The Silver Thread (14 page)

“So, are you certain there’s nothing else you wanted to tell me?” he asked. He handed her the glass and smoothed her hair back, away from her face.

“I’m sorry Talvi,” she said reluctantly, as she was both literally and figuratively backed into a corner in the little bathroom, “I don’t know for sure, but I do know that I’m late. I’m really, really late.”

“How late?”

“A little over three months.”

“I—I don’t know what to say. I’m a bit surprised that this didn’t come to my attention sooner,” he said, stunned. “I thought surely I would have noticed if you…if you were… it’s just that, this is
not
the sort of thing elves miss. We always know when a female is expecting.”

“You do? But how can you tell?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” Talvi said, tilting his head to one side. “It’s something one doesn’t see with their eyes. We simply
know
it; we can
feel
it. But with you, perhaps circumstances are different. Strange things happened during our handfasting. Perhaps this is some sort of delayed anomaly caused by it. Are you experiencing any other symptoms?”

“Yeah,” she said, still afraid to look at him. “Ever since I got back, I throw up all the time, and I’ve been obsessed with blueberries. I put them on everything lately. But Thursday night, right before you showed up, I realized what the reason was. That’s why I know I’m not hung over…that’s why I asked the waitress to put some pineapple juice in a martini glass; so no one would ask why I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t want to deal with it.”

Talvi took a deep breath, exhaled, and then took another deliberate breath. He didn’t want to deal with it either, but at least now he knew what she had been trying to hide from him since his arrival. He thought back to his last meal with his family, and his older sister’s teasing less than two weeks ago, that he was destined to get married and have lots of babies with his wood nymph wife. He wondered if this was the very moment he’d tried his entire life to avoid. If it was, he couldn’t let Annika see how apprehensive he felt. He put on his most valiant smile.

“When Anthea was pregnant, she couldn’t eat cinnamon-date bread the entire time without getting sick, and it’s her favorite breakfast.” He reached up for the hand towel and wiped her face with it. “And you wouldn’t believe the bizarre food cravings she had…certainly nothing as lovely as blueberries. She ate the most revolting things. The smells kept Finn and I out of the kitchen for months.”

Annika knew how Talvi felt about kids long before their conversation in the jam aisle. Back at his house, a world away, she’d seen him avoid his young nephew like the bubonic plague. He made it pretty clear that children were nothing more than squirming, smelly little larvae that served no purpose but to keep him from his precious naps and beloved bar-hopping.

“How can you be so calm, after the way you were talking about getting twins like it was some horrible curse?” she wanted to know, finally able to look at him through the tears forming in her eyes. “You know neither one of us is ready for…
kids!
”

“I doubt many parents are ever truly ready,” he assured her. “Even Anthea has her bad days. Now please don’t cry, my little dove…you’ll only agitate yourself further.”

He held her close, rubbing her back, and she briefly imagined what their life might be like in the not so distant future.

Annika saw their home as a wreck, with obnoxious, noisy, bright plastic toys scattered everywhere and two black-haired tykes chasing each other around the fireplace with rusty scissors. Her guitar and bass were dusty from lack of playing, the walls were decorated with finger paints and sticky residuals of food, while the floor was enhanced with trash and papers and stains. It was a similar version of her bedroom a few days earlier, except with more diapers and less vodka bottles. But on second thought, maybe the vodka would stay. She was by no means ready to lose countless nights’ worth of sleep because crying babies kept her awake all night. And the thought of a post-twin body was upsetting as well. She had places to go, things to see and do, dreams to create, and a needy infant or two were not part of those plans. She was sure her husband was thinking the same thing, just keeping it to himself. But with every protest she voiced, he only assured her they would get through it together.

When Annika finally felt better enough for Talvi to coax her out of the bathroom, they found Charlie and her father sitting at the table, wiping the last bit of scrambled eggs and hash browns from their plates with slices of toast. Her brother had already taken the liberty of finishing hers off for her. Given that he was wearing his dirty soccer practice clothes, it wasn’t much of a surprise.

“Hey jailbird, I came by to give you a ride home since your husband totaled Patti’s car,” Charlie said with his mouth full of Annika’s abandoned toast.

“It’s
totaled
?” She felt even more lightheaded and unfocused as she slid back into her chair. “I thought it just had some damage to the front bumper.”

“Are you kidding? Talvi parked it into a tree. It’s totally wrecked,” Charlie replied as though it almost gave him pleasure to do so. “She already talked to the insurance adjuster. The front axle is bent and the engine is pretty messed up, but since she only has liability insurance, the damage isn’t covered. I’ve offered to give her rides to work when I can, but she’s still freaking out about not having a car.”

