by T. L. Bodine
“He’s a grown-up, alright,” she said. “No doubt about it. You sure you’re not interested in selling, Sonia? You could make a pretty penny off ‘im. Enough to leave this dump, anyway.”
“Thank you, Lorelai,” Sonia said, voice low and cold, “but as I told you, I’m not selling.”
Adrian pulled away from her hand and stared down at her, feeling an immediate and intense dislike sweep over him. “Nobody’s selling me to anybody,” he said. He cast Sonia a pleading look. “…What would you want to buy me for, anyway?”
“Never mind,” Sonia said, moving to stand between the two of them. She laid a hand on Lorelai’s shoulder, just above where the wing sprouted. “Pick out the ones you want and let’s get moving.”
“I’ll need twice as much as I usually get,” Lorelai said. A sulky look stole over her beautiful, ageless features. “To cover for the cost of transport.”
“Yes, yes, whatever.” Sonia made a shooing gesture toward the wall of shelves. “Take whatever you think is fair. Only let’s hurry up and get going. I don’t want to be caught on the road when it gets dark.”
“Nor do I,” Lorelai said, and smiled in a cold, humorless way. Adrian’s immediate dislike strengthened. She took a tentative step forward, turning her shrewd eyes to the shelves with their rows of irregularly-sized jars. She pulled one down and squinted at the slow-drifting smoke inside, pursing her lips critically. She gave it a little shake. “Weak stuff,” she muttered. “How crazy was this one? It’s barely holding together, it’s so incoherent.”
Sonia let out a quiet noise and crossed her arms over her chest — as though holding her hands hostage in her armpits before they had the chance to do something she’d regret, like beat the silver-haired faerie over the head with one of those jugs. Her wings buzzed so quickly that they were little more than a gossamer blur. “It’s what I have.”
Lorelai cradled the jug in the crook of an arm and worked at the cork with her neatly-manicured fingers. After a moment it gave way with a muted pop! and a little of the smoke escaped. It hung in the air over the mouth of the jug and Adrian saw the smoke itself shimmered, as though minute specks of glitter were suspended with it. The smoke curled in on itself like a snail. Rather than dissipate, it compacted itself and quivered as though held together by surface tension or viscosity. Lorelai prodded at the curled ball of smoke — or whatever it was, the more Adrian watched the more he realized that it was definitely not smoke — and it shivered as if it were alive. Then it ducked back into the jar.
“Well, it’s not very high quality, but it’ll have to do.” Lorelai replaced the cork. “Time is, as you say, of the essence. Here, come help me load these up. Five jugs should be sufficient, I think.”
“Five — “ Sonia quailed.
“…Oh, you’re right!” An unctuous smile spread over her lips. “I forgot — the human is coming along as well. Best make it ten, to compensate for the danger.”
“Ten!”
Lorelai’s eyes flashed. “Weren’t you just telling me to take whatever I thought was fair? Forgive me — I must have misunderstood your instructions.” Her eyes flashed back to Adrian. The tip of her tongue ran over her lips. “I could knock it down to two if — “
“Ten is fine,” Sonia said, with some effort. “Gather them up and let’s go.” She looked back to Adrian, and set a hand on his chest. Green eyes met his. “Go pack up the wagon, would you? I need to…finish some business…with Lorelai.”
“What —”
“I’ll explain later.”
He shut his mouth. He felt Lorelai’s eyes on him and the gaze was hungry, like a cat watching a mouse just outside of its reach. He shivered and went to grab the satchels, careful to give Lorelai a wide berth. He glanced nervously at the door, made certain that the unicorn was nowhere in sight, and edged past the faeries and out into the yard.
He’d only been here for a couple of days, but he had spent enough time at Sonia’s cottage to know what everything was supposed to look like. He knew, for example, that the straw-thatched roof had a nest of small, brightly-colored birds in it. He knew that chickens occasionally wandered freely over the yard, scratching and pecking at the dirt. And he also knew that the wagon — Lorelai’s wagon — didn’t belong here.
