Harvest of Changelings Read Online Free Page B

you?” Ben asked, following her down the hall. He would have to replace the floor in the hall, too, and the living room. The embedded black spots were everywhere. Valeria had told him the longer they remained in the wood, the weaker it would be until the floors just collapsed. And that sometimes the black spots could make anyone that walked on them for too long sick of heart, and eventually, of the body. They sat down on the couch, and Valeria leaned into Ben, her head on his shoulder.
    â€œI don’t have the strength for it, not so soon after delivery. Ben, I really don’t want to go. You know, if the Fomorii hadn’t found me, tried to kill me—I would have stayed, Dodecagon or no. But there is just too much at stake, and I need you both to be safe. Without me, you’re safe. With me, you’re not.”
    â€œCan’t I go with you to the gate?”
    No, she told him, it wouldn’t be safe. She didn’t even want him to know where it was. Besides, it would make leaving all the harder.
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    I needed to hear that: she would have stayed. She had forgiven me the nails.
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    I said I told my son almost nothing about his mother until he was ten. I think now I was wrong to do that. He needed to know who and what she was, if for no other reason, to know who and what he was and was becoming. If I had, I think it would have made the first part of his puberty, when his fairyness started to manifest, so much more bearable for the both of us—much less scary for him. But I would have denied him that, if I could. That was wrong, too, I know. But I was so afraid of losing him as I lost her.
    Now, I know there are worst things to be scared of than losing someone you love.
    I have told him this story now I don’t know how many times. Malachi knows it by heart. And no matter how many times I tell it, the ending is always the hardest: I have to tell him how his mother
died and that there was nothing I could have done to save her and that she died so that he and I would not die, that she loved us that much. I do not tell him that there seems to be no limit on how many times a heart can break, or that when I grieved for his mother, I grieved again for Emma, for loose flagstones, for human weakness, for not being enough, for feeling that I had failed again. I do not tell him I was angry with both women, with myself.
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    It hurt to watch the taxi turn into the driveway, Val gather her things, kiss and hug Malachi. When she turned to kiss Ben, they were both crying. Neither of them could say anything. Valeria touched Ben one more time, lightly, just the tip of her glowing fingers on his cheek, and turned to go down the front steps onto the flagstone path to the waiting red taxi.
    Valeria was halfway between the steps and the car when the air shimmered, broke, falling in a rain of broken light, freeing the other Fomorii. It snapped its fire whip when its foot touched the earth, a snap so hard the whip broke, releasing a huge fireball, a miniature comet, with a tail of flames. The fireball was aimed at Ben. He could see it coming, smell and feel the approaching heat, and he knew there was no time and nowhere to go. Then Valeria threw herself in front of the fireball. Ben screamed: Noooo, don’t, don’t, nooo. The fireball exploded on impact.
    Or did she explode? Ben was never sure. The resulting white fire burned away the night, the dark, the stars, the Fomorii, and the fire whip, Valeria, and part of the yard, the flagstones, the shrubbery. The shock wave, a sudden rippling, an airborne tide, hit Ben in the chest, throwing him back, into the flowerbeds, into the pansies and daffodils. The living room windows all shattered, the taxi flipped over, once, twice, three times, slamming into the fence. Ben never knew what happened to the driver; he was gone when Ben, some time later, remembered to check. The flagstones melted, as did a good part of the asphalt, driveway. And there was nothing