I think we should do the opposite. we should just invite him to all our chats. Your local D&D group? invite him. You’re talking to your siblings? put the editor of the atlantic in there too!
Schwarzenegger winning seemed like the most embarrassing thing that would ever happen in politics at the time and now he’s to the left of every elected Republican and a few Democrats and just makes videos going “young men, my fadda was a Nazi and he was a contemptible loosah”
for everyone losing their shit in the notes: the movie is called Junior (tvtropes link) and arnie is the pregnant one.
You and your spouse named your daughter after a legendary warrior fey queen, hoping to give her strength as she grew up. You did not anticipate Queen Morrigan coming to your door several days later, lawyers in tow, demanding to see the contract that granted your daughter her name.
It’s already complicated for a human to navigate the Fae culture of never saying “thank you” or “you’re welcome” for fear of being trapped in a debt. For that matter, something as simple as “can you pick up some milk” has the risk of being received as a bond and a debt.
Fae lawyers, on the other hand, take “binding words” to the next level. Called “Glossators” in early human history, their job is to not just read and understand the law, but to ensure that it has one and only one legally binding solution. Their habit of footnoting and marking up their legal tomes with every possible context (impossible on non-magical paper) made “read between the lines” more of a threat than a hint at what was to come.
The Morrígan, the Phantom Queen, is one of the oldest of the Fae, but here in your kitchen she looks like a strait-laced, if somewhat stereotypical, lawyer. Brown hair streaked with grey in a tight bun, librarian glasses perched on her long nose, a black dress with matching suit jacket overtop, black nylons, and black flats. She was angry. She refused to sit on one of your kitchen chairs to discuss the issue.
“Only one who has purchased the right to name their child after me can do so. It is in the contract.”
“What contract?” You ask carefully. You are not a lawyer, you’re a graphic designer, but you know from your studies that there’s usually a trap. a trap when you see one.
“The contract you should have received before naming the child!”
“How would we have known there was a contract requirement?” You ask.
“By asking your local liege!” The Queen spat back. Queen Morrígan kept glaring at Lou and Lou kept glaring back in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
“We don’t have a local liege.” You replied more calmly than you felt. “We have a president, a few federal congresspeople, a few state congresspeople, a township supervisory council, and a homeowner’s association.” You paused and, trying to break the tension, added “The homeowners association would still be arguing over the name if we had asked them.”
You looked over at your husband for an answer, begging him with your eyes to say something. Anything.
Lou was silent.
Throughout your relationship he had refused to discuss his heritage, going so far as to try to ban you from even mentioning the Fae by name. His parents—humans who had fostered him when his birth parents had abandoned him, he said—treated him as a human. They didn’t even seem to notice their son’s strange eye color or pointy ears.
Your chest hurt, your back ached, parts of your body that were still recovering from birth were begging for a soft bed.
Lou stayed silent.
“You can’t use ignorance of Fae law as protection from it!” the Queen shouted.
“Here’s what I know of your laws,” you suddenly snapped coldly. “If you don’t stop yelling you are going to wake the child in question. I may have invited you in but through the laws of hospitality I also hold the power to kick you out. I am sleep deprived. I am nursing. I am postpartum. I am angry. I am irrational to the point of rationality. I will not hesitate to use those laws, even against you, Queen Morrígan. Got it?”
The Queen shut her mouth angrily, and pointed at one of the Glossators to reply. “In order to legally name a child after the Great Queen, you are required to complete a boon for the Queen first. That boon is recorded in a contract and that contract grants you permission to request the Queen’s name for the child’s use as your boon in return.”
Finally, someone speaking sense. “So if we had known to ask we would have offered to do the Queen a favor and in return she would have granted us permission?”
“Yes… if the mood had struck her.”
The Queen, at least at the moment, did not appear to be struck by the mood.
“And what is the consequence for ‘stealing’ the Queen’s name?” you ask.
The Glassator flipped through a heavy tome. “Should the Fae committing the crime be found guilty by the King or Queen of the region, the guilty party or parties are to be put to death and the child raised by the Queen.”
“Over my dead body,” Lou replied.
“Yes, exactly, as you are the fae in question,” the lawyer replied.
You fought to keep control of your emotions. You knew when Lou had told you he was Faerie that there might be consequences down the road. You knew when you married him that you’d need to learn the rules and traditions of his people. You had studied and studied, anything that you could find, even bribing a changeling down the street to bring you back some books from the faerie libraries.