“I’ll get her another one,” Talvi muttered, and his hand instinctively reached for the silver case in his pocket. It was astounding to him, how quickly things could spiral out of his control.

How long have I been here?
he wondered.
Oh, only about thirty-six hours. Bravo, you git
. Bravo.

“Talvi, what line of work are you in, exactly?” Faline asked as she began to clear plates. Talvi took out a cigarette and tapped one end against the silver case a few times before putting the case back in his pocket.

“Mergers and acquisitions,” he replied without missing a beat, and kissed Annika on the head before putting the cigarette in his mouth. “Good thing it pays well, because being married to your daughter is getting expensive. Now if you’ll excuse me, I know you don’t allow smoking in the house.” He sauntered out the front door in his cat-like way of moving, leaving the Brisby family to exchange plenty of glances among themselves.

“He’s not seriously going to buy Patti a new car, is he?” Charlie asked, with his mouth hanging open. “That’s insane!”

“I don’t think he meant a Mercedes, Charlie,” Annika replied, wrinkling her nose. “And shut your mouth when there’s food in it. You’re gonna make me puke again.”

“I never would have taken him to be an investment banker,” Faline said, picking up a piece of broken glass that she had missed from earlier.

“He doesn’t seem to have a problem taking risks,” Annika’s father said, grinning ever so slightly, “so I guess I can’t be too surprised.”

“What the hell did you do after you left last night? Rob a liquor store?” Charlie asked, but, no one volunteered an explanation.

“That’s fine,” he shrugged. “It’ll be in the paper anyway. They always print the police reports.” He waved his finger triumphantly at her before wiping his hands and face off with his sleeve. “I’ll know whatever you did soon enough, along with everyone else in P-Town
and
the ‘Couve.”

“What? Oh no!” Annika and her mother wailed simultaneously, and her father grumbled something indecipherable before shoving his nose further into his copy of The Oregonian.

“Man, I can’t wait! It’s got to be good if
you
guys won’t even tell me,” Charlie said, wiping his greasy mouth on his sleeve. “Well, are you ready to get out of here and face your doom?”

You don’t even begin to know what kind of doom I’m facing
. Annika thought bitterly amidst her nausea.

Here she had broken up with Danny because he wanted her to settle down and get married and do the whole kid and family thing relatively soon, and now she found herself entangled in all of those commitments. She began to wonder if maybe it had been her destiny all along, regardless of who she ended up with, to not pursue her passions. Maybe she was just being selfish. Maybe she was supposed to be like so many other women, putting everyone else’s needs before her own. She’d fly to PTA meetings in her fairy dusted red-feathered Manolo Blahniks and sit next to women with the same matching haircuts and yoga pants, who talked about her behind her more fashionably dressed back. They would ask her to volunteer at the school book fair, and then recruit the twins into Scouts. They would think she was a raging alcoholic for suggesting that school functions might have better attendance if cocktails were served at them. They would be appalled that she didn’t agree that every child should receive a blue ribbon at the annual art show, because let’s face it…they weren’t
all
little Picassos. She would find herself regretting that she never became the songwriter that she had always dreamed of becoming. She would probably find herself regretting a lot of things.

Maybe it was her destiny after all, because she just wasn’t dedicated enough to be a real artist. The past few months had been proof of that. Why had she wasted so much time wallowing on the couch in self-pity, when she could have been recording her own songs and booking gigs? Pop stars half her age and not nearly half as talented were more successful than she was.

What if Danny had been right all along, and she was destined to be just another starry-eyed shoe gazer? She did live in Portland, where it was impossible to throw a rock without hitting an artist or musician of some kind. Maybe it was finally time for her to walk away from that silly pipe dream and become a bonafide grown up, like Danny was always telling her to do.

“Go for the sure thing; never bet on a wild card,”
he’d always told her.

Charlie had his keys in hand, signaling that he was ready to roll, and Annika felt a long, lithe arm curl tight around her shoulder. It was Talvi, back from his smoke break, coaxing her along as he began to head towards her parents’ front door.

“Mr. Brisby, you have my word that I’ll reimburse you in full within a fortnight,” Talvi said to her father as they headed out with Charlie. “I’ll tend to the matter as soon as possible.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be all at once, but if you paid back your share of the fines first, I might not make you sleep on the couch next time you’re here. I know you kids have a lot on your platter as it is,” her father said with a repressed grin. “And Talvi…”

“Yes sir?”

“You can call me Jonathan.”

Charlie waited until the front door had shut completely before he burst out laughing.

