(Posted November 15, 2016)
Snapping Point
Autumn - Winter of the Charged Waters
Having a new plan for escape brought the bounce back into my toes. The next several times Kalysta returned to fetch a drake to talk plot holes with or to send us off to observe Idona and the nymphs, I paid special attention to the quick way she moved her hand. Middle finger on the thumb. A slide down the palm.
Then, after waiting a few minutes, I would often give the excuse that I needed to use the waste cave and duck out- with little Sanderson tagging after me, of course. For the following two weeks, I practiced in there every spare moment I could afford without drawing Walt, Tobie's, or Jakey's suspicions (Otto didn't have the mental capacity behind his cheery smiles for me to worry about him). My visits had to be short so they wouldn't get a clue of what I was up to and try to beat me to the finish. At last, at last, my dedication paid off. I produced a familiar clicking noise.
I… I'd done it.
Still in shock, I held my left hand away from my body and stared at it. I snapped my fingers again. They made a sort of ringing sound that echoed in the little cave. It was identical to the one Kalysta could come up with. I did it! I'd learned to snap! Like a genie!
No. Like a wisp.
"This is it," I told Sanderson, scooping him into my right arm. "Now we'll see who controls her drakes."
I had to wait for the proper moment to use my newfound power, of course. Dinner was the ideal time. Nearly giddy with anticipation, I rested my hands on the edge of the table, hardly touching my sandwich except for the olives, until the meal was done and Kalysta took Otto back to her room for the evening (poor fellow- she was in revising mode and would probably have him up to his ears in bark strips until dawn). Dishes clinked. Jakey scooted back in his chair and brushed crumbs across the dirt floor, then went to round up Idona and her drake nymphs. Walt took Ever's small hand and started back to the nesting cave. Turning to Tobie, I pointed at his plate. "Give me what's left of your food."
"What? No. It's mine."
Looking the will o' the wisp in the eyes, I pointed again and snapped my fingers twice. He blinked a couple of times, looked down at his brisket, and continued eating.
It didn't work.
My throat constricting, I made another attempt, this time repeating the command as I snapped. Tobie sighed and raised his head again.
"How stupid do you think I am, Fergus? You're not my damsel. I don't have to listen to you."
"It was worth the attempt," I replied. Pushing on my knees, I got back to my feet. "Come on, Sanderson. Let's get you to bed."
I kicked the rock wall as we left, and my toe remained bruised for a week because of it.
I didn't get out of my nest first thing in the morning. I didn't want to. There wasn't anything to work for, no entertainment to keep me distracted, and nothing to do but simmer about how I was missing the election of the Fairy Council Robes this year, and would have to wait 50,000 more for it to come around again. Assuming I even managed to escape by then. Even gambling napcloth-changing, clothes-washing, dish-rinsing, and cooking duties over snapjik didn't appeal to me, and only partially because I always had to play with at least one clueless nymph on my team. Eyes glazed, I watched Sanderson lie in the dirt with a fistful of styluses, swirling them into muddled images across a strip of bark as he hummed Mother Nature and Father Time's prayer, some nursery song about genies, and various other tunes Kalysta had sung to him while she was nursing. Well.
"Sanderson." I pointed to the dirty shirt he'd worn the day before, lumped on the floor near my bed. He owned two of them, and neither fit his hexagonal body well. "Bring that to me, would you?"
He picked up another stylus and ignored me.
"Sanderson," I repeated, and when he looked up I pointed again. When he continued to ignore me, I rolled from the nest and walked over to him in one final attempt, this time snapping like I had for Tobie. Since Sanderson didn't respond, I scooped him up and lay him on his stomach. Locking my fingers around the knobs of his wings, I made two sharp inward twists. The humming broke off at once. He yipped and kicked his legs. I replaced him on his feet. He stood there, clutching his stylus and trembling from his cowlick to his bare muddy toes.
"Next time, if you don't listen to me, I'll do that again." I studied him for a moment, then overturned my hands so he could see my empty palms, the same way I'd done when we first really met. These I offered to him. Rather than examine them to reassure himself of my intentions, he flung his arms around my neck and buried his nose deep in my shoulder.
I scratched the back of his dirty, prickly hair. "Oh, you didn't much like that, I see. Well, now we know to listen, don't we?"
The following morning, when he pulled off yesterday's shirt and tossed it over the edge of the nest, I reacted at once.
"Sanderson," I called, pointing to the shirt. He shifted his gaze several times between it and me. I snapped my fingers, and he got another wing twisting when he didn't obey. I guided him over to the shirt, used his hands to pick it up, and put it on the end of our nest. After that, he was released.
Again the following morning, he removed his shirt and hesitated, looking in my direction as he dangled it over the end of the nest. I kept my face expressionless. He let go, and I snapped my fingers and gestured to it. Instantly Sanderson raced to the opposite side of the room and plastered his back to the wall. When I got up and came over, he fled back towards Tobie and little Ariette, who watched me in a wary way. I followed him around the room until he ran into a corner, and realized too late that he couldn't dodge around me then. He made the attempt anyway, and paid the price for ignoring my command.
But he begin to pick up the message after the first week. One day when he changed his shirt side by side with all the other nymphs, he looked to me and put it at the end of our nest, on the inside. I overturned my hands to give him the signal that he wouldn't be getting his wings twisted, and he brightened up and crawled over to receive his embrace. Then I pulled the new shirt over his small, awkward body so he could go off to play with Ever.
This went on for about another week, until he started to slip back into his former habit. Yesterday's shirt was hurled across the room, smacked the wall, and dropped.
I sat up. "Sanderson."
He glanced over, uncaring, but when I snapped my fingers twice and pointed, he stiffened up. The old shirt was retrieved, lain in its proper place, and he backed away into the wall. Rather than twist his wings for the act of dropping it, I let him take the embrace for his obedience to the finger snaps. That was the part that mattered.
After that, he only improved. Fairly soon, I could point at anything in the entire burrow and he'd stand by it until I made a beckoning motion for him to bring it to me, or upturned my hands and let him claim his little hug if he'd completed the task. Another month and I could call his name and indicate a particular item or location, and receive his obedience without even drawing out the snapping sound. It was a small victory, a small comfort, but it gave me a goal to work towards and offered me at least some sense of control over my fate.
My time was trickling out. Summer had passed away, with the Gathering and autumn slipping after it. I didn't track time by changes to the outside world. There was none of that underground. But Sanderson began eating bits of bread, and by winter had progressed from that to anything he could close his hand around. As the second month of winter began to fade into the third, his hexagonal exoskeleton showed all the signs that it would shed. Eight months of age seemed a tad early for me, but it wasn't unheard of- I'd been a dramatically early shedder myself. When it finally peeled off his back, it left him sore, red, wrinkled, and whining for two weeks.
