Chapter Text
1957
Mae loves the beach best like this, after sundown, when the lifeguards have gone off duty and most of the tourists have packed up to go drink and gamble and shop. The sun is hanging low and hazy orange over the blue-grey sea and the sand is starting to cool off. She’s dug herself a nice little channel to lie in, her shorts bundled up to her hips, letting the tide surge up her legs and then back down again. She could almost fall asleep like this, despite the sand in her hair and the sunburn on her face and arms, at least until a sandaled foot prods at her.
“You promised,” a voice says accusingly.
Eyes still closed, she murmurs in assent, then wrinkles her nose as something drips down onto her pedal pushers. She lost the belt for them a few days ago, and Mum’s going to be furious. She’s really completely neurotic about that kind of thing, being careless with clothes. You’d think they were about to be inspected at any moment, the way she goes on and on when Mae gets a stain on a blouse or loses a sock. To be fair, she does lose an awful lot of socks, mostly because they get sand in them and then she takes them off, leaves them somewhere, and forgets. She doesn’t see the big deal. They’re not exactly charging you through the roof for a pair of bobby socks.
But for all that she can be sloppy with her clothes, that doesn’t mean she wants to be… dripped on. Her eyes snap open in an immediate glare, and she hooks a hand round the offending ankle of the bothersome foot, yanks hard, and sends Isaac sprawling onto the sand with a muffled shout. He was wringing his wet shirt out on her, the little brat. Isaac is her cousin in all but blood; his mum and hers are old schoolmates. He’s only seven, but he’s usually less of an annoyance than his little brother Joel, at any rate. Joel is five and unbelievably shrill. Mae can hardly believe he’s the product of two such mild-mannered people as Auntie V and Uncle Danny. Auntie V is an arithmancer, for Merlin’s sake, and Uncle Danny works for a bank.
That’s why they’re here in the spring, at any rate. Uncle Danny has business in Gibraltar and thought he might as well bring along the wife and kiddies. Mae’s barely seen any of him, since he’s busy doing boring muggle work things, and Auntie V spends nearly all her time cooped up gossiping about their old school days with Mum, or helping her and the O’Neills in the clinic, but Mae has seen quite enough of Isaac and Joel. Thankfully they’re leaving in a few days, although she supposes she ought to at least pretend to be upset over it, to not hurt Mum’s feelings.
Maybe it’d be easier if any of them were Mae’s age. Eleven is really too old to be running around like a little kid, but too young to do anything exciting or interesting, either. And she’s sick of being treated like such a baby. Mum’s always on her about where she’s been and where she’s going- Mae leaves a note every time! They live on a bloody rock on the tip of a peninsula. It’s not as if there’s all that far to go. God, anywhere would be better than here.
Mae loves the ocean and the caves and the Moorish Castle, loves to visit the Upper Rock reserve and see the macaques, loves to go out and pick candytuft and rosemary and jasmine and periwinkle and narcissus and asphodel with Mum for her potions and salves, loves to walk the cliffs and stare out into the horizon or watch the planes come in. She likes to feed the feral cats and watch their kittens come out to explore the alleys and back streets, she likes to go out on Teddy’s boat and look for dolphins and whales, she likes to bird watch from the top of the Rookery and watch the petrels and cormorants and herons and egrets and even a few flamingos come in to deliver the mail, rain or shine.
But still. The obnoxious tourists and the traffic and the noise and the drunks and how jampacked everything is and the fact that she’s never even left the peninsula all seems to balance out the good bits. She’s got barely any friends her own age at all because the magical population is so minuscule- a thousand, if that, and most of them are expats waiting around in the sun to drop dead of something- she’s never even been to a proper school, she’s always stuck cleaning something or running errands for Mum while she’s working, and oh, that’s right, now she’s expected to entertain the brats while everyone else socializes.
She snatches Isaac’s sodden shirt away from him and whips him hard cross the back with it in a proper rat-tail; he screeches in pain and flings sand at her, but then gamely follows her away from the water all the same, shouting for his brother. Joel comes running up, dragging a long stick of driftwood behind him, although Mae shoots him a dirty look as they near the dunes, and he drops it guiltily. “Quiet,” she snaps. “Alright? You’ve got to be quiet. She hates the noise and she doesn’t like strangers.”
