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Ever since the night her past came flooding back with a kiss that cracked her open on the dance floor, Lucy has had a ghost in her mouth that speaks whenever she fails to keep a tight rein on her tongue. This does not betray her indiscretions to her husband, because though the name that tumbles from her lips is familiar to her as breath, it is nothing human.
Indeed, now that she knows the truth, it is difficult to connect her oldest friend to such a pale pair of syllables as “Britney”. Given the chance to be anyone at all, why did she have Lucy introduce her as something so ordinary, so typical, that in her grade alone at least two others shared the name? As a child she never questioned it – why shouldn't a fairy be called Britney? It wasn't like she had any point of comparison back then.
Now, night after night, the name her mouth cannot quite form rolls through her like a wave, bearing on its back all the places it has been, and every emotion it has meant. She follows its currents deeper into the tangled forest of her heart and wakes up bereft each time. She may have disavowed the Fairy in front of a crowd, may have even convinced herself she was drunk on alcohol instead of skin and moonlit paths, but it's becoming harder to deny that somehow or other they'll have to meet again, and harder to pretend she doesn't want it.
Eventually her indiscretions are betrayed to her husband after all, not by careless disclosures to her pillow, but by gossip both malicious and disinterested. Maybe things could have been different if the Fairy had been a man. Who would have looked twice at a woman in a group who kissed some cute guy, long enough to see her as a married woman? Briana knew the truth, of course, but as shocked as she was, she wouldn't have told Hector what Lucy had done.
And maybe, if Lucy had not leapt to her own defense and abandoned her friend in the process, she wouldn't have attracted a crowd so curious and bloodthirsty. And a man, she thinks, could not have inspired such feelings in her, even if he were a fairy – certainly nothing strong enough to recognize it as a threat to her current way of life, and she wouldn't have been compelled to hide those feelings and deny that they'd ever existed. But she got scared, and her fear exposed her to scrutiny.
She may have taken a piece of the Fairy's heart that night when she pushed her away, but she left behind a part of her own, too. Sometimes as she follows the falls in an internal landscape that grows each time she falls asleep, the trees begin to glow and pulse like a rave, and she's right back there, kicking someone when she's down, someone just like her.
Lucy stands at the edge of the forest, willing herself to go be swallowed by the shadows, and feeling more ridiculous the longer she just stands there. But ridiculous doesn't mean she shouldn't do it. She'll never know peace until she discovers what might have been, had she recognized her own feelings earlier. Until she gets the closure she needs, the most beautiful name she's ever heard will only ever mean pain and guilt.
When at last she tears her eyes away from the swallowing dark, it is to find that the sky has bled to the purple of dusk. Another day, perhaps. Maybe tomorrow she'll be brave enough to look her past in the eye, but right now she's just too tired to face it. She's going home to her daughter, and her husband, and a life she understands.
Only when she reaches her home, her daughter isn't there. Oh, there's a child-shaped thing in the bassinet, but the eyes are wrong, and the teeth are wrong, and the weight of this creature in her arms is not the infant girl to whom she gave life and held to her breast.
But changeling or none, it is still a living thing and something like a child, so she cannot bear to dash its brains out and be done with it. After all, it didn't ask to be sent here, and has no part in her quarrel with the Fairy. It is as much of a victim in all this as her missing daughter. She wonders if it is afraid to be alone in such a strange place, wonders if it hates the lullabies she sings when she can think of nothing else that might calm it. Then again, maybe it was perfectly prepared for such an infiltration; maybe it was created for this purpose and knew just what to expect, and it throws its ceaseless tantrum as part of her punishment.
Hector, of course, will never believe any of this, much less care about the creature's motivations, even if she could find the words for how the world she doesn't understand has invaded the one she does. But no matter how he feels about his wayward wife, he cares about their daughter, and Lucy's the one who spends all her days with her, so when she says there's something wrong with Natalia's eyes, that she's afraid it's a fever or something worse, he agrees right away to make a doctor's appointment, and Lucy sags with relief.
There is little to be done tonight that cannot be accomplished with more ease in the morning, after her husband has left for work, with his watchful eye that can only see the mundane, and it's not like worrying ever did much good. As a precaution she uses two layers of blankets to swaddle the changeling limb's tight, not that it'll do much good if it really wants to wreak havoc in the night, and does her best to get to sleep.
And sleep finds her right back in the forest of her dreams, limbs bound with vines and the sheets she's twisted around herself in her terror. She feels but cannot see the threat of a knife, and she cannot call out for help, nor say how very sorry she is. How foolish of her to think she had to walk into the forest when it already lives in her, and more foolish still to get so close without leaving behind a gift. No wonder the trees chose the object most precious to her, and now she has no choice but to enter them for real, to get back what is hers.
When Lucy was a little kid, to young to have even known the Fairy, she used to make “potions” out of rainwater and sugar and the dried up remnants of shampoo bottles. Her parents always made sure she didn't really drink any of it, and invented reasons that it was for external use only, but she thinks this changeling, as a creature of imagination, might actually receive whatever benefits she says a certain concoction will offer. At any rate, it quiets down and watches her half-serious instructions, and it's a relief to not have to block out its screams anymore.
“That will be your gift when we go to the forest,” she tells the changeling as she seals the top and folds its fingers around the little bottle, and she digs into the purse she shoved into her closet that night to pull out a disc of lip gloss, a color she doesn't think she'll ever be able to wear again. “And this will be mine.”
The whole long walk there she has to wonder if the lip gloss will be enough – it's become a symbol of that kiss and that night and all their friendship could have been and can never be again, which gives it weight and value. On the other hand, it's something she wants to get rid of in the hopes that she'll never have to look at how badly she's fucked up, so is she just throwing away trash and calling it a gift? There ought to be a feeling of sacrifice, maybe. But maybe it's both, a joy and a sorrow, as the forest takes and transforms.
That's what the potion is for, to ease the way.
But if the way cannot be eased, if an unruly present refuses to be transformed into a peaceable future, then she is willing to cut ties with the past, be the separation ever so bloody and irreversible, if that's what it takes to keep her daughter safe. She pats her purse to confirm that the kitchen knife is tucked safely inside, cardboard sheath and all. But it's an absolute last resort, and as she squeezes the changeling's hand and they cross the street together, she tells herself she'll never need to draw it, much less wield it, and hopes she isn't a liar.