forcing others to give her what she needs, is unfathomable.) She has to find places to sleep that are safe, ways to eat that are affordable, ways to protect herself that do not kill everyone in a hundred-mile radius. This is how she learns and, gradually, changes: under pressure, on demand, as much forcing the world to adapt to her uniqueness as subsuming herself within it. It is not an easy heritage that her father has accorded her, but neither is it impossible. She develops more appreciation for it with time.
She finds her father at last on the island of Ken, in a small fishing town that doesn’t, as far as she can tell, have a name. It’s barely a town: just a collection of houses and piers and worksheds grouped around a dirt road lined with sun-bleached oyster shells. There’s one dingy trading post, with an equally dingy tavern next door. When she goes inside, the room is full of copper- and auburn- and brown-haired men and women, some of whom are clustered at one end of the sawdust-strewn floor listening to an old man regale them with stories of stingfish and sea serpents. Only one man looks at Glee as the haze of sweet pipe smoke parts and bends around her straight-backed walk; only he sits alone in this place of shared laughter and good company, without seeming lonely. This, far more than their shared racial features or any logical deduction, is how she knows him.
She sits down across from him. “Hello, Father,” she says. “My name is Glee.”
“Hello, Glee,” he replies. His face is nothing like hers beyond its color. It’s so still. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t move his mouth any more than the words require; it is the expected response to her greeting ritual, and nothing more. This is how she knows he isn’t pleased to see her. To reinforce this, or perhaps because honesty is also generally regarded as polite, he continues. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I accept the risk.” Because she knows of the threat that drove him from her mother. When the Lord of Night and the Lady of Shadows promise to kill, they do not do so idly.
He blinks, and much later she will realize that his blinks are perfectly regular, not at all the usual semi-erratic pattern that mortals use when they aren’t thinking about it. He’s thinking about it. He never stops thinking about it. He controls every movement that can be controlled within the scope of his mortality. She has spent all these years thinking of herself as a near mirror of him, and within five sentences she’d realized it isn’t true. His eyeblinks prove they aren’t much alike at all.
“I do not,” he says.
Glee tilts her head—acknowledging the point, not conceding it. She wants to be respectful, but her mother has warned her to demand respect as well. Did her mother ever understand just how utterly alien an entity he is, beneath his deceptively still face? Maybe. And maybe her mother didn’t care, even if she did; maybe one Shoth woman’s incomprehensible primal force is another Shoth woman’s giant ridiculous ass . This thought makes her smile, and that gives her strength. “That risk is mine to take, Father, not yours to deny.”
His brow furrows. For the first time she sees something of herself in him, because the same scowl has graced her mirror whenever universal circumstances resist her design. “Return to your mother.”
This has power, and might have worked if her mother had not armed her for this battle. Rituals, propriety, order—he has made her subservient to these things. A good daughter should obey her father. However…“My mother told me to come and find you.” Propriety cancels propriety, leaving Glee free to find her own path.
He exhales. Is that exasperation? She is enough her mother’s daughter that she smiles again, just a little. Whatever it is, it’s a victory. But there is something more to his expression. What?
“You may not travel with me,” he states in a tone that brooks no compromise. “I am bound to
She finds her father at last on the island of Ken, in a small fishing town that doesn’t, as far as she can tell, have a name. It’s barely a town: just a collection of houses and piers and worksheds grouped around a dirt road lined with sun-bleached oyster shells. There’s one dingy trading post, with an equally dingy tavern next door. When she goes inside, the room is full of copper- and auburn- and brown-haired men and women, some of whom are clustered at one end of the sawdust-strewn floor listening to an old man regale them with stories of stingfish and sea serpents. Only one man looks at Glee as the haze of sweet pipe smoke parts and bends around her straight-backed walk; only he sits alone in this place of shared laughter and good company, without seeming lonely. This, far more than their shared racial features or any logical deduction, is how she knows him.
She sits down across from him. “Hello, Father,” she says. “My name is Glee.”
“Hello, Glee,” he replies. His face is nothing like hers beyond its color. It’s so still. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t move his mouth any more than the words require; it is the expected response to her greeting ritual, and nothing more. This is how she knows he isn’t pleased to see her. To reinforce this, or perhaps because honesty is also generally regarded as polite, he continues. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I accept the risk.” Because she knows of the threat that drove him from her mother. When the Lord of Night and the Lady of Shadows promise to kill, they do not do so idly.
He blinks, and much later she will realize that his blinks are perfectly regular, not at all the usual semi-erratic pattern that mortals use when they aren’t thinking about it. He’s thinking about it. He never stops thinking about it. He controls every movement that can be controlled within the scope of his mortality. She has spent all these years thinking of herself as a near mirror of him, and within five sentences she’d realized it isn’t true. His eyeblinks prove they aren’t much alike at all.
“I do not,” he says.
Glee tilts her head—acknowledging the point, not conceding it. She wants to be respectful, but her mother has warned her to demand respect as well. Did her mother ever understand just how utterly alien an entity he is, beneath his deceptively still face? Maybe. And maybe her mother didn’t care, even if she did; maybe one Shoth woman’s incomprehensible primal force is another Shoth woman’s giant ridiculous ass . This thought makes her smile, and that gives her strength. “That risk is mine to take, Father, not yours to deny.”
His brow furrows. For the first time she sees something of herself in him, because the same scowl has graced her mirror whenever universal circumstances resist her design. “Return to your mother.”
This has power, and might have worked if her mother had not armed her for this battle. Rituals, propriety, order—he has made her subservient to these things. A good daughter should obey her father. However…“My mother told me to come and find you.” Propriety cancels propriety, leaving Glee free to find her own path.
He exhales. Is that exasperation? She is enough her mother’s daughter that she smiles again, just a little. Whatever it is, it’s a victory. But there is something more to his expression. What?
“You may not travel with me,” he states in a tone that brooks no compromise. “I am bound to
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