Shore to Shore

by

Seanan McGuire 

Alas, the sea hath cast me on the rocks,
Wash'd me from shore to shore, and left me breath
Nothing to think on but ensuing death.

--William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Spring, 1841

March had blown into San Francisco with the force of a gale and the enthusiasm of a mating swarm of pixies. There was nothing that was not wet, and fortunate were the things that were not actually under water. I had already patched seven leaks in the roof and around the windows of my workshop, and was eyeing a damp patch in the corner with wary resignation, waiting for the moment when it too would break open and start dousing me in secondhand storm.

My resident swarm of pixies had done a great deal to minimize the impact of the rain on my work. They might not be intelligent as we larger creatures recognized the trait, but they loathed being wet; the water stuck to their wings and dragged them down, making it hard to fly. So they chewed paper like wasps did, using it to mark the edges of the leaks, and when I set out plaster, they would reliably apply it where it would do the most good. I had even passed an afternoon whittling tiny trowels for them, and they had grasped the purpose of the tools with surprising speed, using them to make their repairs even faster.

Perhaps I needed to reassess my ideas about pixie intelligence. They might not be scholars, but they certainly knew how to do what needed doing. More had been showing up in my workshop since the start of the rainy season, and it was a rare evening when I needed to light a candle anymore; all I needed to do was lay out my tools and a curious assortment of pixies would flit down to see what was going on. The light they cast was remarkably steady, better than candlelight in all regards, and not least because it stood less chance of attracting Blind Michael's Ride.

I had finished laying out my tools and was reaching for a silver ingot when I noticed one of the pixies standing closer than the norm. It was a female, dressed in a scrap of knotted silk, her body and wings glowing a pale daffodil yellow. She held a bundle tight against her chest. I raised my eyebrows.

"Well, hello, miss," I said. "Do you have something you'd like to show me?"

Pixies do not speak as such; they chime like the finest, most delicate of bells. It's never been clear to me whether the sound emanates from their throats or from their wings, and it doesn't seem to matter much, since I can't understand them either way. The pixie on my workbench chimed softly and extended her bundle toward me.

The bundle moved.

I managed, barely, not to jump before I leaned forward to get a better look. I had never seen a pixie so small. It was a child, only about half the length of my pointer finger.

"Oh," I said. "Congratulations. I appreciate your showing me."

The pixie woman bit her lip, a look of purest anxiety on her face. Then, carefully, she began unwrapping the swaddling from around her child. The reason for her concern became evident. The child's right wing was long and straight, stretching from its right shoulder blade all the way to the back of its knee. The left wing, however...

It was crumpled, somehow, like it had been smashed in a closing door, or mashed against a hard surface by a careless hand. I took a deep breath, trying to conceal my dismay as much as possible.

There was a deplorable fashion among certain noble households for the keeping of pixies in jars and glass globes, using them for the light they cast without acknowledging that they were living creatures, and as much part of Faerie as any daughter of Titania or son of Oberon. That the Law did not protect them was a shame. That there were those who would claim that same Law's protection as their birthright while also abusing those who were smaller and weaker than they was a sham.

"I am so sorry," I said. "I...what do you want me to do?"

The pixie woman looked toward the fine silver wire I sometimes used in jewelry making. She chimed as she looked back to me. I didn't know her language, but it was impossible not to interpret the tone of her chime and the look on her face as hopeful when taken together.

"You want me to help."

Another chime.

I held out my hands, showing her how much bigger they were than she was. She was a little longer than my middle finger, not even four inches in height. I could have crushed her in my hand and not suffered in the slightest for the motion.

"I'm very clumsy, compared to you," I said. "There's a chance I'd hurt your baby. Do you understand that? That if I tried to do anything, I could hurt your baby, and badly?"

The pixie woman nodded, continuing to hold the child out toward me. It wasn't a baby, not really; it was too large for that, a toddler at the least of it. I didn't really know how pixie development worked. It had never seemed like a particularly necessary area of study.

The pixie child looked at me, and its one wing flicked, in and out, with a muted chiming sound. I closed my eyes.

The wings. The ring was in the wings, as I had long suspected. With only one working wing, the child could neither fly nor communicate with its own kind. Whoever had attempted to capture the tiny thing had left it mute and grounded--and since a pixie with a crumpled wing couldn't fly, they must have rejected it when they saw it no longer fit their standards of perfection. My anger was as fierce as it was useless. How quick some of us were to cast aside things that were in the slightest way flawed, like it was a failing to be shunned. We had all the time in the world to strive toward perfection. Couldn't we be gentler in our pursuit?

I opened my eyes. The pixie woman was still looking at me hopefully. Feeling a bit the fool, I asked, "Can you understand me? Chime twice for yes, if you can."

The pixie woman's wings chimed. Twice.

It's rare that I feel the urge to drink, but this conversation was bringing it on, and strongly. "All right. I'll need to examine the child, and then I'll try--try--to help. Do you understand the risks? That I might do no good, and worse, might even do further harm?"

She chimed twice more. She understood the risks, and she was willing to take them, for the sake of her child's future.

Or perhaps, if pixies were as obsessed with perfection as the rest of Faerie, for herself. "Does your child understand the risks?"

She looked at the baby, which flicked its wings with a dull, half-formed ringing sound, then back to me. Her chimes were firm. With neither mobility nor communication, her baby would be cut off from the rest of the flock, unable to fully belong. They would care for it--I had seen pixies moving their infirm in slings and makeshift stretchers--but so much of its culture would be lost to it. She wanted me to help, not in pursuit of perfection, but out of the hope that I could return what my kind had stolen.

"I will try," I repeated, and put my hand in front of her on the workbench, palm upward.

She only jumped back a little, wings chiming in rapid anxiety. Then, with shaking hands, she set the child on my palm.

Separated from its mother's yellow glow, the child began to glow a deep shade of lilac. Interesting. The shine of the parents must suppress the glow of the children, presumably to conceal the presence of something smaller and weaker from predators. It was possible whoever had hurt the child had been aiming for the mother, and had managed to accidentally swat them apart from one another.

"This will hurt," I said, and reached down, and ran my fingertip along the edge of the broken wing.

The pixie child bore up admirably, bowing its head and digging its hands into the soft skin at the base of my finger. The wing was badly bent but not broken; the long vein running along the outside edge had been folded in on itself without actually cracking. I paused before attempting to straighten it, pulling my fingers away.

