Rings Read online

  Shula caught her eye but Celia gestured with mild daughterly exasperation at her dad, he of the perpetual headache, and Shula nodded. Down the corridor they went. Celia found a room with no people and some furniture that looked comfy enough and led David in.

  He didn’t lie down. He shut the door behind them.

  “Celia,” he said. “How much do you know?”

  * * *

  She was squinting at him, confused. “Know?”

  “You know there are aliens, you were just in a roomful of them -”

  “I - yeah, Shula’s caught me up on, on basically everything -”

  “Not everything.”

  “She’s been in kind of a hurry, if she forgot some -”

  “That wasn’t Maureen.”

  There was a silence. He could feel the skepticism radiating off her, not in the way he just knew things but in the way that he knew his child.

  “What?” Celia finally asked.

  “It hasn’t been Maureen for months. Joe didn’t believe me. I didn’t know how to tell you, I didn’t know how I knew, it’s not Maureen, it’s one of the things.”

  Silence.

  “I know - stuff. It’s not like the, the things I think I know, it’s not the psychosis, I can tell them apart. At least I can now.” He was tripping over his tongue, talking with his hands; he started to pace. “I could tell it wasn’t her. Not her on the phone, not since a little before you moved in with me. I could tell your friend was an alien but I thought I was wrong because an alien would only have a family to pretend to be human long enough to find a mate and I didn’t know and you could have told me -”

  “Dad, you’re -”

  “I’m not - I am crazy. I’m not trying to say I’m all there - but I knew it wasn’t Maureen, I knew why Shula was on Earth even if I dismissed it, you’ve seen now. The CIA isn’t after me but I was abducted by aliens and so were you. Celia, listen to me.”

  “She wants to marry me,” Celia breathed. “And - and if I don’t then her little brothers and sisters - they’ll start a war -”

  “Celia,” murmured David. “Kiddo. Do you want to marry her?”

  “I. I, um.”

  “If she staked her planet’s peace on marrying you - if she really did that, if she’s not lying - Celia, that isn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t want to start a war.”

  “She took your mom. She took your mom and replaced her with an alien and didn’t tell you. I don’t know how I know things -”

  “Earth’s starting to get magic,” murmured Celia.

  * * *

  “Shula told me,” Celia said rapidly, starting to pace, “told me that after a planet has life long enough -”

  “She’s going to wonder what’s keeping you any minute,” said David. “I’ll see if I can - know anything useful - see if I can direct it - find me later, make sure it’s me.”

  Celia swallowed and hugged him and then swirled out of the room and left him behind. She pressed herself to the wall of the hallway, breathing hard.

  She took my mom.

  He’s literally, textbook, psychotic, and he’s the only evidence I have. It’s Shula, for crying out loud, she wouldn’t -

  Mom was going to take me away to Montana where I would have been very hard to propose to and I bet Shula had all kinds of rules for how she had to handle her own foster family but none about mine.

  I saw Mom. I’ve been talking to her.

  SHAPESHIFTING ALIENS. Some of whom are Shula’s servants. She -

  She’s Shula -

  Mine. Promise.

  MAGIC SPACE WAR.

  Celia scrunched her eyes shut and inhaled deeply. It smelled like fire. Extraterrestrial minerals and foreign perfumes and fire.

  She walked step by shaky step back to the party, steadying herself on the wall.

  She thought she caught a glimpse of Shula standing near Maureen - if it was Maureen - when she turned the corner, but then there was a flurry of movement between them and Celia; when she caught sight of Shula again she was near one of the other princesses, unless Celia had misremembered whether the dramatic hat with the feathers was a sister or a cousin or what. Celia trotted down the stairs to her girlfriend. Fiancée. Girlfriend. Kidnapper. Fiancée. …She trotted down the stairs towards Shula.

  “Is your dad all right?” Shula asked.

  “He just needed to lie down. I put him in an empty room. I can do that, right?”

