The Bubble ChildKatherine Traylor
5700 words Just before the baby came, the Dawn Witch Dora walked out to meet the Night Witch Nyx, who always arrived just as darkness surrendered to dawn. Pausing briefly on the porch of her driftwood house, she watched the ocean and listened to the murmur of the surf. A drifting breeze lifted her faded hair, trailing it into the graylight. No beachwalkers were out this morning (fortunately for Dora, who was rarely comfortable letting mortals see her). She carried her tray and blanket quickly through the mist, down the smooth field of damp sand left by the high tide in the night. Dawn was beginning to warm the waves. Dora breathed deeply in the fresh sea-air. These were the moments when she felt alive. Later, when the sun warmed and the beach grew noisy, she’d retreat to her cabin and veil it carefully from human sight. (To those outside, it generally resembled a sand dune.) And then she would wait alone for the next dawn to revive her. She didn’t mind humans, exactly, but their short lives made them painful acquaintances. No sooner did she befriend them than they sickened, weakened, and died, living full lives in what seemed like only weeks. After two centuries and a hundred heartbreaks, she mostly stayed inside these days, avoiding mortal company. She slept the day through or stayed busy with little things: mending torn clothing, making sea-grape jam, reading, and writing to distant correspondents she’d never meet. But for this silent hour, the only people on the shore would be herself and her best and only friend. In the shadow of a large dune, she set the tea-tray down and spread the blanket on the sand. The glass pot held White Peony leaves Nyx had brought last time from China, brewing slowly into a delicate golden tea. The low glass cups were waiting. Dora had only to set out the biscuits and wait for her friend’s familiar humming to drift up the beach. In only a few minutes, a lanky shadow crept towards her up the shore. The Night Witch, cloaked and hooded in diaphanous black against the rising sun, settled crowlike on the sand and smiled sleepily at Dora. “Here she is, Dawn herself.” Dora tried to hide her blush “Well met by morning, Dark Lady.” Nyx clasped her hand, pressing long fingers (rough with the calluses of unknown instruments, fragrant with the oils of plants that grew on distant mountains) against Dora’s softer, paler ones. Dora suppressed a shiver. She unwound her scarf (gossamer, drawn from mist one day to distract her from melancholy) and poured the tea, handing the sea-blue plate of biscuits to her friend. They ate and drank quietly as the sun rose above the billows. They’d been meeting this way since they were children, watching the sunrise together as Nyx’s power faded and Dora’s briefly grew. Ages ago, their eldritch mothers (long since gone on their own wild paths) had met for tea here while their daughters played and rambled in the dunes. Now grown, the daughters had kept up the tradition, which remained the most important constant in Dora’s life. Another breeze wandered by, scattering seafoam across the bare shore. Dora thought, as she always did on these mornings, that she could happily occupy this moment forever. As always, she thought of asking Nyx to stay and shelter for the day with her. But her courage failed before the words could form. “I suppose you’re tired from your adventures?” she asked instead. Nyx laughed. “Exhausted! I watched the moon rise from the top of a pyramid last night. Then I ran back west across the ocean. I slipped a little out of time to get here, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” She saluted Dora with her teacup, smiling. Dora tried to formulate words to convey how deeply she returned those feelings. But before she could find them, she saw something that nearly made her drop her teacup. Something was crawling from the waves. The witches exchanged glances and set their cups down, hurrying towards the thing in the surf. It was a plump little creature, four-legged and tailless, with a round bobbing head that it held up with seeming difficulty. It looked remarkably like a baby. It was a baby. But a strange one: already robust, crawling purposefully out of the foam. Its skin had a bluish tinge, which went well with the deep pinkish-red of its water-tangled hair. In two hundred years of life, Dora had never seen such an infant. “Is it mortal?” Nyx asked, looking bewildered. “No idea. But I don’t think it’s human.” They stared down at the creature burbling at them from the sand. The Dawn Witch, who had never held a baby in her life, braced herself and bent to pick it up. It