Dane (8 page)

Except one.

Her green eyes flitted guiltily to her maidservant, then away. If she told her what had happened in the grove last night, Odette would hound her even more about her safety and would try to curtail her freedoms.

After so many years in the family, the woman was more an aunt than a maid or governess, and she would have no qualms about making free with her advice. It was too early to have the incident dissected and criticized.

Something about it was too private.

Odette set the basket of pastries on the bed next to her. Then, turning her attention to the mortar, she tossed in a few pinches of herbs and an oval, button-sized seed, and began grinding them together.

Eva pulled a warm, flaky beignet from the basket beside her.

Nibbling, she left Odette to her task and rolled onto her stomach toward the opposite side of the bed, the covers tangling around her bare legs.

Pulling the table‟s small drawer open, she found her mother‟s diary and flipped to the page she wanted. Resting on her elbows, she studied the spidery feminine scrawl.

“Why you read Fantine‟s prattle?”Odette asked, gesturing to indicate the book. “You got it committed to memory by now, eh?”

Eva shrugged, tracing a finger over the loop of a “y.”She‟d only found the book after her mother had died four months ago, and she‟d read it a dozen times since. “It still smells of her perfume. And I like to see her handwriting. It makes me feel closer to her.”

Her eyes slid down the list of names, all male. Fantine‟s innamorati. By now, she had narrowed her suspects to three candidates among the wealthy society here in Rome, based on the dates her fey mother had been with them. One of them had to be her father.

But here was the puzzle. None on the list bore the surname of Satyr. And there had been no satyr in Rome at the time of her conception.

She‟d concluded that her father must have used a pseudonym. If so, he might prove reluctant to reveal himself to her as satyr, even if she found him.

She tugged at the thin length of gold chain that draped her neck and sawed it between her lips. “What sort of man abandons a beautiful woman full with his child, leaving her to fend for herself?”she mused.

Odette sent her an inscrutable look, continuing her grinding. “A bad one. One you better off not knowing.”

“I don‟t want to know him. I only want to make him admit himself to be my father and to explain his desertion of us.”

“So you say,” scoffed Odette. “Finding him isn‟t gonna make things right. Don‟t expect his heart will open to let you in. You were a love child, but he won‟t love you.”

Leave it to Odette to find her weakest point and probe it. “Believe what you will, but it won‟t stop me from looking for him.”

Thanks to her bedding of this mysterious man, her mother had become with child. Eva‟s conception had occurred on a night of the full moon, for this was the only time a satyr male could impregnate a female.

Yet, even on such a night, the satyr could control his seed. It therefore followed that her father had either been unforgivably careless, or that he‟d given Fantine his child on purpose. But it was what happened next that truly confounded her. And had confounded Fantine as well. Eva ran a fingertip along her mother‟s words, penned twenty-two years ago: September 1, 1858

I am enceinte! Such joy! Mon Ange says he hopes for a daughter.

One who looks like me. He sends me to wait for him in Florence, where we will marry and live as man and wife. Odette is angry at his negligence in getting me with child and has tried to guess his identity. But he is my secret. I won‟t tell her his name, though she will learn it soon enough when he comes for me. I know I am a disappointment to her, for I was meant to marry well among human society. But my beloved is surely fine enough even to suit the likes of her.

September 14, 1858

Why does my darling leave us here in Florence so long without word? When will he come? It has been two weeks now and I grow worried. And huge.

I now know the truth of what I carry in my womb and wish to share the news with him. Odette has discovered it, of course. She is in a foul temper, muttering and cursing the head of my beloved. For it seems his seed has dominated mine. This child born of our joyful union will not be fey as I am, but will be satyr instead. As he is.

Will he be pleased? He‟d so wanted a daughter. But I hope he will be happy with a son, for if it is to be more satyr than fey, then it can only be a son.