Where it did belong was in one of those creepy fairytale comic books he used to see in the convenience store, back when you could still buy comics at the check-out. The carriage was made of some kind of polished dark wood. It curved on all sides, coming up to a dome in the back, where the seating cabin was closed off with two doors on each side. The doors had windows with curtains drawn across them. At the front of the dark hump was the bench for the driver; the seat was covered in white fabric that might have been velour. It was discolored and worn bald in patches from heavy use. There were no shafts for a horse — and no horse, for that matter. It also had no wheels. Instead, eight spindly legs grew from the sides of the carriage. It looked like an enormous black spider crouched on the lawn.
Adrian backed away from it, finding his back to the door of the cottage. The bags slipped in his hand, which had grown damp with sweat. The carriage waved its two front-most legs at him. He tightened his grip on the bags, as much to tether him to something as to make sure he didn’t drop them, and took a hesitant step forward. “Nice carriage…” he said, sidling up to it the way someone might approach a panicking horse or some dangerous, wounded animal. “Easy, now…”
The carriage had no eyes or ears, so he couldn’t tell if it was paying attention to him, but it remained still as he approached. Its feet — if they could be called feet — were firmly planted into the soft dirt, each one tapered off like a spear. Adrian crept forward, clutching the bags to his chest like a protective shield, clinging to them like a child might cling to his favorite teddy-bear. The carriage doors swung open. A small, half-choked scream caught in Adrian’s throat but he forced it down before it could escape. His sense of shame for cowardice still outweighed his fear of this incomprehensible faerie technology…barely.
The inside of the carriage was substantially more inviting than the outside. Where the front seat was worn and stained, the interior was bright and fresh as though it was rarely used. The overstuffed seats were covered in tooled white leather and the curtains hanging over the wide picture windows were velour. It was also roomier inside than it looked like it should be: Adrian realized he could easily lay lengthwise across the bench seat. The walls, too, were upholstered. It looked soundproof, private, and extremely cozy.
“Glad to see you’re getting along,” Lorelai remarked, emerging from the cabin. She carried two large jugs with her, one in each hand. She brushed past him and climbed into the front seat of the carriage, sweeping her skirt deftly to the side as she slid into place. She carefully laid the jugs beside her, one to each side, and held them in place with her elbows. “I thought you said he was smart.” She met Sonia’s eyes for a moment, challenging, and then turned back toward the road, the lines of her jaw taut.
“I said he remembers,” Sonia replied. She carried four jugs — in each hand and in the crook of each arm — and she nudged Adrian with her shoulder as she walked up to the carriage and climbed confidently inside. I guess she talked her down to six, he thought, watching her. She set the smoke-filled jugs on the seat, set herself down on the bench opposite it, and patted the upholstered seat beside her. “Come on — she won’t wait up for you much longer.”
He glanced at one long, spindly leg and had a sudden fierce vision of Lorelai running him over, of the carriage trampling him and the spear-like points of the legs jamming themselves into his chest. He shuddered and climbed inside, the bags in his lap, reluctant to set them down.
The doors folded shut.
Darkness — not the preternatural, terror-breeding kind, but the regular, cozy absence-of-light sort — consumed the carriage and Adrian blinked rapidly trying to adjust his eyes. The smoke in the jugs glowed faintly, shimmering and flickering like lightning bugs caught i
n thick fog. He watched it, transfixed by the color and motion. He had never paid much attention to them in the cabin, but here in close quarters they seemed suddenly fascinating, especially now that he knew that Lorelai at least regarded them as valuable.
“What are those, anyway?” He asked, keeping his voice low although he suspected the carriage was soundproof.
She made no response; maybe she hadn’t heard. “Want me to open the window?” Sonia asked, suddenly, leaning across him toward the curtain.
He caught her wrist in her hand. “No, it’s alright. I get motion sickness.” He smiled sheepishly. “It’s bad in cars and planes, I bet it’ll be even worse on this thing, with all the legs. I’ll do better if I don’t have to see outside.”
