The two women passed the town’s official boundaries, Janice at the wheel. Emily loved and hated the smallness of her hometown and its proximity to farms and forest. The cooler weather, mushroom hunting, and scenic view didn’t really make up for the single-screen theatre and half-hour drive to the closest mall. Since she’d always owned a bicycle, Emily never felt like she needed to find a car, even though it severely limited the scope of her activities. A total lack of a social life probably helped with that. Drives with her aunt were something different, though. They knew the backcountry and old highways better than most maps. They’d also learned that difficult conversations were easier when one person had to keep her eyes on the road.
Propping her feet up on the dash, Emily turned to look at her aunt. “Did you all move out here for the isolation?”
“Something like that. It’s cheaper than the city, too. Having forest land nearby is useful for other things, especially when we were trying to figure out how to get back.” Janice raised an eyebrow, still watching the road. “But we stayed because of the isolation.”
She threw a glance at her niece. “Keeping you from opportunities was part of the gambit.”
Emily grimaced. “I’m having trouble comprehending the scope of how much of my life was manufactured.”
“Now, don’t say that. You lived it, didn’t you? We didn’t actively interfere. We just set up a situation and made sure that only the right variables were introduced.”
“Ugh, like a science experiment.”
“Or growing roses,” Janice drawled in a passable southern accent, “you’re our little hothouse flower, Amelia.”
Emily laughed.
“Anyway, to continue my answer—we were also dropped off nearby when we were exiled and we could never get up the momentum to leave a spot where we knew Folk could cross over.”
Emily cranked down the window and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Janice frowned.
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.”
“It’s like a couple a day, jeez.” She stabbed the car lighter in and waited for it to heat up.
“You picked it up from that weirdo Roper girl, I know it.”
Emily managed to light her cigarette and sigh at the same time. “She was my only friend and then moved away, point one, so don’t diss on her. Point two—”
“Point two, it’s nails in your coffin.”
“Not like it’ll matter when we rejoin the Sidhe.”
“If we rejoin the Sidhe. If, Emily.” Janice watched her niece sink deeper in the passenger seat, exhaling from her nose. “I don’t want to be a bummer, but this is not a game. Which is such a trope thing to say, I know. But we are specifically dealing with situations that are tropes and clichés, with rules that seem whimsical but have thousands of years of repetition and structure to back them.” Emily remained silent. “You read enough, you know that in anything worth the trouble the entire ordeal is harrowing.”
Emily looked at her aunt from the corner of her eye. Janice’s mouth was compressed to a hard line, eyes focused on the road. Bringing her feet up onto the seat, Emily pulled herself out of a slouch and tapped her cigarette in the console ashtray, meeting her aunt’s glance at the movement.
“It’s difficult to judge when you don’t have all the information. I mean, other than crossing over to the Sidhe for you guys, I don’t know what I’m supposed do. ‘Win back our place’ is a little vague as a battle plan.” Emily lifted her chin imperiously. “But I can guess what you’re going to say.”
“That we have to keep some information from you? Yes.”
Emily scoffed, “That is such bullshit.”
“Language!” Janice glanced at her speedometer and let off the gas as they swept up turns cutting through forested hills. “It is bullshit, and it was bullshit that my sister died and it was bullshit that I had to raise her damn kid and it was the crowning bullshit that I couldn’t even do that the way I wanted but had to shape her to be a god-damned weapon just so I could get home.”
She pushed hair from her eyes. “I can only give you so much. There’s some fictionalised histories you can read for background on why we had to leave. At the official ceremony tonight you’ll get a better idea of the plan and be presented with keys.” She slowed for a squirrel that waited until the car was almost on it to bolt across lanes. “Not, like, real keys. Objects of usefulness.”
“So not like an RPG?” The side of Emily’s mouth quirked. “You’re not going to give me a silver key so I can get the gold key and then the diamond key or whatever?”
Janice glared at the road. “That place with the milkshakes is coming up. Are you hungry?”
Back at the trailer, Janice hauled out a handful of books and handed them off to her niece. “I’m going on errands. The ceremony is at eight in the common yard. You don’t need to dress up.”
Emily watched her aunt leave and turned back to the books, sucking at the last of her shake. She’d already read the books at different points, growing up. One was an early reader chapter book, even. These were the fictionalised histories?
With a shrug, she turned on the box fan and stretched out on a blanket in front of it, the little stack of books at her side. She opened up the first, a collected volume of European fairy stories, to a spot marked with a slip of paper. Angling the book so the fan didn’t blow the pages around, Emily dove in.
Passages were marked with pencil in the margins, bracketing specific scenes. After scanning through a couple of the stories, Emily got up and grabbed a pen and a half-empty spiral notebook with the word “MATH” scrawled across the cover. Sitting tailor-style in front of the fan, she began piecing together an outline of events. The tradition and predictability of fairy stories worked to her advantage; though they were gleaned from multiple sources, each scene fit together perfectly.
When she finished, eyes dry from the fan, Emily took the notebook out to the back stoop where the trailer still cast some shade. Making a face at the wall of heat outside, she went back to the standing freezer next to the washing machine. With a steadily melting popsicle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, she reviewed her notes.
It was a pretty normal story, as far as fantasy went. Twins were born to the faerie king and queen and took the reins of the kingship together when they came of age. Then, classic, they both fell in love with the same person. There was a gap after that which Emily filled with the stripped-down plot of a story from an erotica collection that she couldn’t believe her aunt had included. It seemed that the kings, not being confined to mortal convention, were totally fine sharing, so the dual kingship and marriage continued to rule in peace.
After an undefined period, another lady took a fancy to one of the kings and developed a steady dislike of their wife. Over time this other lady poisoned her preferred king’s mind with gossip, general cattiness, and the weird outright lies that permeate fairy tales. Naturally, civil war followed, the king the other lady didn’t like was killed and his supporters cast out. In the books for a younger audience, the dead king’s ghost haunted his brother and exposed the scam, ending everything more or less well. In the other books, the Irish lore one especially, it just sort of ended on a bummer.
Emily wrinkled her nose. No wonder they had been so desperate to get back. Stretching as she stood, Emily looked around the court, which lay still as the hottest part of the day began. Her apprehension was still there, but it was bolstered by a sense of justice. She was the magical chosen one and was totally going to right things.
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: