The Seventh Daughter (25 page)

Titania made a soft clicking sound with her tongue, drawing back on the reins so that the horse-drawn carriage came to a jangling halt among the aspen trees that grew around the Brown Tower. She turned, smiling at Tania and Edric, who were sitting together in the back.

“I'll wait here for you,” the Queen said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” said Tania as she and Edric got down from the carriage.

Above their heads the velvet sky was so heavy with starlight that Tania felt as if she could have reached up and snatched down a handful of silver. Warm forest scents wafted over them and from somewhere nearby came the piping call of a nightjar.

Edric walked toward the door of the tower and pushed it open. Tania hesitated a moment, looking up at her Faerie mother. “This is going to be so weird,” she said. “My two mums and my two dads meeting one another.”

Titania laughed. “It'll be interesting, that is certain.” Her face became solemn for a moment. “Are you absolutely sure that you want to live in Faerie?” she asked. “It is a huge decision to make. You can still change your mind; no one here will think the worst of you if you do.”

“Are you kidding?” Tania said. “This is where I belong. I feel as if my whole life up to now has just been a kind of…I don't know…a kind of
prelude
, a preparation. I feel as if my real life starts right here and right now. Does that make any sense at all?”

“It does,” Titania said.

“Besides, I've got a lot of remembering to do, and a whole lot of exploring. I want to rediscover every inch of Faerie. But first of all, I want to visit Leiderdale—Zara told me it was her favorite place in all Faerie. I think she'd like me to go there.” She looked cautiously at the Queen. “And I'd like to go back to Fidach Ren and speak with Clorimel again.”

A strange light glowed in the Queen's smoky green eyes. “Oh, yes?” she said. “What do you want to speak to her about?”

“Well…she started telling me how a long, long time ago, all the people of Faerie had wings for the whole of their lives. I want to find out more about that. I want to know what happened, what changed.”

“Ahh.” Titania nodded. “That will be quite a quest, Tania.”

“Do
you
know what happened?”

Titania shook her head. “No, but the legends say
that the answer lies in the Western Ocean.” Her voice took on a lilting quality, as if she was reciting poetry. “Beyond the flaxen coasts and heathered glens of Alba, beyond the emerald hills of Erin of the enchanted waters, beyond even dragon-haunted Hy Brassail, far, far away in the land of Tirnanog, the answer lies, where the Divine Harper spins his songs at the absolute end of the world.” Titania smiled down at her. “That's what the legends say.”

Tania gazed up at her, spellbound for a few moments. “Then maybe that's where I'll have to look,” she murmured. “If Edric will go with me.”

“Right now, going into the Mortal World and confronting your parents is going to be enough of an adventure for me,” Edric called from the doorway of the tower.

“Yes, of course. Sorry.” Tania gave Titania one last, affectionate look as she entered Bonwyn Tyr. “I won't be long,” she called.

“I will be here,” her mother called back.

Hand-in-hand, Tania and Edric mounted the winding stair to the upper floor of the watchtower. They stood in the middle of the wooden floor, bathed in starlight, listening to the whisper of the aspen leaves.

Tania looked at him. “Ready?”

Edric nodded. Tania took that impossibly simple side step and moments later the two of them were standing in darkness in Tania's bedroom in London. Breaking her grip on his hand, Tania walked to the
door and switched on the light. At a first glance everything looked disarmingly ordinary. There was her new computer and her bulletin board and posters—all her familiar possessions in all their familiar places. The bed was rumpled, but the mattress on which her three sisters had slept on their first night in the Mortal World had been removed and the bedclothes tidied away.

“They're definitely back, then,” Tania said.

“Looks like it.”

Tania reached for the door handle. She saw that the lock was broken. She swung the door open, revealing deep scores and grooves on the outer panels, damage done when the swords of the Gray Knights had cut and hacked into the wood. She swallowed hard as she stepped onto the unlit landing. She switched on the light, moving to the banister rail and staring down into the hall. The lower parts of the house were silent and dark.