  “Of course you can. This is my sister Rai, second-youngest -”

  Celia let Shula shuffle her around from small-talk to small-talk. Celia did not remember any of the siblings’ names except for Meer, who’d made an impression; no one else traded barbs with Shula like that. Celia didn’t try to talk to Maureen again and Maureen didn’t try to talk to her. Which was its own kind of evidence.

  The party went on, and on. There were no clocks; Celia had been relieved of her phone when she’d changed into the dress. She ate little snacks that indistinguishably-shaped servants offered on trays. She danced with Shula. She mixed up royalty and dubiously-noble offshoots. She stammered through a compliment on someone’s curling antelope horns. She peeled off from Shula a couple of times to wade through the crowd herself, for clarity, for quelling distance between herself and Shula’s backless dress (why did it have to be a backless dress) but came to no conclusions, always drifted back to Shula’s side.

  The crowd thinned out, slowly; then the king and queen left, and the population of the ballroom dropped dramatically. “I can send someone to bring your dad home,” Shula said.

  “Can - can he stay overnight? Or what passes for overnight. I don’t think changing planets agreed with him and he could use a little longer.”

  “All right,” shrugged Shula. “Your uncle won’t freak out?”

  “Dad goes out by himself sometimes and he’s had a good few weeks. He can tell uncle Joe that he was staying with one of his friends. He has friends.”

  “If you say so,” said Shula. “It’s not like I don’t have room. Your mom’s going back, though, do you want to say goodbye?”

  Celia swallowed. “We can always visit later, right?”

  “Sure, sweetie.”

  “I bet she’s tired. It’s later in Montana.”

  “Sure. Straight home with her, then. Cait, take care of that, please,” Shula said to a passing servant.

  “Yes Princess.”

  Shula turned back to Celia. “One of my brothers is staying for a while too. Meer. I don’t really have a good excuse to get rid of him, but if he bothers you or anything any servant will back you up, all right? They all know who you are now.”

  Celia nodded.

  “Are you okay?” Shula asked her, pursing her lips in concern.

  “I’m just a - a little overwhelmed.”

  “The party’s over,” soothed Shula, petting Celia’s hair. “You can change back into your regular clothes if you want. Or another set, I have some normal things around. Pajamas, if you’re sleepy. Oh, and Cait found you a ring for Spanish, so you won’t be left out of royal family conversations if we lapse into it. It’s with your clothes.”

  “I - yeah.” Celia wanted her phone back, if only to be able to check the time. “Yes please.”

  “Can you find your own way? I need to arrange some things with some servants. I’ve been gone such a long time.”

  “I think I remember how to get there.”

  “Good. I’ve left the firelight going in all the hallways in the house since you can’t operate it yourself. Just holler if you need any of it turned on or off.” And then she pulled Celia into a snug embrace. “You did beautifully. I know it’s all a bit much but you’re doing great. Just hang in there, all right, sweetie? I love you so much.”

  “Love you,” Celia echoed, because she did, she did -

  Shula kissed her. She dipped her, right there in the middle of the deserted ballroom, and kissed Celia till she was breathless and melting and why did the dress have to be backless -

  “I’ll come find you when I’m free,” Shula purred, voice full of promises.

  Celia was practically hypnotized until Shula straightened her up again and pressed another kiss to her forehead and swept out of the room.

  Celia stood in place.

  And then she climbed the stairs and wound her way through the halls until she’d found the wardrobe again.

  * * *

  She came out of the room in a set of pajamas which she’d found in the wardrobe. Her phone was in her pocket, the Spanish ring had joined the one for immortality and the one for plakti language, she had her own shoes on again because walking on these stone floors barefoot sounded uncomfortable. And there was Meer, waiting for her. Celia stopped cold when she saw him. “Um.”

  “Hello again,” Meer said. “Is it just me or do you seem less than comfortable?”

  “Were you lurking out here the entire time I was changing?”