“How d’you know it’s a she? Maybe it’s a boy,” Isaac says sullenly as they stagger up through the sand and patches of tall grass.
“She told me, numskull.” Mae places her hands on her hips, lifts her chin imperiously, and says, “Stay. Here.”
The brothers come to an uncomfortable halt as she looks around the barren dunes, then sits down cross-legged, drumming her fingers into the sand. “Fernanda,” she calls, “come out, lovely girl. Fernanda, I’ve got a treat for you.” She rummages in her pocket, then comes out with the dead shrew, which is really nearly mummified as this rate. Hopefully Fernanda won’t mind. “I killed him this morning, and he’s a plump one. Come on out, darling girl.”
Isaac and Joel are staring at her. Mae furrows her brow at them. “What?”
“What’re you saying?” Isaac demands. “It just sounds like-,”
Joel imitates some strangled hissing noises, bug-eyed. Mae waves the dead shrew at them threateningly, then starts as something warm slithers across her. Fernanda is young, only a foot long, and she flicks the yellow tip of her tail at Mae’s ankle impatiently. Mae beams, strokes the back of her triangular head, and feeds her the shrew in her hand. Fernanda never speaks until she’s eaten; when she’s done and the shrew is moving down the length of her in a new bulge, she flicks her tail at Isaac and Joel and questions, “Who are they, Warmblood?” No one ever said vipers were polite, after all, although some are. Fernanda’s just especially blunt for a snake.
“My friends,” Mae tells her. “My mother and theirs once shared a nest.”
“They’re pinker than you,” Fernanda observes critically. “Are they from the North?”
“From England. Everyone’s pinker there.”
Fernanda shudders slightly. “That is no place for a snake. The sun is too far.” She slithers up Mae’s arm, resting her head on her shoulder. “The hatchlings may approach.”
“You can come touch her, if you want- gently,” Mae warns, and after some hesitation, Isaac and Joel both come over to stroke the viper’s gleaming grey scales. “Isn’t she pretty?”
“I thought she’d be slimy,” Isaac frowns. Lucky Fernanda can’t understand him.
“Snakes aren’t wet, stupid,” Mae rolls her eyes. “They’re not like a frog. And they’re not scary, either. Not if you know how to treat them nice.” Once she caught a few older boys trying to kill a grass snake. She got so angry that her magic made one of them break out in swollen hives, and the others thought he’d stepped on a hornet’s nest and ran off screaming. Mum was upset because she’d thought she’d tried to do it on purpose, but it was an accident. If Mae was going to do something to them on purpose for hurting a snake, it’d have been a lot worse than some silly hives.
After a few minutes Fernanda slithers off to finish digesting her supper, and Mae stands up with a sigh, brushes off her dusty clothes, and begins the long uphill walk back to the clinic with the boys. They’ve barely walked ten minutes before Joel is complaining about his feet hurting, so as much as she wants to leave him on the side of the road, he’d probably just get run over by a motorcycle. Mae lets him clamber up onto her back, then keeps walking, feeling the muscles in her tanned legs burn, frowning as one of her sandals continuously rubs up against a blister on her heel.
The clinic is one of the stone buildings dug into the seat of the Rock itself, which most of the wizards still refer to as Mons Calpe, like the Romans did. Of course, the Romans thought it was one point of the world, and Jebel Musa in Morocco the other. Two pillars on the two edges of a flat world. The way Mum acts, they might as well be right. Mae’s never been beyond either of them. It’s within sight when she remembers she has to stop by the Rookery and pick up their mail. She sets Joel down, and prods him and Isaac towards the clinic. “Go on, your mum’s probably miffed we’re late. I’ll catch up.”
Reinvigorated without a sweaty five year old on her back, she dashes up the precarious set of wooden, crumbling steps to the Rookery, slams through the door, rattling the bell, ignores the dirty look she gets from Mr. Fierro, who looks after the birds and sorts everyone’s mail, and runs her fingers along the wall full of boxes, the same you’d find in at muggle post office, searching for the B of their name. There it is, seven down, third from the right side- she scrounges in her pocket for her key, then jams it into the rusting lock and pries it open. A few letters, probably cards for Mum. It was her birthday last week. Thirty, only Mae’s not allowed to say it, because it’s rude to comment on a lady’s age. Even when she is your mother.