"Will you trust me a step further?" I asked.

The child glanced anxiously at its mother before looking back to me and cautiously nodding.

"Excellent," I said, and held my hand out toward the adult pixie. After a moment's hesitation she snatched her child up again. I twisted on my stool, preparing to stand, and paused as I saw the size of the audience we had attracted. Pixies covered what seemed like every possible surface in my workshop, more than I'd ever seen in one place before. Many of them carried the wickedly-sharpened spears that served as their primary weapons. Pixies have a fondness for poison. I blew out a breath of air, preparing what I was going to say next.

"I know you can understand me, at least a little," I said. "I have been asked to help, and I am going to do my best to do so, but sometimes helping comes with hurting. I may cause the child pain. If you can't promise not to attack me when that happens, I'll need you to leave."

The pixies chimed wildly. None of them moved.

"All right. I'll hold you to your word." I had no idea how I was going to do that--the thought of raising a hand to them sickened me--but I stood and went about my business as if I were completely confident of my ability to discipline a flock of pixies.

My kettle was still warm from the last cup of coffee I'd brewed. I poured out a bowl of water, tested it with my fingertip, and added a sprinkling of black tea before carrying it back to the workbench and setting it down in front of the mother and child.

"I want you to soak in this," I said. "Tea softens the nails, so it should soften your damaged wing as well, and make it easier for me to straighten it without risking a break. The water is warm, but hopefully not so warm as to be scalding."

The mother nodded before setting her child on the bench and reaching behind herself to untie her makeshift gown. The scrap of silk puddled at her feet, revealing a body that was the match for any Daoine Sidhe or Tuatha de Dannan maid I had ever known, only cast in miniature and glowing from within. She bent to help her child with its own garments, revealing it as a little girl, and the two climbed into the bowl. The mother held her wings so that they were not submerged, and settled with them propped against the edge. The child sank down until the tops of her shoulders were underwater.

Several more pixies flitted down to test the water with their hands and look at me hopefully.

"It's up to her," I said, waving a hand. "I'm not running a pixie bathhouse." Yet. As more pixies stripped down and climbed into the bowl, I could see a great many basins in my future.

There were worse things, and the novelty of a hot bath--even a hot bath only big enough to house six at a time--was enough that the pixies let me be as I picked up the silver wire and a pair of cutters and began snipping off experimental lengths. Pixies splashed in the bowl behind me. I was about to step in and ask them to be careful when there was a strident and increasingly familiar chiming. I glanced over. The mother pixie was standing in the water with her hands on her hips, glaring at her bath mates.

"Much appreciated," I informed her, and went back to my work.

Silver wire has many uses, from jewelry making to the finer components of my experimental engines. I always keep plenty of it on hand. Even so, I winced at the amount that I was going to be wasting. Perhaps the pixies would be interested in some bracelets. I could add "pixie jeweler" to my growing list of improbable occupations.

In short order, I had lined up the wires in front of me, and was ready to proceed to the next phase. I turned back to the bath. "I'm ready."

The pixie woman chimed uncertainly before scooping up her child and hopping out of the bowl. She fluttered her wings to assist the jump; a quick, casual gesture that drove home even more how important it was to assist the child. Tylwyth Teg, who can fly, have a tendency to build their holdings without stairs. Tuatha de Dannan build without doors. Pixies scavenge more than they build, but they take up residence in places that aren't accessible to grounded predators, avoiding rats and cats and squirrels by dint of requiring the ability to fly. Without it...

"We're just going to have to fix you up," I said to the child, and smiled, hoping the difference in our sizes wouldn't make me seem too terrible. I cast around for something of the right height to make a chair, settling on a scrap of redwood. I set it down next to the line of wires. "Sit here, wings toward me."

The pixie woman set her child down on the redwood scrap. She remained nearby, wings twitching and giving off the occasional muted chime. I smiled at her in turn, trying to look confident, before reaching down and carefully, experimentally pressing on the child's wing. As I'd hoped, the tea had softened the veins, and it yielded under my fingers without signs of cracking.

"Again, this will hurt, and I am sorry," I said. "Only trust me. I'm doing my best."

I've known many children in my time--was one, once--and few could have sat so perfectly still while a giant tried to set one of their limbs. It didn't help that the wing had no bones, but still felt pain; that much was clear from the way the child tensed every time I pressed down. She didn't pull away. That was all I could ask of her.

The tea had softened the wing, but that wouldn't last long; I needed to work as quickly as I could. I pulled and pushed the wing almost straight before picking up two more scraps of wood, saying softly, "Take a deep breath for me now," and using them to press it the rest of the way flat.

The pixie child--the little girl; I owed her that much, after the dignity and self-possession she'd shown--cried out, once, the sound small and thin and scared. I'd never heard a pixie make that kind of sound before. It was unsettling. I pulled the scraps of wood away. The wing, while still drooping, was perfectly straight.

"Almost done," I said soothingly. I set the scraps of wood aside and picked up the silver wire.

I've been making jewelry and small chainmail for children's dolls since I was a lad. It was a minor thing to twist and braid the silver wire into a cage for the little girl's wing, bending it into place and anchoring it with quick knots, until the whole wing was held captive. I pulled my hands away.

"Can you move your wings for me?"

The pixie girl twitched her wings obediently. The undamaged wing gave a muted chime. The caged wing made a smaller, softer sound. It also didn't move as much. That was fine; this was early days yet.

"Is it too heavy? You can get up now. Try to stand, and see how it feels."

The little girl slid off the redwood scrap and moved to stand beside her mother. She gave her wings another experimental twitch. Then, shyly, she smiled at me.

"I'm going to assume, in the absence of a shared language, that that smile means it's all right. You can live with it. That's good. I want you to keep that wire on your wing for three days--do you know what a day is?"

The pixie woman gave me a disgusted look. I didn't laugh. It would have been rude.

"I'm trying not to make assumptions, madam," I said. "Come back in three days, and I'll remove the wire and see whether the wing is healing properly. Even if it is, we may need to do this again to get it properly straightened. I'm willing to try, if you are."

The mother pixie chimed in what I assumed was agreement. The little girl bent to pick up a few short lengths of wire from my workbench, holding them up and showing them to me.

