Firefly babies
In a world where names have power, Tifa chose her own name. But secrets also have power, and the faerie Courts are rife with secrets and those who know how to use them.
They called Tifa a beggar, those well-dressed, nose-in-the-air folks who strolled the boulevards and esplanades. Her ragged clothes and enormous hat stood out against the jet black paths, ruining the sleek lines of the city, catching the eyes momentarily, it was true, but she wouldn’t lower herself and don a name chosen by others. It was part of the fae, to name themselves and, through naming gain power. To accept a name another bestowed was weakness; to know another’s chosen name was power.
If they had bothered to lower themselves to Tifa’s level and ask her about herself, she would have given a sly smile which was renowned throughout the upper city’s bars and pubs. Lazing back against the wall or perched on a windowsill with one leg hooked over the other, she’d have said that she was a ‘proactive beggar’, before vanishing down a side street, up a drain pipe or slipping between hulking guards that loomed over her with menacing expressions. And they’d probably only realise they were a hundred dollars lighter or that their wedding ring was missing when they got home and Tifa was nothing more than a memory of grime and a grin.
Not that she needed them to stoop to her level, of course. She’d bring them down there, soon enough.
“All wrapped up snug?” She whispered to her partner, Raven, who was suspended from the wall overhead, his spindercling gloves glowing faintly, anchoring him to the rock.
“Like mossworms in their cocoons.” His voice floated down with the midnight fireflies. Tifa tugged on her gloves, the embroidered spiders wriggling on the fabric and leaving the feeling of furry legs trailing over her palms.
The window was open a crack, and that was all she needed. Slipping from the dimness of the street and into the glittering world of the lower household, sliding from one world to another with no more note of her passing than the breeze leaves behind, Tifa landed in a crouch on the plush crystalline fabric. The house was silent, save for Tifa’s gentle breathing and the steady click-clack of the clock whiling away the midnight hours. Fireflies, their wings clipped off and their tiny insect legs scratching frantically against the wood, tracked their way over the clock face in blind pursuit of the ever-moving hand. A few feral flies had slipped through the window after her, and they bumped mindlessly into the glass covering the clock in search of the high-magick stone powering the clock hand.
Tifa crept through the darkened corridors on quiet feet, whisper-fox fur imbuing her steps with unnatural stealth and speed. A dim blue glow filtered beneath a door, casting long fingered shadows that crept up the walls to merge with the greater shadows that festooned the hall. The gentle azure safety light indicated with almost total certainty that this small room contained her prize.
“Cat. Are you there? Night-steward’s moving on the upper floor.” A quick glance back at the window showed the Raven, his eyes glowing with powdered glim-light as he scanned the house for movement.
Tifa nudged the door open with her foot, spilling the light across the floor. By some trick of the light, it cast two shadows behind her, one on the left and the other stretching away to her right, where it melded with the darkness swaddling the end of the corridor. Her wide-brimmed hat, pulled low, distorted the shape of her head and made her appear monstrous.
The crib stretched bars of darkness over Tifa’s face, its contents bathed in warm safety light. A few lone fireflies, lost and confused, meandered into the room in her wake casting little specks of golden light through the room as they bumped into walls and furniture. Some flittered over to the safety light, drawn by its faint magickal field, ignoring the silent figure of Tifa standing stock-still in the doorway.
Footsteps thudded above Tifa’s head.
In a swift, practiced motion, Tifa swooped forwards and snatched up the slumbering baby. It balled tiny fists, face scrunching as it was shaken from sleep to wakefulness, the softness of dreams giving way to the harsh, broken shards of reality. One leg hooked over the windowsill, Tifa shoved the baby into the Raven’s waiting arms, feeling the familiar tingle of the spider-cling enchantments along her fingers and hands. Around the Raven, fireflies swirled in tangled vortices of light, tracing the flow of the leylines around him.
As she shimmied down the wall, a shout went up behind her. Dropping the last six feet, her knees protesting the sudden impact, Tifa darted into the darkened streets, while above her the Raven rose into the air on gossamer wings.
***
The Court was crowded, thronged with faeries hoping to watch the ceremony. Glamourous jewels adorned throats and wrists; finely wrought metals adorned ears that rose and tapered to long, fine points. Tifa lurked amid the silks and satins, sweltering in the warmth of the core that pulsed magic through the earth, her hat pulled low over her ears. Despite that, he still found her.
The thick scent of perfume preceded him, overpowering even the reek of sweat and hundreds of people trying to disguise the smell of sweat and failing. A thick fingered hand, heavy with rings and bangles hanging in golden waterfalls from sturdy wrists, landed on her shoulder, and she looked up into emerald green eyes, like staring into a time-ravaged mirror.
“Come.”
His finely cut suit nearly shimmered in the torchlight as he turned and walked away, not even bothering to look behind to check she was following. He didn’t need to.
She trailed obediently after him as he wove through the crowd. People parted before him, pushed aside by his sheer presence and the force of his will while Tifa struggled along behind him. Sharp shoes stabbed into her toes and elbows slammed into her sides; a long-faced woman snorted derisively at her and swanned away, trailing a feathered cloak behind her.
Her patron led her into a lavishly appointed antechamber, the click of the door closing cutting off the hubbub of the room below.
“My darling,” he crooned, turning with a sharp, insectile movement to grasp her chin in his hand. Tifa glanced away, refusing to meet his eyes despite being able to feel his breath on her cheek. However, in spite of her best efforts to ignore him, she still caught the tell-tale wrinkle of distaste that crossed his features. “Get rid of that ridiculous hat, dearest.”
Tifa frowned, her face mirroring his in every line. The words, however, stuck in her throat and before she could dislodge them, putting her ‘no’ to voice and making it real, a servant whisked away her hat and coat, leaving her wing-stubs wriggling like suddenly exposed grubs. Rubbing her slightly pointed ears nervously, she shifted from one foot to the other.
“My little birdie delivered the gift to me,” he said, gesturing broadly to a small cage draped with glittering shards of mirror and coloured glass. “It is quite satisfactory.”
Tifa shrugged, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel. Her entire body was aching already, the overabundant magick whispering in her head and crawling through her bones, but she thrilled at his words even as she tried not to show it. In her pocket, a few forgotten trinkets gleaned from uncaring marks seemed tawdry and cheap as they clinked against her leg, and she wished she’d palmed them off before she’d gone on the job. If she’d known it might be the last one…
“Thank you.” She paused, her throat working. Did she dare to try? “Fa—”
Fingers pressed hard to her lips, one hand curved cruelly against the nape of her neck and yanking her hair painfully tight even as it pushed her face forwards, towards silence.
“Bup-bup-bup!” came the gentle admonition, the nonsense words soft and cheerful in stark contrast to the chill eyes that bored into hers from mere inches away. “I don’t think you’ve quite earned that right yet, have you, love?”
Tears prickling her eyes, hardly able to move in his iron grip, Tifa shook her head. When he released her, she gasped, drawing in huge lungfuls of air as though he had crushed her entire body flat and she needed to reinflate herself. Resisting the urge to clutch her arms around herself, or run, or cover her bare ears, she curled in on herself and tried to breath.
“Just you keep getting me more gifts, my darling sweetness.”
“What if…” She couldn’t even manage the question, and the shame and anger burned inside her. It seemed as though surely this time it might burn hot enough to consume the longing, but instead it always tempered it, smelting it finer and sharper. Like a blade, which sat comfortably in his hands.
“Ah, darling. Tifa, you’ll get me more children. As many as we need. Won’t you?”
It wasn’t a question. All she could do was bow her head to the power he wielded and comply.
