You Must Fall In Love

Chapter Sixty-Five

Wounds are nice

Unless they don't heal.

Then you have cause for pause

And woe and weal.

The fact that all Rob's wounds had sealed within the hour made being in the hospital a rather awkward experience. After a few double-takes and an annoyed consultation of the nursing records, the doctor had told him curtly that he was free to go, if his vaunted magical healing factor was in fact a real thing, and not some woo-woo placebo that only gave the impression of miraculous healing.

Well, he hadn't used words quite that flippant, but the intent was there.

Rob was starving, so he went to the nearest vending machine and bought twenty packs of breakfast drink with his debit card, the kind that tasted like liquid banana mixed with solid milk. He sat down on the bench right opposite and began to gulp them down, one by one, ignoring the stares and glares from the other residents as he laid the empty packets out beside him, forming a neat little fortress of cardboard solitude.

Maybe it was the packets, or maybe it was because he still smelt vaguely like blood. One of the two.

He felt good about himself, strangely enough. He hadn't felt good about himself for a while, or at least, it had only been an ironic self-affirmation. But now that he had personally laid out a violent aggressor (both violent and aggressor were understatements), he knew (or rather, thought) that there was definitely (probably) a case to be made for his own rehabilitation in the eyes of the world.

He had actually overcome the impulse to change. He'd never done it before. He had told the beasts no, and they had obeyed him.

"What will you do next time?" hissed the snake.

"I'll fight you," said Rob. "Anyway, there won't be a next time. I'll make sure of that."

"If you sssssay so."

His confidence was most likely misplaced, but he supposed a near-death experience gave one the right to misplace at least one thing.

"Ah, there you are, Rob Slade. Satiating your primal urges as always?"

Rob sighed. He couldn't even feel annoyed, not after what had happened. August had tried to protect him from Nimrod, after all, and it wasn't like their own argument had resulted in anything close to death.

"You went back to change, didn't you?"

August smirked. He was wearing a white dress shirt, sharp black pants and a pair of burgundy suspenders, which made him look both neater and more boyish than usual. There were already a few nurses staring in his direction.

"Of course I did," he said. "I am royalty, after all."

"Remind me to check the provenance of that," said Rob, doing his best to dispense of the twenty packets in a curt and dignified manner. "I was just about to go see Yusuke."

"Yes, of course."

The two walked down the hallway, Rob with his back straight and his hands by his side, August whistling a dismal little tune that sounded like a children's ditty refracted down a hollow log.

"You know," said August, "I don't despise you, Rob Slade."

This was a bit of a strange way to start a conversation with someone you barely knew; Rob pointed out as much, only in shorter and more pungent terms.

"No," said August, "you don't understand. It's quite a substantial admission for someone of Faerie. Do you know what we call your kind?"

"My kind as in humans?"

August laughed.

"No, silly. Your kind as in the changers, the shifters, the in-betweens."

"Therianthropes is the magicological term."

"Magicology is also the human term," said August, the glint audible in his voice. "No, we call you wastrels."

"As in an oaf?"

"As in a neglected child."

It might have been offensive to anyone else, but Rob had come to terms with his own abandonment a long time ago.

"Alright," he said. "Why?"

"You might know that we of Faerie sometimes steal human children from their cradles and replace them with our own kind — changelings, if you will, fay disguised as human infants."

"I thought that was just a pernicious old wives' tale, designed to smear Otherworldly denizens."

"Not at all," said August. "It still happens, we just don't advertise it as much."

"Interesting," said Rob. "Ever thought about the parents?"

"Love is a remarkably malleable thing, Rob Slade. If I wanted to, I could create an elixir out of dewdrops and mist to make you fall in love with me — and you would be none the wiser."

"It's different when there's children involved."

"If you say so," said August airily. "Anyway, I've never done it myself. But do you know why we take them?"

"Because you want to."

"Well, there is that, but don't worry about it. I guess the important thing is that we need to leave something of ourselves here."

There was something in the way he said it, but Rob had never been very good at reading people.

"You don't need to do any of that," he said. "You have your own realm."

"On the contrary, Rob Slade, I don't think any of the Fay feel alive unless we have our fingers in your world. We've taken too much from it, see."

"And what does that mean for my... kind?"

He didn't like that word at all. It made him feel inhuman, even though he'd never seen himself as anything but a boy with a curse and a few animals inside him.

August gave his coy laugh. It had always struck Rob as annoying, but he decided to let it go for now. Perhaps there were reasons, although he didn't particularly care to know them.

"You're just like us, Rob Slade. You belong to the realm of man, but you are not a man. You're a mixed-blood waif, stuck between two worlds."

"You're wrong. I'm just as human as anyone else. This is just a curse."

"There is no mortal who understands curses better than the Fair Folk," said August. "A curse stays with the accursed, Rob Slade — molds and shapes him, until it sets the shape of his soul. You have borne your curse since birth. You are different on a fundamental level."

Rob didn't mind being different, but this was far too much. It unnerved him, and very few things did. He clenched his fists and walked faster.

"Don't run away from me, Rob Slade. I'm just trying to help you."

Normally, he would throw something back, maybe an insult or a pointed glance, but he had already thrown August physically into the ceiling, and he knew how much that had hurt him.

It hadn't done anything at all