The Winter Long

And the Luidaeg moved.

There was nothing violent about the way she crossed the marble floor; she didn’t descend like an avalanche or strike like a thunderstorm, but there was something so primal about it that for those few seconds, she didn’t look like flesh—she looked like nature itself coming to life and stepping in to intervene. She was a wave on the ocean, she was a ripple on a pond, and it only seemed to take the blink of an eye before she was in front of me, leaning down and offering her hand.

“You are my niece, and I am your aunt, and when you ask my help, it is within my power to give it,” she said, smiling. Her teeth weren’t bloody, but they were sharper than they had any right to be, more like the teeth of some deep and unspoken sea beast than anything that should be allowed to wear a human shape and walk in human cities. She spread the fingers of her outstretched hand a little wider. “All you have to do is let me.”

“Sure thing, Auntie,” I said, and slid my fingers into hers.

If touching Evening had been like touching a cloud, touching the Luidaeg was like touching a corpse. She was cold and felt waterlogged under my clutching hand, as if bearing down too hard might cause her to burst open and melt across the floor. She pulled me easily to my feet, Evening’s ropes of wind dissolving back into the air that they were made from.

The Luidaeg smiled at me again as we straightened up, our eyes almost level with one another. Those terrible teeth still distorted the shape of her mouth, although they didn’t seem to be making it any harder for her to talk. Her eyes were the same as they usually were, warm and very, very human. If not for that, I’m not sure I could have kept looking directly at her.

Then Evening’s hand caught my shoulder, whirling me around to face her. The Luidaeg hissed, yanking me back, out from under Evening’s hand. Evening sniffed dismissively, her eyes traveling from my bloody face to the blood-soaked front of my shirt before finally settling on the Luidaeg.

“I see you’re just as beastly as ever, Annie,” she said. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that it’s easier to be beautiful in this world? Beauty opens oh so very many doors.”

“I never wanted those doors to be opened in the first place, Eira,” snarled the Luidaeg.

“Then it’s a good thing that what you want has never mattered to me, isn’t it?” Evening shook her head. “I was here first, darling sister. Do yourself a favor, calm yourself, and remember your place.”

“I was there before she chose Faerie,” said the Luidaeg. “Can you really claim to have beaten me to her cradle?”

Evening’s smile was a terrible thing to behold. I shrank back against the Luidaeg, suddenly glad for her terrible teeth, for the solid beastliness of her. She was something I could understand, and if she wore her knives on the outside, that just meant that I was better able to see them when she finally chose to use them on me.

“I was at her christening, dear one,” said Evening. “I saw her father hold her in his arms, little red-faced screaming thing that she was, and say that they could call her Olivia when she got older, if the other kids teased her too much about her name. I saw pretty, simpering Amy playing faerie bride, and when she asked if I believed that she was mortal, I told her yes, yes, oh, yes, my darling, you are so believable as something frail and temporary. I beat you to October by a matter of years. You have no claim here.”

The Luidaeg’s hand tightened on mine. “That’s for October to decide, don’t you think?”