Hero is a Four Letter Word (9 page)

Liam cries so prettily, Jennet has to give him that. “But did they have to remove everything?”

“No,” Jen says, “But I told them to anyway. To keep it from coming back.”

“So you
made
them
cut out your
—”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes!”

“I didn’t know. David never —”

“Why would my father tell
you?
” Jen kicks his stomach gently, getting him to back up, and he stands. She regards Liam carefully, through the lens of this new information.

Liam shifts uncomfortably under her gaze, then stills himself and meets it. “It doesn’t matter, now,” Liam whispers.

They are silent again for a long time, neither of them willing to break their staring contest first.

“You can’t honestly tell me it bothers you,” Jen finally says.

“That you can’t have children? It does.”

“Why?” Jen spits. “It was
my
uterus. It has nothing to do with
you.
”

“It has
everything
to do with me!” Liam roars. And then he is gone, the door to her sitting room crashing against the wall, making the books in her shelf shiver with the force. He is a shadow streaking through the night, when she rushes to the window, swallowed by the the trees, lost to the darkness and the woods.

Jennet sits on her little window seat and shakes, one hand pressed hard against her mouth, the other cupping the wide, grinning scar that smiles on her stomach.

Jennet doesn’t see Liam for a week, and that makes her viciously pleased. When Karen and her husband and kids come over for dinner, Jen steadfastly does not allow herself to look at little Mattie and wonder. When Karen asks what happened to her beau, Jen tells an extremely edited version of the truth, and the three adults drink to being rid of douchebags.

It is Thanksgiving in the new world, and the elder Mathew Simmons is both Canadian and vegan. They celebrate with tofurkey and cranberry sauce, which Jen thinks is over-sweet and vile and ruins the flavor of the tofu, green bean casserole made with almond milk, and an utterly delicious agave pumpkin pie. When the meal is done, the Simmons go home, and the manor is devoid of servants and guests, and Jen feels horrifically, suddenly
alone.

A bottle of wine and then some sloshing around her system, Jen puts on her pea coat and shawl and grabs a candle. A torch feels too
harsh
. When she is outside she walks to the plain, lights the candle and sticks it into the grass by her knee, and sits in the middle of a fairy ring. She’s not surprised in the least when Liam sits down across from her after a few moments, clad once more in a green hoodie and black skinny jeans, even though Jen knows for a fact that he left them on her bathroom floor.

“
How
does it affect you?” she asks with no preamble.

“I missed you.” He reaches for her hand and she pulls it back, hides the pair of them in her pockets.

“How?”

“Do you know the worst part about the stories?” Liam asks. “It’s the magic. The
things
that the fae can do. They’re not sweet. They don’t laugh like bells, or have delicate dragonfly wings, or any of that. They are dark. They are
cruel.
Eyes of wood and a heart of stone,” Liam says, touching his own chest. “That’s what the Fairy Queen threatened.”

He rubs with the heel of his hand against his sternum, as if to make sure that his heart is still there, still warm, still beating. “He was human. He was employed in collecting heather and he fell asleep in a fairy circle. This one.”

Jen resist the recoiling urge to stand and jump out of it. But Liam,
Tam Lin
, is here with her, and she accepted his roses. She feels safe, here. When he reaches for her again, places his free hand on her knee, she doesn’t push him away.

“He begged her not to, told the queen who had captured him, forced him into her entourage and bed, raped him … he begged her not to take that, too. To blind and murder him. And the queen didn’t, because it was the human soul in his eyes that she loved so well, and his human heart that could swell and break that she loved to hold in her hands.”

“She hurt him,” Jen says, voice an awed hush, loathe to break into Liam’s story, to startle him away from it. But she has to ask.

Liam blinked slowly, inner gaze still on that faraway court, still wandering the fairy lands. “The Good People, we call them. The Kind Folk. But it’s not a name, it’s an invocation. It’s a plea. Be good to us, we beg. Because the Fae … they aren’t good. They’re capricious. What is a joke to them is crippling, maiming, murder to us. What they call lovemaking, we call rape. They forget that we’re so very breakable. And they love to see pain. Hurt reflected back in a lover’s eyes, a heart beating too fast, adrenaline sweat and cold fear. Wooden eyes can’t cry. A stone heart can’t bleed.”

And now he is starting to panic, breaths becoming gulpy and shallow, desperate, fingers twisting into his hoodie.

“Liam,” Jen says softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

He jumps, blinking hard, and made a sound like an aborted sob.

“I’m fine,” he lies, after he has caught his breath again.

Jen let the falsehood hang heavy in the air. “In the stories, Margaret saved Tam Lin.”

“That she did,” Liam agrees. “And she loved him well. But they realized after a time …
we
realized, that Maggie was aging and I … was not. The Faery Queen had accepted that Tam Lin would not be her tithe that year, and released me to wed my rescuer. But she did not let me go.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There was a child, in that painting,” Liam whispers, his voice crackling over the grief.

“The art historian said so,” Jennet agreed. “A little boy.”

“Rab,” Liam says. “He was seven years old. He died on All Hallows Eve.”

Understanding struck swift and cold. “Dear God.”

“Yes. I thought that was the Fae’s revenge for having humiliated their queen. To take my firstborn son. But then our third child, a girl, the queen took her too, in her seventh year. So Margaret bore no more children. Thomas grew up and I did not grow older. So on the next tithing I threw myself on the mercy of the queen, begged her to take me instead of him, for he was twenty one then, with a wife and a babe of his own. And she laughed and took my grandson instead. And she said to me,
Tam Lin, I will take all your children for all of time, or I will take the world. I will stop the tithe and Hell will be upon this earth. Which would you prefer?
And so I … what else could I do, Jennet? What else could I
do?
My blood, my children, for as long as there are children, or me and then
everyone else?
”

“What do you mean, your children?” Jennet asks. “It’s been centuries. Surely she can’t still be after … us. Me?”

