Chapter Text
On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, a man in a long dark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street. He hadn’t parked a car, nor had he come by taxi. No neighbor had seen him strolling along the sidewalk. He simply appeared, as if stepping between one shadow and the next.
The man walked to the door and lifted his fist to knock.
Inside the house, Andrew sat on the living room rug and ate fish sticks, soggy from the microwave and dragged through a sludge of ketchup. His twin brother, Aaron, napped on the couch, curled around a blanket, thumb in his fruit-punch-stained mouth. And on the other end of the sofa, their older cousin, Nicky, stared at the television screen, his eerie, split-pupiled gaze fixed on the cartoon mouse as it ran from the cartoon cat. He laughed when it seemed as if the mouse was about to get eaten.
Nicky was different from other older cousins, but since seven-year-old Andrew and Aaron were identical, with the same shaggy blond hair and heart-shaped faces, they were different, too. Nicky’s eyes and the lightly furred points of his ears were, to Andrew, not so much more strange than being the mirror version of another person.
And if sometimes he noticed the way the neighborhood kids avoided Nicky or the way their mother and uncle talked about him in low, terse voices, Andrew didn’t think it was anything important. Grown-ups were always upset, always whispering.
Aaron yawned and stretched, pressing his cheek against Nicky’s knee.
Outside, the sun was shining, scorching the asphalt of driveways. Lawn mower engines whirred, and children splashed in backyard pools. Uncle Luther was in the outbuilding, where he had a forge. Mom was in the kitchen cooking hamburgers. Everything was boring. Everything was fine.
When the knock came, Andrew hopped up to answer it. He hoped it might be one of the other kids from across the street, wanting to play video games or inviting him for an after-dinner swim.
The tall man stood on their mat, glaring down at her. He wore a brown leather duster despite the heat. His shoes were shod with silver, and they rang hollowly as he stepped over the threshold. Andrew looked up into his shadowed face and shivered.
“Mom,” he yelled. “Moooooooom. Someone’s here.”
His mother came from the kitchen, wiping wet hands on her jeans. When she saw the man, she went red. “Go to your room,” she told Andrew in a scary voice. “Now!”
“Whose child is that?” the man asked, pointing at her. His voice was oddly accented. “Yours? His?”
“No one’s.” Mom didn’t even look in Andrew’s direction. “He’s no one’s child.”
That sounded right, with how much attention Tilda paid them the best of days. Not to mention their absent father they couldn’t even place a name to. Andrew took a few steps toward the stairs but didn’t want to be alone in his room. Nicky, Andrew thought. Nicky will know who the tall man is. Nicky will know what to do.
But Andrew couldn’t seem to make himself move any farther.
“I’ve seen many impossible things,” the man said. “I have seen the acorn before the oak. I have seen the spark before the flame. But never have I seen such as this: A dead woman living. A child born from nothing.”
Mom seemed at a loss for words. Her body was vibrating with tension.
“I doubted Kengo when he told me I’d find you here,” said the man, his voice softening. “The bones of an earthly woman and her unborn child in the burned remains of my estate were convincing. Do you know what it is to return from battle to find your companion dead, your only heir with her? To find your life reduced to ash?”
Mom shook her head, not as if she was answering him, but as though she was trying to shake off the words.
He took a step toward her, and she took a step back. There was something wrong with the tall man’s leg. He moved stiffly, as though it hurt him. The light was different in the entry hall, and Andrew could see the odd green tint of his skin and the way his lower teeth seemed too large for his mouth.
He was able to see that his eyes were like Nicky’s.
“We were never going to be happy with you,” Mom told him. “Your world isn’t for people like us.”
The tall man regarded her for a long moment. “You made promises to my family,” he said finally.
She lifted her chin. “And then I renounced them.”
His gaze went to Andrew, and his expression hardened. “What is a promise from a pair of mortals worth? I suppose I have my answer.”
Mom turned. At his mother’s look, Andrew dashed into the living room.
Aaron was still sleeping. The television was still on. Nicky looked up with half-lidded cat eyes. “Who’s at the door?” he asked. “I heard arguing.”
“A scary man,” Andrew told him, out of breath even though he’d barely run at all. His heart was pounding. “We’re supposed to go upstairs.”
He didn’t care that Mom had told only him to go upstairs. He wasn’t going by herself. With a sigh, Nicky unfolded from the couch and shook Aaron awake. Drowsily, Andrew’s twin followed them into the hallway.
