“I can’t! They need help.”
“You being there will make it worse.”
“No. No, no.” I shake my head as I walk backwards. “I might not be the best with a healing wand, but I know how to use a healing rock.” My laughter hurts my throat.
“But you’ll distract Richard, and he’s most likely their target.”
I crumble onto the bed. My body might be still now, but my heart feels like it’s racing around the room. “Well, then, I can… I’ll start the funeral arrangements. Do you have a list of clowns? And ventriloquists?”
I laugh, thinking about the bodies I saw on the branch. Some of them were missing limbs. “We could have puzzle rounds.” I nod. “Throw all the pieces into a box, and see how long it takes people to dig through and find their matches.” My eyes scrunch up as I look at Jace. “That’ll be fun, right? Do fairies still like carnivals?”
He doesn’t say anything, so I carry on, “I know some of them were in alotof pieces, and you might be worried we can’t play with them, but you only need their heads for the face-in-the-hole boards, you know? I can make some really cool boards where they’re getting fucked by a yondu; that way, their injuries don’t look too out of place. Or if we just find their legs, then we can have them sticking out of the board like they’re bending over. Then we can have someone back there to service the glory hole. Or if just a hand, then, then –” I’m laughing too hard to finish my thoughts. Tears are streaming down my face.
But they’re happy tears.
Because a good brownie is never sad.
A good brownie never mourns the dead.
So I press a hand to my chest, and I laugh loud and hard. “That’ll be funny, right?”
I think about the funeral we had for my dad and six of his brothers and sisters. That was such a joyous occasion. I didn’tshed a single tear. Not when the ogre pulled them out of her vagina one by one, covered in cum and blood. Not when her troll partner scraped Uncle Puddy off his dick, then dropped him as a splat on the ground. I laughed loud and hard when cousin Madi created a pantomime of their deaths, having them march inside a cut-out vagina and then get bludgeoned to death by a ram worked by six men.
I sat on dad’s knee as a ventriloquist made him laugh and crack jokes just like he used to.“How many brownies does it take to make an ogre’s pussy tight enough for a troll? Seven!”
It was all so happy and celebratory. I want to bring that here. That laughter and good memories and none of this pain.
“Saragese…” I start. “Saragese…”
Marrabel turns sharply away from me, her fists clenched at her sides. As she storms into the sitting area, Jace slides the two doors across the archway of the bedroom. He turns to me, his face emotionlessly empty. Then sadness fills his features, and he steps towards me, opening his arms.
I lurch up and stumble into them with zero hesitation. My bubbles of laughter shake the both of us as his arms wrap tight around me. I press my face against his chest.
“Why does deathhurthere?” I rasp. “It’s not supposed to hurt.”
He doesn’t say anything, but I already know the answer. It’s the only logical conclusion.
“Fairies give off pain pheromones when they die, don’t they?” I rub my cheek against his chest, smearing my tears. “But then why aren’t you affected? How are you not…”
He squeezes me tighter. “I’ve lost a lot of people close to me,” he says slowly. “The pain is merely familiar, not gone.”
The sliding doors of the room are pulled open.
“But I’ve lost a lot of people too,” I say. “So why is it not the same?”
“Because the connections are real here.”
Jerking my head up, I pull away from Jace so I can look around him. Fabia, my best friend in all the Seven Planes, is standing in the doorway, staring at me, her face the softest I’ve ever seen it.
“I don’t understand. They’re real in Brownston too.”
She glances at Jace as he turns around. With a quick nod, he moves past her. The door clicks shut behind him. Sighing heavily, Fabia steps forwards. She grabs my hand and leads me back to the bed. We sit down side by side on the edge. She slings an arm around me, and I fall against her side.
“Why is this any different?” I ask with a giggle. “Why iseverythinghere so different?”
Her breath leaves her in a noisy exhale. She squeezes my arm, then rubs it. Silence pushes between us, making itself annoyingly at home. It makes me think of my cousin Madi; once, she told a travelling Razian merchant to make himself at home when he stopped by for a cup of tea. So he kicked her out, claiming he liked his house nice and quiet.
I wish this silence was a good type of quiet. But it’s not. It’s heavy and uncertain and cold. Shaking my legs, I shift against Fabia, mooching off her warmth.
