Wherever they’d jumped to had air, which made sense. Emily’s lungs still had water in them, water that had been breathable, but water nonetheless. She crumpled to her knees, hacking. Remembering Dry-Eyes, she struggled the backpack off as she fell over. The sprite was in no better condition, curled up and coughing, her wings plastered to her back.
Emily tried to remember babysitting CPR classes—what was the recovery position? Shaking, she reached out to try and turn Dry-Eyes onto her side. Emily vomited, water and bile dribbled out of her nose and mouth. She was lying on top of something, her knife, which was a sword now. Ha, fell on my keys. She tried again to reach Dry-Eyes and the world went black.
Her throat was sore and she lay on cool sheets, a woman standing over her. Emily didn’t try to sit up. The pillow felt damp and cool, like she had gone to bed with wet hair. She tried her voice: “So I coughed all that shit up?” Her voice was weak, but the soreness didn’t get worse. “How’s Dry-Eyes?”
The woman moved to the side, revealing the sprite perched in the windowsill.
“I’m fine, all dried out.” She fluttered her wings. “We’ll stop here for a couple of days before moving on.”
The strange woman smiled and left. Emily caught a glimpse of a bird’s backward-jointed legs and delicate claws moving beneath her dress, before the door shut behind her. She hadn’t said a word.
Raising herself to her elbows, Emily looked around the room. The furniture was low-slung and simple, the bed a padded pallet, like a futon. There were no touches of home or personal items, and Emily’s backpack seemed aggressively out of place sitting in the corner. The overall impression was monastic.
“Do fairies have monasteries?” Emily looked over at Dry-Eyes. “I mean, is that what this is?” She sat up easily. For someone who’d nearly drowned, she didn’t feel too terrible. Her wet clothes had been replaced by a soft sort of shift and she tucked it modestly around her as she brought her knees up.
Dry-Eyes stretched, then flew to the end of the bed. “I suppose monastery is a good word for it. There isn’t really any worship here, but in places like this, the Folk” —she emphasised the word and tucked her feet beneath her primly— “study magic and theory, write histories, that sort of thing.”
“Are they vowed to silence or something?”
“It depends. If you’re a siren, like the woman who was here, then I suppose you’d be more judicious of when you speak.” Dry-Eyes thought a moment before adding, “If you want, we can take a tour—start at the kitchen if you’re hungry. Do you need to eat?”
Emily wrinkled her nose, thinking. Dry-Eyes’ voice held a weird emphasis. “I’m not that hungry, actually. Probably those things that came out of the dead-whatever-it-was put me off.” She stretched her legs back out, careful not to kick Dry-Eyes. “Food does sound good, but I’m not—”
“You’re not hungry.” Dry-Eyes looked out the window. “How long do you think we were walking down that tower?”
“A while?” Emily kept her eyes on the sprite, not wanting an answer.
“It was about two days.”
“What?!” Her voice was brittle. “That’s nonsense. I know it took a long time and I think I drifted off some, but come on.”
Dry-Eyes kept her gaze averted. “You went into a fugue for some of it, yes, but you didn’t sleep, you didn’t eat—”
“I didn’t want to open my pack in the water!”
“—and you didn’t need to take care of the, ah, baser processes of nature.”
Emily stopped fidgeting. The eating and the sleeping thing she could more or less explain away. But she hadn’t used the bathroom since Dry-Eye’s village and she didn’t feel like she needed to now.
“Okay. So, why?” Emily’s stomach churned as she guessed the answer.
“For the same reason the Folk only eat when we want to or when it amuses us.” Dry-Eyes turned back from the window and leaned forward to put her tiny hand on Emily’s leg. “You’re not mortal, Amelia.”
It was obvious once you thought about it, and Becky had nearly said as much in the beginning. Emily’s parents were Folk and she had been born in the Sidhe. All the care taken to raise her had been as much to make Emily technically mortal enough as it had been to qualify her for the chosen one loophole.