Losing his flat edges did nothing to help his scrawniness, either. Nothing seemed wrong in regards to his overall health. Sanderson's nymphhood belly was reasonably rounded. The ratios of his limbs as compared to his head and trunk and feet and such were all anatomically correct as far as I could tell, though from a certain angle his right arm seemed rather long. But by dust, was he ever puny in the height department. At this rate, it seemed likely he'd grow up to be hardly taller than an anti-fairy, and it made me wonder all the more if half of his genetics could be traced back to Pip. Which was impossible, with the whole physically-can't-mate thing, if that wasn't clear.
Time was gone, and I hadn't managed to pull off a single plan of escape. I'd torn Kalysta's room apart in search of the key to the tunnel in the food storage room. I'd attempted to forge substitutes of it on my own using fork tines and roots. I'd feigned sickness and that I was contagious. I'd claimed fairies needed to migrate. I'd repeated my legal permission to betroth Sanderson to Idona in exchange for my freedom. I'd attempted to break through the locked door of Kalysta's chamber in the middle of the night to try the exit hatch again. I'd insisted that the Tuatha Dé Danann had come to me in a dream and sworn to wreak their vengeance upon the whole burrow if I wasn't released. I'd even attempted to dig my way through the softer patches of dirt in the waste cave. But when the third month of winter came around, so did Kalysta.
"Fergus?"
I turned around, keeping my folded arms on the edge of my nest. Kalysta snapped her fingers twice and motioned for me to join her (and with me, Sanderson). "Pick something you'd like to eat and come into my room," she said as we entered the dining area. "I want to discuss a few things before we begin tonight."
Mulling over my options, I entered the tunnel to the kitchen. Sometimes I had the opportunity to come in here alone, but not often, and rarely just before heading off to spend some time with Kalysta. I took the vanilla ice cream from its hole in the ground beside the block of ice and prepared two bowls and two spoons. Sanderson got a quick bite before I shushed his continued whimpers with a few fingersnaps.
Then, steadying my nerves, I drew the knife we used for slicing salad and carrots from the silverware drawer and ran my thumb down the unicorn-horn handle.
This was it. My only remaining path. I didn't trust it to stay in my loose sleeves, nor did I dare slip it into my pouch in case I didn't have the chance to remove it before Sanderson should dive in headfirst. That, and access to my pouch was likely to be blocked by the time I needed the knife, so I fit it in the waistband of my pants around my left side. Perhaps it would jab me, but that would be a minuscule price compared to what I would be escaping. Thus armed, Sanderson and I stepped into Kalysta's quarters.
"Ice cream," she noted as I handed her the bowl. "I was expecting something of a little more sustenance. But it will do." She patted the fluffy white bed with the apex of one black wing, and I sat beside her. In silence, we ate our first two or three bites and watched Sanderson chase floating feathers between the door and my feet.
"Sanderson shed his exoskeleton almost a week ago," she said at last. "On top of that, he doesn't have freckles, which would make him a drone since gynes aren't able to produce kabouter offspring. Come next year's Gathering, I believe I'll exchange him for one of Gabbi's drakes."
"Mm. What does Idona think about that, my lady?"
Kalysta scraped the side of the bowl with her spoon. "She's upset, of course. Says Sanderson truly loves her and all that, and likes her kisses and draws her pictures, but I'm her mother and the final decision is mine. You've noticed, I'm sure, that fairy drakes carry a status above will o' the wisps ones."
"Because my kind don't often roll over for you to have our bellies rubbed, I presume."
"You presume correctly. And as much as I'd like to keep Sanderson around, well… there are expenses associated with him. Not even just the food now, but taxes in particular."
"There's a tax on keeping fairies in your burrow?" This was perhaps the greatest news I'd heard for centuries. At least I was some inconvenience upon her.
"Oh, there are taxes upon all the non-wisp magical species, and on each post-instar stage wisp after four, but yes, fairies do rank up there. You I wouldn't dream of trading off to one of my sisters or the others, because not only would it slot me below them on the social ladder, but it would raise them, and I would be the cause of it. That, I simply will not have. I've worked too hard for my position- all the sucking up, all the favors, all the false smiles. But Sanderson I can afford to lose. I've heard fairies tend to be more attached to their offspring than will o' the wisps are, so I just wanted you to know this so you have plenty of time to exchange your good-byes."
I nodded without looking up. Kalysta set her bowl aside and pulled a white ribbon - the only ribbon this time - from her fiery gold and scarlet hair. "Now," she said, "if you've finished with your ice cream, let's get on with it."
"But I'm not done."
She took my ice cream away and gave it to Sanderson to lick up. I'm still livid about that. I think she noticed, too, because she was more careful with her motions, playing more to me than urging me to play to her; tickling me behind my left ear, for example, and trying to draw that flustered chirping sound out again as she snuggled me against the crook of her arm. The other hand fluttered beneath my chin.
I did my best to keep her satisfied. When I knew from her closed eyes and shivering wings that she had melted into it, I spent three entire minutes inching my hand down to the knife in my waistband. My fingers wrapped around the ribbed handle.
One too-quick movement, one flash of dim cavern light against the metal blade, and I'd lose my chance. I had to be so deliberate. So perfect. Winter had brought with it the return of her paralyzing venom. It would be too simple for Kalysta to flip me on my back and pin me down while she suffocated me in a Kiss of Frost so deep, I wouldn't wake up from it, and it would be off with the limbs to be baked in pies and bread and such, my core holding onto life by a thread. Perhaps she wouldn't do it because of my status. But perhaps she would.
The knife switched from my left hand to my right behind her neck, where I could get a better hold, although being ambidextrous it perhaps wasn't necessary. Nor did it soothe my uncertainty. Its tip hovered.
A full minute passed. Then another. And one after it. Try as I might, my hand refused to make the final motion.
Why was this so difficult? I'd killed fifteen gynes in my lifetime. A will o' the wisp damsel shouldn't be nearly as hard. It wasn't as though she was fighting back.
One stab. While she wasn't ready. Killing without allowing the chance for a fair fight was one of the Three Deep Sins. Is that what made me hesitate?
"Fergus," she mumbled, slowly unslotting her lips from mine, "you stopped doing that nibbling thing of yours. What are you looking at?"
No more waiting. I plunged the knife downward. It moved with less resistance than I'd expected it to, tearing through layers of bare skin and thick blood and embedding itself in deep. After I'd cranked it in a sharp twist, I wrenched it out and readied myself for another stab. But no blood oozed from of the wound, in any of the six colors. The blade remained as clean and shiny as when I'd first picked it up. Kalysta blinked down at her chest in some alarm, then up at me. She didn't withdraw her hands from beneath my wings.
