The creature sitting across the table from me is wearing my brother’s face. It has a squat, childlike body, a sickly-sweet mask that attempts to beguile any who look upon it. I watch as it picks up the spoon, dips it into the bowl, brings it nearly empty to its lips, red and rubbery like liver at a roadside butcher cart. In its smacking mouth is a pitch-dark gap where normal teeth should be, but is full of jagged bits of jaundiced bone, the true teeth now lost and shoved into some box hidden under a floorboard for safekeeping. Or perhaps they never existed at all. It does not eat, of course, but rather drops the spoon back down and makes some guttural sound of pleasure. My stomach curls at the sound. I can’t even bring myself to swallow what must be our first real food in weeks.
My mother slurps desperately from her own bowl. For a moment, her eyes drift over the brother-thing, and the corner of her mouth dips. Doubt is drawn there, just for a moment, and then it bleeds into building dread. I must make some noise or move in some slight way, because she starts and turns to me. Her face is stone, an effigy of misery. Her eyes have sunk back in her head following months of back and forth between mealy scraps and barren cupboards. There is a tint of yellow and green across the corner of her left eye, the souvenir of a man who offered her a tarnished brass piece in exchange for treating her like a punching bag, or worse.
The brother-thing was supposed to stop all that. It was supposed to solve all of our problems. Instead, it infested our home like the rinds of so many rotting fruit.
When my brother was taken from us, it had been raining for almost a week. The clergy were saying it was punishment from the divinities. They did not specify which divinities in particular had been offended, but we had been feeling their wrath for almost a year. It was time the rest of the city caught up.
Mother dragged us through the cold, vicious downpour well after the cloud-covered sun had dropped past the horizon. We moved haltingly through grimy alleys and busy crosswalks, and we were silent except where mother told us to “Watch out!” or “Come this way,” to avoid tripping over great spilling piles of trash and soggy cardboard boxes filled with sleeping folk. It was easy to tell what they were. One could see the effects of magick in the way their gums pulled back from their teeth, their skin pulled back from their fingernails, creating fangs and talons. Of course, the dealers who had led these common folk here would never be found down in the sludge and filth. Fae slept easy in their warm, cozy highrises.
In other parts of the city, there were churches with great glittering stained glass windows, gold and jewel-crusted statues of Titania and Oberon, rich inviting mahogany pews. The priests were duty-bound to open their doors to the hungry, the tired, and the poor alike, offering the bounties of the great Queen Mother and King Father to their constituents. We had never been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of this duty, nor had we ever heard of anyone else who had walked away from the fae-run experiencing such gifts. But of course, there were tellings that if you were desperate enough, you could come make your prayers, and find yourself in unending debt.
We found ourselves, shivering and dripping, in front of a church that may well have been a skyscraper itself, it was so tall. The great spire bled into the night sky, daunting and vicious. While the brownstones which lined the block around it were crumbling into their foundations, the ornate moss-covered stones here were in pristine condition. The stained glass depicted lovely motifs of old lore, Titania with a mother and her infant, Oberon, presiding over the plowing of a field, surrounded by scores of musicians and dancers. Certainly this building was older than most in the city, and protected by spells in languages that had risen and died long before my mother’s mother’s grandmother had been born.
We weren’t religious. Mother said, and of course I agreed, that it was difficult to pray to divinities that had let us suffer for so long. My mother had surely done every pious thing she could to keep us sheltered and fed, and we were still found wanting. Hands clasped in supplication did little to save us. How many others went hungry in the streets, desperate for their Queen Mother and King Father to offer salvation?
My mother ushered us through the doors, holding my brother fast to her chest as she ducked us in, swiftly out of the rain. I ran the sleeve of my coat against my eyes, struggling to tamp the dripping of my hair across my eyelids. It allowed me to clear my vision enough to examine the place in its full magnificent glory.
