There was this second. The rain drizzled out the window and the news that Daire had to kill me to get out left me stunned. He started this low-key maneuver of taking my hand and leaning closer. I got a special want to see where it went. Did it come from emotions running high or had it secretly built alongside my more aggressive feelings for Rio? Either way, that second I felt as connected to him as I did his sister.
That didn’t make acting on it right.
“Now you know why rain is a big deal.” I rubbed his fingers and leaned away, out of reach. “How about we join our moms at cards? Think you can win a game?”
“Oh.” Daire’s cheeks got pink like he’d just realized what he was about to do. He dropped my hand and nodded with an awkward, but thankful smile. “Of course. I’m sure I’ll snatch victory from Jennifer’s clutches before you will.”
“Oh yeah? If I win first, you have to help with chores.” I smirked. And like that, things were back to status quo. The moment passed, leaving me with a dangerous twinge of disappointment and guilt for missing it.
The sun never moved after the clouds cleared. Hours bled into each other, but I never felt tired enough to sleep. Mom won most of the Rummy tournaments—Etain won the one she didn’t, proving all her practice with Mom had paid off. Abuela ran Mom and I through chores and I roped Daire and Etain into helping. I had fun and let myself get lost in the copies of the family I missed so much.
Everything had an end though. This would too. Daire moved more sluggish and spoke in a drowsy haze the longer we spent with the memory-clones. When his life ran out, would I notice him missing or would he become another copy?
At some point, Daire whispered between our moms. Abuela started cooking something that involved banana leaves while Etain and Daire mixed another something in a bowl. Everytime I tried to help, Abuela sent me to the futon to watch TV. Why were they suddenly into baking? And Abuela only broke out that family favorite on special occasions.
I watched whatever reruns of Telenovelas and cartoons were on while I waited for my dream Abuela to give me the all clear. The same commercials played between them and gave me nostalgia for home instead of making me wish I could fast forward. Daire had said that the commercials were half the fun of T.V. I had to agree with him a little.
The smell of tomatoes joined the pork and steam made a wet mist around what I’d seen of the kitchen. I’d caught Etain handling a giant shaker of sprinkles earlier. What were they up to? As soon as I swiveled around, Abuela barked an order at me. I turned back to the screen.
I should be doing something. Daire said I was the thing holding the dream-reality together. Maybe I could wake myself up? What would that take, though? If I tried hurting myself there, then that could affect me in the real world too. Could that jolt me awake?
Daire wouldn’t let me do that. I wasn’t even sure I could do that to myself. But what else could I do? What lengths was I willing to go to help Daire if he was past the point of fighting?
Daire and Etain came up behind me and joined me on the couch. Etain licked something white off her fingers, vanilla frosting? Abuela loud-whispered at Mom to set the table behind us.
“What’s your game?” I side-eyed Daire.
“Whatever do you mean?” He flashed an innocent smile my way. I didn’t like how thin his cheeks were. But he had a spark back in his eye. “By the by, you were ten and eight years of age this past year, correct?”
“Yeah. Next I’m nineteen.” Late connections went off in my head. The pork and banana leaves were for tamales, which Abuela always saved for parties. The sprinkles and vanilla frosting went together for my favorite cake, confetti.
“Excellent. I counted enough candles.”
The overhead light went off and someone closed the blinds over our window. The glow of the T.V. lit up Daire’s triumphant smirk and Etain’s confused, but expectant stare.
I looked behind me.
A mass of flickering candles brightened up our card table. It had transformed into a serving area with a pile of leaf-wrapped packages on one side and a frosted white cake drenched in sprinkles on the other.
Any comeback I had fell out of my mouth as I gaped at the surprise.
“Come along before they burn out.” Daire took my arm and dragged me off the couch toward the kitchen. Etain giggled as she trailed behind us.
I stopped in front of the card table with Mom’s and Abuela’s glowing faces smiling at me. My family’s signature birthday foods filled my nose and nineteen candles warmed my cheeks. I wouldn’t have that sight with another birthday. I wasn’t supposed to have it with this one.