"Nearly everything in my burrow is formed with magic, Fergus. Magical objects can't kill a magical being. I know you know this."
And maybe I had. Maybe I'd wanted to make the attempt anyway. Maybe I'd just forgotten. As I stared at the unicorn horn knife in my hand, an overwhelmingly sick feeling slammed down on my shoulders. I dropped it into the soft bed, wrapped my arms around Kalysta's neck, and simply embraced her, completely mute as I stared at the wall with its glowing trail of embedded stones. Kalysta brought her hands up and patted my spine, murmuring her favorite song about drakes and leisure time and money, until my trembling had somewhat stilled. Through gritted teeth, I forced the words into her ear, "I despise you. Completely. I despise you with every fleck of magic in my blood."
"That much?"
"I don't want to be caged here in your burrow forever, Ivorie. I refuse to believe that this is my chosen fate. The Tuatha Dé Danann, may the Lost Ancients return from their underground prison, would have had greater expectations for me than this if their race still thrived. Oh, if they could all see me now."
"May the Lost Ancients return." She rocked me back and forth for a few minutes, then uncurled my clenched fingers from her tangled hair and lay me down in her bed. "I think you've had enough tonight. Put your shirt back on. No coffee in the morning for you. You can take that knife back in the kitchen and head off to your nest. I'll check on all y'all in a few minutes' time."
I did, still touching my face every couple of steps to see if it remained hot beneath my fingertips. Sanderson skipped cheerily after me, clutching the handful of colored styluses and strips of bark Kalysta had given him to keep him quiet. When I threw myself face-down into my blankets, he tapped my hand and presented me with one of the drawings.
It took me a couple of wingbeats to make out the lopsided scribbles, but when I did, I felt my stomach flip itself inside out. He'd drawn a circle with four stick limbs- Kalysta with her flame-like hair and speckled black butterfly wings. He'd even added off-center blue dots for her eyes.
"That's very good, Sanderson."
He moved his hand a little, and I made out a second figure beside her. This one was a little smaller, with a squarish face, cowlicked black hair, and dusty violet eyes that he'd managed to mix the perfect match for. He held Kalysta's hand, and smiled. An obvious little fairy child.
"Yes, and that's you. Quite a charming picture."
Sanderson creased his brow and pointed twice at me. At first, I didn't even know how to respond. I took the strip back and compared the drawing on the bark and its artist. Apart from a possible stray dot or two that might have been meant as freckles, they looked exactly the same.
When I returned it to his expectant hands, I said, "So if you think this is supposed to be me, where are you?"
Puzzled, he stuck his thumb in his mouth. The concept that he existed as a figure who could be drawn was, evidently, still beyond him. Apart from in the dips of spoons or soup bowls or water in the washing cave, he'd never seen his own reflection before.
He replaced the strip of bark beside his colored styluses and ran back to me with two more depicting Tobie, Walt, Otto, and Jakey. Then, when I had approved those, he brought me his clumsy interpretations of River, Idona, Tick, Ever, Ariette, Kace, and Dip.
"Goodness. How many of these have you done?" Then I said, "Why did you wait to draw me last?"
Offended, Sanderson scrambled over my stomach to retrieve a larger bark strip from underneath his pillow that showed only me, with my hand raised like I was either snapping my fingers or preparing to twist his wings. That got a soft chuckle out of me. I mussed his hair.
And then… I stopped, and looked between Sanderson and his array of drawings. I put my forefingers together against my lips.
No chance.
That would never work.
Ridiculous.
If my simple plans had failed, there was no way for this one to succeed.
There were too many obscure pieces that had to fall into place. I wouldn't manage to find the opportunity- Walt would stop me purely for the sake of revenge- Otto's bumbling idiocy would be my downfall- Tobie would notice- Ever would squeal on us- Idona would demand Sanderson be moved to her cave with the others- Kalysta would find out- I'd run out of time- I'd get sloppy- I'd make a mistake- Too many risks.
And not enough consequences. Maybe… Maybe, if I could just…
I dwelt over my plan for three days before I made any decisive actions. Kalysta called for me after that. Sanderson and I stood together in her cave, and when Kalysta turned her face away so I could yank out the ribbon holding the back of her dress together, I pointed for him to grab one bottle of nail polish on the floor among the others.
He did, with a bit more noise than I would have liked, but when Kalysta checked back to see if we were still there, we were. Sanderson slipped the bottle into my hand, and I tucked it discreetly into my pouch. After our session, when we returned to our room and Sanderson wiggled in for the night, I hid the bottle beneath my pillow instead. I would need it later. Using it now would make it obvious who had taken it. Before I enacted anything, everyone needed a chance to have stolen the bottle.
But that took time. As Sanderson completed his weaning and the heat season of the wisps deepened from winter to spring, Kalysta's attentions turned on me with more fervor. I was called upon the most frequently of her drakes, and although Sanderson managed to collect quite a few items from around her room while I kept her distracted, we had to stop because if we took any more, Kalysta was likely to suspect thievery rather than her own absent-mindedness. She was growing restless with me as it was.
I had to begin. One night while the others slept (perhaps it was even a midday nap- there really was no way to tell merely from the glowing stones along the walls), I took her pink polish bottle and painted a few dabs of it around the cave, the halls, the dining table, and very gingerly on the backs of Sanderson's wings and his fingertips. When Kalysta saw us at breakfast, there was no doubt that she noticed, and she scolded him gently not to take her things.
He nodded. But the drakes listened to her snapping fingers. He listened only to mine.
Over the following days, I began planting the other stolen items all in places where Sanderson's height allowed him to reach, and I encouraged his artwork immensely so he was nearly always engaged in working on more when she came in. During the nights, I permitted him to cuddle against my neck as opposed to in my pouch, since I knew he'd begun to like that, and I held him as I stared up at a low ceiling I couldn't particularly see.
Though I pulled many strings now, I did not have all control over what went on in the burrow. Every passing day made me more and more certain that my plan involved sacrificing Sanderson. Kalysta would be upset, and killing him would allow her to feel as if she'd achieved justice. Though it would not stop me from forging on, I wasn't quite sure what my opinion on the matter was. I wondered which drakes were sent where after the slicing cave.
Less than a week shy of the new year, Kalysta snapped my forehead chamber shut and fell back into her cushions with a huff. "Why?" she asked no one in particular. Certainly not me. "You're of the proper age and health, your offspring has been weaned, you're in your heat years, and I've showered you with nothing but affection and kept you away from the advances of other damsels. I don't understand."
