A thousand daggers of light shot through the glass, refracting his bored face back at him.
"Oh, so that's what Ms. Edel meant when she said that the light curves through a prism. Okay, now I think we measure the length from lens to image to get the focal point, right?"
"Uh huh."
He toyed with the light along the glass like he were a cat turning a ball of string over in his paw. Even after seven more years shadowing Meghan, humans were still surprising him, so strange, easily manipulated with their fascination for opposites, light and darkness, solstice and equinox, summer and-
"...um, Robbie?"
Abruptly, Robin Goodfellow remembered that he was supposed to be a freshman in high school. What's more, he was supposed to be a freshman doing an optics experiment, not musing on the human condition.
"Sorry." He said, handing Meghan the yardstick. like she'd asked him to "Spaced out there."
Her safety goggles bobbed on her head as she bent to get an exact measurement. She looked...different.
Granted, lab goggles made everyone look strange. No one really knew why the class had to wear them for an experiment with light, but Ms. Edel had been insistent that it would promote good laboratory habits. Yeah, humans definitely had weird fixations.
Still, there was no doubt about it. Something was different about his half-faery charge today. Something like light moving under smoked glass, bright and wavering just below the fogged surface, impossible to pin down to a single area but definitely present.
Being around humans for fifteen years had taught him more than he thought it would, but still so many things eluded him. Humans could lie (and often did) but still they managed to trust each other more than most fey Puck knew. Meghan broke promises at least once a week (usually unintentionally), but still she was able to keep all the promises that her mother and step-father never asked her to make: take care of Ethan when we're not there, don't do anything crazy after school, forgive us when we forget you.
"You're pretty amazing, princess."
"Huh?" Meghan raised her head, startled. "Oh no, I just did that on a calculator. I'm not that good at math."
She laughed but sounded tired, as though the light breaking through the prism had broken her voice into all its different chromatic strands, each hue slowly fraying apart. Puck leaned in.
"Long day?"
Meghan sighed and half-smiled wryly, pushing her goggles back on top of her head when they drooped down. She looked like she was trying to laugh but was at the same time having difficulty swallowing something. "You could say that."
He stretched. "What happened?"
She stuck out her tongue as she changed the subject. "I had a bad dream that we hadn't finally finished The Canterbury Tales and had another sixty page reading assignment due. I'm not sure how much more Chaucer I could take."
"You'll like Shakespeare tomorrow better, trust me. Besides, you already know we're done with it now, so why the long face?" He joked, assuming the air of a photographer, going for all the angles, even going so far as to click an invisible camera (with sound effects) in an as over-the-top way as he could. Still, he couldn't provoke a giggle, or even a well-meaning swat.
"Wow. I used to think that not even a Chaucer-induced stupor could make you so immune to my Robbie Goddfell, Ace Paparazzo impression. Come on, what gives?"
"Nothing, Robbie."
Puck leaned back on the two hind legs of his lab stool, stroking his chin in mock-detection. If anyone else had done that to a piece of laboratory furniture, Ms. Edel would have been all over them. Glamour definitely had its privileges.
"Well, considering that sour look I'm getting, the fact that you say you're upset about a bad dream about a class-"
"Rob, I'm not upset."
"-when you hardly ever have realistic dreams like that, hmm...bringing today's date into consideration." He widened his eyes in a moment of mock-epiphany. "Your family forgot your birthday again."
Her pen hit the desk with a plop. Puck noticed that her eyes seemed to gleam just like the prism had when the light hit it. "You didn't have to announce it to everyone."
Puck graced her with a mischievous grin, but grimaced inwardly. Way to be cavalier about sensitive topics and get the birthday girl to cry. Maybe he could still save this. "Well, good thing the reserve team caught the ball, otherwise this could have been a truly dolorous occasion. Missing a girl's fifteenth birthday? Absolutely unacceptable."
Meghan looked at him askance. Yes, there was definitely something different about her, but he still couldn't place it. Huh. You'd think as a guardian these things would be more apparent since he saw her on a day-to-day basis. It didn't seem like a bad thing, though. Maybe she did her hair a new way? That was always it, right? And why did it matter so much that she'd changed, anyway? That suddenly she-
He brushed that thought aside and continued with all the showmanship he could muster. And for a faery court jester (even one fifteen years out of practice), that was quite a lot.
