Vidar
Ihave never visited Rim’s Edge before, and I have never wanted to. The rumors about this place are grim.
I descend on my delicate mayfly wings toward the place. Someone has caused it to look exactly like its reputation. It’s a settlement built on the edge of what was once a waterfall and is now a crescent-shaped gouge in the landscape that falls into an empty basin.
Dwellings cling around the upper rim and down the descent, a haywire of ladders and bridges connecting them. Old fires burn in the basin where refuse is dropped and along the ridge above – a weak defense against invaders – though who would willingly invade this place is beyond me. Even the Court of Madness will not bother with the residents here.
No one goes to Rim’s Edge because they want to be here. No one stays because they have other options. This is a place for those with no other home. A place for fair folk abandoned by their courts, driven out, and unable to even seek an easy mortal life or death for reasons of their own. Some look too fae. Others, are too far gone in our ways to ever learn a new way to live.
Mostly, they are magic addicts – no longer able to access their own powers, but also unable to live in a place without magic – they cling to the edges of fae society, and some few reprobates visit them with little glimmers and tastes of what they once had, prolonging their slow deaths as they sit here longing for what they’ll never have again.
I make my landing at the top, wary and watching, but even with my keen eyes, I don’t reach the first ladder before I’m attacked.
A pair of men in ragged cloaks rise from the rock, their tattered clothing and dirt-smeared faces disguised them too well for even my eyes. Grim-faced, they set upon me.
I wish I could say it was an epic battle. Or even an honorable one. But I’m young and full of life and they are neither. As much as it disgusts me to say it, I do not find it difficult to quickly break the first man’s neck and then hold the second in a chokehold as I whisper my mother’s name.
His pointed ear tickles my nose as he struggles, but his stink is more powerful than he is.
“Down three levels, dwelling with the sun insignia,” he gasps.
I fling him aside. If he doesn’t follow me, I won’t kill him. But when I look back, he isn’t following. He’s on his knees, eyes rolled back in his head in pleasure. Just that much proximity to my magic has been enough to trigger his addiction and my magic is only that of flight and of the tricks of bargains and geases. It’s no great power at all.
I’m more careful as I make my way down the half-broken ladders and swaying bridges. Everything here is in need of repair. I won’t die if I fall, my wings will catch me, but I could kill others. I’m nervous that one false move might bring down this entire conglomerate of structures. I didn’t come all this way to kill her before I could find her.
My caution is unnecessary. It’s mid-morning, and while I am exhausted, having flown for two days and two nights without more pause than a half-turn to drink water and relieve myself, this encampment is even more sluggish. Some poor fools stumble out of their dwellings, clinging to the rope railings of the bridges, but most are snoring in their hovels.
I find one miserable dwelling clinging to the cliff face, a yellow cloth thrown over it for added protection from the elements. Someone has taken time to scrawl a hastily drawn sun rune over the top of it. Our former family crest, before it was seized and the King of Iceheim made it forbidden to display or even mention.
I grit my teeth. Only here on Rim’s Edge can it be seen again, and just existing in this place defiles it. I want to throttle my mother for putting it here.
I tug the yellow cloth aside and step into the reeking shanty.
My breath hitches in my throat.
We fae do not take ill. We do not die slowly of the ravages of disease. But my mother is no longer fae – not really. She’s been stripped of the magic of our kind. Stripped of all our graces and trickery.
Her breath rasps in her throat, barely even there. Her skin is sallow, eyes sunken, lips pulled back in a grimace. I would have spared her this if I could have. I would have spared her everything that happened since the day the Court turned on her. I still don’t know why they did. I’ve only heard rumors and no two of them match.
Seeing her now, seeing her like this, strips me of all dignity and strength. I stumble to my knee beside her bed, trying not to breathe too deeply.
Her eyes flicker open.
“Vidar. My son. You have come after all.” Her words are barely audible. “I held on for you.”
And I’m glad I came after all. For so many years I have longed for her benediction. Perhaps, just one time, I shall hear from her lips that she loves me and has missed me.
Her palm opens and she offers it to me. I clasp it eagerly and a flicker of annoyance crosses her face. Has she not missed me, too? Or have I taken on so much mortality from my life with my mayfly seer that I am no longer recognizable to my own kind?
“The locket,” she murmurs, and I realize there is something pressed between our hands. “Revenge.”
“Revenge?” I ask. I want to say that I have missed her. I want to say I would take her pain if I could. I want to tell her that none of this is her fault.
“I’ve held out so I can give it to you.” Her voice rattles and I realize she’s trying to cough. She presses the locket into my hand, and I stare at it dully. It’s shaped like a heart. It’s crafted of gold. A cheap trinket despite the precious metal – smaller than the tip of my pinky and suspended on a chain so delicate it looks like a hair.
“I have lived a life you can be proud of,” I say tentatively, trying to draw us back to farewells and kindnesses.
“And now you will die a death that will make me proud,” she says, and these words are much stronger, as if this is what she’s been holding onto for all this time.