She grabs the envelopes and her key, and turns to go when Fierro waves her over. “Package for your mother, missy.”
Mae rolls her eyes at being called ‘missy’ but obediently signs for it anyways, even though he’s really not supposed to accept the signature of an eleven year old. Things are a bit lax here, Mum likes to say. They’re technically under the jurisdiction of the British Ministry of Magic, but the Spaniards like to interfere as well, so no one’s ever really clear about what laws apply and to whom and who to direct their complaints to. Not that anyone’s writing government officials. There’s only two reasons a wizard would come to Gibraltar, Mae thinks. To con tourists or to hide.
The box is light, she notes, juggling it in her dirty hands along with the letters, but she supposes that’s a good thing. If she drops it she won’t break anything. Mae wouldn’t call herself clumsy (although some people might) and Mum agrees- “You’re not clumsy,” she’s told her a thousand and one times, “you’re careless, is what you are. You’ve no respect for other people’s things. Or your own, half the time!”
That’s not really true. Mae just doesn’t see the point in fussing over objects. They’re just things. Inanimate, unthinking, unfeeling. Who cares if she breaks a plate or dents a vase? They’ve got magic, they can just make new ones. It’s not as if anything they own is that expensive. Nearly all her clothes are bought second-hand or patched up by Mum, and while Mum dresses slightly better, she’s had the same wardrobe for years now, as much as she likes to ogle over fashion magazines and window shop.
Inside the clinic, it reeks of blood and magic. Isaac and Joel have recovered from the long walk and are gulping down murky lemonade on the stairs leading up to the flat that Mae and Mum share with the O’Neills, although Teddy and Patsy aren’t there half the time, too busy with their work at the orphanage in Granada. Mae is always stuck there one weekend a month, playing with a bunch of foundlings orphaned by the war or abandoned by their parents. It’s not all misery and tears; the orphanage is a pretty white-washed building up in the hills, surrounded by wildflowers, and there’s a pomegranate tree in the courtyard and they always have fresh fruit and vegetables. Mum says it’s like heaven, compared to how she grew up.
But Mae wouldn’t know, because Mum doesn’t like to talk about that.
Auntie V is on the phone with someone, the cord winding out onto the back patio, voices muffled. The connection cuts out half the time, especially whenever someone’s using spells in here, but Mum says it’s better than nothing. Mae likes to make prank calls on it. She skirts behind the counter, the linoleum floor crinkling under her sandals, and sets down the mail, then peeks into the exam room, where Mum is enthusiastically mopping the stained concrete while Jaime Isola makes his case for not being able to pay off his debt on time… again.
“D’you need help?” Mae asks, only to be shooed out by the end of the dripping mop. The door slams shut in her face, but she listens at it anyways, while Jaime whines about getting ripped off by Bernie Robba and how when he got sent to collect dues from the Cavillas one of them cursed him. Jaime’s a criminal, which isn’t that surprising, since Mum has a strict ‘don’t make me ask, I won’t make you tell’ policy, only no one has to even ask guys like Jaime Isola to start spouting off at the mouth about everything shady they do to pay the bills.
Finally Jaime’s prattling cuts off, and she can barely make out Mum murmuring in a low voice, then some rustling, and finally the doorknob turns and Mae hurries out of the way as Jaime limps out, pulling on his blood-soaked shirt. “You won’t regret it, cariño,” he says smoothly, although it’s somewhat dampened by the fact that he’s got a burgeoning black eye and his nose was clearly just reset by Mum, still slightly crooked.
“I’d better not,” Mum says sharply, wringing out the mop with gloved dragonhide hands. She always mops, because she says cleaning spells don't get rid of the smells properly. She looks to Mae. “You get the mail?”
“It’s on the counter, and I’m starving,” Mae retorts. “Did you at least put the kettle on? Is Auntie cooking tonight?”
