It had begun shortly after their move.
Silva knew she had shattered her family’s hearts by leaving. Her grandmother, especially, and that was the severing that had hurtherthe most as well, but it couldn’t be helped. This was the life theywantedfor her. This was the roadmap they’d drawn out themselves, the plan they’d made, the elf they’d nudged her toward the instant Tannar had appeared on their radar, and whatshewanted had never registered as any vague importance.Careful what you wish for.
“How can you do this, Silva?” her mother had wept bitterly, attempting to change her mind.“Whyare you doing this to us? Is this to punish me for thinking of your future? You’re breaking your grandmother’s heart by doing this.”
Silva remained dry-eyed.Herheart was already broken.Misery loves company and company loves more.
“I don’t understand what you’re upset over,” she’d lied, refusing to be talked out of the move that had already been set in motion. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted me to do? Marry someone you approve of, be a perfect little Elvish housewife. I’m only doing what you planned for me to do, what you’ve been planning for my whole life.”
She knew it wasn’t so. Daughters didn’t leave their families. Their husbands were the ones who moved, who found new careers or relocated existing ones, joining the enclave and club of their wives, so that she might stay with her mother and grandmothers. The community that remained after their menfolk were gone. Children belonged to the mothers, took theirmothers’ names, an unending chain if they happened to be little girls themselves. Silva knew she was meant to stay, meant to be there for her grandmother’s jubilee, to be there with her mother, to raise her own little girl right there in the town she’d always lived in.
Still, her mind had been made up. Cambric Creek was ruined for her now. Every one of her favorite places, the waterfall, the coffee shop, all of it. They all echoed with his laughter, the impression of his shadow still lingering.
She could not stay and be reminded of what she had lost at every turn. And so she left.
Tannar was from a different part of the unification entirely, a suburb of a city not unlike Bridgeton in size, but with far less industry. They were further from the coast and more remote, a small, semi-urban patch in the midst of what her father would have unkindly called “flyover farmland.” It was quickly evident that what passed for high Elvish society here was a far cry from the community she was used to, but Silva had decided that would only make things easier for her in the long run.
She had no job, no friends, and now, quite unexpectedly, she had no baby.
Tanner had come to the conclusion that she’d lost the baby she’d been carrying, came up with the reason for her lack of showing all on his own, saving her lips from needing to concoct one more lie. It was a common enough occurrence in their community.
“It was early days,” he’d murmured into her hair the day he’d broached it at last. “I guess we should have prepared for something like this to be a possibility.”
Silva had nodded woodenly, agreeing because it had been the easiest thing to do.
She’d counted, one afternoon, just how many months she’d been sick to her stomach, without any excuses of stress ornerves. Since the previous autumn, before he’d disappeared. He had been gone just over a year at that point. A year of existing with a hole carved in her chest where her heart was meant to beat, a year with that little wing inside her. It didn’t make any sense.
There wasstillno progression. No outward sign that there was another heartbeat beneath her own, no public evidence of that flutter she felt beneath her breast. Silva was almost able to convince herself she had dreamed the whole thing up . . . almost. But the flutterwasthere, and there were some nights in bed when she stared at the ceiling, terrified to close her eyes, the other heartbeat within her hammering so hard it overtook her own.
Something had gone wrong.
Something in the witch’s spell, maybe. The sweet witch who made her favorite shampoo, maybe it had started that day Silva had sat in the woman’s kitchen in Cambric Creek, allowing her fingers to be pricked with needles, her blood added into a cauldron, drop by drop, a noxious potion she was given to drink. Maybe something had happened that day, maybe the spell had gone wrong.
Maybe that was what she deserved.
“I don’t know if this is ethical.” The steam from the cauldron had fogged up the witch’s glasses, and they slid down her nose as she tied a tourniquet around Silva’s arm that afternoon. “I-I understand your reasoning, I suppose, and I suppose there are always extenuating circumstances, but when we specifically start choosing things like eye color and ear length . . . it seems small, but it’s a dangerous line of thinking.”
“Humans are able to design their children in a lab,” she’d whispered, tears burning in her eyes as the witch unwrapped a needle as long as Silva’s hand. “There’s that billboard right offthe highway advertising it. They can choose eye color, hair color, sex . . . and we don’t even have painkillers that work.”
The witch had nodded, turning over Silva’s hand. “A friend of the family is a lawyer, and he’s involved in a case about that very issue. It’snotfair. I don’t disagree with that. It’s all gene manipulation, what they do. And it has its roots inexcellentmedicine. We can eradicate hereditary conditions by eliminating gene mutations, once we know what to look for in the sequence. We can change lives for the better. It’s important, life-saving science . . . and now we have labs that let you choose your baby’s eye color. It’s all the same principle, just very different applications. I don’t know how ethical some of those applications are.”
The prick of the needle made her wince, watching the blood well up. “This is lifesaving for me,” Silva whispered again, the tears overflowing at last.
She hadn’t had a backup at that point, if the witch were to have turned her away. All of her planning hinged on having a baby that looked like her. Tannar’s family would send her packing the instant they saw tusks, and then where would she go? Her own family would be ostracized at Cevanorë if she came home. She had nothing of her own, no money, no savings, nowhere to go, other thanhisapartment.I told you that you’d always have somewhere to come, dove, and so you do.
He’d put the apartment in her name, but she’d not stepped foot over the threshold since the last time she’d been there with him, and thought of doing so now was untenable. She’d established that her tax liability was accounted for by one of the many provisions he’d made, thinking of every last detail, and she’d put the black-bricked building from her mind. If her situation became dire, she could sell it, if she had to, but Silva was content to forget it existed. One more thing that was ruined for her.
Fortunately, at the time, the witch had continued working, despite her words.
“I suppose I understand . . . that’s why it’s important for us to assess every client’s needs on an individual basis.” She paused, giving Silva a sympathetic smile. “This isn’t much different, not really. It’s genetic manipulation, but I’m not removing anything. I would have needed to major in runework for that. We’re just . . . sending the Orcish traits to the bottom, I suppose. Allowing everything else to rise to the top. Your traits will be dominant. I can’t promise you a clone, and I can’t promise it will last indefinitely, but we’ll do the best we can.”
Something must have gone wrong. A missed calculation, or an ingredient in the potion that she was allergic to . . . something. Something for which Silva couldn’t account, an answer she couldn’t get from the doctor in this new enclave. She would have needed to explain herself, and that wasn’t something she was willing to do.
She still had that scraping hunger that could only marginally be satisfied with a covert meal of raw meat. The night she found herself in the attached garage of the move-in ready home Tannar had purchased for her, ripping open the plastic wrapping of the ruby red beef tips she’d purchased and hidden, consuming the illicit meal with her bare hands in the middle of the night, Silva admitted to herself that she needed to start seeking out an answer.
Either that, or perhaps whatever was inside her would chew its way out, freeing her from the burden of justifying her actions.
It was an answer she was seeking the day she created a login for the discussion board platform. Every topic under the sun was picked apart, from pop culture to politics, marital advice, office manners, and everything in between. Silva was certain, as embarrassing as it was, that Readwise was her best option.
