For she comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than she can understand.
~ adapted from The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats
RACHEL'S GARDEN
Karen M. Rider (K.M. Rider)
Sweat pooled in the crevice between her full breasts as she moved through the humidity that hung like a wet sheet over central Connecticut. Queasy rumblings in Rachel Sinclair's belly had little to do with her being 39-weeks pregnant. The burden of her every step on this hot July morning was to get back to the house before her husband, Trevor, returned from his morning run.
She shifted the brown paper grocery bag around her belly. She glanced at her watch. As long as Trevor ran his high mileage route, then she had time get home and restock the fridge with his favorite post-workout elixir. Otherwise, the moment Trevor's hand grasped the near-empty carton of orange juice; Rachel's morning would turn very ugly.
Rachel tottered down the steep driveway to the rear entry of the house. The back gate was wide open. She was certain she had closed the gate when she left for the market. Trevor didn't like it she left the gate open.
A cold snake of warning crept up her spine.
The baby shifted in her belly.
He's home.
Excuses for why she hadn't left a note spun in her mind.
The snarled rattling of a chainsaw made Rachel jump. She hurried into the yard.
“Trevor! What are you doing?” Rachel hollered breathlessly as she placed the grocery bag on the hood of Trevor's Dodge Hemi.
Her husband was perched on a ladder, wielding a chainsaw. Beads of sweat glistened on his well-muscled chest. He cut the motor.
“What's it look like I'm doing?” he said.
“Please, stop. You're bludgeoning a 350 year old tree.”
She quickly surveyed the damage: Chunks of bark and fresh needles were splattered across the yard. Broken branches dangled from the ancient White Cedar's seven-foot tall, V-shaped twin trunks.
Stepping closer to the garden, Rachel's eyes swelled with tears she did not want her husband to see.
“And, the garden I planted for the baby is ruined.” She blotted her face with the edge of her yellow maternity top.
Trevor looked down at his wife and shrugged.
“Maybe you'll remember to buy my juice. Maybe you won't be such a dumbass and forget to leave me a note,” he sneered.
“Make yourself useful and steady the ladder.”
The saw growled back to life.
The ladder trembled in Rachel's hands as Trevor cut vigorously into a thick branch. Without warning, Trevor jumped from the ladder, the chainsaw still running.
Rachel stumbled back a few steps. “Are you hurt?” she said, trying to cover fear with concern.
Trevor turned off the saw and dropped it in the dirt. A shudder shot across Rachel's belly.
“Did you know about that thing?” Trevor grabbed Rachel's chin. He turned her face so she could see what he was pointing at with his other hand: A grey cone jutting out from an oval cavity high up the left tree trunk.
When Trevor let go of her face, she stepped forward to get look at the nest. Most of it was hidden in the hollow. From the tightly packed rows, she guessed there were hundreds of insects living in it.
Rachel shook her head. “I didn't know, Trevor.”
“You're in this garden every friggin' day and you didn't know! And I bet you forgot I'm allergic to bees.”
Rachel could see Trevor's temper boil in his dark green eyes.
Trevor swatted at a buzzing sound above his head. Rachel watched an insect land on his faded Yankees baseball cap.
“Don't move.” For once, Trevor listened to his wife.
Double-layered iridescent wings folded back against a sleek body dusted with lustrous golden hair. A band of black wrapped its abdomen. Six wispy reddish-gold legs dropped from the underbelly as the insect silently settled atop Trevor's cap.
Rachel slowly lifted the cap off Trevor's head. She sensed this insect was studying her with its dark ellipsoid eyes.
“I think it's a golden wasp.” She whispered, cautiously turning away from Trevor.
Trevor smacked the Yankees cap out of Rachel's hand. He stomped on it. Rachel thought she heard a keening rise from the ground.
“No! You'll upset the nest.” Rachel looked up. An angry stream of insects bounced between the twin trunks.
“The nest! That's what your fuckin' worried about? I would really give you something to worry about if you weren't about to have that baby.”
He walked backward toward the house, barking orders at his wife while keeping an eye on the nest.
“Bring in my orange juice. Clean up the yard. And, get rid of that damn hive! I'm going in for a shower before I get stung.”
He slammed the sliding glass doors shut.
“I should be so lucky for you to get stung just once.” Rachel said under her breath.
Tears mixed with sweat as she stood staring at her garden.
