Mahogany and Teakwood

Chapter 9: Daffodil

the stars slowly separate

driving down a road that's taking us away

all i ever wanted was this

Virgil scrambled to his feet and paced to the wall, to give himself some needed space.

He knows I'm an abomination, a fetch-maker, fetch-maker...

"Okay, look," He gripped the rough stone wall, not looking at Logan. "I can explain—"

"You possess the ability to grow living, organic creations from non-living material," Logan went on. "It only makes sense that he would seek to twist that into making replacement humans."

"Replacement babies, Logan!" Virgil snarled. "You don't have to sugarcoat it. Fetches are the Frankenstein dolls Fae leave in human cribs, so the parents don't realize their fucking child has been taken away!"

Nicodemus, bless that dog, chose that moment to slip up next to Virgil and nudge his hands, whining softly around a stick. He obligingly tossed it.

He tensed again when Logan sat next to him on the wall.

"The insidious part of grooming," the half-faery said after a moment. "Is that the victim usually does not realize they are being groomed until it is too late. It is fortunate that you escaped before Deceit forced you to move beyond flowers."

Wait. He thinks...he thinks I never actually did it. Virgil stopped breathing as Logan's words sank in. He thinks I was rescued before I could!

Virgil's stomach turned.

Of course, Logan would assume Virgil was the innocent little lamb in all this. Actual fetch-makers were heartless and cruel; they had to be, to do what they did. Actual fetch-makers went crazy, and inevitably hurt people. Actual fetch-makers deserved to be shunned.

Everyone knew that.

"What do you remember?" Logan asked softly.

Virgil bit back tears. In Logan's logical, practical brain, Virgil couldn't possibly be a fetch-maker.

"At first," he rasped, "Deceit made me pull flowers out of different materials: wood, cloth, stone, even metal. I always failed at metal. Or he wanted specific ones, or a certain number of them; challenges like that. He would stomp them to pulp afterward."

Logan wordlessly lay a hand over Virgil's again.

"At first I thought the challenges were about mocking me." Virgil shivered under the contact. "To drive home how useless a power I had. That no matter how good at it I got, it was just flowers. Easily crushed."

He pulled his hand away to wrap arms around himself.

"Easily broken."

Silence. A gnome caught a cricket in the nearby grass, giggling in triumph before disappearing into the shrubbery. Logan's voice grew hard.

"The Accords outlawed fetch-making for good reason."

Virgil closed his eyes.

"Sure," he agreed bitterly. "Because forcing a human thrall to manufacture human lookalikes out of sticks and corpses to trick other humans is messed up even for them? Because if they don't get to use fetches to replace the kids they take, they can't take nearly as many?"

"And because changelings forced to use their abilities for fetch-making nearly always suffer mental repercussions." Logan nodded. "Two of the original Grimms were fetch-makers. Cinder—"