Child of Light, page 11
I bristle up immediately. She reminds me of Ancrow—all sharp edges and suspicions rolled up in a prickly ball. But I remember my place and my need to stay calm. “Auris,” I answer.
“A Sylvan name. How interesting. Harrow, are you serious about this? She is a lovely girl, but she doesn’t have a speck of Sylvan in her. What are you seeing that we aren’t?”
“Dreena, please,” her sister cautions.
“Mind your own tongue, sister,” Dreena snaps. “She’s full-grown and full-minded. She looks to be made of tougher stuff than most. And if she seeks to find the truth through us, she will need to be. Auris, will you take tea? We have black currant. Isn’t that your favorite?”
I am reliving my earlier conversation with Benith, so I repeat my answer. I am beginning to get a sense of things, and it now seems that Dreena might be the top dog. But she lets her sister make the tea, motioning me to take a seat on the couch and then sitting next to me. Harrow sits in one of the chairs, a faint smile on his lips. He is enjoying this—not so much my discomfort as the experience of taking tea with these odd ladies. It is obvious he has done this more than a few times already.
Dreena looks at me askance. “You come from the Goblin prisons. You are an escapee? You had friends who came with you?”
“All killed,” I say, deciding she already knows this anyway. “Though I wish it were otherwise.”
“Yes. But you were lucky and they weren’t. Now then, I am the one who will be looking into your memories. I will be thorough, and I will be as gentle as I can, but you will have to trust me. I am not the sort that people are inclined to trust—especially strangers. But trust me you must. Do you understand?”
I nod. She can see right into me.
“Harrow saved you? Even if he hadn’t told me earlier, I would know it from the way you look at him. You like him, don’t you?”
This is cutting close to the bone, but I must answer or I will look foolish. “I do. He is my friend.”
Dreena smirks. “How nice for you. And well said, if you are trying to be delicate.” Her eyes twinkle. “Would you prefer that I move on from this particular discussion?”
“Dreena, just stop!” Benith insists, coming over to hand us our teacups, then continuing to stand in front of her sister with a stubborn look on her up-to-now impassive face. “Let’s not dabble in places we don’t belong.”
Dreena shrugs. “There are no such places, Benith, but very well. Auris, let me explain how this works. We sit here on this couch in perfect comfort, right next to each other. We will finish our tea and soon your eyes will grow heavy. I will sing to you, which will cause you to go into a trance. Then I will have a look at your memories—but mostly at those that I can tell have been suppressed. You may realize this is happening or you may not. You may choose to speak or you may remain silent. When I am done, I will wake you and we will talk about what I have discovered. Do you understand?”
I nod. “I do. But if there are bad or questionable things that I have repressed, I would like them left that way.” I hesitate. “Unless they have to do with Harrow’s belief that I am somehow Fae.”
Dreena cocks her head to one side, and her bushy brows knit. “I have little control over what you will remember, child, and I am not in the business of uncovering harsh truths about people’s lives just to be mean. I have enough harsh truths in my own life. What I am looking for is an explanation about why Harrow—normally a mentally well-balanced young Sylvan—is suddenly experiencing a conviction for which there seems to be no rational explanation. That, and that alone, is what I will reveal. Drink your tea.”
I sip it for a bit as three pairs of eyes fix on me, and then I drink the remainder down quickly. I am immediately sleepy, my eyes closing of their own volition, my breathing deepening. Strong tea, I think—then remember its purpose. I try to relax as I feel myself slipping away. Someone is singing, in a high clear soprano that soothes and calms me further. I am aware of a stillness in the room, and I want to look for Harrow for reassurance but cannot manage to do so.
Harrow, I think—or do I actually say it aloud?
I sink into darkness.
* * *
—
I am sitting alone in a room filled with shelving and cabinets, with examining tables and medical supplies and equipment—all of it white and clean and gleaming. I am myself, but not myself. I cannot explain it, but while I feel myself to be one thing, I look like something else altogether. I take time to examine my arms and legs and body to be sure I am not imagining this unexpected change, but there it is. What troubles me is that while I can see the change, I cannot explain it or remember how I looked before. Confusion dominates my thinking, and I cannot dredge up an explanation for what by now is a certainty in my head.
More troubling still, I cannot remember my name or anything about my life.
I am a blank slate.
A door opens off to one side, and a man walks through. He looks to be an ordinary man but he wears a doctor’s smock. He comes over to me and bends down to peer into my eyes. “Are you feeling better?” he asks.
Better than what? Was I sick? Is he the doctor treating me?
“I don’t know who I am,” I blurt out.
His face tightens. “You suffered an injury and lost your memory, but it will return with time and care.” He forces a smile. I think it is meant to reassure me, but it fails to do so. “Do you…remember anything?”
I think to tell him about how I feel like I am a stranger in my own skin, but decide not to. “I don’t,” I admit.
“Do you know who I am?”
I shake my head. He looks familiar, but not so much that I can remember a name. “Do you have a name?”