The ceiling was so high that I could barely see where the rooftop steepled together. Every stuttering step we took across the stone floors seemed to echo throughout the barreling silence of the place. Heavy glowing crystal chandeliers swung from the ceiling like dew-woven spiderwebs, the wax candles that were dutifully lit each nightfall magicked so that they would not drip down onto the parish below. With every flash of lightning from the growing storm, the stained-glass images mocked us three soaked-to-the-bone wretches.
Something sweet and cloying laced the air. I had to pinch the bridge of my nose to keep from sneezing. A thick fog seemed to float over the entire church, and I could see that there were great brass and gold lanterns hanging precariously over lines and lines of candles, white and gold and scarlet. Mother scanned the pews, but didn’t seem to see who she was looking for. She must have seen the water building in my eyes, because she nodded, and whispered, “It’s ambrosia. For the Queen Mother and King Father. Let’s sit.”
We hurried over to an empty pew on the back end of the church, though the entire sanctuary was ours to take. Perhaps the storm had kept the other worshipers away. Or maybe there were just no other souls in the city desperate enough to stagger in.
My mother tucked my brother beneath her left arm, and me beneath her right, prompting me to tuck my chin and clasp my hands. She did the same, and closed her eyes. She began to whisper into her hands, and I realized with almost an awed terror that she was praying. Really praying. She murmured against her knuckles, her polite mauve lipstick smudging along them like dapples of Morse code. I leaned in, straining to hear her words.
“Please Queen Mother. If you’re there, I beg you to hear me,” She took a shuddering breath, steadying her bottom lip against the x of her thumbs. “I will do anything, anything, to save my children.”
The great and terrible silence did not waver.
My mother looked to where the altar stood, its high wooden statues smiling demurely down upon us. Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes, and she seemed to mumble silently to herself again before taking a sobbing, hopeless breath. “Please Great Mother. From one mother to another…” She swallowed dryly. “Titania —”
“Your prayers do not go unnoticed, sister,” a deep, resonating voice said, and we jumped.
It was a priest, dressed as though for a high holy eve, which I thought only came around during the solstices. He was pale and haunting, as though he had not seen the light in millennia, and perhaps he hadn’t. No real sunlight could sate the fae.
The priest, in his glittering red and gold cassock, looked down on us. You weren’t supposed to look them directly in the face—it was said they could hypnotize you like this— but my eyes wandered, trailing up to lock on the sharp point of his ears. He licked his lips, his eyes running over my mother’s clasped hands, down to my brother tucked under her arm on the pew.
“What?” My mother whispered, averting her eyes.
“The great Queen Mother hears all prayers, especially from our nation’s great lifegivers.” The priest’s eyes darted towards me, and I was barely able to drop my own away in time. The ambrosia smell nearly overwhelmed me, and I felt nauseous with every ragged inhale.
“Perhaps I could offer you Her council, in exchange for…”
He did not finish his sentence.
Silence spread between us, the only sound breaking through the fog a great roll of thunder outside. Mother hesitated, seeming to contemplate something, then pressed a trembling finger to her mouth, wincing for a moment. She held her hand out, offering the bleeding finger, as if in penitence. The priest hissed. My mother pulled her hands quickly back to her chest, her head nodding slightly.
“We don’t work in such transactions as blood magick. If this is all you have, you can find Strega anywhere in the city,” He turned to sweep away.
Mother practically collapsed out of the pew, twisting her hands up in his robes. “No, please!” Her voice reverberated off the flagstones, and I jumped with the weight of it. The frightened gasp of a wild animal escaped her.
The priest looked down at her once more, his lips pressed into a line that curled his nose. His eyes were a hard score of impassable glass obsidian. Of course blood meant nothing to him, to any of the priests in their elevated stained glass houses. They didn’t have blood the way their charges did, so what could they possibly do with ours?
My mother, realizing her mistake, let her hands drop to her chest, once more clasped in reverence. I could see the small poppy of her lifeblood blotting the creamy gold fabric of the priest’s sleeve. Her voice escaped in barely a whisper.
