Page 39 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

mamau a merched

(MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS)

Jagged bricks jut from its edges, where it’s been torn away from the terraces on either side.

The house is a piece of coral, broken off from the reef.

It’s atilt—the front step sticking up from the ground.

Cave water drips down the dirty stone. The curtains are drawn, just as I left them.

The wide cavern cradles the house like a womb, and the chimney butts up against a pale stalactite.

I rise to my feet in wonder and terror, and I stand quietly where the street should be.

A light comes to life in the sitting room. Moments later, another begins to burn in the kitchen. The lights turn on upstairs in both windows.

I’m not alone.

The lights slowly grow until they’re bright as the very sun, and I shield my face. Just as fast, they dim to the faint glow of a fire at the end of a long winter’s day.

Come home, they say.

Who am I to say no?

I pick my way over the uneven ground, but before I take the step, the door creaks open.

I clamber awkwardly over the upturned stairs. Inside my house, the floors are level and smooth. The tiny entryway feeds into tight stairs that creep up to the landing. Pots and pans clink from the doorway of the shadowed kitchen, mingling with a murmured voice.

“Alys?”

I shudder and take a step into the doorway, to find my own back turned to me as I cook.

“How long does it take to go to the shops?” the other me says.

I don’t reply. I’m not Alys. Alys waits for me with a new name, outside the cave.

She turns, hands on hips, and I realize it’s not me. This girl wears fashions of many years past and is heavily pregnant beneath them. Her nose is a little wider, her hair a little straighter, but I know that face.

“Did you get the milk?” she says.

“Yes,” I lie.

Gran nods. No—not “Gran.” Not yet. She isn’t even “Mam.”

She’s just Elin Parry.

“He’ll be in a temper when he comes back.” She turns to the pot. “I’d make myself scarce if I were you.”

“I won’t leave you.” Another lie.

Elin laughs and puts her hands on her hips, just as I’ve seen her do a million times. “You’d be better off. You’re eighteen, Alys. Find someone nice, while you’re still pretty.”

“Pretty tends to get girls in trouble.”

“Pretty girls would say that.” She faces me again, rubbing her stomach. “Still, if it’s a girl, I hope she’ll be pretty.”

I could tell her it will be a boy who looks just like her, who’ll have two girls, one pretty, one not. I could tell her that one day he won’t come back, but it won’t change anything. This is just a memory, and there’s no use making it sadder than it already is.

I close the space between us and pull Elin into a tight hug. She responds immediately, seeing Alys, not Sabrina, because I’m not even a dream yet.

“Leave him,” I tell her. Beg her. “When I go to the woods, come with me. He’ll always be as he is, but I’ll always love you.”

She chuckles, pats my back. “We’re too old to build fairy castles in the woods, Alys.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. She twitches the curtains and glances out, then returns to the cooking with a scowl, where she will stay until she’s too tired to stand, and even past that.

“He’s at the gate, go on now,” she says. “I’ll keep food for you.”

I nod and leave in silence. I linger in the hall, but the door never opens. He never comes home.

“Sabrina?”

I twitch at my name, feeling like a stranger to myself.

This could all be a trick, a pretty distraction, another trap. I’m wasting time in a memory, and yet I creep up to the sitting room doorway.

Mam sits in her chair with her sewing in her lap. Her head turns toward me, sleepy, smiling. She’s wearing her nightgown, and she holds out her hand.

“You’re taller than when I sent you off to school this morning.” Her brow furrows. “How is that?”

I shrug and toe the threshold. “They finally put me to the rack for being rude.”

“How kind, they helped you beat the family curse.” Mam wiggles her fingers. “Come tell me how badly I’ve darned these socks.”

I can’t resist, and I cross to her. Mam’s hand is warm in mine as I come to sit at her feet with my head resting on her knee.

I’d forgotten so much about her face: the constellation of freckles on her nose, the piercing blue of her eyes, how they’re just a little bit too far apart and give her the look of a curious doe.

Her face will be consigned to oblivion someday—when I’m gone—glimpsed only in the pieces passed down to her descendants, if there ever are any.

Her slim hands smooth my hair, and my eyes droop.

I fight back. I’ll never have this chance again, to be here, with those I’ve lost and found. Those who love me dearly.

“You look sad, cariad.” She runs her fingers through my hair.

“I’m tired, is all.”

“That brain of yours moves too fast even for you to keep up with it.” Mam sighs. “Rest.”

“I can’t.” I screw my eyes shut, a barrier against the tears welling in them.

“Why?”

“I have too much to do.”

“Don’t we all?” Mam laughs.

I can hear her heart beating in tandem with mine in the very walls of the house, but I know better. This was how she looked when I last saw her—a sick, waxy flush to her cheeks and promising she would be fine.

By the time I got home, she was in bed. She’d never leave it again.

“Rest,” she insists. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“You can’t.”

“I’m your mam.” A tear leaks out, bleeds into her skirt. “Of course I can.”

“I used to believe you.”

“That’s what’s so lovely about belief; you can always find it again.”

