Page 15 of Mischief Maker

Chapter Twelve

Faela

I knew he wasn’t telling me something. My trickster god isn’t nearly as clever as he thinks he is, not anymore.

I’ve learned his tells, like the way his tail weaves pinched little patterns in the air when he’s thinking about lying, or how he worries his lip with one of his canines when he won’t say what he’s thinking.

His voice changes, somewhat higher pitched, when he’s not telling the full truth.

I sit up quickly, pushing my dress down to cover myself. I repeat my words.

“What do you mean by ‘your part,’ Kireth?”

He flinches when I use his name. He bites his lip and doesn’t look at me, and I know he’s hiding something. Something important.

“Did you really have something to do with the curse?” I press.

“Maybe?” He forces a smile and holds up two fingers just an inch apart. “Just a little bit.”

How is that possible? The sickness befell the farm long before I called on him.

“I don’t understand.” When Kireth reaches for my thigh, I pull it away. “Tell me the whole truth.”

Sighing, he rights himself and crosses his legs under him.

“I’m not a very good person, you know.” He gives me a rueful smile, trying to lighten the mood. “Not since the day Lucia made me.”

I know all of this. I witnessed it firsthand—though he has changed as time has gone on.

“So?” I’m not going to let him get away without explaining himself.

“So...” Kireth trails off, his tail lashing behind him. “I, um, might have gotten on the bad side of an oracle.” He flinches at his own words.

“What did you do?” I’m trying to control the heat rising into my cheeks, but I must try not to judge him until I hear the whole story. There’s no possible way he’s responsible for what happened here, right?

Kireth doesn’t look at me as he talks. “I was summoned, once upon a time. Hundreds of years ago. My master at the time sent me on a ridiculous quest, and I was looking for a way to, um...” He trails off. “I needed to punish him for it. So I went to the oracle to ask what his future was.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I wanted to know what his life would be like. If he would have a family or children.”

I feel cold, but I don’t speak. After a long breath, Kireth continues.

“I stole a goat and traded it to the oracle for the answer. But she said that I couldn’t interfere with the future she told or there would be repercussions.”

That coldness spreads down my arms and legs. Kireth reaches out to take my hands, but I bring them back to my chest. His shoulders sag.

“When I found out he would meet a woman in a nearby town and marry her in just two months’ time...” His eyes finally rise to mine and they are frightened. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my god look afraid before.

“Tell me the rest of the story,” I say, my voice hard. It’s as if I’m watching a huge, terrible boulder rolling downhill toward the village.

Kireth’s voice pitches higher as he continues, his shame growing. “She said if I got in the way of the man’s destiny, she would ruin me in kind—in proportion to my error.

“I didn’t listen. When I returned from my quest, it was right at the perfect moment. On the day my master was supposed to meet his future wife, I broke his wagon so he couldn’t leave the way he was intended to.”

It’s as if my blood has stopped moving through my veins. “So she ruined you in kind,” I whisper.

Kireth nods slowly. “That is what Lucia said. That the curse on your farm was my punishment.”

The world tilts, and I struggle to stay upright.

“My mother.” The words are strangled as they come out of me, because they are so hard to say. To even think. “My mother died because of that curse.”

Kireth’s eyes plead with mine. “I didn’t know, Faela. Truly, I didn’t.”

Why me? Why her ? I feel that there’s more, and as deep as the wound already is, he has not yet told me everything.

“Kireth.” I say his name again, slowly, the tears streaming hot and fast from my eyes as the love that I felt for this demon in front of me morphs into something painful and ugly. “Why did the oracle choose my farm?”

“Faela, please.” He grabs my hands in his and holds them, even as I try to get away. “Listen to me. I couldn’t have known that I would ever find you?—”

“Stop!” I’ve never shouted at him before, and Kireth leans back in surprise, releasing me. I get to my feet and dust myself off, trying to hide how my hands are shaking. “You didn’t answer me. Why my farm? I know that you know!”

His eyes are impossibly sad as he searches my face, clearly hoping for a way out. But when I offer none, he lowers his eyes and speaks.

“The oracle saw the future. She realized the best way to hurt me was through you. That the curse would bring me to you, and...” My pain rises inside me like a beast. “...I would fall in love with you, and then, by the nature of my agreement, I would be forced to leave you.”

He loves me. He loves me, and I am his punishment. I was just an object to be used, a pawn to inflict on him what he inflicted upon someone else hundreds of years ago.

I can’t look at Kireth’s miserable face any longer, so I turn and rush into the house.

“Faela!” he calls out. “Wait, farm girl, please?—”

The door slams closed behind me.

My misery has no bottom. It is a well yawning wide underneath me, sucking me toward it, threatening to swallow me into the nothingness.

All of this was because of him .

It’s as if something has opened inside of me, and a black curse in my own locked chest is streaming out.

I scream in rage, thinking of how this all could have been prevented, how my mother could still be alive if Kireth weren’t so foolish and troublesome.

Blazing hot, I pick up a chair that we repaired together last week and throw it.

It strikes the wall, splintering, and falls to the floor in a pile of sticks.

I sink to my knees and realize that I’m drenched between the thighs after our roll in the grass, and I scream again, tearing pieces of cloth out of my dress so I can clean myself up. I pour more wine, and more wine, guzzling all of it until I stumble up the steps to our bed.

