un/FAIR

by Steven Harper

  “An undine’s familiar,” Aunt Ysabeth breathed. “Indeed! How did you bind it to yourself, Alison? What’s happening here?”

  “I—I—” Alison stuttered.

  “Are you two all right?” Aunt Zara asked. Her blond hair stood out in a wind-blown haystack. “Are either of you hurt? My, my!”

  “I’m all right,” Alison hiccupped. “Just a little freaked.”

  “I have cake on me,” Ryan said. “I don’t like it.”

  Dad glanced uneasily at the empty sky. “Let’s talk about this inside, okay?”

  Several minutes later, Ryan was cleaned up and everyone was sitting in the living room. Nox, still a kestrel, took up the back of Alison’s chair. Ryan braced himself. The adults were going to freak out. How could they not? Ryan was freaking out. His hands twisted in his lap and even with a fresh brown shirt on, he felt like he might explode. Aunt Xaveria checked the windows while Aunt Zara brought in a tray with cookies and Mom poured two glasses of chocolate milk. Alison took her glass, but Ryan left his on the tray. His stomach was in a cold knot.

  Dad came in from the garage carrying a sledge hammer. The solid iron head brought a sick taste to Ryan’s mouth and the knot in his stomach turned into an oozing worm. He wondered if he might throw up. Dad set the sledge hammer near the coffee table. Mom and the aunts drew back from it.

  “Hurts,” Nox whimpered.

  “It talks,” Aunt Ysabeth said. “Indeed!”

  “He,” Alison corrected.

  “Why does the iron hurt?” Ryan asked abruptly. “My stomach feels wrong, like I’m riding in the car.” Ryan always got car sick, and couldn’t even ride the school bus. Mom or one of the aunts always took him to school.

  “Must we have that hammer here?” Mom asked. “There are other ways we could protect the house.”

  Dad’s face was hard. “Fairies attacked. I want iron.”

  “Hm.” Mom nodded once and straightened her blouse. For a moment she looked at Ryan. Her lower lip quivered, and he wondered if she was going to hug him. He looked at the floor, hoping she wouldn’t. A hug would make everything worse. Fortunately, Mom just picked up a cookie and nibbled. Her hand shook just a little. Ryan wondered if meant she was nervous or if she was unhappy.

  “So you all know about the … the … “ Alison flapped her arms in a way that Ryan associated with being upset, though he wasn’t entirely sure. She might be restless or surprised. He didn’t think it was fair that when Alison flapped, no one said anything, but when Ryan did it, people told him to do something else or to stop. “You know,” she finished.

  “You’re trying to tell us about the fairies,” Aunt Ysabeth said in a gentle voice that made Ryan think of peanut butter brownies. “But something is stopping your mouth. Ryan, is it the same with you?”

  Ryan and Alison both nodded. Nox rubbed his beak over the top of Alison’s head.

  “Ladies,” Aunt Ysabeth said, “I think we have a curse.”

  Mom set her cookie down with a snap that broke it in two. “Someone cursed Ryan? Who? I’ll stab her straight through with an iron—”

  “All right.” Aunt Zara pulled her flowing skirts away from the sledge hammer. “We can handle this. First we need information. Ryan, which element did the fairy use to curse you?”

  The question puzzled him. He remembered the big chart on the wall in science class, the one with all the letters that stood for all the known substances, beginning with H for hydrogen. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Was it earth?” she asked. “Air? Fire? Water?”

  “Those aren’t elements,” Ryan said.

  “They were in the old days,” Mom explained. “Which one was it? You were down by the lake and Alison has an undine’s familiar. Did an undine—a water fairy—curse you?”

  Ryan tried to answer, but his mouth wouldn’t work. It frustrated him and made him angry.

  “Hm. Just nod if that’s what happened,” Mom said, and Ryan nodded.

  “An undine this morning,” Dad rumbled like a lion, “and sylphs this afternoon. What’s going on? We’re supposed to be safe here.”

  “I don’t know. We’ll worry about that in a minute.” Aunt Zara was already opening a glass-fronted cabinet filled with knickknacks. She extracted a crystal vial and unstopped it. “Alison, this won’t hurt a bit. Ryan, I’m afraid you’ll feel a certain amount of discomfort. There’s nothing we can do about that, honey. My, my. I’m sorry.”