"Perhaps fairies take longer after birthing to come into heat than will o' the wisps," was my only reply. I sat at the end of her bed, my toes inching along the dirt after a stray feathery fluff.
Her finger jabbed at my nose. "This is because you gave your soul away to Sanderson's mother. Don't give me that usual protest that you don't remember mating with her or that your wings are still unnotched."
I smiled without showing my teeth. "You of course have my soul, my fair lady. I'm your drake, and have been for the last three seasons. Why wouldn't I be yours?"
Kalysta watched me for a moment, weighing my words, and then slid her eyes behind me. My skin prickled. Turning, I followed her gaze to Sanderson, who sat quietly as he often did with the colored styluses and bark he'd been given.
"I wonder," she said, rolling to her feet. I jumped up too, staying immediately on her heels as she crossed the room towards him.
"Don't," I said as she reached out for his arm. "Kalysta, it would not be in your best interests-"
"I didn't ask for you to speak."
"You've already spent too many resources on him to just-"
"I didn't ask, drake!"
Sanderson jumped up at Kalysta's arrival and held out his arms for an embrace. She swung him to her hip. As he snuggled against her neck, cooing in her ear, she turned back to me.
"Now, Fergus," she said, chirping it like a song, "I don't want any more protesting out of you. No fighting. I have been patient for nine long months. You're here to be my drake, and when I call for you to be, I expect you to be amorous. Thus far, I haven't gotten my money's worth out of you. I'll be removing Sanderson from the burrow now. We'll see if you come into heat then."
I opened my mouth, but let it shut again. The back of my throat stung. Sanderson was the keystone to my entire plan. I could use Ariette and Ever, but they wouldn't be so convincing, and especially not after I had been planting all my evidence on Sanderson and leaving them untouched.
Perhaps I knew, too, in some small way, how Walt had felt when I'd chosen to name Ellowi as the one who had to die so Sanderson might live. I couldn't help but feel somewhat upset to be told that all the energy I'd poured into him had been for nothing.
Nibbling my lip, I massaged my knuckles and bowed my head. So this was to be the price for my delay. I should have enacted the most crucial phase of the plan sooner, even if it meant I had to be less careful. Perhaps, as with Ellowi, Kalysta would spare Sanderson behind the scenes. But it was winter again now, nearly spring. The Gathering was another six or seven months away. Dead or alive, if he was gone, so were my last hopes for escape.
"Very good, Fergus. You stay here."
"Yes, my fair lady," I whispered.
Kalysta took a step towards her waste cave where the exit hatch was, and paused. Her foot had crunched against bark. She knelt down and picked up one of Sanderson's drawing strips. He pointed to something scrawled across it and let out a nonsense syllable.
Oh, Sanderson. What is it about the innocence of nymphs that makes us step back from our worries and annoyances and wonder how our old youthful selves had grown up to be everything we'd never wanted to?
For a moment, Kalysta crouched on her heels, just gazing upon the drawing. Then she lowered Sanderson to the ground and let him wander back to me. Out of complete reflex, I snatched him into my arms when he offered his to me, and somewhere in the back of my mind realized that if she really had walked off with him, I may never have touched his cowlicks again.
"Take him back to the nesting cave," she said. "I expect you to perform better when I call tomorrow." Then Kalysta returned to her cushions and sat with her back to us. Her black wings drooped like her limp red skirt. She slid the drawing into place between one pillow and the rocky wall, and lay her head down to stare at it.
There wasn't time to wait any longer. The plan had to get rolling. As we passed through Kalysta's office, I flicked my hand for Sanderson to grab a stack of bark strips on her desk. He did, more quietly than he had in most times past, and I grabbed all the others that I could find. We loaded them into my pouch, although hiding them perhaps wasn't necessary, given Kalysta's sudden dull state. The rest I held in my arms. She didn't suspect anything when we left her quarters behind.
"This is it," I told Sanderson, kneeling beside him on the ground near our nest. I slid over two hundred different colored styluses towards him across the dirt. "My fate is in your hands now. Would you draw me some pretty pictures?"
It took several hours before I picked up the sound of her thumping around outside our cave. After diving into my nest, I covered my head with my blanket, feigning sleep, until I heard the door crash open. Alongside all the other drakes, I jolted upright and rubbed my eyes. Kalysta pinned the wood against dirty stone, her wings whipping, dressed in the winter pine forest pajamas she often wore, the buttons shaped like blue snowflakes.
"Is something the matter, my fair lady?"
"I can't find my latest manuscript anywhere! It has to be finished by the time Mother Nature names the new year on Naming Day or I don't get paid, and we have to cut back on food. I could even be fired for this!" She snapped her fingers and pointed into the hall. "All y'all, search my office, my room, the kitchen, the dining hall, the…"
She stopped. Her hand fell back to her side and bounced once. With her eyes swelled wide, she looked around the floor that had once been dirt. Only patches of it were visible now.
"… Sanderson, did you run out of blank bark strips?"
He looked up from his drawing of himself and Idona, stylus in hand, and smiled.
"Sanderson!" That was me, glancing about as though for the first time. "You're going to get your wings twisted again for this. That was a very bad thing to do."
Kalysta held up her palm to me, urging me to remain where I was. Kneeling down, she scraped a few of the bark pieces together. Sanderson made whining noises and reached out with chubby fingers as she took them away. Kalysta gave them back with a groan and buried her face in her arms.
"Even the ones that aren't real drawings have scribbles all over them. More than half of these have been chewed partway to a pulp; I didn't realize Sanderson's teeth were so big. I'm going to have to start over. Recopy everything. Rewrite what's been lost. Sorting these back into the proper order alone will take a week. I'm going to miss my deadline, maybe sell at a reduced price… if I don't get outright let go."
"Between that and the fairy tax, are we going to have enough money for food this year, my fair lady?" I asked in as sickeningly syrupy a voice as I could possibly manage. Kalysta raised her head from her hands, blue eyes narrow slits of fire.
"I loathe you," she said. As the other drakes looked curiously on, she beckoned to me. When she wasn't looking, I fluttered my fingers back at Tobie in farewell. Sanderson and I were marched down the hall, through the dining room, past her office, and into her private quarters. I squeezed the nymph in my arms.
"Thank you, Sanderson. You're very brave."
Kalysta turned on me, those eyes blazing brighter. She grabbed the front of my shirt in her fist and brought my face up to meet hers. My eyes widened.
It was the first time I realized I had made a horrible mistake.