“Please, Father. We beg the mercy of the Queen Mother and King Father. We —”
She took a shuddering breath.
“If we leave without Their gifts, we will starve.”
The priest straightened. I knew it was the mention of a gift that had caught him. His waxen face became an implacable mask once more, and he seemed to become taller. He had decided something, but I was unsure of what. I only knew that it had to end our suffering, finally and definitely.
“Come then, sister. There are things we can do to alleviate your agonies.”
He held his hand aloft, and moved towards the end of the pew. It took a moment for Mother to register that she should follow. She stood, clutching her skirts in resignation. She knew what the priest wanted – didn’t all men, folk or otherwise, want just that? I watched the column of her throat struggle to swallow a knot. She placed a hand on my shoulder, steadying herself more than me, and she turned sideways to shuffle past.
“Bring the child.”
The priest’s voice cut across the ambrosia and the hammering of my own heartbeat, and mother paused as though on the edge of a wire. I looked up at her, then the receding back of the priest. Embroidered on the fabric of his robe was some jeweled image of what must be Oberon, but looked to me like some leering imp. What could he possibly want with me? Fear bloomed within me, and I tried to make myself small and unnoticeable. My skin prickled in gooseflesh.
There were stories whispered in the folk-riddled alleys, in the small back corner booths of butcher shops, at night by grandmothers to children who refused to be goodly or fall into dreamless sleep. Stories that had always seemed too strange and horrible to be true. Tales of trades and kidnappings. Of children that were so admired by fae, and, in the moments when anguish clung to folk like kudzu, or when hunger had stolen away wee ones in the deep evening, that perhaps the leftover children could be extended as payment. One with which every small pain would be eased.
I would be the one to ease that pain. Mother’s eyes turned down to me, wide like an animal caught in headlights. She had gone as pale as milk, and we shared with one another an unspoken terror. I went to shake my head, when the priest spoke again.
“The aeglagh.”
A breath escaped me in a rush, one that I had stoppered up inside without realizing. I turned to follow my mother’s gaze. My brother, the aeglagh, the youth, ran a small carved horse across the top of the pew, making gentle crooning sounds not unlike neighing. It tapped along in a rhythm that seemed to mimic my own racing heart. He murmured quietly, some language unknown to all except himself.
Briefly, my mother and I looked at one another again, as though we could speak directly in each other’s minds, to share our thoughts, our fears, our visions of stomachs that no longer ached empty in the night.
Mother turned to the priest, who looked over his shoulder back at her. He seemed unmoved, as though this were the simplest question that had ever been asked, unperturbed by the wait.
“Is this suitable?”
We exchanged another glance, our eyes locked together in decision. She nodded, and as though entranced, turned to scoop my brother from the pew and bear him safely to her chest. The carved horse tumbled from his grasp, clattering jarringly to the floor. The priest smiled, greasy and sinister, and led my mother away, towards the front of the church. My brother, his chin tucked back carefully into the crook of my mother’s shoulder, caught my eye. He curled his fingers into the palm of his hand, a little wave. I couldn’t move to reply, but rather stared blankly, trying to gather every small detail of his cherubic face before he disappeared from my life forever.
Once they had passed through a heavy door which led to some unseen space behind the chancel, shame riddled my conscience like a boring beetle. How could we do this? I allowed terrible visions of what they could possibly do to him to flood my mind. Every awful, depraved, manic thing. Would they cook him over a spit, allow his soft tender skin to crackle and split over a low fire to eat for their Litha feast? Would they raise him as their own, to feed him their nectars and syrupberries until he was gorged and completely unlike what had been born to this world? Would they torture him, test the breakings of every small bone until he had healed back into some unrecognizable shape, turned and twisted into a great bleating mess?
