I have loved Mary Henrietta Cassidy for almost half a century across three lifetimes: Orpheus, Hector, Hypatia. She leans over and I lift my head to stare at her despite the way it tweaks my neck. In that eye contact she trades me devotion for dizzying affection.
I considered transitioning early to forestall more comments about her dogs’ longevity. I tell myself I am concerned about what effect repeated manipulations may have on her. I know vague memories of Hypatia’s sad but gentle fading and the acquisition of the next dog won’t hurt Mary, but, truthfully, I hate the puppy stage. Teething is bothersome and being light enough to easily pick up is worse.
It might not matter for all that much longer. Mary ruffles my ears back and forth. “hello, Hyper, hello, Hyper, h—” She pulls away to cough into her arm. I shake myself and launch down from the half-wall where we’d been sitting.
“Hypatia!” Mary stands with less care than she should. Something in her cold-stiff leg creaks, and my resolve hardens. I trot down the path toward the few young oak trees the apartment developers left behind. The slack tightens as I cross off the path amid those few trees. “Hype, stop.” We’ve lived in this complex, oh, seven years, and have never stepped off the path here. “Hypatia!”
The leash goes taut as I lean into the harness. Mary’s footsteps clunk irregularly on asphalt, and then dirt. This will take some care; I need to keep her on her feet, but she is so fragile.
And then we pass into a woods deeper than it ever could have been: three trees become thirty become three thousand become a world. Short and stocky becomes big and bulky. The lack of undergrowth here saves me, but the close press of ancient trees is almost as bad.
But Faerie feels for its own. I’ve not yet begun to panic when things shift and we’re standing in a field of knee-deep amber grass stretching farther than even my eyes can see.
“Hypatia?” Bewilderment in Mary’s face begins to leech into fear as she looks at me: a corgi the size of a pony whose white and orange have become silver and burnished copper. But Faerie’s nature is anesthetic to mortals; her expression softens.
“Oh, Hype. You’re beautiful.” Now she looks up at me. She hugs me around the muzzle like a horse, and I tolerate it. I’d do a lot more for her. “Oh!” She pulls away to look at the field around us. Sprites have come to investigate the newcomers with soft touches and pulses of color. “Oh, Hype. I haven’t seen fireflies in—years. Years!”
If I squint I can see them as she does: smaller, yellow instead of the rainbow, a gentle reminder of summer evenings and few responsibilities. And no pain.
I look at her now: not youthful, but rejuvenated. The Summerlands sun bleached the brown dye from her hair the moment we crossed; it drifts across her face in a gentle cloud as she wades through the grasses. The midday sky gently darkens to twilight with a coolness reminiscent of Mary’s memories. I feel her pang of homesick delight.
For her, anything. I haven’t been a faerie mount in so long, but now I move to her side so that she might sit. “Are you—” As soon as Mary settles I rise, and her words are lost in a peal of laughter. We run and sprites, fireflies, explode from the grasses all around us.
She buries her hands and face in my ruff against the wind. My heart swells so much it aches. I will give her everything. Everything.
I feel her soft affection for the nymphs who rediscover their first human every day. We both delight in Mary’s lack of pain as she dances around a faerie fire with its smoke that drifts against the wind. I cast my big shadow over a mermaid’s pond so that Mary emerges alive with secrets ringing in her ears. We race back and forth across the Summerlands, ferrying sweet words and pollen between two lovelorn dryads.
Somewhere along the way her pink sweatsuit falls to bits and neither of us notice. She roves in a dress of her own hair. When we run, spare tresses flare behind us like a statement, a banner, a testament to Lady Godiva.
Mary stands tall before the two courts in nothing but that hair to argue for the creation of two more courts: many species cannot cope with the heat of summer or the chill of winter. These fae need protection, advocates, and voices. She midwives Titania through the creation of autumnal Maeve, and becomes a bosom confidante for them both.
She watches as I’m anointed as one of the first Autumn fae. Mary beams; her eyes almost disappear in her apple-round cheeks. She dances at the festival that follows, and then is swept from my side by some new Spring lord and his Autumn cohort. Mary always returns to me. We run across the fields, or investigate among younger growths for sweet berries. I grow content and lax.
“Oh... We know this trail. Don’t we?” I heave myself to my feet, but it’s too late; her bare feet already scrape on the asphalt path where none should be. Are the oaks younger than they were? I whine. She cannot hear me. My steps are molasses.
The oaks are thinning: a world becomes three thousand becomes thirty becomes three becomes the smell of grave dust in my nose and silky hair under me. She’s gone. At the same instant I have regressed and I am blind, crying, nesting in her white hair. I have become too young to survive without a mother.
What was instant for her may take me some few days, but I will follow Mary along whatever path is next.