“What the hell was that all about, Talvi? I didn’t know that
you
got arrested too! What were you
both
doing that you
both
got arrested?” he hooted, but neither of the two made a peep. His laughs died down quickly as he came to his own conclusions without the aid of a printed police report. “Never mind. Hey Ani? What the hell is wrong with you? I know you’re not hung over.”

“She’s not feeling well,” Talvi said, helping Annika climb into the back seat of Charlie’s messy jeep. There were crumpled newspapers and feathers all over the floor, although some of the feathers were settled on his duffel bag full of sweaty towels that needed desperately to be washed. Talvi coaxed Annika to lie down with her head in his lap, smoothing her hair carefully, trying to make her as comfortable as possible. Talvi was so preoccupied with her, that he didn’t notice the tense expression on Charlie’s face.

“Listen, I want you guys to see Danny at St. Vinnie’s first thing on Monday. This has been going on long enough.”

“What has been going on long enough?” Talvi asked.

“This chronic ‘food allergy,’ or whatever she’s had since she got back,” Charlie said, waving to his mom with a forced smile as he backed out of the driveway. “I thought for a while that maybe it was all in her head, but let’s get some blood tests done and see if we can find something. Maybe Mom’s right and you’re just pregnant.”

Annika moaned, partially at what Charlie was suggesting, and partially because her stomach was still cramping up painfully. Even breathing felt like a chore. Talvi looked down at her without his typical impish smile.

“Are you referring to the same Danny from your football team?” Talvi asked, but he already knew the answer.

“Yeah. Ani’s going to go see him first thing on Monday morning. That’s all there is to it. And if she doesn’t, I’m telling Mom and Dad.” Annika groaned again in compliance.

“What does she need to see
him
for?” he asked Charlie before looking down at Annika.

“Danny’s a pathologist,” Charlie answered. “He’ll do some blood tests and find out what the hell is going on with Ani.”

“Ah,” Talvi answered, and felt his own blood starting to boil. The last thing he wanted, besides to be a father, was to have a former fiancé and modern mad scientist poking and prodding his not-completely-human wife, testing her like a guinea pig. He jotted this down in his mind right next to the car accident, getting arrested, owing Annika’s parents thousands of dollars, owing Patti a car, and simply said, “How splendid.”

When they got home, Chivanni was timidly clearing the kitchen table where James was sitting with his cell phone glued to his ear in one hand, and the other clutching a fistful of his perfectly tousled dark hair in frustration. The way that Chivanni was tiptoeing around made Charlie wonder if it had been announced that Mount Hood was about to blow up at any second. But the possible eruption wasn’t geological in nature. It was Italian.

“Listen, Jack, you call that incompetent fuckwad right back and tell him to get that shit here as soon as possible!” James screamed. “Ground shipping could take all week! Doesn’t he realize there was just a blizzard in Denver, or am I the only person on the planet who watches the Weather Channel?”

Here he paused, letting Jack get in his two cents.

“Yeah, the music
does
blow more than the northwesterlies,” James agreed after a moment. “But the roads will be a friggin’ ice skating rink! Call him right now, give him the gallery’s account number, and tell him to send it air instead! I needed that shipment
yesterday
! I swear, if I wanted to take it up the ass like this, I’d just go out with Jerry again!” He snapped his phone shut, chucked it into his crocodile man-purse, and took off his glasses. Rubbing his forehead, he said, “Well
you
look like shit,” as he looked at Annika through his repositioned glasses. She covered her mouth with her hand and ran into the bathroom down the hall, but Talvi didn’t run after her this time. Instead, he helped Chivanni with the dishes, grateful to have anything to distract him from what his wife had been trying to hide since his arrival.

“Trouble at work?” Charlie asked his roommate calmly as he hung up his coat in the mudroom near the kitchen door. He had long ago grown immune to James’s frequent outbursts and rampant name calling, but their houseguests weren’t quite as accustomed.

“I’m just stressing out a little,” James said, frowning as he took a cigarette out of his bag. “You know that huge show I have at the gallery in less than a week?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the artist
just
shipped his pieces. Like, they’re totally going to get delayed in this blizzard! I’m so pissed off, I could spit nai—” He stopped as they all heard her heaving into the toilet again from down the hall. “What the hell’s wrong with her?”

“She’s not feeling well,” Talvi said, glancing in the direction she had run.

“There’s no way she’s hung over, not with her tolerance. Maybe it’s food poisoning again,” James said, frowning as he grabbed a lighter and headed to the porch to smoke.

“Yeah, food poisoning,” Charlie said with a slight grin, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers.