These visions pestered me until I felt like I would be sick with them. When I thought I could hardly take it any longer, bending over into myself and clutching my head, my stomach broke into a low, spreading growl, one that echoed up through my lungs and down into my toes. The growl brought to mind a new image, one of a full cupboard, an extra brass piece in the old soap shavings tin under the sink, chrome-gilded appliances in a glass apartment that overlooked the piteous city below. That gnawing wretch in my gut allowed me to set aside the boring-shame. I set my hands to praying, the perfect image of contrition, and waited for my mother to return.
Towards the front of the church, there was a loud clattering. Muffled cries belted out across the space. I looked towards the door where my mother, brother, and the priest had disappeared. It swung inwards with a great smashing bang as it connected with the wall, and my mother hurried out, yelling something that I couldn’t quite catch. Her voice was panicked, anger spilling out of her over hot tears. I had heard those tears in the deep evenings when she thought we were asleep.
I stood, gripping the edge of the pew ahead of me for balance as I watched her hurriedly approach. The priest came to the doorway, yelling in a language I did not recognize, sending shivers up my back. It sounded like he was using several voices, all clambering over one another to reach my ear. But my mind was able to set aside the voices and the cloying smell of otherworld perfumes for just a moment, if only to allow the strangeness of what I saw settle within me.
My mother still clutched my brother to her, pressing his face down into her shoulder as though he were some squalling infant again. In my shock, I almost missed her outstretched hand, clapping her fingers around my wrist to drag me behind her. “We have to go!” She cried, and I followed her stumbling down the length of the sanctuary.
Using her hip, she shoved the great holy door open and we were back out in the rain, to find ourselves drenched to the bone. She moved to the lip of the sidewalk, and for a breath of a moment, she let go of me to raise her hand, signaling an oncoming taxi. It gurgled through a large puddle to a stop in front of us.
My mother pushed her head through the open passenger window, rain dripping into her eyes as she told the driver our neighborhood, almost as a question. She nodded, and gently pressed me towards the back door, which I opened in a murmuring daze. The rain was biting ice on my skin, and I began to shiver as she shoved my brother in.
“Okay, love, get in.” She was hurrying us, and I, still stuck in the whirlwind of my brother being there, barely understood what was happening. I hardly had time to think of how we would afford to return across town to our hovel, let alone what had just unfolded. I got in, so lost in this bloody confusion that I was unable to find myself glad to be out of the downpour. The torn and bulging upholstery smelled like stale sweat, and it crunched under my hands as I scooched in. My brother sat on the far side of the bench seat, one of his hands pressed to the window. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but I didn’t want to. Paralysis ate its way through me.
“Mother,” I said, my voice small and horrified.
I could see her steeling herself in silhouette, her shoulders jerking up and down. She did not answer.
“Mother, what’s going on? He’s —”
I didn’t know what to say. My mouth felt dry as though a great drought had taken up residence in me.
Mother straightened ever so slightly in her seat, sniffing once. She turned to face me, and for a moment, I did not recognize her. This woman who had raised me, had fought tooth and nail and blood to keep me and my brother alive, had become a statue. Her eyes, often full of hope and light, were flat. Dull. She swallowed, and I noticed the lipstick she wore had been worried from her bottom lip. Some otherworldly shade had taken her place, frightening me to my core.
“They wouldn’t take him.”
I blinked. She looked piteously towards my brother, and the taxi pulled away from the curb. I knew my mouth had fallen open, my heart falling deep into my gnawing, desperate stomach. Wouldn’t take him? I had never heard of the fae rejecting a trade like this before. They loved taking children—to wherever, for who knew what. But not him? What was wrong with him?
In the dark of the humid backseat, I turned to my brother. Before that moment, I had never taken the time to notice him, to see what others might. To examine his flaws.
