ONE
“Happy birthday!” Sorrel and I screamed in unison as we jumped out from beneath the little kitchen table we’d been hiding under.
My dad had just walked into our small hut after a long day of laboring, and though he looked exhausted and a bit flushed, his face transformed into a grin.
I picked up the slightly lopsided cake I’d made and presented him with it, scuffling along the dirt-packed floor of our hut.
“Almond orange?” he asked excitedly.
I nodded. “Your favorite. With a honey glaze that I got from Mrs. Lancaster’s bees.”
I wasn’t as good a baker as my father, but I could hold my own in a kitchen.
My neighbor and dear friend Sorrel took my father’s work bag full of tools and set it down on the floor so that he could come sit with us at the table.
Dad walked a little sluggishly to join us and I frowned. “Still have that fever?”
He’d gotten a scrape at the river a few days ago and it got infected.
My father nodded and then peered at Sorrel. “I put the neem oil on it that you gave me this morning.”
Sorrel was our local self-taught herbologist. What she lacked in healer magic she made up for in brains.
“So what are you, like, seventy now?” I joked.
He chuckled. “Forty-four going on seventy.” He rolled out his neck. There was dirt under his nails and even on the tips of his pointed ears. Because he was one of our village’s main laborers, I couldn’t remember a time that my father had ever come home looking clean. He was a hard worker, and I was proud of that.
“Were you able to fix the dam?” Sorrel asked as she cut him a slice of cake and served him.
He nodded. “We got it patched; the lake should hold.”
Our small village of Isariah was a three-hour walk from The Gilded City, home of the most powerful fae in the realm. Where they had piped-in water and other amenities aplenty, we had to make do out here with what we could manage on our own. Which meant a manmade dam of the Dead Snake River that pooled into Huckleberry Lake, aptly named for the hundreds of wild huckleberries that grew at its perimeter. Dead Snake River was named as such because without the dam, it was a weak stream that wouldn’t keep more than ten people alive.
Our lake and dam were crucial to our survival—not only did we drink the water from it, but it watered our fields and kept us clean. If we lost that, no one would care if a bunch of banished, magicless fae died of thirst or starvation.
Sorrel served me next, and I debated removing my elbow-length gloves to eat the cake. Best to keep them on and avoid an accident. I didn’t want to ruin my father’s big day by writhing on the floor in pain.
“Fallon, what’s your favorite memory with your dad?” Sorrel asked, pointing at me as she dug into her cake.
I grinned, looking up at the man who had raised me as his own. “Age twelve,” I said. “The day I came home from school in tears because the kids kept touching me to activate my curse.”
My father reached over and placed his hand on my gloved one, careful not to touch my bare skin. “I remember that day well.”
My heart pinched as I thought of how painful that day had been, both physically and emotionally. Born with a curse I had no control over, I unfairly had to carry it my entire life. “You said something back then that stuck with me,” I told him. “You said I couldn’t control how people treated me, but I could control my reaction to their mistreatment. That it would define who I was.”
I felt that was a turning point in my life. I could have gone down a dark road, hating the world and being upset with my lot in life. But because of my father, I chose to focus on what I could control and the blessings in my life.
Sorrel cleared her throat. “If I remember correctly, he also gave you your dagger on that day and told you to protect yourself if need be.” She pointed to where I usually wore the knife at my hip.
We all burst into laughter then, and my father nodded. “Well, the moral of the story is to be kind to others but defend yourself if you must.”
“Mr. Brookshire? your turn. Favorite memory with Fallon,” Sorrel asked my dad. It was tradition in Isariah to share stories on birthdays and holidays when we couldn’t afford gifts.
He leaned back, looking at me with an affectionate gaze. “Easy. The day I met her.”
A lump formed in my throat at his admission, and I thought back to the day I’d been brought to Isariah in the dead of night seventeen years ago. I’d been left at the front gates in a little basket, my umbilical cord still attached and tied into a hasty knot.
Inside the basket, tucked into my little blanket, was a note with just four words on it:
