Relief crashed through me. “Thanks.”
She shook her head, rubbing at her temple. Her golden-brown wings flitted about behind her in anxiety. “Lily … those guys are scary … like evil.”
“I know! It’s not like I did anything to make it happen,” I snapped, feeling like she was making this my fault.
Her face fell, compassion replacing what previously looked like condemnation. “I know … I just. You didn’t like … give up the crystal, right? You fought him for it? And he won?”
Shit.So she must have just seen the blue lightshow and not what happened after he put me in the closet.
I nodded. “He’s strong. He … someone else walked in and there were two of them and yeah, they overpowered me.” I wasn’t yet ready to admit the truth to my best friend.
Fuck. Why hadn’t I stabbed him? What was wrong with me? My entire homeland was dying and I let him just take the crystal back.
Elle nodded. “Okay, just … remember what’s important … saving Faerie.”
I returned her nod, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. The only person in the world I wanted to talk to about this and ask advice from was dead, and I felt so very alone.
* * *
An hour later,I was dressed in all white, standing next to my best friend and laying my mother to rest in front of our entire village. People had come in from the outskirts and farmlands to pay their respects to the elder seeker. Back before Faerie fell into darkness and our queen was slain, the seekers served her majesty, bringing back important objects and relics that would help win wars or heal people. Being a seeker was a great honor, and we were well respected members of the village.
Indra wore an all-white gown, the hem of which were soaked by the river as she stood up to her ankles in the water. My mother’s limp form floated magically in the air before her. She was draped in white silk, with a giant clear crystal over her abdomen where her mortal injury was.
“Violet, Daughter of Kari, we release your body back to the Earth so that your soul may fly free in the upper realms of the dead.”
“Fly free, Violet,” the crowd chanted, and a sob formed in my throat.
Fly free, Mom. Fly free.
The other three elders surrounded my mom and let their magic flow from their palms, blue, orange, green, and white. It was beautiful. They guided my mother’s body over the lapping waves and then finally set her into the most turbulent part of the river.
“We are grateful for your service to our lands and our people,” Indra told my mother softly.
“We are grateful,” the Fae repeated as they dropped my mother’s body into the ocean and the crystal weighed her down, sinking slowly, slowly, into the water.
I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I couldn’t be strong. I was a fucking weak ass twenty-year-old girl who wanted her mom and I didn’t care. Tears sprang from my eyes and I burst into sobs, collapsing on my knees.
It was done. She was gone. Never to be seen again. The waters would take her body deep under the river, under the protection dome, away from here where she would cease to be anything but food for the water creatures. Back into the circle of life.
Elle’s hand was the first to touch my shoulder. Then another and another. My fellow women surrounded me with love and compassion and it only made the tears fall faster. This was my favorite part about being Fae. Something I rarely saw the humans do in my many visits to Earth over the last two decades. This community of togetherness. When one grieved, we all grieved. If someone needed food, or care, or anything, you needed not even ask. It was given. The Fae were a beautiful people and I was proud to be a part of this special place, a place that Earth would never be like.
A place Liam could never comprehend.
I don’t know where that thought came from, but it was over as soon as it arrived. The people began to chant my mother’s name, and the music started.
“The grieving is over,” Hana, the village seamstress, told me. “Now we must celebrate.”
Our celebrations of life were short in the grieving and crying, and long in the dancing, laughing, and telling of stories. It was the way things were done, and although some might see it as a bit insensitive, I was grateful when the women pulled me from the beach and started to tell stories of my mother.
“I’ll never forget your parents’ wedding night,” Maye, one of the village bakers, told me, linking arms with me as we walked to the band that was playing. Tomas had his tree horns out and his twin brother was banging some gourds in an upbeat tune. They were no Bob Dylan, but they’d do.
“Eww, please don’t tell me about their wedding night,” I joked, wiping my eyes and smiling. I’d heard this story before but never tired of it.
“I wanna hear,” Trissa said behind me, and I was startled by her voice. She never came to these things. She didn’t believe in the upper realms or the gods or any of that stuff.“I’ll make a pretty fertilizer one day,”she would always say.
Maye grinned. “So I’d stitched her a beautiful lingerie gown, and assuming they would be busy the rest of the night, I went home and started getting ready for bed…”
I beamed. The story was actually hilarious. Even more funny when my mom told it.