Like a fool, all this time, after all the nights of editing, all the nights of kisses, all the nights of sorting through old Celebrity Families cards and chuckling at geeky-looking juveniles who had grown up to look symmetrical in the face and balanced in diet, I suppose I'd thought Kalysta saw me as a friend. For some naive reason, I had convinced myself that she wouldn't want to see me dead.
But I had destroyed something very dear to her. Not her trust- I don't think she ever had much of that. But I'd buried a knife in her life's work and slashed without a second thought. I'd painted Sanderson to be the kleptomaniac. I'd molded him to be the ever-busy artist. I'd thought she would target him. I had forgotten she might just kill me.
Our lips hovered a thread apart. I held Sanderson tight, refusing to be the one to blink, refusing to be the one to look away, and ready to sink my teeth into her face if she made a move forward. I wouldn't go softly to slaughter. I wouldn't let Sanderson go either.
Kalysta threw me behind her in the direction of the waste cave, not turning around as I stumbled to regain my footing. "Go. Just go. I know you want to. You're too expensive to keep and you can't satisfy me anyway. Yes, don't forget Sanderson. Go now and fast before any of the other damsels catch you. I don't think they'll be out at this time of season, but you're better off not taking risks. Don't dawdle, and don't fly too high or where there isn't cover. You're better off sticking southwest than northeast. Do whatever you can to avoid them. If they want a fairy, they can go hunt down their own. And if one of them does snag you, come find me at the next Gathering and I'll smuggle you away myself. I want you out of my territory. I want you out of this area. I want you out of my entire life and never to lock eyes with me again."
I inclined my head to her back. "As you wish, my fair lady." Still smirking, I flew up to the ceiling and unhooked the latch. Opening the trapdoor took considerably more pushing than I remembered, and when I finally got it up, snow dumped on my head and down my shirt. I dropped back in alarm, flattening myself against the smooth wall.
Perhaps I hadn't thought this through after all.
"Now, Fergus Whimsifinado. I'm being generous in sparing your life, because all things considered I happen to have enjoyed having you around for the last year. Don't test my patience, or your pretty tail good-bye isn't the only thing around here I'll be kissing."
The last I saw of her, she was kneeling on her dirt floor in her silky green and white pajamas with her face in her hands again. I hovered a few inches above the ground, watching her, and almost considered apologizing. But that would be stupid. With Sanderson clinging to my neck, I scrambled out into the falling snow. I didn't bother to shut the hatch.
Everything stung. My black hair flashed as white as cherub wings in seconds, I'm sure, because my arms and legs certainly did.
I didn't have shoes. No shoes, no coat. Just the thin brown clothes Kalysta had left me with, and Sanderson was in no better position. The snow came down too heavily for flight, and after taking a few nosedives under its weight, I resigned myself to traveling over the hills on foot. The drifts were up to my knees. My wings crunched together with every step I took.
"Sanderson," I groaned after a period of time that could have been an hour just as easily as half of one, "I can't carry you anymore. I'm so tired, and you feel so heavy after all this time. You have to walk now."
The little fairy turned around as soon as he touched the snow. I picked him up and set him forward again. So, he tried to burrow into my pouch. He would have fit, maybe - Fairy bones were lightweight and malleable and bent easily - but that wouldn't solve the question of mass and weight. His wings were stiff and partially frozen, which left them unable to fold and put them at risk for snapping off if bent the wrong way. Nor was I in the mood for dealing with the magical drainage he'd cause if he chose to suck on my nipple there. Not in this snow. I diverted him away from my pouch, tucked my hands deeper beneath my armpits, and walked on. Sanderson made one of those aimless vocalizations he'd been making since he'd hit pooferty in protest before stumbling after me.
"I don't care. We're not going back to Kalysta's burrow."
I should have waited for summer. The magic curled from my right palm as visible lavender puffs in the cold. Freedom, I found, was a bitter coppery taste.
We walked on for another ten minutes, keeping to the conifers and sides of the cliffs when they chose to make themselves available. Amid the falling snow, the silence was complete. I could only hear soft footsteps trudging through drifts of creamy white.
Then I turned around, and realized why it was silent. "Oh, no."
Taking to my wings, I headed back as best as I was able to. The rushing flakes eventually forced me to the ground again, and I had to run on foot over both frost and the occasional patch of roots or pine needles.
"Sanderson! Come out, Sanderson!" Snapping my fingers for once did not produce him. "Sanderson, I did not spend a year changing your soiled napcloths in what may as well have been the core of The Darkness just for you to ditch me now!"
In my blindness and against the sleet, I rushed over the edge of a cliff. My wings flared out and slowed my fall, but I still crashed and rolled into the ditch. Licking frost from my lips, I sat up and squinted. My cowlick blew forward into my eyes, slapping me with wetness.
"Sanderson!"
I fumbled about in the snow and dirt, searching for a tiny body. Instead, I found a large round hatch like an acorn cap. Like the entrance to Kalysta's burrow.
"Aw, smoof no," I muttered, and dragged the nearest boulder on top of it. It didn't matter how bitter it was out here or how warm and dry it was inside. I was never going back to any will o' the wisp damsel.
For a moment I hunkered on the far side of the boulder, just trying to gather magic from the chaotic, swirling air. There wasn't a lot of it stable; my tongue panted. Then the wind shifted, spitting snow in my eyes, and I forced myself to get up and keep moving.
This time, I was more careful as I moved among the cliffs. I held my hand to the rocky walls and did not run. Our footprints had been swallowed up, but I could pull a few landmarks from the whipping snow when I tried.
"Hey!" screamed a voice.
When I turned around, I discovered a little clay dwelling among the roots of an elder tree. I must have walked past this place three times and always missed it. An imp wearing a dark green dress had come out to stand in front, her arms wrapped around her shoulders. Her antennae would spin and whip into her mouth every time she tried to speak.
"Drake! Yes, you! My place is small, but there's room for one more."
I blew into my fists. "You go on in. I'm still looking for someone."
"What?" She took a step closer to me. "No, sir- you've got to come in! The storm is breaking up the Big Wand's energy field and scattering the magic. You can't survive out here."
That much I believed. My panting was coming a little more heavily now as more and more of my lines unplugged and wavered like straining Yugopotamian tentacles. "I'll come back," I called to the imp. "I have to find my companion first."
"You're going to get lost! I'm the only one around for cloudlengths who hasn't hunkered in deep- none of them ever answer their doors anymore when I knock. I think some have gone into diapause. So unless you want to take shelter from a will o' the wisp…"
I looked down at my trembling hands, then up at the sky. I blinked once. Dabbed my tongue across my nose.
