A/N: Hi, guys! This is the third fic in the "The Bent Over Tree" series, and there will be at least one more after that. I know how many people like this series, and that makes me really glad because, as I have mentioned before, this AU is my baby. The response to "The Cuckoo and The Sparrow", in particular, blew me away. Most of the things, I already knew how were gonna go, but it was still hard to put them together (oh, the stress). I took some big risks with my choices in this fic, and I'm curious (and nervous) to see what you'll think.
Spoiler alert for "The Bronze Key" and "The Golden Tower".
Please, do not read this without reading "The Bent Over Tree" and "The Cuckoo and the Sparrow" first, otherwise it won't make sense.
This work contains mentions of leaves growing from someone's body. They don't hurt at all and are considered a part of them, but I don't want to trigger anyone.
I also published this fic on AO3 (username: MidnightHalo27)
Disclaimer: The Magisterium book series belongs to Cassandra Clare and Holly Black, not me. The idea of the Goblin Market belongs to Christina Rossetti. None of the nursery rhymes used in this fic are mine either.
I hope you like it! Reviews, kudos, etc are great! Constructive criticism is very welcome, but flames will be used to roast marshmallows.
The Goblin Market
by: GakuenAlicefan27
"You're joking, right?" Tamara asks.
Aaron stares at her, wide-eyed.
Master Rufus sighs. "I am not."
~x~
The next day is a Saturday, which means no classes. More time for the story to spread, but also more time for Call to hide away in his room.
At least, that's what he intends to do, but he ends up being called to a meeting at the crack of dawn, while still in the infirmary with his dad, and then hopping from meeting to meeting the entire morning, being introduced to prominent members of Mage Society. And then, in the afternoon, they take him to the Collegium, to meet a whole new set of people, because this is his life now.
So no, Call does not make the conscious decision to avoid his friends, but only because the decision is taken out of his hands; secretly, he almost welcomes it.
He is not running, he tells himself. He is merely waiting a day or two before the shock wears off, letting it all sink in.
He is not running, but he is not above it, if need be.
~x~
Aaron feels a little dizzy as he sits on the sofa of his group's living room. His thoughts are dragging, as if he's just hit his head, or been hit on the head. A concussion surely would explain a lot of things, like Master Rufus telling them that Call is a changeling.
But Aaron doesn't have a concussion; he's just managed to miss the fact that his best friend, one of the most important people in his life, has been a fairy all along.
He wants to scream. He wants to yell at himself. How lonely it must have been for Call. How scary. And yet, he was still so brave; all on his own, because no one helped at all.
A noise has his head turning in reflex, but it's from Tamara's room, not the front door, from where Call has yet to emerge.
Aaron flexes his hands. He wants to believe Master Rufus when he says that Call is unharmed, but fear is a terrible thing.
He looks at Tamara's door once more, in case there's another noise to give him an indication about her welfare. She didn't say anything after Master Rufus left, just went to her room, closed the door, and stayed there.
He closes his eyes. One thing at a time: first, Call has to come back, safe and sound, and then he'll worry about the rest.
He doesn't mean to sleep, but he ends up waking with a start at half-past eight in the morning, when a whiney Havoc jumps onto his lap. For a moment, he almost convinces himself he dreamed the entire thing, but the reality of the situation settles in soon enough.
He looks around, but Tamara is nowhere to be found. Her bedroom door is open, and so is Call's. He peeks inside just to make sure, but neither is there, though Tamara's bed at least looks like it was slept in.
He swallows with difficulty, and decides to check the cafeteria.
~x~
Pretty much everyone stares as he passes, but no one asks him anything except for the ever-present "Is it true?". He should have known the news would spread fast, but he still didn't expect the entire school to know before it was even time for breakfast.
When he enters the hall, everything goes quiet. If he were Call, he'd ask if they had a problem. If he were Tamara, he'd ignore them. But he is Aaron, so he scans the whole place three times before Celia takes pity on him and says that "He's not here, Aaron."
"And Tamara? Have you seen her?" He asks, sitting down beside her with a thud and not even bothering to grab a tray; he's not hungry at all.
"No." Celia says. And then, "Is it true?"
"Yeah." He says. "I haven't seen him yet, but it's true."
"Master Milagros told us, but we had to make sure." Gwenda says, apologetically. "Did you…know?"
"Did I – No! Of course I didn't know! Would I be acting like this if I had known?" He asks, with just enough bite that it doesn't even seem like him.
"Sorry." Gwenda says, shoulders hunching.
Aaron makes a dejected noise. "I want to see him." He says. "I need to know that he's okay. He didn't come back to our chambers last night."
"He must be with his father." Kai says. "You need to eat something. Then, if he still hasn't shown up, you can ask Master Rufus."
"I'm gonna throw up anything I eat." Aaron replies. He covers his eyes with his hands. "I'm scared. I think he thinks I won't want to be his friend anymore."
"I'm sure you'll get the chance to talk it out." Celia soothes. "And how is Tamara? Is she…taking things well?"
Aaron winces, hearing the subtext in her words. Tamara has always been very vocal in her fear of the Fae. "I don't know." He says. "She seemed too shocked to say anything, when Master Rufus told us, as if she were still trying to process it. She went to her room, and I ended up falling asleep on the sofa, and she wasn't there when I woke."
"Kimiya isn't here either." Jasper says, and Aaron realizes that it's true. His hands grab the edge of the table so tight his knuckles turn white.
"It's okay." He says, more to himself than to anybody else. "It's gonna be alright."
Except he doesn't really have it in him to think that everything is gonna be alright. Call is a fairy and God knows where. Tamara is MIA too. It feels like the world is falling at his feet.
~x~
Master Rufus says Call is at the Collegium, being presented to some people whose names Aaron doesn't bother remembering. He drops by the infirmary to check on Call's dad, but he's already left, so the only thing he can do is go back to that damn sofa, Havoc at his feet, both of them perking up every time they hear footsteps outside.
Tamara is the first to come back. He's so glad to see her that he almost doesn't notice how irate she looks. Almost.
"Hey." He says, taking in her stiff posture and tense shoulders. "I was worried. What happened?"
"My parents are hypocrites, that's what happened!" She snarls. "Can you believe they want me to do whatever I can to remain in Call's good graces?!"
Aaron flinches at her tone. "And you don't…want that?"
"What?" She looks confused for a second, then her face flushes. "That's not what I meant! Can you believe that after spending my entire life warning me off against The Folk, now they're falling all over themselves because Call's a fairy?!"
Aaron stays silent, because he doesn't want to tell her that "I mean, that does sound just like them." But she seems to hear it anyway, because she suddenly deflates, as if she's too tired to even stay angry. She looks at Call's open door.
"He's not back yet?" She asks, voice small.
Aaron shakes his head. "Master Rufus said that the Assembly wanted him to meet some mages."
"You think he's okay?"
He shrugs. He's asked himself this a thousand times in the last hours. His nails are bitten to the quick. "I don't think Master Rufus would be so calm if Call were in trouble." He says, trying to reassure both her and himself.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." She swallows audibly. "Do you think he's very mad at me?"
"No!" Aaron says, alarmed. "I'm sure he –"
"I said so many awful things, Aaron." Tamara interrupts him, sounding miserable. "And I didn't understand why he got so worked up over them. I thought he was just being stubborn. I told him it wasn't personal." She winces. "I should have known it was personal. It seems so obvious now that I was hurting him."
Aaron thinks back to all the episodes of the previous months. They'd had many arguments in the past, but there had been something different about this one; something that made Call not let it go, when all the times before he'd been glad for it to be over after a while.