Before Trevor desecrated the tree, it had risen from the center of a wide circle of large, marbled fieldstones. Streamers of pink clematis had clung to its trunks. Now, naked vines hung lifeless against the brittle bark. In the nook between the twin trunks, Rachel had fitted a meditation seat. From the crack in it, Rachel guessed Trevor had used it as a step stool.
Nearly all the hydrangea's sapphire clusters had fallen to the ground, and lay scattered atop a quilt of green and gold hostas. The dazzling array of stargazer lilies that had burst open just days ago had all lost their beautiful heads. And then there was the foxglove, it's tall stalks still standing, like sentinels in the garden. Nothing in the garden held a more bitter memory for Rachel than the foxglove—a gift from Trevor.
She remembered that spring day. She was bent over her round belly, on her hands and knees, placing mosaic stepping stones in the dirt. Just as Trevor had walked into the yard, so many starlings flew overhead the sky had flashed black. He was pulling a red wagon full of potted plants purchased from Rachel's favorite gardens shoppe, The Fairy Gardener. He had reminded Rachel of an uncertain little boy approaching the object of his affection.
“No clue what these are,” he had said, squatting next to her, “but the old lady who runs the shoppe said she cultivated these just for you, her best customer.”
Rachel smiled when he handed her one of the pots. She knew this was his way of apologizing for the nasty words he spat at her, like tiny daggers piercing her heart, during a fight earlier that morning.
Rachel ran her hand along the sturdy but soft, fuzzy spikes stretching out of a rosette of downy green leaves. She had quickly noticed the inside of each trumpet-shaped magenta blossom shimmered, as if coated with stardust.
“I've never seen foxglove like this before,” she had said.
“So you like them?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Rachel had read in Celtic Garden Spells that foxglove attracts faeries. She had considered sharing that bit of horticulture folklore with her husband, but decided not to risk his ridicule.
Just as Trevor stood up, Rachel had gasped.
“Trev, the baby kicked.”
She had reached for his hand and, to her surprise, he let her place it on her belly. Together they felt the baby's jerky movement inside her. Trevor pulled back quickly. In the split-second before he did, Rachel had seen in his eyes an unholy mix of fear and anger and dread.
Rachel's grief for what she once thought might have been a wonderful life together was overshadowed by the knowledge that Trevor was never the man she thought him to be. She had no reason to feel surprise; a lifetime of cold indifference from her own father and a history with men who did nothing but discard her taught her that she didn't deserve better from a man. Still, had she heeded the voice in her head, Rachel might have seen Trevor was just too much of everything a woman wanted a man to be. Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have married him 18 months ago.
Rachel wanted to leave Trevor. But as intense as Trevor was with his anger, so he was with his love. She would convince herself if only she could melt the ice pick stuck in her husband's heart, they could be happy. If she couldn't, she at least thought her baby would have that kind of power. Alone in the garden, planting the foxglove, Rachel faced the awful truth that her baby had no magic to cast over its father. On that Spring day, Rachel's garden became her oasis, where she dared to imagine a life for her and her unborn child—a life that did not include Trevor David Sinclair.
Through an open window, she heard Adele's song, “I Set Fire to the Rain,” blaring on the radio while Trevor showered. She walked over to the truck to retrieve the shopping bag with Trevor's O.J. She hadn't quite gotten a grip on the bag when something whizzed over her head. Entranced by the prismatic effect of swiftly moving wings, Rachel watched the wasps fly to their nest.
Suddenly, silvery-blue sparks crackled between the V-shaped trunks. Rachel screamed. She lost her balance. The full weight of her body crashed down. The orange juice carton burst open and gushed over the hood of the black pick-up truck. Her head whacked a large stone. Rachel lay motionless at the edge of the garden, a golden pool of juice soaking the soil beneath her belly.
Throbbing at the back of Rachel's head roused her. Even before she opened her eyes, she ran her hand across her belly. An eternity seemed to pass before she felt a kick—and relief.
Rachel reached back to caress her scalp. She winced when her hand moved over the bump she found. Her hair was wet and sticky. She expected to see blood; instead, her hand was covered with milky slime.