September 23, 1858

If there had been any doubt that my offspring is to be satyr, none exists now. The birth is imminent, and just four weeks have elapsed since Mon Ange and I lay together. Only a child of his species requires so little time to gestate. I confess I am glad this discomfort is to be of so short a duration. But Odette nags at me to flee through the gate. And now the ElseWorld Council has sent an escort. It seems that without a husband, I must go into exile. I have sent a letter to Mon Ange, the third I have posted to him and gotten no reply. I am fat, penniless, and joyless. All looks bleak.

October 3, 1858

I have a daughter! I am in shock. Odette is as well. We don‟t know what to make of it. I bowed to the pressure, so we are all back in ElseWorld now. No one here knows the circumstances of my sweet baby Evangeline‟s blood, and we shall endeavor to keep it that way. I will keep her safe and hope my dearest darling comes to us. Evangeline will need him to protect her. I fear for her if anyone discovers what she is.

But Fantine‟s “dearest darling” had never come for them, and they‟d had no word from him either. Instead, they‟d lived in exile on the other side of the gate, unable to get permission to return or to communicate with this world. The treaty of 1850 negotiated by the satyr of Tuscany had established immigration quotas for interworld passage.

Then the Great Sickness had changed things. Traversing the gate from ElseWorld to EarthWorld had become all but impossible, except for diplomatic or business purposes sanctioned by the Council.

Over the following two decades, Fantine‟s hope had slowly dwindled and been replaced by bitterness. She had dedicated the remainder of her life to keeping the truth of Eva‟s blood secret and to schooling her on one goal. When Eva grew up, she was to somehow make her way back to Rome and wed a wealthy human as her mother had not managed to.

And Eva had learned this lesson well. When her mother died four months ago, she had immediately applied for a visa to come here. In view of the growing need for her particular skill, and her professing herself to be fey and passing the test of this, thanks to Odette‟s powders, a visa had been quickly granted.

“Why wouldn‟t she say who my father was?”Eva wondered aloud.

“And how could you not have known? You were her greatest confidante.”

Odette shook her head, tsking. “She a Marital Broker like you, always around men. Too many of them come and go from her bed for me to keep track. I tell her if she gonna act like a Grande Horizontale, then at least get paid like one. But, no, she was in love with love, your mother.

Happy to have her clients between her legs, while she found wives for them among the humans.”

Odette scooped a heap of finely ground powder from the mortar into the teacup. Then she tilted the teapot and filled the cup with steaming water. Fantine and she had worked together to discover the ingredients for this brew through trial and error, and Eva had drunk many a strange concoction during her youth in order to help them determine exactly the right balance.

Odette absently stirred it now with a small silver spoon, waiting for it to dissolve. “My poor sweet Fantine. The years go by and she tired of every single one of them gentlemen—human or Else—long before they tire of her. Was always happy to bid them farewell the minute she got them married off. Never listened to their pleas to keep them as lovers after they wed, so I didn‟t worry. How was I to know one among them would break her heart and leave her with a bambina one day? A good lesson for you.”

Eva grimaced. “I know, I know.”

“That‟s good, then.”Odette plumped the pillows. “Sit up now, mademoiselle.”

Setting the journal aside, Eva pushed herself upright, hugging her knees. By the time the cup was handed to her, its contents had cooled, and she swallowed them quickly and without argument. Having taken this brew nearly every morning all of her life, she was accustomed to its bitter taste and to its more fortunate effect of disguising the fact that she was satyr. Not only that, it rendered her scent so close to that of a fey‟s as to be indistinguishable, even to the Trackers. They‟d detected nothing when she‟d been sent to them for species verification. They had declared her to be predominantly fey—the offspring of a fey mother and a human father as she‟d claimed. And so she and her maid and servant, Pinot, had been granted passage into this world.

This brew had allowed her to come here. Allowed her to remain here undetected. Its essential ingredient was the small pit of an olive found only in particular trees—those in the ancient groves planted by the satyr.

Which meant they could only be found in a single location here in Rome.

