And silence fell like a curtain dropping. Eerie silence. No gusts of early spring battered at the door. No sound of Bess’s rough breathing echoed behind us, which threw my own breath into sonorous resonance.
The room suddenly felt too close.
“That’s not enough,” Morven grumbled. “She feels ye here, even in her sleep. My queen, ye was never meant to be both in the same place. Ye must go soon.” She peered up at me through the thicket of her shaggy hair. The passing years had not changed her—like all the fae, she wore them lightly, remaining as scrawny, hairy, and scraggly as ever.
I could hardly speak for looking at her so.
Morven glanced down at where my hand still held her arm.
I released her, shrinking back in a fashion I knew no longer suited me. “I am sorry.” The words were wrong, not enough. I didn’t know how to speak to her anymore.
Morven shook her head and snorted. “Och. Ye can’t help it.” If I didn’t know her so well, I would have imagined pity in her voice. “Ye’re not the girl ye were before.”
I never was the girl I was before.I glanced at the silent sleeper behind me.She is.
So, what did that make me?
An intruder upon this mortal plane.
Like pins and needles it felt; sharp points my flesh wanted to shrink away from, but at the same time the threads grew taut and pulled me close.
Morven crept up to me, nose pressed forward, face twisted beneath her shaggy hair. “Ye’ve gone skinny,” she said. “Used to have prettier hair.” Then she pulled out her little stick broom and began attacking the cobwebs in the corners, as if I weren’t even there.
Such had always been her way. But I could see past her hard shell to the softness inside. “I missed you, too, Morven.”
“I never said that, did I?” And she batted at the cobwebs so hard I thought the cottage walls might cave in. “Far as ye know, far as ye care, I never even noticed ye was gone.”
“That cannot be true. I...” But how could I finish? I had not the time to miss Morven while I was in the Faery realm, learning how to be queen. A most un-faelike shame washed over me, and I was grateful when Morven snorted and would not meet my eyes.
“You know, I am queen now,” I blurted.
At last Morven paused, putting her hands on her hips, scrawny elbows sticking out. “So Mairi Grieve did save our queen after all.”
I could only nod. The memories of the time I was Bess Grieve had gone distant now, like a story I had been told many, many times but never actually experienced.
I raised my chin, imagining the crown upon my head. “I it is who holds sway in Faery. I get to say who comes and goes. Who belongs there and does not.”
“Hmph.” She opened the front door, swept the dirt outside, did not meet my eyes.
“I still need you,” I blurted out. Morven would ever keep me humble. Would speak the truth to me with no niceties about it. Keep me humble, however powerful I had become. “I have always needed you, Morven, even if I did not know at the time.”
Morven sniffed. “Well, and do ye think I dinna ken that before?”
A smile crept across my face.Dear, sweet, ornery old Morven.
I could not have Thomas any longer, but I could have Lileas and Lyel. Jamie. And now Morven. This was all the companionship I needed.
“Come back to Faery. Come home with me.”
Morven stared at me, standing straight, her face for once not twisted in a grimace or a scowl. There was something almost human about her now. “Do you so command, my queen?” Her voice, too, was without its usual grumble, eerie in its flatness and casual tone.
Sharper than thorns were these simple words. “No.” I put my hands to my breast. “I would never ask you to do anything you did not want. I thought—”
“Ahh, child.” Sympathy from Morven at last. It hurt worse than her scorn. “It is good to see ye. I’m not saying it’s not. But I can’t go with ye.”
My lips parted, I wished to protest.I am the Queen of Faery. There should be nothing I cannot do.
But to treat my old friend as a mere subject—nay, to order her about like a servant—that was beyond me.
