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There were stones inside her heart that would never stop grinding together, but they did not weigh so heavily in the years when no princes came.
She could not seem to stop talking, now that she had started. There was some enormous store of words bottled
up inside her, it seemed.
She stared at the fire, thinking of how many people that must be, all of them real, and how she would never be able to hold them all in her head or mourn for each of them. She hoped that there had been someone to mourn properly for them. She did not think she could take on another task and hope to see it done.
Toadling wanted to laugh, but if she started, she would never stop and it would turn to crying almost immediately, she was sure, and everything was already terrible, and that would only make it worse.
It has been too long. I have forgotten how to make words do what I wish.
“The world rarely leaves anyone alone,”
Apologies made it worse. She had long experience with unkindness, but apologies undid her. Her eyes prickled and she dashed blue-black tears away. Her face would look as if she had been beaten again. Damn.
Surrounded by child-eating swamp spirits, Toadling felt intensely loved.
“But we are not always given the choices that we want.”
It was a tiny rebellion, but it was the first one she had ever uttered.
She left the greenteeth knowing everything worth knowing about her world and came to the fairy court to find that she knew nothing at all.
And then he went out and shut the door behind him, and the first lesson that Toadling learned, in that strange place, was loneliness.
It was in Toadling’s nature to try to please.
She learned that her ideas of beauty were wrong and of no use to anyone.
“It has been five days, in the mortal world, since you were taken.” He smiled faintly. “And so I have another few years to teach you what I can, and then I will send you back to the mortal world so that you may arrive on the seventh day, to stand as godmother to the child left in your place.”
Toadling began to laugh because if she didn’t, she would cry immediately.
It’s a dangerous thing, curiosity.”
There were no locks or bars or boiling water. Toadling stepped through the door, into the chapel, where the parents who did not know her were standing over the child who had taken her place.
“I’m not exactly a fair maiden to be saved by a questing knight,” she said. “It’s not as if I’m beautiful.”
Toadling had been sad for a long time, but she was not used to being interesting.
But he always said the dread was the worst.”
The fault was mostly her own.
Fear, it turned out, made him courteous.
She did not want ownership of these people, or to be owned by them in turn.
But he was “our priest” and she was “our fairy,” and they were both expected to intercede with other worlds because that was their job.
She did not want to move. She wanted very much to lie in the mud, which lay cool and squelching up around her legs. It held up her weight and curved to her body. She would have liked to never move again.
“It doesn’t do any good. She’s like a cat playing. They’re not real to her; they’re just … things that move and flutter and squeak. The nurse has tried—it’s not her fault, I swear! But we can’t make her believe it matters. I’m sorry.”
She was not supposed to apologize for that.
She thought perhaps that she should feel something, knowing that her mother found her ugly, but she did not. I am probably doing this wrong again, she thought, not feeling something when I should.
No. I have many mothers. If I am hideous, then we are hideous together. And that made it easier, because in her heart of hearts, she could not believe that her mothers were anything but beautiful.
The only curse is that she is a changeling. And she will be as cruel as she can, because that is the nature of changelings. Good spirits do not steal away babies to take their place. It is only the wicked that are sent to make mischief.
It would engulf her like a lover, and she would die of salt-poison in its embrace.
Her white skin went suddenly red and mottled with fury, for Fayette had not yet learned to be angry beautifully, and she rose to her feet, clenching her fists.
Even humans are capable of seeing evil when it lives among them, she thought, slow and stumbling, as if reading unfamiliar words on a page. Even they have noticed.
You could not hate a child—only a monster would hate a child—but the child was a monster in the shape of a child, an elfin creature whose power was only contained by her youth and her unfamiliarity with the world.
Her skin sang with the water’s touch, because skin was foolish and did not always know when it should be afraid.
You fool, thought Toadling wearily. You poor fool. You have poured out love, and backed it with all the steel you possess, on a creature that does not love you and never will. And I am more a fool because I did not know how to stop you.
She’s a changeling. She’ll live halfway to forever in a magic sleep. She wouldn’t even notice. I don’t know if she’ll even bother to age.
“You know brick and stone,” she said to him. “I only know mud and water. What does the brick tell you?” “It tells me that it will do its best,” said the mason, and then put a hand over his mouth, as if his own words had shocked him. “Good,” said Toadling. “Good. That’s all that we can do.”
“And one of these stubs that I’ve left will catch me in the thigh, right where the big artery is, and I will bleed out before I can finish cursing. And even then I will probably apologize for having cursed. My last words will be I’m sorry.”
And if I expired from guilt,
my mother would be very upset, and I would have to feel guilty about that, too.
“I thought so. I do that when I don’t know what to say. I talk to fill spaces. I’m a wretched liar. Although a good liar would probably say that, wouldn’t they?”
She was theirs; they were hers. The love of monsters was uncomplicated.
Perhaps she had come to the end of being strong.
