Page 83 of Curse the Fae

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Sitting together on the ridge overlooking The Kelpie Rapids, we regard one another, my vision clear, his hooded. Unspoken memories flash through our minds, the silence more prolonged than it’s ever been between us.

How do his recollections compare with mine? I want to ask, but I’m afraid to, and I see the same misgivings in his own eyes.

Countless emotions surge through me. Just as many radiate from him.

Aside from our mingling breaths, it’s quiet. The rapids have calmed, the water placid now.

I swallow. “The creek dwellers helped you escape, didn’t they?”

Elixir’s fathomless eyes probe the half-light and stray across the ground. “The iron was too strong for me otherwise,” he reflects. “They loosened it. After that, I was able to punch through.”

“And Cerulean is the one who saved you from the stream,” I assume.

Elixir nods, then grunts, “The bastard can see from the greatest of distances, particularly while airborne. He was freeing the mountain fauna when he caught sight of me in the water.” Despite Elixir’s gruff tone, gratitude and fondness slip through the cracks in his voice. “Though, I have never told him how I escaped or about you. My brothers and I do not speak of our experiences in the village, what the humans did to us.”

I cross my legs under the medallion-colored dress, take his hand, and cradle it. Our fingers bunch together in my lap. Elixir’s breath hitches, and he goes still while I examine his knuckles. Aided or not, he must have struck the iron hard to blast the cage door open.

“No scars,” I marvel.

“I removed them,” is all he says.

Oh. I think of the mixtures in his den and wonder which one of them he’d used to erase the wounds. However, those injuries evoke other grievances, as well as my own spin on this game, the need to get close to him.

I release his hand. “Why do you hate us? You don’t even know us.”

“I know what you did,” he snaps, but with less venom than usual.

His accusation applies to more than one offense, and not only to me. All the same, I reside at the nexus of his anger, because I’m the one who attempted to thwart his escape.

Somehow, I had cursed him that fateful night. During our brawl, my actions had changed his fate. That’s why he’d acted so strangely, flailing in confusion and shock. In that moment, I had changed him. He’d been so frazzled by the transformation, he hadn’t had the capacity to retaliate.

That’s why he hadn’t blinded me in the stream. It had nothing to do with the iron cage weakening him. Likewise, Elixir’s counter-ability must have developed because of the spell, but he hadn’t known about that right then, much less how to wield such magic.

To this day, he knows it was me. He knows I cursed him, but even now, Elixir doesn’t confide it.

The confession sneaks up my throat but gets stuck on the edges of my lips. That’s where it stays.

Besides, something else lurks behind his words, his raspy intonation frayed. I’ve heard many renditions of this tone coming from my neighbors, particularly after burials. It’s the sound of bereavement. It goes beyond the fallen Solitaries and fauna, beyond the fate of his subjects.

Elixir’s loss is intimate, as deep as the sea. It’s the loss of family, a feeling I understand well. I think of his mothers—Marine and Lorelei—and remember what Coral had told me.

Comfort will not bring back what he’s lost.

“Every time I thought of humans, all I thought of were the Faeries and fauna they butchered,” he growls.

“Elixir, please,” I say. “Think past your anger. Not all of us took part in The Trapping. Some were too young. Did you ask any of your former sacrifices how old they were when that night happened? Have you asked those captives if they even lived in town that year, or if they had moved there afterward? You would have gotten those answers if you’d bothered to ask, to understand who they were. You’ve been punishing people without knowing who they are.”

Elixir frowns. “You were young. That did not stop you.”

No, it didn’t. I could claim I was just like any innocent child who grew up being persecuted by the Folk unfairly. But while that rule applies to my neighbors and my sisters, it doesn’t apply to me. I was ten when it happened, but I knew what I was doing that night.

I made a choice to attack him. I made a choice to act.

I twist toward the vista, wishing the kelpies would come back, wishing this Fae and I could return to a happier moment, a mesmerizing one. “How can you despise someone you don’t know?” I utter. “Someone you’ve never met? How do people do that?”

How did I do that? How did we both do that?

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