Aaaah the greenteeth! Toadling! A knight to the rescue that I don’t want to punch in the throat! But the GREENTEETH!
Pull quotes ⚭
Another fairy might have played up their status as exiled healer, demanded special treatment and catering to their every whim. But Toadling tried to be helpful and stammered when she was nervous and had beautiful, worried eyes in a homely face. Her transformation into a toad was shocking, true, but it did not involve any inside-out bits or explosions, and she was such a small, inoffensive toad and such a small, inoffensive human, and she went out of her way to change behind buildings and things where people would not see it and be troubled by it.
Thorns die from the inside out, like priests
“Can you kill her?” she asked. “I don’t mean… That’s not a request—that’s a question. Do you think you could?”
Halim stared into the fire. His face was drawn and un-handsome itself. “I… I don’t think so,” he said finally. “I want to say yes, for you. Because of what you said. But I’ve killed a few men, and it’s bad. And they have to be coming at me with swords, and it’s not like not like that, exactly. It’s like we’re all screaming and hammering on each other and you just want everyone else to stop screaming and you hope you stop them before they stop you. It’s just noise and mud and not thinking. But it’s still bad. Afterward, you remember too much of it. And that’s men trying to kill me. I don’t think I can kill a little girl who’s asleep.”
“You think you had to pay for two hundred years for a momentary slip of the tongue?”
The magic sulked. It had been still and quiet for so long. It wanted to rage like a torrent, pour over things, sweep obstacles away. But it was her friend, and so it turned in its course and settled back in its bed, sullen and quiet once more.
Fayette lay on the bed, bright as mushrooms in the dark.
He snorted. After a moment, he leaned slightly toward her, so that their shoulders touched, and Toadling leaned back, and they sat together on the steps for a little time, with the magic washing over them like the sea.
“All right,” said Halim, and turned away. “I do believe you.”
Toadling waited for the but.
It didn’t come.
His eyes were grave. “Some things can’t be fixed.”
“We couldn’t change her,” said Toadling, feeling as if the words were broken glass in her ruined throat. “The queen loved her and the nurse and I tried for years and love wasn’t enough and trying wasn’t enough and nothing we did changed anything!” She let out a croaking sob. Halim gathered her up awkwardly in his arms and she gripped the edges of his surcoat and cried black ink tears onto his shoulder. “It should have mattered. All that love and all that trying should have changed… something…”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
Toadling shuddered and shivered against him. She wanted to turn into her quietest, coldest toad shape and sink into the mud and not think for a long time. But she stayed human instead, and Halim held her the way that no one had held her since she had left the greenteeth behind.
Eventually she ran out of tears. There were centuries worth still locked up inside her, but her body could only shed so many at a time. She was aware that her eyes were ringed with black and looked as if she had been beaten, but there was nothing to be done about that.
She had so many choices and she had never had choices, never been given a chance to choose anything more important than what fish to snatch or what herb to pick.
It was paralyzing. How does anyone manage? There are too many streams and they all flow and all of them could be good and there’s no way to know. How does anyone ever choose to do anything?
It never occurred to her to doubt her welcome. Such was the gift of a child raised with love.
The old monster’s eyes lidded over as she smiled. “You’ll outlive him,” she said. “By a thousand years. We’ll be here afterward. We’ll always be here. You’re ours and we’re yours.”