I nodded. "You may have those. But only those--please always ask before taking things from here."

The little girl nodded shyly. Her mother scooped her up, her daffodil glow suppressing the child's lilac. The little girl waved over her mother's shoulder as the mother retrieved their clothing from the bench next to the bowl--which was still full of other pixies, none of whom seemed inclined to give up the novelty of a warm bath. Then, with a chiming of wings, mother and child were gone, retreating back up into the rafters.

Someone behind me started to applaud.

Stomach sinking--if Simon had witnessed this, I was never going to hear the end of it; if it had been one of my occasional jewelry clients, such as the esteemed and awful Countess Winterrose, I was going to wish it had been Simon--I turned. The woman leaning against the doorframe smiled.

"Do you do that sort of thing often?" she asked.

I said nothing. Words seemed to have temporarily deserted me, and I was not quite sure of how to call them home.

She was tall, with skin the color of clean sand, somewhere between tawny and tan. Her eyes were a deep, drowning blue, like the sea at rest. Her sleek black hair was styled to conceal both the points of her ears and the gill lines on her throat. A neat trick, if she wanted to pass for Daoine Sidhe; not quite so neat if she was hoping to pass for human. Her bone structure was too fine, her skin too smooth, to disguise her as one of their number. She was wearing a blue walking gown with pearls embroidered around the neck and hem. It was beautiful, impractical, and likely to get her robbed.

"Do you not know how to spin an illusion?" I blurted, before flushing red. "I mean, ah, Dianda. I mean, your Grace. I mean..." The correct address for an Undersea Duchess had deserted me. I stood there, feeling my ears burn, and waited for her wrath to rain down upon me.

Instead, she laughed. "Please. 'Dianda' is just fine. And yes, I can cast an illusion, although I didn't know I needed to. There was no one between here and the shore."

The warehouse I retained for my work was on the docks. If she'd come straight from the water, after the morning boats had gone out but before the mortal businesses began to open, it was believable that she might not have encountered anyone. I glanced past her to the rapidly lightening sky. Dawn had struck shortly before the pixie woman had come to me with her daughter. The timing lined up...fortunately.

"Normally, there would have been a great many human fishermen and workers in this area," I said gravely. "If they'd seen you, it would have been trouble."

"Your door is open. Don't you worry that they'll look in and see you with your...whatever those small, glowing bugs are?"

"The charms on my door are of Coblynau design. Nothing mortal can see my place--not even some of the local changelings. As long as I stay inside, I'm invisible to prying eyes. You, milady, were not when you walked here."

"Huh." She looked over her shoulder at the dock. "Can they see me now?"

"In the doorway? To be honest, I don't know. It's not a test I've ever put these enchantments to."

"Then I suppose I'll need to come in." She raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting.

My blush, which had been receding, surged back at double the strength. "Oh!" I said. "Oh. Ah, please, Duchess Lorden, enter as you will, and welcome to my humble..." I trailed off, looking at the mess around me. I had been working on my steam engine all winter; pieces were scattered from one end of the room to another, along with piles of redwood, barrels of leaves and pine needles, tools, and of course, my jewelry-making supplies. Spring was my busiest season, as lovers went courting and needed tokens of their affection that would not return to mushrooms and hawthorn berries upon the sunrise.

"Well, it's certainly humble," I finished weakly.

"Is it?" asked Dianda, stepping fully into the protective field of the Coblynau charms. She was barefoot. Not a wise choice in a place like this, filled as it was with sawdust and metal shavings. "I've seen so few land dwellings that you could tell me this was all the rage among the nobility, and I'd believe you."

"But then I'd be lying to you, and I would feel terrible about it." I cast wildly around, looking for a chair. Mine wouldn't do; it was a backless stool, and somehow, I couldn't see an Undersea Duchess taking it for anything other than an insult.

When I had first been setting myself up in the warehouse, Simon had insisted I be prepared to receive company. As he was the only person who ever bothered to visit me, his efforts had been mostly for naught, and had been buried under heaps of canvas and construction supplies. Still, that didn't remove them.

"If you would please be patient a moment," I said, and hurried to a dusty corner of the room, shoving barrels and boxes aside until I had unveiled the fabric-wrapped outline of a formal receiving chair. I ripped the fabric off, grasped the chair by the arms, and dragged it to where Dianda waited.

"For your Grace," I said, gesturing to the chair.

"Dianda," she said again, and sat. A puff of dust accompanied the motion. She blinked, apparently surprised, before laughing. "Don't get a lot of company, do you?"

"Not really," I said. "Forgive me if this is impolite, but...do you own shoes?"

She looked at me blankly.

I lifted a foot off the floor, holding it up for her to see. "This is a shoe."

"What?"

"The thing on my foot. It's a shoe. It's like clothing you walk on."

Her eyes narrowed. "What?"

I paused. "All right. Either you're having fun at my expense, or I'm insulting you direly, or you genuinely have no concept of what a shoe is. Please let me know which it is, before I dig myself a pit so deep that I'll never be seen again."

"I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about."

I opened my mouth to reply before pausing again and asking, more carefully, "Without offering any insult, how...friendly...have the land courts been when you attempted to have truck with them?"

Dianda scowled. It was almost soothing. My first encounter with her had involved her threatening to hit me with a chair, and a scowl seemed one of the expressions most at home upon her admittedly lovely face. "They act like we're ignorant fools come for their amusement, rather than their equals."

"If you don't know what a shoe is, that stands to reason. Not," I hastened to add, before she could get angry with me, "because not knowing about something that has no immediate relevance to your life makes you either foolish or ignorant, but because it seems certain assumptions have been made by the nobility of the land. Here, coming to a formal function without shoes would seem terribly rude--if you had feet, that is. Those with hooves or roots or talons aren't expected to wear them. When you're in fins, you wouldn't need them, and when you're on feet, they're considered a requirement."

Dianda blinked at me, scowl fading into pure bemusement. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's easier to show you. May I see your feet?"

Dianda stuck her right foot in the air, expression going challenging. I studied it for a moment before returning to my workbench and picking up a piece of leather that I'd been intending to use to patch my favorite apron. It would do.