  “Please,” snorted Meer. “Don’t ascribe me such motives. If I want to be around naked women I have better ways to do it.”

  “W-would Shula want you to be talking to me?” asked Celia, trying to sound more indignant than mousy, quite sure she was failing.

  “No,” said Meer, “probably not.”

  “Well. This. Is her estate,” said Celia.

  “The question is do you want me to be talking to you, and that depends very significantly on whether you want to be here. In my dear sister’s estate,” said Meer.

  Celia couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, so she just stared at him coldly. He looked like some kind of Disney prince. One who was about to have a character arc that wiped the smirk off his face. Or turn out to be a bad guy all along.

  “Did Shula tell you that you have to be here?” he inqu
ired. “Did she spin nasty stories about how warlike her family is? Am I the villain of the piece? She’s never liked me.”

  Celia didn’t like him either. “She - wants an orderly succession.”

  “Celia,” said Meer in a low voice. “If that was what she most wanted, she would have found a boyfriend.”

  “She - she’s a lesbian.”

  “That wouldn’t stop her if her priority was getting married and popping out heirs in a perfectly regular manner without letting me - or our other siblings - get within arm’s reach of the throne. Would it? Marriages of convenience are known on Earth, I believe.”

  “She wants to marry me.”

  “I don’t doubt that for an instant. She wants very badly to marry you, and she’s gambling everything on her ability to pull it off. Including the orderliness of the succession. Which she could easily secure even without having had to locate a boyfriend by yielding with as much grace as she could muster to me. Now, I confess my experience with humans is limited to immediate family members very far from your own culture. But however fond you were of Shula last week, you do not seem to me to be entirely at your ease here.”

  “It’s a lot to get used to,” Celia said softly.

  “You don’t look enraptured and curious, you look like you want to crawl in a hole and forget this ever happened,” said Meer.

  “And, what, you want to offer your shoulder to cry on?” Celia snapped, suddenly angry. He’d noticed and this was what he was doing about it? Loitering while she changed clothes and asking her pointed questions about how comfortable she was. That was sure to improve things.

  “I’d rather not,” said Meer. “I’d rather just solve the problem. The political situation is neither as stable nor as unstable as Shula may have led you to believe. The population might be able to cope with you, if she can get you pregnant. How quickly do you want her to feel obliged to try?”

  Celia swallowed.

  “Not soon, I’ll wager, and every year that goes by is more time for our parents to spend getting older a little at a time. And more time for Earth to become less like what we’ve grown up expecting. It was a trick indeed to slip Shula into a family. How much harder is it eighteen years along? If I tried and failed to find a queen, two more decades might make it near impossible for Tam to give it a try, at least in any remotely pleasant part of the world. We can only do so much to computer records and cameras.”

  “Shula found me, though. You - you don’t have to try.” You don’t have to do this to some other girl.

  “I do if her little shapeshifting idea doesn’t work. Or if you’re sterile. I do if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to be here. If you don’t want to be queen.”

  “What makes you think you’d be able to find somebody who wanted to be here? What, are you psychic?” Shit. Don’t say that again.

  Meer snorted. “Here’s another question for you. Why didn’t you have any inkling before you got here? Why was this a surprise?”

  “…Shula said there were rules. Protocols. That she had to observe. She wasn’t supposed to tell me, it would be against the - the rules.”

  “That’s absolutely correct. Would you care to guess how those are enforced?”

  Was someone listening in - No. Shula had never acted like she was being watched. Shula had made reports which contained whatever she felt like putting in them, she’d had a servant-nanny only as a child - she was not bugged while she was kissing Celia in her bedroom or knocking their shoes together under the cafeteria table.

  “They’re not enforced,” said Meer. “Does that allay your concerns?”

  “What do you want?” asked Celia.

  “An orderly succession,” Meer said. “One more, and then over for good. I will go, I will find a queen who will be less…” He gestured at Celia vaguely in lieu of a description. “And we will each have our own rings.”