Most people with motion sickness relish having a window to look out of, but Adrian was quite the opposite. It wasn’t the movement that bothered him so much as the constant barrage of images, the world whipping by as though projected onto a screen. Besides, the glow of the smoke-jars was comforting somehow, like large nightlights.
Sonia slumped back in her seat. She rubbed her wrist with the fingers of her other hand, a vague frown on her face.
“…Sorry if I hurt you,” Adrian said, glancing down at her wrist in the dim light. He didn’t know how delicate faeries were. Maybe their bones were hollow, like birds.
“Huh? Oh! No, no.” She smiled, vaguely, and clasped her hands in her lap. Her thumb occasionally strayed upward to brush her skin where he had touched her. “I’m alright.”
But she didn’t seem alright. She seemed shaken, actually. He opened his mouth to point this out, but a distant creaking sound caught his ears: a terrible wrenching noise like the sound of metal being torn, the sort of noise a car bumper makes when it’s pulled from the car. He winced. If it was this loud through the padded walls, he could only imagine how deafening it must be outside. How had he not heard Lorelai’s carriage coming from a mile away?
The carriage gave a shudder, as though it was shaking itself awake, and then it was moving. It undulated and skittered and wandered in drunken zig-zags, like a crab trying but failing to walk in a straight line. The carriage rose and fell with each step, but also moved side to side, giving the whole thing a swinging circular motion. The metallic shriek of the legs faded, somewhat, as they moved, and fell into a rhythmic sort of tapping and creaking — the sound of a very old rocking chair.
Adrian clung to the satchels in his lap and doubled over, holding his head with both hands and willed himself not to vomit.
Sonia touched him gingerly on the shoulder, a mere brush of fingertips, but the touch was telling — full of uneasy concern. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” he managed. His head swam a little. He remembered a time when he and William had gone to a carnival at the local fairgrounds; he was eleven, and William was thirteen. This was years after their father left, and their mom was out with whatever suitor she’d picked for the week. Evan was a long time coming still. William was supposed to be watching Adrian, and they were both supposed to do their homework, order a pizza with the money she’d left for them, watch one of the videos she’d rented, and be in bed by ten. Instead they’d snuck out of the house — William’s idea — and with their pooled allowance-and-pizza money they’d managed to stuff their faces with funnel cake and pink sticky cotton candy and still had plenty left over for the rides. Adrian had waited patiently in line at the ferris wheel and, when he got to the top, he stared down at the ant-like people in the fair, the twinkling dazzling lights of the city. The seat of the ferris wheel swayed a little, back and forth, and Adrian’s sweets-filled stomach convulsed and he had puked all over himself and everybody beneath him in a wide arc.
“You’re so stupid!” William had yelled at him. “You can’t even go on a baby ride, you stupid sissy.”
And Adrian, who was old enough to feel shame but not quite old enough to hold the emotion back, had started crying, which only set William off more.
“…Adrian?”
Sonia’s hand squeezed his shoulder, drawing him out of the memory. His stomach did a lazy roll and he thought he might throw up after all — but then the sensation passed and he took a few deep gulping breaths. Cautiously, he lifted his head. The carriage trundled on. The luminescent smoke in the jars traced patterns of multi-colored light over the ceiling.
“I’m alright,” he said, running one sweaty hand back through his hair, making it stand up in clumps along one side of his scalp. He felt the all-too-familiar sensation of pressure just behind his ear, gathering in his jaw, and he swallowed hard and tried to think of something other than the rickety sway of the carriage. “Just feeling a little sick. It’ll pass.” He leaned back against the seat and slid his eyes closed again. “I think I’ll try and sleep until we get there. That always used to work in the car.”
“Good idea,” Sonia said. Her hand withdrew from his shoulder and settled into her lap. “It’s not a very long journey. I’ll wake you up when we get close.”
He had expected it to be difficult to sleep, but he found that once he surrendered his mind to it that his body was more than willing to follow. He focused on his breathing and the inside of his eyelids. The carriage shuddered and jostled and trembled, but as Adrian retracted further into the comforting turtle-shell of his thoughts he noticed it less and less until he was oblivious to everything.