Puzzled, she angled her body toward the tree. Milky sap, if that's what it was, oozed like pus from between strips of brittle bark. It dripped from an expanse of black branches stretching into the cerulean sky. Looking around her, Rachel saw the entire garden had been bathed in it. Not only that, all the plants were a shadow of what they had been in her garden before Trevor had at it. The lilies hadn't been beheaded; they just drooped in sadness. The hydrangeas faded to ghostly grey. The hostas' once vibrant leaves now sagged to the ground. Only the foxglove, unaffected by the vile sap, shimmered in the sunlight.
Rachel tried to stand but the baby somersaulted, taking her breath. She sat back against a large dry stone.
“Don't worry. Mama must be having a bad dream,” she whispered.
“You are not dreaming,” a raspy female voice sounded from above.
Rachel squinted into the light filtering between the trunks.
“Who's there?”
When the figure emerged from glare and shadow, Rachel's eyes opened wide.
The woman seemed to float down from the mangled branches. She couldn't have been more than three feet tall. Yet, she had an aura that made her seem larger than life. She wore a sleeveless, sheer red dress cinched with a black sash around her tiny waist. Blue-black hair, strung with crystal beads, fell across her shoulders. As the woman got closer, Rachel noticed the golden luminescence did not hide the grey scaly patches on the woman's arms and neck.
Am I alive? Dead? Some place in between? Rachel rubbed her eyes.
“Alive and definitely some place in between,” The woman responded to Rachel's silent question.
“Did you just…?”
Words fumbled across Rachel's lips as she tried to figure out if this woman had actually read her mind.
“Yes, Rachel, I can hear your thoughts-if I want,” the woman said. Diaphanous golden wings veined with red unfolded from behind her body. Rachel felt the woman's up-angled violet eyes on her.
I hit my head. I'm hallucinating. Rachel tried to convince herself what she was seeing wasn't real— just like when she was a little girl.
Again, the woman responded to Rachel's thoughts:
“You're not hallucinating.”
Rachel massaged the back of her head. “What's happening to me?”
Before she could refuse the advance, the winged-woman placed her hand at the back of Rachel's head. The throbbing subsided.
“You've entered a hidden world that is symbiotic with, but lies beyond your own reality. I am Orlea, Queen of the Hidden Folk.”
Orlea waved her arm across the garden. From behind the decaying twin-trunks, hundreds of shimmering insects took flight. A small group approached Rachel. Their wings created a hypnotizing hum. Rachel recognized these insects were the same as the one that landed on Trevor's baseball cap. Hovering there, Rachel had a chance to see at the end of each slender body was a shiny, serrated stinger.
Rachel felt the air vibrate. She stood up and stepped back.
The insects transformed into humanesque creatures like Orlea, though none quite as luminescent. Rachel also noticed the stinger retracted into a scabbard between the wings. At the Queen's command, the creatures returned to their hiding places.
“When your Trevor destroyed the Cedar tree, he severed the source of my…my colony's essence. You're going to help me restore balance.”
“Why not just fly off to a new tree?” Rachel was surprised at her own willingness to consider this was real.
“No matter what you may have read or think you know, you will be wrong about my kind,” Queen Orlea said.
“We are bound here.” Orlea leaned close to Rachel. “Surely you know something about being trapped by circumstance, Rachel?”
The Queen's words stung Rachel with the same shame she felt every time Trevor daunted her.
“Now, we suffer, as you do, because of Trevor. Sitting in your beautiful garden, you called to us for help.”
“How?”
“Thoughts are energy, Rachel. They must go somewhere.”
Rachel's eyes darted to the stalks of foxglove, shimmering above the floral decay.
“What help did I ask for?”
“Life without Trevor.”
Rachel had a sinking feeling. She'd immersed herself in enough Celtic lore to know a faery's help was always in the faery's best interest.
What could Orlea possibly want from a pregnant woman?
“Your breast milk.” The Queen answered.
Rachel folded her arms across her belly.
“I need you to nurse my son. Human milk strengthens faery stock. When he is strong enough he will mate with a new queen and restore the colony.”
Orlea turned to two faeries standing behind her.
“Draiden. Analine.”
Rachel guessed the lager male faery, Draiden, was some kind of guard. He was quite vigilant about his duty to escort the smaller female holding an infant swaddled in red silk. Upon receiving the infant, Orlea beamed in that way any mother would recognize.
“Rachel, this is my son, Keigan.” Orlea held the infant so that it faced Rachel.
