Methods of Inheritance
It only took me like two weeks to have enough free time to post the second part of this, but HERE. And here’s Part the First.
Here are the signs that every child learns in the fifth grade.
One. Exhaustion, coupled with crippling insomnia. (Fact: Harry should have seen the circles under her best friend’s eyes, and the loll of her head as she fought to focus in class.)
Two. A gleam in the eye, a silver sheen to throw back light when struck at the right angle. (Fact: the darker the eye, the more obscure the glint. Harry knows this, but cannot help but blame herself for missing it.)
Three. Carelessness trending toward ruthlessness, toward anyone not considered a personal possession. (Fact: the boy who had upset Harry had not deserved the cracked ribs, nor the shattered nose. He certainly had not deserved the cold gaze and mocking laugh that fell on him as he lay bleeding in the dirt.)
Four. A sudden disinterest in sleeping altogether, and a total vanishing of the need. (Fact: Harry had thought this enviable, in her more bitterly whimsical moments of high school.)
Five. A crippling fear of iron, and blackened burns on contact. (Fact: Harry has not considered herself clever since she was fifteen, because it was only the sight of her best friend cringing back from a wrought iron fence that made the connection between her strange behavior and the lectures they had heard about children stolen and replaced with something else.)
Six. Total disintegration of the mortal glamour. (Fact: Marys had been so lovely, standing in the sunlight, all sharp ears and sharper eyes, that Harry had almost wept. She still hates herself a little, that the tears in her eyes were not of grief.)
Harry stumbled to a halt, one shaking hand braced against the lean trunk of a rowan tree whose tapered red leaves chattered together in the wind. She lowered herself forward against the rough bark, leaning all her weight on the tree as her breath hitched sharply through her throat and her eyes burned with exhausted tears. The moon was barely to its zenith, its light sluggish and cold on her skin, and she swallowed down a sob at the thought of another six hours to sunrise. She couldn’t afford to make a sound that would draw the Hunt to her, and a noise of weakness would pull them like a magnet, especially given that she had barely slipped past a Touched rider not two hours before.
The noise of the Hunt had faded, distant, and she took the moment of reprieve to press her head back into the wood and try to get her breath back. Her chest ached with every deep lungful of air, her throat too dry to swallow as her heartbeat went from rabbit-fast to a more subdued rattle behind her ribs. Every muscle had the numb burn of exhaustion muffled beneath a thick layer of adrenaline, the demand to survive riding roughshod over any pain that attempted to surface. The magic of the Horns had faded hours since, and she almost missed it, the purity of oblivion that the panic offered. Under the power of the Horn, there was no pain or discomfort, only the demand to run.
She had never been so thirsty in her life, Harry thought, half-hysterical. For some reason it was all she could think about, her throat clicking as she tried to swallow. She would hand herself over to the Hunt for a drink of water, but somehow she suspected that they didn’t offer refreshments to their prey.
The sound of a high, sharp bark shook her out of her reverie and she snapped upright, back still pressed to the rowan tree. Shapes melted out of the forest, mismade forms that settled into the lean bodies of hunting hounds, sketched in darkly shaded blacks and greys. It was less like facing a pack of dogs and more like facing an artist’s depiction, based on a detailed description but without any real basis for comparison. They were closer to wolfhounds than anything else—perfect for taking down prey that could put up a fight, Harry thought, feeling sick—all long legs and rangy muscles with jaws that promised bone-crushing force. Their eyes gleamed, uneasily intelligent, far too much so for animals, and they ranged around the shadow of the rowan tree as if to remind her that she couldn’t hide under the leaves of the tree forever. Each hound lingered close to the side of a partner, save for the one directly in front of her, the one who had headed the pack out of the trees.
Low rumbling, growling from a dozen deep chests, rippled through the air, the sound almost tangible, and the lead hound bared its teeth in a snarl as it prowled forward. It refused to cross into the vague outline of the tree’s shadow, but lingered just outside, teeth flashing white and wet in the moonlight. It put back its ears, eyes alight with mockery, and tipped its head back to give a full-throated bay.
In reply, a voice from the trees called, “All on!”
“Fuck me,” Harry breathed, pressing herself back into the tree until she felt the bark leaving marks on her skin, bruises forming where the knobs of her spine pushed back. She cursed herself for not having the good sense to keep running—she was going to die because she had so desperately wanted to catch her breath.
The rider who burst from the trees was clearly the lord of the hounds, because they looked up with the sort of adoring obedience Harry associated with docile lapdogs, not these massive examples of walking death. The rider’s sleek, steely horse was just as fey and unearthly as the hounds, although its eye held a less terrifying level of scheming intellect. Its teeth did not look like the teeth of something that preferred to dine on hay and oats.
The rider, hunting horn in one hand and the other loose and easy on the reins, had black hair that fell in a riot of loose curls to her waist, half-pinned back with an ornately carved wooden clasp. She wore a loose white blouse in an archaic style under fitted leather vest, laced up the front and embossed with gold images of hunting dogs, and a diamond nestled at the hollow of her throat, where her skin flashed through the collar. Her face was heart-shaped and shone where the moonlight touched it, like the promise of heartbreak.