was wet and ungainly. She nearly dropped it, but finally got it settled in her arms, wincing as the seawater soaked through the sleeves and bodice of her dress. Physically, it seemed basically female. “Let’s go with ‘she’ for now,” she said weakly. The baby caught her scarf and cooed contentedly, stuffing the silkbound mist into its mouth. Nyx was pacing circuits on the sand. “What can we do with her? We can’t leave her. She’s too little. Could she belong to one of the mermaids?” “I suppose it’s possible,” Dora said doubtfully. She made her breath bubble-shaped inside her chest and leaned down to call a greeting into the sea. Moments passed. Finally, a wave parted, and the head of a fearsome woman slid out: subaqueous green from skin to scale, with yellow eyes and teeth like a barracuda’s. “Good morning, Marut,” Dora said. The mermaid looked from her to the child. “Good morning, Dora.” Her voice was sibilant and cool. “Is there something to discuss?” Dora held up the infant, clutching the plump limbs firmly to avoid dropping her. If she wasn’t a mermaid’s child, she should definitely be kept from them: mermaids could devour a child faster than a riptide could steal it. “Have you lost this?” she asked. “Or has one of your sisters?” The mermaid squinted at the baby, bottom fangs pressing into her lip. Then she ducked her head under the waves. Soon a chorus of mermaids (silver-slick, sleek as sharks and far more deadly) splashed from the surf, beaching themselves as Dora stepped quickly backwards. Each eyed the baby, shook her dangerous head, and slipped back into the water. “Don’t bring her here,” hissed Marut when the others were gone. “We don’t want her.” Then she, too, flipped backward, vanishing into the sea. “Well, that settles it,” Nyx said. “The little thing’s not human. If she had been, they’d have fought us both to get her.” Dora winced. “I didn’t think of that. I suppose I shouldn’t have stood so close to the water.” They looked around, seeking other clues. The shore was empty, no joggers or beachcombers breaking the gleaming horizon. The baby cooed as the witches exchanged a long, lost look. “I have no idea what to do,” Nyx said finally. “We can’t give her to the mortals. She’s blue.” “Well, we can’t leave her here,” Dora decided. “Let’s take her inside, anyway.” They hurried into the house, shading their faces against the sun. In Dora’s cool, dark cottage, they tried to work out what an infant needed. Nyx passed on what little she knew from her travels (Dora, having no experience with children, had no knowledge to contribute). “She’s probably big enough to drink on her own,” Nyx mused. “Usually when they’re crawling they can have a cup or something. Or a special bottle.” “I have milk in a bottle,” said Dora, who’d never resigned herself to cartons. She took it out and offered it to the child, but had to hold it up herself when the glass bottle proved too heavy for the baby’s plump blue arms. “What else?” “A bed? Here, we can put her on yours and make a blanket nest for now, so you won’t squish her when you sleep. Not that you would!” Nyx added, seeing her friend’s glare. “Ah… beforehand, though, we should wrap her in something so she won’t make a mess. They don’t know about bathrooms till they’re older.” “Too late!” groaned Dora, “She’s sprung a leak.” She rushed the dripping child to the sink and drew a bath, washing the baby (who seemed quite pleased with herself) while Nyx made a little dress from an old dish towel. They moved around each other awkwardly at first, unused to sharing so close a space. They’d rarely spent this much time together. Usually they had tea, traded stories, and parted ways until their next meeting, a week or a month or a year later. Now, nestled in her rocking chair with the newly-bathed foundling in her lap, Dora felt suddenly self-conscious. When she caught Nyx stealing glances, she asked irritably, “What on earth are you looking at?” Nyx averted her eyes. “Nothing. You just look so… domestic. I mean, you’ve always been domestic, but I’ve never seen you so…” She cleared her throat. “Here,” she said, handing over the makeshift dress. “See if this works.” Blushing, Dora dressed the child and diapered her with another towel. Soon the foundling was installed in the nest of blankets, fast asleep. The two witches watched the sleeping creature for some time. At last, Nyx cleared her throat. “Are you planning to keep her?” “Unless you want to take her with you,” Dora said dryly. “She can sit on the pyramids with you.” She’d been joking, but her friend hesitated. “I could try. Or maybe I can track down my mother. She might know someone who could