'You... ,' Jenks started vehemently, then hesitated. 'You have,' he whispered.
Pierce set the figure of a mantis back on the mantel. 'I loved a woman with all my soul. And I left her though I strove not to. She lived on, found love, married, had children who are old today, but I saw her face in their pictures, and I smiled.'
I sniffed, thinking my coming here was a travesty. I was trying to help Jenks live when Pierce had lived more than both of us put together. Not in years, but in experience.
Seeming to start to understand, Jenks collapsed back onto the hummock of moss. 'When does it stop hurting?' he asked, hand around his middle.
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. All of us were damaged, but it made us stronger, maybe. Maybe it just made us more fragile.
'The mind numbs,' Pierce said. 'The memories blur. Others take their place. A long time. Maybe never.'
'I will
'But you will live.' Pierce faced us squarely. 'Others need you. You know it. Otherwise, why tell Jax to take the land? That's not pixy tradition. It's against everything you know. Why do that if you don't feel a responsibility for something else?'
Jenks blinked fast as he thought about that, and Pierce stood beside me. 'You've reached past your limits, pixy,' he said. 'Now you have to live up to your ideas. You have to
A light silver dust was sifting from Jenks as he silently cried. 'I'll never hear her again,' he said softly. 'I'll never know her thoughts on a sunset or her opinion of a seed. How will I know if it will grow? She was always right. Always.' Misery in his face, he looked up. Relief spilled into me. He wanted to live. He just didn't know how.
Pierce handed him his glass of honey. 'YouTl know. Come with me on the first full moon of spring. We will tour the cemeteries. I need to find my sweetheart. I need to put flowers on her grave and thank her for going on without me.'
My chest seemed heavy, and my throat was tight. I couldn't help but wonder, though, if Pierce had been measuring me against his eighteenth-century love. That was something I could never be. I didn't know if I even wanted to be with a man who wanted a woman like that.
'I will,' Jenks said seriously, not drinking the honey. 'And you will sing with me about Matalina.'
Hope mixed with melancholy, and I crossed the room to give him a hug. 'Are you ready to go?' I asked him. Matalina wanted him to burn their home.
Jenks's eyes flicked down to the glass in his hand. 'Not yet.'
I took the solstice light out of his hand. 'I missed you, Jenks,' I said, giving him a hug and shocking myself when I found wings back there. 'Just for that breath of time I thought you were gone. Don't do that to me again.'
He took a breath, then another. It came ragged, full of his emotion. 'I miss her so much,' he said, and suddenly he was holding me tight as he cried angry sobs into my hair. 'I miss her so damn much.'
So I held him, my own tears falling anew as we gave comfort to each other. It had been worth it. All the blackness on my soul was worth this. And no one would convince me that this was damning. It couldn't be.
Twenty-five
There was a hollow place in my middle that wasn't from not having eaten all day. The sun was nearing the horizon, and the leaves that hadn't been burned were stark against the blue and pink of sunset. Almost like an oil, the scent of ash coated me. The heat from Jenks's stump burning was a gentle warmth this close to the ground instead of the expected inferno.
To one side of me, Pierce stood, his hands clasped before him with a white-knuckled strength, his expression pained from a memory he wouldn't share. Sunset would be here soon, and he'd ignored all my suggestions to leave. He claimed Al would leave him alone as long as he was 'protecting' me. I didn't need protecting. Okay, maybe I did.
One of Jenks's returning children had given Pierce a heavier coat, garden stained and looking like it hadn't been washed since last fall. It went all the way to the ground, and Pierce looked odd with his dirty bare feet peeping out from under it.
Jenks was a tortured presence at my other side as his home burned with Matalina inside it. Tears glittered into dust as they fell from him, a pure silver that gave him an unreal glow, almost as if he were a ghost. Each breath was pained, rising from deep within him, hurting.
His children were in the garden, silent. All but Jax had returned, their grief tempered with the unknown. Never had a pixy tried to live past his or her spouse, and though happy they were together, there was no understanding of what came next—joyful that their father was alive, yet mourning their mother. They were confused, not understanding how they could be both.
The flames took on rims of blue and green as the rooms laden with pixy dust caught, a funnel of heat making the flame swirl into a spire, as if reaching for the heavens. Jenks's fingers brushed mine and took them. Fire cleansed, but nothing could stop the heartache.
'Tears could not be equal, if I wept diamonds from the skies,' Jenks whispered, empty and bereft. 'My word silent, though I should howl. Muffled by death, my wings can't lift me high enough to find you. I feel you within. Unaware of my pain. Not knowing why I mourn.'
He lifted his eyes to mine, a glimmer of tears showing. 'And why I breathe alone.'
I shifted my bare feet, cold on the earth. I wasn't a poet. I had no words. Tears blurred my sight as we stood and watched his life burn.
Today had been harder than anything I'd ever endured, watching Jenks's children come home, one by one, each not knowing why they were drawn back or how to react. I could imagine what usually happened to the lonely souls that were cast into the world, hurting and alone. Watching them realize that they had one another to share their grief with was both painful and a joy. Jenks was the binding force, the gravity that had brought them back. Even the fairies, now released from their prison to find food, were subdued.
'I'm sorry, Jenks,' I whispered when the flames grew higher, warming my face but for the tear tracks. 'I want you to stay in the desk.'
Taking a deep breath, his wings shifted, then stilled, lying like gossamer on his back. Saying nothing, he pulled his hand from mine and looked up at the faint noise the fairies were making as they hunted for spiders in the chill evening. Apparently their wings were why they destroyed a garden in their efforts to reach food, and they were amazed by their new dexterity, relishing being able to duck into small places. Better yet, they weren't damaging the garden.
'No thank you,' Jenks said, his voice low as he watched the trees. 'I couldn't live in the stump anyway.' His faint smile was because of parental pride. 'The kids will be fine. They have huts all over the garden. I'll just sleep in my office.'
I couldn't bear thinking of him setting up residence in the flowerpot he'd turned into an office at the edge of the property. I was itching to push him into taking the potion that Ceri had made to turn small things big, but I daren't mention it yet. I shivered, and Jenks turned from the fire, his shoulders slumping. 'You should get big again. It's too cold out here for you.
'I'm fine,' I said, clearly not.
At Jenks's pointed look, Pierce took his coat off and draped it over me. I would have protested, but it was warm and smelled like him and the garden both. A puff of redwood rose as I tugged it close, and Jenks eyed the witch, the first glint of anything other than grief in his eyes.
'You're smaller than I thought you'd be my size,' he said dryly, attention going to his home as a weird keening rose. The flames had eaten through the ceiling, and the wind was being sucked in through the tunnels, feeding the fire. It sounded like the wood itself was moaning, and it gave me the creeps. 'Maybe I should hit you now for when you make Rachel cry.'
'I'm not going to make her cry,' Pierce said indignantly.
Jenks's wings lifted slightly, turning red from the increased circulation and heat. 'Sure you will. All her
