Thornhedge

by T. Kingfisher

No, they are greenteeth. They are nearly immortal if nothing kills them. Surely their bellies are full and their teeth are sharp.

And then she was alone with the birds and the brambles and the changeling in the tower and the wagtails on the grass.

“I think she’d kill everything if she could. The whole world. And who’s going to suspect a child? At least at first?”

The words of my gift or the terms of my sentence—take your pick.”

“They are a great wickedness. To us and to themselves, I think. The great houses steal children from each other, or force their vassals to leave their own. They think it’s funny, to leave a rival’s child in a human crib. And fairy children grow up in a world where metal burns them and the food is dead in their mouths and they see things no one else sees and they know the world should be different than it is.”

I couldn’t make her understand that the world was real.”

“Maybe the world is full of changelings who learned to adapt,”

“The great fairies don’t much care what happens in the real world, so long as it causes mischief for someone.

Fayette had not cared if people feared her or loved her. She had not cared if they thought of her at all. She simply wanted to take them all apart, because she could.

They would, by his standards, be hideous—and yet she knew in her heart that they were glorious, lovely monsters with their teeth and huge eyes and webbed, grasping hands.

It’s like we’re all screaming and hammering on each other and you just want everyone else to stop screaming and you hope you stop them before they stop you. It’s just noise and mud and not thinking. But it’s still bad. Afterward, you remember too much of it.

“It was easier to be a toad,”

“I thought perhaps I could, one day, but then I was a toad for a long time, and as long as I was a toad,

I didn’t have to worry about it. And then no one could get in, so it d...

“There’s a very high wall,” said Halim, “according to the imams, called al-A’raf. Between hell and paradise. And if you haven’t been good enough or evil enough to go one place or the other, you live in this wall. But even those people will eventually enter paradise, because God is merciful.”

The magic sulked. It had been still and quiet for so long. It wanted to rage like a torrent, pour over things, sweep obstacles away. But it was her friend, and so it turned in its course and settled back in its bed, sullen and quiet once more.

The darkness yawned before her, deep as a well.

And you would think after all these years trapped in a mortal world that I would have learned not to trust my first instincts

Fayette lay on the bed, bright as mushrooms in the dark.

He did not sound solid. He sounded as lost and alone as Toadling.

He raised his head, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “And striking your head off with a sword?” Toadling shrugged. “I suppose I’d prefer you didn’t.”

After a moment, he leaned slightly toward her, so that their shoulders touched, and Toadling leaned back, and they sat together on the steps for a little time, with the magic washing over them like the sea.

“I am probably mad or a fool or enchanted,” he said. “But if so, it is like no enchantment I have ever heard of, and I already knew I was a fool.”

“I believe you,” he said again, and the words filled up the hollow space under her breastbone the way that few other words ever had.

She knew that she should feel something, that she was probably doing something wrong again, not feeling as she should, but she did not know what she was supposed to feel.

She did not believe that it had ended, perhaps. It had gone on too long

and this was too final and sudden and irrevocable. Her long vigil ...

“Some things can’t be fixed.”

“We couldn’t change her,” said Toadling, feeling as if the words were broken glass in her ruined throat. “The queen loved her and the nurse and I tried for years and love wasn’t enough and trying wasn’t enough and nothing we did changed anything!”

“It should have mattered. All that love and all that trying should have changed … something…”

Toadling shuddered and shivered against him. She wanted to turn into her quietest, coldest toad shape and sink into the mud and not think for a long time. But she stayed human instead, and Halim held her the way that no one had held her since she had left the greenteeth behind.

Eventually she ran out of tears. There were centuries’ worth still locked up inside her, but her body could only shed so many at a time.

“You were in pain as well,” he said, “and bones heal faster than spirits, I think. But I’ve felt a great deal better than I do now—I won’t deny it.”

It felt isolated from the rest of her flesh, as if with that kiss, the mortal world had reached out to claim her, the way that the semicircle of scars on her palm had claimed her for Faerie.

She had so many choices and she had never had choices, never been given a chance to choose anything more important than what fish to snatch or what herb to pick.

It was paralyzing. How does anyone manage? There are too many streams and they all flow and all of them

could be good and there’s no way to know. How does anyone ever ch...

It was useless, but she was the last one standing, so perhaps that was her task, to apologize to all the others. “I’m so sorry.”

“The dead do no harm to anyone.”

“We are made of cruelty and kindness both. But we also keep our promises.”

She fell into it, scrambling over the stones to the deeper channel. Her skin sang with the touch and she plunged her head under the surface, gulping it through her damaged throat, and let out a squalling cry that echoed along the riverbed.

It never occurred to her to doubt her welcome. Such was the gift of a child raised with love.

He likes stories. And I know so many. And he says his mother is kind.

“You’ll outlive him,” she said. “By a thousand years. We’ll be here afterward. We’ll always be here. You’re ours and we’re yours.”