“The dragons thought it best if you didn’t remember. They thought that… ” How should I phrase this? “They thought it would make you a better mom to forget what happened in Faythander.”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “A better mother? Did they hope I wouldn’t try to kill you again?”
“Yes.” I swallowed. This was a conversation I’d never wanted to have.
She sighed. Weariness tugged at the corners of her eyes and made her cheekbones seem to sag.
“How much do you remember?” I asked.
“Everything,” she said with bitterness. “I remember being sucked into that portal after getting beaten by Roger.”
“Roger?” I asked.
“Don’t ask. He was a worthless, awful person that I’d forgotten until now. I tried to leave him so many times. But when I’d finally had enough and had told him so, he beat me… he beat me so bad that I thought I would die. After that, he left me alone in my apartment, an inch from death. And then, that portal opened.” She shook her head. “When I entered Faythander, I thought I’d gone to heaven.” A small smile creased her mouth. “And then I met Pozin, your father. He was so kind, so forgiving, not anything like what I was used to. I wanted to know about the elves, the goblins, about the world. I had so many questions. And he had so many answers.”
“When did you find out about the Caxon?” I knew it wasn’t a topic she felt comfortable with, but I needed to know the truth all the same.
She smoothed her blankets before answering. “Not for some time. The short years that your father and I courted were the happiest time of my life. When we married, I was sure nothing could ever come between us. I believed our love was too strong to be broken. But I was wrong.”
“What happened?”
She stared out the window as she told her story. “Your father decided I needed a tour of Faythander in order to understand it better. The elves took pilgrimages every so often, so we decided to join them. He said he had high hopes for me. He said I was the first human he’d ever met who seemed connected with Faythander’s magic. I never did understand why he’d said that, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to see all of Faythander. I didn’t realize it at the time, but your father had other reasons for taking me with him.”
“Because he was a member of the Gravidorum?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I didn’t know it, but he was a spy for the Gravidorum. Our pilgrimage was nothing more than a mission to kill the goblins who’d learned the truth about their ancestry—the Caxon. When I learned the truth, I couldn’t go along with him. I told him I was leaving—that I couldn’t stand by and watch him slaughter a group of people simply because of their ancestry.
“He refused to let me leave. He turned against his own people after that and even went along with me as I joined the Caxon.”
“But he never joined the Caxon, did he?”
“No, of course not. He was a member of the Gravidorum. He always would be. It was a fact that stood like a wall between us. When I got pregnant, I’d hoped his resolve would change. It did—but not how I’d expected.”
“Why?”
“He cared for you, even before you were born. He thought the Caxon were a danger to you. I told him not to worry, although I knew he was right. When the Caxon approached me about the sacrifice, I felt appalled. There was no way I would kill my own child. But after time, I began to see their logic. They needed the sacrifice of innocent blood to free their people. There wasn’t any blood more innocent than a newborn child’s. What was one life that hadn’t yet started when it would free an entire nation of people?”
Although her logic was hard for me to condone, I supposed I could see her point of view. It boiled down the age-old question asked by the great philosophers Spock and Captain Kirk: What was more important—to save the many, or to save the few?
But her reasoning also frightened me more than I cared to ponder. She would have killed me. I wouldn’t exist right now if she’d gone through with it. She would have murdered her own child. It was a concept that deeply disturbed me on some primal level I couldn’t explain.
“To think that I would consider sacrificing my… ” She stopped, then tried again. “My own child.” Tears filled her eyes. “The Caxon almost killed me for not allowing them to sacrifice you. And now, I wish they would have. I should have died that day. I should have.”
“But you didn’t let them sacrifice me,” I said, remembering the vision I’d had at the Ever Root Tree. “You stopped them long enough for Fan’twar to save me. You gave me life, and for that, I’m forever thankful.”
She nodded. A tear broke free and trickled down her cheek. I grabbed a tissue from a box on the nightstand and handed it to her. It killed me to see her this way, although the thought occurred to me that perhaps I was seeing my mother—who she really was—for the first time, not the emotionless zombie to whom I’d become accustomed, but someone with real feelings.
Houston’s city skyline glowed through the room’s only window. The beeping sounds of the heart rate monitor broke up the silence.
“Your father,” she said. “Is he alive?”
She’d already been through a major shock today, I wasn’t sure if I should tell her. What if she passed out again? Or worse? She’d believed he was dead for so long, but I knew she’d loved him once. Maybe it would help lift her spirits
