“I’ve heard his hair and clothes aren’t as bright as they used to be,” Elemi said. “Because he’s been lying there so long. They would fix it, but the room’s all sealed up and no one’s allowed in to change anything because they don’t want to mess with the spell.”
“Oh, he’s preserved,” Sal said. “Hair included. That spell’s got fae magic backing it up; it’s good and strong. His clothes might’ve faded, though. Rosamund Highvalley and the fae probably didn’t give much thought to keeping dyes looking fresh, what with everything else going on at the time.”
“See what you can do, then,” Merrick said to Elemi, and waved toward the wig. “Darker red.” He was an endo-witch—one who could magically alter himself, but not anything or anyone else. Elemi, however, was a matter-witch, someone who could alter non-living material.
That said, she wasn’t a very experienced one yet. She got up and took hold of the wig, frowning in concentration. A burst of magic cascaded over Merrick, like being splashed with a glass of invisible water, and the wig turned orange. Elemi sighed and let go. “Lord and Lady!” she complained.
Merrick laughed. “No worries. We’ll have Cassidy do it.”
“Yes, because all your festival costume needs have to be done by me,” his older sibling, Cassidy, called from the adjacent room, a former bedroom that now served as junk storage.
“Please?” Merrick added.
“I’ll have a look,” Cassidy said in a grudging tone.
“Thanks, Cass. We love you.”
Cassidy strode into the library, dressed in all form-fitting black as usual. The scent of water-lily swirled in their wake. They tossed a long jacket with tattered silk hems to Merrick. “Here. Best I could find. I changed it from gray to blue and made the tatters more dramatic.” Cassidy, like their daughter, was a matter-witch.
“Nice.” Merrick slipped it on over his shirt and flapped his hands. The cuffs fell over his knuckles. “Too big, though.”
“Sweet Lady. I’ll fix it later, along with the wig.” Cassidy spun to frown at Elemi. “It’s seven-thirty. Have you started your homework?”
Elemi looked sheepish. “It’s just one page.”
“Math?”
“Social studies. A worksheet about why the rest of the world doesn’t know about Eidolonia.”
Merrick tugged at a loose button on the jacket. “Which is why?”
Elemi rolled her eyes. “Because of fae magic keeping everyone else away.”
“Magic such as?” Cassidy said.
“Whirlpools, winds, fog, rocks that boats crash into.”
“They’re called sea stacks,” Merrick said. “Also reefs.”
“And people can’t even see the island usually,” Elemi added, in impatiently fast tones. “But if they do, they forget about it right afterward. The Crosswater Fade. And it’s where the island’s name comes from, because ‘eidolon’ means ‘phantom.’”
“Among other definitions,” Merrick conceded.
“What about satellites?” Sal challenged, her eyes twinkling.
“The magic messes them up so they can’t take pictures.”
“Good.” Cassidy waved toward the doorway. “Go write all that down. Bet it won’t even take you five minutes.”
Elemi sighed melodramatically, but wandered out of the room, swinging her phone.
“Merrick,” Cassidy said, “you printed all the labels for the festival scents, right?”
The button fell off the costume jacket. Merrick crouched to retrieve it. “Yep, they’re ready.”
“I’m going to count all the bottles and make sure. I want to start decanting early tomorrow.” Without waiting for his response, Cassidy left the library.
“Cass still can’t trust anyone else to do things right,” Merrick said to Sal. “Especially me.” He pulled off the wig and dropped into the creaky armchair next to hers.
Sal took another sip of tea. The pearly-blue mug looked delicate in her leathery hands. “I assume the perfumes are your real contribution to the festival. Yours and Cassidy’s.”
“Yeah. The play is my friends’ project. They roped me in for a few cameos, including Larkin.” He had let go of the magic morphing his face, but touched his cheek where the beauty mark had been. “Will the fae be pleased, you think?”
“I’m entertained already,” she promised.
Tomorrow was the start of Water Festival, one of the seven festivals in the year during which Eidolonian humans produced gifts and displays of creativity to amuse and thank the fae. The festivals also helped soothe the occasional antagonisms that cropped up between fae and humans—though these days society was relatively peaceful, compared to the type of strife that people long ago like Prince Larkin had lived through.
Sal was a hob, a type of earth faery. She had been Merrick’s favorite professor at Ormaney University in Dasdemir, where he had earned a business degree while refining his magic. He had kept in touch with her after graduating, and since she was in Sevinee that week to visit relatives, Merrick had invited her up to Highvalley House for dinner.
Hobs rarely bothered with shape-shifting or glamour; they showed themselves as they were. In Sal’s case, this meant being stocky and short—she only came up to Merrick’s chest—with bright blue-black eyes, a nose longer than her hands, and pointed ears that stood up above her head like those of the Highvalleys’ corgi. Her coloring was mostly brown, but her nails and hair showed natural streaks of scarlet, pumpkin, and gold. She always smelled vaguely of garden soil, a warm note he found comforting.
“The friends doing the play,” she said. “Are they the same ones you hung out with at university?”
“Mostly. Some live around here now. The others are visiting for the festival.” Merrick picked thread out of the button, his thoughts meandering to the people he used to spend all his free time with.
“My. What’s that somber expression for?”
He looked around at the library of Highvalley House, with its oddly-shaped skylights and shelves of dust-covered books. “Just thinking how it’s only been seven years since we graduated, but it seems longer. They’re all doing real adult things—marriage, pregnancy, careers—and I’m … this.”
“Talented perfumer and uncle to a great kid, living in a historic house in the Sevinee countryside? Could be worse.”
“Well. It is worse.”
“Hmm.” Sal swished her tea around in the mug. “I wasn’t going to ask. At least, not in front of Elemi.”
“Whether I’d been arrested during Earth Festival?” He spoke the words with astringent clarity.
“I take that as a yes.”
Merrick steepled his fingers. “We were visiting Dad in Dasdemir, and he’d built some flying gadgets for the celebration. He and his friends decided to use them to fly a banner down Spirit Street outside Parliament. It, uh … here’s a photo.” He scrolled through his phone to find it, and showed her.
All her facial features pulled upward in the hob equivalent of a smile. “Tell the Earth the Truth: Riquelme Lies. Well, the fae largely agree with you there. I’m a hundred and six, and I can’t remember ever having such an inept prime minister.”