Page 63 of Sleep No More

The Luidaeg’s attention swung back to me. I shied away, forcing myself not to back up any farther. It was a struggle, and I was proud when my feet didn’t move.

“I think I can guess which aspects you mean,” she said, and fully turned in my direction. “Do you know me?”

“By myth and reputation only,” I said, before adding a hasty “milady.”

“Oh, Dad’s fucking fruitful testicles, this is bullshit I did not need today.” The Luidaeg scowled. “You don’t know me at all? You don’t remember who we are to each other?”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life. Please don’t hurt me.”

“Okay.” The Luidaeg turned back to Ginevra. “So this is going to be fun. You haven’t convinced her to take the enchantment off herself yet?”

“She says she can’t,” said Ginevra. “Says she can’t get a proper grip on the spell.”

“Shit. She’s probably right about that. We’ll have to go down to the Undersea, get the other one.”

“August? She was on the surface when the spell came down. She’s here. She doesn’t seem to be able to see the threads the way her sister can. She can’t unravel Titania’s enchantments.”

“She can, she just doesn’t know how,” said the Luidaeg. She looked around. “We shouldn’t linger here. How did you even get here?”

“Toby bled on the Summer Roads key and used it to open a door,” said Ginevra.

“Oh. Well, I guess that’d do it.” The Luidaeg looked at me again. It was all I could do not to cower. “Okay, look. I am not your enemy. I’m not always your friend, either, but that’s beside the point. I am literally incapable of lying to you. If we walk away and leave you here, you will die. The forest will eventually claim its own. Most people, I’d be down for that if they annoyed me. You, though, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into, and I’d rather not start over with your gormless excuse for a sister, so I’m gonna need you to come with us. Get it?”

Arguing with one of the Firstborn is never a good idea. Arguing with a naked daughter of Maeve somehow seemed like an even worse idea than that. I forced myself to nod.

The Luidaeg threw her hands up, turning away from me. “There, was that so fucking hard? Now we just need to reset her back to her normal irritating baseline before kitty kills someone, and we’ll be fine.”

“You’re naked,” said Grianne.

“Am I? I hadn’t noticed. I was too busy spitting out roses and hawthorn tree, which, very funny, ha ha, Stepmother. I am not Merlin, nor was meant to be.” The Luidaeg snapped her fingers. The dead leaves on the clearing floor rose up and slithered along the length of her body like a great, rustling serpent, becoming a form-fitting dress in shades of decay, black and brown and bruised gray-green. “That better?”

“Yes,” said Grianne.

“Great. Glad to meet with your approval. Now come on.” The Luidaeg began striding imperiously forward, and the rest of us followed her, since it was that or get left behind.

There were no more desire paths, no more need to watch where we were stepping: oh, no. Where the Luidaeg walked, the ground cleared itself, briars retreating into the wood, tree roots flattening themselves beneath the soil to create a perfectly smooth surface. She never looked back, just kept walking, her chin up and her shoulders back, giving no sign that she cared whether or not the rest of us were there.

After a time, she started to talk.

“We always knew she wanted this version of Faerie,” she said. “I mean, I guess that’s a very sweeping statement, because in this case, ‘we’ just means Mom and my oldest siblings, but she and Mom used to fight about it where we could hear. Titania wanted Mom and all her kids to go away, to retreat into deepest Faerie and create our own worlds, and leave the worlds we already had for her and her precious, perfect children. And she wanted Dad, too. That sort of goes without saying. I used to lie awake during the day wishing Mom would say sure, okay, whatever, and gather us all up, and retreat into the distance. I was tired of burying my brothers and sisters, tired of hearing the night-haunts’ wings. I wanted to rest.

“Then I found out the reason Titania was so set on us being the ones to leave, us being the ones who abandoned everything was because the Heart of Faerie was part of what she was asking us to walk away from. We didn’t talk about the Heart much, even then. People today don’t even seem to remember it exists. Faerie came from Oberon and his wives; they came from the Heart. A place and a power that, for some unknown reason, decided to spit out three effective gods who couldn’t get along for more than five fucking minutes. Without a connection to the Heart, we would die. So Titania’s grand plan, her awesome idea, was for all the beasts and monsters to leave of our own free will, so we could wither and fade far away from her, where she wouldn’t have to watch us die. She wanted us gone so badly that she was willing to see us all dead. We refused to go. Dad found out what she’d been trying to talk Mom into, and told her to cut it out, and I guess back then he made it stick.

“Now . . . if she knocked Dad down before she started this whole thing, and I’m guessing she must have, she doesn’t have anyone to balance her. She doesn’t have anyone to stop her. And we sure as hell aren’t going to be enough.” She stopped walking, taking a deep breath. “We have to break this spell so completely that she’d have to start over from scratch, and hope she’s pumped so much power into it that she can’t try again.”

“And we need to do it fast,” said Ginevra. The Luidaeg glanced at her. She shrugged. “Tomorrow’s Moving Day. Everyone says the Summer Queen is planning something big. She’s been preparing her Ride for weeks.”

“A Ride . . . If she made a strong-enough sacrifice to the Heart while her version of the world is in place, she might be able to convince it to remake Faerie on a more permanent basis,” said the Luidaeg, thoughtful and grim. “The whole thing, not however big a sphere she’s got now. All of Faerie, as defined by Titania.”

“That sounds . . . bad,” I said.

The Luidaeg glanced at me. “Normally, this would be sarcastic, but right now: kiddo, you’ve got no idea.”

“Does that mean you’re going to tell us?” asked Ginevra hesitantly.

The Luidaeg sighed. “I can’t, because I don’t know. The Three are to the Firstborn as the Firstborn are to their descendants: a magnitude of power enough greater as to defy measurement. Well, the Heart made them. The Heart made all of Faerie, when you get right down to it, and while it shapes Faerie through the Three, it’s at the root of everything. It’s the root, and they’re the branches. So yeah, if Titania thinks she can sell the Heart on her idea of a perfect world, that’s probably going to suck for everybody she doesn’t care for.”

“Has she tried this before?” I asked.