My eyes watered and my nose snotted up as I held back an ugly cry. It was a bittersweet happiness that made my chest hot and my knees weak. I threw my arms around Daire, needing someone real and solid to hang onto among my fake family’s smiles. I was grateful and heartbroken all at once. I had no idea which emotion I should settle on, only that he’d gone and made them happen.
“Oh!” Daire stumbled back at my extra weight and set gentle arms around my shoulders as I buried my face in his sternum and used his shirt as a tissue. “You did mention your birth celebration was near Samhain, right? Was celebrating it early a bad idea?”
“No. It’s perfect.” I squashed him tight. “You did good.”
Daire went quiet and held me as long as I stayed there, not too tight that I couldn’t pull away at any time if I wanted to. That moment sealed it. His relatives could screw themselves. Fate and magic was going to get out of my way. I wasn’t losing him. No matter what I had to stoop to or what crazy thing I had to try, I’d make sure he stayed around. I wasn’t losing another member of my family.
I got a hold of myself and blew out my candles. Mom moved my cake to the counter while Abuela served the tamales onto everybody’s plates. Then Mom coached Etain on how to eat the new food while Daire’s failed tries to go it alone had me giggling. Once everyone had enough, Abuela packed the leftovers while Mom cut the cake and served it. We all moved to the living room and ate dessert in front of the T.V. It was a perfect end to the last minute surprise party.
I strong-armed everybody else to let me handle cleanup and recruited Daire to help.
“Hey,” I said as I passed Daire the first dish out of the pile we’d gathered. “Thanks for all this.”
“It was an impromptu celebration that broke up the monotony of the endless day.” Daire shrugged as he took the dish and ran a towel over it. “I’m only glad the cake tasted as well as it did.”
“I doubt even you could mess up a box mix.” I kept that it had been a little too sweet to myself and let him have the win. A question prodded the back of my brain, though and it slipped out. “Why’d you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re…y’know, and one of the last things you do is plan a birthday party for somebody else?”
Daire’s cheeks darkened to a red and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped. “It’s a logical course of action when you care about that somebody else.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. What could I say to that? Did I want to ask what kind of care he meant and open up that can of worms when I still cared about his sister in a non-platonic sense? Did I want to explore what ways I cared about him that may have popped up while we were stuck in that dream-world paling around with our families?
Etain came up behind Daire and tapped his shoulder, interrupting my opportunity. She had a concerned look on her face with her eyebrows pinched together. “Daire, something is wrong.”
Wait. I could understand Etain. She spoke with the same lilting language running underneath her English as when Aos Si talked to me. But she hadn’t talked like that since we’d woken up.
“Maya…”
I turned toward my name.
Abuela leaned against the couch, gasping for air like she wanted to say something while clutching her chest. She collapsed.
I dropped the dish I held. It crashed to the floor as I ran across the main room, dropped to my knees beside Abuela, and pumped both hands against her chest. “¡Abuela! ¡Despierta!” Abuela! Wake up!
It was happening again. I knew it wasn’t actually real. The sternum I pushed on hard enough to crack wasn’t actually hers. The way her shiny black hair sprawled out like so much exploded pen ink was pulled from a memory.
“Not again, not again…” I couldn’t help muttering it to myself as I kept pushing down in vain against Abuela’s chest. I turned to Daire to get his help.
Etain loomed over him, a kitchen knife raised high and ready to stab into his back.
“Daire, behind you!” I shouted.
He turned right as Etain lunged. The knife stuck in the floor instead of between his ribs.
“It’s your fault! If you aren’t here, I don’t have to be!” Etain screamed, but it still had that magic double talk that made it English at the same time. Tears spilled down her cheeks and her eyes were red and veiny. She yanked at the knife lodged in the laminate floorboard, but it stayed. She wiggled it and pulled again.