* * *
Nathaniel Weaver dozed, for a while. When he slept, he kept returning to the same place over and over, as though someone were rewinding a tape and playing it back repeatedly. He saw the beach, heard the gulls, held the beach ball in his arms. Autumn leaves fell around him. Someone, somewhere, cried. Always, when the sobbing started, he woke.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been here, in this blank white room. Whenever he slept, it felt as though no time passed at all, but once he awoke it seemed that great long days had elapsed. When he woke, he would sometimes find that food or water had been left out for him — but not always. Other times he would awaken to the rumbling of his stomach or the dry, cracked feeling in his throat that made him think he wouldn’t be able to talk, if he even had someone to talk to.
But, of course, there was no one to talk to. He wished the Nightmare Man would come back, just so he could have a little company.
Once he woke up and realized he desperately needed to go to the bathroom. He curled himself into a ball, as though squeezing his body into the most compact shape possible would forestall the inevitable. He hadn’t wet the bed in years. The prospect of doing it now was too terrible and humiliating to consider. If he peed himself now, he would be stuck wearing the same wet, stinking pants, or else go without anything at all. He didn’t know why, but being naked here in this blank, cold room terrified him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will his bladder into submission.
When this failed, he opened his eyes and realized that a toilet had appeared in the corner of the room. Curious and afraid, but overcome with necessity, he crept across the room, carrying himself gingerly to the foot of the newly-arrived, sparkling porcelain toilet. He looked around, assuring that he was alone. He fleetingly wished that whoever had put the toilet here would have had the decency to have included a wall, or at least some curtains.
No sooner had he thought this, than the air around him shimmered as though in a mirage and solidified, gaining color and weight. He stared, openly shocked, at the purple curtains that had drawn themselves around him. They hung from nothing, suspended in mid-air as though held up by invisible string from the ceiling.
He did his business, humming tunelessly to himself
When he was finished, he backed out of the curtains — he had a terrible, fleeting thought that they might close in around him, strangling him, but they allowed him to pass without challenge — and peered hopefully around the room. He wondered if maybe a sink would appear, so he could wash his hands, but none did. Suddenly very glad that Mommy wasn’t here to see, he allowed his hands to drop to hi
s sides.
“Bubba?”
The voice came from directly beside Nathaniel, and he jumped and wheeled around. Standing beside him was a little girl, no older than three. She wore denim overalls with pink flowers for buttons, and an embroidered butterfly on the pocket over her chest. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a mad tangle of golden curls, and she blinked up at him with wide eyes. Her nose wrinkled.
“You not my bubba.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
Nathaniel wondered what a bubba was. He shook his head. “No. I’m Nathaniel. Who are you?” He looked around, his heart thudding in his chest. They were alone.
She didn’t answer his question. “Play with me?” She tilted her head, looking up at him.
“Um…” He trailed off, noticing that the room had shifted around them. Where before there had been only plain white walls and a single white table, now there was a large doll house built to look like a castle. It was nearly as tall as the little girl, who went now to stand at it. Nathaniel followed.
She picked up a white plastic horse and made it gallop along the outer wall of the castle, making clip-clop noises with her tongue.
“Where did you come from?” Nathaniel asked. “Are you lost, like me?”
She shook her head, and held out the white horse. “Play with me,” she repeated, more emphatically. “You be horsey.”
Reluctantly, he accepted the horse. The little girl’s fingertips brushed his, and his skin tingled as though he had been shocked by electricity. Now that he stood close to her, he could see that she flickered and glowed around the edges, the way Christmas lights did. He wondered if she was a ghost.
She bent down and pulled a figurine from inside the castle. It was the size of a large action figure, dressed in a full suit of armor. She picked up another doll, this one dressed in a long flowing gown and wearing a small silver circlet on top of her raven-black hair. The little girl glanced up at Nathaniel, who was still holding the white horse somewhat awkwardly in his hands, and huffed in impatience.