Page 13 of The Falconer

Derrick rises from my shoulder and flies back to the table. I assume he’ll steal more parts while I’m distracted.

I shut the dressing room door behind me and press the button for the light. Hardly any dresses remain on the shelves. The scent of roses clings to the air. I grudgingly admit that Derrick is right – it does smell rather heavenly.

Deftly, I untie the bow around my chest. Blood sticks to the fabric and I wince as I step out of the many layers of petticoats and undergarments that have constrained me all evening. The thigh holsters securing my pistol andsgian dubhgo next.

My inspection reveals five superficial cuts and four deep others, running across the freckled skin just below my bosom. The deeper ones will require stitching.

I brush my fingers along the healed welts elsewhere across my ribs. No one knows that underneath my beautiful dresses I hide a body that is scarred and cut and bruised. Old injuries are scattered across my thighs, my stomach, my back. They’re my badges. My secret tokens of survival and victory. And vengeance. I can name the faeries that inflicted every scar, and I remember how I killed each one of them.

With a sigh, I pop open the lid of my trunk and pull out my stitcher kit. I lie amid my scattered dresses and twist the key at the bottom of the box. The tiny mechanical spiders crawl across my chest and abdomen, mending my torn flesh.

I close my eyes. I listen to their bodies move, the whisper of wee mechanical pieces interworking as tiny legs creep across my skin. They puncture me over and over, cauterising and threading gossamer tendon through my sensitive flesh. Finally I feel them finish and crawl back into the box.

The dressing room is silent when I open my eyes and place the kit back in the trunk. My midsection is smeared with blood around four stitched wounds that will become new badges.

I reach for fabric to wipe the blood away and draw an old, tattered tartan from beneath the dresses.

Then I can’t breathe. My eyes are wet and my chest aches.

I shove the tartan inside the trunk and shut it with a loud thump, gasping for breath.

Derrick must have dug out the tartan from the back of the dressing room. I wish I could burn it, even if it is the last memento I have of my mother. I managed to salvage it before my father ordered her most personal belongings removed from the house. He said he couldn’t look at them any more, as though their presence gave him some hope that she’d return.

I understood. Even this last reminder of my mother’s life just makes her absence all the more glaring. So the tartan stays hidden, where I won’t be tempted to hug it or sleep with it or wear it in a poor attempt to pretend she’s still alive. The pretending would only make reality all the more painful.

I snatch a small handkerchief off the floor and dip it into the bowl of water Derrick leaves out for me next to my rows of slippers. He always anticipates that I’ll come home with an injury that requires cleaning. He’s always right.

I gently mop the blood from my skin and change into my nightdress. When I step out of the dressing room, Derrick is sitting cross-legged on my work table, sifting through metal pieces, no doubt choosing which to steal next.

‘Get away from there,’ I say, flipping the switch for the fireplace. A spark under the coals sends flames bursting upwards. I toss the bloodied fabric into the fire.

Derrick flies to perch on the back of the pink muckle chair near the settee. ‘But they’re just sitting there, all shiny and unused.’

‘How about another project to keep your fingers busy?’ I hold up my ravaged ball gown. ‘See? It’s completely destroyed, just the way you like.’

Light explodes around him. ‘What the hell happened?’ Derrick bursts out.

‘Revenant,’ I say. I toss him the dress and Derrick catches it easily by the sleeve. I know pixies are stronger than they look, but his effortless strength still surprises me. ‘You’re welcome to work on it.’

I’ve finally learned never to say thank you when he mends my dresses. Faeries take heavy offence to gratitude.

Derrick drops the dress onto the settee and inspects the damage. ‘Almost had you, didn’t he?’ he murmurs.

‘Almost.’

I press my fingers against my new badges. They all tell stories, each distinct and significant. One of them – the longest scar, the one that spans the length of my spine – is the first I ever earned. It tells the tale of a girl who had just lost her mother and nearly died when she went out into the world armed with iron. The girl who was later remade into a killer.

I sit in my work chair and pick up an old watch fob lying amongst the metal scraps. ‘I shot it, of course,’ I murmur.

‘Well done,’ Derrick says. He holds up my dress to inspect it and his wings flutter once. ‘Did you take its head?’

He sounds hopeful. Small faeries truly loathe the larger fae for being so pathetic as to live off the energy of less powerful creatures. They consider it a weakness.

‘Of course not. What on earth am I going to do with a revenant’s head?’

He brightens more, skin glowing golden. ‘Take it as a trophy, put it on a stake and display it in the back garden where everyone can appreciate it.’

‘Derrick, that’s disgusting.’ I’m amused despite myself.

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