COF 1: The Fairy Legacy

7 | Lessons (II)

Lunch was muted with Xanthy focused on the tome she stole, well, borrowed, from the dusty library. Her mind roiled with magical concepts explaining the mechanisms of the spell. Things like spatial dimensions, tangible trails, and magical influxes and reserves swirled in her head. Only a few more words and her brain would explode.

She rolled her eyes, groaned, and shut her tome. Her empty bowl sat beside her elbow propped against the table's surface.

Jarvik, seated across her, raised an eyebrow. "Having trouble?" he glanced at his children quietly shoveling white goop into their mouths.

"No, uh," Xanthy massaged the bridge of her nose. "Just thinking about a lot of things."

"Oh?" Jarvik scratched his chin that's beginning to grow stubble. "What sort of things?"

Xanthy shoved the tome into her pocket. "What do you think of fairies?" she blurted.

June, who was eating beside Xanthy, snorted and choked on his food. He slammed his fist into his chest as he gagged. Xanthy rolled her eyes and turned back to Jarvik.

The inexplicable sadness was back in the man's green eyes. "I think fairies are wonderful people," he whispered. Xanthy didn't miss that he referred to fairies as people and not just mere creatures. "I have seen them. Loved one, too."

The cleret meat didn't quite go down Xanthy's throat the way she wanted it to. She coughed and jabbed her palm against her chest. June snorted and Xanthy kicked him in the shin.

"Should you...I do not know, be quiet about it?" Xanthy muttered, leaning against the table. Her eyes flicked to the people around them who might be listening.

Jarvik shrugged. "I do not see the problem about it, really," he tucked Marin's hair behind her ears in a loving gesture that stung Xanthy's heart. "Most people here do not care. Some are currently in the same shoes as I have been."

Xanthy's jaw fell. "So...Humans do not hate fairies?"

"Some do," Jarvik's eyes darkened. "Our Queen certainly does. She...sent my wife to be executed."

"Wife—" Xanthy knitted her eyebrows. "Executed?"

Jarvik glanced at the timeteller behind Xanthy. The children stood up, kissed Jarvik on both cheeks, and scampered off somewhere. "She was caught in a purge," he recounted. His eyes misted. "Then, sent to be executed. The children and I barely made it to the Disfavoreds as the Guards came for us."

Xanthy's eyes widened. "Guards. Disfavoreds."

So Vikara was telling the truth when she said that Disfavoreds crossed into Commons all the time. That meant...that those Guards were not into her because she was a Disfavored. Rather, it's because she was...what she refused to believe she was and they knew it.

Jarvik had chosen to be associated with a fairy. Humans were supposed to hunt fairies for occupying their lands and not become bonded to them. It didn't make sense. It just didn't.

She raised her eyes to Jarvik's and forced herself her tongue to unlatch from the roof of her mouth, "So the children...are half-bloods?"

Jarvik's nod set the final stone down Xanthy's gut. Oh, gods. Half-bloods...

Xanthy's world spun. She put her head in her hands and took a deep breath. Her eyes closed as she inhaled and exhaled.

"Xanthy?" Jarvik called. "Are you alright?"

Xanthy snapped up from her hand with a sharp inhale. "Yeah, yeah," she sighed. "All fine. I hope you, uh, gotten over her death?"

Jarvik shook his head. "Oh, I miss her every day," he said softly. "I could have done something to protect her but...I was too late."

Xanthy nodded against the bile rising through her throat. "You did everything you could," she said. Damn, she sounded so fake. "Taking care of Marin and Malin are more than enough, I think. It is no easy feat."

"Yeah, it is not," Jarvik drummed his fingers against the table. "But it is the least I could do after Geradine..."

Geradine. That must be the name of the wife. Jarvik's voice and story died down. Xanthy had never seen such melancholy etched in someone's face. Especially if the cause of it was a fairy or a half-blood.

Still, it told Xanthy that not everything she was taught in the Disfavoreds were true. She didn't know what to feel about that.

Xanthy shook her head and laid her hand to still Jarvik's atop the table. "I am sure that she was happy, wherever she was," she smiled at him.

She may have not understood the extent of how people feel about other races but she certainly understood what it was like to lose a loved one regardless of race. Perhaps, that's enough in this circumstance.

The bells clanged again. Stools were pushed back as workers shuffled off in a hurry to get back to their jobs. Jarvik smiled at her with one of his signature shrouded smiles. "I hope so, too."

Her heart eased with a sigh. Xanthy frowned. "Also, do not go around spouting your secrets to everyone you meet," she stood up and walked alongside Jarvik on opposite sides of the long table. June's footsteps echoed somewhere behind Xanthy. "It is dangerous for you. Or it will be."

"I will keep that in mind," he scratched his neck. Seriously, how did this man survive so long in the Commons? "It is just so easy to talk to you. I hope I did not spook you or something. I am here if you need me, alright?"

Heat rushed into Xanthy's face. "I...will keep that in mind," she muttered.

Jarvik winked at her and in silence, the three of them headed back to their weaving room. Xanthy flexed her fingers and prepared for another afternoon of gruelling weaving. She balled her hands into fists.

Not only was she becoming something she didn't recognize, she was also developing sympathy to the creatures she was taught to hate. She...didn't know what to think of it.

The tome about taboo spells bounced against her leg as she walked. It served as a reminder of her new mission. Things would go back to the way it was. Even if it's the last thing Xanthy would ever do.

She would be human again.