Edric was standing in the doorway. She turned to look at him. “I don't think anyone's here,” she said. “Maybe the place was such a mess that they went to stay with relatives or something.”

“Maybe,” Edric said. “So? What do we do now?”

“Find them, I guess.”

A small sound made Tania turn and peer along the landing: a soft, subdued sound, as of bare feet on a thick carpet. A moment later the door of her parents' bedroom opened and she saw her father standing there, wrapped in a dressing gown, blinking in the
light, his face crumpled from the pillow.

“Dad—it's me.”

“Anita?” His voice quavered as he stared at her in disbelief.
“Anita?”

She ran toward him and caught him in her arms. “Yes. I'm back,” she said. “Please, please don't ask any questions right now. Where's Mum?”

“Is that Anita?” called a voice from the darkness of the room.

“Yes, it's me,” Tania called, letting go of her father and running into the bedroom. She grabbed her mother's hand. “You have to get up now,” Tania said. “You have to get dressed—both of you.”

Her mother gasped. “What happened to you? The house! We thought burglars—but then we found out you didn't go with the Andersons to Florida. We thought you'd been kidnapped or murdered or—”

“I'm fine, Mum,” Tania interrupted her. “Please—get up now and I promise I'll explain everything.”

“Everything?” her father said from the doorway. “For heaven's sake, Anita, have you got any idea of the state the house was in when we got back?”

“She
can
explain, sir,” Edric said.

Tania's father turned, his face darkening. “You!” he spat. “I might have known you'd be involved in this.”

“Stop it, please!” Tania demanded. “I'm going to explain everything to you, I promise. But you have to trust me just for a little while longer—and you have to get dressed.” She took a breath, looking from her
mother to her father. “I'm going to take you somewhere, and when you get there, you'll understand everything. Now put some clothes on,
please
!”

For a moment she thought her father wasn't going to do as she asked, but then, with a last angry glare at Edric, he walked back into the bedroom and began to pick up his clothes.

“I'll wait outside,” Tania said. She switched on their ceiling light and walked out onto the landing, closing the door behind her. She looked at Edric, shaking her head.

He smiled encouragingly. “So far, so good,” he said.

“You think?” Only sheer willpower was stopping her from running to the bathroom and throwing up.

Two or three minutes passed before the bedroom door opened and her mother and father came out fully dressed. Her mother looked confused and upset, and her father's face was dark with barely suppressed anger.

“Well?” he said. “Let's get this over with.”

Tania walked toward her room, Edric stepping back through the doorway.

“In here, please,” Tania said.

Her father frowned. “What is this nonsense, Anita?”

“Trust me, please.”

“No more lies, Anita,” her mother said. “I couldn't stand any more lies.”

“No, no more lies,” Tania promised.

Her mother came to the door, her father following reluctantly.

Tania led them into the room. “I'm sorry for everything I've done to you recently,” she said. “But there is an explanation, and I'm going to show it to you right now.” She moved between them, taking them both by the hand.

Her mother gave a gasp of surprise as Edric took her other hand.

“Okay,” Tania said, her heart pounding so loudly that she could hardly hear herself speaking. “I'm going to take a step, and when I do, I want you to move with me.”

“Anita!” growled her father.

She looked at her mortal mother and her mortal father. “Trust me!”

Holding her parents' hands tightly in hers, she took that enchanted side step and led her mortal parents and Edric into the Immortal Realm of Faerie.

“Good grief!” she heard her father gasp as the curved stones walls of Bonwyn Tyr appeared in front of them. “Good
lord
!”

Her mother's hand tightened in hers, her eyes widening in amazement.

Tania laughed out loud with pure joy. “And believe me when I tell you, Mum, Dad, this is only the beginning!”

Thanks to Rob Rudderham
for allowing me to use a verse of his song
“The Man in the Moon”

Cover art © 2008 by Ali Smith

Cover design by R. Hult