In Light's Shadow

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 21966–1972

Birthday Cake, January 15–16, 1966

Gavin learned that Mama was a secret when he was six, on the twins’ eleventh birthday, January 15, a Saturday. Charlie and Elliott had asked for their usual lemon-orange double-layer cake, but that year, for their double-one birthday, they wanted the cake to also be a Roosevelt cake, with red roses on grass-green icing. Mama tried to talk them out of it. Everybody had a birthday cake in the dynastic colors, ever since the first-ever TV broadcasts from the White Palace, back in 1956, the year after the twins had been born. The Crown Prince had turned sixteen and the Emperor and Empress had invited the whole nation to the party. The broadcast had begun in the Great Hall and followed the royal family from room to room, until they finally went outside to the Rose Garden and the party. The cake, which covered an entire table, had been decorated in the Roosevelt dynastic colors. Didn’t they want to be special, to be different, to be unique, Mama asked. She bet even the royal family had different colored icing from time to time. How about chocolate icing, like last year? Or lemon and orange icing? Double the flavor, double-layer, doubled boys? Double the birthday luck? Or the Empire’s colors: red, white, and blue? With the Columbian eagle-and-shield-and-star? An imperial flag cake? With a really, really big eagle?

The twins would have none of it. Dynastic colors, on a lemon-orange cake. Everybody else did, why couldn’t they? Besides, Gavin got the kind of cake he wanted on his birthday. Daddy got to pick his cake on his. She had her favorite cake on hers. That’s how it’s supposed to be, right? The birthday boy always gets to pick, right? First, a movie, then steak for dinner, then a red roses-on-grass-green cake, rose-red and grass-green ice cream for dessert, and presents. First one twin spoke, then the other, their towheads bobbing up and down like golden apples in a tin tub at an Autumn Harvest party.

Mama gave in. Gavin knew she would.

He wanted to help Mama carry things from the refrigerator to the red Formica countertop of the snack bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room. Eggs, stick butter, milk. He promised he would be careful. He promised he wouldn’t drop anything. He promised he would walk very slowly and nothing would drop and splatter on the white-and-yellow tile floor. He wanted to help Mama break the eggs into the big bright green mixing bowl. He knew how to do it: a quick tap on the side, push in, and let the bright yellow yolks drop. Then, stir and stir until all the yolks become yellow soup. No eggshells. He loved the smells of the cake cooking, the scents of lemons and oranges.

Gavin wanted to sit in the kitchen and just breathe. No, he had to go the movies with Daddy and the twins. But he had gotten sick during the night and thrown up and thrown up. He hadn’t even been able to hold down the dry toast that Mama had made him for breakfast. Mama sent him back to bed, after shooing the twins out of the room all three of them shared. After ginger ale and crushed ice, cherry-flavored children’s aspirin, double-strong chamomile tea, with extra valerian, and Pepto-Bismol, Mama had drawn the curtains, enclosing him in a warm darkness that was later permeated with orange and lemon, as he slept.

Gavin woke to a quiet house. He felt better; he felt hungry. He listened to the dark as he lay there, trying to the name the sounds he heard. Mama, down the hall in the kitchen. She was singing. Maybe she hadn’t finished making the cake yet. Maybe she was getting ready to make the frosting and he could lick the bowl. The smell of the cake had been replaced by the aroma of meat, onions, and mushrooms. He recognized the song she was singing; he had sung it to him when he was very little, to get him to fall asleep. He remembered her face, framed with dark hair like his, looking down at him in the bed, her eyes the same intense honey-brown as his. Her skin seemed to be glowing with a pale, pale yellow light. Another pale light seemed to be behind her eyes, as if a lit candle sat behind the brown. It was a song without words, just sounds, he thought, funny syllables of noise.

Gavin got up slowly, pushed back the brown spread, and very softly walked to the door, like a hunter in the forest. No twigs would snap under his feet. Maybe he could surprise her. He crept down the hall until he reached the door to the kitchen, which was outlined in yellow light, and then pressed his ear to the wood. The hall was dark, the late afternoon light had given way to shadows, as the sun had already set. He had slept the whole day, thanks to the tea. Mama was still singing the same song, her voice low and sweet.

Gavin cracked open the door. The table was set and he could smell the steaks in the oven. She had spread the old, white lace tablecloth she only brought out on special occasions. Her mother had made it, the grandmother Gavin had never known, dead long before he was born, and long before Mama and Daddy had even met. The twins and Daddy would be home soon. He watched her place two long, thin white candles on the table, one on each end, as she always did on birthdays. Then she reached into her skirt pocket and came up empty-handed. She stood still a moment, as if she were trying to remember something. Then she glanced around the room, looked out the kitchen window. What was she looking for? Gavin froze. Please don’t let her see me. I want to surprise her.

If she had seen him, Gavin knew she would have called his name and asked if he was feeling better and did he want to help her pour the tea? She stood at the table for another moment, shrugged her shoulders, and then went and pulled the kitchen curtains and shut the door to the den. Apparently satisfied, Mama went back to the table and leaned over the candle the farthest from Gavin. She touched the tip of the candlewick with her pointer finger. The tip of that finger glowed a bright, bright yellow, then red, and the candle was lit. When she had lit the other candle the same way, Gavin pulled open the hall door.