He sat very still, jostling only as the taxi glided over slick bucklings and dipped into greased potholes. We passed under a flickering fluorescent street lamp as the yellow car turned a side street, and his face was caught in its sickly glow. A bitter chill stole through me. My mother, who had only ever hidden truths beneath her tongue when she knew the falsehoods could swallow us whole, had lied.
The thing which sat across from me, which sat with an almost imperceptible stillness, could not be my brother. My mother had to have indeed traded him for some other terrible creature to the fae. The thing sat, changeling all, wearing my brother’s skin as though it were some first class suit. Perfectly fitted. Its sharp relief cheekbones reflected the consistency of chalk, and I watched as its finger traced some unrecognizable pattern in the fog on the glass. Its mouth opened and closed like it was whispering against the glass. I could see that it had copied the gap where my brother’s teeth had fallen out, forever empty. I felt as though that emptiness would drag me down into it.
And though the thing could only be seen in the brief flickering of street lamps as we moved out of the glowing city streets back towards the smattering of wood slabs we called home, I could see enough to recognize it as false. In my chest, my heart hardened into an uncaring tomb.
Now we sit, sharing our slab of brick and board with it. It lies on my brother’s abandoned blanket at night, eyes closed, pretending to sleep like one of us. I share the room with it, unable to close my own eyes in case it decides to come and pull me from my body, or carry me back with it to the knothole it must have crawled out of. I watch it, every twitching gesture and deep inhale a false idol. Hours tick by as I study the points of its ears, considering if the freckle above the left eyebrow truly matches the one that laid above my brother’s own eyebrow. The creature does not make noise the way my brother did, nor smile, and it laughs out of turn in a way that sends a spike of fear through me.
I decide, in one of those evenings where sleep eludes me and I awake to the creature staring out across the dusty floor towards me, that I must try to oust the brother-thing myself.
The lamplighter’s son, whose father needed to pull himself out from the depths of card loss after card loss, says he has a half-fae sister himself. He whispers to me beneath the burnt-out street lamps that used to line the street—we have not had our own working electric lights here in years—that you can trick them to speak by brewing eggshells in sheep’s milk, and having them waft the steam. He says one can feed the creature stones and the pebbles will fill it so heavy that it has to return to its own realm to have them removed. He says you can cook the creature in the oven until its skin curls and crisps like a honeyed ham, sweet and delicate, and it will jump out of its bones and bring back whatever original you were hoping for.
Of course, fresh eggs are a luxury we can scarce afford, and sheeps’ milk can usually only be gathered during the lambing months. Not unless we are willing to spill more of ourselves into the greedy outstretched hands of the drude, bilwis, or hungry-eyed men.
I steal away used shells from garden sills, a bottle of creamed milk from a stoop. I scoop handfuls of rocks from the gutter and drop them into my pocket, twisting them between thumb and forefinger to test their weight, the smoothness that will make swallowing them all the easier. I daydream about the crisping of pork, and the dozy dreams within make my stomach curl in on itself, still so desperate for something, anything. If Mother was able to trade my brother for this, why do we still suffer?
By the end of the first month, I am exhausted, tight on the edge of a wire, waiting for the creature to carry out whatever terrible deed it must. Mother is out. She has not been back for many hours. I know that it must be done today.
I stir the milk in the chipping cast-iron, careful to keep the heat low so it doesn’t burn. There is a fire stoking in the oven as well, in case the steam doesn’t out the creature’s voice. When I began cooking, I was alone in the kitchen. But suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing at attention. It is here.
“This is going to fix everything,” I’m speaking quickly, some sort of adrenaline building in the back of my throat. I’m afraid if I don’t hurry, the brother-thing will realize what’s happening, and try to escape. Or something worse.
I turn and look over my shoulder. The creature is standing next to the barren kitchen table, twisting its hands over. It is taking pretend heaving breaths, watching the stirring of the pot. I wave it over.
“Come, just take a breath.”
