Unthinkable (29 page)

384
Chapter 48

_{It was after daybreak}
in the human realm when
Fenella pulled open the unlocked front door to the threefamily house. She hesitated in the vestibule, feeling the
quiet all around her. There was no time to be lost in returning Dawn to her parents, even though Fenella was terrified
to face them. She could feel her heart thudding with that
fear as she looked at the staircase.

She thought of how she would ascend the steps and knock
on the apartment door. She thought of how Lucy would
grab Dawn from her. She wondered if her family would be
able to hear her, when she explained that the stakes had
been higher than they knew. When she explained that she
had had to steal Dawn, in order to save Lucy’s and Dawn’s
futures.

Maybe they would simply throw her out, even after hear

ing it all. Probably they would. How could they forgive her?
After all, her motives had hardly been pure and loving at
the beginning of the three tasks. She had pursued her own
selfish way.

But she had been dead, at the beginning. Now she was
alive. Now she would do whatever she had to do to earn her
family’s trust and forgiveness.

“Keekee,” said Dawn conversationally. She laid her head
on Fenella’s shoulder. The child was clutching in her little
hand another oak leaf, a gift from the tree fey. Fenella was
grateful for it. The leaf kept the child calm, and would ensure she presented a smiling face to her parents. That would
be infinitely valuable in the firestorm ahead.

I said to my soul, be still.

 

“Mommy,” said Fenella. “You’re going to Mommy and

Daddy.”
Dawn nodded happily. “Keekee.”
Kitty was not a word that Lucy and Zach would want

to hear from Dawn, Fenella knew, even though it seemed to
mean many things besides Ryland. The word keekee was
another reason Fenella could not yet instruct her feet to
climb the stairs.

Also, it was early. What if they were all sleeping?
She glanced at the closed door of Walker’s apartment. She
had looked in vain for Walker’s truck outside. Was he away?

Could he have spent the whole night somewhere else?
Then she heard the house’s front door open behind her.
She stiffened.
She didn’t have to see Walker with her eyes; for him, she