help. I don’t want to leave you to take care of her with no help. We found her together. And—” Her last words were cut off by a mighty yawn. Seeing her waver, Dora remembered that Nyx often stayed awake for days on end, stretching each wandering journey into one enormous night, around and around the world. She should certainly have been asleep ages ago. “Lie down,” Dora said firmly. “Go to sleep. You can’t leave now without a terrible sunburn, anyway, even if you manage to stay upright long enough to get back to wherever you’ve been hiding yourself.” It was a testament to Nyx’s weariness that she didn’t protest, though she looked shy as she climbed into Dora’s bed. Her lanky frame barely fit alongside the baby’s nest, and her toes trailed off the edge. But seeing her and the child together sent strange warmth through Dora’s heart. Dimming the lamp, the Dawn Witch climbed carefully into bed with them and fell asleep in minutes. *** Nyx scoured the globe for weeks, searching for the child’s parents. Dora, lacking the physical strength to stray far from home, asked every mortal she could find if they knew of a missing infant. Her inquiries soon attracted the attention of local authorities, and twice she had to persuade the police to forget about her. She felt bad for fiddling with their memories, but she certainly wasn’t entrusting the baby to them. In the end, there were no clues at all, which perhaps wasn’t really surprising. “Did your mother ever tell you where you came from?” Nyx asked one day as they huddled under a parasol, watching the baby (now called Caru) playing on the beach. “Were you made in the usual way, or did she find you?” Dora shook her head. “She told me once that she’d made me from a cobweb, but I couldn’t tell if she was joking. Whenever I tried to press for details, she changed the subject. And yours?” Nyx shrugged. “No idea. We stopped getting along before it occurred to me to ask. But I think she might have just found me somewhere, too. She wasn’t really the type to tolerate pregnancy. And I was quite mobile from a young age, just like our bubble child.” They looked at Caru. Preternaturally skilled in chaos, she was scooping up sand and dusting it through her ruby-red curls, which would need to be washed later. “We found her,” Dora said after a moment. “Like they found us.” “So… does that mean she’s ours?” Nyx rose and skittered gingerly across the sunbaked sand, shielding her face from the light with the sleeve of her robe. Scooping the baby up, she kissed her on both cheeks. “Ours, Caru. What do you think about that?” *** Whatever Caru’s provenance (and whatever they morally and legally should have done with her), she seemed happy enough to stay with them. Soon it seemed the house had always held the sound and presence of a wild, fast-growing creature with the destructive power of a hurricane. Even so, it was a difficult adjustment at first. Dora had lived alone in her cottage for more than two centuries. To suddenly be a mother to this thing that filled the walls endlessly with sound—that screamed, snored, laughed, wept, drummed on the furniture, and threw dishes to the floor—was an incomprehensible burden. But gradually it became natural to pick Caru up: when she cried, when she stumbled, when she threw herself into her mothers’ arms for joy or sorrow or pure delight of movement. Both of them were drawn to the baby as if she’d pulled a string through their hearts to lead them. It was clear without discussion that this child was now the center of both their lives. Life took on a steady rhythm as they learned their way through parenthood. They passed chores from hand to hand, sharing quick meals and coffee whenever the baby slept. They kept the house as tidy as they could, though it wasn’t nearly as neat as when Dora had lived alone. The floor was soon covered with toys: some brought by Nyx from her various travels; some made by Dora, who had learned many handicrafts in her centuries alone. The hardest thing was getting used to having Nyx around so much. The Night Witch spent all her sunlit hours at the cottage, abandoning her usual dwellings. Sometimes she even spent her nights there, playing with Caru and talking to Dora until the morning drove them all to sleep. But even when her wanderlust carried her to the farthest corners of the earth, she came back in a day or two. Somehow Dora’s house, long though she’d had it, was now more of a home to her than it ever had been. She grew used to the sight of Nyx lying across the bed like a mislaid broom, large feet dangling off the end. A black quilt had been added to the gray-covered bed, and Caru had her own