"If I may," I said, and knelt in front of her, measuring the leather against the sole of her foot. The fit wasn't perfect, but that's what knives are for; I drew one of my whittling knives, trimming the leather until I had a relatively exact fit to her foot. Dianda watched this entire process with narrowed eyes and a pursed mouth, waiting for the trick.

"I'll be right back," I said, and stood, returning to my workbench. The redwood scraps would do nicely; those, alongside the leather and a fistful of driftglass from the bucket at the end of the bench. Making slippers out of glass may be clichŽ, but things become clichŽs because they work. Glass slippers are surprisingly sturdy, and can hold up to a remarkable amount of damage when compared to the silk or cotton kind.

I assembled my components in neat piles before starting to sing a shanty over them, trying to explain what I wanted to my magic. The smell of cranberries and mayflower rose around me, smelling so sweetly, achingly of home that it was momentarily painful. There have been times when I wished my magic would shift into something less tied to Massachusetts. I know plenty whose magic smells of grass or heather or the wind; nothing to remind them of the land they left behind when they went chasing their majority. But alas. Even though I leave Tremont and Boston far behind me, they'll always follow, in every spell I cast and charm I weave.

The spell rose, twisted around itself like a knot, and broke, leaving two plain blue satin slippers behind. They glittered faintly when the light struck them, as if the glass had become a part of the fabric. I picked them up, knocked the heels together to clean any clinging sawdust away, and walked back to where Dianda waited.

"These are for you," I said, offering them to her. "You put them on your feet."

"Why?" She took the slippers, turning them over in her hands and looking quizzically at the bottoms. "You cast that quickly."

"I've done it before. They should hold for three or four sunrises, in their current configuration. They can be reinforced with a secondary charm, if you've need to keep them past that." I doubted that. There was no way she would still be in my warehouse in three or four days. She shouldn't even have been here in the first place. This wasn't the sort of place where a Duchess--or a mermaid--belonged.

"Huh." She leaned down and put the slippers on her feet. It was a relatively simple process, but I was still relieved when I didn't need to assist her. I would probably have blushed my way into oblivion if I tried. "So what's the point here?"

"You can walk without getting sharp things embedded in your feet."

Dianda gave her slippers another look before turning to me and saying sheepishly, "I should have realized you'd need something like this up here. I've hurt my feet on pebbles and the like, and that's just the beaches."

"Everything sharp is here on the land," I said, and grinned at her for a moment before I remembered myself and straightened up. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Ice cream."

It was my turn to blink. "Excuse me?"

"You promised me ice cream the last time I saw you, remember? I don't know what ice cream is, exactly, but you said it would astonish me." Her voice dropped a little, losing some of its easy confidence, as she continued, "You said you wanted me to come around again. That was before you knew I wasn't...what you thought I was. Did you not mean it?"

"I meant it, I just..." I stopped, considering my words carefully before I said, "I thought I was inviting an unlanded noble, like myself, or at worst, a second daughter, not in line for her family's title. You wandered freely. I'm not accustomed to that from someone of your standing."

"You wouldn't have spoken to me if you'd known who I was."

"Probably not," I admitted.

"But you see, that's why I didn't want anyone to know." Dianda stood, steady in her new shoes. "I wanted people to treat with me as me, and not as the title I didn't have yet. You were sweet and you were kind, and you had no idea who I was, and even when I was...well, myself, you said you wanted to see me again."

"It's rare that a woman introduces herself by offering to hit me with a chair."

"It's rare I get to introduce myself to anyone at all." Dianda sighed. It was a heavy, weary sound, and for the first time, I compared the woman in front of me to the one who'd been laughing in my memory since the prior winter. Her face was the same--I couldn't have forgotten that face if I'd tried--but the laughter was dimmer, somehow, compressed under a veil of worries that she was clearly trying to shunt aside, if only for my sake. She was just as clearly failing.

"In the Undersea, I was always my father's daughter," she said, not seeming to notice my regard. "He was the Duke, I was going to be Duchess, and that was that. There was no chance of another heir. He and my mother were together purely for the sake of getting them both someone to inherit. My brother was born two years after I was. Mother stayed long enough for him to understand what she was asking, and once we'd both chosen a parent, the marriage was dissolved and she and my brother disappeared. She's Viscountess of a demesne near Nova Scotia. By all reports, she's doing well, and not yet ready to swim aside." Her tone was dispassionate: she was speaking of a business arrangement, not a negligent mother.

Sometimes the way we run our noble households is enough to make me want to smash things. "Everyone assumed they knew you," I said.

Dianda nodded. "Everyone knew they knew me. There was no question. Father sent me to school so I could learn to do what was expected of me. You may laugh at us here on the land because we have no shoes, but we laugh at you under the sea because you have no spines. It took me so long to come and visit because I was busy fighting to prove I should be allowed to keep what I'd been given. Father paid one of the challengers himself. I wounded him badly enough that it would have been a violation of the Law if I hadn't had healers standing by."

"The Undersea sounds like a very dangerous place."

"It is. But it's beautiful, and it doesn't lie, not like the land." She waved a hand, indicating the whole of my workroom--and, it seemed, the world beyond. "People here smile and stab you in the back. We'd never do that in the Undersea. When we stab you, it comes from the front."

I blinked. "I repeat, it sounds like a very dangerous place. Why are you here, if the land is so treacherous?"

"I wanted ice cream." Her smile was quick and oddly shy. "As I said, it's rare for someone to meet me. Everyone seems to know me already. You were kind with no reason to be kind, and generous with nothing to benefit from it. I'd like to know you better. I know you can't come to me--the Undersea would eat you alive, even if you could somehow manage the descent--so I thought it best that I should come to you. Was I wrong?"

It was early morning and early spring: the sidewalk vendors with their carts of frozen delights wouldn't be appearing for months, and then not until the late afternoon. We couldn't go to Gilad's kitchen without turning this into some sort of political event. Simon would be happy to receive me, but he would be unable to resist trying to find some useful angle on the situation, even if it was just impressing the virtues of his wife and daughter on an unsuspecting member of the nobility. It wouldn't matter to him that Dianda was from the Undersea and unlikely to be in a position to improve their prospects any time soon. Knowing that she'd seen and admired them would be enough.

Sometimes I envied him the intensity of his contentment, the way he centered his world completely around Amandine and August. Other times, I worried. No one should hang so much of themselves on someone else, not even within a marriage. What would become of my friend if they were ever, through accident or intent, removed?

