Elixir (24 page)

“Maybe you gave birth to me, but you’re not my mother! My parents are Pete and Beverly Jones. They’re the ones who raised me. Hell, Ursaline was more of a mother to me than you ever were. You . . .” My voice broke. “I don’t know what you are!”

And I ran out of the room.

My boots were loud on the gleaming agate floor. Everything blurred together, my vision swimming. I brushed my eyes quickly with my hand—I wasn’t going to cry, not here, not in front of my . . . mother. I still couldn’t believe it. I wanted to cry, scream, do something—but instead, all I could do was run—try to get to some quiet place where I could think about all this, process it, try to wrap my mind around what she was saying.

At last I reached the door. The Elf, the same one who had made such a show of letting me in, was standing there, gaping at the scene taking place before him.

He shut his mouth abruptly as he saw me and moved towards the door, as if his thin, delicate body could block me from exiting.

“Let me out,” I demanded.

He opened his mouth to protest, then he must have thought better of it, because he opened the great door.

I heard the Queen call my name—I could feel her anguished voice pulling at me—but I refused to turn around. Instead, I stepped through the threshold.

“Where are you going?” the Elf asked through the open door.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Somewhere very far away from here. Somewhere I can think about all this.”

CHAPTER 17

I
knew where I wanted to go. The place I’d always felt safest in the world, the place where life made the most sense. My old House Tree. The Animalia I’d met on the road couldn’t have been the real Ursaline. I didn’t believe the Queen that my old bear nurse had been merely paid to take care of me. Ursaline had loved me. A little voice deep inside me hungered to go back—to see something familiar, something that hadn’t changed, when it seemed like everything else in my life had been ripped out from under me.

I walked through the canyon of quartz spires. I could feel passersby staring at me—but I no longer cared. I kept walking, pretending I was on the streets of New York City—keeping my head down, not making eye contact, like I was a carriage horse with blinders on—just barreling straight ahead, alone within the crowd.

At last I came to where the hard gilded cobblestones faded into the soft grass, and House Trees replaced the cold crystal towers.

I inspected the paths between the trees. Surely I hadn’t forgotten the way home? It had been over twenty years, but some things stayed etched in your memory forever. Then again, the Vale wasn’t the way it was when I’d left it. I kept seeing fallen trees and those enormous holes in the ground—the ones that seemed to go down infinitely into blackness. The paths had moved—shifting around these aberrations in nature.

It wasn’t long before I was lost, standing amid a grove of identical House Trees. My feet were hurting from having walked so far in shoes thoroughly ill-suited for the purpose, and I kicked them off, soothing my blistered toes in the cool grass. I put my head in my hands. The tears that I had stifled before began to flow now. Could the Queen really be telling me the truth?

I saw a familiar clearing up ahead. Now I knew I was on the right track. I recognized this place. I broke into a run, despite my blistered feet. I could smell the old familiar smells—the honeyed fragrance of the meadow grasses mixing with the warm, musty scent of the bears. I knew I should be scared. I was human now, I could be prey, but I wasn’t scared. It smelled like home. I saw a great hulking shape in the distance—my House Tree? But something was horribly wrong.

It was upside down. The branches were smashed into the ground, leaves brown and dead, and the upturned roots were white as bones against the sky. Something had lifted the ancient tree out of the ground and turned it on its head as if it was a toothpick.

Beside the tree was one of those enormous holes that seemed to go down forever. A few dead branches extended over the yawning blackness. Dead leaves scattered the ground, with the broken remainders of windows and doors.

What had happened to my home?

“Ursaline!” I screamed.

But there was no answer. My voice echoed in the clearing.

I looked out at the toppled, burned-out trunk, the empty broken windows. This place had been abandoned years ago. There was no one left.

Whatever was destroying the Vale had claimed my old home too. I had seen the damage and destruction along my path—why had I thought it wouldn’t happen to my home?

Because you never think it’s going to happen to you.

What had happened to Ursaline and all the orphan kids—had they made it out, before the tree collapsed? I didn’t know. I would never know.

I reached out my hand and ran my fingertips along the bark of the trunk. It was dead. I could feel the difference under my fingertips—the same way that I had known that Eva was a Fetch. The cold, brittle bark was like Eva’s rubbery, lifeless skin.

My home was gone.

Did anything remain of the life I had left here? Had everything been destroyed?

I sat down on what would have been a branch but now seemed like a root poking out of the ground, and put my head in my hands. At last I gave vent to all the tears I’d been holding back. It didn’t matter anymore; no one would see me crying here. I was alone. Completely alone.

I
jumped as I heard a rustle in the leaves behind me. My eyes popped open and I whirled around, my hands braced into fists. Was it one of the Queen’s guards, come to try to bring me back? She had some nerve! I got up and backed towards the stump, poised and ready.

“Go away!” I yelled at the shadowy figure hidden in the branches. “I’m not coming!”

“Mab, it’s me!” I heard a familiar voice say.

“Obadiah?” I gasped.

He stepped through the leaves into the clearing. The sight of his face was the most comforting thing I could have asked for in that moment. I ran towards him, throwing my arms around him. He had changed—he was dressed in the rough buckskin clothing that the Wolfmen wore, and he smelled of leather as I hugged him tight. His black eyes were full of concern. I beckoned him over to come sit on the stump beside me. I had no idea how he’d found me, but I was glad that he had.

“How did you know I’d be here?” I asked.

“You said you wanted to visit your old home,” he replied. “I found out from some of the bears where it was. Or, where it used to be,” he added quietly, and seeing the devastation on my face, he squeezed my hand. “This is why I told you not to try to come back.”

