Page 32 of The Deer and the Dragon
Was she asking me about my college major? I’d forgotten entirely. I wasn’t even sure I remembered my own name. Between the shock in the basement and the baffling events that had unfolded in my living room, I wasn’t positive I could identify tits from toes.
Finally, a semi-intelligent thought came to me.
“Double major,” I responded reflexively. The normalcy of the question caught me off guard as I recited an answer I’d given a million times, from panels to interviews to first dates that went nowhere. “Literature and linguistics. With concentrations in Spanish and Nordic studies.” Would she ask for my résumé next?
She flashed a starlit smile at that and asked me in Norwegian, then Swedish, then Icelandic which of the Scandinavian languages I spoke. She lost me when she switched to Old Norse, though I caught most of her words, even if I couldn’t respond.
“How many more could we do? Faroese? Finnish? Danish?”
“I can read Danish,” I said. “I didn’t touch any of the others.”
She tilted her head to the side, silver and copper tumbling over her shoulder, the shortest layers pooling near her collarbone as the rest tumbled below her breast. “Isn’t it lovely, how the blood calls to you? Here you are in the godforsaken American Midwest, and—forgive me if I’m wrong, but—your mother gave up her language, right?”
I dipped my chin numbly. It was true. My mother had wanted only English spoken in the house. The more she rejected our heritage, the deeper I’d dug in my heels. My grandmother had been delighted when I’d been able to hold a conversation with her at long last. My mother’s chagrin was an emotion I’d never truly understood, but I also hadn’t tried. Everything I did was disappointing to her.
I opened my mouth to ask Fauna how she knew about my mother but closed it again wordlessly. I wasn’t about to win a Pulitzer for my journalism anytime soon, as I couldn’t form a coherent thought beyond reverting to denial. If she truly was a product of my imagination—which I still wasn’t sure whether or not I hoped she was—then she’d know anything I knew.
“I can’t blame her,” Fauna said. “I’m sure the things she thought and felt were very scary for her. Generally, we like to leave humans with distant fae blood to their own devices. Unless, of course, some angelic asshole is trying to bond with a Norde just to fuck with the Prince.”
Her sentence was a word salad, so I took a stab at the piece I understood.
“Are you saying you’re fae?” I asked.
She offered a half-shrug. “Me, Silas, the Prince—what’s fae besides a word you’ve used to help understand facets of the preternatural?”
“Preternatural?” I repeated.
She made a sound of controlled patience. “Preternatural is for something beyond what is expected, which, for humans,we are. Supernatural is what humans prefer to use when talking about us, but it’s simply inaccurate. It’s a word for things beyond the natural, which the realms find rather egotistical of humanity. As if you’re the determining factor on what is and isn’t natural.”
“And…what exactlyareyou?”
Curls cascaded over her shoulder as she tilted her head. She chewed her lip for a moment. “Fae is fine as a catchall. I’m closer to what you’d consider an elf, I guess. Skogsrå is the technical term in our pantheon, but no one seems to know it. Basically, I’m a god you don’t care very much about. Maybe a nymph, if you’re using Greek…which, given your literary career, I suspect you might. Humans have created all sorts of nifty little words to help compartmentalize their understanding of our kingdoms. Likeangels.” She said the word again and giggled. She surveyed the apartment as if seeing it for the first time. “I know I said your place was cute, but damn! What the hell do you do with a literature degree that affords a place like this?”
“I…I write books,” I said. “ThePantheonseries…and before that…well…”
“Gods, we know you write; we just didn’t know it paid this well. I read the first one, mostly to see if you mentioned me. I was gravely disappointed with how you described Álfheimr and equally disappointed that I was not your main character. But, all is forgiven. Wait, why the face?”
She studied me for a minute before recognition clicked.
“Oh! Money! Jobs! The sex work? We know about that, peanut. Congratulations, by the way. There isn’t a deity alive who doesn’t use sex as a form of worship—oh, no, I’m wrong. Silas’s owner has very particular ideas about sex. I wonder if that’s why all of his angels have sticks up their asses. They need to get laid.” She got to her feet and wandered to the neat line of books that had my name emblazoned on thespine. She plucked one from the row and smiled. “I suspect you have the Prince to thank for this, too.”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant, as it was a reflection of my own insecurity. I’d never believed I’d deserved success. There was no such thing as luck, after all.
“Well, shall we?”
I frowned. “Shall we what?”
She plopped my book to the table and gave me a tired look. “You nearly bound yourself to an angel so that you could see beyond the veil.” Fauna wiggled her fingers, hand extended toward me. “Are we bonding, or what?”
There it was again. That miserable lightning bolt through my core at her use of the word.Angel. Years of fists on pulpits, of fear of eternal damnation, of verses and pews and water and communion made me recoil. I realized it wasn’t that I wanted her to be fake. I’d been willing to accept hidden people and folk tales. I was ready for witches. But the church-heavy language had triggered something within me. Ineededit to be fake. If angels were real, did that mean my mother had been right about everything? The stitches I’d sewn up around my childhood began to burst, every memory threatening to spill out as I stared at Fauna, quite certain I was going to be sick.
“Now?”
Her face twitched into wry amusement. “Do you have something better to do? From my understanding, you were so desperate to step into the veil that you tracked down a murderer, and from the smell of it, you encountered his attachment. Unpleasant little fuckers, aren’t they? But this tells me either that you’re dumb or that you’ve already let go of whatever expectations you had for this life. Knowing the company you’ve kept, I sure as hell hope it isn’t the former.”
My throat worked, struggling to swallow as if I’d taken a large pill without water. My heart stuttered arrhythmically as I examined her awaiting palm.
“My friends? My life? My job?”
