Chapter 12

"Merrick," I said, startled by his presence. "You're back."

He smiled as if it had been only hours since he'd last seen me, as if an entire year had not passed. "I am. Just in time to celebrate."

"I finished the books," I said in a rush, eager to show him I'd done as he'd asked. "All of them. Just as you wanted me to."

"Excellent," he said, sweeping from the armchair. It was much too small for him, and his body creaked upon straightening. "Shall we have cake?"

"Cake?" I echoed with surprise. I assumed he had come back to talk about my studies, about all the things I'd learned and done.

He nodded, seemingly unaware of my confusion. "Yes. And then we'll be off."

"Off?"

He smiled with amusement, eyes crinkling at my befuddlement. "You're repeating everything I say, Hazel."

He pulled my plate from the shelf and, upon realizing there was only the one, snapped his fingers and another appeared, complete with utensils.

"I suppose I must be out of practice. I've been here for a whole year with only plants to talk to." I felt the edge in my voice, but Merrick didn't seem to notice.

"The garden, yes! I was very impressed by how large it's grown." He picked up a knife but paused before the first cut. "You'll want to blow out the candles, yes? I'm told that's the usual tradition."

Irritation flickering in my middle, I crossed to the worktable and extinguished all thirteen in one breath. "Where are we going?" I persisted, but was forced into accepting the plate he pushed my way. He'd made me a sponge cake, soaked in cherry compote.

"Eat," he insisted, taking a bite himself. "It's quite good, though the cherries seem a surprise with that lavender icing. Should it have been pink? It should be pink," he decided, and with another snap, the cake changed hue.

"You said we were going to be off," I said, my mouth half full. Like his cake the year before, it was too sweet. "Where are we going?"

He blinked, only now acknowledging my questions. "To your house, of course."

"My house?" I was beginning to feel like a parrot. "I'm going home?"

He nodded.

"You're sending me back?" I asked, the alarm spiking through me every bit as sharp as the scalpels I practiced with. I'd done everything he'd asked of me, hadn't I? I scrunched my face, wondering what I'd done wrong.

Merrick frowned. "Sending you back? No, no, no. Not there. I'm taking you home. To your home. Your new home," he clarified, most unhelpfully.

"I thought this was my home." I gestured about the cabin.

"For a time," he allowed. "I needed to make sure you had a place you could concentrate. Learn what you needed to. Study without distraction."

"And?"

"And you have," he said, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. "You've studied. You've grown. And now it's time for the work to begin. After cake, of course."

"After cake." I took another bite, hardly even tasting it now. "Where…where is this new home?"

He beamed. "It's a lovely little plot of land, just outside Alletois. It's a bit rustic, I suppose. Farmland, sheep. It will be the perfect place to perfect your techniques."

"I've never heard of Alletois." It wasn't what I wanted to say, but it was the first thing that fell from my lips.

It truly hadn't occurred to me that I would leave the Between, though I suppose it should have. Merrick planned to make me a great healer, and there wasn't a single patient to treat in this vast and empty liminal space.

"It's lovely," he assured me. "Only a few hours' ride from the capitol. A little rustic perhaps but…"

I stabbed at my slice again, cleaving the remains in half with petulance. "You said that already."

"I…I suppose I did." He pressed his fork against the plate, smashing crumbs together to make a more sizeable bite.

I studied his face, trying to spot any changes that might have occurred in the year since I'd seen him. There were none. Gods wouldn't age, I realized belatedly. "What have you been up to? Since I saw you last."

"Work." One slice down, he busied himself cutting another. Merrick, I would learn in the years to come, had a prodigious sweet tooth.

"What sort of work do gods do?" I asked, hacking the last of my cake into more and more sections till the cherry juice ran everywhere, making my plate look like a small massacre had taken place.

He chuckled. "Work most godly, I suppose."

"It must take up a great deal of time," I pressed. "It's been an age since I've seen you."

"Yes, and look how you've grown!" he exclaimed, ignoring my censured tone as pride filled his red and silver eyes. "Why, you've shot up at least five inches! And your hair looks darker now, less auburn than it used to."

"There's no sun here to lighten it." I set my fork down, abandoning the pretense that I was going to finish my cake.

"That will be quite different in Alletois. Your cottage is in the center of a clearing. There are so many windows, sunlight streaming in everywhere. It will be enchanting come summer."

"My cottage," I said, picking up on his phrasing. "Not ours."

His brow creased as he tried sorting through my distress. "Of course not. It's yours. I made everything for you, exactly how you'll want it. Oh, I can't wait for you to see it. One slice more and then we'll go."

"How?" I asked, ignoring his offer for more cake. I shoved my plate toward him, and with a shrug, he began gobbling my remains.

"How what, Hazel?" His question was clipped, and there was a slight edge to his voice now, a current running through his words and charging them with warning.

"How do you know that everything will be exactly as I want? You don't know me. You've never been around me long enough to know me."

