I pause, struck by his words. “And what if it doesn’t happen?”
“What if what doesn’t happen?”
“You said eventually your feelings for Zora and me developed. Over time. What if you never feel that love for Mother again?” My throat goes dry on the words. “What if it’s gone forever, and there’s nothing you can do to get it back?”
My father examines me with those piercing eyes of his. “Are we still talking about your mother and me?”
I sigh, rubbing my brows, and my father sets his elbows on the table.
“Nox, how do you know the sun will rise tomorrow?”
I shrug. “Because it always does, I suppose.”
My father appears pleased with my response. “I already told you that your mother and I have been together for a long while. This isn’t the first time she’s delved into the shadows. I imagine it won’t be the last. But it never lasts forever. And the female who’s waiting for me on the other side…” He takes a sip of his stew, the rim of the bowl hardly obscuring his smile. “Well, you know her.”
Visions of my mother as I remember her wash over me. My mother selling our wares underpriced to travelers who’d found themselves robbed and naked on the road. My mother chasing Zora and me around in the snow, then greeting us with hot cocoa when our fingers started to numb from the cold.
“Yeah,” I say, unable to help my smile. “Yeah, I do.”
“In a few months now, I’ll find her out on the side of the road, handing out the last of our food to complete strangers,” he says with an exasperated huff. “And then I’ll fall in love with her all over again.”
“How did you know the first time? The first time your feelings faded for her? How did you know they’d come back?”
My father frowns, as if he’s never considered that question before. “I suppose I didn’t. I suppose I just remembered the commitments I made to her and stuck to them.”
I don’t find that altogether helpful, but then my father leans over and says, in a whisper as if it’s the secret to life, “We’re all different people on the inside, son. There are lots of us running around in our heads. Different Meridas, different Noxes. But people don’t change that much over their lives. We just rotate through the different versions of ourselves. Like we might our different work boots. We have a favorite, of course, one that’s most worn in and comfortable. But then we have our nice pair, and the pair we wear for trekking through the ice, with all the spikes at the bottom. So far, I’ve determined that inside your mother are three different females. This one, the one you remember, and the one she only lets me see. Now, out of the three, I’m madly in love with two of them. The one I don’t prefer…Well, she’ll change it out soon enough. You’ll see.”
It takes me two days to decide that if my father can love two out of the three of my mother’s versions of herself, I can take sixty-six percent of his advice and still respect him immensely.
It’s that decision which guides me as I enter my parents’ bedroom, waltz over to the bed, and drag the blankets off my mother.
“Get up,” I say, though my voice sounds more weary than commanding.
My mother covers her face with her pillow, weeping into it. The sight makes my insides squirm with guilt, but I don’t let it overcome me.
Instead, I wrestle the pillow away from her, which takes little effort, given my strength is an advantage.
“My little girl,” my mother weeps, and though it aches my heart to do so, I pick my writhing mother up and carry her out of bed into the kitchen.
My father sits at the dining room table, looking stunned as I haul her out of her room.
He shoots up from the table. “Nox, what do you think—”
I hold my hand up to stop him. “I listened to what you said, Father. And believe me, I respect it. More than you could possibly know. But she’s got to get up. Wallowing in bed all day isn’t helping her.”
I set my mother down, though I keep a gentle grip on her shoulders.
“My little girl…” she keeps weeping, and as gently as I can muster, I lift her chin to look at me.
“I’m so sorry that Zora is gone. But Father is here. I’m here. That’s going to have to be enough.”
For a moment, my mother’s face goes blank, and I wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake, if this is the most insensitive thing that’s ever been done. If I’m prowling around this realm and all the others just messing things up.
But then my mother peers up at me, and slowly, recognition flares in her eyes, flickering in the pale lantern light by which my father was penning the ledgers.
“Nox,” she whispers, using my name for the first time in what I realize must be years.
I don’t know what to say, so I just nod.
She lets out a strangled sob, then tucks her head into my chest. “My boy…” she cries this time.
And now that she’s upright and out of bed, I let her.
CHAPTER 84
PIPER
We arrive at the Rip sooner than I expect to. It took us a week to travel from Avelea, across the ravine, to Charshon.
The truth is, I haven’t been sure I wanted to get here quickly.
I’m still unconvinced the power enhancement I’ll receive from the faerie-made flute and proximity to the Rip will be enough to control a single Other, much less an entire army of them. An entire army that is already under Az’s control.
But my feet don’t stop placing one in front of the other, so naturally, we eventually arrive.
I feel it before I see it.
A gentle thrum in the soil, the reverberation of a string recently plucked.