Lou had picked the name. You should have done more research, you thought.
“I’m not a Fae. I’m a human, and our daughter is a changeling.” You had read enough fantasy novels to know that humans and changelings were viewed as undesirables by the pure blood Fae. “Surely the Queen doesn’t want to be saddled with an orphan changeling. The Queen expects a boon of equal quality to what she is giving, right? She gives her name, and she expects to receive a child worthy of it? Isn’t that part of the Law of Boons, as provided by King mac Nessa?”
Lou narrowed his eyes. “Love, when did you learn so much about faerie law?”
“I got some books out of the library.” You didn’t mention which library.
“I want to understand so that I can teach our daughter.” you replied. “I was an orphan too, remember? I don’t know my heritage either. I grew up with kids from Korea and Vietnam and Cambodia who were adopted by white American parents and never got to learn how to pronounce their birth names, much less anything about their cultures. We were all so lost, and so angry. I don’t want that for our daughter, do you, Lou? I want her to know that you’re Fae and she’s a changeling.”
“I told you I don’t want to talk about Faerie.” He was angrier than you’d ever seen him.
“What are we going to do, Lou? We can’t raise our daughter to be human and human alone. I mean, that’s ridiculous. You’ve seen her pointy ears! You’ve seen your own. She’s going to know you’re a Fae. ”
“Don’t bring it up again.” Lou warned.
The other members of the room had grown still. Your anger grew at your husband’s behavior. He was embarrassing your guests.
“Lou, the Queen of the Crows is standing in our kitchen. We need to talk about the fact that you are Fae.”
A bolt of lightning struck the ground outside the kitchen window. The house shook with the power of the thunderclap. The baby started to cry upstairs. Lou…
…Lou transformed into something else.
“What the fuck?” You asked. “There’s a horse in my kitchen.”
“What the Puck, more precisely.” The Queen replied. “The trickster himself. I suspected, but King mac Nessa had banished him so long ago I couldn’t be sure.”
One of the Glossators turned to a page deep in the tome he set on the kitchen table. “For the crime of killing and mutilating the King’s cattle, then putting on a play with their bones, terrorizing thousands of humans, and exposing the humans to the world of Faerie, Sir Púc shall be banished to human form until such measure that he is recognized three times for his true nature. If he has failed to redeem himself of his selfish behavior, he shall be furthermore banished to the form of a mortal horse until the end of its lifetime.”
You blinked back tears. So many hard conversations suddenly made sense. So many fights about the world, its inhabitants, its politics. And so many lies! Lou knew all about Faerie! He wasn’t avoiding it because he didn’t want to be part of it, he was avoiding it because he was banned!
And he’d married you, gotten you pregnant… your whole life was a sham.
You fled the kitchen, up to the baby’s room. She was still crying. You swooped her up into your arms, crying with her, wishing for anything but this.
A few moments passed and there was a soft knock on the nursery door. Mordor had stopped crying and you had almost convinced yourself that it had all been a bad dream.
You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and called, “Come in.”
Queen Morrígan stepped inside. Her suit was replaced by a gown of soft black feathers that ended at her knees. She watched you rock your daughter against your shoulder. Her little hands balled up near your neck. Her tiny pointed ears glowed pink in the sunlight streaming through the window. The Queen looked pensive, almost apologetic.
“Speak truth: you didn’t know you had married Púc?”
“I hadn’t even heard of him until like a week ago and that was in a footnote on Wikipedia,” you replied.
The Queen nodded.
“I feel like such an idiot.” You tried to keep the tears from falling.
“You were deceived by the trickster. It happens.”
“What am I going to do?”
The Queen thought for a long moment.
“Normally, the boon I ask is for a cow. In exchange for the name,” she added at your look of confusion. “You appear to have a horse I could take off your hands…”
“And Morrie gets to keep her name and all this will be over?” you replied.
“Not quite over.” The Queen smiled. “I want to introduce you to some blood workers I know, and see if we can find your parents.”
“My parents?” you asked.
“Honey, you saw through the King’s own enchantment to see Púc’s true nature, and you stood up to me using my own laws. If you’re not pure blood Fae, and a powerful one at that, I’ll eat my horse.”
An orphan develops the habit of talking to the moon as if it were a parent—just telling it about their day, and occasionally announcing milestones in their life, like their admission to college. Unbeknownst to them, the moon has been listening all along, and it’s so very proud.