Then I shook my head. "Forgive me, Sanderson," I gasped out, "You understand." Turning my back, I pushed my way towards the elder tree. The imp reached out with both arms as I stumbled close, and she pulled me the final steps into the little house and slammed the door shut. Ice had strewn itself across the dirt floor. It wasn't a large place- if I'd removed the furniture, stood in the exact center of the single room, and extended my wings in opposite directions, I'd almost have been able to brush all four walls without leaving the spot. I sank my face into a soft chair near the door and left my knees on the ground.
"Not even the ishigaq will be out in that weather," muttered the imp, bracing her shoulder against the wall. "Maybe we'll see a barbegazi. They might rescue whoever it is you were looking for- I'm sure of it."
"Not if he gets buried," I said, withdrawing my arms from the chair.
The imp looked around her humble abode. "I don't have much, especially in this season, but you're welcome to stay until the weather clears up. I imagine it will by morning- storms like this don't normally last for long. Would you like some soup? I have only the one bed, but since you're my guest, you're welcome to it. I want you to feel comfortable."
I looked up. "What did you say?"
"You're my guest. I asked you to choose what would make you most comfortable here. Soup?"
As I drew my knees near my chest and rubbed my shoulders, images of my first night in Kalysta's burrow flashed through my mind, when she'd asked me to decide which of the nymphs to sacrifice so she could nurse Sanderson. It didn't matter that Ellowi had lived in the end; he'd still been torn from his father, and I'd still made the conscious decision that he deserved to survive less than Sanderson did. Would I have done the same thing if I'd known back then that only nine months later, Sanderson would perish anyway?
Of course not. So, since I couldn't change the past, I had little choice but to change the future. Jumping up from the floor, I ran to the trunk at the end of the imp's bed and began yanking out blankets and clothes and bits of underwear.
"That's… not exactly what I had in mind," she said, hovering behind me.
"Perfect! You have a selkie coat!" Dragging it out, I stuffed my arms through the sleeves. The gray fabric, mottled with black and a lot heavier than my wisp clothes, molded instantly around my arms, snug and watertight. There were no holes for my wings, but I could manage. I would make myself manage.
"Please be gentle. That belonged to my brother before he drowned."
"I'll do my best." Before the seven ribbons were tied in the front, I was at the door.
"Wait, you can't go out there now," the imp protested, pulling me back by the crook of my arm. "I promise, you'll get lost in the flurry."
"I'll keep track of the landmarks. I have to find my nymph- he's just a nymph, see, out there."
"Oh- oh, of course! Uh, let's see. Take this bread. You'll probably want bread. And this water. It's, um, it's frozen. Maybe you don't want that. Boots! Take boots!"
"Thank you, thank you," I said, stuffing the cloth-wrapped bread into my pouch. I tied the last three ribbons. Halfway through the door, I turned back and grabbed the imp by the shoulder so her antennae bobbed. "What's your name?"
"Um… Shelli Marmot?"
"Shelli Marmot. Shelli Marmot." I snapped my fingers twice and nodded. "My name is Fergus Whimsifinado. One day I'll pay you back for this, Shelli Marmot. It's only fair and I can promise you that."
After flipping up the furry hood, I plunged back into the storm. My wings rustled, pinned down by the coat. I used my arm to shield my face instead.
"Sanderson!"
The wind picked up on my voice and spun it over my head. I took a step into the snow, grateful for the moccasins. They kept out the fiercest chills and most of the sleet, if nothing else.
"The smoof am I thinking?" I muttered, and ran forward to skid down a ditch. "I'm an idiot. That's all I ever was- an absolute idiot. Why am I risking my life for his? This goes against every survival instinct that should be embedded in my species. Clearly I don't deserve to pass on my genes. I don't deserve to continue living. Absolute idiot. I hate myself for this, I hate, I hate, I hate myself. Leaving that warm hovel to make this hopeless search. Makes no sense. He'll likely be dead anyway, and now we'll both die. Better to save the one. Freezing toes. Can't taste lips. Fingers stiff. Yes, definitely worth leaving shelter for. Smoofing, moronic idiot. Sanderson, the moment I've rescued you, I'm going to kill you."
In this manner I zig-zagged through the hills, always sticking to the small and more sheltered paths against the cliffs that wouldn't have been too thin for Sanderson to walk. At one point, I lost my footing above a crevice and crashed down the sides so hard, I broke the thin ice of the stream I landed in. I went under.
Chilled water stung my face, of course, and my legs, but the tight selkie coat kept it away from my upper body and wings. I kicked so hard that one of my moccasins flew off. My fingers attempted to break through surface, only to be met with a solid sheet of ice. My eyes shut briefly and stayed stuck a moment. Then, opening them again and shaking feeling back into my hands, I crawled my way along the ice against the flow of the stream, found my hole, and climbed onto the bank as other chunks of ice began to break apart.
"This coat is incredible," I muttered as I lay on my back. "I wonder where it was made?"
I'd escaped the icy water, but I was still cold, and being wet meant that each movement made the wind blow colder. I dragged myself, agonizing inch after agonizing inch, fingers stiff and straight, beneath a bit of jutting rock that I found. It's not unlikely that I would have stayed there until I fell asleep into diapause or death, but something sprang into the air and caught my nose.
It was a scent that could only be described (since now I know the words for it) as both chillingly minty and warmly buttery, with a tang of soaked cù sith hair sprinkled over its top. I paused, tasting it with my lips. I'd picked it up a couple of times in the past, when Sanderson had scraped his hand against a sharp wall or even from my own skin, when I'd ever been bitten or scratched. Apart from that morning after Sanderson's birth when I'd had to empty my head of all that loose blood, I'd never much noticed it. Like one of those old insects swarming to defend its hive after its companions had been injured, I forced myself up, veered around my rock, and tracked the scentline downstream.
It wasn't easy between the whirling wind and spinning flakes, but I was rewarded in the end. Sanderson, blue, had curled into a knot among heaps of snow beneath a yellowish conifer. His wings lay spread to either side, far too stiff with frost to fold into place against his back. Purple blood oozed like molasses from a cut across his palm. When I reached him, his mouth was open like his pores were too frozen to draw in magic.
I took up his hands and, after drawing air and magic from the energy field through my own mouth, sent it back out over his fingers where the cut was. After I did this a couple of times, his eyelids began to flicker. Pulling him into my lap, I blew more air into his mouth. A minute later, he was in control of his own limbs, albeit groggily. With jittering hands, he hooked his thumb between my lips and used that to pull his eyes on a nearer level to my own.
"No, no," he croaked out, poking my nose. "I f-f-fell down in the white dirt. And you walked away. Y-you didn't even look. I thought you l-left me. I thought you left Sandyson alone for all the cold. No."
