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But I knew I’d find her here.
Mom smiles at me, then loops her arm through mine, tugging me close until we’re elbow to elbow. “Just felt like visiting an old friend.”
“It’s not magic, is it?”
“Oh no. At least not magic in the sense you’re used to,” she says. “But it always had a way of making me feel at home. And that’s a type of magic too, isn’t it?”
I nod. Silence stretches between us, and I fight the urge to lean away.
Why did I come here? What made me seek her out today? I haven’t been into town either, and it was certainly no desire to walk these streets again that had me rushing out the door.
I glance at her, then back at the tree, then back at her.
Despite living together these last few months and working in the garden for hours every day, she’s still a stranger to me. Her hair is long and wavy like mine, her eyes that same shade of golden brown. If there were a mirror before us, there would be a thousand similarities. Yet I feel like I understand her less than even my sister.
But there’s only one way I’ll ever grasp her.
“Why didn’t you go back?” I breathe.
She closes her eyes.
“Why did you never return to the Vale?”
She looses her arm from mine and turns away. “I’ve been gone from the cottage for too long. I should—”
“Mom.” I grab her shoulder. “I need to know. Why didn’t you ever return?”
“I did return,” she hisses. “To curse your mates. That’s what started this whole mess.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Why didn’t you ever return as the queen?”
A gaggle of tourists holding binoculars and bird-watching guides ambles past, barely observing the tree. Mom and I give matching stretched smiles. As soon as they’re gone, I push on her shoulder, forcing her to turn to look at me.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she says under her breath.
An ache throbs through my ribs, as real as a heartbeat. “That’s just it. I need to.”
Mom’s pupils seem to shrink, and her eyes dart from the ground to the tree to the sky, as if searching for words in the air. “Do you know what it is like to be a blade of grass? A mouse plucked from the grass by a falcon? And then the falcon itself, hunger gnawing at your belly? And then the falconer, a fae from Autumn, or maybe one from Spring. And his beloved father is sick, and you are all at once grieving a father and also you are the father, slowly dying of a new illness, because this world is brand-new, and all at the same time, you are also the illness and the fungus growing in another realm that is a cure…” She holds her hands up. They’re shaking.
“Mom…”
Her eyes find mine. “I created the realms. I was in everything. I was everywhere. At every moment. I was no mother, yet I had a million children. And I’d never asked for any of it.”
“But the high rulers—”
“I gave them power in hopes it would relieve my own. And it did, in certain ways.” Her voice becomes clipped, harsh, as she thumps her chest with each word. “But. Not. In. Here.”
I stagger back a step. What must it have been like, to be a young woman, bold and reckless and desperate enough to do anything to save your people—even make a brand-new world?
And then to have to learn to rule it, all while fighting battles against an enemy who was once a friend?
Mom drifts to the willow and runs a hand along one of the branches. “Why didn’t I come back, Rosalina? Because I was tired of being blades of grass. Of being the mouse and the falcon and the falconer. I wanted to be Anya.” She looks at me. “I knew once I had you, it would only be a matter of time before we returned. That you deserved to know the other half of your home. And that George, after all he’d done for me, deserved to see where I came from. But I was terrified. I put it off. The only reason I returned at all was because I wanted to make sure your mates were worthy of you.”
“Didn’t you miss it?”
She looks back at me and drifts over, an elegance to even the smallest movement. Despite being transformed into a human, she still moves like a fae. “Of course I missed it. There is no place in any world like Castletree, when all the seasons mingle together and the air sings with magic. But my heart was weary, Rose, and not strong enough for all the love one must carry for every blade of grass, every mouse, every falcon.”
I close my eyes, pushing past the pain that keeps out thoughts of the Vale and the life I once lived. I want to feel it now, that sensation of viewing all the threads of life, the way I did whenever I altered the world around me. Turning Eldy, Marigold, and Astrid into birds. Giving myself gills. Transforming the people of Hadria into sirens. Rescuing the soldiers on Voidseal Bridge by changing them into snowy owls.