“What’s going on?” I couldn’t think, couldn’t process with Abuela dying all over again. The black hole in my stomach sucked the feeling from the rest of my body. He didn’t tell me about this, he hadn’t say anything.
“She…she tried to kill me.” Daire stared at the knife in disbelief.
I tore my eyes away from Abuela’s blank stare. Etain pulled the knife from the floor and pivoted on Daire again. I ran behind her and hiked both of my arms under hers in my best imitation of a Full Nelson. Etain bucked and kicked my shin hard. I winced but bit down on the pulsing pain spreading through my leg.
“Explain!” I strained against Etain’s flailing.
“Mother tried to kill me…before all of this,” Daire said, gaping at Etain’s tear-ridden, snarling face. “She tried to kill my father before, but never me. She had deteriorated that much.”
“Maya? Maya?” Mom called behind me. She stood by the card table, eyes darting around the room, looking right past me so many times. “Honey, where are you? She didn’t take you. Tell me she didn’t take you…Maya!”
“Reality is breaking in, the truth.” Daire backed away from Mom and me in horror. “Something is wrong with the construct.”
“What?” If the truth was breaking in, then why was Mom up and walking? Why was she looking for me when she’d forgotten who I was? “Why does Mom remember me?”
“I’m sorry I…I can’t.” Daire opened his mouth as if trying to talk, trying to tell me something, but nothing came out. His face struggled between unspoken shame and apology. “Riona knows. Ask her.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
My arms went limp around Daire’s mom. Rio knew? But she couldn’t lie about Mom not remembering me. She could hint at the wrong answer and play along if I assumed wrong. Had she hidden this the whole time? What actually happened to my mom?
Etain fell to her hands and knees on the floor, knife clattering away as she sobbed.
“She’s gone, my baby’s gone.” Mom shook her head, straggly blonde hair hanging in her face as she stared at her hands. “My fault, it’s my fault. I should have told her sooner, done something. I’m useless and now they’re both gone.”
“Mom, I’m right here.” I ran to her and almost slammed into her when I grabbed her shoulders and shook. “Look at me!”
She stared straight into my eyes, straight through me like I wasn’t there.
“I’m touching you Mom. Snap out of it!”
She didn’t even blink. Red, fresh blood gushed from the side of her skull, soaking her hair. Her hazel brown eyes became as blank as Abuela’s as she slumped in my arms.
No. Not her too.
I sank to the floor and cradled Mom in my lap, rocking her back and forth. Her blood made my pants damp and sticky. My vision blurred with tears, so much I could barely pick out the finer details of her narrow face. The blurry colors melded together. They brightened until I only saw white.
* * *
I blinked up at the underside of Rio’s neck. For a blissful second, I couldn’t remember a thing. I squinted away from the light of the cloudless sky above us and saw Daire’s aunt Brigid standing across from Rio on one of his garden paths. Brigid held Daire’s sagging body the same way someone would hold a fainted princess. The careful braids twining his hair together hung loose, white and wiry. The vibrant greens and golds of his medieval costume had changed into dull browns. Even his skin was sallow with pockets of shadows around his cheeks, his joints, and his sunken eyes. I couldn’t see his chest move.
Etain hunched over and sobbing with a knife. Abuela’s blank stare. Mom’s blood-soaked head. Everything came back.
“What did you do?” Riona pulled me tighter to her chest, holding me like I’d held my mother’s limp body. The air became magnetized and static as everything in my field of vision filled with gray and her color surrounded me. Behind Brigid, two men ran up. The taller one I recognised by his wavy hair and gold decorations: Daire’s father. The other one’s face was hazy at first, then his swooshing purple cloak and wild curls made me press into Rio’s chest. Aengus. The guy who’d thrown us in there.
“It wasn’t enough to take my mother, was it?” Rio followed my eyes toward Daire’s uncle. She gritted her teeth behind her jaw and swept my uneasy legs up. “You will suffer by my hands, Aengus Mac Og. You will grovel, beg, and plead but I will not stop until my vengeance is sated. This I vow.”