“How many times have I told you not to leave our mail out in the open like that? Anyone could walk in here and take it,” Mum exclaims, even as she carries the bucket of filthy water over to the door, flings it out past the stoop, and then yanks down the CLOSED FOR ANYTHING BUT LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCIES, TRESPASSERS WILL BE HEXED sign. She then locks the door, all three times, even the bolt.
Mae sighs dramatically, scoops up the mail again, and makes her way upstairs, pulling a face at Isaac and Joel, who are slurping their drinks. Auntie V is hanging up the phone, clapping her hands together. “Danny’s laid up with work, so we won’t wait around for him any longer. Shall we have the stuffed peppers tonight? I bought some rice this morning.”
“Better than beans on toast!” Mae shouts down the stairwell, and giggles when Mum yells back about how that’s only once a month, you liar.
She shoulders open the door to the office, and puts the mail down on the cluttered desk. And that truly, really, might have been the end of it, only as she turns to go she catches a glimpse of something- her name? Mae pauses, studies the desk before her more carefully, and then spots it, peeking out from under the folds of a month-old copy of the Daily Prophet. Mum’s subscription delivery is sporadic, to say the least, not that there’s ever anything interesting in the news. Mae likes the gossip columns and reading the birth and wedding announcements, although most of them are old pureblood families with ridiculous names, giving birth to children with even more ridiculous names.
But the newspaper isn’t her concern at the moment; Mae yanks it out from under the lamp it was sitting under, ruffling over the cover page emblazoned with GAUNT AND OPPOSITION LAUNCH BID FOR MINISTER, TUFT SEEKS REELECTION WITH MAJORITY PARTY. The envelope bearing her name on it green ink neatly slides out into her waiting palm. She tosses down the paper and hungrily studies the writing. Miss M. Benson, Sabath Healing Clinic, Old Moorish Way, Westside, Gibraltar.
No one’s ever addressed her as ‘Miss’ before. No one’s ever written her a letter before. Birthday cards from friends of Mum don’t count. In March, a few months ago, when she turned eleven, she got a card from Mrs. Weiss, who Mum calls Bianka but whom Mae is not allowed to, and her name was misspelled as ‘May’. M-a-e. How hard can it be to remember? She goes to tear open the envelope, but the wax seal is already cracked in half, the contents missing. Mae stiffens in surprise as she thumbs the seal, tracing the red crest.
Then she slams her stolen mail back down on the table, collects herself by digging her nails into the soft, aging wood of the desk, puts on a smile, and walks back out for supper.
The stuffed peppers are really good, she has to admit. Auntie V’s loads better at cooking than Mum, and Isaac and Joel are too busy stuffing their faces to talk about meeting Fernanda. Mae swore them to secrecy, but she doesn’t trust them not to blab. Mum would be really upset; not that Mae was talking to snakes again, but that she showed someone else it. She says being a parselmouth is really rare, even for wizards, and that people used to think it meant your powers came directly from the Devil, so she must never tell anyone about it. Mae doesn’t see what the big deal is. Plenty of witches and wizards have all sorts of familiars- cats, owls, toads, frogs, bats, rats, rabbits, even wolves or lions or tigers, in some parts of the world. What’s wrong with snakes? If she could talk to the macaques no one would care.
Mum and Auntie V have a glass of red wine each and talk about their work and how nice the weather here has been this week and how they’ll have to come visit again, maybe in the summer. “You’re getting so big,” Auntie V tells her, not for the first or last time. “Really, Mae. Growing like a weed, you are. You’ll be a teenager before we know it, won't you?”
Mae shrugs sullenly, as is expected of her, and gulps down some more of her milk, the peppers pleasantly burning the inside of her mouth.
Then Mum remembers something Auntie Ruby told her in her last letter from the States, where she’s working now, with her new beau, in New York. Mae would love to go to New York. Or London. Or even Madrid. Or Paris. Anywhere, really. She keeps an old map that used to belong to Mr. Sabath on her low bedroom ceiling, sticks colorful pins in all the places she wants to visit. The places she will visit, when she’s of age and Mum can’t keep her cooped up here a minute longer. It’s only six more years. She feels a sharper stab of anger than usual, watching Mum laugh with her friend, having stolen Mae’s mail and lied about by omission. What right has she? Eleven’s well on the way to being grown up. She got a letter. From Hogwarts! And Mum kept it for herself instead.