The faery infant's unopened eyes were set in wrinkled skin. Two small nostrils pressed into the center of the face. Three small, tightly packed fangs protruded from its upper lip.
“Your child,” (Rachel almost said ‘that thing') is likely to split my breast wide open. That for your promise of some undetermined freedom from my husband?”
Orlea's luminescence grew dark.
“If you do not do as I want, I will send you and your baby back to Trevor. Your daughter will repeat your pathetic pattern.”
Acid seeped into Rachel's mouth. When she swallowed, it felt like shards of glass going down. She didn't know the sex of her baby. Boy or girl, life with Trevor was not what she wanted for the child.
“Choose to help me,” Orlea said, her aura lightening with her tone, “and your baby will be born here. You will nurse both my child and your own.”
“This could take days, weeks even. Trevor will be on a rampage when I get back…”
“The Hidden World lies in a space out of time for those who visit here. Though, it may not seem so to human senses. Give me what I want and your baby will arrive safely. Trevor will not be a problem when you return.”
Rachel reached inside herself for courage she never dare show Trevor.
“Queen, I need to rest before I can agree.”
Rachel felt the queen's penetrating gaze. She was careful to think of nothing other than the exhaustion she felt.
“I hope you don't still think you're going to wake-up from a dream!” She toyed with the beads in her hair.
“You are merely human. Must keep that baby safe until the time is right,” Orlea said.
“Take her there.” She pointed to a grove of willow trees about 100 yards from the garden. Orlea passed her son to Analine. She ordered Draiden to escort Rachel.
Along the way, Rachel marveled at prismatic grasses, sweeping in the breeze and casting rainbows on nearby rock walls. A brook swifted through a fern gully dotted with wild irises.
Draiden swept aside a canopy of jade-colored willows so Rachel could pass through. On a low table was a crystal pitcher filled with lavender liquid and, next to it, a drinking glass. Rachel's mouth watered at the site of chocolate wafers, pear and small mango-colored fruit she didn't recognize. In the grass lay gold pillows and a red silk covering.
“Eat. Rest.” Orlea vanished with Analine and her son but not before Rachel heard her say, “My son is quite hungry.”
Rachel stared at the food set before her.
“It is safe to eat,” Draiden said. “Orlea wouldn't risk giving you the delicacies of legend.”
Draiden had a gentle voice and kind ocean-blue eyes. Rachel thought the combination strange for someone so broad through the shoulders, like Trevor, and who, no doubt, carried a sizable stinger in his large scabbard. He said he would remain near-by while she rested. She nodded and watched him move off to a sunny spot by the brook.
Looking at the food, Rachel wanted to avoid the unfamiliar fruit but couldn't resist the sweet aroma wafting from the bowl. She rolled the fruit, the size of a small fig, between her thumb and index finger. The thin leathery skin was lightly wrinkled. Without utensils to use, she bit into the rind. A bitter flavor sprayed into her mouth. Then, a gush of nectar—a fusion of honey and cherry—coated her tongue. To avoid eating the rind, Rachel poked a hole in it with a stick and sucked out the nectar from every piece, emptying the bowl.
The faceted pitcher was heavier than she expected when she lifted it. Fragrant lavender liquid spilt over the rim and across the mosaic tabletop. A small puddle formed in the grass. The liquid gelled, creating a mirror.
At first, Rachel's own haggard expression reflected back at her. Then it shimmered and the image transformed. She was staring into Trevor's eyes. Rachel was able to see and hear everything he was doing back at the house:
Trevor ran his hand through his inky black hair as he admired his reflection in the mirror. Adjacent to the vanity, his eyes locked onto a portrait of Rachel taken on their wedding day.
Peering into the liquid, Rachel was amazed she could, like an empath, experience her husband's private recollection of the day he first laid eyes on her.
She seemed to have stepped from Tolkien's Rivendell and into the opalescent light filtering through the panoramic window in his office overlooking the Connecticut River. Her scent, a fusion of jasmine and rose, aroused Trevor even before he saw all that her slim silhouette had to offer him.
As Rachel moved through the glare and shadow, Trevor devoured her with his eyes. He wanted to fill his mouth with her perky breasts. He fought back an erection as he thought of pressing his own body against the fullness of her ass. He wanted to slide his penis between those honey-pink lips painted on her pale, almost translucent skin. When Rachel stood before him, Trevor stared into her oval eyes, misty blue speckled with violet, and felt only the urge to possess her.
