“Really?”
“Yeah. Then they age a bit slower physically, so by the time a faerie looks like a three-or four-year-old, they’re actually seven or eight…and mentally they act like they are about eleven or twelve.”
“That’s weird.”
“You need to remember that we’re plants. Nurturing helpless young is what animals do. Not plants. Plants produce seedlings and those seedlings grow on their own. They don’t need help.”
“So what, faeries don’t even have parents?
Tamani bit his lip and looked at the ground. “Things are very different in the faerie realm. There’s not much time to be a child and not enough adult faeries to just sit around and watch kids play. Everyone has a role and a purpose, and they take on those roles very early. We grow up quickly. I’ve been a sentry since I was fourteen. I was a mite young but only by a year or two. Most faeries are practicing their profession and living on their own by fifteen or sixteen.”
“That doesn’t sound very fun.”
“Fun isn’t really the point.”
“If you say so. So, I couldn’t come as a baby because I could walk and talk, right?”
“Yep.”
“So how old was I when I did come?”
He sighed, and for a moment Laurel didn’t think he would tell her. Then he seemed to change his mind. “You were seven.”
“Seven?” The idea was a little shocking. “Why don’t I remember anything?”
Tamani leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. “You have to understand before I answer that, even though you don’t remember, you agreed to all this.”
“All what?”
“Everything. Coming here, fulfilling your role, living with the humans, all of it. You were selected for this a long time ago, and you agreed to come.”
“Why don’t I remember?”
“I told you I can make humans forget they saw me, right?”
She nodded.
“That’s what they did to you. Once you were at the age that you could pass for a human child, they made you forget your faerie life.”
“Like, with a potion or something?”
“Yes.”
Laurel sat stunned. “They made me forget seven years of my life?”
Tamani nodded solemnly.
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
They sat in silence for several minutes as Laurel tried to comprehend what this meant for her. She began adding up the years Tamani claimed she had lost. “I’m nineteen?” she asked in amazement.
“Technically, yes. But you’re still just like a fifteen-year-old human.”
“How old are you?” she asked, anger heavy in her voice. “Fifty?”
“Twenty-one,” Tamani said quietly. “We’re almost the same age.”
“So they just made me forget everything?”
Tamani shrugged, his face tense.
Laurel’s tight clutch on her temper came loose. “Did you guys even think this through? A million things could have gone wrong. What if my parents didn’t want me? What if they found out I don’t have a heart, or blood, or that I don’t hardly have to breathe? Do you know what most people feed three-year-olds? Milk, cookies, hot dogs! I could have died!”
Tamani shook his head. “What do you take us for? Amateurs? There has rarely been a time in your life when you didn’t have at least five faeries watching you, making sure everything was going smoothly. And it wasn’t like the eating thing was a problem. That’s why you were selected in the first place.”
“Didn’t I forget what I was supposed to eat?”
“That’s the cool thing about Fall faeries. Part of their magic is knowing intrinsically what is good and bad for themselves as well as other faeries. They have to, in order to make their elixirs. We knew you wouldn’t eat something bad for you of your own free will. The only thing we had to watch for was that your parents didn’t force- feed you. Which they never did,” he said before she could ask. “We had everything completely under control. Well,” he added reluctantly, “till you left.”
“Till I left? If you were watching me so closely, you should have known we were moving.”
“We stopped watching you as closely a few years ago. I insisted. I’m…kind of in charge of you right now. You weren’t a child anymore. In terms of faerie age, you were more than an adult. The signs of you being a faerie weren’t as obvious. You didn’t fall down very often, and your parents were used to your eating habits. I felt you deserved a little more privacy. I thought you would appreciate it,” he added morosely.
“I probably would have if I had known,” Laurel conceded.
Tamani sighed. “But I pulled back too far and we totally missed you moving until the movers showed up. I wanted to go extreme and stop everything right then. Dope the movers, take you back to the realm, call the whole damn project a wash. But…let’s just say I was outvoted. So you and your parents took off in the car and then you were just…gone.” He laughed humorlessly. “Boy, did I get in trouble.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You came back. Everything’s all right now.”
She looked at him warily. “Are you going to follow me home and move into my backyard since you apparently like to watch me so much?”
He laughed. “No. We’re fine right here, thanks. Mostly we were worried about you blossoming and having major problems with that. Luckily, you managed just fine.”
“So I’ll live there and you’ll just keep living out here?”
“For the time being.”
“Then what was the point of me being a…a scion? Was I just an experiment?”
“No. Not at all.” Tamani let out a loud, exasperated breath, then looked around the clearing quickly. “The point of sending you here was to help protect this land. It’s…an important spot for faeries. It’s imperative that someone who understands be in possession of the land. That’s the main reason you were placed with them. When your mom’s mother died, your mom got really bitter and immediately put this place up for sale. She was nineteen and I guess it just held too many memories.”
“She’s told me about that.”
Tamani nodded. “Things got better when she married your dad, but she never did stop trying to sell. That’s when the Seelie Court came up with the idea of adding you to her family. Worked even better than they had hoped. After your mom really bonded with you, she stopped trying to sell. Other than an occasional buyer who comes through now and then, that part of our job has been easy. It seems to be pretty much all downhill now.” Tamani leaned back with his hands stretched behind his head. “We just sit back and wait for you to inherit.”
Laurel looked down at her hands. “What if I don’t inherit? What if — what if my parents sell?”
“They can’t sell,” he said matter-of-factly.
Her head jerked up. “Why not?”
Tamani smiled slyly. “You can’t sell a house if no one remembers it exists.”
“Huh?”
“Seeing us isn’t the only thing we can make humans forget.”
Laurel’s eyes widened as she understood. “You’ve been sabotaging them! You made people forget they’d even seen the house.”
“We had to.”
“And the appraisers?”
“Trust me, it would be too tempting if your mom found out how much this land is worth.”
“So you made them forget too?”
“It was necessary, Laurel. Believe me.”