Dianda was still looking at me in mute hopefulness, and I realized how much she had hung upon this moment, upon this morning. It would be the height of arrogance to assume she had any interest in me as a man, but a friend? I could be that much for her. It seemed certain to me that she needed one.

"Ice cream may be difficult at this time of year, without going somewhere that would attract an undue amount of attention, but I'm willing to go questing if you are," I said. "Just give me a moment to cast an illusion and find my coat, and I'm yours for so long as you desire."

"Careful with those promises," she said. "I might take you serious."

Cheeks reddening again, I forced a polite smile and ran to fetch my coat, the pixies chiming overhead. It sounded for all the world like they were laughing at me.

Dianda, it transpired, had found my warehouse by asking the Selkies where to go. The skin-shifters were the natural messengers between the Undersea and the Courts of the land, and they had a seemingly uncanny knack for knowing where every noble along the coast was located. There was nothing magical about it, I knew--they simply kept scrupulous track of our movements, so as to be able to deliver a missive at a moment's notice--but it was still an impressive trick, especially when one considered how often the minor nobles moved. We went from household to household, knowe to knowe, looking for a place where we could be useful, or idle, or whatever our jaded little hearts desired.

Of course, I was a stationary example of my breed, and had been since my arrival in Northern California. I had originally attempted to settle in the Kingdom of Lost Angels, to the south, only to find that my goals--quiet, patient tinkering, and not being drafted into anyone's army--were somewhat antithetical to theirs. My escape had been accomplished under cover of daylight, when all sensible nobles were asleep, and had ended when I reached the court of King Gilad, who was content to leave me alone as long as I was willing to show up and pretend to understand the political makeup of the Westlands whenever he called for me. It looked good for him to have a noble from Tremont choosing his kingdom over all others.

Dianda was waiting when I returned with my coat, a human illusion smoothing her features and rounding the tips of her ears. She made a beautiful mortal woman. I would have expected nothing else. Most of the nobility will choose beauty over ugliness when given the opportunity, and while human beauty is not the same as fae beauty, it is still better than the alternative.

She lifted an eyebrow at the sight of me. "After scolding me, you'll go out into the town with your true face on? Have I missed some change in the standards of the land courts?"

"No, milady," I said, and waved a hand over myself, pulling the magic out of the air around us. My workshop was no knowe--I might never have the standing or the power to hold a knowe of my own--but I had been living and working there for years, with never a mortal setting foot beyond my wards. My magic had permeated the structure. Summoning it for something as simple as a human illusion was a small feat.

Dianda's eyebrows rose higher. "Impressive," she said.

"I suppose I've had plenty of practice," I said, grateful for the extra layer of discretion my illusions provided me. She could no longer see me blush. I was unaccustomed to the attention of anyone...well, anyone, really. Simon was the only one who really came to visit, and when he did, the focus of his flirtation was usually so strong that I didn't need to think about it. I just went along with whatever he asked me to do. Dianda was something else entirely. It was going to take some time--more time than I had, most likely--to adapt myself to her.

"I haven't," she said. "Am I acceptable?"

"More than," I said. Her human disguise had made her dress plainer, keeping it within the limits of current mortal fashion. She might seem a little odd to someone who saw her on the street, but nothing odd enough to truly attract attention. In a way, I was grateful to see her so out of the current mode. A woman as lovely as she was would have attracted too many idle stares if she had been outfitted to suit her face, and I was going to have her attention for little enough time that I had no desire to share it.

I offered her my arm. She took it. I felt the blush rise in my cheeks, and was even more grateful for my illusions.

"Walking is so ungraceful," she said, as I led her out of the warehouse and onto the dock. It wasn't raining, thank Oberon. I didn't want to be the one to try teaching the mermaid about umbrellas. "Swimming is much faster, and more forgiving. If someone wants to go faster, they rise; if they want to go slower, they descend. Here, everyone is fixed to one level all the time, getting in one another's way, inconveniencing everyone around them. How can you stand it?"

"We're accustomed to it, I suppose," I said. "Swimming is difficult when there's no water. Surely you do some walking in the Undersea."

"Most of our palaces are constructed with areas for air-breathers," she said. "Selkies and the like have a tendency to drown if we don't accommodate them, and books and scrolls do poorly underwater. But it's never necessary to go more than a short distance on two legs, unless you want to."

"You walk quite well for someone who doesn't need to."

"Remember that extremely violent school I went to?" Her expression darkened, eyes remaining fixed on the middle distance. Her anger wasn't for me. "Walking was a part of the curriculum. Merrow are children of Titania as much as the Daoine Sidhe are, and yet somehow we find ourselves mocked and looked down upon, simply because we make our homes beneath the waves. When we must do business with the courts of the land, we need to present ourselves as their equals, as much as it's possible for us to do so. Walking is a part of that. We stand because they will not lower themselves to swim."
"I would swim with you," I blurted, before thinking better of it. No illusion in the world could have been powerful enough to hide the redness that swept across my cheeks and ears after that. I ducked my head and kept walking.

Dianda was silent. When I risked glancing up again, she was looking at me, an oddly gentle expression on her face.

"I thought you might," she said. "That's rare. Almost as rare as a man who would take me to the kitchen and feed me when I was hungry, rather than insisting we stay where the powerful might see him being generous to a stranger. You interest me, Baron Patrick."

"Baron Twycross, if you wish to be formal to that degree, which I wish you wouldn't, especially now," I said. "The humans don't have many barons among them, and the ones they do have tend to be fussy things, insistent on their titles."

"What shall I call you, then?"

"I prefer 'Patrick.'"

"Do you, then? I prefer 'Dianda,' and yet you seem intent on calling me 'milady' at every opportunity you have." Her smile was quick, and sharp as a dagger's point. "I can give you what you want, if you'll extend me the same favor."

Years as an unlanded hanger-on in other people's Courts have left me sensitive to the concept of quid pro quo, and very aware of my relative position in the political dance: better than someone entirely untitled, but not by much, and especially not considering my fondness for ignoble hobbies and the company of draftsmen, dockworkers, and their ilk. I hesitated, looking at Dianda. Her smile faded by inches, replaced by confusion.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Have I misspoken, or misread the situation?"

"To be honest, I don't know," I said. "I don't know what you want, or what reading you've given to our circumstances. I fear to give offense."