"You don't need to be afraid of me." He'd said, and Aaron had been affronted Call had even entertained the idea. But how could he not entertain the idea, when just hearing about The Folk made Aaron nervous? When you were a fairy, living among people who distrusted them?
"You couldn't have known." Aaron says, at last. "It wasn't obvious, Tamara. It's obvious now, but it would never be if we hadn't been told."
Tamara's lower lip trembles. "He told me." Her voice breaks. "He said he was secretly a fairy, and I told him not to make jokes like that."
"Oh, Tamara." He hugs her. She is shaking. "We'll talk to him. We'll work things out."
"Okay." She whispers.
~x~
They go to lunch, and things are still pretty much the same as in the morning, except now their friends keep shooting cautious looks at Tamara, as if she's a bomb that might detonate at any time.
"You can talk to me, you know. I'm not gonna break." She says, after an unbearable five minutes.
"No sign of him at all?" Gwenda asks.
"Nothing." Aaron says.
"And are you okay, Tamara?"
"No." She says. "But it would be better if I couldn't feel everyone in the mess hall looking at us."
"They're just a bunch of busybodies." Gwenda says.
"That's not what bothers me."
Gwenda raises an eyebrow. "No?"
"No. What bothers me is that if this had happened to someone who isn't my friend, I'd probably be acting just like them."
"You still want to be his friend then? Even though he's a fairy?"
"It doesn't matter that he's a fairy. He's Call." Tamara says.
"Don't say that to him when you see him." Kai replies.
She frowns. "Why not? I want him to know."
"Yeah, and he probably won't want to be friends with someone who says they still like him, even though he's a fairy. Not any more than you would want to be friends with someone who told you they still like you, even though you're a person of color."
Tears well at Tamara's eyes. "Is that what it sounded like?"
"Kai!" Aaron angrily exclaims.
"No." Tamara says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "He's right. I needed to hear it." She wipes a tear that's threatening to fall. "I feel so stupid. I should have known."
"Tell me about it." Gwenda says. "This is surreal, I bet there's so many hints I missed."
"I mean," Rafe says, taking a sip from his juice. "There's that thing with Aaron, at least, but no one thinks about those things unless they're staring them in the face."
Tamara blinks slowly. "What thing with Aaron?"
"Yeah." Aaron says. "What thing with me?"
"You know," Rafe gestures vaguely. "That time when you almost crossed the border to Faerie."
"What about it?" Tamara asks.
"When you told us what happened, you said that you and Alex were holding Aaron's arms and yelling bloody murder right on his ear, but he still didn't wake from the trance. Call, on the other hand, just stood in front of him and said his name and BAM, he woke."
"Oh my God!" Celia says, bringing a hand to cover her mouth. "I hadn't thought of that!"
Tamara stays there, frozen. Yes, it seems so very blatant now, because they know, Master Rufus taught them, that there are limited ways to get out of a fairy's trance.
Way one: the fairy breaks it. Way two, you fight it through sheer force of will. And way three, the rarest of them all: another, more powerful fairy breaks it for you, because a human cannot break the allure using magic.
And Call did. With just a word. He made it look easy. He did it like it was nothing.
And Tamara had seen it too, after Aaron was out of the trance. She'd seen the way Call's eyes were shining, but she convinced herself she had imagined it. She had noticed that Call seemed unnaturally calm near the tree, but she had brushed it aside.
Where had her head been?
~x~
Call stands outside his chamber door for a long time. It's almost one in the morning. He's scared someone will still be up waiting for him. He's scared no one will be.
He doesn't want to lose Tamara and Aaron, but if they are going to hold his being a fairy against him, then he would rather lose them.
For a moment, he considers dropping the glamour and walking in. He almost does it too, but decides it's too much, too soon.
He takes a deep breath and opens the door. The first thing he sees is Aaron, sitting on the couch with a book in hand. His head whips up the moment he hears the door open, but before Call can see his expression, he's already lunged at him. The impact is so strong that they both fall to the ground.
"Aaron!" Call exclaims, surprised, but the other boy doesn't seem to care; if anything, he wraps his arms around Call's neck a little tighter.
"I was so worried!" Aaron says, voice muffled by Call's own shoulder. "We thought you were in trouble! Or hurt!"
"I'm okay. It's okay." He says, feeling something warm expanding in his chest.
It's then that he notices Tamara, standing a few feet away and looking hesitant, but he can't tell if it's because she's uncomfortable with his presence or because she's not sure if her presence would be welcome.
"Hello, Tamara" He says.
She lunges too. Aaron laughs. Call almost suffocates with the weight of the two of them, plus Havoc, on him.
~x~
Then they talk. It's awkward.
They don't know what to say at first; as if afraid that Call will take off running if they use the wrong word. He's sure that, by now, they must be aware of the story he told the Assembly, but he wonders what they heard about his glamour.
They don't mean to, but he can feel their eyes cataloguing him, looking for something out of place. He scratches at his nose and feels his nails too sharp for comfort, the claws wanting to make themselves known. The glamour is not fighting to break out anymore, but it still reacts strongly to his emotions.
"I'm sorry." Tamara says, at last.
Call stills. "What are you sorry for?" He asks, cautious.
"I'm sorry for the things I said to you, and I'm sorry that I meant them." She looks so small, huddled up against the side of the sofa. "I can't change overnight, but I'm sorry I made you feel as if you couldn't trust me. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you when you were telling me about fairies. Things are not as black and white as I thought they were. I'll listen now. I want to be your friend, and I want to understand the things about fairies that the mages don't tell us about."
Call's throat closes up. He nods jerkily as Aaron rests his chin on his shoulders.
"And I'm sorry if I ever made you feel that I would fear you, if I knew the truth. I know you would never hurt me. You're a fairy, but you're not The Enemy of Death."
That makes his throat close up for a different reason.
"I –" He tries to say, but he's still too choked up. He swallows; it hurts. "I'm gonna drop the glamour now, alright?" He says.
Both of them stiffen. Tamara moves closer to better see. Aaron remains with his chin on Call's shoulder.
"If you don't move," Call says, nudging Aaron gently. "My feathers are going to tickle you."
Tamara makes an "eep" sound. Aaron blinks and moves away slightly, mouthing the word "feathers" as he goes.
Call lets the glamour fade.
Tamara takes in a sharp breath, eyes raking all over him; but she looks mesmerized instead of scared, so Call doesn't mind.
"Oh." Aaron says, voice strangely bland.
"I knew I hadn't imagined your eyes!" Tamara says, and then focuses on his ears. "Oh, just look at them!"
"Oh." Aaron says again.
Call looks at him. His face is flushed. "Aaron?"
"You're gorgeous."
Call's face goes red. Aaron's gets redder. "Did I say that out loud?"
"Yes, you did." Tamara says, patting him on the head while Call's brain is still resetting. "Never change, Aaron. Never change."
~x~
Call decides to leave the glamour off.
"Hello anxiety, my old friend." He says, eyeing the door with trepidation.
"You don't have to do it just to prove a point." Tamara says, watching warily.
"It's much better to get this over with now."
"But it's your life, you shouldn't have to drop the glamour if you don't want to." Aaron says.
Call smiles. "I want to."
"You do?"
"The glamour is not me. It's something to hide behind, and I'm tired of it." He reaches out to unlock the door with his bracelet. "Doesn't mean I'm looking forward to the gaping."
~x~
He had been expecting murmurs, whispers, pointing, even yelling. Instead, there's a hush that falls over as he passes, some sort of creepy silence that really doesn't belong in a school.
The hush is worse than anything Call could have imagined, but he keeps walking, head held high, with Tamara and Aaron flanking him on either side. It sounds stupid, but he's actually wearier of the students than he is of the Assembly. They have less power, but children can be so much crueler.