"Finally finished with pooferty, are you?" I muttered, rubbing the back of his head. "And I almost missed it. It's alright; you're all right. Come on. Let's get you back to Shelli's. Eyes open, Sanderson- you can't sleep here. I need you to stay awake, okay? Can you do that? For me? It's very important."
For half an hour, I scoured the hills in search of the elder tree. Sanderson clung to my neck the entire time, too frozen to fit inside my pouch, and unwilling to do so anyhow. He liked his cheek against mine, where he could feel the bristles around my chin and whimper into my ear. On multiple occasions I tried to put him down, but he would only thrash and weep about being abandoned and grab my feet to trip me up, so I had little choice but to let him stay there.
Shelli Marmot's clay home remained an oasis, a mirage. I'd been crunching about in circles in search of it, chasing a vain hope, and now we were paying the price. I had moved beyond the point of shivering, though Sanderson remained in that state. He eventually drifted off with his teeth embedded in my collar. I wrapped him more tightly in his shirt so the short sleeves were pulled over his hands, bundled him in the too-big selkie coat, and walked on with my one moccasin.
That was the only option. There was no shelter here- not really. I couldn't have dug into the frozen ground even without the chance of tunneling into the home of another will o' the wisp.
Sanderson's mouth parted beside my ear again. His body trembled with heaves every couple of minutes. I tightened my fingers against the back of his neck and that place just below the knobs of his wings. His light was fading. Could he really die from the cold? I had nothing to either confirm nor deny such possibilities. I supposed it was an option. Magic, after all, did not travel well in the colder or wet climates, rendering its powers either sluggish or entirely non-existent. The magical particles in his blood could not have been traveling to his brain very quickly, no matter how much I blew in his mouth to stimulate it. If he stayed out here much longer, in the end even they would freeze. He would asphyxiate. And if Sanderson slipped away, then there was still a possibility that I could too.
So, repeating such thoughts in my head with every step, I pushed myself to trudge on down the cliffs. I could not sleep. In doing so, I'd be playing in death's jaws. It is fortunate, I think, that back then I wasn't aware of how among the insects I shared my wings with, all little working drakes die out come winter's snows, and only the gynes manage to survive to spring via diapause. Such knowledge may have crushed my resolve and dropped me to my knees, gyne myself or not, and that may have been the end of the pixies there on that day.
Through a beautiful miracle, Sanderson did live. By twilight, we made it to a copse of trees where a family of gnomes led us into their mounds and warmed him and rekindled the color in his skin. I suffered from hypothermia, but I too recovered in the end. Thank starlight kitchen wands were versatile enough that even species who lacked the ability to channel magic through real starpieces could use them- the gnomes had one on hand, and I got to have a decent cup of coffee. There was no cinnamon or caramel or even soy milk to mix into it, but I had something. Nine months with bad coffee, and two before that when my pregnancy had made the taste aversive. Imagine.
We stayed there for a short matter of days, but I was anxious to keep moving. I had lived out a great many Earthside winters, most of them unpleasant. For Sanderson's sake, I wanted to reach either some Fairy who could poof us above the clouds, back where the weather was permanently chilly but never this freezing, or we had to reach the Rainbow Bridge itself in the distant west, where the sun seemed to pass into the ocean. His immune system and resulting near-immortality wouldn't be fully formed and functional until he was nearly fifty years old. He needed warmth, regular food, reliable shelter, a wand, eventual schooling, vaccinations… Dust, nymphs were fragile creatures.
Except, evidently, when one was trying to drown them.
The gnomes and I had agreed that Sanderson and I would leave first thing in the morning, two days before the new year, and probably before our hosts shed the mushroom shapes they fell into when asleep. I was going about my routine of feeding myself before waking Sanderson for breakfast when all at once I became aware that I wasn't alone in the keeping room.
We were in the gnomes' mound- a lumpy structure with dirt walls and a rounded roof like a hill, grassy and pretty in the summer, and at the moment with a blooming lawn full of lovely flowers despite the snow thanks to the lawn gnomes who lived here being what they were. I was crossing from the kitchen towards the couch where Sanderson slept (I'd started forcing him to sleep outside the pouch while I recovered from hypothermia) when I noticed that a clean, slightly short, somewhat plump damsel perched off to my right. My wings stiffened.
"You slept in," she said, swinging herself down from the windowsill. This brought her directly between Sanderson and me. "Luckily for you, I'm not a psychopathic murderer like a certain sister of mine whom I could mention."
She was young- younger, perhaps, than I felt comfortable being around alone, with that whole 'damsels-come-onto-older-drakes' stereotype. Maybe thirty-six lines to her core. On top of her pale yellow dress, she wore a mint green and white checked apron sprinkled with rainbow flowers. Her fuzzy black hair was bundled up in a neat clump behind her head. No shoes- only fluffy peppermint-striped socks. Her eyes glinted like chocolate, if chocolate was red.
"Webbed digits," I noted. "Dark, shining skin. Wings at your shoulders that double as fins for swimming. Earrings shaped like seashells. The floating crown formed of pink coral." I raised my left eyebrow. "I'm not sure I've ever spoken directly to one of your elusive kind before, but you must be a selkie. Oh," I said then, looking down at the speckled gray coat I was already wearing for the day. "This is yours."
"Finally ditched my mom's basement as soon as I sensed you put it on. Sorry I'm late. Traffic was real bad in the Specific Sea." She clasped her hands together in the gaping pocket of her apron, and she still didn't move away from the couch. "My name's China Mayfleet. You're…?"
I glanced past her shoulder. Sanderson slept on, blissful and innocent, head on his folded arms as he often seemed to. "Fergus Whimsifinado."
"Roger that. Fergus Whimsifinado. Did I say it right? Super." She shifted away when I took a step towards the couch. "Well then, before we go anywhere, Fergus Whimsifinado, I think we should get some lines and questions settled. What are your boundaries, and what do you want me to do about them?"
"Before 'we' go anywhere?" I repeated, reaching out for Sanderson.
"I'm coming with you, aren't I?" she asked in surprise, which froze my hands a wing's breadth away from his shoulder. "You've got my coat. That means we're sort of, well, you know. Mates now."
She may as well have kneed me in the gut and twisted my wings. I straightened with a jolt and spun on my heels. "Absolutely not. No. No. No. I literally just escaped a will o' the wisp burrow. The last thing under the sky I want to deal with right now is another damsel coming onto me. Here." I untied the seven ribbons on the coat and, after shrugging out my wings, held it out to her. "Please just… take this, and leave. No strings- I won't stop you. You're free."
"What? Already?" China raised her hands up in surrender as she backed away. "I can't go back to being unemployed. Do you know how much that spikes your taxes? I've got student loans!"