"Because I might bring the anger of the Undersea to your shores?"

I actually laughed at that. Dianda looked stung.

"No, no," I hurried to say. "I may not know much of the ways of women or of Merrow, but I know the ways of war. You've come not as a Duchess in silks and arrows, but as a person whose title chafes. You are, as you say, a child of Titania. She claims both our lineages--although I'll admit, that's always seemed odd to me. Titania is the Lady of Flowers, and Maeve the Lady of the Water."

"Our historians say Titania made us to spite Maeve," said Dianda. "We claim no descent from Oberon."

"Then who sired your First?"

She shrugged expansively. "No one knows. Maeve was always more an ally to the Merrow than Titania was; Titania made us and turned away, for we were wet and inconvenient and not as pretty and placid as her dry-born lines. Maeve knew what to do with things that were wet and inconvenient. She was second mother to our line, and could we change our allegiance, we would."

"I don't think you're wet and inconvenient," I blurted.

The corner of Dianda's mouth curved like a shell. I could have whispered all my secrets to that curl, and felt them to be well-protected.

"I spend most of my time in fins," she said. "I swim more than I walk; my hair is rarely dry. As for inconvenience, you seemed to find me inconvenient enough when I came to darken your door."

"That was surprise, not inconvenience," I said. "I never thought to see you again."

"Because I'm a mermaid?"

We had reached the end of the dock; we would be less able to speak freely in a very small distance. Perhaps that was what put oak in my spine, strengthening and straightening it, or perhaps it was only the high regard in which I held the lady who walked beside me, in shoes of my magic's making. Regardless, she had a right to hear the truth.

"Because you can do so much better than me that I don't even understand why you're here," I said simply. "I am no great ally, to bring strength to your household; I have no resources to support you, or power in the local Courts. You could slaughter me, replace me with a replica of coral and pearls, and odds are good that few, if any, would notice before the month's end. I am no wizard, to craft you treasures that cannot be replicated by what you already have below the waves. I am no scholar, to grant you wisdom. I'm a tinker who spends his time piercing his fingers on snips of wire and hand-crafted fishhooks, prized only by pixies and by those too determinedly silly to seek out more serious friends."

The curl at the corner of Dianda's mouth had smoothed back into a line as I spoke. As I finished, it dipped downward, pulling her face into a frown. Not an angry one. That would have been a familiar form, on her face, and hence easy to understand. This frown held sorrow, and regret, and a hundred other things I didn't know how to translate. I stood, transfixed, and when she reached up her hand to rest, lightly, against my cheek, I did not pull away.

"I would that we had been born to the same Kingdom," she said. "You would have made a fine Merrow, and while we might have broken a few of your bones in the course of your childhood, we would never have left you so unsure of your place, or of your value. You offered kindness to a stranger who was offering you nothing but violence. You were generous with your time and with your knowledge. You asked me for no favors, no recompense. Even now, even knowing that I have riches below the waves, you offer me shoes and wisdom and time. How could you think that I might do better than you? As friends go, you are without question the finest I have known the land to offer."

I reddened. Dianda lowered her hand and smiled at me again, wistfully this time.

"Oh, I would that you had been born to the sea," she said.

"You just said that."

"It bears infinite repeating," she said. Turning her eyes to the street, she asked, more dubiously this time, "Is this where we'll find the ice cream?"

"Perhaps," I said. "Given the time of year, perhaps not. Shall we find out?"

Dianda smiled, and I would have moved the sun itself to bring her ice cream, had she so bid. She did not; merely slipped her hand back into the crook of my arm, and we walked on.

None of the soda fountains which might, in colder weather, have offered true ice cream, or even frozen custard, were currently equipped for such delicacies; the market would not appear until the summer, when they would be able to charge the prices necessary to justify the expense of keeping their iceboxes full and their creameries supplied.

To complicate matters further, the hour was early enough that the establishments which were open were devoted to preparing breakfast for the workingmen of the city. While Dianda seemed interested enough in the unfamiliar smells wafting from their open windows--mermaids, it seemed, did not have many opportunities to become acquainted with ham steaks or fried eggs--I was loath to take her into a small room packed with dockworkers and other such pleasantly rough men. Not, I must add, because I feared for her safety: because I feared for theirs. I had no reason to suspect that she was anything less than sincere when she spoke of the violence of both the Undersea in general and her schooling in specific. All it would take was one untoward comment and I might find myself in the very middle of a proper brawl.

Simon, with his endless eagerness to experience all that life had to offer, would call me a coward and worse for shying away from the opportunity to have a chair broken over my head by a real, live mermaid, especially one who also happened to be a Duchess and wearing my enchanted slippers on her temporary feet, like a knight carrying a lover's favor into battle. Beloved as he was, Simon was not always the smartest person I knew.

"What about that one?" asked Dianda.

I followed her pointing finger to a tea room, and grimaced. "That one is favored by the local nobility. If you don't mind the thought of raising your eyes and finding Gilad at the next table over..."

Her grimace matched my own. "No," she said. "No, that would not do at all."

"Because you'd be seen in my company?" I tried to keep the question light. In the end, I almost managed it.

"Because I would have to present myself, and explain myself, and more, I would have to be myself, which is to say, I would have to adjust my behavior to suit the expectation of who I am, rather than enjoying the reality." Dianda shook her head. "The Duchess Lorden is a tiresome woman, and while she can be a fun role to play, she's not the reason I'm here today. I just want to enjoy your company, while it's available to me, and let her dry her fins a while until I'm prepared to put her back on."

I hesitated. There were so many things I wanted to say, and virtually none of them were appropriate to a woman I'd known for such a short time. In the end, I settled on the mildest of them, and asked, "Will you walk with me a little further?"

"I will," she said.

"I appreciate it," I said, and continued on.

We left the small eateries and early businesses of the docks behind us, moving deeper into the city, away from the water. Luck was with me, perhaps for the first time since the sun had risen: Carmichael was on the sidewalk outside his place of business as we approached, unlocking the door with a careful hand. I knew, even if the passing mortals would not, that he was releasing his wards in tandem with his locks. A chemist's shop made an easy target for those looking to steal something quick and resalable. He needed to be protected.

