Nothing.
Janet cries out, from the loss of so much beauty, I think. The very rocks turn to dust, then fly away. The sky turns black, or at least that is all I can comprehend it as. For across the Veil now, there is no life, no land, nothing.
Janet is weeping, from the loss of something that was never hers.
As for me, I cannot contain this much life any longer. Flowers bloom out of my wrists, with my veins their stems, curling like decadent sleeves over the backs of my hands. My lips are ripe as fruit, almost bursting with juice; they part and vines spill out of my mouth, leafy, thick, and tasting of dirt. Around my crown the leaves wrap, dancing around the branches. My hair moves, gorgon-like, on its own. So much life is in me now, there is scarce room for my own thoughts. I dislike how helpless I feel.
I let it go.
Flowering vines slither down my arms and drop to the ground, crawling back across the Veil. I cough and hack up the vines in my mouth, like a cat with a furball. They choke me like the lies I cannot speak.
The excess of life flows out of me back into the land that is also me. A reapportionment, if you will. I am more comfortable now. And Faery?
She is alive again, the sky a radiant twilight, the ground—yes, there is a ground again—lush with grass. The flowers bloom, the trees both blossom and fruit, as is so often the Faery way. Only the leaves are a little crisper now, like the trees of the mortal realm this time of year.
Faery still needs to feed.
“But this is a glamour, surely,” Janet says, echoing her previous plaint. Her mortal faculties cannot encompass all she has seen.
“Not exactly,” I tell her. “It is a temporary truth; the dry parched land of skeletons is what will happen to Faery if the Teind is not paid. If She is not fed by the sacrifice of souls.”
If Faery loses Her essence, as I have my own.
Tam Lin puts his hands on Janet’s shoulders, turning her to face him. “Do not believe her,” he says. “The fae are masters of deceit, even if they do not lie. And it is nothing to do with us.”
Nothing to do with them. He does not understand the connection between the mortal and faery realms. We quicken their spring with our own fertility. Our hobs work the farmland; our brownies clean their homes; the banshees warn noble families of coming death.
All that humanity dreams or creates or wonders stems from our fair land.
I should have left Tam Lin’s broken body in Carterhaugh. Should not have taken him into the Underhill. Should have let him die and rot, his decaying flesh to feed the earth. All of this is no more than he deserves.
Janet turns away from him, brows beetling. “So, Faery can die?”
I throw my hands in the air. “Is this not what I have been telling you?” Sweet Mother Mab, I thought she was more intelligent than this.
“And you are Faery and Faery is you?”
“So I have said.” Impatience sets in. The vision I showed her took much of my strength: it gets harder to hold back the dawn.
“Then Faery is mortal, and so are you.”
I am robbed of speech, nearly of breath. What is this nonsense she speaks?
“Nothing dies that is not mortal,” says Janet. “This is what mortal means. And if you can die, my queen, even a little bit, you are as mortal as we.” She lifts her chin, determined. “And I cannot give up the man I love to save your life.”
I have given up my essence. I killed the man I love. I killed my other self. I have sacrificed everything I wanted, everything I love, to feed this land. Nothing that is mortal within me remains, I would swear to it.
And I did it all for Faery, my home, my land, my other self. All I have left to love.
The roses rub against me, crawl up my leg to caress my fingers. Blood drips down, and I cannot say whether it is theirs or mine.
“If you arenotmortal, and I am mistaken,” says Janet. “Then neither you nor Faery can die. Tam Lin’s life is not forfeit after all.”
She pulls her cloak over him, closing it around his naked form to hide it from the world. He grins down at her and wraps her in his arms. There they stand, embracing, under the light of the rising sun.
They have worn me out.
Mere children, these young lovers seem to me. Fair Janet—nay,fierceJanet, for we both know how much more valuable ferocity is than a fair face. And Tam Lin, who once was mine. He loves her now, though her beauty cannot last, any more than her youth can. I can see the love clearly; the spark was missing with all the others. He intends to be true to Janet—whether he can keep that promise or not, it is beyond my power to say.