On land that evidently had been acquired by the flesh and blood male she‟d met last night—the sole person who had not been fooled by her ruse.

How had he guessed? And why only him?

Eva set the empty cup on the tray. “Was that from the olives I brought last night?”

“Non,” said Odette, going to throw open the window. “It‟s from what we brought with us from ElseWorld‟s trees. You‟ll need to go again to the grove on Aventine and gather more.”

Go back? And risk encountering him? “Why?”Eva asked in alarm.

“What was wrong with what I gathered last night? Were they too unripe?”

Odette‟s coarse, tightly pinned hair didn‟t sway when she shook her head. “Ripeness don‟t matter. It‟s just that the trees you pick from were the wrong ones.”

“How do you know?”

“Just do. You follow Fantine‟s map next time.”

Eva spread her hands in exasperation. “I did follow it. It‟s confusing. Why don‟t you come with me to help next time if you think it‟s so easy?”

Odette quickly drew a sign on her chest with a forefinger to ward off evil spirits. “Satyr lands give me shivers, like the dead walking past.”

“Yet you‟d bid me go there, in spite of your superstitions.”

“That grove won‟t hurt you—you one of them. Those old trees sense it‟s best not to do you harm. You go back there in the next week or so. Don‟t have to go today.”

Apparently considering the matter settled, Odette began straightening up the room, intent on removing all trace of what Eva had gotten up to last night. The bottle of wine that would replenish its own contents within the month was capped, and it and the goblet returned to the cabinet.

Eva slid lower in her bed, feeling suddenly tired. She took the brew every morning, but it only made her sleepy the morning following Moonful. She opened her eyes again when Odette came closer and reached for one of the ropes tied to the headboard.

“Leave them. I‟ll do that,” Eva protested halfheartedly. “I don‟t like to trouble you.”She tried to get up but sank back, a trifle dizzy.

“You rest.”

“I should get up. I have things to do. I need to return to the grove for more olives.”She yawned. “And I promised to take the girls to tour the ruins.”

“You take those little heathens out later. Rest now.” Odette tucked her in, as she had when Eva was a child.

“Don‟t call them that. They‟re orphans, who lost their mothers to the Sickness. Abandoned by their fathers as I was. They need and deserve our kindness.”

Mmm-hmm. Odette untied the ropes from the headboard and looped them around her hand without comment. They, too, would be stowed in the cabinet and Eva wouldn‟t see them again until next Moonful.

“Really, I‟ll do all that, “Eva insisted again. Her lashes fluttered as she battled sleep.

“No shame in this, cara. It‟s your nature,” Odette soothed.

Eyes drifting closed, Eva shook her head on the pillow. She knew better. Fantine and Odette had loved her, but they‟d considered her a freak. Their refusal to discuss her “nature,” and the strict secrecy they insisted upon with regard to it, had taught her that there was shame in this, at least for a woman. Satyr males were revered in ElseWorld, but she—the lone satyr female—was quite simply defective.

Yet they had always arranged for her comfort during the ritual she performed each Moonful. And Odette continued to aid and abet it in every way after Fantine‟s death, in spite of the fact that she scorned the satyr species in general. By the time Eva woke again, the cylinders on the bedside table would be cleansed and returned to the cabinet. The phallus at the foot of the bed would be polished and rotated back to its former position among fanciful vines and clusters of grapes carved from olivewood.

“I don‟t know what I would do without you, Detty,” Eva murmured dreamily, hardly noticing she‟d used her childhood nickname for the serving woman. Upon the first Moonful after Eva had turned eighteen, Fantine had been confronted at last with undeniable proof that her daughter was truly satyr. A faraway, longing look had come into her eyes.

One that said she was remembering Eva‟s father. But all she‟d said was,

“Well, we must make do.”But it was Odette who had done the practical things that had helped Eva to survive undetected.

“Dear Maman.”Eva sighed, her eyes drifting closed. “I miss her.”