When they get to the cafeteria, it gets marginally better. Their other friends have saved a spot for them, and seem relieved to see him, if a little amazed. From the corner of his eyes, he can see Alex a few tables away, making a mock-horrified face, and he almost laughs.
It's an immense relief. He hadn't known how they would react; had been particularly worried about Celia, but it seems her hate for Constantine Madden doesn't transfer to the Fairy race in general.
"Hey, guys." He says, once they've settled down and people are still looking, but have gone back to talking.
Jasper hits him on the head.
"Ouch."
"What did I tell you, you idiot?"
Call fights a smile. "To be careful?"
"And what part of that, exactly, translated into telling your life story to the Assembly?"
The smile wins.
"Wait," Aaron says, observing the interaction with the rest of their friends. "Jasper knew?!"
Call shrugs. "He figured it out a while ago. The fairy thing, I mean. Not the changeling thing. What was it that you said again? I don't know which of your parents cheated?"
He tries to hit him again. Call dodges.
"You knew?!" Celia exclaims. "And you kept such a straight face!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Jasper says, embarrassed. Then he takes a good look at Call's hair and stops. "That's where the feather was from?" He asks, sounding surprised.
Call frowns at him. "Where else would it be from?"
"I thought you had, you know, wings or something."
"Wings." Call repeats, drily.
"Don't look at me like that, plenty of fairies have wings. It's a much more reasonable guess than thinking they're your freaking hair!"
Gwenda pokes him on the side. "Don't listen to him, Call. Wings are too mainstream anyway. Your hair is much cooler."
"Much obliged, my fair lady."
Rafe raises an eyebrow. "Are you gonna start talking like a fairy now?"
"Nah." He laughs. "I was just joking."
~x~
Kai catches up to him later.
"Something like that, huh." He says.
Call smiles sheepishly.
"Could you tell?" Kai asks.
"Tell what?"
"About my great-grandmother. Did you already know before I told you?"
"I could have known, if I had focused on it." Call shrugs. "When you told me, I concentrated and was able to feel the threads of wild magic coming from you. If she were your grandmother, I might not have needed to."
Kai looks kind of stunned at that. Call doesn't know what kind of response he had been expecting, but he guesses the one he got wasn't it.
"Are you okay?" He asks.
Kai blinks, still astonished. "Yeah, I'm…surprised, I guess. I didn't really think you'd say yes. I've always thought my blood connection to her was too distant to be felt."
"That kind of thing goes a long way." He says, as they reach his door. "But you must not have been so certain, deep down, or you wouldn't have asked me." He winks.
~x~
Three weeks later, Call develops an apocalyptic headache. He'd like to say that he's surprised, but he is not.
Some people have begun wearing protection charms. Not a lot of people, but a few, and while none of them has tried to outright attack him, it's enough for his skin to itch and his eyes to water from time to time. He figures this is just another side effect.
He groans, earning a concerned look from both Celia and Gwenda. They've been protective of him ever since they found a horseshoe nailed to the wall above his group's chamber's doors.
"Are you alright?"
"I have a killer headache."
Aaron turns his attention to them. "The one that began yesterday or a new one?"
"Same one. God, I need some aspirin."
"Perhaps it would be better if you didn't go to the Gallery today. It's too loud." Tamara says.
"I'm fine." He mumbles, even though he kind of wants to pass out.
"Well, I'm going." Jasper says, though Call catches him looking at him with a frown. "I have to enjoy my free time while it lasts. Master Milagros didn't give us any homework for the weekend, can you believe it?"
"She's been in an awfully good mood lately." Gwenda agrees.
Call smiles. "She's had a good month."
Gwenda tilts her head. "Why?"
"Just a thank you." He gets up, wincing. "Anyway, let's go. I'd rather be miserable in the Gallery than in my room."
~x~
There is something off about Anastasia Tarquin.
Call has known that ever since he first saw her, in her fancy car, dropping Alex at the Magisterium in the beginning of the school year.
He had known something was wrong, but she'd been too far away for him to tell, and gone as quickly as she'd come.
She'd seen him staring and smiled, the way she had smiled back at the Council Chamber, when Call had revealed himself as a changeling; the way she's smiling now, and Call is still trying to decide if she's deliberately sought him out, or if bumping into her is just a coincidence.
The difference is that she isn't far away this time. She's standing right in front of him, and now he can tell what feels off about her, because it's the same thing that feels off about him.
Glamour.
Anastasia is a fairy, and a full-fledged one at that, not a half-fairy like Call.
A fairy is a high ranking member of the Assembly.
Huh.
Call inclines his head in acknowledgement. She inclines her head back; it's more than he expected of her.
"Walls have ears. Doors have eyes." She says, in lieu of a verbal greeting. "You know the rest, keep it in mind."
Call hesitates only for a second, before asking:
"Why would you tell me that?"
"Consider it a thank you gift for the lovely show you put up at the Assembly Hall."
Call doesn't believe her for a second. She can't lie, but she didn't tell him it was because of his performance at the Assembly Hall, she just told him to consider it as such.
That doesn't help his headache at all.
~x~
"Hello." Says someone from behind him. The voice is vaguely familiar, but Call is still surprised when he turns and sees that it's Kimiya.
"Hello." He says back.
"Can we talk?" She asks, nodding to the empty chair beside him. They are in the library, but as long as they keep their voices low, they should be fine.
"Sure. What about?"
"Fairies."
Call blinks. "Anything in particular?"
Kimiya sighs and sits beside him. "You are aware that Tamara and I were raised to fear them, correct?"
"Yes."
"For the longest time, our parents did whatever they could to reinforce this fear. They made it seem as if fairies were demons. But after you revealed yourself as a changeling, they changed their tone and wanted us be on good terms with you."
Call freezes.
"Tamara was furious at them. I admit I was upset too."
Slowly, Call's muscles relax. "Why are you telling me this?" He asks.
"I want to understand." She says, adjusting an invisible imperfection in her braid. "I tried to understand where my parents were coming from; told myself that they were following a keep your enemies closer approach, but it's not that. They are excited about you, and the advantages you might bring. It's like they only hated fairies because it was convenient for them, and that has made me wonder whether they even believe in half the things they always told us."
Call thinks this is the closest he's ever heard Kimiya get to reproaching her parents.
"And then there's Tamara." She continues. "When I saw that you two were back to being friends, I thought she had decided to follow our parent's advice after all, but no; it didn't take me long to realize that she did it because she wanted to." She looks at him. Her eyes are calculating. "Why? What have you told her that made her change her mind? It's not only because you're her friend. You were fighting before you came clean, and I know you said things in the fairies' defense. What were those things?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because I need to." Her voice is insistent, annoyed. "I need to know if the things I've been taught are not what they seem."
"And you think you can trust me?"
"I think I can listen to what you have to say, and make my own judgement."
Okay, Call can respect that.
"Listen," He says, and she rights herself in her chair and focuses her attention on him in a way that's borderline scary. "What I told Tamara is simple: they are right when they tell you not to cross to Faerie. They are right when they tell you not to make bargains with fairies, and they are right when they tell you not to anger them. But just because these things are true, doesn't mean they are all there is."
She frowns, but he continues. "Fairies have feelings just like anybody else, and some would argue that they feel even stronger than others. They have families and people whom they love and care about, and they might even fall in love with humans. Real love, not just as playthings or distractions."
"That seems obvious." She says.
"And it should be, but were you taught that? Did other mages ever tell you that?"
