I Wish

Chapter 26

Nia seemed to take way more pleasure in explaining things that Ivy hadn’t bothered to. In fact, she almost vibrated out of her skin with excitement, and smiling. Always, always smiling. We sat together, a reasonable distance apart because I’m not stupid, and I knew Ivy would come looking for me eventually. She smiled widely, in a way that showed a lot of teeth but wasn’t menacing. I wasn’t confident if that was intentional or by lack of capability, but she wasn’t threatening.

“So,” I said when we’d talked our way around anything of import, taking about fifteen minutes to do so, “I am especially curious, Queen of what?” There was a look on their face, like she couldn’t believe that I’d had to ask. I frowned at this, it wasn’t like Ivy ever brought it up.

“The Seelie court,” Nia said proudly, “they call her the Queen of threes.” I let out an over dramatic gasp, as if any of that meant anything to me at all. It didn’t, and it occurred to me that I need Ivy to tell me way more about this place if I wanted to avoid unpleasantness like — thwack. My thought-train, forcibly derailed by memory. I did my best not to act like a crazy person, and yes, I know I wasn’t one, but if you felt enough like you were it hardly made any difference. 

“That sound’s appropriately fabulous, the significance of the number three?” I queried. She stopped and looked at me. I sighed. As much fun as she was clearly having with me, she wanted to avoid being responsible for spelling out every little thing.

“The Summer and Spring courts band together to form the Seelie court, and Autumn and Winter create the Unseelie court. I wouldn’t bother with them, though. The Unseelie court is not to be trifled with,” Nia said waving her hands around like she could use them to paint a picture of the point she was trying to get across, “Queen Ivy is ruler of the Summer court, Spring court and the Seelie court.” So, she hadn’t just neglected to tell me she was Queen, but she was Queen three times over? I took the opportunity to stare off into the distance while I thought about how I wanted to respond to that. It was easy enough to do, easier to make someone think that it was only a mere distraction. Around us was a village. I say village because even if it was the size of a sprawling city, it was built with cottages like in the English countryside… or at least as much as they advertised them to watch like in TV and movies. Further than that, there was nothing but nature in full bloom, spring at its best. 

“I don’t know if I want to deal with that,” I muttered, and Nia laughed. There wasn’t a lot more that we talked about that wasn’t really life-changing information. I found out she was a Lady, and that while you could be born into that role, you could also earn it. Nia was one of six Ladies, and respectively six Lords. She made her career as a social worker, or at least that was what I could tell from what she was saying. It was probably good that we were just trading small talk because Ivy walked in not much later, and she was furious. 

“Leave,” she spoke impetuously. Nia bowed, and yeah, that was definitely her Queen, before scurrying out the door. My heart hammered in my chest as I looked at Ivy. A sharp, gritty layer of black sand coated my perception of her now, or at least for now. I knew what she was capable of in my name, had no choice unless I wanted to be particularly stupid about it, and it didn’t have the terror it should have attached to it. I was very much looking forward to going home, so I could sort out how I felt about it without her interference. That might be unfair of me to say, but I knew that she’d try to weigh things in her favour. Even if I was wrong, her presence was enough. She’s been terrifying, arguably the monster, but instead of standing between me and safety, she stood behind me. Ready to annihilate all comers. “What? You aren’t going to talk to me now that you remember what I did?” she scoffed when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence.

“I always remembered,” I bit back sharply. What is with her and disregarding my feelings? She calmed at that, and started to walk forwards to take the place that Nia had sat. Only inched closer, enough to make it look like I had made damn sure it hadn’t when Ivy walked in. “Is it time for me to go home yet?” I asked tonelessly, and at a loss as to where to go from here. According to the pattern to the little dance we were doing with each other here, that meant it was time to go. Her face twisted into an ugly sneer.

“No,” she hissed, and I blew out a sigh. Pinching the bridge of my nose in an attempt to not completely blow my stack. No? Are you kidding me?

“What do you mean no?” I said, a dare to repeat that ringing in every syllable. Her eyes hardened, and she looked at me like I was something she was responsible for. Not in the kind of way that a partner is supposed to be, but like a child that she had to keep from doing anything dumb.

“No, it isn’t time to go home. At this point, you’re not going home,” she said with a shrug, as if to ask me exactly what I was going to do about that. Pushing me to consider what I could do about it. My first instinct horrified me, and I couldn’t help but let that colour the expression on my face. “It isn’t bad here,” she huffed, “You’ll learn to like it.” 

“You have to sleep some time,” I said in a deadly voice, it was enough that she looked up and stopped pouting.