  Ryan tensed. “Is it like getting a shot?” Even though he was eleven, shots occupied a top slot on Ryan’s private list of awful things. They were terribly painful, he had no way to control them, and the ache lasted for days. Worse, the doctor always said it wouldn’t hurt much but it always did. The lie made it more awful. Mom said a lot of people with autism were extra sensitive to pain, but the explanation never made it any better.

  “I don’t know if it’s like a shot,” Aunt Zara said. “But we need to do quickly. The longer the curse stays on you, the harder it will be to break. Alison, I need you to touch the head of the sledgehammer, please.”

  “Why?” Alison asked warily.

  “Iron hurts fairies and it can break their magic. Quickly, now.”

  Alison set her glass aside and reached down to touch the hammer’s head. When she did so, Aunt Zara sprinkled a few drops of water from the vial over her. Nox the kestrel drew back with a flutter of feathers.

  Aunt Zara said, “With iron cold and water holy, I break this curse, I break this curse, I break this curse.”

  There was a pop and a flash of light like from a camera. Ryan jumped. Alison flung herself back in her chair, blinking rapidly. Nox dropped behind the chair with squeak, then changed into a water snake and cautiously poked his head above the back. Ryan couldn’t make sense of what had just happened, and he ran back to something that did make sense.

  “That was bright,” he said. “It was just like when Hoshi faced the thunder toads in Flashcard Battle—”

  “Not now, Ryan,” Dad said, and Ryan stopped. “Alison, are you all right?”

  “I’m okay.” She looked at the back of her hands, then at Ryan’s family. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Hm. Can you talk about fairies?” Mom asked tightly.

  “Fairy. Undine. Water woman.” Alison breathed out hard. “That’s better! Where did those … sylph things come from? Why did they grab me?”

  “Curse before questions.” Aunt Zara turned to Ryan. “Now you, dear.”

  “Do you want me to hold your hand, Ryan?” Dad asked.

  “No.” Ryan leaned away from him.

  Mom pursed her lips and covered her eyes with one hand. “I don’t want to watch.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Ryan had been feeling reassured that Alison hadn’t felt any pain, but now Dad’s offer and Mom’s reaction were scaring him all over again. The sledge hammer lay on the floor, heavy and slightly greasy, the handle pointing at the roof like an accusing finger. His skin felt tight. The hammer was going to crush him, the water was going to burn him. Panic built inside him, an old, hated friend, and he wanted to run away.

  “Quickly now,” Aunt Zara said. “Before you lose your nerve.”

  The world flickered and the future popped up. The panic prevented him from stopping it. The room brightened and Ryan was lying on the ground as pain powered through him. He felt it, but in a sideways sort of way, like pain a ghost might feel, but made all the worse because he knew the real thing was coming.

  “He’s going into a meltdown,” came Dad’s voice, and the room snapped back into the present.

  The entire world loomed around Ryan, huge and chaotic. Everything pressed in on him—the coming pain, the people who wanted to touch him, the fairy curse, the fight in the yard, the cake crushed across his middle, how he had changed the future twice, the iron hammer in the living room, even the feeling of the clothes on his skin and the way his shoes squeezed his feet, and the coming pain, pain, pain. They were going to hurt him and they weren’t su
pposed to do that. The hammer squatted on the floor like a poison toad ready to jump, and his parents and aunts created thunderstorms of unhappiness over him. Nothing made sense, but it had to make sense and he couldn’t speak or breathe or think. Fear of the pain and fear of them and fear of chaos, chaos, chaos crashed over him and he wrapped his head in his arms and screamed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Don’t touch him. It only makes it worse.”

  “I’m an idiot. I should have seen it coming.”

  “Ysabeth, can you bring him out of it?”

  “It’s a bad one. I don’t think I can.”

  The voices swirled around Ryan. He heard the words but didn’t understand what they meant. His screaming was a monster now, a living thing that had awoken inside him and fed on itself. Back when Mom had Ryan read fairy tales over and over to make him understand that words could lie, he had come across a picture of a snake swallowing its own tail. Ouroboros, it was called, and it was a symbol for infinite, something that made itself go on forever. The scream fed on itself, like the serpent Ouroboros, and nothing could stop it. Ryan hated it, but there was nothing he could do to stop it, either. He screamed and screamed.

