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Roderick had to admit that the fairy wasn’t all he hoped for.
Of course, he admitted this only to himself. He didn’t regret things where other people could see. Just like he boasted his injury as a mark of adventure and mild inconvenience rather than, well, having his whole right forearm hacked off by some shiny yellow and green fairy Roderick ought to have been able to make short work of. Instead the fairy had made short of Roderick’s arm.
Now he had another yellow and green fairy staying at his place, though this one was not shiny at all. Dull all over, in fact. Even her eyes were dull, like scratched up amber and the last little bit of green on dying leaves. Not that Roderick got much of a look at her eyes. She let her long yellow hair hang down and kept her eyes on the floor. At least, pointed in the direction of the floor. Her gazed seemed to end before it reached as far as the floor.
Roderick leaned in the front door of his rooms. They were nice rooms in a nice part of the upper castle. Bog was at least not petty enough to stick his tragically wounded cousin in some old hole or another. It was guest of honor treatment all the way for Roderick. As a survivor of the treacherous attack from Summer he had become quite the important political figure. Combine that with Roderick being generally important by default Bog must have had no choice but to grit his teeth and give his cousin everything due his status. There was no way Bog could have known—or ever would know so long as Roderick had his way—how awkward it was to get up and down to the rooms with his missing arm throwing his balance off when flying. There were so many stairs he’d never thought about before and every step made his arm throb from fingertips to shoulder.
The fairy rocked silently back and forth in the corner, cradling her baby, seemingly unaware of Roderick watching her. He couldn’t stop a grin at the baby, a little grub that waved tiny soft fists like it was thinking it could do any damage with them. Roderick liked playing with the baby but the mother didn’t like it. Roderick found this ungrateful of her. He’d saved both of them, hadn’t he? He flexed his right hand. A blue outline appeared where his right hand ought to have been and flexed its see-through fingers. A moment later it blew away like mist. He wished he knew why it did that. How it did that. Having two hands again, one a ghost or not, would be great.
“Boring.” Roderick sat on the floor in front of the fairy. “It’s all boring. Even you’re boring. That’s not fair. You’re supposed to tell me all about Summer, and Spring too, maybe. How they get about when it’s bright outside all the time, for instance. They must be blind at night, pretty much, yeah?”
There was no answer from the fairy. Roderick sighed, feeling gloomy, picking at the stump of his arm. He felt gloomy a lot since the border closed. He marveled that Bog could get through being gloomy all the time, it was so draining even when you did nothing.
“You ever feel trapped, Summer fairy?”
One of the fairy’s rare answers came out in a raspy whisper. “Spring.”
“Oh? Is it a lot different from Summer?” Roderick asked, wings perking up. But the fairy had nothing more to say.
The first truly interesting thing the fairy did was throw a knife at Roderick.
One day he burst into the room, taking the fairy by surprise. She whipped around—the fastest Roderick had seen her move since she came here—and a streak of silver hit the wall behind him. An eating knife dropped to the floor, too dull to stick in the wood. Roderick had been so excited asking questions that the fairy wedged herself behind a chair and it took days to coax her into a calm mood again.
“Hey, hey!” Roderick announced and peeked around the door of the fairy’s room, “coming in!”
The fairy didn’t indicated she cared one way or another. The baby giggled at the sound of Roderick’s voice. It had been rolling around on a blanket spread over the floor, but got snatched up by its mother when Roderick came in. It looked over her shoulder and gave him a toothless smile.
“Someone likes me around here.” Roderick wiggled his fingers, eliciting more giggling. “I hope my bribe will bring the count up to two.” He set a box on the abandoned blanket and opened it himself rather than waiting for the fairy to do so and then opening it himself anyway when she did not. “They’re real knives, for throwing. Everybody should have a weapon and you like knives—you’ve stolen four from your meals so far. I guess it makes sense, too. I can’t picture a fairy being strong enough to lift a sword or spear. Yeah, knives suit you. There’s a little belt to wear them in too. What do you think? Like ‘em?”
The fairy tapped her fingers on the back of her baby and was dull as ever. She was incessantly tapping, mostly when she thought Roderick wasn’t nearby. When he came close all she would do was rock back and forth. It was annoying.
Later Roderick had to put the box away himself. The fairy hadn’t touched it.
Not long after a letter Roderick had been expecting for quite some time finally arrived. It was everything due his status from the thick paper to the official illegible signatures and heavy seals with grains of amber pressed into the wax to make it particularly binding.
“Yup. Disowned.” Roderick tossed the letter aside. “Not that it matters. It doesn’t change anything, especially much.” The arm that wasn’t there throbbed, the upper arm that was still there was hot and aching. That’s what made him frozen and hiss. Maybe he should let the doctor take another look at it like everyone had been incessantly insisting for weeks. “I would have ended up disowned eventually. I’m the disappointment of my family and I plan to keep it that way.”
He felt hot and aching all over. He felt weak. He hated that. He wanted to punch something, claw something, shout that it didn’t hurt that none of it hurt and he didn’t care. He didn’t care. He might’ve tried shouting but the little fairy sprout was staring at him. Roderick wiggled his fingers at it. It rewarded him with a laugh.
Roderick didn’t burst into tears. He sort of overflowed. Stupid. Unnecessary. Uncalled for.
A warm weight settled in the crook of his left arm. He looked down in astonishment through his tears. The dull fairy had settled the baby in his arm. She held the baby in place as if she didn’t trust him not to drop it, but she let him hold it.
“I never had a family.” the fairy said, looking down as always.
“They’re not all that great.” Roderick sniffed.
“Being alone is so much worse. I did everyone I could not to be alone. Stupid things. But my family now is wonderful.” She touched her baby’s soft cheek.
“It’s pretty cute.”
She smiled at it, slowly tapping her fingers up and down the folds of its blankets in a way that was different from how she’d done it before. It seemed a happy sort of fidget.
“Hah, I don’t need any of them. I’ll find my own people,” Roderick declared, “People that are mine, that I chose. They’ll be better than anything my family ever was.”
The baby chuckled.