small cot nearby. Dora sometimes lay awake listening to the rustle of her daughter’s breathing and Nyx’s occasional snore. Looking around the single room, she’d marvel at the things that had appeared there: trinkets of obsidian and jet, blue-black scarves with silver stars, wine velvet trousers, mysterious scraps of black gauze, all mixed and mingled together with Caru’s toys and her own dawn-colored things. It was breathtaking sometimes, as if the air were full of perfume. Sometimes Dora felt wistful for her old uncomplicated old life—when she could look up from her reading and see only the window, could know exactly what would be happening in her house from one hour to the next. But now she was seldom alone with her thoughts, much less her accustomed melancholy. Where before her days had been full of silence and shadows, now there was plump blue Caru and the angular visage of the person who knew Dora best of anyone in the world. She soon grew to depend on the steadiness of Nyx’s breathing, the second set of hands always ready to do what she could not. And it was lovely to know she could look up whenever she liked and talk about the book she was reading, or ask for Nyx’s opinion on a skein of wool. As the mornings brightened, they watched the beachgoers from their shadowed doorstep, marveling at the ever-changing fashions of the human world. They ate together, argued over tea, took walks at dusk (though sleepy, Dora usually stayed up to see the Night Witch off). They often sang together on rainy evenings, and Dora thrilled to hear her friend’s low voice caress the syllables of familiar tunes, making them enchanted. And when the sun was bright, they drew the curtains and slept side by side, negotiating space in the narrow bed and waking in turns to check on their charge. In the end, their searching had turned up no information. It gave Dora a choking feeling to think that Caru’s parents (if she had them) might someday come to look for her. And even if they didn’t (for she had begun to suspect that their girl had been born a fish, or rolled herself together out of seafoam) a day would come when Caru wouldn’t need her mothers anymore. Then she would leave them, as both of them had left their own mothers as soon as they were old enough to know their own minds. And on that day, Nyx would surely leave, too. Dora wasn’t sure she could endure it. Now that she knew how it was to live with Nyx (working and sleeping beside her, every image of her life marked by her friend’s spindly grace) she couldn’t imagine returning to life without her. For the first few months, Nyx stayed close to home, surrendering only occasionally to her wanderlust. But as the baby grew, the Night Witch yielded more often to the call of darkness. She began to take the child with her sometimes, striding out into the darkened country with Caru burbling on her back, showing her a world of mysteries that Dora would never see. Dora was left to listen as the lonely wind wandered the shore, whistling in the cracks of her driftwood cottage. On those nights, Dora felt loneliness collecting on her like cobwebs. Solitude hadn’t troubled her in her centuries alone, but now it was inescapable. As the quiet hours passed, she returned inevitably to thoughts of Nyx: how they’d met on the beach as little girls, talking shyly as their mothers conferred, the wide brims of their hats (one dark, one pale) protecting them from the sun. She’d admired Nyx all her life, and had often thought wistfully of her between their rendezvous. But since they’d adopted Caru, the Night Witch had become a cornerstone of Dora’s life. When she was gone for longer than a day, her absence hurt like a hole in the chest. Once, feeling particularly inadequate, Dora tried to join the others on their nightly wanderings. Though surprised, Nyx looked happy, and she adjusted her pace to accommodate Dora’s slower steps. But even at that gentle speed, Dora soon grew exhausted from casting herself forward into darkness, sliding westward from hill to hill till she was farther from home than she’d come in years. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep going much further—and she knew that however kindly Nyx hid it, she must be thinking of the places she wouldn’t get to see tonight, longing for the warmth of distant winds. “Is something wrong?” Nyx studied her closely. “Are you tired? Unhappy? Do you need to stop and rest?” “Just tired. I think this is the farthest I can go tonight.” Dora slowed, stepping down from the road of wind and magic onto the cold, flat shore below. She saw a faint light in the far distance: her porch lamp, small and lonely against the vast black sky above the sea. “No, it’s all right,” she added quickly, when Nyx moved to join her. “I can get back from here. It won’t take long. I could use the exercise. You two go on.” “Are you sure?” Tense with concern, Nyx leaned down to tuck Dora’s shawl more firmly around her shoulders. “I don’t want to send you back exhausted.” Dora pushed her away gently. “I’m not exhausted. Just tired. Go on. You know Caru gets fussy when she misses her walks.” The Night Witch looked about to protest. But Caru was indeed getting fractious, shaking her small fists, eager to go out and explore the country of the stars. Biting her lip, Nyx kissed Dora’s cheek. “Be careful. Call if you need help. I’ll come right back.” Dora waved her away, irritated by this extended attention to her weakness. “It’s all right. I should have known better. I’ll see you in the morning.” Nyx wavered. Then, sighing, she started walking again, covering two or three paces with every step, until she and Caru had left Dora behind. Trembling with exhaustion, the Dawn Witch tottered home. The whole way, she imagined Nyx and Caru cutting through the darkness, wind rushing around their faces, wild songs burning in their hearts. Nyx had once said that, if you traveled deep enough into the night, the air would fill with spices and you’d step from one world into another. It seemed this was an experience that Dora (frail from birth) would never share. When she finally got home, she sank into her reading chair and fell immediately asleep. Her dreams were cold and miserable. But she woke at dawn to Nyx laying a drowsing Caru in her lap. While the baby cooed, the Night Witch twined night-blooming flowers through Dora’s fragile hair. “We missed you, dear heart,” she whispered, as Caru patted Dora’s face and tugged at the flowers. “Shall I tell you what we saw?” And she led Dora to bed and lay beside her, whispering stories into her ear until they both fell asleep. *** Caru grew faster and faster. In a year, she was walking. A few months later, she was speaking, first in words and then in sentences. They didn’t know if that was normal for her, given that they didn’t know exactly what she was. But she seemed happy. They let her run wild, face smudged, red curls tangling. Their mothers had let them run wild, after all, and neither was the worse for it. From time to time, when they remembered, they pinned her down by the fireside and worked the tangles out. Then Caru would run out and lead them on a laughing chase among the dunes until they were all tousled and tangled again. As would be expected of any child fostered by witches, Caru was deeply uncanny. She talked as much to herself as to her mothers, building a language neither of them knew. But she learned their language, too, and called them both “Ma” interchangeably. Sometimes she wandered the world with Nyx after sunset, learning the names of the stars. Other nights she stayed home, keeping house with Dora. By daylight, when the witches were forced to take shelter, their bubble child sat on the shore, calling to the mermaids (who still wanted nothing to do with her) or playing with human children, who never seemed to notice anything unusual about her. She slept when she wished and wandered where she liked, living the hours of some star neither of her mothers could see. She seemed to love them both equally, and helped gladly around the house when she was home, gifting them often with treasures: paintings, seashells, fruits she’d found where no fruit should have been growing, and strange breathless stories of other worlds. Again and again, they wondered where she’d come from. But they knew by now that they’d never find an answer. Caru simply was, and they adored her. *** When Caru was seven, Dora woke to find her gone. She didn’t understand at first what had happened. It was still dark, and the house was empty, the only sounds the waves outside and the creaking of the walls. Caru must be out beachcombing, Dora thought drowsily. Though still small, her daughter stayed or went as she pleased, wandering off on quests of her own and leaving her mothers to wait for her. Sure enough, Caru’s little bag was gone, and a sandwich had been made (raspberry jam on yesterday’s bread, judging by the evidence), and a pair of small blue sandals were missing from the door. It wasn’t the first time, or even the first time that week, that Caru had gone out so early. Most children would still be abed, but the bubble child kept strange hours. As the strength of the coming dawn warmed her bones, the Dawn Witch put on her sweater and went out to find her daughter. “Caru?” A rough wind carried