"You forget who you're speaking to, mortal." His voice boomed with omnipotent magnitude.

I faced his anger head-on. I would not cower before him. "I am speaking to my godfather. The one who promised my parents he'd raise me and take care of me. The one who I've not seen in a year because he left me in this realm of immortals all by myself."

The light in the cabin began to dim as forbidding black clouds rolled in, covering Félicité's starlight with their menace.

I squared my shoulders, steeling my spine. I knew I was right, and I was not going to be the one to back down.

Merrick's nostrils flared. "I didn't realize your time here has been so trying," he sneered. "Here, in this house, which is not a barn, where I've clothed and fed you with resources better than you could have ever dreamed of, given the time to expand your knowledge, learning the secrets and wonders of the mortal body. Yes. I could see what a time this must have been for you."

"You left me alone!" I exclaimed, and though I didn't want it to, my voice cracked as my heightened emotions made my throat swell. I angrily wiped at the tears welling in my eyes, threatening my vision. "For years I've been told that you would one day come for me and take me away to some grand manor, and I thought that meant that you'd be there too. That you would be there, with me, and that I'd finally have some sort of family. All those years ago, you told my parents you wanted me. And then you came, only to leave me here. For an entire year." The sobs rose then, breaking apart my words and making it impossible to speak. I collapsed upon the counter, burying my face in my arms, unable to look him in the eye, and cried.

Oh, how I cried.

Great, hot tears fell down my face, which was scrunched red and ugly. My shoulders trembled with the force of the sobs, and my chest felt as though it might cleave in two. I struggled to breathe through a runny nose and my cries turned to gasps, wretched heaving grabs for air.

And suddenly Merrick was beside me. His skeletal hand rubbed my back, attempting to soothe and assuage my anger and hurt.

"I…I don't know what to say," he said, sounding honestly perplexed. "I hadn't ever considered you'd want me here. You're all grown up."

"I'm a child!" I protested. "I was a child. I was…" I shook my head, unsure what category I fell into. I'd been relying on myself for years. Did that make me an adult? I didn't feel like one. I didn't feel like much of anything most days, and in this moment, I felt like even less. It hurt to speak, hurt to hold myself together. Without care, I threw myself at him, hiding away in the fullness of his robe. I felt his figure beneath the swell of fabric, but it was too gaunt, too wrong, too full of angles my mind couldn't wrap around, juts from bones my mortal frame did not possess. For a god so suffused with power beyond reason, his actual body did not take up very much space.

After a brief hesitation, Merrick folded his arms around me, holding on as I released my torrent of woe upon him. He patted my shoulders, then my head, eventually deciding to stroke my hair, saying nothing as I wept but making a soft, low noise of comfort.

I don't know how long we stayed like that, but eventually the tears trickled themselves out and I sat up, stretching my shoulder blades. I wiped the back of my hand over my face, shame burning across my cheeks. I couldn't guess what he thought of my outburst, what he was thinking of me.

Merrick watched on, the apprehension written across his face as obvious as a splatter of blood on surgical linens.

"I'm sorry," I said, struggling to put myself back together. "I didn't mean…I didn't mean to…" I stopped, unsure of exactly what I didn't mean to. I had needed that, but more importantly, he'd needed to see that, needed to hear my frustrations, needed to know how much his absence had undone me.

Merrick cleared his throat and it sounded like the wispy rasp of insect wings rubbing against each other. "I ought to be apologizing to you, Hazel. I didn't…I never would have dreamed you'd need me to stay, that you'd even want me here."

It would take me years to realize that for all his talk of remorse, he never actually did say the word sorry.

"You're my godfather," I protested. "You're my family—the closest thing I have to one now."

He tilted his head, pondering me. His eyes seemed more luminous than usual and glassy bright, as if he might be on the verge of tears too. "Family," he said, holding out his hand.

I placed mine in its center and when his long fingers folded closed, dwarfing mine, it felt oddly formal, as if we were concluding a business transaction. Impulsively, I threw my arms around him in a desperate embrace. I wasn't crying now, grasping at any comfort I could find. I wanted him to feel how earnestly I needed him, this odd father figure I'd been promised. I wanted him to need me as badly as I did him.

He hugged me back and my ears were filled with the rushing sound of a sudden wind. It roared all around us, a hurricane of motion, whipping my hair and animating Merrick's robes in a flurry of ripples.

He broke the embrace first, stepping back and giving me the space to find my sense of equilibrium. My ears ached, and for a second, I thought I wasn't in the right space. My cottage didn't look the way it should. The room skewed too long, too wide. All the furniture was in the wrong place.

I blinked against the vision and rubbed my eyes, certain the wind had kicked some grit into them. If I could just get it out, thecottage would return to normal.

But I did and it didn't.

I stepped away from Merrick, turning to look about with open wonder.

It wasn't that the furniture was in the wrong place…it was entirely different furniture. In an entirely different room.

"Where…where are we?" I asked, whirling around to Merrick.

His mouth rose in a smile. "Home."