She shakes her head.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." He huffs. "People used to know that. They always have had a healthy fear of fairies, because our magic is wilder and you can feel that, but there used to be awe too. There were interactions between the races. Nowadays, you're just taught that, if you see a fairy, you should run or fight, and that is not fucking right. If you see a fairy maiden walking in the woods, maybe she's not stalking you, you know? Maybe she's just enjoying a goddamned walk in the woods. If you see fairy children running about, maybe it's not some elaborate ploy to lure you in. Maybe they just enjoy playing tag like any other child. And if you see a fairy and they smile at you, maybe they're not plotting your demise. Maybe they just like your dress."
"You can't mean that." Kimiya asks, eyes wide. "There's always an ulterior motive. You can't really tell me that a fairy could simply smile at me because they like my clothes."
"Why the fuck not? Do you wear ugly clothes?"
She flushes. "You're serious." The bafflement in her voice is evident. "You're really serious."
Call groans. He can't say this type of behavior is all because of the war, because there have always been prejudiced people who thought like that; but the war did make things ten times worse.
He gets up. "Wait a minute." There's about a dozen people staring (oops, forgot to talk low), but he ignores them in favor of scanning the titles on the shelves.
It takes a while, because his head is throbbing and the books he's looking for are all over the place. Judging by the dust in them, no one has read them in ages.
Sometime later, he's back with an armful of books. Kimiya is still in the same position as when he left; she eyes the books with curiosity.
"These books all contain good and bad things about the Fair Folk. They are pretty accurate and reasonably unbiased". He puts them on the table and grabs the first one. "This one is from the sixties. It's the journal of a mage who spent a year in a town in Oregon that was known for having a population that constantly mingled with the fairies around their forest's border."
He grabs the second one: "This is the memoir of a mage who went into the woods to look for her little sister and ended up spending thirteen years in Faerie, even though, when she came back, only a month had passed in the mortal realm."
He grabs the third one. "This is actually an old children's book. The tales are all very simple, but most of them were based on true facts that happened around the eighteenth century. And this one," he grabs the fourth and final one, and makes a face. "We're all familiar with it."
Kimiya blinks. "One of our Copper Year history books?"
"Yeah." He holds it up. "Can you guess how many pages it has?"
She frowns. "Two hundred?"
"Two hundred and thirty. When it was first published, in 1750, it was the most thorough treatise on fairies of its time. It had six hundred and ten pages."
"All this?!"
"All this. Then, in the early 1800s, it underwent its first cut. They edited out about a hundred pages; said it was too long. Most of the chapters that were taken out depicted examples of peaceful cohabitation of humans and fairies." He grimaces at the book. "Fifty years later, it underwent its second cut, God only knows why. Some of the chapters taken out discussed the fairies' influence on the progresses the mages had made in the medical field in the years before its publication." She reaches out for it, but he shakes his head. "And then, in the 1920s, it underwent its third and final cut, because the mages of a town in Northern England had waged a conflict against the fairies that lived in its surrounding woods and killed sixty of them. But they didn't want the future generations to reproach them, so they managed to bribe a prominent publishing house in London to cut out most of the chunks of this book that spoke favorably of The Folk."
Kimiya stares at him, horrified.
"This book isn't half of what it used to be. But," He grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder. "The Magisteriums are old institutions, with secular collections. If you go to the archived section, you should be able to find an original copy. You'll have to get a pass from a Master, but that should be easy enough. See for yourself what I'm talking about."
He looks at the clock. "I have to go to class now, but I hope I helped."
Kimiya nods, perturbed, and he leaves.
~x~
Three days later, he wakes up to find the headache has shifted to two sections of his head, instead of all of it. He grumbles, absent-mindedly rubbing at the spots. And freezes.
The litany of swear words that follows is truly impressive.
~x~
Call sits down between Aaron and Tamara in the mess hall, slumps his head against the surface of the table, and groans.
"What's wrong?"
"My life is a cosmic joke."
"Nothing new then." Jasper says. Call tries to step on his foot, but misses.
Tamara frowns. "The headache again?"
"The source."
She blinks. "What is it?"
"I have antlers."
"Shut up." She says, dropping her fork. Aaron and Rafe whip their heads around so fast they almost break their necks.
"Antlers. What did I do to deserve this?"
"I think I see them." Aaron says, staring very hard at his feathery hair. Call unconsciously covers his head with his hands.
"I don't see anything." Celia says.
"They're barely there." Call grumbles. "They're just tiny stumps for now. But the skin around them is sensitive."
"Were they there when you went to sleep?"
"No."
"Crap." Tamara winces, doing her best to seem like she's not staring too. "What are you gonna do when they are fully grown? How are you gonna put on shirts and stuff?"
"Do I look like I know?"
"What if they grow so heavy that you can't lift your head?" Gwenda asks.
"Why can't at least one person say something positive to make me feel better? There's seven of you! Is it really too much to ask?"
"Yup." Tamara says.
"Yup." Jasper agrees.
"But what if you get stuck trying to go through a door?" Kai asks.
Call makes a long-suffering noise and they all laugh, even Aaron, the traitor.
~x~
All jokes aside, there's something almost eerie about the antlers. Celia says they're beautiful, their white making a contrast with his raven feathers, and even Call has to agree.
They grow quickly, but stop growing long before they get big enough to become a problem, and their weight only bothers him in the beginning, and much less than he thought it would.
He puts on shirts like he always does, and his magic makes sure that the antlers don't snag on any part of the fabric. It's instinctual, more so than nearly everything else he's done with magic before, like an old habit.
Call wonders how Constantine must have felt when they started to grow; how uncomfortable it must have been to hide them, and probably his other fairy traits too, with a glamour. He's beyond glad that he doesn't have to anymore.
~x~
"You really need to take it easy on the coffee." Aaron says.
Call raises an eyebrow. "What do you mean? I haven't had more than a cup today."
"Somehow, I don't believe it." Tamara says, unimpressed. "You've been jittery all day. I'm pretty sure this has happened at least once every month since I met you."
"Yeah, well, there's a revel at least once a month." Call responds, drily.
Aaron blinks. Tamara stares at him for a second, before her mouth forms a perfect "O".
"You can feel it?" She asks.
Call shrugs. "The magic calls to me, makes me feel restless."
"But was it always like this?"
"Always, but it was especially shitty before I found out I was a changeling. I thought there was something wrong with me."
"How old were you when your father told you the truth?"
"Er," He says. "Maybe seven or eight."
"That seems kind of young." Aaron says. "I don't think seven-year-old me would be able to keep a secret like that."
Call clears his throat, uncomfortable as all hell. "He didn't have much of a choice. I – " He pauses. "Got sick, the glamour became unstable for a while, and he couldn't come up with an excuse as to why my hair had turned to feathers and my ears had gone pointy."
"Oh." Tamara says, kind of sad. "It must have been horrible to find out like that."
Call thinks of himself standing inside a crumbling bowling alley, Master Joseph in front of him and telling him that "Your glamour may be excellent, but I assure you you're still as much of a fairy as you ever were, Constantine."
He swallows. "Could've been worse."
~x~
Master Rufus asks him to drop by his office. At first, Call is worried, but he hasn't done anything that warrants a scolding lately, so he ends up knocking on the office's door feeling more curiosity than anything.
As it turns out, it's not anything important, just a regular check-up to see how he's doing. They haven't had one since before the antlers grew.
"Are they uncomfortable?" Master Rufus asks. Call notices the thick volume lying on the table, a bookmark in place about halfway through.
He smiles. His conversation with Kimiya had, much to his surprise, a domino effect. Turns out a lot of people overheard them in the library, and told their friends, who told their friends, who told everyone. The Magisterium had had two copies of the original edition of the treatise on fairies, but the library requests for it grew so numerous that they had to borrow tomes from other Magisteriums around the U.S.