  “Alison, bring the hammer over. Ysabeth, bring the water.”

  Hard hands grabbed him, tried to pin him down. He fought back, unable to stop himself. His fist connected with something, and he heard a cry of pain. One of the hands went away, but others took its place. Water splashed his face, and it burned like acid poured from the sun. He screamed even louder. In the same moment, a greasy iron brick pressed against his side. Nausea exploded through him, and his screams choked away as he threw up.

  “With iron cold and water holy, I break this curse.”

  There was a wrench, and Ryan was falling through darkness. He flailed in all directions, but he felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing, not even his own voice. Terror clawed at him like a fanged animal. He didn’t know where he was or what to do next.

  And then, far below him, he saw a green field beneath a night sky. No, he didn’t see it so much as know it was there. He wasn’t falling any longer, but he wasn’t standing on the ground or hovering above it like Hoshi did in episode E205 when one of the flashcards gave him wings. He was simply everywhere, part of the air and the rocks and the grass and the starlight. His terror faded. Earth and rocks and wind couldn’t be afraid. It was a relief.

  Very good, my prince, said the voice in his head. Now watch and learn.

  Who are you? Ryan demanded. What am I doing here?

  The past calls to the Time Child. These are secrets you need to know. So know them. Watch them.

  Ryan watched. A stone wall made the field into a tidy square. Cows, calm and placid, dotted the grass, and Ryan smelled their sweet breath. Most of them were lying down, asleep beneath a full moon, but a few were standing up. Behind the wall hid a man. He wore a cloth cap, boots, and a jacket, and he kept peering over the wall, like he was waiting for something. The man looked familiar, as if Ryan had seen him on TV a long time ago but could only barely remember him.

  Who is that man? Ryan asked in his head.

  Watch, the voice commanded.

  From the sky dropped a number of silver strings. Ryan counted them instantly—thirteen. He liked the number thirteen. It was a good, solid prime number which couldn’t be divided. It was also the eighth number in the Fibonacci sequence. The strings dangled above the field, hanging from nothing and gleaming liquid silver in the moonlight. Ryan tried to catch his breath and touch the new circle on his palm, but he had no breath to catch or palms to touch. The man ducked behind the wall and just barely peeped over the top. His eyes were wide and excited. Ryan would have squirmed with curiosity if he could have.

  Thirteen young women slid into the pasture, one down each string. Ryan tried to see where they had come from or where the tops of the string hung, but he couldn’t make it out. All the women had long, silver-blond hair and they wore grass-green cloaks. Each carried a silver bucket. Moving together, like ballerinas in a dance or a flock of birds gliding across the sky, they flowed in waterfall steps to the herd of cows, one woman to each cow. The cows that were lying down stood up, and the women knelt beside them while Ryan stared in amazement. With swift, sure movements, they milked the cows. Yellow cream streamed into silver buckets.

  When the women were fully occupied with their milking, the man leapt silently over the wall and ghosted up to the one of the strings. The women didn’t notice him. Stolen milk frothed inside the buckets. With a slash of his steel knife, the man cut one of the strings and dove back over the wall with it. The remaining part of the string shriveled and vanished. Ryan wanted to gasp, but he wasn’t breathing. Now there were only twelve strings, and twelve was a terrifying number that might be divided any number of ways and crunch in on itself like a rotten tooth.

  The women finished their milking and, laughing and chatting among themselves, glided back to their strings. One by one, they rushed up the silver lines like yo-yos or bungee jumpers. But one of the women was left behind. She cast about for her missing string, a number of expressions crossing her face. Ryan concentrated to read them. He thought maybe she was confused, then frightened, then something else. More than frightened. Horrified, maybe, or panicked. He understood. Somewhere, there were only twelve strings left, and that was wrong. It was painful to watch.

  Don’t turn away, the voice in his head warned him. You need to know.

  Is this another test? Ryan demanded.

  But the voice remained silent.

