She’s lovely. Every line of her smooth face and shrouded body feels as if it has come from another world. Is she mortal? Of course. Is she immortal? Most certainly. She may outliveme. Thousands of days are left in her mortal life but since she lives but one a year, she’ll live for millennia. As long as the magic doesn’t break, and her cage doesn’t open the spell will last.
Impossible as it may seem, it seems to sustain her and keep hunger and thirst at bay. And it also likely amplifies her gift. The gift I need right now.
I bow deep and with a flourish. Do seers like flourishes?
“I bid your favor, Mayfly Seer,” I say. “I bid you grant me a vision of the future and in return I offer this.”
I’m holding up my offering. She watches it with moon-bright eyes as if she can already guess what it might be. It’s a tiny ivory birdcage, carved in delicate whorls and flowers. It looks very like hers, but white to her black, curling to her jagged lines. I have covered the cage with a handkerchief, but I tear it away now and reveal the tiny cage and the bright canary within.
The bird sings its crisp, trilling song, and the Mayfly Seer gasps.
Her gasp is so distinct – so fresh – as if she’s never gasped before. A burst of mayflies puff from her open mouth. Her hands spring to her mouth as if she can call the gasp back, but she can’t. I’ve heard it and my soul smiles at the sound. If I had a half a century I would sit here and give her new gifts every May Day.
Despite the urgency of the moment, I can’t help the smile that creeps across my lips or the warmth that spreads across my heart. I’ve never seen a fae lady spit bugs when she opened her mouth. I’ve been missing out all these years.
I press the tiny cage between the bars of her cage, offering it to her and she takes it with eager hands. It’s not until she has it that I realize her mouth has gone thin and firm and her brows are drawn low.
She’s angry with me?
But that makes no sense. I have brought her something beautiful. It is the yellow apple times one thousand. A living thing. A companion.
I’m eager to see the happiness in her eyes when she realizes what it is.
Her eyes well up and a quicksilver tear slips down her cheek and now I’m the one who gasps. I have misjudged. I never misjudge.
My smile flees as she cradles the cage in her two pale hands. She holds it up to her eye level and for a moment I fear the bird has died or is injured and that is the explanation for her fury and sadness. My stomach does a quick flip. But no. The bird still sings.
With one delicate finger, the seer finds and lifts the minuscule latch and with another, she beckons the tiny bird out. It hops to her finger and through her tears, I see the most delicate of smiles break on her face like an ocean wave, and then she flicks her hand and the tiny bird flies free, past his cage. Past hers. Out into the late afternoon sun.
I cannot breathe. I am struck with beauty, an arrow to my ice-cold heart.
I watch her eyes follow the bird, watch her heart blossoming with joy as it flies free until it’s nothing more than a speck in the blue sky and then not even that.
And I won’t disturb this moment. Not even if I don’t get my answer. Not even then.
But after a long moment, she sighs and turns to me, gesturing to the ground in resignation.
I know what she wants. I kneel, ready for the vision at hand.
But the dull look on her face pains me and the tear tracks on her cheeks are my doing.
Regret fills me before the visions smash across my mind and everything else is lost to the fury of images and possibilities. I search and sift and look for what I need but my heart is heavy as I search. I failed in my offering. Will I fail at this, too?
I desperately need a vision of what to do with the Court of Madness and how to stop a war when I have no power and no weapon to defend myself. And I don’t know why she’d show it to me when last time all she showed me was a vision to fuel my yearning imagination. Perhaps I have misjudged in this, as well.
As I wait, I feel my memories surfacing and I know she sees. She sees how the king has humiliated me again and again in vengeance on my mother. She sees how I have been set task after impossible task. She sees me weeping alone. She sees the night I try to throw myself from a cliff, stopped only at the very last by Precatore who yanks me backward and backhands me twice to force me to my knees. “No cowardice, Vidar,” he snarls.
She sees it all and I am bare to her, naked before her knowing.
I’m trembling by the time it is done. No wonder some bleed or die. I feel as though I may join them.
But now the bubbles of future memories are back, and I sift again, searching. I find the solution eventually. I find it and hold it close, memorizing the glimpse of the future I’ve been given and while it solves all my problems, I can’t help but think it would have been better to have had the vision from last time – the vision of her embrace – or even better, a vision of a kiss. Her lips – filled as they are with mayflies – still entice me with their subtle curve and sly bow.
But when I come awake this time there are no mortals offering me games and wine. They have all fled. And there is no Mayfly Seer, either.
The moment my eyes blink open, the sun dips on the horizon and she flees with it, leaving only an aftertaste of shame in my mouth.
* * *