“Hey guys,” Annika said weakly from the doorway, looking more pitiful than ever. “Can one of you call work for me and tell them I’m still sick? I’m going to go lie down for a while.” She headed for the staircase, but she was hoisted up into a pair of strong arms before she could take another step. Talvi carried her upstairs and walked into the bedroom, and for a good long while, he wasn’t sure if he was in the right place.

The furniture had been rearranged, the bed was made, all the laundry was put away, and the rug had been cleaned. Talvi’s books had been neatly lined up on an elegant set of antique oriental bookshelves, and his beautiful longbow was mounted on the wall above the shelves, with his quiver on the top shelf. He pulled back the bed covers, getting a whiff of freshly washed linens, before setting Annika down and tucking the blankets around her.

A few minutes later, Chivanni and James drifted into the room; Chivanni with a glass of water, and James with a bottle of aspirin, which he set on the clutter-free nightstand closest to Annika.

“I called the music shop for you and they seemed okay with you not coming in again. And I’m sorry for snapping at you down there,” James said as he took off his glasses and rubbed them clean on his shirt sleeve. “I didn’t mean to tell you that you looked like shit. I mean, you
do
look like shit, I just didn’t mean to say it out loud.”

“It’s okay. If I look the way I feel, I’m sure it’s like shit,” she said, smiling at his honesty. It was usually blunt, but always reliable. “What happened to my room? Did you do this?”

“Yeah, what do you think of it?” James grinned, putting his glasses back on. “Do you like the matching lamps we found to go on the nightstands? We picked those up at an estate sale this morning. How about those bookshelves? Aren’t they fantastic?”

“
We
who?” Annika asked, eyeing him a little suspiciously. James was not the type of guy to use the pronoun ‘we’ in back-to-back sentences.

“Chivanni and I, who else? I had no idea fairy magic was so practical! I think I’m in love.”

Chivanni blushed a little and busied himself with straightening a painting on the wall that wasn’t crooked to begin with.

While Annika checked out her new lamps, Talvi peeked in the bathroom to find it magically transformed as well. The fluffy oversized towels were folded up on a cushy chair beside the large built-in bath tub, and a long wrought-iron table was perched beside it, holding soap, shampoo, and pillar candles. It looked like a room at a luxury spa resort.

Talvi returned to the bed and sat down next to his wife, smoothing her hair away from her face while James handed her the glass of water.

“We’ll let you have some rest now,” James said courteously. “I mostly wanted to see your reaction to your room. I’m taking Chivanni to the gallery with me, and Charlie just left for work. So if you need me to bring anything else home for you, now’s your chance.”

“Well, there is one thing I’d really, really, really love for you to pick up for me,” Annika said, after taking a long drink of water. “Can you get me a…um…a pregnancy test?”

Both Chivanni’s and James’ eyes widened as they looked her, and then at Talvi, and then back at Annika.

“Shut the fuck up! So
that’s
why you’ve been blowing chunks for the past few months? Holy shit!” James blurted out. Chivanni couldn’t even speak. He just looked at Talvi, wide-eyed.

“Charlie wants me to get some blood tests done at the hospital on Monday, but I don’t think I can wait a whole day and a half,” said Annika, taking another drink before she set her glass on the nightstand.

“No…” James said, still completely baffled. “I don’t suppose you would want to wait to find that kind of thing out. Alright, well, text me if you need anything else.” He turned to leave, grabbing Chivanni’s arm as they left the room in a hurry. For a while, neither Annika nor Talvi spoke.

“I’m so selfish,” Talvi sighed after a long moment of silence. “I really wanted you all to myself for as long as possible. I don’t want to share you with anyone.” He crawled alongside her and reached under the covers, resting his right hand below her navel. It felt strange and comfortable to her at the same time. “I don’t understand why I’m not able to sense precisely what is happening to you. I feel
something
changing inside; it just doesn’t feel like you’re expecting,” he said, repositioning his hand and pressing in a bit more.

“Can you tell if it’s deformed conjoined twins with fetal alcohol syndrome? Because that’s what I think it is.”

Talvi rolled his eyes at her and shook his head.

“That tickles,” she said, squirming a little. “You can’t really tell just by touching, can you?”

“Typically, I don’t even need to do that much,” he said. “I can usually sense it without touching, though using one’s hands will tell for certain. My mother first taught me how to do this on the animals back home, and even Anthea had me check with Stella and Sloan. I’ve never been wrong before.” He now put both hands on her, frowning a little in concentration.

“So what is it supposed to feel like?” she asked.

He paused for a moment.

“All that comes to mind is a ray of light.”

