Instead, she’d plugged the phone in, charging it fully, prepared to go through his texts and photos until she was a snotty, sobbing mess, just in time for her husband to come home.
She hadn’t counted on his password being a biometric. If only he and his fingerprint were there. Silva had raged, stomping around the bedroom, flipping over the laundry basket, and screaming into a pillow. She’d still been sulking, slowly putting the still-folded laundry back into its basket when the doorbell rang, the goblin who had been hired to come over once a week and meal prep standing at the front door.
She was in the kitchen with the goblin when she heard it. A melodic phone chime, short and repetitive, and not one she recognized. She’d spun, mouth dropping open. The sound was coming from up the hall, not from her phone, clutched in her hand. There was only one other phone in the house.
“You don’t need me in the way,” she’d told the goblin, who’d already pulled open the refrigerator. “This is your kitchen, not mine.”
She hit the wall in frustration as she turned into the room, the call already ending, but didn't need to wait long before it started up again instantly.
Caoimhe - Main Line
There were too many vowels for her to work out, and Silva had no idea how to say the name that flashed on the screen, but she had an inkling of who it might be.
“Tate? Tate?” The voice was instant and demanding, higher and younger sounding than Silva had expected, off and running the instant the call connected. “Tate, they won’t let me leave to go to the shop. I’ve told them over and over, but the bastards won’t listen. Can you tell them Ineedto—”
“He’s not here,” Silva cut in, suspecting she might not get the opportunity if she let the voice on the other end of the line keep talking. Just hearing the sound of someone else saying his name was enough to squeeze the air from her lungs. She had the sinking realization that his mother was entirely alone in the world with him gone.She’s probably been calling this number for the last year, never getting an answer.“He’s . . . not here. You’re his mother, right? I can try to help, if I’m able.” Silva didn’t know how to explain to the other woman who she was or why his phone was in her possession, deciding to simply avoid the issue altogether unless she was directly asked. “I’m Silva.”
“Silva,” the other elf breathed. “That’s abeautifulname. A proper Silmë name.”
“I’m a Silmë elf,” Silva agreed, tears burning in her eyes. “Like you.” He had been raised in a household like hers, raised to honor the goddess of starlight in the moon temple . . . raised in the same brittle environment that didn’t accept him.We should have run away from all of this when we had the chance.
It was enough of a distraction, evidently, for the purpose of the call to be immediately forgotten. Silva listened as the other woman chattered about nothing she understood, fast and manic. She sounded too young to be his mother, and that was using the supposition that Tate was the age he looked.
The realization that she had no idea how old heactuallywas had occurred to her at some point in the last year and a half, wondering how such a thing could even be accounted for. According to Elshona, he’d disappeared for regular intervals, and the main point she’d picked up in her dark web rabbit holes was that time was a nebulous thing on the other side of the veil.
She’d lost an entire night of her life, only taking a few steps away from the Plundered Pixie’s door, then another whole night in the bathroom at the wedding, despite the fact that she’d never even let go of the handle. Who knew how many years of his life had been lost to the Otherworld? If he spent an evening there and lost a decade on this side, which accounting of the time was the correct one?
“Is-is there anything you need?” Silva asked at length, able to break her way into the conversation once more. “You said you need something from a shop? Do you have enough wool?” she asked, remembering that day in the coffee shop and what he’d told her about his last conversation with his mother. “Tate said you knit and crochet.”
“Silk. I need some new silks. Spun silk.”
“I’ll make sure it gets to you.” She scrabbled for a pen, taking down the address with a shaking hand. He was gone, lost to Faerie, and now she was going to become pen pals with hisestranged mother, evidently.All in a day’s work when your life is a fucking disaster.
“You choose the colors, dearest. I’ll make you somethingbeautiful. As beautiful as your name. Will you tell him?”
Silva couldn’t hold back the tears then.How? How do you tell her?“Tate,” she began, feeling her face crumple, realizing this was likely the first time she’d said his name aloud since he’d disappeared. A deep, dragging breath, forcing herself to find a scrap of composure. “Tate, he’s—”
“Tate?” A dawning whisper from the other side of the phone, as if he were a brand-new topic, and not someone that had been referenced throughout the call. “My Tate is gone.” The other’s elf’s voice had grown softer, smaller, almost trance-like, like a switch being flipped. “Gone, gone. They took him. They took him. Gone. Sent me back a changeling. One of theirs. They took him. They took my baby.”
Silva pressed her knuckles to her teeth, holding back her own sob as she listened to the sound of the other woman crying, her volume increasing until Silva could hear the muffled sound of several other voices. Soothing voices.Nurses. He’d told her that his mother was in a care facility, that she was well-cared for with as much company as she cared to have, and that she rarely got through an entire conversation with her son, knowing it was him on the other end of the phone.How could she not be confused? How could anyone understand this?
It was the phone call with his mother that had steeled her resolve. Silva wondered if she had ever had the opportunity to mourn the loss of her only child before he’d reappeared, upending her grip on what was real. This had torn apart his family, she understood. Shredded their lives to ribbons, as it was doing to her own.
Shewasn’tbrave, and she wasn’t ferocious, but she couldn’t stay here and do nothing. She had no baby, nothing but a flutter,and no answer on what it was. She had no happy marriage, no life she was content in. There was nothing left for her in Cambric Creek. There was nothing left for her anywhere, if she didn’t at leasttryto find him.
She hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
The thought occurred to her as she sat there, sobbing behind the steering wheel. No note. No explanation. No text to her husband or email to her mother. She could disappear today, likelywoulddisappear, lost to fae tricks or torments, and no one would know where she'd gone.
Silva tried to imagine the aftermath if she did not return. Unanswered phone calls, confusion that would turn to panic, panic bleeding into grief and recrimination.What remains.
Her hands shook as she held her phone, tapping out a text to her mother, and then a message to her grandmother.I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you and I love you. And I know you love me too.It felt important to acknowledge, now that she stood at the precipice of whatever came next. She might never see them again, and she wanted them to know she understood that it had all come from a place of love. Misguided, but not cruel. And it was important to take the opportunity to say goodbye. He’d at least done that.I’ll love you forever, Silva of the Nighttime.
It had taken her more than a week to choose the cemetery.
The relative ruralness of this part of the Unification meant that she had plenty to choose from. The small graveyard in town was too crowded. The one in the middle of nothing off the highway was too remote. She didn’t have any specific criteria to work from and admitted to herself on more than one occasion that she was working off vibes and instinct and nothing else, but she decided to allow fate to continue pushing her in the right direction.
This was a municipal cemetery, hundreds of acres of open land, situated between the city and suburbs, and the in-betweenness of it was what called out to her. There was nothing remarkable about the architecture, nor anything particularly beautiful about the landscaping. It was huge and desolate and the best she was going to find, if the cat-like man in the shop had told her the truth.It’s now or never. Because if this doesn’t work, you still need to drive home and pretend to be fine.