"No." He answers truthfully.
"Are you having issues with your balance?"
"I had a little, in the first days, but not anymore."
"Good." Master Rufus says, and he makes it sound as if they're talking about something trivial. Aside from the initial shock of that day in the Council Chamber, he seems to have taken it all in stride.
"Have you contacted your father to tell him about them?"
"Not yet." Call says. "Have you?"
"Told him about your antlers?"
"Talked to him."
Master Rufus grimaces. He had been going to talk with both Call and Alastair, while they still were in the infirmary; but then Call was called away to all those meetings and Alastair was quick to make himself scarce after they interrogated him.
Call wonders if they'd have managed to mend something out of their broken relationship, or if the rift between Master and former student would never really begin to heal. He wonders if Master Rufus would have asked to visit Callum Hunt's grave.
Master Rufus sighs. "I feel like I should have had more faith in Alastair."
Call shrugs. "Sometimes people make it really hard for you to have faith in them."
"And I feel like I should have noticed you were a fairy."
"Yeah, that seems like a common theme among the people who know me."
"But I have taught two fairy students before. I know the signs, and still I missed them."
"Because I was hiding them."
Master Rufus sighs. "I guess. But anyway, please tell me if any problems arise, Call. I will do my best to help, though I don't know much help I can actually give. Your antlers are something new to me, they present a different set of issues than Constantine's leaves."
Call stares. Little by little, he feels himself going tense.
"Leaves?" He asks.
"Yes." Master Rufus studies him, perhaps noticing how stiff he is. "Is something wrong, Call?"
"I was just thinking," His heart is hammering away in his chest, like a hummingbird. "All the pictures I've seen of Constantine have him wearing a mask and a cloak covering his entire body."
"Indeed. I'm afraid there aren't many official pictures of when Constantine was young. Why do you ask?"
"But what you said now – about leaves – I take it you've seen him without a glamour, then? I assumed that you hadn't."
Master Rufus raises an eyebrow. "He used glamours sometimes, but the Madden brothers were not fans of them, no."
"And what did he look like?"
"He had the trademark ears." Master Rufus says. "And he had vines and leaves growing from his body; sometimes flowers as well."
Call wets his lips. "What about his eyes? I-I've heard people say they were grey, like mine."
Master Rufus frowns. "The shade of silver of your eyes can hardly be called gray, Call. As for Constantine, his eyes had storm clouds inside the iris."
"Storm clouds?"
"Yes. If you looked at him for time enough, you could see them moving and getting darker. Sometimes, there were even flashes of lightning."
Call manages to nod, as if his mind isn't spinning; as if he hasn't just found out that something is really, very wrong.
~x~
He's looking for Aaron and Tamara, but it's Kai who ends up running into him as he's heading for the Gallery.
"You have a minute?" Kai asks. He seems excited.
"Sure."
"I have something from my great-grandma."
Call blinks. "Cool?"
"For you."
"Really?"
"Yup."
"What does she want with me?" He asks.
Kai shrugs. "I don't have the slightest idea. She just came to me this morning, when my group was out in the forest, and asked me to tell you that she wanted to talk to you." He says, as if he still hasn't gotten over the shock of seeing his fairy great-grandmother showing up out of nowhere. "She told me to give you this." He holds up a nut.
"Okay." Call says.
"I don't really know why she would give me – wait, what?"
"What?"
Kai gestures to the nut. "Okay?"
"Okay."
"I don't understand."
Call smiles, taking the nut from him. The moment it touches his hand, it breaks in half, revealing a handful of seeds inside.
Kai huffs. "I should have known." He looks more closely. "Seeds?"
"Apple and pomegranate, to name a few." Call replies, curiously.
"You understand what this means?"
"Yeah." He holds out his hand. "Take them."
Kai seems almost afraid to do so, as if the seeds might explode in his hands. When he does, Call closes his fingers over them and says: "Close your eyes and focus."
"On what?"
"On the seeds. On how they feel."
Kai closes his eyes and Call waits. It takes a while, but eventually Kai's eyes snap open.
"I heard something!" He says, sounding awed.
Call smiles. "What was it?"
"It sounded like come buy, come buy." Kai cocks his head. "What does that mean?"
"The Goblin Market. The seeds are from there; there's gonna be one this Sunday."
Kai gapes. Call takes the seeds from him and sets all of them but one on fire. The remaining one, he puts back inside the nut, and it closes as if it had never been opened at all. He has no intention of using it, but he won't throw it away either.
"What did you do that for?" Kai asks, as Call puts the nut in his pocket.
"It's not good letting things like these lying around."
"But – The Goblin Market? Does she want you to go there?"
"I think so."
"And are you going to?"
"No offense to your great-grandma, but most likely no."
"If you go," Kai begins.
"No."
"You don't even know what I was going to say!"
"You were going to ask me to take you with me."
Kai looks sheepish. "I've always wanted to see the Market."
"I don't think you truly understand what you're asking."
"I know the rules, and I'll behave. Please, just think about it."
Call takes a deep breath for patience. "I'll think about it, but I make no promises. I mean it when I say I really don't intend to go."
Kai nods happily and leaves. Call shakes his head and resumes looking for his friends.
~x~
Call spends some time trying to come up with an explanation for his dilemma, but he can't think of anything, so he uses Master Rufus' tornado-phone-thingy to call his father.
Thankfully, Master Rufus leaves to give them privacy, because Call doesn't know how he would find a way to talk about the things he wants to talk about with him there.
"Those are…new." Alastair says, eyeing the antlers with curiosity.
Call feels his heart plummet to his stomach.
"You've never seen them before, have you?" He asks.
Alastair frowns. "How would I?"
Call huffs in frustration. "You know."
Understanding dawns on Alastair's face. "Oh." The frown gets deeper. "No."
"How's that possible?" Call asks, hunching over the desk. "I had assumed Constantine used a glamour while in school, and that was why no one seemed to recognize my fairy traits, but Master Rufus said that he didn't. He said he had leaves and vines and I don't have any of that! Dad, why didn't you say anything?!" He hisses. "I took the glamour off in front of the entire Assembly! What if I didn't look different? You didn't think this could have ended badly?
"I didn't say anything because I hadn't seen you without the glamour until that day in the infirmary." Alastair says. "And when I did, I assumed it was your magic protecting you, making you look different than Constantine on purpose." He looks pointedly at him. "And as you might remember, revealing yourself as a changeling was a last resource plan that I never thought we'd have to use."
Call averts his eyes. "How would my magic even do that?"
"The same way you use the glamour. Fairies are not able to change their true appearance, but they are able to change how others perceive their appearance. You'd just be trading an illusion for another."
Call touches his unruly locks. They look like hair, and even feel like hair, but deep down, he knows, they never stopped being feathers.
"The feathers are the real deal, dad. The antlers too."
Alastair looks pensive. "And if they grew now, they should have grown when Constantine was the same age as you."
"I thought so too."
"I told you fairies can't change their true appearance, but perhaps there are ways around that, and it's simply that humans don't know it. I'm no fairy, so I don't know for sure how things like this work. I suppose our best bet is that he did something, after he became the Enemy, which resulted in this. Or that it was in the family, and for some reason they only grew this time around."
"How likely is that?"
"No idea. But Jericho had deer spots all over his back, so I wouldn't discount it."
Call thinks of the way his magic reacted to the antlers; the manner in which it instinctually worked on his shirts, and the familiar feeling that came with it. He thinks about all the things he doesn't know, the means he could use to find them out, and what he might pay for using them.
He wants answers.
He decides he can live without them.