“You don’t understand—”

“I understand plenty,” she says in that no arguments tone. “You have your mission. Look after Gran and Ceridwen. I know what your dad is like, and I know you’re too like him for your own good.”

“I promised,” I tell her.

Dad only asked because there was no one else. He knew that I could carry it, even before I did.

Still, I throw my arms around her, burying myself into her chest, as if I can burrow home inside her. Mam holds me like she wants me to.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“Because you’re here, love.”

It may be our mine, but it’s become Eu gwlad’s as well. The magic, no matter how twisted, has made its home in the coal. It’s only right that those trapped within its walls get to come home, too.

I lift my head, sniffling. “I have to find Ceridwen.”

“Is that all?” Mam strokes my cheek. “She’s upstairs waiting for you.”

My head snaps up to the ceiling, then back to Mam.

Ceridwen is upstairs. After all that wandering and nonsense, I’ve found her. I know I should be on my feet, running to my sister straightaway, but when I try to rise, my legs don’t obey.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I tell my mother.

She wipes a last tear from my face. “I wish I got to see who you’re going to be.”

“You won’t like her,” I whisper as the knife turns in my chest. “I don’t.”

“Then that means you aren’t done yet,” Mam says. “We never stop changing, Sabrina, even when you’re as old as me. That’s the beauty of it. If you’re not happy, then you’re not at the end.”

“Were you happy?” The question falls from my lips like a stone through water.

She runs her hand once more over my hair. “I had your father and this house. I had you and your sister. The end was sudden, but next to everything that came before, it’s dust. I couldn’t have been happier.”

She was only forty when she died. There were lives she still had left to live.

And there are so many things I can be, too.

I tell her I love her and amputate myself from her lap. I don’t dare look back until I’m at the door and I know I won’t run to her again. Mam stays there, her sewing in her lap, smiling at me. Exactly where she will always be.

Exactly where I’ll find her someday.

I take the stairs slowly and walk into our room like I’ve just come home from work. And there Ceridwen is, sitting on her battered chair by the window, staring out at the empty blackness of the cave. Even in the misery of the mine, she practically glows.

The door slams shut. Ceridwen leaps up, seizing a discarded, blood-crusted dagger from the floor. She brandishes it at me. The blade looks absurdly old. Her clothes are torn and dirty, and her face is stained with a mix of blood and coal. Her hair is matted, but the sunset shines through.

“You stink,” I tell her. “They don’t have baths down here?

She narrows her eyes, twins of my own. “And you don’t. How?”

“I’ve only been down here a few hours.”

“You got here in hours?”

I shrug. “I was always faster than you.”

She lowers the dagger. “You’re real, then.”

“What gave it away?” I ask.

“You would never miss the chance to brag.” Her lip curls into a wry smile.

My mouth twists to match. “I missed you.”

She launches at me with a newfound speed, and it’s clear how right Morgen was.

Living in our world was killing Ceridwen almost as much as the sickness.

Even filthy and worn to the bone, she’s so vibrant here, so alive, that I find all that resentment and jealousy I nurtured on my journey slipping to the floor like an old coat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she says into my hair.

I rest my cheek against her shoulder and find I don’t care at all. “I’m sorry I made you believe that you couldn’t.”

“Let’s go home,” she tells me. “It will be easier to get out together.”

I shake my head and hold her at arm’s length. Our eyes lock.

“I’ve not come this far to give up,” I say. “You want to stay here with Morgen, and so you will.”

“I’m the eldest,” Ceridwen counters. “I’m supposed to protect you.”

I roll my eyes. “We’re supposed to protect each other. You were doing badly, and so was I. But now you’ve made your choice, and I’ll not let you go back on it.”

Ceridwen lets out a tired breath. “All right, it was always pointless trying to keep—Is that my ring?”

I start, hiding my hand in my pocket. “No.”

“Why are you lying? I saw it!” She tuts. “Duw, I should’ve known you took it. You really are the absolute limit—”

Despite everything, I laugh. Only sisters would stand in the depths of the very earth and argue about stolen property. I set aside my sword and remove the iron ring, holding it out to her.

Ceridwen shrugs. “I made it this far without it.”

I ignore her and force the ring into her balled fist. “I’m trying to be a good person. Besides, I have a blade that’s far better than that dagger you’ve pilfered. Take the ring.”

Her eyes soften. “Sabrina—”

“It’s Habren here,” I tell her.

She nods. “Elin.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “Does Elin know where the sickness starts?”

Ceridwen’s eyes track to our window. “She has an idea.”

“But?”

“But she couldn’t face it alone.” Ceridwen lets out a deeply held breath.

“What is it?”

She looks back at me, her eyes wide with a horror I’m yet to meet. “You know where we are, yes?”

“The mine,” I say. “The one where Dad worked. The one that collapsed. Maybe it’s all the mines.”

Ceridwen nods. “You’ll see.”

She crosses the room. I twitch. “Or you could just tell me.”

Ceridwen says nothing and opens the door. “I can’t really describe it. You’ll see.”

When we walk through the house, it’s empty, and when we leave, the lights stay on, waiting, always waiting, for us.