But then she traces the familiar lines of Mum’s face; her sun-bleached light brown hair, gathered back in a messy knot at the nape of her sun-leathered neck, the freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks, the round curve of her chin, her smiling lips, and she softens all the same. Mae loves her mother, she does, even when she wants to hate her. And she’s never doubted for an instant that Mum loves her. They do everything together. Sometimes they’re almost friends, in a way. Tomorrow is a Sunday and she will sit behind Mum on her bike as they race down the hills to the book store, and Mum will haggle over prices while Mae sits in the dusty back room and reads to her heart’s content, devouring as much knowledge as possible, and then they will go get ice cream and walk around and mock wealthy tourists or play hopscotch or kick around a football on the beach.
But she can’t stand to forgive her right now, so she finishes her supper instead, takes a cold shower, and goes up to her attic bedroom to read while they put the boys to bed. Right now she’s halfway through Alice in Wonderland for the third time. Mae loves it, loves the language, the absurdity, and above all, desperately wants to believe that she too could follow a white rabbit down a deep, dark hole and see and do all sorts of marvelous and strange things. She’s a witch, she is, just like Mum, and once she’s got her wand- well, it will be straight through the looking glass for her. She even has an Alice headband, red with white polka dots, which compliments her dark hair and blue eyes quite well.
She’s just at the part where Alice is shrinking when her door creaks open, and Mum slips in, having changed into her own pyjamas, the bundle of mail in hand. “Thought we could open it up together. Did you comb out your hair?”
“What’s there to comb?” Mae wrinkles her nose; Mum wears her hair unfashionably long, for all that she likes to keep up with trends, but Mae’s has always been short, which is good, because it’s wavy and thick, and a real pain to deal with once it gets down to her shoulders. She runs her fingers through it jerkily, ignoring Mum’s sigh of exasperation as she sits down on the end of the bed.
“Very nice, darling.”
“Very nice, darling,” Mae imitates her almost perfectly, then suppresses a smirk when Mum smacks her with one of the envelopes. Then she remembers that she’s supposed to be angry, and stops, brooding, as Mum hands her the first letter. Mae pries it open with a fingernail, rips out the card too carelessly, and flips it open. “Hi hello dearest Amybelle-,”
“Don’t be cheeky!” Mum pokes her in the rib.
“Ow,” Mae snaps, “fine. Dearest, darling, most lovely Amy-,”
“I very much doubt the Abbotts wrote that,” Mum says dryly.
Mae sighs, then reads the note properly. It’s the usual well-wishes and whatnot, from Mr. and Mrs. Abbott, whom she has never met, but who Mum knows from school, like her aunties. Mr. Abbott is an auror, and his wife is an herbologist. They just had a baby last year, with a dollop of red fuzz atop its head. They’ve signed the card as Sincerely, Matthew and Evie. She’ll probably never meet them, just like how she’ll never go anywhere, or do anything.
She reads two more cards, and then Mum hands her the box, but Mae doesn’t open it. She can’t stand to wait any longer. “There’s never any mail for me,” she complains pointedly, watching her mother carefully. She barely blinks. Damn! “I mean, don’t you think- I am eleven now, oughtn’t I to have-,”
“You know Ulls-de-Banya doesn’t take witches until their twelfth birthday,” Mum says patiently, since they’ve had this exact conservation half a hundred times in the past two years. “Next year, love, I promise. I visited there once, it’s really quite nice, up in the mountains… We’ll have to work on your Catalan, of course.”
“I don’t want to go there,” Mae blurts out angrily, “I don’t want to wait, I want to go where I’ve actually been invited!”
Mum pauses, and Mae shifts in bed indignantly. “Have you gone through my things, Mae?”
“You took my letter!”
“Mae-,”
“You had no right,” Mae says venomously, “no right to not tell me. They always send it before your birthday, and I could go- we’re in a British territory, they’d let me go, but you- you stole it! It was mine!”