Of all the chemists in San Francisco, Carmichael's was the only to be fae-owned, and the only never to have been robbed. If anyone had ever noticed the number of confused owls perching on his roof, they had failed to draw the connection between the odd blueness of his eyes and the occasional disappearance of one or more of the local street toughs. He was kind to the birds, at least, and there were plenty of rats about, for those who accepted their new instincts.

"Good morning," I called, as we approached.

Carmichael turned, the sunlight glinting off the lenses of his glasses, and blinked in surprise at the remarkable sight of me in the company of someone who was not Simon Torquill. "Patrick?" he called. "Is that you?"

"In the flesh," I said, continuing toward him. "May I introduce the lovely Miss Lorden, who is visiting our fair city from parts which must remain unknown? Miss Lorden, I would like to introduce you to Carmichael Kearney, who claims to be a chemist, but is, in reality, the most foul of villains."

"Charmed," said Dianda, with a smile that could have thawed the hardest heart.

Carmichael did not possess the hardest heart. He smiled back, and while I knew he could see the illusions glittering around the both of us, he kindly did not inquire as to her origins. "It's a pleasure to meet you, miss, and Patrick, you know you're always welcome to darken my doorstep. The shelves you constructed on your last visit are holding up excellently."

"Which is something of a miracle, given the way you overload them," I said. "I know this is an imposition, but I was wondering whether your soda fountain is currently operational?"

He blinked. I had come for painkillers and liniments from time to time, when I didn't feel like seeking out a healer and admitting what I'd done to myself, and his alchemical tinctures were first rate, but I'd never come to him for sustenance before. "We don't normally open until past ten, although for you, I suppose I can make an exception. What sort of craving are you having?"

"I promised Miss Lorden ice cream," I said. "I realize that's a tall order, given the time of year, and thought a milkshake might satisfy her enough that she'd continue to tolerate my company."

Carmichael gave Dianda a thoughtful look before he smiled, and said, "I think a milkshake could be arranged, if that meets with your approval, miss."

"I have no idea what that is, so it sounds splendid," said Dianda brightly.

Carmichael's smile broadened into a grin. "Oh, I like her," he said, and finished unlocking the door. He didn't do the polite thing, which would have been to wave the lady inside before he entered for himself; he stepped over the threshold in a quick, decisive motion, not looking back--not looking, in fact, anywhere but absolutely straight ahead. There was a thin sizzling noise, like someone had spattered oil on a hot skillet, and the faint smell of cherry camphor drifted over us.

"Carmichael's wards are excellent," I said mildly, tilting my head toward Dianda. "Their excellence extends to accounting for the fact that someone might think to rush him in the process of unlocking the door. It's not until he, himself, enters the shop that the last of them dissolve."

"How novel," said Dianda.

"It does its job," said Carmichael, waving for us to follow him inside. "Come along. It'll take me a few minutes to get the soda fountain ready, but there's no sense in waiting on the street where anyone could spot you."

We stepped inside.

The experience of shepherding a mermaid through a modern chemist's shop was not one I had ever considered vital. After a short time watching Dianda exclaim over every bottle and bauble on the shelves, I couldn't see where anyone with any sense would voluntarily miss the opportunity. Everything enthralled her. Everything was new, and fresh, and worthy of being exclaimed over. To see the world through her eyes was to see it made new in a way that I had never dreamt possible. She could erase a hundred years of jaded acceptance with nothing more than an ignorance of violets, and an absolute delight over their existence.

She was peering at the face creams when Carmichael appeared at my elbow. His smug expression told me, quite clearly, how much time I'd be spending explaining this day. "The soda fountain is ready," he said. "Miss? Your milkshake awaits."

Dianda put down the jar she'd been examining and stepped over to reclaim my elbow. "Please, lead on," she said.

Carmichael inclined his head before turning and leading us through the shop to the small soda fountain tucked into the back. It had never been profitable: it was too narrow, without sufficient seating to make it a popular spot. But he had customers enough, with children enough, to make it a worthwhile use of real estate, and it wasn't as if the old alchemist ran the place for profit. He thought he could find ways to make fairy ointment more easily, to refine goblin fruit until it would be non-addictive for changelings and mortals, and other such wonders that would make our impact on the human world less painful. It was an admirable goal, if one that no noble household would ever underwrite, and so he kept his soda fountain, if only for the sake of the dozen or so people who visited it regularly.

Dianda settled onto a chair, wincing as her knees bent. I frowned.

"Are you well?" I asked.

"Of course." She waved her hand, dismissing my concern. "I am always excellent. Be sure you don't forget that."

"I doubt I'm accomplished enough to do any such thing," I said, and she laughed.

She was still laughing when Carmichael walked over with two tall glasses, each filled with a pale brown liquid. He set one down in front of each of us.

"Your milkshake, miss," he said.

"Oh, fabulous," said Dianda, with a smile to mark her words as gratitude. Even the Undersea avoided thanks, when they could. Her smile dimmed, replaced by puzzlement. "But what is it, exactly?"

"Heavy cream, chocolate syrup, egg, and soda water," said Carmichael. "It's best to drink before it warms."

I took a straw from the center dispenser and placed it in my own glass. "Like this," I said, and sipped.

Carmichael looked at Dianda, looked at me, and winked. I choked on my milkshake.

Dianda looked at me with concern. "Is it not good?"

"No, it's lovely," I wheezed. "But don't breathe it."

"I'll take that under advisement," she said, and sipped her own milkshake. Her eyes widened. "This is wonderful!"

Carmichael grinned at me as he walked away, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

In all honesty, I couldn't blame him.

Once Dianda discovered that milkshakes came in flavors, there was no convincing her not to try them all, or at least a reasonable sampling thereof. She deemed strawberry delightful, peach unpleasant, and root beer to need further consideration. I promised to bring her back, which seemed to satisfy her; we were able to move on after only four milkshakes.

We were walking along the street, heading toward the water, when she suddenly stiffened, her hand going tight on my arm. "Is there a place to sit?" she asked, in a studiously calm voice.

"This way," I said. I guided her around the corner to the nearest bench, holding her wrist as she settled herself. She grimaced again as she sat. "Dianda, what's wrong?"

"I would prefer it if you not panic, as any panic would doubtless make things worse, but there's a small problem," she said, in a distant voice.