~x~
But life has a way of not caring about your decisions.
~x~
Call, Jasper, Celia and Gwenda have just settled down for a study session when Nigel arrives, holding a pencil case in one hand and a bag of chips that must have come from the Gold Year's stash of contraband food in the other. He smiles in greeting, but the smile dies as soon as he sees Call.
"Nigel?" Call asks, taking in how his face has gone alarmingly pale.
"You're not with Kai." Nigel whispers, horrified.
Call frowns. "What?"
Gwenda looks from one of them to the other. "Is something wron-"
"I'll kill him!" Nigel yells, throwing the bag of chips on the ground and making Celia drop her book in fright.
Call leaps to his feet, ignoring the pain that shoots up from his bad leg. "What's wrong?"
"Kai said he was gonna be with you!" Nigel says, voice and hands shaking. He looks on the verge of a panic attack. "He said he was gonna go to the Goblin Market, and I tried to change his mind, but he wouldn't listen. He said I didn't need to worry, because he was going with you, and his grandmother or something was going to be there. But he lied! That son of a –"
"When did he go?" Call asks, starting to panic himself.
"Tw-two hours ago."
Both Call and Jasper curse loudly, but Call does it longer. He should have known. He should have suspected Kai would try to go with or without him.
"But," Gwenda says, eyes wide. "What are the chances that he's actually going to get there? It's really difficult to find the Market, isn't it?"
"Difficult, but not impossible." Especially for someone with fairy blood. "He knows it's open today, which is usually the biggest problem. If he tries hard enough, he just might find it." And then he's gonna be all by himself, painfully human, in the middle of the Market. God, it's a scene straight from a nightmare. "I'll go after that idiot."
"You can't!" Celia shrieks.
"I have to!"
Jasper narrows his eyes. "Is it safe for you to go there?"
Call clenches his jaw. "Safer." Jasper opens his mouth to protest, but he cuts him off. "I don't have a choice, okay? If it were up to me, I'd stay the hell away from Faerie, thank you very much. But it's not up to me. Someone has to go get Kai."
"We'll talk to the Masters then!" Celia says, looking like she wants to grab his arm to stop him from leaving.
"Yes, you will." Call agrees. "Find Master Tanaka and Master Rufus. Tell them everything, but I'm still the best bet."
"Please, just wait until we talk to them." Nigel pleads.
"Listen to me." Call says, hating that he's going to make them even more nervous. "There's no time to waste. I don't know at which hour the Market began, nor how long it's gonna last. There's a thousand things that might happen to Kai, and even if, by some miracle, he's perfectly safe, I still have to make sure that he leaves before the Market closes. He can't be there when the last stall shuts down."
"What happens if he is?" Gwenda asks, trembling.
Call doesn't have a memory to go with the knowledge. It is, like so many things related to Faerie, just an echo of something he almost remembers. He shivers anyway. "Bad things."
~x~
Fifteen minutes later, Call's in the forest. It's later than he would like, but he had to stop by his chambers to get the nut with the seed inside. He can only hope that the time he'll gain by using its shortcut will make up for it.
Market days are not like revel nights, but there's still a faint thrumming in the air. He pauses, looking for a good spot, and his eyes are drawn to a small space between a fallen tree and a big rock, where residue magic lies.
It used to be a gate to Faerie, a long time ago, and that means it's good for what he's about to do. If he didn't have the seed, it would be a different story; he'd have to rely on chance and patience, the latter of which he really does not have at the moment.
He breaks the nut and plants the seed, focusing his magic on making it grow. His earth magic is not that great, but being a fairy helps. Sometime later, he takes a step back to inspect his work, and is surprised to see that it turned out better than he'd expected.
It's an orange tree. It doesn't have fruits yet, but the flowers are in bloom. It also looks completely out of place, in the middle of this forest of high trees and subtropical climate. Even if weren't destined to wither in a few hours, it wouldn't last long.
Call takes a deep breath to get his bearings. He's not calm, but that is not really a problem. Fairies can't smell fear like some animals can; they rely on body language. As long as he pretends to be calm, and does it well, it's going to be fine.
He steels himself, ducks under the tree's lowest branch, and the scenery changes.
~x~
The first thing he registers is that the sky is pink. It's not always pink; sometimes it's purple, and sometimes it's orange, but the pink one is his favorite.
He sweeps his eyes over the place. The stalls are colorful too, but similar to the ones you would find in an ordinary farmer's market, with the exception of one that is made of running water, and another that seems to be made of teeth. Not all of them are run by goblins, but quite a few are. Just like not all the products sold are wondrous, but quite a few are.
He walks on, and the sounds of the Market engulf him. A cacophony of noises of fairies yelling, laughing, and talking. Some talk as if they are singing, while some talk in other languages. The fairy nearest to him speaks with a voice that is more like that of a bird's, but the one next to her seems to understand her perfectly.
His mouth involuntarily twitches upwards. The Market is beautiful, in its strangeness, in its colors, and even in the ache it induces in Call's chest.
He takes a shuddering breath, feeling choked up. He is happy with the life he has, but still there's a part of him whispering that this is what you gave up when you left.
Before he can get lost in that train of thought though, the memory of what he came here to do snaps him out of it.
Calmly, he strolls through the place, doing his best not to call attention to himself. It seems like it's working; no one stops to talk to him, and no one looks except in passing (some look away far too quickly, but he's not gonna realize it until much time later).
He passes a stall selling jewelry that can never be stolen, takes a turn near a stall that is simply selling fruit, and another near one that is selling sorrowful nightmares. The one made of teeth is actually selling weaponry, and he almost pauses at one selling secrets, but he doesn't think he's gonna like the prices. The fairy managing the stall looks at him; at his hair, then his antlers, and smiles. Another fairy is walking his way.
Call stops as she draws near. She is lithe and graceful, but not aristocratically beautiful like some fairies are. Her hair looks like something's nest; her eyes are robin egg blue.
"Greetings." She says. "I see you received my invitation."
Call's neck is stiff with tension. "You're Kai's great-grandmother." He says.
"I am. I don't suppose you've brought him along?"
He swallows. "No."
She hums. "It's no matter. I'm due a visit anyway."
"But why did you ask me here?"
"I was curious." She makes a vague hand gesture. Her nails are not as sharp as his. "There has been talk. The mortal who raised you came to Faerie recently; it's not everyday someone destroys the Alkahest."
"And that is all?" He asks. She is a full fairy, so she won't lie, but cryptic answers are commonplace.
"There has been talk." She repeats. "And then there has been more talk." Her eyes fall on his antlers. "I see that it is true, but I am not the best one to talk about this. I did not really think you would come."
"You could tell me anyway."
"No, I don't think I will. I don't want to, nor is it my place."
"Did someone tell you it is not your place?"
"These kinds of things don't need to be told."
He narrows his eyes. "But did someone tell you?"
She smiles. "Yes."
"Who?"
"A friend of yours."
Call grits his teeth. "If you listened, you must be afraid of them."
"Indeed"
"That's not very much like a fairy."
"I disagree. Self-preservation is very much like a fairy."
She is right, and that irritates him. He can't think of anyone who could be going around and warning people off telling him stuff. Not now, that Master Joseph is dead. Unless the spy has more sway on Faerie than he'd thought.
"Are you saying there's no one who could tell me, then?"
She smiles beatifically, exposing her too-shiny-teeth. She looks delighted at the question, which is never a good thing.
"There is one." She says. "One of the ancient ones. He would be a good fairy to tell you."
"And where can I find him?"
Her smile gets impossibly bigger. "I don't know if you can. Maugris made a foolish decision, and it's possible he'll never recover." Her eyes glimmer as if she's just told a very good joke, and then she turns into a hare and hops away.