Mum jerks back then as if stung, as if her words had reached out and slapped her, then recovers herself. “Listen. I know you’re upset, but I was going to tell you. We’ve just been so busy these past few months, and then with the visit-,”
“Liar,” Mae mutters. “You were never going to tell me, were you? You never tell me anything!”
Mum exhales slowly, massaging her forehead. “I’m sorry, Mae. But I swear I was going to tell you, I just- this isn’t easy for me either. To… to accept that you’re growing up, and so fast. I thought we’d have more time. You’re right,” she reaches out and takes Mae’s hand in her own warm one. “I should have let you see it as soon as it came. I was just- I was just afraid, of... “
“Of what? Me leaving you?” Mae rolls her eyes. “Mum, it’s just school! Everyone goes! What does it matter if I go to Spain or Scotland? I’d still be leaving you.”
“I would rather you stayed close by, is all.” Mum says slowly. “And… this is your home. Our home. I know you’d like to… to go abroad, but I really think you’ll like school in Spain. It’ll be good for you.”
“Why wouldn’t Hogwarts be good for me?” Mae demands sharply. “What? Will they turn me into a toad because I can speak to snakes?”
“Of course not!” Mum lets go of her hand. “It’s- there’s a lot of memories there. For me.”
“Well, you’re not the one going, are you!”
Something about the look in Mum’s eyes frightens her, and what frightens her more is the way she takes both her hands, this time. “That- it wasn’t just an acceptance letter, for you. I’ve had a job offer. Over there.”
“Back in Britain?”
“At Hogwarts,” Mum smiles, but it’s not a happy smile, somehow. “They’ve… one of their professors has taken a leave of absence, and I was asked if I might fill in for them, just for this next school year. Potions, you know.”
“You’re a healer, not a potioneer.”
“Mae, I work with potions, it’s my job, and I can certainly manage the school curriculum,” Mum says tightly. “But I- obviously I haven’t-,”
“But then it’s perfect!” Mae brightens, shoves back the covers, scrambles up onto her knees, gripping Mum by the shoulders, “Isn’t it? I can go to Hogwarts, and you can teach there! In the fall! You won’t have to worry about me at all, and- that’s it, right? Have you said yes yet? How much would they pay you? Where’ll you stay?” The last of Mum’s birthdays gifts has fallen onto the floor, unnoticed.
“I haven’t replied yet,” Mum gently loosens Mae’s white-knuckled grip. “Settle down. They’re not looking for an answer until the end of next month. And I… even if I were to take the position- temporarily, of course- I don’t know that it… that it would be good for you,” she settles on, too carefully, minding her words and tone too much.
Mae narrows her eyes. “Why not?”
“Because- you don’t know how things go over there, the community’s much larger, they’re- they’ve got a terrible preoccupation with blood status, I don’t want you exposed to that, the house system is barbaric and divisive-,”
“Ulls-de-Banya has houses too!”
“Not based off character traits,” Mum says sharply, continuing to tick off on her fingers, “the castle is old and drafty, they haven’t updated anything since the Victorian era, the coursework is rigid, the weather’s shit, and-”
“And what?” Mae presses.
“Nothing,” says Mum. “That’s it. The weather’s shit, and I know how much you love the sun.” She holds up Mae’s sunburned arm limply, then smiles, this time almost sadly.
“I’m not a plant, I could survive some bad weather and rainy days,” Mae mutters. “But if you’ve already made up your mind-,”
“Of course I haven’t. We’ll… we’ll talk about it some more. Later.” She tugs the covers back up around Mae. “Do you want to read me some of your book?”
“No,” says Mae, “I’m still awfully irked, so I’d like a story as payment, please.”
Mum sighs, but she seems a little better than before, some of the tension leaving her face and shoulders. “Alright. What about?”
“About the beginning.” Mae has heard this many times before, but right now she just wants it again, for comfort, or a reminder of some sort.
“Fine. In the beginning… there was a girl named Amy who wanted to see the world.”
“So she signed up for the Relief Services with her friends.”
“Yes. With her friends Teddy and Patsy, she signed up to go into Europe and help the people there, who’d been hurt by Grindelwald.”
“And the Nazis.”