He ignores me. Has something gone wrong with his experiment? Is something wrong with me? “Tell me your name,” he orders.
I shake my head again, this time almost giving way to tears. “I can’t remember it!”
“Your name is Auris, and this is your home,” he whispers, leaning close. He tries on another smile, but it doesn’t fit. Instinctively, I mistrust him. When he reaches out to touch my hair, I flinch away. He pulls back immediately. “I know this feels strange, but I will see to it that you are well cared for. It will take time and patience. You should regain your memory soon enough, but in the meantime you will have to rest.”
I shake my head uncertainly, feeling adrift and directionless. “I am afraid.”
“You don’t need to be, Auris. Not of me.”
Why don’t I believe his assurances that all will be well?
As if reading my mind, he says, “I’m your father.”
* * *
—
I wake from my trance almost violently, jerking forward hard. Dreena catches me in her arms and holds me upright. Her wizened green face with its pared-back features frightens me momentarily, but she coos reassuringly. Her hand strokes my hair as she murmurs to me, “There, there, everything is all right, Auris. You’ve come to no harm.”
“But I saw him!” I gasp. “I saw everything. My father, an examining room—me, but not me, I don’t…”
She moves me away from her to arm’s length, her grip firm as she holds me fast, her eyes locked on mine with such intensity I cannot look away.
“Listen to me,” she says. “You saw some of what there is to see, but you still hide much. You have a very powerful mind and your secrets are locked fast.” She nods to confirm what I am hearing. “It might have felt like you saw everything, but there is more. Some of it has to do with what Harrow instinctively realized about your connection to the Fae.”
She turns to stare at him, and I follow her gaze. Harrow wears a determined expression, but it is laced with worry. He nods to me reassuringly; he is still there and will be there until this is over.
“You were right to bring her to us,” Benith adds from where she now stands across the room. “You are not who you seem to be, Auris. But Dreena senses what needs doing in order to find out what you are hiding. Am I right, sister?”
Dreena nods. “Call Maven. This will require all three of us.”
Benith disappears momentarily, and when she returns tiny Maven is with her, come down from her elevated cottage to join us. She takes one look at me and says, “Oh, my!”
I experience this terrible feeling of having been revealed to be something alien—something so anathema to everyone that, as soon as the sisters’ seeing work is completed, I will be dispatched as swiftly as possible to the farthest reaches of this land. I feel it with such certainty I am instantly terrified.
“I want this to stop!” I cry.
Instantly Harrow is kneeling before me, taking my hands in his, letting me look into those mesmerizing eyes. I calm down, but not as quickly and completely as I usually do under his gaze.
“I don’t want to know any more,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “Auris, nothing has been revealed that really matters. Nothing that we can explain without looking deeper. You’ve done so well. Just another few minutes and it will be over.”
He shifts closer to me. Our faces are practically touching. “Listen to me. I have never heard of the sisters all acting in concert to uncover something. One is always enough. Whatever is buried inside you, it must be buried deeply. It is also a great credit to you that they are willing to expend the energy. They sense that there is something important hidden in your mind—something important about you and the Fae nation. If they felt otherwise, we would have been sent packing.”
I shake my head in denial. “There isn’t anything!”
But there is a stricken look to his expression—one I have not seen before—deep and affecting. Harrow needs me to continue. He is pleading with me as much for himself as for me, and to my surprise I do not resent or mistrust it.
He leans closer still, and I feel his breath on my face—an act of unexpected intimacy. I wonder in that moment if he might kiss me, but…No. We just stare at each other momentarily, then he mouths three words: Please. Do this.
I nod to the sisters, who now begin to gather around me. Benith brings me a second cup of the tea and hands it to me. “Drink it all quickly,” she instructs.
Dreena begins to sing once more, my thoughts scatter, and my mind goes still. All three sisters are touching me—one my face, one my shoulders, and one my legs—in a joint laying-on of hands. I am only dimly aware of this, already sliding away into my trance once more, the world about me disappearing.
Harrow remains kneeling before me, still holding my hands in his.
I want him there always.
* * *
—
I stand in a different room; this one looks to be a bedchamber. My father stands before me, his face a mask of concentration and secret thoughts. He gives me a smile and says, “This will only take moments, and it will keep you safe. It will tamp down the impulses that might otherwise cause you to react in stress.”
He sounds as if he is instructing me in something, but I can’t think what it is. My thoughts remain fuzzy. I stare at him in confusion, and he shakes his head. “Do you understand me, Auris?”
I nod obediently because I sense this is what I am supposed to do. But in truth, I understand nothing.
“Give me your arm, please.”
I hold out my arm to him and he takes it in his hand. I have not been looking at anything but his face before now, but the touch of his fingers causes me to glance down. I notice immediately that my arm is green and that a fringe of silken hair with tiny leaves grows on the underside from shoulder to wrist.
Before I know what he is doing, he injects me with a syringe, pumping a fluid of some sort into my body. I flinch at the way it stings, but he holds my arm fast until all the liquid is inside me.
We stand facing each other in silence as he withdraws the needle.