As they started toward the carpet-covered steps, Andrew saw her uncle come in from the back garden. He held an axe in his hand—forged to be a near replica of one he’d studied in a museum in Iceland. It wasn’t weird to see Uncle Luther with an axe. He and his friends were into old weapons and would spend lots of time talking about “material culture” and sketching ideas for fantastical blades. What was odd was the way he held the weapon, as if he was going to—
His uncle swung the axe toward the tall man. His face twisted in a large and serious scowl. “Demon!”
The axe went past the tall man, biting into the wood trim of the door.
Aaron made an odd, high keening noise and slapped his palms over his mouth.
The tall man drew a curved blade from beneath his leather coat. A sword, like from a storybook. Uncle Luther was trying to pull the axe free from the doorframe when the man plunged the sword into Uncle Luther’s stomach, pushing it upward. There was a sound, like sticks snapping, and an animal cry. Uncle Luther fell to the vestibule carpet, the one Mom always yelled about when they tracked mud on it.
The rug that was turning red.
Mom screamed. Andrew screamed. Aaron and Nicky screamed. Everyone seemed to be screaming, except the tall man.
“Come here,” he said, looking directly at Nicky.
“Y-you monster,” their mother shouted, moving toward the kitchen. “He’s dead!”
“Do not run from me,” the man told her. “Not after what you’ve done. If you run again, I swear I—”
But she did run. She was almost around the corner when his blade struck her in the back. She crumpled to the linoleum, falling arms knocking magnets off the fridge.
The smell of fresh blood was heavy in the air, like wet, hot metal. Like those scrubbing pads Mom used to clean the frying pan when stuff was really stuck on.
Andrew ran at the man, slamming his fists against his chest, kicking at his legs. He wasn’t even scared. He wasn’t sure he felt anything at all.
The man paid Andrew no mind. For a long moment, he just stood there, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d done. As though he wished he could take back the last five minutes. Then he sank to one knee and caught hold of Andrew’s shoulders. He pinned his arms to his sides so he couldn’t hit him anymore, but he wasn’t even looking at him.
His gaze was on Nicky.
“You were stolen from me and my sister,” he told her. “I have come to take you to your true home, in Evermore beneath the hill. There, you will be rich beyond measure. There, you will be with your own kind.”
“No,” Nicky told him in her somber little voice. “I’m never going anywhere with you.”
“I’m your uncle,” he told her, his voice harsh, rising like the crack of a lash. “You are my heir and my blood, and you will obey me in this as in all things.”
He didn’t move, but his jaw set.
“You’re not her uncle,” Andrew shouted at the man. Even though he and Nicky had the same eyes, he wouldn’t let himself believe it.
His grip tightened on his shoulders, and he made a little squeezed, squeaking sound, but he stared up defiantly. He’d won plenty of staring contests.
He looked away first, turning to watch Aaron, on his knees, shaking Mom while he sobbed, as though he was trying to wake her up. Mom didn’t move. Mom and Uncle Luther were dead. They were never going to move again.
“I hate you,” Nicky proclaimed to the tall man with a viciousness that Andrew was glad of. “I will always hate you. I vow it.”
The man’s stony expression didn’t change. “Nonetheless, you will come with me. Ready these little humans. Pack light. We ride before dark.”
Nicky’s chin came up. “Leave them alone. If you have to, take me, but not them.”
He stared at Nicky, and then he snorted. “You’d protect your cousins from me, would you? Tell me, then, where would you have them go?”
Nicky didn’t answer. They had no grandparents, no living family at all. At least, none they knew.
He looked at Andrew again, released his shoulders, and rose to his feet. “They are the progeny of my dear companion and, thus, my responsibility. I may be cruel, a monster, and a murderer, but I do not shirk my responsibilities. Nor should you shirk yours as the eldest.”
Years later, when Andrew told himself the story of what happened, he couldn’t recall the part where they packed. Shock seemed to have erased that hour entirely. Somehow Nicky must have found bags, must have put in their favorite picture books and their most beloved toys, along with photographs and pajamas and coats and shirts.
Or maybe Andrew had packed for himself. He was never sure.
He couldn’t imagine how they’d done it, with their mother and uncle’s bodies cooling downstairs. He couldn’t imagine how it had felt, and as the years went by, he couldn’t make himself feel it again. The horror of the murders dulled with time. His memories of the day blurred.
A black horse was nibbling the grass of the lawn when they went outside. Its eyes were big and soft. Andrew wanted to throw his arms around its neck and press his wet face into its silky mane. Before he could, the tall man swung her and then Aaron across the saddle, handling them like baggage rather than children. He put Nicky up behind him.
“Hold on,” he said.
Andrew and his remaining family wept the whole way to Faerieland.
In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television.