“Them too. So she did, right after graduation, they sent her across the Channel and into France-,”
“And then she met a boy-,”
“Don’t interrupt, love. She went to France and they helped heal people and rebuild their homes and protect their villages, and they traveled around all over, and sometimes it could be dangerous, and sometimes it was fun, but mostly it was very hard. Because so many horrible things had happened, and so many people were dead, or missing, or… or had lost the ones they loved. So she was very sad.”
“And one day-,”
“Mae!”
Mae closes her eyes, smirking. Mum ruffles her hair. “And one day, she met a soldier-,”
“A muggle soldier.”
“Yes, and he’d been a prisoner and gotten hurt, but now he was free and happy, because he was going home soon. So even though she was a witch, and he an ordinary man, they became very good friends.”
“And…”
“And they fell in love, and when people fall in love, they do stupid things like sleep together, and sometimes that means a baby.”
“So there was a baby.”
“Right. But he had to go home, and she had to stay and work. But she promised to come find him when she was too fat and too tired from the baby to work any longer.” Mum pauses for a long while. “But he got sick. And when she found out, she went to see him, but he was too sick for any visitors. And… and then he passed away. So she was really sad, and didn’t know what to do. Until an old healer named Sabath offered to let her stay with him, to have the baby. So she did.”
“And she named her Mae.”
“Right. Because all the prettiest things blossom in May. And they lived in Gibraltar and helped Mr. Sabath with his work here, and then Teddy and Patsy got married and came to stay as well, and when Mr. Sabath died…”
“He left it for all of us,” Mae finishes the story with a bleary smear to her voice, rubbing at her eyes. “And they stayed there forever and a day, and Mae went completely nutso because her mum wouldn’t let her do anything or go anywhere or have any kind of life at all, and locked her up in the attic-,”
“Haha, hilarious.” Mum kisses her on the cheek. “I love you, Mae-flower. You know that, right?”
“Yep. Love you too.” Mae smiles in spite of her lingering irritation. “Can I have my letter now?”
“In the morning. Here, we forgot one.” Mum picks up the box, smiling in bemusement. “Must be a scarf or something. From your aunt Ruby, maybe?”
Mae undoes the ribbon across it, then lifts the top off, pushing back the paper. Then she laughs. “Some joke! These are just someone’s old gloves, Mum- Mum?”
Something ripples across her face, like a pebble tossed into a pool, and then it’s gone. “Silly,” she agrees, picking up the gloves lightly. “Haven’t see these in years. Thought I’d lost them for good.”
“Is there a note?” Mae moves to rustle through the packaging, but Mum’s already taken it off the bed and put the gloves back in the box.
“No, I don’t think so,” she says distantly. “It’s late, huh?” Outside the sea and sky are matching midnight blue. She flicks off the lamp, so the only light is the dull glow of Mae’s charmed night-light in the corner, a spinning carousel that goes round and round, casting dancing shadows on the wall. “Get some sleep, darling. See you in the morning.”
“Night,” Mae replies, still a bit confused, but Mom doesn’t look upset, really, just… She doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s sort of like the look she had when she first found Mae playing with an adder on the back porch, when she was five. Weary acceptance. Like she’s not surprised, but not very glad, either. Mae doesn’t like it when she looks like that. Especially not at her. But she really is very tired, and she’s excited at the thought of getting to read the letter for herself in the morning. So she nestles under her old baby quilt and goes to sleep.
In the hall outside, Amy Benson shuts the door to her daughter’s bedroom very carefully, then reactivates the usual security wards. Even if someone broke into the clinic, and got up into the flat, they would not be able to enter that room, she reminds herself. It’s alright. They’re alright. She turns the gloves over in her hands, then goes into her office, releases the charm on the wardrobe in the corner, and puts the gloves in the bottom, beside the jewelry box. It seems to twitch slightly, but that could just be her imagination and the dark. Her chest burns, although she has not worn a ring round her neck in many, many years. She closes the wardrobe and leans back against it, resting her hot scalp on the cool mahogany. Only then, after a few moments, does she let herself glance down at the scrap of paper in her palm.
Thought I’d return something of yours. Remember, fair’s fair.
She studies it in the dark for a minute more, and then curdles it to ashes on the tip of her wand.