Not that the house was home. In some ways, Esmerelda was.
Solanda used the cat door. Esmerelda’s parents were talking softly in the parlor.
“Perhaps boarding school,” the mother was saying. “If she is this incorrigible now, imagine what she’ll be like when she gets older.”
“Give it time, darling,” the husband said. “She’s still a child. She will learn, as we all did.”
“It’s just I despair of ever teaching her manners. You didn’t see her with that Fey….”
Solanda had heard enough. She hurried up the stairs. She would talk to Esmerelda tonight. Tomorrow the Wisps would come, carrying a bit of stone in their tiny fingers. They’d fly in the open window, leave the stone on the bed and it would mold itself into a replica of Esmerelda while Solanda was leading the real Esmerelda out of the house.
Quick, neat, and completely perfect. The parents wouldn’t have to worry about manners or boarding school. Esmerelda would get her heart’s desire. And Solanda would have her reason for staying in Nye.
The door to Esmerelda’s room was open. Esmerelda sat beneath a lamp, a long skirt over her lap. The air was stuffier than usual, and Solanda saw that the window was closed.
It had probably been closed all day. Sunlight had poured in, and the poor child had had to sit in the heat, working on some task her mother assigned her.
When Solanda got close, she saw what it was. The child was attempting to mend her own ripped dress.
The stitches were uneven, and Esmerelda had stitched the bottom layer of fabric onto the top. That would make her mother even angrier. Esmerelda’s eyelashes were stuck together, her nose was red, and there were tearstains along her cheeks.
“Goldie!” she said, and let the dress topple to the floor. She was wearing another dress, equally inappropriate to the hot weather. She reached for Solanda, but Solanda jumped onto the windowsill.
She was not going to be hugged by a hot sweaty child — not, at least, until the window was open and the fresh air came inside.
Esmerelda glanced toward the door. She put a finger to her lips, as if she thought Solanda were going to give her away, and then called, “Mommy! Can I go to sleep now?”
Solanda froze in her spot. She didn’t want to be seen in here, not tonight. She wanted to have her conversation with Esmerelda in private.
“Are you done with your dress, darling?”
“Yes.”
Solanda looked at it. The dress was ruined. The poor girl would have an even more difficult day than usual tomorrow.
“Then blow out the lamp. Good night.”
“Good night.” Esmerelda pushed the door closed. Then she went over to the window and opened it.
A strong breeze came in, and on it, Solanda smelled rain. Maybe, after she spoke to Esmerelda, she would go outside. By then it would be raining, and she would be able to cool down.
Esmerelda put her hand over the lamp’s chimney and blew. The flame inside the glass went out. Solanda blinked in the darkness, letting her eyes adjust. It only took a moment. There were clouds over the moon this night, and it was very dark.
Esmerelda went back to her chair. “I wish you knew how to sew, Goldie.”
“I don’t,” Solanda said. “But I know someone who does.”
Esmerelda let out a small yelp, and put her hands over her mouth. She peered around the room as if looking for the source of the voice.
Solanda had to go slowly with this. The child wasn’t used to magic, not like Fey children were.
“I could take the dress to her tonight,” Solanda said, “and by morning, you wouldn’t even know there had been a rip in it.”
Esmerelda’s eyes were wide. She finally turned in Solanda’s direction. “You can talk, Goldie?”
“As well as I can listen.” Solanda jumped from the windowsill to the bed. The room had cooled down. The fresh air felt marvelous. “What would you think, Esmerelda, if I took you to a place where you could wear comfortable clothes, play with children your own age, run and jump and swim to your heart’s content? What if I told you that you would never have to sew another stitch, have another music lesson, or sit in a corner when you’ve done something that your mother didn’t like.”
Esmerelda looked for her, but clearly didn’t see her. Cat’s eyes were far superior in the dark. Solanda watched the child lick her lips, rub her hand over her knees, and then sigh.
“How long would I stay?” Esmerelda asked.
“Forever,” Solanda said.
“Would I have to be a cat?”
Solanda laughed. For all her verbal sophistication, Esmerelda was still a child at heart. “No,” Solanda said. “You’ll stay just as you are.”
“Would Mommy come?”
“No.”
“Daddy?”
“No.”
Esmerelda’s shoulders stiffened. Her little body looked rigid. “Who would love me then?”
Solanda started. She hadn’t expected that question. “I would be with you,” she said.
Esmerelda was silent, as if she were thinking this over. “Where would you take me?”
“To my people,” Solanda said.
“I’d live with cats?”
“No,” she said gently. “With the Fey.”
Esmerelda gasped. She held onto her chair as if she expected to be dragged from it.
Solanda wondered if she should have said that, but she had never taken a child before. Certainly she knew of no one who had ever taken a child of this age.
But Chadn had said she had had to speak with the child, and the choice to come had to be the child’s. There was sense in that. Esmerelda, at age five, would always have a memory of living with her parents. She needed a memory of her choice to leave them.
“Esmerelda,” Solanda said. “I—”
“No!” Esmerelda screamed. “No!”
She launched herself out of her chair as if her voice had given the ability to move again.
“Help! Mommy! Help!”
Solanda’s ears went back. She hadn’t expected this from Esmerelda, not her sane, different child.