Call growls in frustration; the sound is more animalistic than he'd intended, but he doesn't care.
He turns around, ready to do another sweep of the Market, when he realizes there's a small child frowning at him, a toy that looks like a magical pinwheel in hand.
He clears his throat. "Hello."
"Hello." The child returns, tentatively. "Are you angry?"
"I am, but not at you."
"I should hope so. I did you no harm."
Call smiles at their words and unimpressed tone.
"Why are you wearing these clothes?" The child asks, eyeing his jeans and t-shirt.
"I like them."
"They are human clothes. Are you with the human who was here?"
Call's heart starts beating faster. "Maybe. What did he look like?"
"Just a boy, with brown hair. Tall too."
"Where did he go?"
The child points to one of the many paths that lead out of the Market; a slope bordered by silver trees with blue leaves. Call can see why Kai might decide to go through it; it is one of the nicest looking paths. Unfortunately, that does not mean it is the less treacherous one.
"Thank you." He says, and runs.
~x~
Thankfully, for his bad leg, the slope is treacherous not because of its steepness, but because of its flowers, wedged in between the trees. He examines them as he passes, careful not to stay in one place too long. All are exquisite and in various shades of blue, and while some are just pretty, most of them could kill someone in so many different ways it's not even funny.
He gulps when he thinks of Kai, with his favor for earth magic, walking through and touching and sniffing all those pocket sized deaths. Then he tells himself that Kai wouldn't be stupid enough to forget everything he learned at the Magisterium; except he was stupid enough to come to the Market on his own, so it's very possible Call will stumble upon his dead body any minute now. He –
– Dodges just in time to avoid the dagger aimed at his back.
He falls to the ground and turns. Someone comes up from behind one of the trees; a human boy, tall and with brown hair. It's not Kai, but when Call looks at him, he wishes it were, horrible as that sounds.
Another dagger is thrown. He dodges again and jumps to his feet.
"Alex." He says, and because he doesn't want to voice any of the betrayal he's feeling, he says. "I see you did some shopping. Did you like the teeth décor?"
"Shut up." Alex says, sneering. "How did you follow me all the way here?"
"You're not as subtle as you'd like." Call lies, and smiles, even though he wants to throw up. One of the daggers has landed near his feet, and he can see that they are made from pure iron, and carved at the hilt with words that are too small for him to read. Just the iron is trouble enough, but he doubts the words are for aesthetical purposes. "Nor as smart. Attacking a fairy in their own homeland? Someone is over-confident."
Alex grits his teeth. "This was not supposed to happen now. But it doesn't matter, just a small change of plans. You won't thwart me again."
"Again?" Call asks, but the answer comes to him less than a second later. "You did it on purpose." He says. "You knew the bent tree was going to act as a border to Faerie that night. You wanted Aaron to cross."
Alex snorts. "Of course I wanted him to cross. It would be one less pebble on my way. He never deserved the power he has."
Call doesn't know why, but instead of the rage he expects to feel, all that runs through his veins is a type of cold fury. He can see it clearly now, how Alex planned it, and why it went wrong.
"You underestimated my strength."
"You were not supposed to be strong enough to break the allure. Not the way you are now!"
"But I was." Call smiles.
Alex's face is contorted in such a derisive scowl, there's no doubt that he's anxiously waiting for the moment when he can stab Call with one of the many daggers he still has on his belt.
"Not for much longer." He grabs two daggers, holds one in each hand. "Your luck has run out, and once you're out of the way, I'll show the mages that a human can be just as powerful, and much worse, than any fairy they've encountered."
Call had known, on a logical level, that there were many people who hated him for what he'd done as The Enemy of Death, but he still wasn't prepared to see someone look at him like this. Not with so much hatred, and not for all the wrong reasons.
He tries to ignore the heavy weight in his chest. "You could have been so great, Alex. On your own merit, through your own talent."
Alex laughs. "I'll be better than great." He holds the daggers tighter. "Prepare to die, Constantine Madden."
"Oh dear, are you quite sure of that?" A voice says from the shadows.
Both of them turn.
Alex goes pale as a ghost. "No way." He whispers. Call feels as if time has stopped.
A man walks forward and, quicker than Call can blink, presses something to Alex's nose – something turquoise: one of the flowers from the path. Less than a second later, Alex has collapsed, asleep.
The man turns to him. On one half of his face, there are burn marks from where autumn leaves grow, going around his eyes and all the way down to his shoulder. On the unblemished half, there are no leaves, but there are on the correspondent shoulder, also growing from his skin, except green as they can only be in spring.
He looks at him, and the storm clouds in his eyes shift, collide; Call half-expects to hear thunder, but none comes.
"Hello." Says Constantine. "It's been a long time."
~x~
There are many things Call can say to that, but after an entire minute of silence, the only thing that comes out is:
"Who am I, then?" And it sounds way more broken than he means it to.
Constantine takes a step forward. Call takes a step back, grabbing one of Alex's daggers from the ground and pointing it at him.
He stops. "I will not hurt you."
"Forgive me for not trusting a single word out of your mouth." Call replies, automatically.
Constantine chuckles. "I protected you from him." He nods to Alex. "And before that, my mother warned you too."
Call frowns. "Your mother?"
"I believe you know her as Anastasia."
"Oh." His heart is beating so hard it feels like it's gonna come out of his mouth.
"I asked her to warn you about him."
"Why?" He asks, eyes cataloguing his surroundings, trying to find the best route for an escape.
"To help you. He may not be much, but ambitious, ruthless people should never be ignored." His eyes move to Call's antlers and he looks ridiculously fond. "I see they grew back. I'm glad; they have always been your signature, along with your hair."
Call narrows his eyes. "You were the one who forbade the fairies from telling me about them."
"I did not forbid anyone. I merely suggested, in a strong manner, that they should choose their words wisely when talking to you, or Master Joseph, may he rest in hell."
That surprises him. "Master Joseph too?"
"Of course. I didn't want anyone telling him that you were not me, much as I would have liked to see his face if he ever found out."
"You…but…" He pauses, then gives up and simply scowls.
Constantine smiles. "I missed that."
"Tell me." Call says.
"But I thought you said you wouldn't trust anything that came out of my mouth."
"I told you to tell me, not that I would trust it."
Constantine hums. "Very well." He says, and leans into the bark of the nearest tree as he thinks of how to begin. He looks gorgeous, and completely in his element. Call almost throws the dagger at him just for the principle of the thing (also, because his nerves are frayed).
"After the Cold massacre, I was nearly dead." He says.
Call's shoulders tense. He should have known the tale would begin with the Cold Massacre.
"My followers brought me back to Faerie, to my mother, so she could try and save me. She is very powerful, and had it not been for her, I would have met my end. However, just because she managed to save me, didn't mean everything was fine. My power was depleted; chaos magic and fairy magic are a volatile combination at best, but the way I used them…my strength was down to the dregs. Many years would be needed before I would be able to stand my ground again, and even so, only if my mind didn't kill me first."
"Your mind?"
"Shattered, is what it was. It began to break when my brother died," His left hand spasms. "And it only got worse from there. Too much guilt, too much rage, too much magic. It took its toll."
Call swallows. He had heard mages say that Constantine Madden had become insane in the years preceding his disappearance, but he hadn't really known whether to believe it or not. He believed it now though, because when others said it, it kind of sounded like they were using it as an excuse to justify his actions, as if only someone off his rocker could do the atrocities he had; but when Constantine said it, it sounded like the insanity was the symptom, not the cause.
"Then you came." Constantine says, and snaps Call out of his thoughts.
"Me?"