"I was going to save this as a surprise for later, but I'm throwing you a party. Midnight tonight, meet me at the edge of your backyard. Don't worry about bringing anything; I've taken care of all the food and favors. Think nothing of it. And don't worry about getting dressed up for a gaggle of guests, it'll just be you and me."
He noticed that her mouth was open. Fifteen straight years of human contact and he still couldn't tell if that was a good sign or not.
-o-
"It's a little early to call it at this, wouldn't you say?" Puck scrutinized the vial as though it might break out of its glass. The liquid inside of it seemed clear but then became more and more opaque when swirled. "I mean, it's not like there's been any damage done already. She's not even curious about me yet."
It shouldn't have hurt to say that. He should have been happy, elated even, that he'd done so well in concealing his true nature from her for all this time. But still, she hadn't even given him a second glance? Nothing in her had told her that something about him was strange?
The Erlking moved through the brush with a grace that seemed to make the very woods on edge, as though the silent Louisiana forest around them were on its best behavior, trying to be as respectful as it could. "I would ordinarily leave it up to your discretion, but given the circumstances, it seems I must intervene."
"Circumstances?" Puck balanced the little bottle on his finger deftly. "What circumstances? I'm as capable as I was before, probably even more so."
There was a pause. Oberon chose his words carefully. "She can see past some of the Mist, as you yourself have demonstrated with your rabbit trick. Though you did not mention it to me, it was brought to my attention nonetheless. It is never wise to leave a charge protected by only one guardian, especially a trickster."
Puck shrugged. Damn the nurse. He knew he could have been more careful driving Meghan crazy with that rabbit, but it had all been in fun and games, honestly. He couldn't see what the big deal was, other than a faery monarch getting his royal undergarments in a twist over Puck's teasing his daughter.
But then the Summer King's next line made him start: "Which is why I am requiring you to promise me that you will indeed give the Mistwine to Meghan Chase on her fifteenth birthday, if not sooner."
"What?" For a moment, Puck forgot the necessary civility due his king.
"It will be easiest coming from your hand than from any other." Oberon continued, his voice clear and concise, yet sharp like jagged glass. "The opportunities and the position of trust you have with her are difficult to duplicate. Of course, should you choose not to..."
Puck snorted. "I'd hardly be a fit for the title of trickster if I hadn't already surmised you'd have someone else do it if I backed out." He paused. He hated being hemmed in like this, forced to make promises. But if someone else had to do it instead, it would be uncountably worse. "Fine. My lord, your wish is my command."
-o-
Betrayal's a funny thing.
Dragonflies alighted on the water like jewels bouncing up and down on the surface of a mirror, searching for aquatic plants to their liking. Even though it was midnight, the lake seemed to radiate its own light from the reflection of the moon, so much so that it lit the mossy shores with a cool glow.
It was a pretty nice set up, Puck had to admit. Too bad he was setting up a half-faery princess he actually didn't mind all that much, but hey, a job's a job.
"Oh my God."
"Looks like the birthday girl finally made it to her party!" Puck crowed, spading his hands in his pockets and playing the part of exuberant host. It wouldn't do for her to catch on. "What took you so long?"
"This can't be behind my house." Meghan took in the lake, the picnic blanket Puck had set out and the neatly wrapped spread of food, the dance of the dragonflies and lightning bugs above the water. "This is just too..."
She trailed off. She was probably going to say "too nice" or "too much," both of which were false, in Puck's opinion. Still, she was right about one thing.
They definitely weren't in her backyard anymore. Puck had had to pull some strings, but seeing that expression on her face-oh man, it was all worth it.
Still, it proved his point. If Meghan Chase could really see through the Mist- all of it - she would have known for sure that something was up, something that would probably make her a lot more worried, or at the very least more curious, than she was. And that, insignificant though it seemed, got him scheming.
He stood in front of her, grinning like a Cheshire cat, hands behind his back teasingly. "Hey, come on. If a guy can't do something nice for his best friend on her birthday, then he's hardly a good friend. After all, it's..."
Easiest coming from your hand than any other.
Puck trailed off.
Meghan broke out into a smile nonetheless, still sheepish and still looking very unsure of what to do with herself in her olive green cargo pants and self-consciousness, yet heartened. "Best friends," she repeated happily, "yeah. Rob, I'm so happy."
And then she did something that surprised him.
Not many things can surprise him. After a very long time of playing a lot of tricks on a lot of very clever people, he'd learned to spot tells like reading notes scribbled in the margins, never something strictly a part of the original, but always there on the side, saying exactly what he needed to know.
