Page 75

There were lessons to be learned inside. I’d believed that if I taught my lips to form the letters, to string them together, one day I would know all the answers.

How to protect myself. How to redeem myself.

I could do better. I could be better.

Papa had noticed me blinking, squinting. A week later, he’d set a pair of spectacles on my nose. At which point, the book’s pages cracked open like an eggshell, a yolk of shapes spilling out. The words evolved to squiggly configurations, arbitrary rows of symbols etched across calfskin vellum. They were clusters of circles and lines, dots and slashes, like a child’s drawing. I couldn’t tell the symmetry of A from the waywardness of K.

But then, Papa taught me and my sisters to read, and I loved every moment of it. The letters took shape—the potbelly of D, the illuminated candle of a lowercase i, and the mermaid’s tail of Q. And I loved even it more when I understood the words, connecting them like strings of lights that brightened the world around me.

As for the Fables: Nothing is what it seems in Faerie, a notion that has always motivated me to know more. To make sense of the nonsensical. To see how different we really are—or how similar.

Finished, I glance at Puck. He’s sitting up now and staring at me. An avalanche of red hair sweeps his broad shoulders, the waves unkempt, as haphazard as his personality.

He asks, “Will you do me a favor and keep talking?”

I don’t rightly know how this started, but I find myself settling deeper into the tree. The satyr asks questions and confides what he thinks about the Fables. He finds them intriguing, unnerving, mostly accurate, sometimes incomplete, and occasionally false. We list the tales that have inspired us, agreeing on the ones featuring forest critters and simple agendas rather than grand, life-affirming ones.

On the other hand, we debate about the best stories. I prefer the ones that specify their lessons or morals without being sermonic, whereas Puck favors the ones open to multiple interpretations.

“Favorite Fable?” I broach.

He gives me a meaningful look. “I think you already know, luv.”

Damnation. I do know. We had talked about this as children, but I’d wanted to see if his taste had changed, if we no longer had this favorite in common.

In unison, we recite, testing one another’s memory.

“Once in the dark forest, a Stag hunted a Doe. Yet intelligence is the ally of intention and the foe of lethargy. Thus, both deer wondered, what if we thought wiser and hunted together?”

We watch each other while narrating. Once finished, we trail off to consider those lines in private. The Fable and this passage of time reminds me of our brief history, when we shared secrets in a forest, both of us wide awake while the world slept.

At one point, we segue to our families. I tell him about Papa Thorne. Middle-aged and finely edged, he’s got a direct gaze, a loyal heart, and he calls me his tree of knowledge.

I talk about my sisters. I tell Puck that sometimes we dash outside and chase each other across a field, fighting angry, sibling angry. Or sometimes we fall asleep in the grass, huddling in a crescent until our papa rings the supper bell.

Riling each other up, throwing pillows, roughhousing—that’s us. We do it as often as we cuddle or dab one another’s tears.

If not Cove, Papa’s the one to calm us down. “One time—I must have been eleven,” I say, “Lark and I quarreled over a patchwork blanket, insisting it was ‘Mine! No mine!’ Our papa just about had it. To shut us up, he grabbed a pair of shears and cut that blanket right down the middle, then gave each of us half. Neither me, nor my slack-jawed sister, had thought of doing that. And by bedtime, it didn’t matter. We’d crudely resewn the yards, so that we could snuggle together.”

I chuckle at the memory, then catch Puck staring into space. He says to himself, “So that’s a family.”

This comes out quietly, attentively, as if such a life—a family cultivated—is foreign to him. I understand this, having lived without one for the first years of my life. For reasons having to do with my tattoo, I don’t expand on that part.

Puck requests more family-orientated tidbits, soaking up the answers like a dish rag. His questions range from the profound—what are our traditions?—to the minute—who cooks?

Also, do we have inside jokes? What games do we play? How do we spend our mornings?

Nearby, a stream burbles. Remnant constellations hop through the sky, and a breeze rustles the willow vines. Whereas he and I remain still, caught in a recess between twilight and dawn.

The Book of Fables had been sitting on my lap. I set it on the grass and enfold my arms around my upturned limbs. “What about your family?”

Puck shrugs. “My pedigree’s a short Fable, luv.”

“Tell me anyway. Repay my favor.”

The satyr sits upright and balances on one hip. It’s a coltish pose, though he speaks to me in earnest, his tone one of sobriety. While conception doesn’t come easily to Faeries, Puck takes it a step further, revealing there’s another way to come into being. That’s how it was for him.

For a start, he was born twelve-hundred years ago. That alone knocks me off balance.