Wondrous Strange

“Sonny-”

“Your father is a very, very old power and he is not from this realm.”

“You are actually trying to tell me that my father-wait, sorry, my ‘real’ father-is from another country?”

He nodded. “Another world entirely. Actually.”

Kelley was speechless, her patience reaching its absolute end.

Sonny took another deep breath and barreled through his next words. “Your father-yes, your real father-is a king, and his name is Auberon-”

Kelley laughed out loud.

“Yes, I know-but Shakespeare didn’t make it all up, Faerie tales are sometimes true, and you are the heir to the Unseelie throne of the Faerie realms-”

“Stop it.”

“Kelley-”

“Stop. I said stop!” She held a hand up in front of his face as he opened his mouth again. She got it now. The gauze wings on her back suddenly felt like lead weights. “I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want you to say my name. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to hear you say anything. Look…I don’t know if you’re a weirdo or a liar or just crazy, but you have to stop talking to me. You have to stop coming around here. I have a job to do and I can’t do it with you near!”

“Funny, I feel exactly the same way about you every time I see you in the park,” he muttered, turning away. But then he turned back to her, and his storm-gray stare fastened on her like a vise. “Kelley. Listen to me.”

“No. This is insane. I mean, okay, I get it. You’re very amusing, Sonny. A real practical joker.” She struggled a bit frantically at the knotted laces that held her wings on. “What kind of an idiot do you think I am? Do you really think I’m naive enough to fall for this particular line of BS? Did you and your buddy Maddox come up with this over beers or something?”

“What? No!”

“Ha-ha, very funny-let’s mess with the girl who thinks she’s a fairy queen! I’m an actor. This is a role.” She shrugged out of the costume piece with violent, jerking motions, and threw the wings at Sonny. They hit him in the chest and fell to the ground at his feet. “And you can go to hell!”

“You think I’m delusional? You think I’m crazy or something? That this is all a joke?” His hands shot out and he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, shaking her. Then he released her and his long fingers moved down the front of his shirt, unbuttoning it with a lightning swiftness. He yanked the fabric aside, and Kelley gasped despite herself. His chest was heavily bandaged. There were dark stains seeping through in parallel gashes over the right side of his ribs. He flung his arms wide so that Kelley couldn’t help but see the blood. “Was that creature in the park a delusion? A joke? Funny. Those claws felt awfully real to me.”

“It was a dog,” Kelley protested weakly, her stomach heaving at the sight of Sonny’s blood. The Black Shuck web entry she had dismissed as fantasy suddenly flashed unbidden into her mind.

“Sure it was. A dog the size of a hay wagon with talons and glowing red eyes and-oh! I almost forgot-it ran without touching the ground.”

“It was dark…”

“I saw it just fine. Of course, I got a nice, close-up view as it was trying to rip my throat out. It won’t be trying that again.” The tone of his voice made it pretty clear what he meant by that.

“You killed it?”

Sonny held up his arm: His wrist was encircled by a band of coarse black hair, intricately braided and knotted. “I got lucky. But, by all means, if you really don’t believe me, and don’t believe that I was trying to protect you-that I’m trying to protect you now-just say so. And then, maybe next time someone from the Otherworld-that’s the place your father the Faerie king rules-tries to have you killed, I won’t even bother coming to your rescue. I could probably save myself some pain and suffering that way!”

Kelley was silent. Whatever Sonny saw in her eyes in that moment, her expression made him shrink from her- as though he had just slapped her across the face and regretted it profoundly. Shame coloring his cheeks, Sonny dropped his gaze and buttoned his shirt back up. He reached out a hand to Kelley in a gesture that might have been a silent apology, but she turned and walked back toward the theater.

Jack was standing on the steps when she got there. Wordlessly, he held the stage door open for her.

Once inside, Kelley stood with her head pressed against the wall, feeling a bit faint. From the other side of the door, she heard Jack’s voice, not so mellow at that moment.

“I don’t know what you said to upset her so, young man,” he said. “I don’t need to. All I need to know is that you aren’t going to be coming around here again. Because if you do, there’s a fairly good chance I will forget that most people call me Gentleman Jack. Do you understand?”

Kelley peered through a crack between the theater’s old oak doors and watched Sonny wordlessly hand her wings to Jack. Then he turned and walked out of the Avalon’s courtyard without once looking back.

Kelley shut the door to her dressing room and picked up her cell phone.

Her aunt answered on the first ring.

“Kelley?” she asked immediately. “Is everything all right?”

Kelley didn’t answer the question. “Emma…Was I…adopted?”

There was a pause. “What?” Emma’s voice, when it came, was pitched too high. “Oh, my dear! Why would you ask such a-”

“Don’t lie to me, Emma.” Kelley cut her aunt short. “I know about…about them. I know.”

“Oh, Kelley…” The long, sad sigh on the other end of the line told Kelley everything. Sonny had spoken the truth. As insane as that seemed, as much as Kelley had wanted it to be some elaborate practical joke, she knew suddenly that Sonny hadn’t lied.

“Em?” Kelley asked again, her voice quiet. Calm. “Please. Tell me.”

“You weren’t adopted, Kelley. Not exactly.” Emma’s voice, on the other hand, shook with emotion. “More like…”

“Abducted.”

“I…” The tremor stopped just short of becoming a sob. “Yes. You were stolen. I took you from them-from him-because he took my child from me.”

“How…Oh, Em-how could you?” Kelley didn’t even know what else to say.

“Madness. Grief.” The pain in her aunt’s voice reflected an old wound that had never fully healed. “I only wanted someone to love. It’s not an excuse, and I won’t blame you if you hate me forever.”

The crackling hiss of the phone connection stretched out in the silence that followed.

“I don’t hate you, Em,” Kelley said finally.

“I’ve denied you your birthright.” Emma was weeping. “Your destiny. I thought that I was doing a good thing, but it was all kinds of evil and I see that now. I only hope you can forgive me one day.”

It broke Kelley’s heart to hear her aunt’s grief. “Tell me about this ‘birthright,’ Emma,” she said gently.

She had to wait for a minute while Emma struggled to get hold of herself, but eventually her aunt was able to speak. “Do you remember the stories, Kelley-the ones I used to tell you about the Fair Folk?”

Of course she remembered. The fables. Folklore…cautionary tales of the fairies and their wicked deeds. She’d grown up steeped in it. Given even half an ear, Emma would rabbit on and on about the subject until her listener’s head exploded. Eventually Kelley had become immune to it.

And to all the rest. She’d learned to ignore…things, things that lurked in the half-forgotten memories of her childhood. Things once kept at bay by the constant presence of rowan switches and iron charms near her bed, warded off by pots of wild marigold and primrose kept growing on the sills, and by Emma’s whispered invocations every night at the door of her room.

Later on, when she’d give fleeting thought to those days, Kelley remembered Emma’s “superstitions” as quaint. Once she’d grown older and stopped believing in things she’d once seen in the woods around home with her own eyes, Kelley had written Emma’s stories off as just that: stories. And her own encounters, the product of an overactive, childish mind. She had made herself forget. But now…