shreds of Dora’s voice down the empty beach. She shivered. Then she froze. Beside the house, a vast and intricate sand castle sprawled like a miniature city. Its curtain wall meandered down the shore, rambling with familiar grace over tide-runnels and remnants of footprints. Battlements had been notched carefully into its top, protecting dozens of nested keeps and baileys. She must have worked all night, Dora thought, bewildered. She bent to look more closely, running her fingers down the side of one small tower. Each keep had been scored with an ornate pattern that caught the shadows of the rising sun like sandy filigree. A sand-crusted twig was thrust through the roof of the highest keep. Tied around this twig was a folded slip of paper. Dora removed it carefully, mindful of the many delicate walls that separated her from the keep. When she unfolded it, she found a short message in Caru’s wandering handwriting. I love you, Mama. I love you, Mama. She sat very still, holding the note in both hands, as the sunlight warmed around her and she realized that her daughter was gone. *** The sun was fully up, the beach uncomfortably warm, but she’d made no move toward the house by the time Nyx’s spindly black-swathed arms wrapped around her shoulders. “Darling, what’s wrong?” Nyx pressed her cheek to Dora’s, shading them both with her hood. “Why are you out here so late? Where’s Caru?” Dora handed her the note. A flash of grief crossed the Night Witch’s quixotic face as she read it. She looked for a long time at the sand castle, which by daylight was even more impressive. “She’s gone, then,” she said quietly. “Off to be her own creature.” “Yes.” The word escaped in a sudden, despairing sigh. “I’m sorry. I should have heard her—I should have stayed awake, or we should have put in a better lock. She’s been able to get through that one since she was five. I just… it didn’t occur to me that she would leave without saying goodbye.” “Shh.” Nyx drew her closer, stroking her hair. “It isn’t your fault. How could you know? And remember, we both did the same thing when we were small, maybe even younger than Caru. You went off and holed yourself up in bookstores, and I…” She laughed. “Remember how I wandered? I’d be gone for days. Weeks. I was learning the winds, and I’d go wherever they’d take me. Anywhere. Mother had to go to Egypt to find me once, when she didn’t see me for two months.” Dora laughed damply. “I do remember. Your mother seemed more annoyed by the exercise than the disappearance.” Dora’s own mother had fallen into daydreams before the Dawn Witch was old enough to ramble. She’d barely ever noticed when Dora had gone wandering, and hadn’t once come looking for her. So Dora had learned to take care of herself, building her own home and inviting Nyx to visit between odysseys. Before Caru, that had been enough. “She must take after me,” Nyx mused, running her hand delicately down the castle wall. “A true rambler. No surprise, given how she first turned up. Who knows where she was from originally? And it’s the nature of our kind to wander. Yourself excluded, obviously.” Glancing sideways, Dora saw that her friend’s lean face was drawn and tired. Nyx should have been long abed. “I can’t go after her now,” Nyx said, echoing her thoughts. “Neither can you. But I’ll go west and look for her as soon as it gets dark. She loved Tokyo last month. And there was this island where we stopped to watch the starlight…” She broke off, leaning close to scrutinize Dora’s face. “Are you all right, dearest?” Dora nodded, sniffling. “I know you’re right. She’s clever. I know she’ll take care of herself.” Intellectually, she knew Caru was stronger and more vibrant than she herself had ever been, maybe even stronger than Nyx. From the moment they’d first seen her, their bubble child had carried a flame they couldn’t reach, some destiny she was following that was unrelated to either of them. “It’s just so soon. I thought we’d have more time with her before she went looking for… whatever it is she’s looking for. And…” She trembled on the precipice of what she was about to say, then stepped over. “And you. It means so much, having you here. My life has been so much better. I’m afraid that, with Caru gone, it’s all going to end. And I’m selfish! I want to keep things as they are. But with her growing up, things can’t be the same.” Silence stretched. Nyx’s brow furrowed. With the air of someone betting everything on a risky proposition, she said quietly, “Dora. Do you want it to end?” “Of course not!” Dora said, nearly choking on the words in her urgency to get them out. Nyx shook her head. “You must be tired of