“A vow you know you won’t be able to keep.” Aengus wiggled his fingers at me with an insinuating wink. “A pleasure working with you, Maya. I hope you enjoyed your little sojourn with my nephew. I did notice the two of you were becoming very close. You’re welcome.”
Rio dug her nails into my skin. The pain sharpened my awareness of my situation. Daire. He hadn’t even twitched in his aunt’s arms. I bit down on my lip hard, hard enough to taste blood. I couldn’t save Abuela. I couldn’t help Mom. I had to help him. I thought the order at him to wake up in my head in both my languages. I prayed, bargaining with God, whether he could hear me from that world or not.
“Daire, wake up,” I croaked, my voice hoarse and throat dry like I hadn’t used it for a few days straight. “Wake him up.”
Midir came up beside his taller sister, face hard as he held out his arms for his son. “Give him to me.”
Brigid handled Daire as gingerly as a porcelain doll. She didn’t say anything, but it seemed like it was her own son she passed over. Midir’s expression didn’t flinch as he turned away from Rio and I. He never met eyes with Aengus. Daire’s favorite uncle still grinned like it was all some game.
“Wake him up, you bastard!” I shouted, squirming in Rio’s firm hold. “You did this to him! Fix it!”
“You should tend to her before she has even more hysterics, little niece.” Aengus turned away, his purple cloak billowing behind him.
“Calm yourself, dear one.” Rio tucked my head under her chin, even though all of her shook. “We will speak of this more at home.”
Rio carried me back through Daire’s garden and we passed a sunset themed patch of flowers with a gaping hole where the purple center used to be. The entire mass of plants seemed duller, bent in mourning. I supported myself with an arm around Rio’s neck and the other curled around my stomach. She approached a pool of water surrounded by roughly cut stones. I recognized it as the same place Daire and her had shown me my mom spread out on the road, then safe and sound in a hospital bed surrounded by Nico and Nathan.
I rested my voice as Rio gazed into the water’s surface and the reflection of the blue sky clouded into the muddy brown of the burrow’s dirt walls. She stepped through the water and it glided over us without a drop escaping until our horizontal descent became a vertical entry. The mirror we came out from had a gold frame covered in dented rams and butterflies.
Rio walked me to the padded cot and set me down. My arms and legs moved like boiled noodles at first as I sat up. Every thought came thick like I was still stuck in that groggy phase after a too-long nap.
“What happened to you?” Rio knelt and folded her skirt under her knees, all careful composure and precise movements. The gray field around her raged on and cracked the ground under her.
“Your asshole uncle happened.” I sat up, propping myself against the dirt wall. The room spun a little. “We have to go to Daire’s room and find his notes. I have to fix this.”
“Answer my question first!” Rio sat one second, then shoved herself into my space the next. Her hands were fists, but after a second her angry eyes softened with flecks of silver flickering in them them. “After my negotiations with Finvarra failed, I waited for your return. You never came. I searched all of Bri Leith, the rooms of my father’s house, the lengths of the gardens, to no avail. I even stooped to calling Brigid to help me. It was only by chance I stumbled upon you when I searched Daire’s gardens another time. Think if my magic wasn’t able to break the enchantment on you.”
“Wait…how long was I gone?” I asked, trying to figure out a guess in my head. It had only been a long day in there.
“Too many days.” Rio’s energy rolled over me and the cot. “Samhain is almost upon us! Did he take you as ransom to prevent my election? Did he hurt you? What happened?”
“I’m fine!” I nearly smacked my forehead into hers as I shoved myself at her the same way she’d invaded my space. “He’s trying to get rid of the Key by killing Daire. Daire needs my help so that doesn’t happen. But now Aengus knows so I’ve gotta find another way to help him.”
“Finally, an answer.” Rio’s eyebrows came together as she looked down at me. The gray shrank when her animalistic curiosity flared up. “Why is Aengus trying to destroy the Key?”
“Are you going to help Daire?”
