Nothing But the Truth
An Inkling of Magic - Chapter 14
“Elspeth! Where –” she heard Maelyn's voice say when, weary and barely staying on her feet, Farren helped her out of the car.
“I found her just down the street on her way back,” Farren said, cutting off Mae's questions. “She said she'd had to go see one of her teachers and lost track of time.”
“And do you believe her?” Mae asked, holding the front door open for them.
With his arms around her helping her into the house, Elspeth felt him shrug. “Why wouldn't I?”
There was a sigh to her left that sounded like Mae. “Farren, –”
“I'm right here you know,” Elspeth interrupted, her words mumbled tiredly. “I might look asleep, but I'm not there yet and I can hear you two.”
Her eyes were still closed, weighed down from the day's exhaustion catching up with her, but she didn't need to see in order to know what Maelyn was doing. She could hear it in the silence how her sister's lips pursed in deep contemplation from her dissatisfaction with the answer Farren had relayed and how Elspeth offered no further explanation. She could feel her sister's steel blue eyes boring down on her just as she could feel her brother's silent promise of support in how his hands, still helping to hold her upright, gave her a gentle squeeze. And, when she heard Mae huff, she knew they had won the war being waged, or, at least this particular battle. However, she was more worried about Farren's determination for a full and honest answer than she was of Mae. Of the two of them, Mae was the most likely to forget once the incident had passed while Farren's mind was like a steel trap, especially when it concerned Elspeth.
It was still quiet and the tension between them hadn't much dissipated when the gurgling roar of Elspeth's stomach, greatly protesting its empty state, broke through the silence causing all three of them to laugh.
“Come on, let's get you something to eat before that thing burns a hole in you,” Mae laughed.
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With her stomach satisfied and feeling a little more stable on her feet, Elspeth declined the offer of joining in the games she could hear taking place in the living room and, instead headed for the quiet comfort of her bed. Her hand still on the railing, Elspeth smothered a laugh when, even several rooms away and at the top of the stairs, she could still hear Aiden and the twins laughter as someone yelled out 'no cheating.' Careful not to fall and bring about new round of questions as to why it was she was so tired that she couldn't even walk, she inched along the upstairs hallway using the wall to help her balance. Finally, alone with only her thoughts for company, Elspeth slipped beneath the covers of her bed and let the exhaustion of the day carry her off to a dreamless sleep.
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When Elspeth woke the next morning it was to a peace she hadn't felt since the whole nightmare had begun and her sanity thrown into question. As a child, she'd never questioned that any of it was real she had merely accepted it. It wasn't until she'd told her parents about it and the avalanche that that revelation had set off in her life that she had started to question her own sanity. But that was all gone now – the endless doubts and bottomless fear – there were questions, certainly, but not the ones that she'd had before and, the more that Elspeth dwelt on the events of the day before, the more that she felt that fear turning to anger.
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“Feeling any better, Els?” Farren asked when she tumbled down the stairs for breakfast. “You were quite the zombie when you got home last night.”
Striking an odd chord, Elspeth coughed just as she was taking a gulp of the apple juice she had just poured shooting some of it up her nose and even more of it down her windpipe.
“Yes,” she croaked weakly, her voice hoarse and a little wheezy, when she'd finally stopped coughing and spluttering.
Looking up from her bowl of cereal, an unhealthy delight of vaguely cocoa flavoured balls of puffed grains and marshmallows that her parent's bought specifically for Aiden, Elspeth found her brother staring at her with his lips flattened into a thin line and his brows pinched in contemplation. Stonefacedly and with her spoon frozen in mid-air, she held his gaze until he found whatever it was he was looking for and gave her a small nod.
“Good.”
“Oh, by the way, Mrs. Hythe asked to talk to me after school today, so don't freak out if I'm late,” she said just before plunging a spoonful of carefully selected marshmallows into her mouth and groaning at the welcome burst of pure sugar.
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“Thanks, Farren!” she said as got out of the car and tossed him a wave goodbye.
She'd planned to just walk again to school, but, for whatever reason he had churning about in his head, her brother had insisted on dropping her off. At first, she'd thought it was another attempt to corner her away from the prying eyes and ears of their siblings, yet the whole drive he only made small talk about his work. It didn't stop her from seeing the concerned look in his eyes whenever he glanced over at her or feeling his reluctance to let her off at school. He was worried and she got the distinct impression it was more than just her relapse into seeing the fantastical that was bothering him.