I tossed the coat at her, and it landed over her face. "What is it about damsels and taxes? Sure, why not? Obviously I would get the one selkie in the world who doesn't want… No, I don't care. I already have to sacrifice my resources for the nymph. You're not coming. Go home, China."
She threw it back at me. "I've been eating sea slug ramen and doing brownie chores for the mermaids for mostly the last nine centuries. There is no way I'm going sniveling back to my mom on the first day, so you can suck it up."
"It's a very nice coat," I admitted, hurling it again and then ducking away, "and it did perhaps save my life out in that blizzard, but it's not worth it."
"I am extremely worth it, excuse you. But I'm glad you like it, especially since I had no control over the color. Kind of marbled, a little counter-top-ish, but it's not bad, you know? I'm not saying I'm a looker, but you're right. Where I come from, it's a very nice coat."
This time when China tossed it back, I caught it and held it. "Isn't there another way I could get you to leave? At all?"
The selkie shook her head. "Sorry, but no."
"Nothing?"
"Well… I lied. There is sort of one way you could shake me. If you die and the coat sits around untouched for a full one thousand years, I technically have no choice but to come reclaim it. My survival instinct won't let me resist. My mom will probably throw me out on the doorstep if I show up again after that, but I guess that's none of your concern. Let's talk about your needs." She looked around, thumbs twiddling above her apron pocket. "What are our options? You could drown in the toilet. Or stab yourself in the forehead. I'm not going to do it myself since I don't want to be chased down as a murderer again after what happened to the last imp who had my coat, but…"
"Forget it." I folded the coat up and placed it at the foot of the couch. "I'm not going to kill myself to be rid of you."
She let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, good. Can you imagine how humiliating that would be if the other selkies found out you did? I never did claim to be the most desirable, but that's cutting a little deep even for me. Who's the nymph?"
"That's Sanderson."
"Sanders' son? Not yours, then?"
"Not entirely."
China nodded, a thoughtful look in her eyes. "So, is there another damsel I need to know about?"
"No other damsels, but my supplies are low and we're very busy. I'm headed west to find the Rainbow Bridge. If I run across someone willing to poof me up directly, all the better for me." Last I checked, selkies couldn't use starpiece magic. That would be too easy.
She smirked the politest smirk I had ever been faced with in my life. "Good luck making it far without a coat, boss."
I glanced through the window. The snow had stopped falling during the night, apart from some lightly-drifting flakes, but that didn't mean it wouldn't come back, or that the ground wasn't enveloped in thick white. Images of Sanderson's blue lips and open mouth drifted through my head. My fingers trailed from his back down to his bare foot, with its sharp edges and small square toes. Thanks to that mutation he'd inherited from me, normal shoes didn't fit him right, and he'd have nothing until I could afford to get some custom-made for him. Unlike me, who had been large from birth, Sanderson had turned out to be the puniest nymph Kalysta had ever seen, even when compared with the fairy nymphs born to some of her friends. His post-instar pants were baggy and always slipped too low in the hips, his brown wisp shirt had short sleeves, everything was pockmarked with gashes, and my too-small clothes weren't in much better condition…
"You win," I said, taking up the coat again. "I'll keep this on while I travel. I do appreciate its soft and warm fabric. But, I have a few rules to be followed concerning this partnership."
"Roger that. Everyone has 'em. Not a problem."
I nodded as I flapped her coat out. "The first one is, I want you as far away from me as you can reasonably get. Where do you want to go? Back to the Specific?"
"Uh… Since you're asking, why not a little Fairy World town called Lau Rell? I haven't been there in ages, although you might have noticed a hint of my drawling accent."
"Lau Rell would be perfect. I've heard of the place. The town with the carnival parades, and it's not terribly close to Novakiin. For my next trick, I want you to head there, stay there, and don't come wandering back. Ever. Until further notice. Just, do whatever it is you do. If I keep your coat and you follow my instructions, you're technically fulfilling your commitment to the coat-bearer, aren't you?"
China opened her mouth, and shut it again. Her fingers tightened in her pocket. "I technically only have to listen to you when you say something while actually wearing it, but you're not wrong…"
"Excellent." I slung the coat over my shoulders. "Then that's all I need to hear. Do that. I need to be going before the snowfall picks up again. Come on, Sanderson. Wakey-wakey, wands a-shakey."
"Breakfast?" he mumbled as I drew him into my arms.
"I've packed you some food. You can eat it on the way when you're not so groggy. I want to get moving as soon as possible. Come on, into the pouch. There we go, that's it."
"Actually, I have something I want to give you that goes with the coat, before you go sprinting out."
When I glanced back, China had stretched forward her arm. Dangling from her hand was a triangular gray cap with its point flopped over like a chocolate chip, crowned at the tip with a little shiny silver star that clinked whenever it moved. This, she held out to me. I shook my head and said, "Don't give me anything selkie-esque. Take it with you."
"Really? That's the first time anyone's ever said that to me. Are you super positive you don't want this? It's a cohuleen druith. I don't give these to every drake who ties those ribbons down the coat, but you have a nymph and I already like you." At my continued scrunched eyebrows, she summarized, "It's a special hat that steadies your lines and slightly enhances your magic so you don't drown as long as you're wearing it. I made it myself."
"I don't want anything to do with you or your people."
She sighed. "Just take it. You have the coat. They're a matching set."
"I don't want it," I repeated. "I'm not in the habit of accepting gifts from complete strangers, and particularly from species I didn't learn much about in all my years of school."
Shrugging, China stuffed the hat in the pocket of her apron. "You'd think two mates wouldn't be complete strangers, but let me know if you change your mind, yes? Yes. Just spend twenty-four hours straight with the coat off, then put it back on and I'll know, and come find you. That's the rule. I guess," she said then, looking up at the ceiling, "for the next order of business, I… head back up to Lau Rell."
I paused with my hand holding back the open door. Snowflakes spattered against my cheek and dusted my hair and the sleeves of her coat. "China?"
She looked back to me. "Fergus?"
"Don't… don't head out yet. There's no need. Wait until the snow melts, or at the very least becomes manageable again. Stay here or in this area until then. Above all, take care of yourself. That's what I want."
She smiled. "No objection. You're the boss."
A/N: Text to Text - A cohuleen druith is a hat present in various myths about water-dwelling beings called merrow (mermaids). In the myths, if you take their hats from them, they lose their ability to return beneath the water (the equivalent of taking a selkie's sealskin coat) and, as China said, in this universe these hats can alternatively be worn to help one avoid drowning or asphyxiating in a snowstorm or something. But they're not helpful if you refuse to wear it.