What she shows me are scraps. Bits of future, bits of past. Mayfly memories, here and gone. And they flutter from me like mayflies on the wing. To grasp one, I must abandon the others. As they flitter past, they leave echoes of the emotion they carried. I dive toward the answer to what I seek.
The trinket.
It’s just over there.
But as I grope toward it, I feel myself paying the price – tiny fragments of my own memories are shearing off – not lost, no, but found again. And I do not want them to be found. I flinch at a memory of the last look I saw in my mother’s eyes. That look of hopelessness and betrayal. I shudder as I sit alone in our empty estates, face in my hands, no echo of servants in the hall, or laughter, or any movement at all, just the smell of dust in the air and agonizing hollowness left over in my heart.
And then I catch sight of the memory of the trinket again and gratefully flee my own memories in search of the one that is lost.
It’s right there ahead of me.
I reach for it and then pause. I feel the knowledge I’m searching for just out of my grasp – a tiny flying fragment of some future knowing, but I am caught staring at the scrap in front of me instead. It’s not the past. And it’s not my own painful memories.
I know this because I have never before reached for the woman with the mayflies covering her. I have never held her tenderly to my breast or whispered her name, and yet, here I am doing all those things in this little scrap of memory. And it feels like I have caught a star and that I hold it in my hand. It feels like a meeting of souls – like the happy ending every story ever told dares to proclaim. It’s like happiness resurrected in my ashes and calling my name.
I shudder at the feeling. The only thing close to it I’ve ever felt is pain. But that’s not right. This is just as all-consuming, just as maddening – and yet I want it. All of it. Forever.
I watch, curious and puzzled and desperate for more of it.
I am a member of the Court of Iceheim, a fae of the dancing northern lights and the scream of ice heaves in the black of night. I am fearless and pitiless as the winds that scour the ice fields and I do not grow overwhelmed by mortals.
This memory, this future – is a lie. That’s the only explanation for it. And yet, I am thoroughly amused. I am touched in a deep hidden part I thought had been carved away forever.
I watch until the scrap is gone and when it is done, my eyes flutter open and I smile.
Around me, the mortals are abasing themselves, locked prostrate against the carved steps or the shale ground in either worship or a trance – I know not. I care not. They have fulfilled their purpose. They have gifted me a sight unseen before.
Precatore lounges against the post where the boat is tied. He lifts a single eyebrow in mockery when I meet his eyes. I don’t care that he is laughing at me. I don’t even want him to come see for himself because then I would have to share, and I do not like sharing.
I approach the cage and see her sitting there on a small dais in the center. There is no food or drink within. No blankets or mattress or tools of any kind.
I fumble in my pocket and bring out an apple – a treat I was saving for a later time. It’s a golden-skinned fruit of warm lands and hearty people, and it brims with the sweetness of their love for the land. Hesitantly, I offer it between the bars.
I am never hesitant – except today. And I do not know why I have changed.
I am not sure if she will take the apple. She doesn’t seem to notice me, though the mayflies have cleared her face and mouth and she can clearly see.
It’s almost a full minute – a minute where I’ve second-guessed myself twice and scolded myself wondering if I would have done this if I hadn’t seen her strange vision. I swear I can hear my kinsman’s low laughter from behind me. I’m about to withdraw my offering when she stands and walks to me. Her steps are slow, measured, and swaying. Her strange pale eyes – like the palest of silver – stare at me, wide and deep as the ocean in the far north. There is intelligence there. And a sadness so deep I cannot fathom it. I tilt my head to the side. I am like the rest of my kind, I freely admit it. I’m drawn to any depth of feeling – good or ill.
“An offering,” I suggest.
The hand she takes the apple with is dainty and bright and she gives me the barest hint of a smile when her fingers touch the smooth skin. Her lips are a pale coral against the snow-white of her face – barely alive at all.
I realize, almost as an afterthought, that her hair is white, too, and it pools around her shoulders and runs down her back like one of the frozen waterfalls of my homeland.
“Don’t!” the word rasps out from behind me, and I turn with a sneer to see my mortal guide pulling himself up on trembling limbs. He’s shaking all over. Blood runs in twin trails from his nose and through that accursed beard. “You must not feed her or leave anything with her. This is our way.”
I draw my hand back, but I leave the apple with her. She cups it in her open palms, a tiny flame of yellow amongst all the ghastly whites and greys and iridescence of her and her cage.
“What spell do you fear breaking?” I ask with an arched eyebrow. I don’t like being told what to do. None of my kind do. Now if he had begged, or bargained, well that might have been different. I love to hear begging fall from the lips and I’ll even stop a game of merrels for a good bargain.
“The one that brings her back here every May Day and only then. The one that keeps her bound – senseless and dreaming – in the depths all the other days of the year. She’s not a girl anymore. She’s a channel between us and the gods. Didn’t you see your future? Don’t you realize she showed it to you?”
I make a noncommittal noise. My guide looks back and forth from her to me and back again.
“Were you not pleased?”
“Oh, I was very pleased,” I say, winking at the oracle. She does not appear to notice, as she takes her place again in a flutter of mayflies. She sits up on her dais, cross-legged, cheeks slightly flushed under the white bodies of the mayflies, but now with the golden apple in her hands, as if she holds a baby sun waiting to be born. I feel as if her sadness has lessened by a shade and I am shocked to realize that pleases me.
