un/FAIR

by Steven Harper

  “What’s this got to do with the army?” Alison asked.

  “Oh!” Aunt Zara pushed a lock of unruly hair behind her ear. “I drifted there. The storyteller in me. My, my.”

  “Indeed. Let me,” Aunt Ysabeth said. “Different fairies have different powers, it’s true, and the most powerful are the gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders. It’s their job to keep order in the fairy realm. No type of fairy is more powerful than they.”

  “We’re only lucky they don’t get along,” Mom added. “Gnomes and sylphs hate each other, and so do undines and salamanders.”

  “Earth and air, fire and water,” Alison said. “Opposites.”

  “Precisely. It’s all about a balance of power.” Mom ticked her fingers. “So far Ryan has encountered an undine and a flight of sylphs. We have yet to see gnomes and salamanders.”

  “This is a bit much to take,” Aunt Zara said. “Maybe now would be a good time for that tea.” But she stayed on the couch with her sisters. Aunt Ysabeth patted her arm and Mom touched her shoulder.

  “What happened in Ireland, really?” Alison asked. “I don’t understand it all.”

  Here, Mom got up and went to the window. She stared outside. “It’s very strange. A true fairy tale.”

  “Bad word,” Nox muttered. “Bad. Bad Dad.”

  Mom ignored him. “Ryan, when your grandfather was a young man in Ireland, he noticed his cows weren’t giving milk, and he went to the pasture one night to find out what was going on. The thirteen women you saw were all sisters who came from the realm—the world—of the fair folk. They slid down silver strings to steal milk.” Mom’s voice was even and careful, like she was telling one of the many news stories she wrote every week. “When your grandfather saw the women, he fell in … I don’t know if was love, or something else. But he decided he had to have one of the women for a wife.”

  “So he cut one of the strings and the woman Star couldn’t go home,” Ryan said.

  “That’s exactly right. He took her to his house and made her his wife. I know our dad loved our mother. He gave … time for her.”

  “The old woman asked if she could take the time,” Ryan said. “What does that mean?”

  Mom’s voice was sad. “When she asked for time, Dad—your grandfather—agreed without asking what she meant, and that was his undoing. She took it from him, you see. He died before he turned fifty.”

  “But … that’s unfair,” Alison protested.

  “It was eminently fair,” Mom replied quietly. “From the fair folk’s point of view. Dad agreed freely, and it wasn’t the midwife’s fault that he didn’t ask or specify where the time should come from. Actually, I think he would have agreed even if he had known. Like I said, Dad loved Mum, and I think she eventually came to love him, but …”

  “But what?” Ryan asked.

  “The call of the fairy realm is very strong. Mum always wanted to go back.” Aunt Zara smoothed her blue skirt, and she looked sad, too. “It was our fault she left.”

  Aunt Ysabeth took her hand. “You can’t think of it that way, Zara. It’s not true.”

  “But it is true,” Zara cried. “I was the one who found the place where Dad hid the silver string.”

  “And I was always curious about everything and made you show it to us,” Aunt Ysabeth said.

  “And I always had to know what everything was.” Mom came back from the window. “So I asked Mum what the string was. Her eyes went wide when she saw it.”

  “What happened?” Ryan said.

  “She had to choose between the fairy realm and her family, between power and family.” Mom’s mouth looked tight. “It wasn’t a difficult choice for her. She snatched the string from my hand and flung one end toward the sky. In a wink, she was gone. We were just your age, Ryan.”

  Ryan thought about that. He knew that Mom and his aunts had to have been his age at one time, but it didn’t feel real. Mom was always Mom, organized and steady and full of energy. Aunt Ysabeth was always kind and thoughtful and ready to play games. Aunt Zara was always a little sloppy and forgetful but happy to make cookies or pancakes. He looked at them, all three so alike and so different at the same time.

  “You’re all the same person,” he said slowly. “The same woman. And you’re fairies.”

  “Bad word,” said Nox. “Heard a bad word.”

  “Never mind, Nox,” Aunt Ysabeth said. “That’s the word, and we’ll use it.”

  “We’re only half fairy,” Mom corrected. “And you’re part fairy, too.”

  “We’re not really the same person,” Aunt Zara said. “I’m still your aunt, Ryan, and so is Ysabeth. I don’t know what it means to have been born all at the same time that way—thinking about it makes my head hurt—but I know that I’m different from my sisters. You should know that, too.”

  “It’s why you built the house without iron,” Ryan said slowly. “Fairies don’t like iron.”

  “That was hard,” Dad said. “And expensive. But it was the only way. Your mother and aunts get sick if they live in a house with iron nails. You do, too. That’s why you get car sick—so much iron. We buy cars with as much plastic and aluminum as possible, but you can’t get away from it completely.”

  “Why does iron hurt fai—those people?” Alison asked with a glance at Nox.

  “I don’t know.” Mom shook her head. “It may be that iron conducts energy like electricity so easily and it pulls magic away, too. All we do know is that fairies can’t bear the touch of it, and that it’s the only substance that can kill a fairy permanently. They don’t like blessed objects, either, and it doesn’t matter what religion they’re from, which is why you can use holy water to dispel a curse.”