Walking into school, she smiled when she saw Kieran and Niamh standing by Niamh's locker engrossed in some pretend argument over some silly thing, their eyes gleaming as they each needled the other. Though curious, she resisted the urge to go over and see what her friends were up to now and continued on to her own locker before either of them noticed her.
Elspeth was only half paying attention as each class seemed to drag on and, though she could feel Derek's eyes on her during the classes they shared, she ignored them in favour of the questions and her resentment of being kept in the dark only continued to grow. By the time school ended and she was making her way to Mrs. Hythe's office, the anger that had been kindling inside of her had grown into a raging inferno.
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She found Derek leaning casually against the wall with his arms and legs crossed quietly waiting for her outside of Mrs. Hythe's office. As usual, his apparent radar that told her she was nearby was in full working order as she had no sooner turned the corner of the hall when his head came up and his eyes found hers.
“Must you do that?” Elspeth asked perhaps a little too roughly when she had reached him.
The smirk that had appeared as soon as his eyes had alighted on hers grew a fraction of an inch and that playful glint that always made her want to run and hide sparkled brighter than ever in his eyes. “Do what?”
Elspeth scowled, not buying his innocent act for even a second. “Must you always act like you have some magic compass that points in my direction?”
“Perhaps I do.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she tried to gauge his unchanged expression. “You must act that way, or you do have an internal magic compass?”
“Either or perhaps both. Take your pick,” Derek replied, his smirk blossoming into a full-blown grin.
“You just can't help but play games with me can you?” she cried, anger and hurt spilling into her voice.
She watched his face closely and, at first, he seemed confused and a little hurt by her lashing out, but it was as if she could see the wheels turning in his mind and it wasn't long before confusion gave way to comprehension and comprehension into something she wasn't sure she liked the look of. There was anger there to be sure, though not a lot of it and the bit of anger that she read there seemed more akin to indignation than anything else, but what scared her was the determination she saw settle over him. Determination for what? She thought as she saw him purse his lips and tried not to buckle under the glare that he returned.
Elspeth tensed when she saw him open his mouth to say something. Afraid, she interrupted before he could even get the first word out. “You know what? Never mind, Mrs. Hythe is waiting for us.”
Before he could react, she was surging forward and knocking on their teacher's door effectively cutting off anything he had to say.
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“Elspeth, Derek. Please, take a seat,” Mrs. Hythe said when they entered her office. “I trust, Elspeth, that you've told your brother that you will be late?”
Elspeth nodded as they both took a seat in front of her desk. “I did, but that doesn't mean he won't still start messaging me if he thinks it's taking over long. He.... he worries about me and I'm afraid I've not been very forthcoming with him. It's made him even more protective of me than normal.”
Though her words were polite, there was an edge about her that, judging from the way they frowned, did not go unnoticed by either Mrs. Hythe or Derek. Derek especially seemed bothered by the foreign coldness in Elspeth's voice and the way that she held herself – tight as a clock's spring that's ready to burst.
“Perfectly understandable given what you've been through,” Mrs. Hythe replied gently, a tinge of guilt in her voice. Then, clearing her throat, she sat up a little straighter and put on what Elspeth thought was probably her 'down to business' voice. “Now, yesterday I said I had a few questions for you –”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Hythe, I'm not here to give answers, but to get them,” Elspeth said in a hardened and trembling voice. “I believe I'm owed that and from you especially.”
In the silence that followed, Elspeth looked around at her teacher and classmate, the unfiltered pain and anger that shown in her eyes along with the faint shimmer of hot tears that she refused to let fall driving the force of her words home. Derek, unsurprisingly, was remarkably impassive having already tasted a bit of Elspeth's anger out in the hall. Mrs. Hythe, on the other hand, closed her eyes and shoulders slumped in shame.
“You're right,” she said with a heavy sigh. “You are.”
Spurred on by her teacher's admission, Elspeth continued, “While I don't condone him and certainly don't trust him, Derek's reasoning from last night I can better understand, but you? You, I thought would have had the compassion to tell a suffering girl that she wasn't losing her mind!”