  “Nobody’s allowed to be king forever.”

  “The current model cannot sustain itself,” hissed Meer. “Imagine! Imagine trying to insert your children into an Earth that has had another five or six hundred years to advance! To imagine life on other planets - and learn to keep more careful documentation of the life on its own! To perhaps develop magic, which it may begin doing at any time!”

  Celia flinched.

  Meer just took it as an excuse to go on, though: “I remember Mother sobbing for weeks when her little Kess was turned into someone else’s baby on the eve of her adulthood. I can’t say I look forward to putting her through similar again, but at least on my plan this would be the last time. Is that what you want, even generously assuming it will continue to work? For your children? And grandchildren? Shula could have ended it, but she has walked the knife edge of tradition just enough to get you exactly where she wants you. I am the only realistic ally you have in getting you where you would be much better off. Home.”

  She took your mom.

  Meer hadn’t said anything about that, but this was two sources now - Meer had no reason to love Celia. David had no reason to hate Shula. Did that add up to trustworthiness?

  Her dad was crazy and Shula’s brother wanted to be king -

  “What do you want?” Celia asked again.

  “Your ring,” Meer said. “I’ll give you a dummy to replace it. When Shula takes it back for her own turn she’ll notice the difference and then she’ll have to admit defeat - she can’t have you visibly aging at human rate in front of people, even if she can cover for herself in the short term with shapeshifting.”

  “She’d know it was you. She knows you hate her.”

  “And if she confronts me about it she’ll have to admit that you gave it to me, and she will be out of the running for taking an unwilling Earthling regardless. I run a certain risk here if you change your mind and then blatantly lie, of course. I know very little about your personal integrity, having only what my sister gave me to work with.” He gave her an assessing look, seeming to settle on it’ll do. Celia wanted to slap him.

  “I love her,” Celia breathed. “I don’t want her to die.”

  “She will be looking for you any moment,” Meer said, clenching his fists. Rings glinted around his fingers. “Make a decision.”

  “I need to think.”

  Footsteps. “Celia?” called Shula’s voice.

  Meer, scowling, disappeared down the hallway without another word.

  Celia tripped on her way around the corner to meet Shula. Shula caught her. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

  “I’m fine.” I’m not fine. I’m not fine. I’m not fine. “I want to sleep. I’m exhausted.”

  “Okay,” said Shula, stroking her fingers through Celia’s hair. “Okay. Let’s get you somewhere cozy and put you to bed. It’s been such a long day.”

  * * *

  Maureen woke up in her own bed.

  This was the Montana house. She didn’t remember -

  “You’ve been very sick for months and let Celia live with her father. Celia will be fine,” said a voice in her ear. “But now you’re better and you’re going to go in to work…”

  Maureen blinked as the voice went on murmuring. That would explain -

  Maureen woke up in her own bed. This was the Montana house. She didn’t -

  “You’ve been very sick. But now -”

  Maureen woke -

  “You’ve -”

  Maureen woke up in her own bed, in her own home. She felt a lot better. God, the entire summer was a fog. A blank, really. Didn’t help that she’d had that nasty insurance fumble with the new job, but now she was all right. She called the new boss. Well, new. She’d technically had the position for months now. But she hadn’t gone in. They were very understanding, glad that she’d finally be in.

  The house was disorganized, or rather organized badly. She’d want to rearrange everything. Maybe she’d been on drugs when she’d unpacked. Painkillers or drowsy cold pills or something. Whatever. She found something business-casual, she got in the car, she drove to the office with GPS assistance.

  She called Celia during her lunch hour.

  Voicemail. She left a brief message and went back to what she was doing. Celia would be fine. She felt very confident that Celia would be fine. She was eighteen now, wasn’t she? And she’d eloped with her girlfriend, who was going to take good care of her. Maureen stayed late; she had a lot of work to catch up on.