  “It’s not as bad for us as for full-blooded fairies,” Aunt Ysabeth added. “For us, iron is unpleasant, but not deadly.”

  “Is this why I’m autistic?” Ryan asked suddenly.

  A silence dropped over the room. All the adults exchanged glances. At last Dad scooted his ottoman closer to Ryan. “We wondered the same thing, buddy. The fair folk don’t change, and they have a deep need for order, just like you do. On the other hand, lots of autistic people in the world aren’t descended from the fair folk. So maybe it’s fairy autism, and maybe it isn’t. Does it really matter?”

  “I don’t understand,” Ryan said.

  “It doesn’t matter why you’re autistic, Ryan,” Dad said. “You can’t change who you are, Ryan. What matters is how you handle yourself. And whether you have people who love you.”

  “Oh.” Ryan rubbed his nose. “Do you have magic powers, Mom?”

  Mom laughed. “Not really. Your aunts and I can see fairies, like you can. And we arranged for you father to see them, too, but that’s all.”

  “I can see them,” Alison pointed out. “And my family isn’t … part of that world.”

  “You have Nox,” Aunt Ysabeth said. “Indeed, you do. Your blood binds the two of you together and makes you part of that world, for better or for worse.”

  Alison looked uncertain at that. Ryan said, “Why can I see through time?”

  “That string.” Mom pointed at Ryan’s hand. “That must be from your grandmother—our mother. The question is why she sent it to you.”

  “I’m the Time Child,” Ryan said. “The other fairies wanted to kill me. I think they still do. But I don’t know why.”

  “It has something to do with your grandmother,” Mom replied slowly. “But I don’t know exactly what. Hm. You’ve already seen that the fair folk are divided by the elements—water and air and earth and fire, though you’ve only seen two of them. There’s a fifth element, though.”

  Ryan held up the circle on his hand. “Time.”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Fairy has thirteen queens, and your grandmother is the youngest, most powerful of them. She lives at the center of the spiral, where the four elements combine and create time.”

  “Where’s the f—that place?” Alison asked.

  “All around
us,” said Aunt Zara. “It’s a different world. You can get there through certain gates. There’s one nearby. It’s why we live here.”

  “That’s where you go on Moving Day,” Ryan said.

  The three sisters nodded together, and Mom said, “Every year for seven days. In exchange, the fairies are supposed to leave us alone the rest of the time.”

  “But why do they want to kill me?” Ryan said, growing upset again. “I’m the grandson of the queen! I’m a prince!”

  “I don’t know,” Mom admitted. “Something’s very wrong.”

  “Really?” Dad burst out. “Do you think so?”

  “It’ll be all right, Harrison,” Aunt Zara said soothingly.

  “You don’t know that.” He got up to pace. “None of us know that. We don’t even know what’s going on!”

  “Nox, what’s happening?” Alison asked suddenly. “Why did the sylphs and that undine try to kill Ryan?”

  Nox popped into a hedgehog shape. “Don’t know,” he said. “Blood of new mistress makes forget. Forget, wet, beset. Forget! Don’t remember much. Sorry! Starry, calamari. Sorry!” He curled into a miserable ball of bristles. “Is the mistress angry?”

  Alison stroked him carefully. “It’s okay, Nox. But don’t call me the mistress.”

  Dad cracked his knuckles as he strode back and forth. “Moving Day is a bargain,” he growled. “The fairies can’t break a bargain. How are they able to break this one?”

  “The children broke the bargain,” Aunt Ysabeth said quietly. “The bargain only holds as long as they’re mortal, but they’ve both joined the fairies now, at least partly. Ryan took Mum’s string, and Alison shared blood with an undine. With the bargain broken, the fairies can do as they please.”

  Dad knelt in front of Mom and took her hands. Ryan shifted. He didn’t like it when Mom and Dad did romantic stuff. It made him feel weird. “Then you don’t have to leave at sunset. Moving Day is done forever.”

  “Only the children broke the bargain,” Mom said. “It still applies to the three of us.”

  “I didn’t break anything!” Alison protested, and Nox climbed up to her shoulder again. “I didn’t even know there was a bargain.”

  “That doesn’t matter to the fairies,” Aunt Zara explained. “Sort of an ignorance-of-the-law-is-no-excuse situation.”

  Alison crossed her arms. “That’s not fair.”

  “Hm. An interesting way to put it,” Mom said.

  “Fair,” Ryan put in. “Fairy. They come from the same word. Fairies are always fair. They can’t help it.” But Alison looked unconvinced.

  “At any rate, Moving Day still begins at sunset. I can feel it in my bones,” Aunt Ysabeth said. “That means we need to set up protections now. Before the fairies try to kill Ryan again.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “All right,” Dad said. “Here’s the plan. We’ll set up protections around the house. At sunset, you three will go to Fairy like you always do, but you talk to your mother and find out what’s going on and put a stop to it. Ryan and Alison will stay in the house with me until you get back.”