Then we wait.
Time passes.
Nothing happens.
“It isn’t working,” he hisses, clearly displeased.
He disappears, and I am left to wonder what it is he is attempting to do. I examine myself—arms, legs—and find I am green all over. Oddly, I find this both normal and troubling. I want my father to explain what is happening.
Perhaps I should leave now before anything else happens. But I am his dutiful daughter, and I wait for his return.
* * *
—
I slide in and out of sleep after that for a short time, never fully awake, never fully unconscious. I am aware of all three sisters working on me, hands holding mine, stroking my brow, as their probing gently but steadily explores my thoughts—discarding most but holding on to a few. I relax, soothed by the comfort their ministrations provide, unbothered by their soothing presence in my mind. They do not intrude; they simply observe. I know they are seeing things from my past that I do not; finding memories that are either already mostly present or unnecessary to help reveal my past.
“Here,” one whispers to the other two, and something is extracted and examined.
“Oh, dear!” another exclaims.
“Hold it steady now,” another orders.
Silence, and some further searching. They are intense in their efforts but not incautious or rough. I know they are seeing everything about me, but it does not feel as if they are judging or flinching. I see some of the memories they explore, but all of these are current and already known to me.
One is different. It is the last one they recover and I view it with them, shocked and frightened.
This memory is a more fully realized rendering of my recurring dream.
* * *
—
I stand in a different room behind a partially closed door, concealed from the two people who converse with lowered voices in an adjoining room—my mother and my father. I cannot see them, but I know their voices. There is a clear urgency to their words that I cannot ignore.
“They know,” my father says. “They will come for me soon. You must take Auris and flee.”
“I won’t,” my mother answers, and there is a firm insistence in her voice, a determination. “We can send Auris away, but I will stay with you.”
“They will take you, as well, if they find you. Please. It was a valiant effort, but it failed. You need to take Auris and leave. I will follow shortly.”
“But what about Auris? What about her condition?”
“She’s fine as she is for now, but I can’t be sure of the drug’s long-term effect. I can’t know how she will respond when it wears off. I’m not sure when her memories will return. You have to be patient, but you need to do so in a safe place. You need to take shelter—go into hiding.”
“Where? Where can we go?”
“Anywhere but here. Away from the compound and the madness that is taking root all around us. I can’t do what they want anymore. I won’t. So take Auris and go—now!”
His voice has become desperate, as if this is a life-threatening situation they are facing. But I don’t know what the situation is. I want to ask them, but at the same time I don’t. I am conflicted for reasons I cannot entirely understand.
Then I hear my mother say, “Dennis, we have to send her back!”
“No!” my father replies immediately. “No, I won’t do that.”
This triggers a strange understanding in me. I can sense there is something about me that my parents find deeply troubling. Something hidden is threatening to be revealed. Something that poses a threat of monstrous proportions—something that could destroy us all.
I step into view, confronting them.
As I do, the front door of our house explodes inward, and I freeze in place. A clutch of armored soldiers surge forward. My parents are seized and forced to their knees.
I hear myself screaming.
* * *
—
I come out of my trance with a jolt of realization of what my recurring dream is about. I take a moment to let my vision adjust and then I focus on the faces around me, one by one. Harrow is last—my rock, my assurance of safety.
He still holds my hands tightly.
“Did you see what I did?” I ask the sisters, who are clustered together before me.
They all nod. “That, and much more, child,” Dreena answers. “Such a tangled web, and no clear path forward. No certain answers, and only a strong sense of what to look for. Did you feel it, sisters?” she asks them.
Maven and Benith nod immediately.
“That memory is also a dream I have been having for years,” I tell them. “It explains more than I knew from the dream, but still not enough.”
“What your dreams also reveal, when taken altogether,” Maven says to me, her ancient face crinkling with emotion, “is that at some point in your life, while you were still quite young, you were taken from us. Perhaps by your parents, perhaps by someone else. Your father did not specifically say you came from Viridian Deep. But woven in his words and his emotions—all of which we could read easily enough—he revealed that you are one of us. You are Fae. No matter how you look now or ever did look for that matter, you are a Sylvan.”
“But you are something else,” Benith adds, glancing from one sister to the next. “Did you sense it, too, sisters?”
This time they both shake their heads no. “What did we miss?” asks Dreena.
“Sisters,” Benith says softly, now looking directly at me. “I think Auris is a Changeling.”
A Changeling!
I hear Benith speak the name clearly enough, and I abruptly recall what a Changeling is, which is a creature that up until now I was pretty well convinced lived only in fairy tales. A Changeling is supposed to be a fairy child exchanged by deceitful adults for a Human child. I sit there still half-dazed by the rapidity with which I recovered this lost memory and at the same time try to take in the possibility that what I have just been told could be true. But I know it could be. I know because I am living in a new world—in a world I also didn’t believe existed. The world of the Fae was imaginary, too…right up until I found myself standing in it. Is it so difficult then to believe that if there are Fae creatures there might also be Changelings?
