Fallen
an excerpt

As I was tucking the little bundle of dreamsbane into the saddlebag, however, an unfamiliar voice behind me said my name, “Fent Levere?”

I turned around. “Yeah?”

It was the new face from the grocer’s, and he was fixing me with the same curious stare he’d regarded me with in Lonel’s shop. One hand had reached up absently to rub his beardless chin. It looked as though he had gone ahead and bought a map; it was tucked under one arm. He didn’t however, bother to explain why he’d gotten my attention.

After a few moments of no answer, he was starting to make me nervous. I found my hand drifting self-consciously up to my unruly and multi-colored mane, which his gaze seemed to be resting on. But I caught myself, shook my head, and reminded myself that if anyone should be embarrassed, it was him. Instead, I pressed him for the information he wasn’t giving. “Who are you?”

He shrugged. “I knew your mother.”

I don’t know if he expected me to jump at this unexpected piece of information, since goodness knew I had met only a few people who associated me with Mama rather than Papa— she’d died when I was only a baby, after all— but all I did was raise an eyebrow. “So did a lot of people. My father, for one.”

He smiled slightly. “Indeed. You don’t look a lot like her. Or your father, either.”

I sighed. Where Papa was tall and lanky, I was short and skinny, and where he’d smashed his nose half a dozen times, despite the run-in with Papa’s elbow this morning mine was still perfectly straight. We were both lanky and mostly black-haired (Papa was graying, and I had red streaks through my hair), but that was about it. I’d been told a couple of times that my eyes were Mama’s, but as far as I knew that was the only trait I’d really inherited directly from her. “I don’t know, I think I’ve got a few traits in common with Papa.”

“The one who gave you those streaks in your hair?”

I reached up to the horsetail and absentmindedly picked at one of the red streaks he spoke of and shook my head. “Possibly. After all, his experiments occasionally have . . . unfortunate side-effects.” I nodded to Maigne— I was convinced that the cold-potion he gave the animal the first time he was sick was responsible for the intelligence too great for his own good. There had been owl brains in it, at least.

The stranger’s lip raised in a sneer. “Indeed. And nobody knew that better than you mother. Which was why she found different bedfellows.”

I rolled my eyes up to the heavens and turned back to Mainge. “Do you honestly think I haven’t heard that before?” I asked absently, loud enough he could hear even though I wasn’t really looking at him. “I mean, yes, most of the people around here had enough tact not to mention my parentage in front of a child, but there was always the occasional idiot who couldn’t be bothered to check and make sure I wasn’t around while gossipmongering. And I’m not a child anymore, I’m afraid.”

Behind me, the man sighed. “I didn’t expect that to be a new concept to you. I’m merely pointing out that your resemblance to the man you call father is merely coincidental.”

“What of it?” I asked. Mainge was shifting uncomfortably under my hands, as if there was something wrong with the situation. I patted him absently, although I felt the same uneasiness. It struck people as odd that I didn’t care about my parentage. I was happy with Papa being the only father I’d ever know, though, so why should it matter to me?

“Have you ever wondered about the powers he couldn’t teach you?”

“Occasionally,” I admitted. I tied the pack shut and used a nearby crate to get into the saddle. “But I’ve come to live with the disappointment. Good day, sir.”

Maigne started trotting back towards home before I even thought to tell him to get going. But I didn’t protest when he took the other way out of town, avoiding the graveyard with it’s twitches and leaving whoever it was behind.

I really, really doubted he actually knew what was going on, since Papa had never been able to find anything about it. And I hated being lied to more than I thought I needed to know.