Dry-Eyes left shortly after dropping her little bomb, saying Emily probably had a lot to think about. She was right and Emily tried to think practically. How did this affect her plan? How did this affect her? She slipped off the bed, where she’d been sitting in a daze, and put on the clothes she’d been given in Dry-Eyes’ village, which had been dried and folded neatly on her backpack, her knife belt and compass resting on top.
Emily wondered if she could do magic. What, or who, had her parents been? The only family she’d ever known had been Janice. Her parents were little more than anecdotes that, in the current light of the situation, were probably not true. That they’d been idealists and liked to travel were the only things that Emily could begin to consider fact.
Whatever possible personal abilities she might have, Emily knew she had magical objects. It was time to stop looking sideways at things for fear that they’d disappear. She made the bed and solemnly laid her pack’s contents on the blankets.
There were the clothes that Janice had so carefully helped her plan and pack but hadn’t proved necessary. She set them aside. Her boots, which were already dry, she held for a moment, wondering. Were they imbued with some power? Her feet hadn’t hurt or blistered despite all the walking, but that could just as easily be attributed to whatever latent abilities she had. Frowning, Emily decided to ignore them for now.
The tobacco pouch Becky had given her replenished itself, as had the bag of homemade energy bars. She put both in a pile of “magic things,” taking a bar out and munching thoughtfully. Toothbrush, soap, a towel and a comb she hadn’t used since arriving in the Sidhe. All the bright plastic seemed out of place. Emily looked at the toiletries, wondering if she should maybe brush her teeth. They seemed fine despite neglect. Maybe faeries—the Folk— didn’t get cavities or that fuzzy grossness after waking up. Emily had fillings, but she decided that the rules had to be different in the Sidhe anyway.
She unbraided her hair and picked the comb through. She’d only been finger combing at tangles, so it took some time with the wide-toothed comb to get the worst of the snarls out. Emily let her hair stay loose in a wild cloud around her head and examined the comb. In fairy tales, the protagonist would drop one and it’d sprout into an impenetrable forest to hide in or delay a pursuer. Emily shrugged. Magic or not, she should probably keep it, if only so that she could keep her hair from becoming a rat’s nest. The other toiletries she pushed with the clothes into a “not magic” pile.
Emily had completely forgotten about the Polaroid camera and film. She retrieved the shot she’d taken of herself from the writing desk and looked at it. The grasshopper fields were out of focus in the background, most of the frame taken up by an undeveloped blurry glow where her head was. It was easy enough to find out if there was a problem with the film or lens: Emily aimed the camera at the table and window, keeping the flash off. While she waited for the image to appear, she counted the energy bars again, out of curiosity. They were back to the same number they’d been before she’d taken one a few minutes before. Creepy. Emily wondered if the magic was in the bag or the bars.
Developed, the photograph showed no weird flares or faded spots, just the table and the wall behind it, which was covered in runes. Or something like runes, anyway. Emily held the photo up, looking between it and the plain, whitewashed wall she’d taken a picture of. She decided against taking another photograph of herself until after she learned more about the camera.
All that was left to examine was the writing desk, the compass, and her knife. Emily had a pretty good idea what the desk did. She made a mental note to write her aunt that evening. Also, she thought while picking up the desk and peering at the letter slot on the side, maybe she’d ask Dry-Eyes about it. If the sprite didn’t know, someone in this place might. It seemed to fit with what they did here.
Emily touched the hilt of her knife. From fantasy books and fairy tales, she knew better than to fully draw the blade outside of need, but she did pull it out enough to expose the engraving.
“Luck.” Emily said it out loud and thought of Becky. What was she in the Sidhe? A sprite, or a monster, or some unknowable thing? Of course, if she was going to start thinking that way Emily might as well wonder about the rest of the court. It wasn’t worth worrying about. If she could pull this thing off, she’d find out soon enough.
Taking the compass from her pocket, Emily watched the needle spin. Apparently right now she was right where she needed to be. Emily stood up, leaving her things spread on the bed, and padded barefoot out the door to find Dry-Eyes.
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: