Мэгги Стифватер - Lament

I sighed and deleted the message without sending it. Closing the phone, I turned toward Luke.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Whether they'll write my life story as a tragedy or an epic fantasy." He had pulled himself out of his thoughts with effort, and it seemed he'd lightened them a lot for my benefit.

I laughed. "And whether or not they'll get a cute guy to play your part?"

"No, I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely." He glanced over and brushed the top of my hand with his fingers before looking back to the road. "I'm hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot."

I frowned. "Can you tell me who did that to you, back in the kitchen?"

Luke paused, as if trying out the idea. "Someone... who started out like you."

"Oh, that's specific."

"I can't be specific."

I squinted in the dying evening light and tried to think of what I was like. "Shy? Ruled by an iron-fisted mother? Musical?"

Luke groaned at all of my choices. "Think basic." "Female? Human?"

"Ding! Give the girl a prize!" Squinting in the evening light, he put on a pair of sunglasses; they made him look almost unbearably cool. It really wasn't fair that he had so many Deirdre-felling weapons in his arsenal. "So theoretically, if she's like you, I can talk about you and you'll learn about her and I won't get in trouble."

"That makes my head hurt, but I think I'm with you."

Luke warmed to the idea. "Okay. Let's talk about your gift. It can't change who you are. It's like--" he struggled for the words. "It's like being drunk. Getting sloshed doesn't change who you are--it just takes away all your inhibitions. It makes you more you. So if you've got a nasty streak, you're a mean drunk. If you're a nice person, you're one of those amiable drunks. You're a crazy talented girl with an amazing force of will, and this gift just takes that and explodes it."

"You've already won me. You don't have to compliment me."

Luke made a vague motion. "It just comes naturally to me. I can't seem to stop. You have an amazingly cute pony-tail; it makes me want to touch it. See, that one just slipped out.

"If you make me blush, I am going to hit you." I was thrown off-balance by his sudden lightness of mood--this was the Luke who had flirted with me at the competition, not the Luke shedding tears of blood in a tomb or the Luke lost in memories in the kitchen. I'd missed him.

He glanced over at me and rewarded me with a brief, shining smile.

I bit my lip and blushed anyway. "So, go on with the gift bit. I assume that this someone else who might be a lot like me, but isn't, wasn't a nice person who became an über-nice person after they found out about their gift." My emphasis on the word "gift" was decidedly sarcastic; the jury was still out on whether or not I agreed with Luke's terminology.

"No. Someone who might be like you and might have something to do with my condition was a nasty, paranoid-schizo girl who loved telling people what to do. And when she grew into her gift, she was a nasty, paranoid-schizo girl who told people what to do and hurt them if they didn't do it. A lot of people."

I contemplated this. "And where do you come into it?"

"I think that might be where the hurting comes into it. If I try and tell you, I mean." His glance toward the tore was almost imperceptible.

"Then where do I come into it?"

"The paranoid part."

"She's afraid of harpists?"

"Your brain, Dee. Use it. What were we just talking about?"

It dawned on me. "My telekinesis. That's what you meant back in the kitchen, when you told her I wasn't a threat." I thought further, and burst out, "But that's so stupid. If I hadn't been messed with at the competition and had four-leaf clovers hurled at me by perv freaks, I would've never even known faeries existed. The only people I would've been a threat to would've been the ones between me and the bathroom when I got nervous."

Luke grinned at me; I'd never seen him so cheerful. "That's where the paranoid-schizo part comes in."

"But I can't be the only one like me--oh." Suddenly, the pile of bodies in Luke's memory was starting to make sense. "So, that's why--oh." All the overheard conversations were starting to make sense, too. "So, she makes you do it. Why you?"

Luke answered with another question. "Why not Eleanor?

I saw Eleanor in my mind, her elegant fingers jerking back from me and the key around my neck.

"The iron... Eleanor can't touch it. But can't the Queen touch it? She's human."

"Not quite, not anymore."

I shook my head. "But I saw you--I saw how you felt about all this. How can she make you do it?" "You know I can't tell you."

I thought of Luke plunging the knife into his heart, trying to destroy himself. And of him sitting in the tomb, plaintively asking me if I would ever forgive him. Whatever it was that compelled him to kill those people must have been pretty awful. A horrible idea occurred to me. "You don't go into a trance, do you? Does she do some sort of voodoo remote mind control?"

Luke shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm utterly conscious for the whole thing. But you came along and fascinated me, and that was the end of it all." He grinned suddenly, surprising me. "I'm so damn giddy. Is this what love is?" Before I could answer, he braked hard. "Is this the place?"

I looked up. "Yep."

The Warshaws' enormous brick house sat well back from the road, its columned facade dominating the massive sloping lawn in front of it. Luke drove Bucephalus up the steep driveway, peering at the immaculate grounds. "I don't see any cars. Are you sure we're here at the right time?"

"It's seven thirty, isn't it?" A glance at his car's clock confirmed the time. "This should be right.

Mrs. Warshaw said the party started at eight but to just go around back and set up in the rotunda.

I've been here before, for her daughter's reception; they're friends with Mom."

"Your mother has friends? "

"Be nice!"

Luke grinned and parked the car near the house. He took my harp, I took his backpack, and then he came closer and clasped my hand tightly. Together, we walked around the back of the huge brick house, past bushes sculpted in spirals and a stone fountain in the shape of a little boy peeing into a puddle. I hoped that if I ever got rich and famous, I wouldn't be so warped by my gobs of money that I thought little peeing boys counted as acceptable lawn ornaments.

The spacious back yard was empty of people, although folded tables leaned up against the wall near the back door and folding chairs leaned in long rows against a screen porch. I led Luke through the orange-green evening to the rotunda, a brick-floored circle of columns covered with a white dome.

"I think we must be very early," Luke remarked. He retrieved a folding chair for me and sat on the edge of the rotunda, watching me set up. After a few minutes of silence, he said, "I know about your brother."

I looked up from tuning my harp. "My brother?"

He reached into his battered canvas backpack and withdrew his flute case. "From one of your memories. How old were you when your mother lost him?"

I could have feigned ignorance, but the truth was that I remembered the exact month, day, and hour that Mom had lost the baby, down to the weather outside and what I'd eaten for breakfast. I wondered what else Luke had dug up from inside my head. "Ten."

His deft fingers assembled the flute pieces while his eyes scanned the edges of the yard, ever on guard. "Does it bother you to talk about it?"

I remembered Mom's huge belly disappearing too soon, and the last time I'd ever seen her cry.

But it wasn't my sorrow; I was a step removed, and to me, the pregnancy had always been a bit surreal anyway. "No. Why do you want to know?"

Luke's eyes flitted over the trees closest to the rotunda: three petite thorn trees a few yards away.

"Before I decide I don't like someone, I always try and figure out if there's a reason why they are who they are."

"Me?"

He gave me a withering look. "Your mom, stupid."

I chewed my lip, feeling both defensive and relieved that an objective third party thought she was hard to live with. "She's all right."

Luke frowned. "I've had plenty of time to watch the two of you, thanks to your memories, and I don't think she's been all right in a while. And don't get me started on Delia." He shook his head, and added after a moment's pause, "We're going to have to protect your family. If I won't touch you, They're going to try to come at you any way they can."

I imagined trying to coax Mom into wearing iron jewelry. Or trying to have an intelligent conversation with Dad about faeries. And Delia--well, she could fend for herself. Maybe I could use Delia as a decoy.

Luke laughed when he saw my face. "I think we have to find out what Granna was working on before They got to her."

I sobered, remembering that Granna was lying in a hospital while we were laughing. "Will the doctors be able to fix her? Do you know how to fix her?"

Luke shrugged and shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know anything about that. Some of Them might know, but it's not as if I can just call Them up. Even if I could, I don't know if I'd want to.

Even the best of Them aren't exactly safe."

"They aren't all like Eleanor and Freckle Freak?" "Freckle Freak?"

"He was at the reception. And again, at Dave's Ice."

Luke frowned, remembering. "Aodhan. That's his name." His eyes narrowed further. "He was at Dave's?"

"James bitch-slapped him with a fireplace shovel." That reminded me of something else I wanted to say. "I think James is jealous of you."

Luke rolled his eyes. "You think?" He lifted his flute as if he were going to play it, and then rested it on his knees again. "He's known you for years, Dee. He had plenty of chances, and he blew it."

I raised an eyebrow. "You aren't worried about it, then?"

Luke shook his head and blew an "A" before pulling the slide out a bit on his flute. "Nope. I love you more than he does."

I sighed. I wanted to take this moment, wrap it in paper, and give it to myself as a gift every time I felt crummy.

Luke glanced at the silent house. "We're definitely early. Do you want to play some tunes to warm up?"

I wanted to hear him say that he loved me again, but playing tunes with him came in as an okay second. I leaned my harp against my shoulder, the smooth wood fitting perfectly into the crook of my shoulder; it felt like it had been too long since I'd played. "Sure."

Luke seemed to feel the same, because he ran his fingers over his flute and said, "It's been a while. What do you want to play?"

I rattled off a list of common session tunes I thought he might know, and he nodded recognition at all but one. I ripped into a bouncy reel and Luke tore in after me. It felt like we were two pieces of a puzzle: the high, breathy note of the flute filling in everything that the harp lacked, and th" rhythmic arpeggios of my low harp strings pulsing beneath the melody of the flute, driving the reel forward with a force that made me forget everything but the music.