Within weeks of their first encounter, he had Rachel leading every major web design project at his marketing firm. He also knew more about Rachel than any employer had the right to know. Not just information she volunteered, such as she lived with her father who had liver cancer. Trevor also knew her father's treatment had been draining her bank account. He knew she hadn't had many friends. He knew she needed a restraining order to get rid of her last boyfriend. And, from secret visits to her house, where he would massage his face with her panties, he knew all the secrets Rachel Evans kept in her diaries.
Revulsion coursed through Rachel. She realized Trevor was as poisoned as the sap oozing from the cedar tree in this Hidden World.
The liquid shimmered. Compulsive curiosity lured her to look again, to perhaps see more of what Trevor kept hidden in the dark space of memory.
A twisted smile stretched across his lips as he was remembering his efforts to become her trusted friend, even as she resisted his advances. The solace he gave after her father's death. And, soon after, the day he proposed.
“I'd wait forever for my soul mate. But I don't want to. Marry me.”
Forever came just five months after the day Rachel first appeared in his office. By their first anniversary, Rachel announced she was pregnant.
Shadows rippled across the liquid. Rachel understood that not even this strange magic could unearth all that Trevor kept secreted away.
When the liquid looking glass became clear, she saw Trevor walk across the bedroom to the window overlooking the yard.
“What the hell?”
He pulled up the window and leaned over the sill. His face turned red at the site of orange juice splattered across his truck. And, the yard— it was still a mess.
He bolted downstairs and stormed into the garden.
“Rachel!”
Silence.
Then, buzzing. He froze in mid-step and looked up.
“Damn her,” he said. “She better be at the market getting insecticide.”
Trevor moved quickly out of the garden. His foot landed in a muddy puddle of juice. He eyed the nest. He opened the driver-side door and reached into the center console. He grabbed his epi-pen and iPhone and tossed them on the passenger seat.
Rachel jumped when he slammed the car door. She watched Trevor go to the shed for the hose. She heard him grunt about having just taken a shower and now having to clean up Rachel's mess.
“Bitch probably did it on purpose. I'll deal with her when she gets back.”
The liquid mirror went dark.
Whizzing startled Rachel as she rested against the pillows under the willow tree. Analine's copper hair flowed in the breeze as she settled in the grass next to Rachel.
“Did you rest well?”
“Come to fetch me for Orlea?” she said.
“We are to meet her at the Cedar Tree. First, there are things you must be told about Orlea. She can't be trusted.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. Only Disney creates trustworthy fairies.
“The female who reigns as queen can nest wherever she chooses but once she does, her season is finite. Even before your Trevor hacked the tree in your garden, Orlea found a way around that: She kills all the potential new queens at birth. She mates with the strongest virile male. Then, kills him. She has ruined the colony but, good queen or bad, we are bound to the one who rules.”
Rachel thought quickly, unsure if these faeries also could read her mind.
“Look, I'm not eager to have fangs latch onto my breast but I will suffer for my daughter's sake. Why should I care how your queen runs her hive? If I help her son thrive, she's promised I'll be free from Trevor. Like you say, good queen or bad, we all get some kind of happy ending.”
“Orlea doesn't want her son to find a new queen. She wants to be his queen. Once she mates with Keigan, she regains power. When she no longer needs you, do you think she'll care what happens to you and your daughter?”
Rachel stood up against the willow tree. A contraction pulsed across her tummy. Her back ached. Beads of sweat formed on her face.
“Why should I believe you?”
Just then, Draiden appeared at Analine's side.
“You haven't told her, yet? Orlea is preparing to leave her chamber!”
“Tell me what!” Rachel grimaced as her belly tightened again.
“Seasons past, we had a King, Rowan, who fell in love with a human woman. Orlea discovered this woman was pregnant. She conjured a curse and the woman died giving birth. Then, she killed Rowan,” Draiden said in a low whisper.
“Unaware Rowan had placed a protection charm on the child, Orlea thought it stillborn. The human woman was your mother. King Rowan was your father. Rachel, you are a Halfling.”
”My mother died in childbirth but…”
“Keep silent!” Draiden said. “Didn't you ever wonder why your father regarded you with such disdain? He knew you weren't his.”
Despair stole the light from Rachel's eyes.
“A group of us watched over you but we promised Rowan we would never meddle in your life,” Draiden said.