Panic flooded over me, despite her admonition against it. I swallowed it as best I could. It sat poorly on a stomach full of milkshake. "I will do my best," I said. "What's wrong?"

"It seems I misjudged how long I could manage to stay on two legs," she said. "It took me a little longer to find you this morning than I admitted."

I paused before looking, slowly, toward her lap. There was no indentation at its center, as would have been normal for a woman in her position; instead, the fabric hung smoothly across a single wide limb. A tail. I looked further down, and saw the tips of her flukes peeking out from beneath her hem.

"Your illusions..."

"Weren't intended to account for this. There's a reason mortals see us, from time to time." Her face was drawn, her eyes tight with worry. "We can hide our faces, but our tails are substantially harder. Patrick, I'm sorry."

"No, no, there's no need." I stood a little straighter. "Can you craft a don't-look-here?"

"Yes, but--"

"Craft it. I will be right back." I touched her shoulder without thinking about it. Then I turned, and ran.

Carmichael was behind the counter when I crashed back into the chemist's. There was no one else there, thank Oberon: my request was awkward enough without that. He looked up, eyes wide. "Patrick, what in the world--"

"I need a bath chair," I said, as quickly as I could. "Please, do you have one?"

He hesitated. "Where is your lady friend?"

"She's the reason I need the bath chair. Please. I'll owe you."

"Yes, you will," he said, composing himself. "I do have one; it was ordered by the husband of one of my regulars. He'll be coming to collect it this afternoon. Will you have it back here by then?"

"You have my word," I said fervently. "But hurry. Dianda isn't the most patient of women, and I left her alone." It wasn't like she could exactly run off under her own power. That didn't mean I was comfortable with the situation.

"Wait here," said Carmichael, and vanished through the door into his office.

He returned in short order, pushing the bath chair in front of him. It was a decent example of its breed, large enough for an adult woman, although the tail might be something of a stretch. I took it from him, babbling promises and pleasantries, and ran out before he could ask me what had happened. He'd find out soon enough. Gossip was virtually coin of the realm in San Francisco, and someone was going to see us on our way back to the sea.

The bath chair was well-made, at the least; the wheels turned smoothly, and in all, it was only a minor hindrance to returning to the bench where I had left Dianda.

She wasn't there.

I stopped, paling, before I remembered my last instruction to her. "If you would?" I called softly.

There was a distant popping sound as she released the spell, and my missing mermaid reappeared. "What took you so long?" she asked.

"I had to secure you a carriage." I wheeled the bath chair over beside the bench, looking from it to her before I reddened, and said, "I would be glad to help you into it, if you need."

"You mean you're going to have to, because there's no way I can do it on my own," she said. She reached her arms toward me, a gesture that would have been beseeching if not for the cynically amused look on her face. "You've come to save me. Well? Save me."

"Forgive me," I said, and bent to scoop her from the bench. I couldn't brace her feet against the ground--not when she didn't have any--and so wound up with one arm supporting her back while the other cradled her rear. It was difficult to say whether this was inappropriate, given her lack of buttocks. From the way my ears burned, it was clear enough that I considered it inappropriate, and was suitably embarrassed by the contact.

She put her hands around my neck, helping me to support her as I maneuvered her over the bath chair and lowered her, carefully, to the cushions. I let her go. She did me the same favor.

"What is this?" she asked.

"A bath chair," I said. "They're used by human invalids and the unwell. It allows them to take the fresh air without exhausting themselves. Arrange your skirts to cover what needs to be covered, and I'll get you back to the water." I looked around quickly for onlookers before sweeping a hand through the air and throwing a hide-and-seek spell over the both of us. It would keep us from becoming too much of a spectacle.

Dianda blinked. Then she smiled. "Think of everything, do you?"

"Only as much as I can," I said, and stepped behind her, and began to push.

If showing a mermaid through the local chemist's was an experience not to be missed, pushing that same mermaid through San Francisco to the sea was, perhaps, a less vital exercise. I decided against the beach, where the sand would only clog the chair's wheels and make movement impossible; my brief seconds supporting her full weight had made it clear that I was far from up to the task of carrying her any distance. Her upper body was still that of a relatively slim woman, but her tail was entirely muscle and bone, and I knew my limitations.

It took easily half an hour for us to reach the dock. I was sweating copiously and faintly winded, although I did my best to conceal both from her. She was worried enough already. I didn't need to add to her burdens.

No one moved to stop us on our way to the dock's edge. For that, if for nothing else, I was thankful. I parked the chair as close to the edge as I could, moving around it to kneel and put myself on her eye level.

"You see?" I said. "Nothing to worry about."

"Not now," she said, and smiled. It was an expression to melt a heart of stone, and that it was intended, however innocently, for me lightened my heart and strengthened my arms. I would have pushed the chair a thousand miles to put that look upon her face.

"Dianda," I began. "I--"

"You didn't invite me to come to you," she said. "You offered me ice cream, but you never said 'come to my home, impose upon my hospitality.' I did that all on my own, out of the hope that you might be glad to see me."

"I was," I said fervently. "I truly, truly was."

"I know." She kept smiling. "You were gladder than I could have dreamt. I am genuinely grateful for your time and attentions. Tha--"

I didn't think: I only moved, raising my hand and pressing a finger to her lips. She looked at me in wide-eyed surprise. "Please, no thanks," I said. "I want no fealty between us. I don't think I could bear it."

She leaned back, pulling her lips away from my finger. "What, then?"

"Friendship?" I ventured. "If you think..." I stopped. What I wanted was vast and formless and seemed too improbable to name.

And once again, Dianda smiled.

"I'll see you again," she promised. "You still owe me ice cream."

"If I can't deliver?"

"I'll keep coming." Her expression softened, going wistful around the edges, until I could have sworn I saw my own wanting reflected in her eyes.

"Oh," she said, softly. "Would that you had been born to the sea."

Then she tipped forward, out of the bath chair, into the sea. She vanished with scarce a ripple. I gasped--I couldn't help myself--and the gasp turned into laughter when her hand emerged from the water, holding a pair of blue satin slippers high. The hand withdrew. The slippers vanished. I was alone on the dock, a man with an empty bath chair, looking at the vastness of the deep blue sea.

I would see her again. Until then, I had spring storms to weather, and pixie wings to mend, and a borrowed chair to return. I turned back toward the city, and began the long, peaceful walk home.