A Local Habitation

Maybe not ever.

The day of the funeral dawned bright and clear. I met Quentin in the Tea Gardens five minutes after I’d said I’d be there. His arm was in a sling, and he was wearing a black doublet and hose that made him look like Hamlet’s forgotten younger brother. A don’t-look-here spell shielded him from tourists, eliminating the need for a mortal disguise; anyone watching saw me smile and link arms with nothing, then climb the garden’s tallest suspension bridge. If they watched closely enough, they may have even seen me disappear. I don’t think anyone saw. People almost never look that closely.

We walked through Lily’s knowe, stepping out the back gate into the Summerlands. All the glory of the endless Faerie summer was on display, and I stopped, catching my breath. I’ve been living in the mortal world too long, and it takes time for me to adjust. Summerlands air is too clean for lungs accustomed to modern pollution, and the constantly changing twilit sky disorients me. I still love those lands, but they’re not home anymore, if they ever really were.

The sky was the color of burnished amber, and the hills were bright with flowers. I picked a blue daisy, and smiled as it dissolved into a dozen tiny butterflies. The Summerlands are like that. Logic is just a convenience there; change is the only constant, and even that’s false, because the Summerlands are founded on the concept that life—our life, the life of Faerie—can last forever. They’re wild and strange and slowly dying. They weren’t the first home of my people. They’ll almost certainly be the last.

I was a child in the Summerlands. I won’t say I grew up there, but I was a child there, and they’ll always be a part of me. They have a lot in common with stories of Never-Never Land—no one there grows up, just older. Faerie is a world filled with eternal children, forever looking for the next game and never quite learning what adult life is like. That’s what we learn from the mortal world.

Quentin watched me, frowning at this odd frivolity. He was as serious as he’d been when we met; he’d lost a lot of the ground he’d worked so hard to gain. I could understand why: part of his innocence was gone forever, and while I hated the way he’d lost it, I couldn’t say I was sorry it was lost. We all have to learn that leaving the Summerlands means leaving the nursery; he’d grow up or he’d die. Maybe that’s cruel . . . but that’s the world.

I straightened, wiping the pollen off my fingers. “Come on. We need to get moving.”

“Of course,” he said, and followed me across the fields toward a spiraling rose-colored tower. It was like something from a fairy tale, all spun sugar and elegance, and we reached it faster than perspective indicated we should.

The gardens around the tower were a maze of greenery and untended roses. I led Quentin through them, stopping at a tiny door almost concealed behind a wishing well. He looked at it, frowning.

“You know your way around pretty well,” he said.

“I should.” I pressed my hand against the door. It swung open and I smiled sadly. At least the house still knew me. “I used to live here.”

“Will your . . .”

“Don’t worry, Quentin. My mother’s out.” She’s been out for a long time now. No one knows exactly when Amandine went crazy; she collapsed a few years after I vanished, moving into an internal world far stranger than the Summerlands. She doesn’t spend much time in the tower anymore. Most reports place her wandering endlessly through forests and standing, motionless, at crossroads.

I wish I knew what she was looking for.

“I’m sorry,” he said, subdued. “I didn’t think.”