It leans forward and seems to peer over the edge of the cast iron, not moving from the spot it is worrying on the floor. As though an afterthought, it gives a gentle shake of the head, its great dark eyes glittering in the fire dying in the hearth. My chest feels tight, and I let out an exasperated sigh.
“Come, it’s okay.”
I take a small step forward.
The creature reflects my movement and bumps into the table. The sound it makes as it slides across the floor grates my teeth.
“Here, let me help.”
I move quickly across the room, grabbing the creature by the upper arm. The place where my fingers fall burns, skin on skin. I hope they leave smoky bruises behind. I drag the creature over, push it violently over the stovetop, letting its face dip into the steam rolling from the milk. It tries to fight back, weakly, and closes its eyes.
“Just take a deep breath! You can, can’t you?”
It struggles against me, and I try to push myself behind it just enough that it cannot move, but of course, it has the strength of the otherworldly fae. The creature tears itself away from me. I stumble back into the stovetop, my palm brushing against the scalding cast iron. The frothing milk and eggshells clatters to the floor, splashing down in a terrible, thundering crash.
An animal sound rips out of me, filling the room like a hot smoke and I turn back to the creature. Its eyes are wide and staring, a face my brother never would have made. He never would have been frightened of me.
I take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Get in the oven.”
My voice comes out biting and rough, like a knife against a whetstone. The creature flaps its hands, looks to me, then back to the oven. It shakes its head, and makes some small sound. Red spots dapple in the corner of my vision.
“Get in!”
The brother-thing opens its mouth, closes it, again and again – of course it will not speak.
“I know you’re not him. Say it.”
Its eyes are glittering more now, wet like the surface of some cooling puddle of oil on the street. Something cracks inside me—crying! Now it pretends to cry!—and the rage spills out in a torrent.
“Say it!” I scream, and I push all of my anger and hunger into the creature as it topples back.
It falls in such a lovely arc that for a moment, I think perhaps one of the properties that the fae had bestowed upon this creature was that of beautiful dance, or flight. The sound of his skull cracking on the pavestones is like so many eggshells. Such a delicate sound. My chest heaves, taking in desperate breath after desperate breath as I try to quell the burning hate. This thing had come into my home, dared to sit at my family’s table and pretend to be blood.
On the stone floor, a great pool begins to flower out from him, a blooming scarlet halo. The burning hearth coals sparkle against it, so many stars. I watch as the body twitches, the creature’s eyes wide and unblinking. Its mouth is open and I can see the gap where the front teeth should be, that swallowing darkness. Some sound escapes its mouth, like a choking, gurgling breath, and then it stills, like exhaling a long held spool of smoke.
For a long moment, I stare at the scarlet, my mind bolting between confusion and the biting edge of understanding. This isn’t right. Fae don’t bleed, not like us. But the truth of this spreading gore suddenly bursts within me, so much like my mother’s bitten finger, raised in desperation as offering.
I fall to my knees, ignoring the crackling of pain under me, shuffling across the dusty ground towards him. Something churning with dread and aching heart burns up through my throat like bile. My hands scrape along the stone, catching motes of soot and lost crumbs of dirt. I reach out to grab him, to shake him.
“Why didn’t you say anything! Why didn’t you say!” I scream, my voice cracking.
How could he? How could he not say it was him! That he had not been traded out, that it was still him, in all his truth and glory. He does not reply, the dying firelight glittering across his lifeless, glassy eyes.
I grasp uselessly at the front of his shirt, digging my fingers into the scratchy fabric. Nothing beats within him, nor against my knuckles.
“I didn’t know,” I gasp, sobs bubbling up from my stomach. My eyes burn like they are filled with choking smoke, that too sweet ambrosia from the sanctuary. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
I can not find it in myself to continue. My heart stutters again in my chest. My brother’s body lies frail and devastating on the floor.
I sit there until the marrow of my legs has long fallen asleep, filling me with the buzzing of so many growling hoverflies. In the valley, the church bells begin to chime a fantastic dirge.