Even clad in her human glamour, Marys had always been the kind of beautiful that started wars and burned cities.
“Marys,” Harry said, toneless with shock, and the faerie looked at her sharply.
There was a moment of clear incomprehension in the face of the rider, and when she spoke, it was slow and uncertain, as if wrapping her tongue around an unfamiliar language. “Angharad.” She blinked, a steady lowering and raising of her eyelids, and said, only slightly more confident, “Harry.” Harry nodded shallowly, the stiff muscles in her neck fighting her every inch of the way. “Why are you out here?”
“Caught outside,” Harry said. “Why are you chasing me?”
“You ran,” Marys said, in the tone of someone stating an incontrovertible fact. “You ran, so we have to chase you.” The Earth turned, so the sun rose.
“Marys,” Harry whispered again, staring at the creature that had once lived a human life as her best friend. Changelings were delicate affairs, once they rejoined the Fair Folk—Marys had a headstone in the cemetery, but it bore no date of birth nor date of death, and was relegated to the back corner with the other plaques of those who had been stolen as infants. The real Marys Amador had probably been switched with this version before she was a month old. The changeling and Harry had been best friends for eight years, from the fourth grade until Marys was drawn outside by the Hunt when they were sixteen, to disappear into the faerie Courts.
When they were growing up and her faerie instincts were beginning to push through the glamour, Harry had been Marys’ prized possession, to the point where she had done serious harm to the first person stupid enough to antagonize Harry.
Some part of that had lingered, because Marys waved a hand lazily and ordered, “Leave it.” The hounds relaxed at once, peeling away from the shadow in pairs to mill around her horse, their eerily intelligent eyes still watching Harry closely. The pack leader was slow to turn away, only retreating when Marys repeated her command, sterner this time, and its teeth were still bared as it stared at her. “Down,” she added, and the hounds stretched out on the dew-damp grass, heads up and attentive as their mistress dismounted in a smooth slide. “Stay,” the faerie said as she walked forward.
Harry experienced a lurch somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, two worlds colliding in a messy tangle of contradictions.
Marys was her best friend, for all that they hadn’t seen each other in the three years since the other had joined her kin, and Harry was exhausted in every sense of the word. A hug from an old friend sounded like a divine gift. She and Marys would talk, she would hear the other girl laugh at her foolishness in getting trapped outside, and it would all be okay.
Marys was of the Fair Folk, for all that she had grown up human, and the Hunt turned even the gentlest faerie cruel and blood-hungry, and Marys was far from gentle. Allowing her within arm’s reach would end badly. She would be killed on the spot, or else bound and taken away for someone else to kill, and the best Harry could hope for was that Marys would grieve after sunrise.It ended up not mattering which mindset Harry settled on, because, as she passed the edge of the tree’s shadow, Marys said coolly, “If you try to run, my hounds will bring you down before you make it fifteen feet.”
“Noted,” Harry said, and she was proud of how steady her voice was. That, at the very least, answered the question of which Marys she was facing down. “Are you going to kill me?”
Marys tilted her head at her, and her eyes flashed silver as the moonlight glanced off. “Only if you resist.”
That, Harry did not answer.
“Come,” Marys commanded, and the great black hound that had led the pack flowed to its feet and paced to stand at her hip, flashing its teeth casually at Harry as if to lay claim to its mistress. “Guard,” she said, hand settling into the thick ruff of fur over its shoulders and neck. Her long fingers vanished as if she had plunged them into dark water, and when she drew away, the shadow-stuff of the hound’s form clung to her skin. Eager to obey, the hound set up a low rumble in its chest, like a distant earthquake, and stared Harry down with the promise of violence alight in its eyes.
As Marys advanced, Harry entertained a wild hope that she would be as stymied by the shadow of the protective rowan as her hounds. The thought was short-lived, and the faerie only shivered faintly as she passed through the shadow line without even a hitch in her step. Hope flickered out in Harry’s chest, a candle blown out by Marys’ approach.
“Are you going to fight me?” Marys asked, stopping several paces away as Harry pressed back against the tree. She wished that she was like one of the shy tree-folk who were sometimes seen wandering the forest when the moon was new, able to vanish into the wood without a trace.
Harry shut her eyes and took a deep breath, the leaves rustling above her with a gust of cold wind. Her hands were trembling again, tiny tremors against her jeans, and she clenched them until the trembles stopped, and tried to force her heart to slow.
“No, I’m not,” she said, opening her eyes and meeting Marys’ gaze. “I’d never win.”
“You would not,” Marys conceded, her sharp-nailed hand closing around the coil of thin rope—cord, really, barely more than string—looped at her belt. “Will you come quietly?”