But thousands of years of experience still couldn't prevent him from being surprised by Meghan Chase, fifteen if a day, embracing him.
Of course they'd hugged before. He told himself that over again, wondering why his heart was beating so fast for this girl of all girls, the child he'd been assigned to protect. But as he looked at her, he realized what had so eluded him before. Even calling her that was just...wrong. Meghan wasn't a child, someone he had to constantly entertain or shepherd places as a faery godparent. She'd become much more than that, not only older, but also more her own than his in every way.
And, as a princess-to-be, she was dancing more and more tantalizingly out of his reach.
"Will you promise that we'll always be best friends, Robbie?" She asked, a little quietly, but that could have been because she was talking into his shoulder.
He breathed in the scent of her hair. Even though it smelled mostly like the manufactured flowers of her shampoo, he still caught that same hint of faery magic spiraling off of it that had pulled him to her that first time on a bus, like a verdant forest in the center of a city. A little out of place but still there, spark enough in this dreary iron-filled world to draw him to her like a moth in pitch dark bewitched by a sudden fire.
Everyone was asking him to make promises and take oaths, and finally here was one he didn't think he'd mind.
I think I'm making a mistake, he wanted to whisper to her, but didn't. This will be something I can't undo and you can't either. I think I've played myself too close to the game to not get caught up in it and escape unbound...
"Yeah." He replied, just as softly.
They stayed like that for a while, until he noticed Meghan's heart start to speed up too, and she hastily broke away, pink-faced.
"Thanks again, for all of this," she stuttered and glanced around, anywhere but at him, and noticed the food again. "Oh wow! You even brought champagne? You really went all out! Way to get me to participate in underage drinking after I was so convinced I'd never get asked to a party." She laughed.
Puck's eyes immediately flicked to the flutes he'd set up on a rock by the blanket. He'd poured the champagne already and mixed the Mistwine into Meghan's glass (he'd denoted it with a pink ribbon- the same as he'd used to wrap her gifts- tied around the base) before she'd arrived. It would be so easy; she already held that fatal glass.
Well, not fatal fatal. Metaphorically fatal, at best. No bodily harm done.
It would just be fatal to memory, really. And he had been prepared to accept that, hadn't he? She even looked happy. And after drinking all of it, she'd start to be noticed more; the fey effect of her blood would wear off and she'd probably make new, more human friends. She would never remember this party, and he'd become a nameless face from her youth. Fifteen years, what of it? Most people forgot their childhoods anyway, after a while. This wasn't anything special.
But as she raised it to her lips, Puck found that memory was the one thing he could not sacrifice now.
"Meghan, wait!"
Sure, she could see through most of the Mist, but not the important parts yet. She wasn't a threat to the Summer Fey, or Winter Fey, or really anyone for that matter. She was just a high school girl with little to no social life, classes he found unexplainably boring, and only one best friend who was about to vanish from her life forever.
Meghan gave him a puzzled look.
"We're supposed to toast." Puck chastised her. "And I didn't think you wanted to drink that huge fly in it, anyway."
He whisked away the flute and dumped it out before she could get a second glimpse, then washed it out thoroughly, and poured her a fresh glass.
"Good save," Meghan commented, still a little off-guard. "I didn't even notice. Yuck, what a way to start off fifteen, huh?"
Puck raised his own glass. "What are best friends for? Cheers, princess. Happy birthday."
Sure, he'd sworn to Oberon that he'd give her the Mistwine. He never swore that he wouldn't take it back, even if that wasn't what the Erlking had intended. But hey, betrayal's a funny thing, right? Some nights, you don't even know who you're going to double cross.
Author's Notes:
Thanks so much to everyone for the reviews! I'm really glad that this has been so well-received thus far. I haven't yet read Summer's Crossing (lame full-time job/ generally busy summer), but if I do decide to include spoilers from that later, I'll make sure there's bold spoiler! text all over the place so you can avert your eyes if necessary.
Again, thanks! I love hearing what you think of the plot, scenes, writing, or whatever, especially if it helps you for school plays or makes you reconsider your team allegiance, lol! This is definitely a bit darker than most of the books, but I guess that's more my weird perception of Puck- how he can trick people so easily and yet somehow have these crazy-romantic feelings for Meghan- there's a lot of opportunities conflict there, I think.
Hope you liked this one! We officially move into the Iron King (no more pre-series! except for maybe a flashback or two) with the next chapter, so I hope you guys stick around.
-cy.
