“My father used to recite that poem all the time,” Helen said. “It was his way of telling me and Mark the story of where we came from.”
“He recited you a poem about an evil faerie queen luring men to their deaths as a way of telling you about your mother? Repeatedly?” Simon asked, incredulous. “No offense, but that’s kind of . . . harsh.”
“My father loved us despite where we came from,” Helen said in the way of someone trying to convince herself. “But it always felt like he kept some part of himself in reserve. Like he was waiting to see her in me. It was different with Mark, because Mark was a boy. But girls take after their mothers, right?”
“I’m not really sure that’s scientifically accurate logic,” Simon said.
“That’s what Mark said. He always told me the faeries had no claim on us or our nature. And I tried to believe him, but then, after he was taken . . . after the Inquisitor told me the story of my birth mother . . . I wonder . . .” Helen was looking past Simon, past the walls of her domestic prison cell, lost in her own fears. “What if I’m luring Aline to that cold hill’s side? What if that need to destroy, to use love as a weapon, is just hibernating in me somewhere, and I don’t even know it? A gift from my mother.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about faeries,” Simon said. “Not really. I don’t know what the deal was with your mother, or what it means for you to be half one thing and half another. But I know your blood doesn’t define you. What defines you is the choices you make. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that. And I also know that loving someone—even when it’s scary, even when there are consequences—is never the wrong thing to do. Loving someone is the opposite of hurting her.”
Helen smiled at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “For both our sakes, Simon, I really hope that you’re right.”
In the Land under the Hill, in the Time Before . . .
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady of the Seelie Court who lost her heart to the son of an angel.
Once upon a time, there were two boys come to the land of Faerie, brothers noble and bold. One brother caught a glimpse of the fair lady and, thunderstruck by her beauty, pledged himself to her. Pledged himself to stay. This was the boy Andrew. His brother, the boy Arthur, would not leave his side.
And so the boys stayed beneath the hill, and Andrew loved the lady, and Arthur despised her.
And so the lady kept her boy close to her side, kept this beautiful creature who swore his fealty to her, and when her sister lay claim to the other, the lady let him be taken away, for he was nothing.
She gave Andrew a silver chain to wear around his neck, a token of her love, and she taught him the ways of the Fair Folk. She danced with him in revels beneath starry skies. She fed him moonshine and showed him how to give way to the wild.
Some nights they heard Arthur’s screams, and she told him it was an animal in pain, and pain was in an animal’s nature.
She did not lie, for she could not lie.
Humans are animals.
Pain is their nature.
For seven years they lived in joy. She owned his heart, and he hers, and somewhere, beyond, Arthur screamed and screamed. Andrew didn’t know; the lady didn’t care; and so they were happy.
Until the day one brother discovered the truth of the other.
The lady thought her lover would go mad with the grief of it and the guilt. And so, because she loved the boy, she wove him a story of deceitful truths, the story he would want to believe. That he had been ensorcelled to love her; that he had never betrayed his brother; that he was only a slave; that these seven years of love had been a lie.
The lady set the useless brother free and allowed him to believe he had freed himself.
The lady subjected herself to the useless brother’s attack and allowed him to believe he had killed her.
The lady let her lover renounce her and run away.
And the lady beheld the secret fruits of their union and kissed them and tried to love them. But they were only a piece of her boy. She wanted all of him or none of him.
As she had given him his story, she gave him his children.
She had nothing left to live for, then, and so lived no longer.
This is the story she left behind, the story her lover will never know; this is the story her daughter will never know.
This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul. This is how a faerie loves: with destruction.
I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that.
I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever.
This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.
Bitter of Tongue
By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan
There were more horses joining the roan, more and more of the Wild Hunt. Simon saw Kieran, a white silent presence. The faerie on the roan turned his horse toward the place where Simon and Isabelle stood, and Simon saw the roan sniff the air like a dog.
—Bitter of Tongue
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and it was a beautiful day at Shadowhunter Academy.
Well, Simon was pretty sure the sun was shining. There was a faint luminescence to the air in his and George’s underground chamber, casting a pleasant glow upon the green slime that coated their walls.
And all right, he could not hear the birds from his subterranean room, but George did come back from the showers singing.
“Good morning, Si! I saw a rat in the bathroom, but he was taking a nice nap and we didn’t bother each other.”
“Or the rat was dead of a very infectious disease, which has now been introduced to our water system,” Simon suggested. “We may be drinking plague-rat water for weeks.”
“Nobody likes a Gloomy Gus,” George scolded him. “Nobody likes a Sullen Si. Nobody is here for a Moody Mildred. No one fancies—”
“I have gathered the general tenor of your discourse, George,” said Simon. “I object strongly to being referred to as a Moody Mildred. Especially as I really feel like I’m a Mildly Good-Humored Mildred right now. I see you’re looking forward to your big day?”
“Have a shower, Si,” George urged. “Start the day refreshed. Maybe style your hair a little. It wouldn’t kill you.”
Simon shook his head. “There’s a dead rat in the bathroom, George. I am not going in the bathroom, George.”
“He’s not dead,” George said. “He’s just sleeping. I’m certain of it.”
“Senseless optimism is how plagues get started,” Simon said. “Ask the medieval peasants of Europe. Oh, wait, you can’t.”
“Were they a jolly bunch?” George asked skeptically.
“I’m sure they were much jollier before all the plague,” said Simon.