Analine reached her hands to Rachel's temple. A memory flashed in Rachel's mind: Tiny golden creatures flitting about while she played in the yard of her childhood home.
“What do you want from me?”
“Only a Halfling can invoke the Golden Vow. It binds a promise between a Halfling, a pure faery and, in this case, an unborn child. Orlea doesn't believe in it. She thinks even less of Halflings than humans. If the Pure One intends trickery, the spell will destroy her,” said Draiden.
“Once the vow is invoked, you and the child will be protected by ancient magick,” Analine continued.
“You may not have wings but you do have otherworldly abilities you have yet to manifest.”
“And if I don't believe your story about my faery genes?”
“That is your choice,” Draiden said, “but you leave us only one. We will reveal to Orlea that you are Rowan's Halfling. She will use the power she has left in her to extract your child's spirit from your womb and feed it to Keigan. She will die, but her son will live. We'll get our new queen. You will return to Trevor with a stillborn.”
“But we'd much prefer to have you as family,” Analine said quickly, linking her arm around Rachel's waist.
“Isn't that what you want, a family for your daughter?”
The two faeries whisked Rachel back to Orlea's tree.
“That baby is on her way,” Orlea said with icy pleasure. Analine and Draiden took their places beside the Queen.
“Rachel, are you going to help me or do I send you back to Trevor?”
A thundering hum filled the air. Hundreds of faery-wasps emerged from the nest.
Rachel took deep breaths. She thought only of her daughter, of bringing her safely into the world, and keeping her safe.
“I choose,” she locked eyes with the Queen, “to invoke the Golden Vow between myself, Queen Orlea and my unborn daughter.”
A thick woodsy vine, like a tropical liana, erupted from the earth beneath the Cedar Tree. It rose like a cobra between Rachel and Orlea. One offshoot wrapped Rachel's left arm. Another tightened around Orlea's.
“Halfing! Impossible!” The Queen hissed.
“Not just any Halfing, my Queen,” said Draiden.
Rachel's anxiety rose with her labored breathing as the Queen searched her face. For a moment, in the Queen's pained expression, Rachel could see Orlea was stung by the truth the same way Rachel had been by Trevor's deception.
“How could I not have seen? You have Rowan's eyes!”
Orlea shape-shifted to wasp. Just as she was about to dart at Rachel, dozens of wet, white vines burst up, ensnaring the Queen's body. She was caught, like a fly in a web, between the twin trunks.
Slimy pink insects slithered out of the ruptured vine and descended upon Orlea.
“Centipedes!” The onlookers cried.
Orlea moaned. The centipedes dug their forcipules into the Queen of the Hidden Folk. Within seconds, nothing was left but a pair of shriveled golden wings.
Rachel choked for air. Just before her body slumped to the ground, Draiden had his arms around her.
“It's horrific,” Draiden said.
“I'm sorry we had to put you through this,” Analine brushed Rachel's matted hair from her face.
Rachel wailed with the next contraction.
“To the birthing chamber!”
“Your daughter is almost here Rachel,” Analine's voice resounded in the chamber.
Rachel was lying on a bed of pillows in a room with honeycomb walls. Her feet were strapped with red twine to makeshift wooden stirrups. While Analine and an assistant, tended to her, she noticed another faery-nurse pouring thick liquid into a basin.
“I'm thirsty.” Rachel panted.
A glass of gold liquid was brought to her.
“I know this taste,” she said, gulping the beverage.
“It's nectar from our eggs. You really enjoyed them under the willow tree,” she chuckled. “We hoped it would keep you, and the baby, strong during all of this.”
Mother's intuition sent a warning signal, but Rachel did not have time to process it. A powerful contraction brought her daughter into the world.
After Analine cut the cord, she placed the newborn in the basin. When she lifted her up, thick shimmering liquid dripped from her tiny body. The attendants swaddled her in a gold silk blanket and placed her in Rachel's arms.
“She's perfect.”
Rachel looked into her daughter's angular indigo eyes. She felt a tingle of unease. It passed quickly as her baby girl vigorously sucked at her breast for the first time.
“We'll bring Keigan to you, shortly.” Analine stopped at the doorway.
“What will you name her?”
“I don't know,” Rachel answered. “I'm too terrified about nursing a baby with fangs to think about what to name my daughter.”