Liam takes her hands and kisses each of the palms.

“The closer to my blood, the better,” Tam Lin explains. “When it grows too thin, I rejoin the family. I am a new lover, a husband, a cousin come a-courting. All Hallows Eve is next week, Jennet. You see my desperation.”

“You fuck your own descendants and get them pregnant on
purpose
?” Jen asks, aghast. She tries to pull her hands back and he doesn’t let go. The candle sputters.

“They enjoyed it, every one,” Liam says with a shrug. “You’ve had no complaints.”

Fury makes her suddenly strong. Jen wrenches a hand free and slaps him hard across the face.

Liam just grins as his lip splits and dribbles blood. “Ah, there’s my Maggie.”

Jen stands, stalks out of the circle and around it, too furious to leave, too upset to sit still. “And then what, you just let them die?”

“The Faerie Queen demands her tithes. Every seven years they must send a soul to hell, and about a third of the time she remembers that I owe her mine. The time between tithes is getting longer. It was nearly fifty years this time. Maybe one day she’ll forget.”

“And meantime, you give her your sons!”

“Sometimes the daughters,” Liam says, light and unconcerned, perhaps slightly confused by her fury.

“You
vile
,
disgusting
, unbelievable
monster
!” Jen snarls.

“They all volunteered! They consented!” Liam protests. “Each and every one of them! Out of love! If not for me, then for their family!”

“Love!” Jen screeches. “What does a
seven year old
know of love and sacrifice! That is not
informed consent
.”

“They knew the songs, the stories, they knew that one day they would —”

“Oh my god,” Jen hisses, and her knees dump her onto the edge of the circle with such force that she hears a crack. She falls onto her side, to desolate to sit up. “Oh my god,
Da
.”

There is a long silence, and then Liam crawls across the grass and buries his fingers tenderly in Jen’s hair, massaging gently across her scalp. “He did it for love of you, Jennet Carter. He wanted to save the world from hell and he consented. He saved me,” Liam finally chokes.
Tam Lin
. “He took my place.”

“It was a heart attack,” Jen protests.

“He was a tithe. He was a hero.”

“It’s not heroism,” Jen protests. “It’s suicide!” Jennet wrenches away from his touch, sitting up, turning around and shoving his shoulders hard enough that he slams back on the ground. His green eyes are wide and, for the first time, filled with fear.

“It could have been you. It
should have been you
, you revolting
coward
.”

Fire snaps in that emerald gaze, burning away the surprise, and he kneels up and shoves her back. “And then who, Jennet Carter of Carterhaugh? After the Faery Queen has had her
Tam Lin
, then who would she come after? My descendants? There’s only you left, and then who? Seven years after that? Who would she pick? The nearest human? Perhaps your Karen? She does so love her walks in the woods.”

Jen claps her hands over her ears. “Stop.”

“Or little Mattie?”

“Shut up!”

“Or perhaps some of your tourists, or your Mrs. MacDonald.”

“
Shut up!”

“I will not!” Liam roars. “Because
you will understand me
, Jennet Carter!”

“No!”

He grabs her wrists and yanks her hands down, trapping them in one hand. The other he digs into the hair behind her ear and holds her head still, so she can’t look away, can’t break his gaze.

“When my Maggie saved me from the tithing the Faery Queen vowed her revenge, and she is old, and she is dark, and she
has not forgotten.
The Faery Queen will
never give hell
one of her Fae, she will empty the world of humanity before she gives up her kin, and because I cannot
bear
to see the world destroyed I rip out my own heart and give it in their place. I give her children of my blood, yes, because they are raised to know what I will ask of them, and because I can
hold them here
.” He flings away her hands, thumps a fist into his own chest so hard it echoes through the night.

And does that make him a villain, or a hero, Jennet wonders, dazed.

Silence jams her ears, loud. Sizzling. It is broken only by wrenching, horrid sobs. Liam is curled on the grass, face against the dirt, shuddering, shivering, wracked. “I am a monster,” he moans. “I hate myself and I hate her and it’s not
fair.
I did no wrong, Jennet. I only fell asleep in a fairy circle. I didn’t mean to. How was to know that the Fae love children so much? The Erokling …”

A frozen horror stabs into Jen’s joints. Ghastly disgust and understand pull at her guts, and she swallows hard on the urge to vomit.

“
What do they do to the children they take?”

Liam only sobs harder. “Ask me not, oh, ask me not,” he weeps.

Jen stands outside of the circle they currently occupy. She watches the candle burn low, the stars wheel overhead. Slowly Liam’s sobs go quiet, then still. He is limp with exhaustion, cradling his head, moaning and shivering in the damp of the grass and the chill of the night.

As he’s been weeping, atoning for his sins, Jennet has been thinking. She is the daughter of Margaret, who stole Tam Lin once. It can be done again.

So when the candle is nothing more than a puddle of wax and a tenuous flame, she reaches out and pulls Liam’s head onto her lap. She threads her fingers through his golden hair, dries the tears from his freckled cheeks, and asks: “How do you summon a Fae Queen?”

“Jennet, no!” he says, jerking upright.

“Tell me, or I’ll find a way to do it myself, and I’m certain I’ll do something wrong. So. Tam Lin of legend, tell me how to summon a Fae Queen.”

“You need merely ask,” a deep and melodious voice says, from somewhere just outside of the circle. It is accompanied by an uncomfortably chill breeze and the scent of nightshade. Her voice is devoid of all accent, flat and unnatural, and all warmth as well.

Liam buries his head in Jennet’s lap and moans in fear.

“Ah, my Tam-a-Line,” the Queen croons.