“If you tell me I will help.” Rio sat on her knees and backed off. She held onto my leg, tense like she thought I wouldn’t stay there. “I need that welp alive. The core of my campaign relies on assuming control of his power. Unless I can somehow persuade Finvarra to relent his support of Midir, I won’t survive after the election.”
“That’s a promise? A deal?”
“Have I not yet done enough to show you can trust me?”
“I know about my mom.” I said through gritted teeth. It didn’t matter that I needed Rio’s help. The careful trust I’d built with her fractured as soon as Daire said to ask her why my mom remembered me, why she didn’t wake up. “I was trapped in a dream dimension that used memories. I had to see my Abuela die again when you pulled me out. Mom fell down right after her. I never saw that part. It means Daire saw it and you two faked the rest.”
“I did that to spare you heartache.” Rio folded her hands in her lap with a delicate frown on her mouth. “I had no way of sending you back and for all I knew, your mother had died. I wanted us to get along and did not want you to needlessly go through that pain. It was the most merciful option.”
“Bullshit!” I stood up and sneered down at her. “You set up a lie so I wouldn’t bitch at you. The only reason you’re saying anything now is because I caught you. How the hell can I trust a thing you say?”
“Every word I have said to you and every move I have made while in here has been from my heart. And the trust, dear one, has been broken both ways.” Rio’s innate field became so dark I had to squint to see through it. “I deceived you for your own well being. Can you say as much about your helping Daire? You mentioned something of notes, of helping him save himself from death? It’s peculiar you never said as much in all the times we have been together up until this point, even after you knew I needed him to win the High King’s seat.”
“Yeah, I’ve lied a lot about that.” I didn’t have time to talk around it. If she needed everything out in the open to help me, then I’d give it to her. Daire was counting on me. “Daire roped me into helping him early. He needed a human to steal the sacred treasures. I wanted you to run so I could get to them. Then I stole the three that went missing. We were supposed to finish the spell to cut the Key off from the High King before Samhain, then he was going to take his mom and I was going to take you. He didn’t want me to tell you about it earlier because he was scared of you, scared of his family finding out, scared of dying. Now Aengus found out and Daire’s going to be gone by the election if I don’t do something.”
“You…you intended to take me with you?” Rio’s field deflated. Shock and confusion warred on her face like I’d just proposed.
“Yeah, to give you a way out of the campaign and give us being together a shot,” I said, my shoulders relaxing as I held her eyes. I tried seeing her through the same lens as I had before I knew about Mom, before I had to go through losing her all over again. Threads of doubt crept in as everything she’d done up until then got thrown into question. “I can’t stay in this place with all the magic and backstabbing. I always wanted to go home, Rio. I want that more than ever now. But first I need to save my friend.”
“One question, if you’ll indulge me.” Rio crossed her arms over her chest. She seemed calmer, more calculating as her pupils narrowed to slits. “Essentially, you’re saying the way to save him is to sever the Key from Bodb, correct?”
“Pretty sure that’s how it worked, yeah,” I said, struggling to remember how exactly Daire explained it. “Bodb gave the order to trigger the curse, like a failsafe or something, and Daire’s been getting weaker ever since. Him and the Key will run out at the same time as the election.”
“And Aengus now has the treasures you gathered for the cure?”
“I think he does, so that won’t work.” Then there was that last step Daire and I had never found. “Seems like he wants Daire to die too, even though Daire always said they’re really close.”
“My mother raised Aengus and he killed her easily enough. I would bet that he was following Bodb’s orders in making sure the Key and its bearer actually died.” Her lips curved into a satisfied grin. There was almost a purr to her voice. “Did it occur to either of you the simplest solution is removing the source of the order? Based on the logic of the cure, it should work the same as eliminating the link between the two.”
“Is there another spell you know that can do that?”
“Much easier than that, for you at least.” Rio lifted a disbelieving eyebrow at me. “You kill the source, Bodb.”
