Page 130 of The Shape of Monsters
Lyric stares at her, and Rabbit has been the subject of that look: relentless, prophetic, and still somehow soft with patience. It makes Rabbit want to drop to ahz knees. Instead az steps closer and wraps ahz hand gently around Lyric’s elbow, breaking the look. Both glance to ahz, and then Iriset cusses again. “I bet it will be a problem, yes,” she says.
“Won’t your sundering work for everyone?” Lyric asks, starting for the kitchen again.
“I’m not having sex with the whole mirané council,” she sneers, but her eyes spark with humor. Then she pauses, head tilted. “Maybe your sister, though.”
Lyric makes a strangled sound, and Rabbit can’t help liking this banter between them, even though az doesn’t understand the full implications of it all, even though there isn’t room for ahz. Lyric is very human with her. He likes her. That’s good.
Rabbit swallows. Az lowers ahz hand to Lyric’s, and Lyric allows ahz to weave their fingers together. Rabbit doesn’t want to feel relieved. They sneak through the fortress to the inner kitchen, which is lit and the Moon-Eater baking. It smells tart and gingery, and there’s a pot bubbling thickly on the stove. Rabbit walks around Lyric toward ahz mother, hoping it’s the sweet porridge he used to make with berries that burst when they got hot enough. It turned the whole meal pink and sweet. Sometimes right before serving, Mother would drop more berries in to warm up and burst right on the tongue.
Iriset Sunderer makes a surprised sound, and Rabbit supposes it’s strange for the red god to be cooking, to anyone who wasn’t raised by him. Rabbit steps beside the Moon-Eater and leans ahz shoulder in. Mother smiles. He’s shifted his form to the one he wore to bear Rabbit, which Rabbit recognizes from being told repeatedly. It’s more androgynous than Mother’s usual hard masculine-forward preferences, and he said when he was pregnant it just felt right—and the humans around him tended to deal better when they could pretend he was a woman. “Rabbit,” he says cheerfully, offering a tasting spoon.
“Mother.” Az accepts, blowing on the porridge to cool it. Az props ahz hip against the thick wooden counter and looks at the others. The other fairy, Never, sits cross-legged on top of the nearest table. Its stringy pink-silver hair falls all around it like rain in a painting, and its back is hunched, its arms too long, its teeth too sharp. None of that bothers Rabbit, but Iriset Sunderer sits as far away as possiblewhile remaining at the same table. Lyric joins her. The only other person in the room is the small king Irsu River, lounged in a tall-backed chair. The cold stub of a cigarette rests in a shallow bowl of wine before an.
“I didn’t realize you cook,” Iriset says in the fairy tongue.
“Did you heal him?” Never interrupts in its hissing voice. A voice like the wind scattering dry leaves.
“Yes,” she says with absolute confidence.
“You’re welcome,” Never snarls back.
Iriset looks like she wants to tear Never apart. Rabbit wonders why. Az wants to know more about Never and what it means to ahz mother. But the porridge is good. Rabbit sits sideways on the bench and pushes a bowl at Lyric. Lyric smiles thanks and digs in so quickly Rabbit has to grab his hand to stop him from burning his mouth on the steaming hot food.
Alarm fades into self-deprecation as Lyric realizes why Rabbit stopped him and lets Rabbit blow on the spoonful of porridge for him before eating it.
Iriset is staring at them. Probably everyone is, but Rabbit can feel her gaze because she’s so near and there’s something about that opal eye, something disconcerting. Rabbit is not used to being disconcerted after living with a unicorn for eight years.
It gets worse when, after Lyric has eaten three bites, Iriset closes her opal eye and places a finger over the lid. She scrunches her brow. She opens her eye, and the too-bright blue-green iris gleams even more ferociously, focused on Rabbit.
Az rears back, but then stops when nothing happens, and tilts up ahz chin. She can see what she likes, whatever power that eye has. It does not take effort to wait; this is nothing compared to stalking snow foxes for fun, or ahz namesakes for food. Or existing in the Moon-Eater’s court as a child.
Meanwhile, the chimera ahz mother likes so much slips into the kitchen, too, and sits carefully on Irsu River’s lap, accepting a bowl for both of them from Mother.
As if everyone can sense something coming, it is quiet but for the sounds of spoons on ceramic. Lyric pauses his eating, looks between Iriset and Rabbit, then stares at Rabbit. There’s still grief there, the pain that hasn’t truly gone away since Setka fell apart. But the softness in Lyric is Rabbit’s, too, and any other time Rabbit would lean in and kiss him open-mouthed.
Azhasknown Lyric couldn’t be with ahz forever, almost from the moment they met. It didn’t matter—it still doesn’t—but it does hurt.
“Moon-Eater,” Iriset says slowly, still peering at Rabbit. “How did you make Maimeri?”
Mother plops down on the bench beside Rabbit and puts a bowl in the other fairy’s hands, though Never only accepts so it doesn’t splatter on its lap. It tilts the bowl with a look of distaste and refuses to eat. Mother sips the thick porridge directly from the bowl.
Despite mixed feelings for ahz dangerous mother, when the noise isn’t grinding at Rabbit’s consciousness, it’s nice to be close to him. For a little while.
Mother says in Sarenpet, “A piece of embodied flesh, seed donations, a mesh to help maintain the integrity of the womb.” He shrugs. “Practically the natural way.”
But Iriset narrows her eyes at Mother now. She blinks her opal eye hard, then looks again. “Just like that?” she says in a very skeptical tone.
“Well, obviously it took several tries. This old fairy wanted to carry a child like any mother, but it was difficult—any slip from full embodiment caused miscarriage. To maintain that kind of form exactingly and for so many months…” Mother grimaces. “It proved nearly impossible. Experiments were conducted, mostly on mergingvarious types of sheer arrays—which eventually became the fetal meshes that Iriset is familiar with—and this fairy’s various physiologies. Eventually a solution was invented—a sort of double dome like Iriset’s first eye—that maintained the mesh and womb internally, but matched this fairy’s necessary energy fluctuations.”
“A piece of flesh?” Iriset taps her finger to the table. “The mother-seed, so to speak. And father-seed donations, such as tend to be used with creating human chimeras?” Her attention flicks briefly to the chimera Eliri on River’s lap.
“How many children were lost?” Lyric asks.
Rabbit looks around at the Moon-Eater in time to see him make a rippling gesture that’s half shrug, half eye roll.
“Wait,” River the small king says with a frown. “These attempts began when? Thirty years ago? And succeeded twenty-three years ago?”
“Something like that,” Mother answers gently. But the Moon-Eater’s entire being sharpens, and Rabbit looks past him to the other fairy. Never watches Mother with razor-eyed focus.