“Esmerelda, I only want to give you a better life—”
“Mommy! Daddy! Help!”
Finally Esmerelda pulled the door open and blundered into the hallway. Solanda followed, tail between her legs, ears still back. The little girl’s screams echoed down the stairs. Her parents had reached her, and they both put their arms around her. Esmerelda was too terrified to be coherent.
Then the mother looked up the stairs. She saw Solanda, her gaze flat.
And Solanda realized she had no choice.
She Shifted, her body lengthening, her tail disappearing, her fur becoming skin.
Then she walked, naked, to the floor below.
Esmerelda’s mother gathered her child in her arms and backed away. The father placed himself in front of his small family, arms out.
“You came from the Black King, didn’t you?” the woman said. “To punish us by stealing our child.”
“It’s not about you,” Solanda said.
Esmerelda peeked around her father, eyes wide. Solanda had never, in her entire life, been so conscious of her nakedness.
“Wh-what do you want?” the father asked. He was trying to sound brave. Like most Nyeians, he was failing.
“I had hoped to take your daughter, but it seems that she prefers this place, even though you treat her as less than house pet. It seems, for reasons I cannot understand, that she loves you.”
“Of course she does,” the woman said. “We’re her parents.”
“As if that’s a divine right.” Solanda stopped on the middle stair.
The family cringed below her as if they expected her to strike them with a lightning bolt. She didn’t have that kind of magic. They had seen the extent of her powers, but apparently they didn’t know that.
“She is a child,” Solanda said. “She is to run and play. She is to have friends of her own age. She is to have comfortable clothing so that she can move without tripping. She is supposed to get dirty, to rip her skirts, and fall on her behind. She is to have some joy in her life. Do you understand?”
“I thought you Fey were supposed to leave us alone,” the mother said. “I thought —”
“Be quiet,” the father said.
Esmerelda clung to her father, her curiosity moving her closer.
“You will give her those things,” Solanda said, “or I will take her from you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the father said.
“You can’t do this,” the mother said. “You can’t change our customs. The Black King promised you wouldn’t.”
“A promise made to a conquered people is worth nothing,” Solanda snapped. “You will do what I say, or the child is mine.”
“Mommy.” Esmerelda reached for her mother. Solanda’s eyes narrowed. Couldn’t she see that her mother saw her only as a thing to be trained, to be forced into the right and proper life?
Probably not. It was too sophisticated a concept for her. The same innocence that allowed Esmerelda to accept a cat’s speech, allowed her to believe that she was loved.
“Do I take her now?” Solanda asked.
“No,” the father said. “We’ll do as you say.”
“But our friends —”
“Shut up,” the father snapped. “Do you want to lose her?”
For a moment, the mother’s gaze met Solanda’s and in it, Solanda saw something she recognized, a coolness perhaps, a calculation. How would that woman have answered if she had been asked
who would love me then?
Would she have dodged the answer like Solanda had? Or would she have heard it at all?
“She will stay with us,” the woman said. She sounded resigned.
Solanda felt a hope she hadn’t even known she had die inside her. “Then I’ll watch. You will treat that child as if she is more precious than gold. And if you fail, even once, she’s mine. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” the father said.
But Solanda did not take her gaze from the mother.
“Yes,” the woman said.
Esmerelda had stepped to her father’s side. She was still holding his leg. “Are you Goldie?” she asked.
Solanda gave her a small, private smile. “Only for you.”
The little girl slipped behind her father again. Her answer was clear, too. She would stay, no matter what. And Solanda had done all she could.
So she Shifted back to her cat form. For a moment, she watched them all, tail twitching, then she ran up the stairs and into Esmerelda’s room. She stopped for only a moment, knowing she would never return.
She leapt onto the windowsill, and sighed. She had just lost her excuse for staying on Nye. She was bound to the Black Family. She had to do as they wished.
Rugar wanted her to go to Blue Isle.
Where a Shifter awaited her care. A newborn child, with blue eyes. A child who would think her the closest thing she’d ever had to a mother.
Solanda looked over her shoulder. She heard Esmerelda’s voice, high, piping, excited; the soft answers of her parents. Solanda had lied to them. She would not be able to watch.
She hoped they would take good care of her little girl.
Then she jumped out the window, and climbed along a tree branch. Maybe her future had been preordained. Maybe she had no choice. She would raise a Black Heir, maybe kill one, and influence children.
How different would tonight have been if she had told the child that she would love her?
She would never know. Perhaps that was the moment in which everything could have changed. Maybe she had just missed her only chance to save herself.
“Destiny” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in French as “Destin” in
Faeries: Toutes Les Fantasy
, Hiver 2000-2001. It was first published in English in
Creature Fantastic
, edited by Denise Little, Daw Books, 2001.
About the Author
International bestseller Kristine Kathryn Rusch has written seven novels in the world of the Fey. Published all over the world, the Fey novels have recently been rereleased in the United States as audio books by Audible.com. For more information about her work, go to kristinekathrynrusch.com.
If you liked “Destiny,” you might like these works by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:
The Fey Series (beginning with
Sacrifice
)
Five Fantastic Tales
Five Feline Fancies
Heart Readers
Traitors
The White Mists of Power