“There are –”
“Rules, yes, I know,” Elspeth said dryly, rolling her eyes, “but are your rules really worth more to you than a person's life? I was terrified. I thought the bounds of reality were crashing down around me, that I was slowly going insane and would be forced to spend the rest of my miserable existence locked up in a padded cell under constant supervision. That I would be medicated so heavily I would no longer know up from down, just as I thought I no longer knew reality from fiction. Do you know what that sort of fear and desperation does to a person? So, what I need to know is why. Why you thought my life was worth so little compared to your rules? Has not history repeatedly shown that the 'rules' are not always what is right?”
It was Derek that answered her.
“No rule is perfect, not in human law nor librarian nor even fae,” he said quietly, calmly, beside her, “but they are not without reason, however flawed or ill thought out that reason may be. There was a time this rule didn't exist, that authors and librarians were told what they were and with disastrous results. You may scorn and mock the fae for our pride, but it is as much a human failing as it is ours and power and pride are no strange bedfellows to each other. There were a few that sought to misuse their gifts, to control the fae and others of the unseen realm for their own profit. Lives were lost, and even more ruined. After that, and I'm sure Mrs. Hythe will correct me if I'm wrong, it was agreed in a meeting of the Courts and the Library Council that, under no circumstances, was anyone bound by Court or library law permitted to reveal to an author what they were. They were to remain in blissful ignorance of their powerful gift. As for the librarians, they could be told, but only after they had waged a war within themselves and accepted as truth what the world around them all called fables and folly.”
Elspeth frowned and, listening to Derek's explanation, she felt some of her anger begin to ease. She no longer felt the need to lash out and brandish her tongue as if it were a sword, but, though she was beginning to understand, it did little to ease the pain of so many years. There was also something about what he'd said that bothered her and she struggled to understand. “How would a librarian struggling to grasp reality improve anything?”
“Because it became a test,” Mrs. Hythe said when guilt had at last loosed her tongue enough to speak. “Some that do not pass still manage a reasonably stable life by going on to become artists and musicians, finding inspiration in the extraordinary things they see and hear and neither accepting it as real nor fully denying it either. While, sadly, the rest that do not pass go completely and utterly insane. It was thought that it would weed out those of weak character, leaving only those that were strong enough to resist the dangers of possessing a gift such as ours.”
“Would you have left me to fail?” Elspeth asked flatly. Hearing it all, to the logical side of herself, it made sense and yet she felt dead inside to think that anyone could so easily sit on the sidelines and watch as she continued her downward spiral into insanity and do nothing.
Met with only silence, the walls she built up to give her strength to seek the answers she needed began to crumble inside her. Her eyes closed, no longer able to bear the look of pity and guilt that was plastered on the face of her teacher – a teacher she had, until now, greatly respected and appreciated for how she would so quickly put down any bullying of Elspeth in her classroom or within earshot of her outside of it. To learn that she had known this whole time what the endless mocking had truly been about, and said nothing, done nothing, crushed her as surely as a painter crushed pigments. Just when she was sure that she had been given her answer, a voice that she did not expect broke the painful silence.
“No.”
Wide-eyed, Elspeth turned to gape at the fae beside her.
“But you said –”
“That not even I would break that rule?” he finished with a sad, lopsided smile, “that wasn't exactly true.”
Elspeth frowned, and, out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mrs. Hythe frowning also.
“I thought the fae couldn't lie?” she asked cautiously, her mind, whether on instinct or from habit, screaming at her not to trust him.
“We don't lie,” Derek corrected, “and I didn't, though I wasn't entirely honest either.” He paused, frowning a little as though troubled, before adding “neither with you nor myself.”
Elspeth huffed, annoyed as usual by the way he never could give a straight answer even to a simple question. Are the fae always this difficult? “That makes about as much sense as putting hot sauce on ice cream,” Elspeth said dryly, not in the mood for his games. She nearly laughed though at the horrified expression her colourful metaphor garnered from him or the way that Mrs. Hythe coughed to cover up her own gagging response.
As horrible a thought as it was, Elspeth had actually seen first hand the results of such a poor culinary decision. Kieran, on a dare from Niamh, had, a couple summers ago, doused a bowl of double chocolate ice cream with hot sauce. It was a decision that would have long reaching effects for the next week and that, to this day, he recoiled to recall whenever the subject arose. Which, thanks to his sister, was as often as possible.
