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Ravus put down his mortar with a scowl and walked around the table. She felt a thrill run through her that was only part terror.
She was very conscious of lying in what must be his bed, but she didn't want to get out without any pants on.
"Ah, you mean with glamour?" He hesitated. "Make myself look less terrifying? Less hideous?"
"You're not—," Val began, but he held up his hand and she stopped.
"My mother was very beautiful. Doubtless, I have a broader idea of beauty than you do."
Val said nothing, nodding. She didn't want to think too closely about whether she had a broad idea of beauty. She'd always thought that she had a fairly narrow one, one that included her mother and other people who tried too hard. She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.
"She had icicles in her hair," he continued. "It got so cold that frost would form, clumping her braids together into crystalline jewels that would clatter together when she moved. You should have seen her in the candlelight. It lit up that ice like it was made of fire. It's a good thing she couldn't stand in the sunlight—she would have lit up the sky."
"Why couldn't she stand in the sunlight?"
"None of my people can. We turn to stone in the sun—and stay that way until nightfall."
"Does it hurt?"
He shook his head, but didn't answer. "Despite all that beauty, my mother never showed her true self to my father. He was mortal, like you, and around him, she always wore a glamour. Oh, she was beautiful glamoured, too, but it was a muted beauty. My brothers and sisters—we had to wear it, too."
"He was mortal?"
"Mortal. Gone in one faerie sigh. That's what my mother used to say."
"So you're… ?"
"A troll. Faerie blood breeds true."
"Did he know what she was?"
"He pretended not to know what any of us were, but he must have guessed. At the very least, he must have suspected we weren't human. He had a mill that sawed and dried wood from the several hundred acres of trees that he owned. Ash, aspen, birch, oak, willow. Juniper, pine, yew.
"My father had another family in the city, but my mother pretended to know nothing about that. There was a great deal of pretending. She made sure all my father's timber was fine and flat. It was beautifully planed and would neither warp nor rot.
"Faeries—we do nothing in moderation. When we love, we are all love. So was my mother. But in return she asked that he ring a bell at the top of the hill to let her know he was coming.
"One day my father forgot to ring the bell." The troll got up and walked over to the boiling milk and poured it into a Chinese cup. The smell of cinnamon and chocolate wafted toward her.
"He saw us all as we really were." Ravus sat beside her, long black coat pooling on the floor. "And fled, never to return."
She took the cup from him and took a cautious sip. It was too hot and burned her tongue. "What happened then?"
"Most people would be content for the story to end there. What happened then is that all my mother's love turned to hate. Even her children were nothing to her after that, just reminders of him." Val thought about her own mom and how she'd never questioned that she loved her. Of course she loved her mother—but now Val hated her. It didn't seem right that one could so easily become another.
"Her vengeance was terrible." Ravus looked at his hands and Val remembered the way he'd sliced them open holding a sword by its blade. She wondered if his rage was so great that he hadn't noticed the pain. She wondered if he loved the way his mother did.
"My mother was very beautiful, too," said Val. She wanted to speak again, but the single sip of the hot chocolate had filled her with such a delicious languor that she found herself slipping down into sleep once more.
Val woke to voices. The goat-hooved woman was there, speaking softly to Ravus.
"A stray dog, I might understand," she said. "But this? You are too softhearted."
"No, Mabry," Ravus said. "I am not." He looked in Val's direction. "I think she wants to die."
"Maybe you can help her after all," Mabry said. "You're good at helping people die."
"Have you come here for any purpose other than to smear me with my own filth?" he asked.
