“Is it down the rabbit hole again, darling, or will you be a good girl this time and stay where you can be found for marmalade and tea?” Amandine’s voice was sad and distant; her eyes stayed on the moon. “It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you, even when I thought it could be up to me. But you’re choosing for keeps this time; you’re choosing to stop deceiving yourself. Out of the tower now, no more protection for Daddy’s precious princesses.”
“What—”
“No.” Her voice was like a whip cracking through the air. “Choose. No more arguments. No more letting me lie to you. Choose.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You didn’t understand the first time either, and you chose then.”
I dropped back to the soles of my feet, looking around the room. The shadows had deepened, twisting my toys into strange new shapes. This wasn’t my childhood reality anymore. This was something new, sea-changed and wild, like a mirror reflection of what had really been. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“You have to choose.” There was no pity in her voice, no mercy; just a strange echo, like distant bells. My reflection in the window changed, growing taller, melting into my adult self before the lines of my flesh thinned and refined themselves, becoming something altogether different.
The face in the glass was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It was too delicate, with sharply pointed ears and eyes that were even more colorless than before. Even my hair looked bleached, going from brown to a silvery ash-blonde. It was who I would have been if I’d been born a pureblood, immortal, bred to the faerie rides and the dark at the bottom of the garden path.
I’d never realized how much I look like my mother.
“It’s not too late,” she said. The bells were stronger now, layered with moonlight and madness. “This is your choice to make, and there are always other roads. Look.” Amandine gestured to the window. The glass cleared, reflection fading. I looked.
A second window had replaced the Cheshire cat moon, separated from ours by a few feet of empty space. It framed a second me, a frightened little girl in a toonew nightgown, standing next to her own version of Amandine. But this little girl and her mother were human, without fae strangeness or illusions.
“What is this?” I pressed my palm against the window. The other me did the same.
“This is the choice you can’t take back.” Amandine’s voice came from above and slightly behind me. The other Amandine’s lips moved in perfect time with the words. “If you take it, nothing you do will change the road you’re on.”
Swallowing hard, I asked, “What am I choosing?”
“Me or her, October. Humanity or fae.” There was a pause before she added, much more quietly, “Freedom or the crossroads burden.”
“The Changeling’s Choice?” I twisted around to face her, my hand still pressed against the glass. “I already made that choice.”
“Now you have to make it again.”
A second chance? “What happens if I pick the human road this time?” I asked. “What happens if I say I want to stay here?”
“If you choose that road, I’ll tuck you into bed, kiss you good night, and walk away. You’ll sleep, you’ll dream, and you’ll die. I don’t know whether it’ll hurt. I’ve never died of elf-shot.” She shook her head. “It probably won’t, if that helps your decision at all. You’ll just sleep until your heart stops.”
“What if I choose the road I took last time? Does that mean I’ll live?”
“Maybe. Nothing’s certain.” She looked away. “This has only happened a few times.”
“Great. Even my hallucinations aren’t normal.” I shook my head. “Go away. I’m not choosing anything.”
“October—”
“I’m not!” I pressed my hands over my ears. “I’m dying. You can’t change it, you can’t stop it, and you’re nothing but a bad dream! Now
“Toby?” This voice was different.
I lifted my head, uncovering my ears. The dreamlike twisting of the room was gone. I was back in the bed; the lights were on, and most importantly of all, my father was standing in the doorway, one hand still on the light switch.
“Bad dream, baby?” he asked.
For a moment, it felt like I’d forgotten how to breathe. Swallowing, I managed to whisper, “Daddy?”
My mother didn’t bring any pictures of my father when we left the mortal world, and I was too young to understand how much I’d want them someday. I didn’t take my teddy bear, much less the family photo album. No one told me I’d never see my father again; I wouldn’t have believed them if they had.
I barely remembered what he looked like until I had him standing right in front of me. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a thick waist, and pale Irish skin speckled with a lifetime of freckles. I got my rotten knees from his side of the family, even though I didn’t inherit his height or bright blue eyes. I always looked like a changeling next to him, even before I knew how true that really was.
“Yeah, baby, it’s me,” he said, smiling as he walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled at me. I found the strength to smile back. I had my father’s smile. Mother never told me that. Mother never told me a lot of things. “Can’t sleep?”
“Not really.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Maybe I was hallucinating while the elf-shot shut my body down, but I hadn’t seen my father in a long time. I wanted to look at him as much as I could. “I’m sorry I yelled.”
“It’s all right. I was up.” Daddy was a tax attorney. He brought a lot of work home during the week and worked on it after I’d gone to bed, leaving his weekends and afternoons free. I never forgot that, even though I’d forgotten the way the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Just don’t wake your mother.”
“I won’t,” I said earnestly. Amandine went away when I told her to; I didn’t want her coming back.
He ruffled my hair, asking, “Everything okay in there?”
“Sort of. Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Is it wrong to walk away from a choice you’re supposed to make? If you’re supposed to pick something, is it bad not to pick anything at all?”
“I guess it depends on what you’re choosing,” he said, with his usual careful deliberation. “If you were deciding whether to take your teddy bear to bed with you, I guess you could take a different dolly and never make up your mind about the bear. But if you were deciding whether you’d do something that needs doing—like cleaning your room—I guess it would be bad to never decide.”
“What if it was something more important than cleaning your room?”
“How much more important?”
“As important as going away or not going away.”
He stiffened before nodding, saying, “With something like that, it would be bad not to choose. You planning on running away from home?”
“No. But if I had to decide whether to stay or go, wouldn’t it be better to just not decide? To stay without choosing?”
“Not really.” He reached out again, putting his hand over mine. “You have to decide what matters to you, baby, and follow that decision. I’d be sad if you left, but I know you’d only do it for something that mattered so much you felt you had to.”
“You have to make your own choices in life. If you don’t, what’s the point?”
“You’re right.” I managed to smile again, blinking back tears. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, baby.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead before standing and walking to the door. “Get some sleep, and think about it, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Good night, Toby.” He turned off the light, closing the door as he left.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark when I was a kid, but for a moment, I wished my childhood room had come with the usual night-light. It would’ve been nice if those shadows had been just a little shallower as I climbed out of the