“Why would you... never mind,” Derek started to ask before shaking his head to, no doubt, remove such a horrible image from his mind. “What I meant was that I wouldn't outright break the rule, but there are still plenty of ways in which to bend it.”
The impish gleam in his eyes and the way that his lips quirked up into a sly smile had Elspeth repeating silently to herself to never, ever trust a fae and especially not this one. It was rather like a cat eyeing a delicate vase its owner had so carelessly displayed within its reach and then having the nerve to look all innocent and cute when the thing inevitably shatters after being introduced to the laws of gravity by a calculating paw or tail swiping it off of some counter top. If the creatures could speak, Elspeth was well certain that the cat would decry its innocence and that it had not destroyed the priceless vase and then proceed to gloat about the destruction of some nefarious, and very possibly, imagined prey that just so happened to share the same space as the vase that had been reduced to an expensive pile of rubble on the floor. Elspeth had witnessed such scheming before in the cat that Maelyn had adopted and it was an eerily similar feeling that Derek produced in her whenever she saw his eyes light up. Elspeth waited for him to elaborate or make some cheeky little remark, but, whatever it was that was going through his twisted mind he kept to himself.
“You and I, Mr. Corvelle, will have to have a long discussion regarding your bending of rules agreed upon by both the Courts and Library Council, but, as there are more pressing matters than than your disregard for the rule of law, I'll overlook that confession for the time being,” Mrs. Hythe said giving Derek stern glare.
Derek smirked at her and it made Elspeth's spine run cold. Over the two years that he had been living in Hydendale, Elspeth had become well acquainted with the irksome smirks of Derek Corvelle, having been on the receiving end of more than her fair share of them, but the one that he wore now was different than any she had seen on him before. It wasn't merely cocky or an impish promise of trouble, but nor was it mocking. It was cold, cold and defiant.
“I'm Courtless, remember?” he told their teacher, insolence dripping from his voice like honey, “whatever agreements the Courts make with you librarians they don't carry the same weight with me. It makes everything so much more... flexible.”
Elspeth held her breath as she nervously shifted in her chair, her eyes darting between the librarian and fae as they engaged in some sort of stare off. In class, Derek had always avoided direct conflict with Mrs. Hythe and Elspeth had thought it was simply her fierce nature in the classroom when putting down disruptive students that made him hold back. Now though, she supposed it more had to do with their teacher's status as a managing librarian, something Derek had yet to explain to her, and the classroom being too public a square as he didn't seem to have any problem egging her on now nor that time she had overheard them in this very office. Still though, it was disconcerting being on the sidelines of an open spat between them and Elspeth found herself wondering if she should be concerned for their safety. Eventually though, she heard an exasperated sound from Mrs. Hythe followed by mutterings too low for her to hear, but, judging from the all to smug look on Derek's face, must have been some unflattering mutterings about either Derek or the fae in general.
With once last glare at Derek, the librarian turned her attention back to Elspeth. “For what it's worth, Elspeth, I am sorry for the pain our rules have caused you. I would have spared you that if I could, and I am more than delighted that it is now at an end and a better one than what I feared.”
Elspeth pursed her lips at Mrs. Hythe bland apology, but she said nothing. It wasn't quite what she wanted to hear and seemed rather inadequate considering all that she had gone through for the last ten years. Still, it's better than nothing at all. She thought as Mrs. Hythe continued on talking.
“Though, if you're finished and don't have anything more you wish to say, I still have a few questions of my own that I'd like to have answered,” Elspeth heard her say, having missed what came before.
“For the moment,” Elspeth replied, almost jumping at how cold her voice was still. Though her head thought it understood her reasoning, Elspeth couldn't yet find it within her to forgive her so easily. In time perhaps, but the pain was all to fresh.
Her tone wasn't lost on Mrs. Hythe either and Elspeth had to stay herself from reacting at the look of sadness that passed through her teacher's eyes. Looking a little deflated and no longer the fierce defender of the rule of order, the petite woman gave her a nod of reluctant understanding before becoming businesslike once again.
“Fair enough. Then, the first thing I would like to know is....”