Harry stood here, arms locked down at her sides as if all her muscles had been laced with iron while she wasn’t looking, and watched Marys approach. Something was trying to claw its way out of her chest, a scream or a sob, and a fresh wash of adrenaline was flooding into her arteries with every beat of her heart. Surely she would run out, eventually, she thought dimly as her pulse hammered under the skin of her throat.
“I saved your life once,” Harry heard herself say, distant and vague as if she was wrapped in layers upon layers of wool. Marys stopped, well within arm’s reach, and the cord dropped back to her side as she watched Harry. So close, Harry could see that Marys’ eyes were wild, dark lashes framing blown pupils in silvered irises. Her lips were parted and damp, a hectic flush high on her cheeks, a hunter hungry for blood and boiling over with a lust that looked like nothing that belonged on human features.
“When we were eleven,” Harry continued, watching Marys for any sign of recognition. The faerie hovered in front of her, held still in the echo of her words. “You were so exhausted by your glamour decaying that you could barely watch where you were walking and you wandered straight into the street. I pulled you out of the way of a truck, do you remember that?”
“Yes, I remember,” Marys said. “The truck was blue.”
Harry let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, shaky and worn. Marys had said the same thing that day, watching the sapphire truck barrel away, and she and Harry had leaned against each other, giggling, half-hysterical. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”
“On any other night, that would earn your freedom,” she said. Her voice was softer, touched around the edges with traces of something that Harry remembered from the way Marys had held her hand after nasty clashes with her cousins when they were young, childishly sure that she could solve all of Harry’s problems with her presence.
Looking back, it was a very fae way of thinking.
“What would it earn me tonight, to call in that debt?”
Marys stepped forward and touched Harry’s arm, and Harry brought her hands up and pressed the soft insides of her wrists together, offering them with a feeling of participating in some ancient ritual. “Tonight, I can follow the old rules. Three truths for a life debt.”
“Three questions?” The cord was rough against Harry’s skin, and Marys wound it tightly, not quite cutting in but eliminating any hope of gathering enough slack to wriggle free.
“Three truths,” Marys repeated, tying off the length of cord with a knot that was simple and foreign. Harry gave an instinctive tug and found that, although she could move her fingers, her wrists were going nowhere. Marys’ hands were gentle as she tugged Harry forward, away from the security of the rowan tree, and said dispassionately, “I have to bring you back to the Huntsmaster. He prefers to make the first kill himself.” She paused for a moment and added, “Usually with a knife.”
Harry’s heart stuttered in her chest and for a brief moment, she thought that her legs would collapse beneath her, spill her onto the ground at Marys’ feet. Usually with a knife. Was this what the Fair Folk called mercy, telling someone how they would die? It seemed unimaginably cold and cruel, even held up against what Harry knew of them.
Outside of the shadow, Harry shuddered under the eyes of the hounds, all of them turned toward her with feral intelligence gleaming in the moonlight. Marys’ touch was sure and steady as she led her forward by her bound wrists, and Harry crushed the urge to scream and bolt down in her chest until it was only a memory. The hounds let her pass, some degree of status awarded by being their mistress’ prey rather than their own.
Marys stopped beside her horse, and the beast twisted to give Harry a look that tended uncomfortably toward hunger. Giving the horse an absent pat on the wither, Marys tied the trailing end of the cord to a ring on the saddle that looked like it existed for the sole purpose of having prisoners tied to it. She lingered there for a long moment, her back to Harry and her fingers resting lightly on the ring, and asked without turning back, “Do you want to call in your debt or not?”
Harry stood stony for a moment, then felt her lips crack into a smile that must have looked quite deranged from the outside. “I don’t think I’m going to have another opportunity to do so,” she said. “So yeah, I’ll call it in.”
Marys looked over her shoulder and gave Harry a small smile, an attempt at kindness that was ruined by the wild shine in her eyes. She leaned forward so that she could whisper in Harry’s ear, her voice familiar from secrets shared in classes and stories shared at sleepovers.
“The first truth is this,” she said, tone heavy and formal. “There are two ways for a human to survive the Hunt, by running until sunrise and by one other method. The second truth is this. There is only one way for a human to truly join the Courts of the fae.” She paused, and caught Harry’s gaze with her wide dark eyes, holding it as if trying to pass some further information through the connection. “The third truth is this. Any gift given must also be accepted. Do you understand?”
“No,” Harry said slowly, because it was clear that she did not understand whatever Marys was trying to communicate to her.
Marys nodded and said, just as solemn as before, “I cannot tell you more. Keep up.”
She rested one hand on the pommel of her saddle and the other on the cantle and, through some graceful movement that Harry couldn’t make out, vaulted up to settle into the saddle like a bit of dandelion fluff. The saddle didn’t have stirrups, and was a strange shape, perfectly to the form of Marys’ torso and thighs. For a moment, Harry wasn’t sure what she had meant by ‘keep up,’ but a click to the horse and a call of “Come” to the hounds made it clear. She skirted wide around the heels of the horse and stumbled into motion, hurrying to stay close enough to keep her feet.