She immediately pushed his hand away and rolled to her side, facing the wall instead of him. It bothered her to no end that he sounded so relaxed about the same topic that had her stomach in knots. And that screeching baby at the grocery store was definitely not a ray of light. It was a pain in the ass.

“Why did you push my hand aside?”

“I don’t want to think about this anymore.”

“Oh, because pretending nothing is wrong resolves things so bloody well?” he asked. “You won’t be able to drink yourself to incapacitation this time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she hissed.

“You know perfectly well what I’m referring to,” he prodded coolly. “I may not be able to read your thoughts as well as I would prefer, but I am still capable of listening to those of your friends and family. Surely you didn’t think that they would go unnoticed by me. I think you need to face some demons that have been following you around ever since our battle with the Pazachi. Having to defend yourself in a matter of life and death is nothing to be ashamed of. It appears to have been eating you alive from the inside for months. I’m so sorry for what you must be going through, but the pain doesn’t disappear when you cast it in shadow or drown it with alcohol. The best thing to do is to bring it out into the light and let it go. I know your friends and family won’t understand, but you can talk to me, Annika.”

There. He had finally said it; he said the thing that she had never dared mention aloud. Steely-eyed and resolute, she didn’t reply right away.

“We killed that girl’s parents…” Annika whispered, half expecting the room to cave in on her as she spoke. “I saw Justinian cut off her mom’s head, I watched you shoot her dad through the heart, and I watched her find their bodies. I guess that messed me up a little, not to mention that I killed people myself. They could have been her aunt and uncles…who knows?” She started to sob, and Talvi curled his arm around her a little tighter, trying to think of something comforting to tell her.

“Would you rather that we were the ones who were dead?” he said quietly, rubbing her back. “Would you prefer it if she stood with her father over
your
body? I don’t think you do. Nothing will change what happened that day, Annika. It doesn’t matter to them if you live your life in sorrow or in joy, but surely it matters to you, and those who love you. The Pazachi didn’t give us a choice. They didn’t want to negotiate; they made that very clear from the beginning of the whole ordeal. You have to understand that they would never have surrendered to us. They didn’t want peace…they wanted power. They were under the influence of incredibly dark magic; they were blinded by their greed to have power over every race, over every realm, even over nature herself. Nothing would have been enough to satisfy them.”

No, Annika didn’t want to trade places with the people who had been killed, but something still bothered her even more than the lives that were taken. It was the life that had been left behind to suffer through the aftermath of that nightmare.

“What about the girl? We made her an
orphan
! I’ve never seen anything so messed up! We ruined her whole damn life! How can we ever make up for doing something like that?” Annika was now crying harder.

“I’m not certain that it will ever be possible to make amends to Denalia,” he said softly. “I feel terrible for what she must endure, yet I accept that I am not completely to blame, either. Her parents had just as much a part in ruining her life, if you want to call it that, as Justinian or I did. I accept the price one pays for taking a life and harming another one so severely…but she would be beyond help even if her parents were still alive. She has been brought up to follow a very destructive path. A child should be free to play and discover how the world works in their own ways, not be forced to learn the darkest magic that exists. It’s chilling, the shell of a girl she is, as though she’s not even human.”

“What happened to her after I went through the portal?” she asked as her tears died down. She was racked with even more guilt now that the orphaned girl had a name. Talvi shifted uncomfortably on the bed and pursed his lips. With great caution, he gently began,

“Well, if she had been younger like the other children, we would have left her to be cared for under Takashi and Natari’s guidance. After we disarmed the survivors, they were relocated to a different area of the forest. Tak and Natari were quite confident that they could rehabilitate the young ones,” he said, finally able to look her in the eye, “But Denalia is a girl of fifteen, not five, and unfortunately she’s been taught to fight from an early age. Her level of skill, her immaturity, and the situation she’s in make her an extremely dangerous weapon.”

“She’s a
kid
, not a weapon!” she said bitterly as tears started to run down her cheeks.

“She is not a mere child, Annika,” explained Talvi. “She’s the daughter of two of the most powerful Druid extremists that have ever existed. You’ll recall that they were rumored to be a myth; their manipulative ways were so unlike the other Druids. They have desecrated what it means to be a human son or daughter of Mother Nature, and Nikola was not alone in cursing them. They wanted to completely sever the connection that our worlds hold with each other. They care nothing for the human race, which is rather ironic and twisted, being that
they
are human! Denalia was trained to be a killer like them, and leaving her in that environment would only breed a deadlier desire to follow in her parents’ footsteps. We thought it would be best to send her with Pavlo, Justinian, and Sariel.”