“Excuse me if cold-blooded murder doesn’t jump to my mind as my first resort.” My shoulders slumped again with my own disappointment as the spark of hope snuffed out. “Plus, he’s a giant magical man-beast. I’m a pudgy, normal human.”
“Of course you won’t openly challenge him to hand-to-hand combat.” Rio chuckled, like she found it funny that I would blindly punch at her ex before he crushed me with his club. “You must be stealthy about these things.”
“Okay, he’s royal and probably has guards. I’m just me.” I ticked that reason off on my next finger. “Then its big, scary magic people and a numbers game.”
“I am also an asset, that evens your odds,” Rio said, her voice sweet with only a little condescension.
“Well, unlike everybody else here who’s stuck in the dark ages, people don’t have to kill each other to survive where I’m from.” I ticked off that third reason on my thumb. “I’ve never killed anybody and I don’t want to.”
“Even it would save Little Daire’s life?”
I wrinkled my nose at the thought of trying. Hadn’t I promised myself I’d try anything in the dream world?
“You’re obviously fond enough of him to gather ingredients for a strange spell. With most spells that require another creature’s aid, sacrifices are not uncommon. More than likely he would have you spill blood if you were allowed to continue. At least with this way, you know whose blood it is and that they are not an innocent.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“I have restrictive vows and universal edicts holding me back,” Rio explained. “You, however, do not have a drop of Aos Si blood nor the obligation to follow any vows, making you a perfect assassin.”
“That makes sense.” My stomach cramped with fear and dread. “Are you sure you can’t just use me to do it like you did to threaten Etain?”
“For this, I cannot be directly involved.” Rio bent down and took my chin between two of her fingers, tilting my face to meet hers better. “I can give you the means, and even the opportunity if you wish it. However, you must be the killer of your own free will.”
“I really don’t like this.” I paced to the other end of the cavern. I had to move. I couldn’t keep still while my mind raced trying to find a work around to forces I didn’t understand. “What happens to Daire if this works? The election happens anyways and Midir gets control of him if you don’t have Finvarra’s vote. All he wanted was to get out of here with his mom. He never wanted any part of this political crap.”
“What he wanted won’t save him.” Rio stayed put in front of the cot and watched me. “There is still a narrow span of time between the election and the coronation he might be free to govern his own power.”
“That means there’s a chance he could still make a way out of here.” My heart picked up, anxiety turning to excitement. “This can work.”
“And you could go home to your world,” Rio said, finishing my thought.
“What about you? If you stayed here without him, you’d die for sure.”
“If I do not win the election, then you are certainly right,” Rio said, her mouth tight. “Going with you to your world would be preferable to dying.”
“That’s a funny way of saying it.” Was she being so backwards about her phrasing for a reason? I tossed my head. No time. “Nevermind. How long do we have to pull this off?”
“A matter of hours,” Rio said. “If Daire lasts that much longer, given his condition. We must also arrange the means of getting you close to Bodb, plan how you will dispatch him, the minutiae of your escape, the list goes on.”
“I got it.” I walked up to Rio and held out my hand for a shake. “You’ll help me save Daire?”
“Only under the condition you follow my every direction without question. What we must do to save Daire and the Key will not be pleasant for you. A first kill is hard. The only way this is possible is if you trust me.” Rio had the snake-like precision I remembered from when we first met, before I knew the cuddly creature she could become when she let her guard down. “Do we have a deal?”
Warning alarms sounded in my brain. She had her walls up as high as I’d seen them with her rivals. This wasn’t my Rio I was dealing with, but scary Rio. Without anyone else to go to for help, though, I didn’t have any choice but to take the deal and hope scary Rio didn’t have the reins.
“Yeah, we have a deal.” Tingling sensations ran up my arm as she clapped her hand in mine. She smiled, beamed even, but the morbid satisfaction in it only made cold goosebumps crawl up my back. I focused on Daire’s limp body, all sallow and thin, looking so much like Mom laying in my lap with blood tangling her hair. I couldn’t let that happen to him too. “Now, tell me what I have to do.”