This is the place where we’ve slept every night and made love innumerable times in the last few months.

Months. It’s been so long, surely we should have run out of tasks by now. Surely I’ve used all forty of them.

And then I realize: he stopped counting.

The splinter digging into my chest becomes sharper, more acute. Who knows how many tasks Kireth did for me without counting a single one of them? Was his plan to stay here forever?

My pain is a river and I am trapped in it, flailing, trying desperately to grab onto a root or a rock so I can stop being dragged away. I fall into the bed and sob, remembering how Mother would always come and kiss me before bed, even once I was a fully grown woman.

Little girls never grow out of their mother’s kisses , she’d said.

I bring up the quilt to my face. It smells like Kireth: dense woods and undergrowth, fresh rivers, a new sprout coming out of the ground.

He lied because he knew the truth was too much for my love to survive. And perhaps it is.

Kireth

The front door of the house slams closed, and I know I am no longer welcome in Faela’s home.

It is hers, after all. It was never mine. I slept there, and fixed what I could, and ate dinner there because it made her happy. But a mortal’s home is not meant for me. I was always intended to be a temporary presence there.

Fresh hay bales are waiting inside the barn.

I lie down on them and curl up because it’s starting to get cooler at night.

I think of Faela’s soft bed, the scent of her everywhere, ensconcing me in its comforting glow.

I remember drawing her into me, tucking her head under my chin, wrapping my tail around her thigh where it lay between my legs as we fell asleep.

She will never forgive me.

Up at the house, I hear an immense crack!, like something large has broken into pieces. She screams with fury, and I think I underestimated the lion lying dormant inside her.

I am a truly miserable thing, to have brought this upon her.

The noise ceases after some time, and then the candles in the windows are extinguished. I watch the house through the open barn door as Faela goes to bed without me.

How can I possibly undo what I’ve done? When my actions created so much heartache and misery, and stole so much from her?

“Overstayed your welcome, have you?”

Lucia’s voice startles me enough that I tumble off the hay bale. The great goddess chuckles from where she stands stooped under the low barn ceiling. She snaps her fingers, and slowly her body shrinks until she’s a much more manageable seven or eight feet tall.

“You have always landed on your feet before, haven’t you?” she says, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “This time... not so much.”

I dust myself off. “She’ll forgive me,” I say with confidence so that perhaps, I’ll believe it. But I’m not sure she will.

My mother simply shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, unfortunately for you.” She leans down close and smiles wickedly. “You’re done here, Kireth. You have been for some time.”

I balk. “But I wasn’t counting my tasks!”

“Just because you weren’t counting doesn’t mean no one was counting.” She narrows her sharp blue eyes. “Those were the rules when you were created. You have broken them by not returning to your temple when the time was up.”

I chuckle uneasily. “The time can’t be up yet, though.” Have I done forty tasks since I stopped keeping track?

Lucia keeps a level gaze on me as she crosses her arms. “It is. You’re done, Kireth.”

I sprint to the door of the barn and throw it open. I can’t go, not yet. I have to say goodbye to my sweet farm girl. My chosen one.

I take off at a run toward the house, but my feet won’t move. They’re trapped in mid-air, tethered by vines around my ankles.

With a yelp, I fall to the ground.

“Faela!” I shout. “Faela!”

But the house is silent as my mother slowly walks around me, examining me.

“You really love her.” She chuckles, and it’s a menacing sound. “I would never have guessed.”

My Faela. I can’t leave her—at least not without seeing her one more time. Not without telling her where I’ve gone.

“What if I do?” I snap, trying to unwind the vines. But they keep growing, tightening as they crawl up my body, trapping my tail to the ground. “So what if I’ve stayed? I’m immortal! The humans are forgetting us anyway. We don’t serve a purpose!”

Lucia tilts her head thoughtfully. “You’re right.

She is likely the last one to ever summon you.

” Crouching in front of me, my mother tilts up my chin, and her pale face is decorated with a pitying smile.

“You think you should get to stay, do you, even though you’ve broken all the rules?

Even though she doesn’t want you anymore? ”

I don’t care if she doesn’t want me. I will live in this dark, stinky barn, and work the fields, and milk the cows for as long as I must to earn her love back. The idea of never having my farm girl again blots out all the light in the sky.

“Haven’t I served long enough?” I twist away from her, but the vines are starting to wind around my arms now. “Haven’t I earned the right to stay while the world forgets about me?”

Lucia chuckles. “That’s not how this works, and you know it, Kireth.” She rolls her shoulders, preparing for something, and I know now that I have not swayed her. “Since you are so insistent that you are now without purpose, perhaps it is time for you to join the others in oblivion.”

Panic sweeps through me. “No,” I whisper. “You can’t mean to send me there.”

“I do. That is your punishment for flagrantly abandoning your post and your duties.” She raises her hands up in the air. “A fitting end for such an arrogant, spiteful child as you.”

“You can’t!” I scream as the vines squeeze around me, pulling me into the gaping hole in the ground. “You made me this way!” They cover my face, my throat, but still I cry, “Faela!” one last time.

My shout is swallowed up as the vines finally pull me under.