  After a moment, the man called out to the woman from behind his stone wall. The woman jumped and dropped the bucket. Fresh warm milk spilled across the cross, and Ryan thought of the glass at breakfast. Ryan was sure she wanted to flee, but her string was gone and she had no way to escape. Still, she might have run off somewhere else if the man hadn’t held up the silver string.

  More expressions crossed the woman’s face, so quickly Ryan couldn’t read them, and he wished she would speak. She rushed over the wall at the man, fists raised, and Ryan wasn’t sure if she really wanted to fight him or not. The woman was much shorter than the man, who was tall and looked very strong. Ryan wondered if the man might try to hit her, but he only wrapped the string around the blade of his steel knife. It made Ryan uncomfortable to watch a beautiful object like the string touch razor iron.

  The woman came to a dead stop only a foot away from the man and held out both hands. She was weeping, and she spoke something in a language Ryan couldn’t understand. Then she dropped to her knees with her hands still raised. It took Ryan a moment to understand she was begging.

  “My name is Eric,” the man said, and the way he said his words made Ryan think of green fields and mossy houses and old fairy tales with leprechauns in them. Were they in Ireland, then? “You and your sisters have been stealing my milk for a fortnight and odd days now. You need to pay me back.”

  With that, Eric shoved the string and knife into his pocket and walked away. After a long moment, the woman got to her feet uncertainly. Leaving her silver bucket behind, she took one hesitant step after Eric, then another and another, until she was following him across the fields and down a road. Ryan counted her steps. When the woman reached 1,719, Eric arrived at a low stone cottage with one window in each wall and smoke curling from the chimney. Eric went inside, leaving the door open, and a light came on. The woman halted, then walked nine more steps to the door, bringing her total to 1,728. That was a very bad number. It was the cube of twelve, and would turn on you with blades and razors, slicing itself into smaller and smaller pieces that dwindled away beneath your feet, leaving you standing on empty air. Ryan silently begged her not to go inside a house you reached by walking a number of steps equal to multiplying the awful number of twelve by itself three times. The woman hesitated for a long moment. Ryan caught a gleam of silver through the open doorway. The woman took a breath and entered the house.

  In that moment, Ryan remembered where he h
ad seen Eric before. He had been concentrating so hard on the terrible numbers, he had missed the importance of the cottage. There was a picture of it on the mantle above the fireplace at home, all in faded colors. In the picture, a man in his cloth cap—the same man Ryan had just seen—was standing in front of a cottage door—this cottage door—with three little girls. Eric was Ryan’s grandfather, who lived in Ireland and whom Ryan had never met because he had died when Ryan was very young. The three little girls in the picture were, of course, Ryan’s mother Xaveria and aunts Ysabeth and Zara. The realization hit him hard and made the world wobble. The man who had cut the beautiful woman’s string was his own grandfather. That made the beautiful woman his grandmother.

  Truth is never beautiful, my prince, whispered the voice. Watch the truth.

  The sun rose over the cottage, then set, then rose, then set, faster and faster. It was like watching a video on fast mode. Winter flicked by, and spring, and when summer came, the sun stopped just before it would have dropped below the horizon one more time, and Ryan found himself inside the cottage now. In the bedroom, the woman lay on a wide bed under a blue blanket. Ryan thought she looked beautiful, even with her eyes closed and her hair uncombed and loose like it was. She seemed to shine like a star. Beneath the blanket, her belly was swollen. Ryan had seen pregnant women before, of course. Alison’s mom had had a baby just two years ago, and Ryan remembered how big she had gotten, though she wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as this woman, his grandmother. He also knew that some women had trouble giving birth. Sometimes they died.

  Indeed, said the voice.

  Is she going to die? Ryan asked, horrified. Don’t make me watch her die!

  The voice remained silent.

  The woman moaned in pain. Her face was pale. In a basket beside the bed lay some old towels, and they were stained with blood. Eric sat next to the bed with a bowl of cool water and a washcloth. He sponged the woman’s face, though she didn’t seem to care about it one way or the other. Ryan wondered what was wrong. He didn’t want the woman to die. Why didn’t Eric call a doctor or take her to a hospital? Maybe it had something to do with where she came from. A doctor might not be able to help a woman who slid down from the sky on a silver string. Ryan also wondered where the string was.