“Mama. How did you do that? “

“Do what? How did I do—” Then she stared at him. “Your eyes. The fairy light, the fey fire, oh, baby. I thought that since the twins haven’t, that you’d be safe,” she added in a much softer voice, as if she were talking to herself. “Fey traits are recessive; I thought you were all safe. Oh, God.”

“Afraid of what? Safe from what? How did you do that? Light the candles with your finger? What’s recessive?”

“Never mind. I didn’t light the candle with my finger. Gavin, you know people can’t do that.”

“But I saw you.”

“Gav, you were just imagining—”

The door burst open and first Charlie, then Elliott rushed in, talking so fast that it was impossible to tell where Charlie’s words ended and Elliott’s began. Their faces were red from the cold and their blond hair stuck up like so many spikes. They both wore their favorite Carolina-blue hooded sweatshirts, with rams charging from the middle of their chests.

“We didn’t see the movie, not all of it. It got turned off. Gav, Mama, a para was there and he started glowing—”

“He lit up the place with a really odd light.”

“A funny color, a kind of grey, wasn’t it, Charlie?”

“Yeah, a kind of grey, I’ve never seen a grey light before, it was all over him, and it was sort of moving, like it was crawling all over him, he was just two rows up from us, and he kept glowing and he got up and somebody started shouting to call the police.”

Gavin watched his mother, trying to hear what she was saying to herself: “A grey light. He must have been sick, a fever. Why in the world did he go to a movie?” Had she said that? What did she mean? What about her finger? What did she see in his eyes?

“Mama, how did you know he was sick?” he asked in a low voice, as he pulled at her sleeve.

“Sick? Gav, what are you talking about? Are you feeling better? Anyway, somebody yelled for the police and this para tried to run away, but some big guy grabbed him and threw him on the floor—”

“Hush, Gav, never mind.”

“Everybody was yelling and screaming!”

Daddy came in then, unwinding his scarf, his blond hair as tousled as the twins. “God, it’s cold out there. Did they tell you? About the para, a fairy kind? He wasn’t a pureblood, no pointed ears. A hybrid, trying to pass. You know what they say about hybrids. God, he must have been stupid to go to a movie and start glowing. Y’all go put your coats up, and go wash your hands. Dinner looks about ready, right, El?” For a moment, Daddy was staring really hard at Mama. Then he stopped and starting pulling off his sweatshirt.

“He got sick unexpectedly,” she said to herself and nodded to Daddy. “In just a few minutes. What happened to the hybrid, Paul?”

“Police took him away,” Daddy said, his voice muffled, as he pulled his sweatshirt over his head. “Execu—you know what police do to hybrids. Tomorrow on TV, I think someone said. Why? So, my little guy is feeling better, is he?” Daddy reached down and hoisted Gavin up in the air, and Gavin started laughing and laughing as his father lifted him up and down and then wheeee! around the room.

For the rest of the evening, Gavin forgot the questions he had asked his mother. He forgot she had lit the candles with her finger and that she had seen some kind of light in his eyes. Mama wouldn’t let him eat steak (“Wait another day; I’m afraid you’ll get sick again”), but he could eat birthday cake and ice cream and wear the funny hat and blow on the horns.

Gavin remembered when he was in bed, the twins asleep across the room. She had lit the candles with her finger. She had said something about a light in his eyes. He would try to remember to ask her tomorrow.

* * * *

Eleanora stayed up later than everyone else that night. To clean up, she had said. To tidy up, and get to church. No one argued with her as she busied herself in the kitchen. She breathed a huge sigh when all the birthday stuff was sorted and out of the way and done with before tomorrow and getting ready to go to church. She heard Paul close the door to their bedroom. She was alone. She had lied about needing to stay up late to clean up. Most of the cleaning and putting up had been done right after dinner, when the boys had followed Paul into the den to watch TV. Now there were only a few things left in the sink needing her attention. They didn’t take long. After that, Eleanora wiped down the counter tops, the table, and the stove. Finally, knowing she was putting off thinking about what she had to think about, Eleanora swept the kitchen and den floors one more time. The stray crumbs she found she took as proof of the job’s necessity.

The house was very still. The kitchen was clean; the silverware and dishes were clean. Everything was put up. She turned off the kitchen and den lights, and sat down on the dark brown couch in the living room. Now she had to think about what she would say to Gavin when she could speak to him without anyone else overhearing. She stared out the living room picture window into the dark front yard. The pines and cedars, planted as a buffer for the highway noise, made one huge jagged shadow. The early winter sky was clear. What would she tell her six-year-old son, her quarter-fey hybrid son? What about Charlie and Elliott? Already eleven and nothing: no fairy lights in their eyes, no unexpected glowing beneath the skin. That nothing fey had manifested did not mean they were safe, however. As Dr. Deerman had told Eleanora more than once: with hybrids one never knew. The fey blood could show up early, as it had with Gavin and his eyes, or years could pass before such lights turned on, without any warning. Or, Dr. Deerman told her, sometimes, enough times to make it worth the risk, nothing. No visible fey markers at all. No iron sensitivity, no awareness of the protective sealant on the steel appliances, the car.