Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie

“Of the old queen. The one your not-girlfriend helpfully got killed in all her teen brilliance. That was back when the daoine sidhe could only appear on Solstice, or with awesome music. But something’s changed. It couldn’t be that way unless the new queen was allowing it. The faerie that—” Nuala stopped, tried again. “The faerie you saw—the swan ass**le—he was one of them. He shouldn’t have been able to dance unless it was Solstice.”

“I’d like to find him.” The words surprised me. Out loud, and angry.

Nuala looked at me, eyes dark and fierce, and her expression said: me too.

“You look tired,” I said. For some reason, I didn’t like to see her looking tired, just like I didn’t like to hear her falter when she described the swan faerie.

She didn’t even think before answering, which I was beginning to figure out meant she was lying. “No, I don’t.” She looked away from me and then said, abruptly, “I’ll find out what they’re doing. I don’t have anything to lose. I’ll be dead in a week and a half anyway.”

I sighed, and pressed my hands flat against the sides of her legs, waiting for my arms to race with goose bumps. Nothing happened. “You’ll rise again, though. Like a phoenix, right? From the ashes. So you won’t really die.”

Nuala made a harsh gesture toward her chest. “This girl will die. Everything that makes me who I am now will be gone. Just because another body climbs from the ashes doesn’t mean it’s me.”

I slid my hand along her thighs just far enough to take each of her hands where they were braced by her legs. I gathered them into my own and held them between us. She had such long, soft hands. Nothing like my square, blocky palms, with fingers muscled hard from so much piping. “I’d be freaking out if I were you. You’re so brave it makes me feel bad.”

“You’re brave,” Nuala said. “Stupidly so. It’s part of your charm.”

I shook my head. “This summer, before I had my car accident, I knew I was going to crash. I knew the moment I woke up that day to go to the gig. I knew it all day long. I just kept waiting for it to happen.” I laughed in a very unfunny way. “I was a wreck all day. And then, when it happened, all I could think was, so this is it.”

“You can’t read my mind.” Nuala’s hands were tense in mine. “I’m freaking out. You wouldn’t think I was so brave if you knew what I was thinking.”

I looked at her. “What are you thinking?”

She immediately dropped her eyes to our hands; our fingers had somehow knotted together. My rough, written-on fingers all tangled around her slender, unmarked ones. “How hard it is. How unfair. How much it’s going to hurt like a bitch to get burned alive.” She laughed, too, harsh and unhappy.

“Why do you go? If you know you’re going to die in a bonfire on Halloween, why not just lock yourself in a room somewhere? Then when they light the fires and ask you to come out, just tell them they can put their matches where the sun don’t shine.”

Nuala gave me the most scathing look in the history of scathing looks. “What a clever idea. I’ve never thought of that. And I’m sure all the previous versions of myself never did either. Idiot.”

“Okay, okay. Point taken. This will probably earn another scathing look, but are you sure?”

“Sure about what? You being an idiot?” Nuala laughed derisively, but her fingers were trembling in mine; I held her fingers tight to still them.

“Sure that you’re going to be burned.”

“Were you sure you were going to die in a car crash?”

She had me. I made a face.

“I just know, okay? Everyone else knows and a million faeries have told me, but even before that, I knew. I can’t even stand to be near a candle.” Nuala’s shoulders shivered; she clamped her arms to her sides to still them. “I thought for the past few years that it would be the dying that really hurt, because it’s not like I had anything worth remembering. Nothing I couldn’t do again, you know? But now it’s the forgetting. I don’t want to forget.”

“What changed?”

Nuala stared at me, and her voice was furious. “You, you ass**le! You ruined everything. You’ve made everything impossible.”

When they say “my heart skipped a beat,” they’re full of crap. Really, what they mean is, your heart sort of stutters and thinks about stopping for a second before it remembers that beating is good for it. Oh shit, no, Nuala. Not me. Not stupid, cocky me.

She jerked on my hands. “Shut up! I already know you’re a prick.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Nuala spared me from having to come up with something else to say. “I was thinking about attraction. I have this theory on it. On love.” She wouldn’t look at me.

I swallowed, but managed, “This ought to be good.”

Nuala shot me a hard look. “Shut up. I don’t think love has anything to do with how the other person is. I mean, maybe a little. I think what really matters is you yourself. Like, you know, let’s say you lo—really liked a self-involved ass. That doesn’t matter. What matters is how that ass makes you feel. If you feel like the best person in the world when you’re with him, that’s what makes you like him. It really isn’t about how nice a person he is at all.”

I ran my tongue over my bottom lip. “I like it. It’s like the selfish person’s guide to love. It’s not you, baby, it’s me I’m in love with.”

Nuala smiled self-consciously at nothing in particular. “I thought you’d see what I meant.” She paused, and when she started again, it was like she couldn’t stop, like the words just kept tumbling out of her. “I like what I look like now. I like what I act like. Everyone thinks I’m going to jump you and suck out your life because I want you so bad, because you’re such a great piper. They don’t think I can resist. But I can. Here you are and you look amazing and I haven’t taken anything from you. I don’t even want to. I mean, I do, I mean, it’s killingme not to, but I don’t want you to give up any of your life for me. I’ve never done that before. I’m—proud of myself. I’m not just a leech. I’m not just another faerie. I don’t want to use you. I just want to be whoever it is that I am when I’m with you.”

I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t feel like writing anything on my hands. I didn’t feel like jumping and running from the room. I didn’t feel awkward or weirded out or freezing cold or hungry or anything. I just felt like sitting here with my knees touching her knees and with my forehead leaning against our collective ball of fingers.