"My mother asked you to come. You were not friends, had never even talked, but you knew of each other. She was a princess, and respected. You were one of the ancient ones, and also respected. Knowing of each other was inevitable. I had heard of you too, but you were more a myth to me than anything else. I never thought I'd actually meet you."
"I don't understand." Call whispers.
"You're a very powerful fairy, Callum." He says. "A half-fairy, like me, but centuries old. The one with raven feathers for hair and antlers like a crown. You're the kind of fairy other fairies talk about."
"Was." Call murmurs, distractedly, trying to process the information.
"Is." Constantine says. "You came to me, and you saved me."
"How?"
"You used your own magic to undo the damage in mine. It wasn't easy. Even you weren't quite sure how to do it in the beginning; it was trial and error, for the most part, but you did it. You didn't have to do any of it; didn't have to come when my mother asked. I was nothing to you, but you came anyway, even though you were older and more jaded than anyone could ever imagine. Even though some of your thoughts were darker than mine." He shakes his head. "I never knew why. Perhaps you were bored; perhaps you just wanted to see if you could. But you did it, and that's what matters."
"No. The intention matters too."
Something shines in Constantine's eyes. "Yes, you would say that." He cocks his head. "And while you did it, you were there, talking to me. Telling me of the things you'd seen and done. The hatred you had felt in the past and still felt, even then. How tired you were, and your desire for something else. You talked, and that helped too." His thoughts seem to be a million miles away. "Made me feel so small, but in a good way. Made me reconsider many things."
"Just like that?"
"It took time."
"Define time."
"Four years, give or take."
"What?! But the baby switch happened months after the Cold Massacre, how –" He stops. "Oh, time passes differently in Faerie."
"Exactly."
"That doesn't explain how the switch came about though."
Constantine shrugs, but the tenseness of his shoulders betrays how much the topic really bothers him. "Master Joseph had not been in Faerie. He stayed in mortal territory to evaluate the damage done to our follower base; only months passed for him. He didn't know about you, or that I was much better than he thought. He was the one who came up with the idea for the switch." His expression darkens. "I had no reason to do it, but I told you about it, and you became interested."
"Why?"
"Like I said, you've lived a long time, with a lot on your shoulders. The idea of starting from scratch was intriguing to you."
Call shakes his head. Everything is just too much. "Why would I think that? I'm terrified of dying."
"You did love life; you just wanted to try a new one."
"That's stupid. When you erase someone's memories, you as good as kill them."
"You do not need to tell me that. I wanted you to stay, but you wouldn't change your mind. You were convinced that you would recover your memories in time, or that something could be done to return them."
Call stiffens. "And was I right? Is it possible?"
"I wouldn't know. If it is, it has to come from you."
He exhales. "Good."
Constantine shifts his footing. "Does that relieve you so?"
Call looks at him warily. "Of course. I don't want these memories back."
The other looks at the ground. "Why not?
"Tell me what happened after I decided to go back to being a baby."
He frowns. "My mother brought baby you to Master Joseph. He thought you were me, as he should, and handed you over to the two fairies responsible for the switch."
"Did I know that the baby they were gonna switch me with had already died?"
"No."
"So I agreed to this scheme, knowing full well that an innocent baby was gonna be taken from his father to be raised as one of the Folk."
"Yes."
"And you ask me why I don't want to recover my memories?" Call asks, baffled at Constantine's confused expression. "What kind of person I must have been to agree to that?"
"You'd done far worse before."
"That is the opposite of helping your case."
Constantine hunches over, then straightens, as if he's just remembered who he is. "Recovering your memories doesn't have to mean becoming that person again. You have new memories now, and they won't be overridden. You have free will just like anyone else. If you think something is bad, you can simply choose not do it. If your conviction to do right depends on not remembering your past, then it must not be that strong a conviction to begin with."
For a moment, Call just gapes at him. Then he whistles lowly "It really is remarkable."
"What is?"
"Your charisma." Call shakes his head. "People say that you had such a way with words you could convince someone to shoot their entire family, and I see it now."
"I will take that as a compliment."
"You can take it however you like, it won't change the fact that it's not."
Constantine grinds his jaw. "There are parts of me which haven't changed, but I meant it when I said that I am better now than I was then."
"You were already "better" when Master Joseph suggested this whole thing, but you still did not care about what you were letting happen to someone who had been your friend."
"I told you I wanted you to stay!"
"I was talking about Alastair!" Call yells.
For a second, Constantine looks stunned, but his expression shuts off in a heartbeat.
"His wife and brother-in-law, who had been your friends as well, by the way, were killed by your hand." Call seethes. "But as if that wasn't enough, you did nothing when his own son was gonna be taken from him, and he wouldn't even know. You were thinking of me? You should have been thinking of him!"
Constantine swallows. "Alastair and I hadn't been friends in a while by then." He says, but not even he sounds like he believes that to be a valid argument.
"And yet, when faced with a baby whom he believed to be you, he chose to raise him! Because he believed you deserved a second chance! Because, despite everything that you'd done, he still found it in himself to care!"
Constantine rears back as if slapped. Call can see it in his expression that that line of thought had never occurred to him before. He watches with satisfaction as guilt flashes in his eyes, but the satisfaction is gone in a minute, substituted by the thought that "I don't want to hurt him."
He doesn't know where that thought came from. It scares him.
He looks away, and when he looks back again, Constantine has recomposed himself. He gives Call a look of steely determination.
"I know you hate me now." He says. "But I will not let it deter me. I waited for more than a decade to have my friend again, and even if your memories never return, I am determined to earn back your regard."
Call scoffs. "Don't count on it."
Constantine smiles, it is lovely and terrifying. "Ah, but that is the beauty of immortality, isn't it? Plenty of time to change your mind."
Call grits his teeth as the other stops reclining against the tree and walks towards him.
"I have no intention of going to war with the mages again. I still want to bring my brother back, but I've found there are other ways to do that that do not rely so dangerously on chaos magic."
He looks down at Alex's unconscious body. "My interference in this matter ends here. His fate is in your hands now. He won't wake by natural means." His storm eyes turn to Call. They still look guilty. What Call said has struck a chord, even though he's trying not to show it. But there's something else too, the same fond look from before. "I look forward to seeing you again."
And then he turns, singing softly as he leaves, a hand outstretched to graze the barks of the trees like one would while taking a leisure stroll through the park. The other hand brushes Call's cheek, so briefly he almost thinks he imagined it, then it's gone. He still hears the lull of Constantine's voice, melodic and echoing, long after his silhouette disappears.
"Rattle his bones,"
Call looks at Alex's prone form on the dirt.
"Over the stones,"
He drops the dagger to the ground and covers his face with his trembling hands.
"It's only a pauper, who nobody owns."
A/N: Fun fact: I almost ended the fic in "Hello," Says Constantine. "It's been a long time.", but then I remembered that I already left you hanging in "The Cuckoo and The Sparrow", and I don't want you to kill me, so I figured I'd be nicer this time around.
"The Goblin Market" is a book by Christina Rossetti, and it's more on the metaphorical and symbolic side, but the concept of the Market has been used by many authors who put their own twist to it over the years. All the depictions of the Goblin Market in this fic were my own, including the method Call used to get there.
I have had a pinterest board for inspiration for this series since before I even posted "The Bent Over Tree". I was going to make it available for you last fic, but I forgot (hehe). Some of the pictures are there just to put me in the mood to write, while some I especifically saved for references. If you'd like to take a look, the link is (remove the spaces): br. pinterest Midnight5949 / changeling-call /
You can find me on tumblr as agarotado27dejunho, be it to discuss anything Magisterium related or just say "Hi!"