had antennae. She didn’t have to hear his voice; the nape of
her neck recognized his footfall.
She turned.
Walker wore a hooded gray sweatshirt, faded jeans, and
work boots. His thick hair was firmly banded back, the way
it had been when she first met him.
His gaze went from Fenella’s face, to the little girl in her
arms, to the oak leaf clutched by the child, to Fenella’s feet
on the stairs, and then back, finally, to Fenella’s face.
She could not read his.
She blurted, “Dawn is safe and she’s well. I’m bringing
her upstairs, to her parents. Everything is all right now. The
curse—I don’t remember if you know about the curse—but
anyway, it’s broken. I broke it at last.”
Her throat choked up and it was impossible to say anything more.
“Miranda told me,” Walker said. “About this Padraig.
And about the family curse.” He was still expressionless.
“She says the faerie stuff is real. That you were in danger,
even if we don’t understand what exactly it was.”
Fenella managed to nod. Miranda, she thought. Perhaps
Miranda would be able to understand, and would risk
allowing Fenella back into her life. Perhaps.
“I did see your arms heal from the cat scratches. The first
day I met you.” He sounded neutral.
Fenella swallowed. “There is a lot to explain, and it’s complex.”
“Yes.”
Fenella nodded toward the staircase. “So here I am. I am
going to explain everything to my family, and ask for forgiveness, though I don’t really expect to receive it.” She lifted
her chin. “I know I can’t undo the damage I have done.”
“No,” Walker said. “You can’t.”
This was hard to hear. She knew it for truth, however.
She had inflicted terror on Lucy and Zach and Soledad and
Miranda. Leo’s rehabilitation lay ahead. There was an old
home to mourn; and a new home to make. There were family financial losses too, and those were not small.
Wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong
thing.
Still, if they let her, she would face it all with her family. She
would shoulder as much as she could, for them, with them.
Now, or later. She would be useful. She even had a legal birth
record now, inserted into computer records as a gift from
Queen Kethalia. The first thing she would do with it was get
a driver’s license. Ryland’s voice came back to her: Seventy,
seventy-five years. She wanted every minute of every day. Not
one moment would be thrown away. Not even the hard ones.
Like this one.
Fenella shifted the weight of the child in her arms.
Dawn’s foot dangled against her stomach, where, beneath
her clothes, Fenella’s skin had scabbed over.
She said to Walker, “Yes. I did the damage I did. I am here
to take responsibility and make amends and help my family
in every way I can.” She paused. “To you too I owe explanations and apology.”
Walker’s eyes flickered. “It’s hard to believe any of this.
Even though your family says it’s true about the faeries. I
almost think you were all having a mass hallucination.”
“It’s real,” Fenella said, as if the words could make him
believe it. “You saw my arms heal from the cat scratches.
You said it yourself.”
“Unless I imagined that.” Walker looked away.
Dawn brushed her leaf up against Fenella’s cheek.
“Well,” Walker said. “Don’t let me keep you. Go on upstairs.” He turned, and Fenella meant to let him go—it was
right that he go. But—
There is yet faith.
She called after him.
“You told me once about your family. You said they were
tree people.”
He paused. He half turned back. “We have a tree farm.”
“You said trees are in your blood.”
He turned toward her again. “That’s a family joke. I don’t
know why I mentioned it.”
Following her instinct, Fenella pressed further. “Is it really a joke? Or are there some strange things about your
family and trees? Things as unexplainable as what you’ve
learned about me?”
Walker’s gaze went to the leaf in Dawn’s hand. “There was
that business with the oak leaf. The other one, that took me
to you when—when—” His face flushed. She knew he was
remembering that night with her on the park bench, in the
bower of trees.
Fenella wanted, as badly as she had ever wanted anything, to step close to him. To put her hands on his face, to
make him understand.
The faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
She stayed where she was. “Is that the only strange tree
experience?”
“Well, it’s like having a green thumb. We all love trees in
my family. There’s nothing strange about it.”
“Did the trees ever talk to you?”
“No,” he said quickly. Too quickly.
“It wouldn’t be in language. It would be . . .” Fenella drew
air into her lungs, released part of it, and then whistled
softly, taking in new air through her nose and releasing it
through pursed lips, a complex movement that resulted in
a rustling sound. She repeated the words she knew. You are
kin. You are part of the whole. You are beloved.
Walker shuddered.
“Have you ever heard the trees say something like that?
Somehow, you feel what they mean. In your spine. On your
skin.”
Walker had an arrested look on his face.
“I am part tree too.” Fenella felt shy, saying this. Shy, but
proud. “Not by blood, like you. I am adopted. In Faerie,
the tree fey are—well, they’re different from trees here,
but they are still all one people. They became my friends.
They looked after me. They loved me and I loved them, and
I think that I grew strong again only because of them. I
never really knew how important they were to me, but
they knew.”
And I believe, she thought suddenly, that the tree fey sent
Walker here originally, all the way across the country, to wait
for me. Long before I knew that I would have the chance to
return to the human realm. Time is different for them.
“Tree fey,” said Walker.
“Yes. I wish you could meet them. I’d take you to Faerie
if I could.”
A long, long silence. Then Walker said, “The night I
turned thirteen. I woke up and went outside in the dark.
I felt pulled.”
Fenella waited.
“I went to the middle of the forest. Then—that noise you
made, just now? That’s what I heard from the trees. I understood it. Like you said. In my spine. On my skin.”
“What did you understand?”
He said it simply. “That I am part of them. That they are
me.”
They looked at each other. Fenella felt all the things she
wanted to say; all that she wanted to give. But she held back.
It was enough that Walker was talking with her.
Perhaps, tomorrow, he would talk with her again.
She would water and nurture. She would give space and
sun and air. And who knew what might grow? Destruction
need not be the end. Creation could follow. What was broken might be remade, stronger than ever.
She was living proof.
Walker put a hand into his pocket. He pulled out the oak
leaf. Fenella’s jaw dropped down right against the top of
Dawn’s head.
“This came to me again,” he said. “I don’t know how it got
into my pocket, but there it was.”
Now Fenella did take that step forward. Cautiously, so as
not to jostle Dawn, she reached out.
Walker made to put the leaf in her hand. But at the last
second, he didn’t let go. They both held the leaf, their hands
near each other, not touching.
A minute passed.
Fenella said, “Would you—by any chance, would you
come upstairs with me? Would you bear witness when I tell
my family my full story?”
Walker’s eyes were wary, but still he held on to his half
of the leaf.
He said, “Yes.”
Fenella closed her eyes, just for a second, not daring to
believe. Then she opened them to see Walker’s face.
“Yes,” he said again. “I will.”

Acknow�edgments
Asking for other people’s ideas can get you into serious trouble,
but I always do it.

Scottie Bowditch at Penguin told me she’d love to read a prequel
to Impossible, focused on the backstory of Lucy Scarborough’s ancestress Fenella, the young woman with whom the Scarborough
Fair song-curse began. I thought this was a bad idea and I told
her so. “We already know Fenella’s story ends sadly!” But then
time passed and I wondered: What if Fenella were magically
still alive? Could the prequel also be a sequel? Could I transform
Fenella’s sad ending into a new, hopeful beginning? I wrote excitedly to my editor, Lauri Hornik, that the new book would be
“about healing, and ‘becoming strong in the broken places,’ and
the re-embrace of life.”

Scottie’s bad idea had hooked me.

 

I knew Fenella’s prequel/sequel story would be tricky to write.

Among other problems, there would need to be a new puzzle in

the present day, which would somehow be entwined with the
curse from the past. I consulted my writer friend Mark Shulman.
After five whole minutes of concentration, he suggested Fenella
be forced to pursue three destructive tasks, to balance out the
three tasks of creation in Impossible. “Brilliant,” I said.

Halfway through writing the first draft, having fallen totally
in love with Fenella—in other words, when I was too far gone
to turn back—I understood that I actually had things backward.
Scottie’s was the good idea, whereas Mark’s was insane.