us eternally in your space. Seashells in the washbasin. Darks tangled with lights. Caru knocking pictures off the walls. If you need time to yourself—or just prefer to be independent again—I can leave. As soon as you say, I’ll find somewhere to go. There are places in town where I could—” “No!” The Night Witch gave Dora a slow, questioning smile. Something bright was dawning in her eyes. “I mean,” Dora amended haltingly, “do you want to go? Really?” Nyx shook her head. Pushing past fear, barely daring to breathe, Dora pressed a soft kiss to the corner of Nyx’s mouth. This seemed to break a dam. Nyx clutched Dora tightly to her, kissing her again and again till both of them were breathless. Finally Nyx collapsed against her, sighing, laughing, sobbing. “Dora, Dora, Dora…” “We should have done that ages ago.” Dora combed through her friend’s hair, pressing kisses to the corner of Nyx’s dark brow. “What kept us apart?” “I’ve loved you since we were children,” Nyx agreed. “But I never knew you felt the same.” They sat by the castle awhile, basking in the silence of this new moment. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Dora asked at last. “I never thought you saw me as more than a friend.” Nyx snorted. “Why didn’t you? You’re the inscrutable one, with your veils and your silences and your sweet sea-glass face. I never could be certain what you were thinking. I certainly couldn’t hope you ever saw me as someone worth kissing.” The comment stung, but it was fair. “I never had many people to show my face to,” Dora murmured. “So maybe I’m not good at showing my feelings on it. But… you’ve always been the best thing in my life, you know. I loved my house the most when you were there with me.” “I felt the same,” Nyx agreed quickly. “Growing up, I always loved telling you where I’d been, what I’d seen, what I’d found. Telling you seemed as valuable as seeing the things myself.” “I wonder if our mothers noticed,” mused Dora. “How we fixated on each other.” “Probably,” Nyx said dryly. “I’m an open book. You used to tease me about it, remember? Mother could read me, too. And since it was you…” She laughed, blushing slightly. “It must have been obvious from about age four that I thought you’d sculpted the moon and hung it with your own two hands. You were a princess in a castle. I idolized you.” Dora’s cheeks warmed. “I idolized you, too. To me, you were a kind of… bold knight, or perhaps a warrior queen. An adventurer. I always wished I could be as brave as you.” Nyx grinned flirtatiously. “You find me dashing?” Dora kissed her again. For a while, they lost themselves. Burying her face in Nyx’s perfumed hair, the Dawn Witch thought, I almost lost this. When they drew back, she whispered, “Let’s stay together. As long as we want to. Forever, maybe?” Nyx hesitated. “Will it be crowded for you? You like your space.” “And you like your freedom,” Dora agreed. “I know. But… you’re part of my space now. It doesn’t feel right without you anymore. I know not all of you can fit into our life. You have a world outside the house, outside this beach. But whatever part of your life can fit with me, I hope you’ll stay. Keep making your home here. If… if you want to.” “It’s the most perfect home I’ve ever had,” Nyx whispered. “You’re the most perfect home I’ve ever had. I’d be honored to stay.” Dora kissed her again. Then they retreated to the house together to hide from the sun, holding each other while they waited for the daylight to fade so they could go and seek their wandering child together. Three days later, Caru bounced through the door as if nothing had happened, dressed in human clothes and trailing saltwater taffy. She brightened further to see her mothers curled up together, and she regaled them with stories of boardwalks and boat rides while they drew a bath for her and plied her with sandwiches. Then she yawned and curled up in her slightly-too-small bed, and the house on the shore fell quiet for the night. |
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Katherine Traylor
Katherine Traylor is a US-born writer currently based in Prague, Czech Republic. Her writing is often fairy-tale-inspired with a strong focus on transformation. Her work can be found in the anthologies Slightly Sweetly, Slightly Creepy; Literally Dead: Tales of Holiday Hauntings; Dangerous Waters: Deadly Women of the Sea; Once Upon a Wicked Heart; and Gods & Services; as well as MYTHIC Magazine, Creepy Podcast, and Tales to Terrify. She shares a home with her beautiful wife and three four-footed children. Follow her on her website, katherinetraylor.com.
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