“I guess I should have listened to you,” I said, staring at the chalk white roots of my old House Tree hanging so wrongly in the air.

“You can never really go back,” said Obadiah wistfully. “When I was the fairies’ prisoner, all I could think about was returning to New York City, going home. And then when I finally escaped, that world was gone. You can never go back to the past, Mab.”

He moved closer to me and put his hand on my shoulder. His touch felt right when everything else felt wrong, and I closed my eyes as his warm, calloused hands caressed the bare skin where my T-shirt ended.

“I had to see it for myself, I guess, or I never would have believed it. Maybe I’m stubborn like that,” I said, a lump in my throat.

“We both are,” said Obadiah.

A moment of silence passed between us as we sat side by side on the stump. I could feel his presence, warm and comforting beside me, hear his breath coming softly in and out. I wanted so badly to tell him everything the Queen had told me. He was the only person I could talk to about everything I’d learned today, the only one who could understand. I opened my mouth to begin, but paused. Could I really tell him that I was the Fairy Queen’s daughter? Obadiah hated the Fairy Queen. He’d gotten over his prejudice against fairies quite a lot because of me—but what would he do or say when he found out I was the daughter of his number one enemy? Would that change how he felt about me? His dark eyes were imploring me to open up, to spill all the secrets I kept locked up in my chest. But I hesitated.

“So how did your meeting with the Queen go?” Obadiah asked at last.

I was silent.

“That bad?” he added when he saw the expression on my face.

“I guess I’m in shock.” I broke into an unnatural laugh.

“Please tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to know,” I said, looking away from him into the shifting pattern of light and darkness that filtered through the leaves.

“I want to know,” he insisted, “and I want to hear it from you.”

The earnestness in his dark eyes called it out of me. Taking a deep breath, I told him everything I’d learned from the Queen.

When I finished I let out a long sigh.

“Do you think it’s true?” I said at last.

I heard Obadiah exhale in a long, slow whoosh. Then he was silent. He was silent for too long. That length of silence only meant one thing.

He knew it was true.

“You already knew!” I gasped.

“I didn’t
know,
” he corrected me. “I
suspected.
That’s different.”

“Why didn’t you try to tell me?”

“I had to be sure,” he said. “And I wasn’t sure. Not until today.” He looked up at me, a searching expression in his dark eyes. “When I left you at the mouth of the cave, I went to visit some old Wolfmen friends. They’re rebels; for years they’ve been working on plots to overthrow the Queen.”

“The assassins that were trying to kill me . . .” I whispered under my breath, remembering my mother’s words.

“I joined with them for a while after I escaped the Queen’s capture,” Obadiah continued, “until I realized I’d help the cause more by stealing Elixir. The rebels always said the Queen had a daughter. It was only recently that I put all the pieces together that it had to be you. Still,” he added, “I wouldn’t let myself believe it. I had to have proof. I had to hear you say it yourself.”

“You could have told me you suspected who I was,” I whispered, hurt and anger in my voice.

“Actually, it was lucky for you that I wasn’t certain.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you hadn’t set off the human
and
the fairy lights, if I’d known you were the Queen’s daughter from the beginning, when you walked in the door of my club”—he paused, his black eyes fixed at me—“I would have killed you.”

I stared at him, aghast.

“I’m sorry, Mab, but it’s true. I’m a rebel. The Wolfmen fight against the Queen here, and I fight her my way—by stealing her Elixir. But it’s the same thing, ultimately. The Fairy Queen is my enemy. And you’re her daughter! You’re her heir! The quickest and easiest way of damaging the Queen would be to kill you.”

“So, now that you know, why don’t you just kill me?” I cried wildly. “What the hell is stopping you from killing me now?”

I knew I shouldn’t be saying this, but I was starting to panic and the words were flying out my mouth faster than I could think about them. I began to back away from him, towards the path—but I knew, if he wanted to kill me, he could. We were alone, deep in the forest. He had every opportunity.

But instead, he just sat there on the log in the buckskin clothes he’d borrowed from the Wolfmen, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. But it wasn’t hate. And it wasn’t anger. It was something else.

“Maybe I’m a fool,” Obadiah said quietly, gazing at me. “The Wolfmen think I am. We had a fight about it, before I left. Luckily, for all their brawn, I’m the better fighter.” He smiled a dry, mirthless smile.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said, my voice dry and hard, struggling to breathe. “Why don’t you kill me?”

“When you walked in the door of my club, Mab,” he said, “and both lights flashed at the same time, it was like something struck me. There was someone else out there like me—someone else who was both fairy
and
human. It should have been impossible. But there you were, this cute, scared, awkward girl who’d once been a powerful fairy—you were humanity and magic, all muddled together into one. I thought I was alone—it’s a lonely path to walk, to be a human being whose eyes have been opened to magic—and then when I met you, I realized there were two of us.”

I stared up at him, a lump in my throat.

“Maybe it made me act against my own best interest, my better judgment, made me take risks that others would think I was a fool to take . . .”

I paused, breathless, waiting for him to go on.

“Maybe I’d do anything to not feel so alone.”

I felt like I was going to start crying. I knew what he meant, knew it deep in my bones, because I’d felt the same thing the moment I’d laid eyes on Obadiah. He was the first person I felt like I could share all of myself with—the fairy part and the human part. And that was precious—it was something no human could understand, and no fairy could understand either. Only Obadiah understood.

“I don’t want to become the next Fairy Queen,” I said, my voice barely audible. “I don’t want anything to do with what she does. I just want . . .”