“Bye, Kea!” An anonymous boy waved solemnly as I scooped a few minutes away from the picnic’s planned end.
My “daughter” had been a hit with the crowd of slightly awkward engineers and computer scientists. Clever, cute, and intensely interested in interrogating those with greater knowledge about hacking gadgets and gizmos? They’d accepted her as a miniature adult without question. She’d go far in their world.
Or would, if the clock weren’t ticking.
Kea was exactly what I’d asked the Marble Witch to create. And in just a few hours, she’d dissolve back into the fallen petals of her fantastic origin. That was the promise, and we both knew it.
I saw both sadness and joy in her eyes today. At least we could end it with ice cream. I put the truck in drive and myself on automatic.
Morbidly, I found myself practicing answers in my head in case she disappeared early. No, there wasn’t a little girl here. Are you sure you didn’t mean that child playing over there?
I wasn’t sure I could handle the heartbreak again when she left me. More time was all I desperately wanted, and each second ticked away faster than I could process it into the insufficient wetware known as memory.
“Hayes.” The frog on my shoulder was surprisingly difficult to ignore, nor was it typically worth it. Tonight, it was. I’d only known the overgrown tadpole a week, but it was the longest week of my life bar one terrible year that had vanished into a bottle.
With Kea’s “pet” on my shoulder, I’d had to admit to my new fake boss that he’d been in my briefcase after all, during the infamous ribbiting interview. She’d burst out laughing, not knowing all three of us were infiltrators, sent to bring down her empire.
“Hayes,” Geo said again. “Look, did you ever stop to think about why she picked you for this job?”
He never said the witch’s name, I’d noticed. He persisted, much to my disgruntled dismay.
“Why she needed you, specifically? Con artists are a dime a dozen.”
“I’m a pentester,” I said petulantly.
Even Kea rolled her eyes. “He’s right.”
At her words, I jerked the steering wheel to the side of the road. “Wha—I don’t know what to ask, so why don’t you help me out here?”
“I can’t,” Geo said glumly. “I can hint. That’s it.”
“He’s under a compulsion spell not to tell you,” Kea said. “But I’m not. I wasn’t supposed to exist long enough to need one. But it’s good practice for you to know how to maneuver this world.”
Her eyes were dark and sly, suddenly older than her apparent eight years, and I was forcibly reminded that she was not my daughter, but a fey creature of wild spring magic.
I swallowed. “You’re created from magic.”
Geo tugged on my ear from his perch on my shoulder. “And she is interested in…?”
“Magic,” I answered automatically. “That’s the whole reason for this job, it’s got to be.”
“And that means…” He was the world’s smallest and least patient teacher.
“She chose me because…” I trailed off. “Can’t have magic. That’d be ridiculous.”
He flicked my ear with a sticky finger. “Clueless, you are. Do things ever happen just because you believe in them? Because you want them? More than careful preparation can explain?”
I met Kea’s eyes, bright and eager, eight years old again. “You’re the daughter of my dreams.”
“Takes a powerful dreamer to manifest,” she said wistfully. “Perhaps you need to try dreaming more deeply.”
It was ridiculous. Utterly insane. That I could simply will this delightful creature into continued existence?
“It’s because I’m also the daughter of your heart,” she whispered, and grinned up at me with a missing tooth.
I threw the truck into drive and gunned the engine, mind racing with plans at a speed I’d never expected to feel again, unnatural sharpness as the jigsaw took four-dimensional shape inside my head. I’d been trudging through life and it was time to celebrate. And to plan.
“We need ice cream for the rest of this conversation.”
Hope was the most dangerous emotion in the world, and it filled all three of us like we wouldn’t shatter on the ground when the witch discovered our treachery.
If my suspicions were correct, she’d know within the hour that the magic she’d expected to recover when Kea dissolved was stolen by a newly awakened mage.
I hadn’t a clue how to use magic, but I wouldn’t fail my daughter a second time.
***
Whew, made it! Cedar’s prompt was sadness and joy, and mine went to Becky Jones. Go check them all out, over at MOTE!
