Emily perched on the broad stone windowsill of her room, smoking. After the mirror had run through a brief history of the twin kings’ civil war, she had asked it to go into more depth on several points. The mirror was a good storyteller, smoothly playing stills and scenes across its mirrored surface to supplement the narrative. The basics matched what she’d pieced together from her aunt’s books, which was reassuring. When asked, the mirror had admitted that some faction of the Sidhe was always fighting, but this particular incident had been notable both because one twin killed the other and because the woman they’d fought over had been human.
The mirror showed Emily a portrait of the two kings and their bride laughing with arms around each others’ waists. The woman was Janice. Emily tried to comprehend the ramifications of this. If Janice was human, then she wasn’t family by blood, which made her decision to raise Emily all the more meaningful. How did she first get to the Sidhe? Where was she from, or when? It must have been so difficult to be shoved back into the mundane world after having happily escaped it.
Emily had asked the mirror about her parents, but since she had no real information about who they were, it couldn’t help her. They’d looked at a list of those killed in the twins’ war, but even if she confined her search to those lost right before the end, she wouldn’t know which two people they were. Her aunt had admitted to Emily that the picture of her parents in the living room was a snapshot she found in a thrift store frame. Emily couldn’t pick her parents out of a line-up, let alone a bare list of names.
Asking about Janice had been a dead-end as well. The mirror only had a short summary of her life in the Sidhe and no information on friends, which meant no short list of people whose child she’d be willing to raise.
It wasn’t that she had a driving desire to learn all about the people that had made her. Janice had been all the family she’d wanted or needed. But it would be nice to know who, and what, these people were so she could figure out her birthright. And, she admitted to herself, it would also be cool if she could do magic.
Emily moved to a chair and balanced the writing desk in her lap. She rolled another cigarette, fumbling after she lit it for somewhere to ash. She ended up dragging the chair to the window and staring out at the night sky’s unfamiliar stars instead of the blank sheet of paper on the desk. If she wrote her aunt a letter, Emily was uncertain whether she should send it. There wasn’t a point if she wouldn’t get a reply. She looked at the two photographs of herself in the Sidhe, holding them up to catch the moonlight.
When the hare came to visit Emily in the morning, he found her staring out the window, feet tucked up into the chair, writing desk abandoned. There were a dozen cigarette butts crushed out onto the sill and she was still staring at the pictures.
The hare was a big fan of breakfast foods and he invited Emily to join him in destroying the spread the castle’s kitchen had sent up. Emily recognised the little pastries she’d helped with the night before.
“Now, I’m sure you’ve lots to talk about, but let’s keep it light while we eat.” The hare munched while talking, flashing his mean-looking front teeth.
Emily laughed. “Was it the thousand-yard stare that tipped you off?”
“Among other things.” They sat quietly, sipping hot chocolate.
“Hey!” Emily sat up, remembering. “Are you called ‘haas’ or was that some rude troll slang the guard used when we arrived? I know ‘Herr’ is just German for ‘Mister.’” She took another tiny pie from the tray. All the food was sized to the hare’s paws and irresistibly adorable.
“It’s a Germanic word for rabbit. She was using it in a ‘hey you’ kind of way. I don’t bandy my use name around enough that a mere palace guard would know it.” He pushed away the rest of the food and leaned back in the overstuffed chair, legs stretched out on the seat. “We should probably talk about what had you staring out the window all night.”
Emily poured more hot chocolate. “I finally got some background info on the twins’ civil war.”
“And?”
“And I learned that my aunt was their wife and the cause of the current queen’s dispute. And that she’s a mortal human.” Emily stared into her cup.
“Oh my.” The hare folded his paws on his stomach. “That would put a different shine on things, wouldn’t it? What about this birthright of yours, any clue?”
“Who and what my parents were is as cloudy as ever, but I think I’ve figured something out.” Emily’s fingers itched for another cigarette, but it would be rude to smoke in the hare’s room. “How much do you know about the mundane world?”
“As it is now? Next to nothing.”
“Well, this shouldn’t sound too cheesy then. I knew someone once who was the first person in her family born in the States. She was my only friend, really, since friends were quietly discouraged as part of the whole chosen one thing. Anyway, one Fourth of July—”
“What’s that?”
“Uh, it’s a holiday that celebrates the founding of the country I’m from. It’s not held during the school year, but we were learning about national holidays. Not that it matters. So, one year there was an assignment about what being an ‘American’ was.”
“America and the States are the same thing?”
Emily looked up at the hare. “Yeah, more or less. Her paper was about how, since she didn’t really have the full benefit of her parent’s culture, but the culture of where they lived didn’t really fit completely with what her family knew, she had to pick and choose what worked best for her. She said it was better that way, making her own identity. ‘That’s what being an American is,’ she said. ‘Becoming your own personal mix of things.’”
“That’s a nice sentiment.”
Emily stared blankly at the tray of cakes, thinking about that day. “Some of the other kids laughed at her, because people are always going to be dicks when you’re different. But yeah, it was a nice sentiment. I don’t even remember what I’d decided being an American was, but I remember her paper.”
The hare scooted forward in the chair to reach the pitcher of hot chocolate and poured a fresh cup. He took Emily’s cup and refilled it, nails clicking on the porcelain.
“So your birthright is whatever you make it?”
“Yeah.” Emily wrinkled her nose, thinking. “I guess. I’m not wholly what is my nature or how I was nurtured. So I get to pick and choose. Same as Crawburn did. What, and how, I choose will be something I figure out and change my mind on as time goes on.”
This post is part of The Audacity Gambit – Serialised. Learn more about when the book was first published here, see the archive and overall content warnings here, and find more of my writing here. I’m over on both Comradery and Patreon, if you feel like supporting my creative endeavours. If you’d like to subscribe to this story, here’s a handy email box for you: