“What are they? Are they fair dreams?”
Again, the boy shrugs. His eyes are on the floor and the storm. “They aren’t good or bad. Just dreams.”
“Lor, tell me. Please.”
“Sometimes . . . I dream you’re looking at me through a window. It’s strange.”
“A window?”
“I’m lying somewhere, and all your crows are hopping about. And someone’s making noise, but I can’t see them. And you’re leaning in a window over me and watching. Your eyes are a different color. Your hair too.”
Oh.
Oh.
He remembers those first moments? It seems so long ago that Iohmar took him from the human shack. Iohmar’s magic must have sealed in the memories when he pulled apart pieces of himself to turn Lor fae. Iohmar doesn’t remember his own infancy, but Lor is still so little, and the way he was created was unusual. He even remembers Iohmar’s appearance before the broken magic altered him. Perhaps it’s possible.
“I have that dream a lot,” Lor whispers, eyes fluttering across Iohmar’s appearance. “Daidí, what’s wrong with you?”
Iohmar sighs. He longs to sleep, body dragging him toward it with every breath, but this is not something to be fixed with silence.
“Sometimes I fall ill, Lor. It has happened before.”
“When?”
“Once when you were a little babe. Once after we crawled from the caverns. You were deep asleep.”
“Why?”
“I’m not . . . I’m not sure. I believe my magic is quite angry with me.” He pauses. Lor still watches, expectant, tears clinging to his eyes. “Some time ago, I split it, which is quite a dangerous thing to do. The threads you feel when you touch magic? Some of my own are tethered to you. Ever since then, it has done this strange thing. I always recover, but I cannot tell you exactly what it is. I do not know myself.”
He watches Lor mouth the word split. Such things are not known to the boy. Such things weren’t known to Iohmar before the woman under the mountain.
“Why did you split it?”
Iohmar’s eyes burn. He doesn’t allow himself to blink. “When you were a little babe, you were ill and weak. My magic alone could not help, nor could Galen’s. You would’ve died had I done nothing.”
“But the trees don’t give ill children. All the children the woods give are perfect. Like Rúnda. And Oisín. Everyone says that.”
Iohmar closes his eyes, then opens them long enough to say, “I found you in the human world, Wisp.”
“Found me?” Lor whispers.
“I . . .” Iohmar starts, then takes a long, deep breath. “Lor, set the fawn on the bed and come here. I will tell you the story.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t believe Lor will listen. But the boy shuffles to the bedside and places the animal on the blankets before stepping to Iohmar’s knees. Catching the rot drifting from his fingers, Iohmar settles his hand on Lor’s leg.
He tells him the story.
Beginning to end. From Lor as a helpless little babe to the strange woman beneath the earth who helped Iohmar bind their lives. Confessing to Rúnda was easy as breathing in comparison. Partway through the story, Lor’s eyes leave Iohmar’s and stay solidly on the floor. Iohmar wishes to abandon the tale, feeling a coward.
Words stick in his throat. What does Lor think of his human parents? His human life, which would’ve ended before it’d hardly begun?
When the tale is finished, Lor’s eyes remain on the floor. Iohmar raises his other hand to rest on the boy’s side, but the movement spins his head. His vision refuses to focus no matter how he tries. The dim sounds of the storm hurt his ears.
Iohmar can no longer bear to watch the boy turn this over and over in his mind. “Lor,” he says, focusing on the word after speaking for so long.
Lor starts. His eyes flicker to Iohmar’s. His expression crumples, and he bursts into tears before Iohmar can speak, flowers wilting and drooping from his skin.
Rippling mirrors tearing him was less painful.
Iohmar coughs, gripping Lor’s clothes and trying to clear the tightness from his throat. “Lor . . . there is nothing incorrect in being human. You may have been born to different parents, but—”
Lor shakes his head, covering his eyes with the backs of his hands. “I don’t care about that!”
Iohmar curses the struggle of raising his arms. A thousand pains could be troubling the boy, and he can’t begin to choose one. “Then what is wrong, dearheart?”
Another shake of his head. Iohmar tugs him closer, his light body seeming to hold the weight of a mountain. “Lor—”
“ ’Mnotyourson,” he mumbles.
“What?”
“You said I was your son . . .” Finally, he stops hiding his face. “You said the forest made me for you. You said I was special because I was yours and the forest made me just for you. But I’m not. I’m not . . .”
Iohmar blinks and blinks. Darkness creeps at the edge of his vision. Dragging Lor another step so he can lock his arms around his back, Iohmar holds him to his chest, uncaring of the sickly cuts that may frighten him.
As gently and clearly as he can, he says, “Lor, you are my son. Because the heart of the woods did not give you to me does not mean you were not a gift.”
