Memories—painful memories of my mother’s brutal death worked their way through my mind. I tried to shut out the images of that horrible night from long ago. For the second time in a month, my mind conjured up her beautiful face marred with regret and agony.

A rose petal softness replaced the haughty look on Sen’s face. “I’m so sorry about your mother,” she whispered.

Her voice pulled me from morbidity. “You know of my mother’s death?”

Sen nodded. “All the fairy godmothers do. Your disappearance and her murder are stains on our order.”

A swell of anger needled up through my belly and into my heart. I clutched at my chest, trying to rub away a phantom pain that had never fully healed. “All this time, I thought I’d gotten lost in the ether. I thought I’d been careless, that her death was my fault, but it was a fairy godmother who opened a portal.”

Sen winced at the malcontent in my voice and recoiled, her wings and face as taut as piano wire. A desperate plea for understanding colored her voice, “The fairies punished and excommunicated the one responsible for the accident. The elders banished her to another realm.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I spat through my teeth.

Sen straightened her wings and drew herself up tall, defiant in her search for vindication. “I’m sorry for what happened to your mother. The fairies enacted justice. Yours wasn’t the only family destroyed that day.” With that, she flew into a hut and remained there until sunset.

Peter watched her disappear into the hut, then spoke. “It was her mother.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The fairy who opened the portal when you disappeared. It was Sen’s mother.”

I stared at the boy, grappling with two voices in my head: one in earnest to know more, the other beseeching me to turn away and ignore the lad’s account. My inner turmoil left me rooted to the spot, much like a tree battling to stay erect during a hurricane. And like the tree, the branches of my mind, splayed and helpless, succumbed to the gale.

Peter pivoted, and began walking toward the shoreline. The waves, bathed in golden light, glittered like fractured glass, the sleek heads of children bobbing back and forth amongst them. “She was granting a wish,” he said over his shoulder, the inertia in his feet matching the enthusiasm of the silhouettes as they capered through the swells. Without preamble, the youngster crowed, kicked up his heels and launched headfirst into the water.

As unobtrusive as a ghost crab, Duncan stayed by my side throughout the day, his voice carved little holes in my melancholy, keeping me from the grips of utter despair. While I ruminated my mother’s fate, he spoke quietly of the next steps we’d need to take.