“It’s just a vacation,” she said in an oddly small voice for all her former demands, “You can stay here as long as you like, and I can drop you back with your other family five minutes after you leave.” Somewhere in all of that, the part where I could be placed back five minutes after I left no matter how long I stayed was swallowed by the way she’d emphasised the word other.

“Other,” I asked her, somehow even more furious at her last misstep, “Other family?”

“Yes. Your family that isn’t me,” she said with a nod, and pride at the way she’d sidelined the people who had looked after me my entire life and regulated them to being secondary. Who the hell gave her the right to do that?

“I’m leaving,” I said, rushing to my feet and preparing to stalk off because I wanted to hurt her. I did, it was unreal. I never realised how mad I could get at someone, but I was finally realising what the expression seeing red meant. My hands were clenched tightly at my sides, tingling with the need to actual claw her face off, and my whole body shook. Even as it was happening, and I watched the single thread holding me to being a reasonable person and not, you know, abusive scum got more frayed as she had the gall to look offended by all this, I thought to myself... this was insane. As far as I was concerned, whether it was weird or not, we were in some kind of relationship. Mated was a big word, and I appreciated that she didn’t throw it around a lot. It still meant that no matter how made I was, I need to have more respect for both of us. 

I was the kind of person who vandalised White Ribbon posters. If you don’t know what White ribbon is, it’s a domestic violence service. That provides services for domestic abuse committed against women by men. The blatant discrimination that it boasted of so proudly lasted about two weeks of me having to walk past in school before I took a thick metallic silver pen to it. When it was done, I had crossed out women and replaced it with everybody, and the word men was replaced with anyone. At the bottom I’d scrawled ‘Anyone can be an abuser, anyone can be a victim. Wake up.’ The school had tried to initiate some very serious consequences for that, but in the end couldn’t prove it. Despite there being several witnesses, but as the soccer team said they were just so damn happy to be not considered irrelevant. For people to not look at them and go, oh, you’re a bloke. You’ll be fine. Just because something was more likely didn’t mean that the minority was unimportant, or that anyone was going to stop helping the majority by acknowledging that they weren’t the only ones who needed help.

“Don’t you dare,” she spat, rising with me and doing her best to cut off my escape. Oh, that was so not helping. It was like the kind of throbbing you get with a headache but instead of pain it was an unbearable need to start screaming abuse and throw the most wicked left hook I was capable of.

“Move. Just move,” I said raggedly, “I am so mad I am actually scared that I will hurt you. Just leave, before I do something I’m going to regret.” I sounded miserable as well as furious, but that seemed to escape her notice as she geared up for this fight.

“I saved you. I brought you here, and healed your injuries. I protected you from your own foolishness, when you couldn’t take care of yourself,” Ivy growled, drawing up to her full imposing height, “All I wanted was to spend some time with you. Time not under review of your feelings, or what you think. Time where you couldn’t run away. What more do you want?”

“For not to marginalise my family,” I yelled, “Without those people, I wouldn’t exist as the person I am, and you seem to be going nuts to hoard me all to yourself. I say you should have a little more respect. Your majesty.” It wasn’t guilt, she was still angry, and I was beginning to notice a pattern. Ivy didn’t do lots of emotions at once, she did one really big emotion and then moved on to the next one. Discarding the old one completely, it was truly disorientating, but unfortunately seemed to be contagious. So while she didn’t look guilty, she did calm down a little.

“I just wanted an honest chance,” she said, and it was quiet enough that after my shouting I could barely hear her over the ringing in my ears. “You stay, I’ll leave,” she followed it up with, stepping aside. 

“I’m going home,” I said flatly, and uncompromisingly. She smiled sadly.

“You might find your way back if you go, but I promise you that it will be centuries after they’ve died, and you know I can’t lie,” Ivy said bowing her head, her had falling like a waterfall over her face in an attempt to hide her obvious shame, “There is no life without you, though. There is no getting over you. There is just madness, and eventually death. I need you to understand I am not playing, and I am not letting either of us hurt like that just because you can’t imagine what I could possibly like about you so much that it’s worth all of this. I don’t expect you to work it out immediately, I don’t expect you to trust me, but one of us needs to be brave right now. One of us needs to be brave, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that it needs to be me right now.” I could feel my eyes welling up with tears. Not emotional tears of sadness, or pity. Nothing as kind as sympathy or empathy. I was near-crying because I metaphorically wanted to kill her so badly that it almost wasn’t metaphorical, and I knew at some point in the future I would regret it if I followed through, and that was frustrating. In the end, I knew I wasn’t capable of responding and still remaining an, at least, semi-decent human being. So, I just left. I left and that didn’t feel like I was accomplishing anything by it either. What was wrong with me?