“Rachel,” Analine called gently into the room. “Keigan is ready.”
His cries were fierce. He thrashed about the swaddling, making Rachel even more nervous. When Analine passed Keigan to Rachel, she was surprised by how he inched, caterpillar-like, toward her human breast.
“You many not be his mother, but he smells your milk,” said Analine.
Rachel looked down at the faery-child. He was less wrinkled, now. His eyes had opened; a lighter violet than Orlea's. He opened his mouth. Rachel's body stiffened at the site of the three fangs.
“Relax. Show him your breast.”
Trembling, Rachel uttered an almost inaudible ‘help me.'
Analine steadied him. Rachel felt the heat of his breath on her breast. Then, a searing pain, like hot needles stabbing her flesh. She expected blood. To her amazement, the fangs retracted just enough that when Keigan fully latched-on her flesh didn't tear. At the end of the long feeding, Rachel burst into tears. It took two nursemaids to unlatch Keigan. Rachel would leave the Hidden World with a few scars in the flesh of her bosom.
Rachel pulled her damp, copper-tone hair into a long braid. After what seemed to her to be days of feeding and sleeping, she was grateful for the bath. She smelled of honeysuckle and her skin glowed in the bands of light that wafted through an open window. Looking out, Rachel could see the Cedar Tree. It had shed layers of pus-covered bark. Young branches, pregnant with new growth, emerged from both trunks. Prismatic grass and rows of lilies and foxglove surrounded the tree.
Analine entered the room.
“Liana and I are ready,” she said as she hugged her daughter close to her bosom.
“A wonderful name!” Analine's wings fluttered happily.
Rachel smiled. “How is Keigan?”
“Stronger. Already buzzing about for a mate. Won't be long.”
“Analine, how long have I been gone?”
“When you return, it will be dusk of the same day.”
Gooseflesh rose on Rachel's skin as she thought of facing Trevor.
“You don't need to go back. Draiden will handle things. We're family, Rachel.”
Cold tingling swept up Rachel's spine.
Analine reached for Rachel's hand and they were transported to the cedar tree.
“Why not leave Liana with me? No reason to bring her along.” “We have unfinished business with Trevor. We'll come back.”
“Faery nature is coming out in you!”
Silvery-blue sparks crackled and Rachel went through the portal.
The hive rattled back to life. The swarm crossed the yard and descended upon Trevor's bare chest. He fell out of the hammock where he'd dozed off. Jumping to his feet, he swatted in every direction.
The swarm taunted him. Stingers pricked his skin but did not, yet, penetrate his flesh. He looked like an imbecile dancing in the yard as he tried to make his way to the truck. He tripped and crashed to the ground.
Serrated stingers repeatedly stabbed his flesh. Blisters bubbled. Blood and pus oozed across his skin. Trevor convulsed in the grass, screaming as wasp venom burned through his body.
Sparks lit between the twin trunks.
“Trevor!” Rachel was stunned at the sight of her husband writhing in the grass.
He reached out for his wife.
“The epi-pen. In the truck. Please. Before these things kill me. Help me!” He grunted. Wasps flew at his mouth.
“I thought I could. I was a fool. You trapped me in your cruel world. I won't have that for my daughter.”
The swarm slowed to hovering. Trevor could see the child in Rachel's arms.
Rachel turned her back on Trevor.
He choked out another plea. “I promise I'll make things right for us. For our daughter. We'll be a family.”
Rachel walked to the truck. Through the open window, she grabbed the epi-pen and Trevor's cell. When she turned to face her husband, Draiden appeared.
“Rachel, do not betray your faery kin.” He disappeared into the swarm.
Rachel had no intention for doing anything foolish. She'd been in the dark long enough and she'd had enough. She tossed the epi-kit and the phone in the grass.
“Help yourself, Trevor.”
Rachel Sinclair placed her daughter in the car seat. She got behind the wheel of Trevor's Dodge Hemi and revved the engine. As she put her hands on the steering wheel, she noticed the scar on her forearm: The mark of the Hidden World was burned into her flesh.
She looked out the window at her garden, in full bloom. She put the car in gear. Stopping at the top of the driveway, she turned to check on Liana. The baby had slept through everything. Through the rear window, the shimmer from the foxglove caught her eye. Two winged silhouettes stood in the garden. Rachel pulled the Hemi onto the road.