  “How do we protect the house?” Ryan asked.

  Alison eyed the sledgehammer. “We could all carry something made of iron or steel.”

  “No,” Ryan said.

  “I can,” Dad said.

  “Do we have anything of iron or steel in the house?” Mom asked doubtfully.

  They searched, checking everything that had metal in it. The pots and pans were aluminum. The door knobs and hinges were brass. The faucets were copper. The knives and forks were silver. The only iron they could find was in the sledgehammer, the barbecue fork and spatula, an old shovel, and the riding lawnmower. There were the cell phones and computers, of course, but they didn’t have enough steel in them to make a difference, Mom said. Dad spread everything out on the sunshiny front porch, with the mower at the bottom of the steps.

  “All of them feel unhappy,” Ryan observed from a safe distance.

  “That’s a good a way to put it as any,” Mom agreed. “The more iron, the sicker they make us feel.”

  “What about carrying small pieces of iron?” Alison said. “Nails or screws or things like that?”

  “No,” Ryan said.

  Aunt Ysabeth pursed her lips. “Indeed. This is the difficult part. You see, dear, we’re neither fish nor fowl—neither fairy nor human. It means we have none of the advantages and all of the disadvantages. Iron and blessed objects are bad for us, but we can’t do any fairy magic.”

  “Ryan can,” Alison pointed out. “He can see through time.”

  “Never again,” Ryan said firmly.

  “This isn’t the time for talk,” Dad said. “We need to act, before the next attack comes. Alison is right—we need pieces of iron we can carry, or at least keep handy. The closest supply is the hardware store in town.”

  Mom shuddered. “The three of us can’t even pass through the door. You know that.”

  “I’ll go,” Alison said. “And Ryan can come.”

  “No,” Ryan said.

  Alison crossed her arms. “You’ve been saying no a lot lately.”

  “I’m autistic,” Ryan said. “It means I have a hard time.”

  “So what? We’re talking life and death. Get over it, fairy boy.”

  Ryan shut his eyes and put his hands over his ears. Light and sound vanished. The silent darkness was regular and comforting, and it didn’t throw hard ideas at him. “No.”

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. He wanted to ignore it, but the rules, which created order from chaos, dictated that a phone had to be answered. He opened his eyes and pulled it out. Alison was texting him.

  You have to come. It’s safer.

  Why? He kept his eyes glued to the screen as he replied, shutting out the rest of the world.

  Because the fairies are coming for you, dummy.

  Ryan put the phone away. “Okay,” he said.

  It was nervous work just walking across the yard out to the mini-van. Ryan tried to watch in all directions, expecting some new threat to jump out at them. Dad’s face was hard, and Nox huddled on Alison’s shoulder as a colorless wren. Ryan got in one of the far back seats of the van as he always did, but now he realized the reason he always did it was to get as much distance as possible between himself and the steel block in the engine, though there was still iron in the brakes and in the axles and the wheel rims. He still felt tight all over and a little sick as he always did in a car. At least now he knew why. Alison and Nox sat next to him.

  “Let’s go,” Dad said, and took off.

  No one spoke much on the way in to town. Everyone was too tense. Even Nox was quiet. Ryan played with his fingers over and over, trying to calm himself. The van wound through the familiar wooded road toward town.

  Pendleton, a large village on Lake Michigan, made most of its money from summer residents and tourists who came to visit the water, and the place was deserted in winter. Spring had barely gotten started, so everything was still quiet. The main street was sprinkled with shops that sold stuff like kites and fudge and signs that read Grandpa’s Fishin’ Hole and Forget the Dog—Beware of the Kids! which were supposed to be jokes. Ryan barely noticed kites and fudge because he saw them all the time, and he didn’t understand the jokes, though Alison assured him they were kind of stupid.

  The town’s little hardware store sat a block back from the main street in a parking lot sprinkled with trees. Ryan climbed out of the van, relieved to be away from the iron engine, but Nox whimpered and Alison hung back in the seats.

  “Iron monger,” Nox said. “Bad, bad place.”

  “Nox can’t go in the hardware store,” she said.

  “Should we leave him in the van?” Dad asked.

  “No.” Nox said. “Sick. Trick, click, flick. Sick. No.”

  “I don’t think he likes the van very much, either,” she said doubtfully, and climbed down. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Nox followed her ou
t of the van and blooped into the shape of a cocker spaniel puppy, complete with collar and leash. Ryan put out a finger and touched the leash. It felt warm and springy.

  “Oh!” Alison said. “I see. We can pretend to tie him outside the store. Is that it, Nox?”

  “Better,” Nox agreed. “Butter, batter, bitter. Better.”

  “Don’t change shape until we come to get you, though.” Alison tied the leash to a tree near the front door and patted Nox’s head. “Who’s a good boy, then? Who’s a good boy?”

  “Me,” Nox replied.

  Alison glanced about. “Not so loud.”

  “Woof,” Nox said.

  Dad laughed, and Ryan didn’t understand why.

  They entered through the automatic doors with a ding, and a wave of nausea swept over Ryan. Smells of oil and plastic and, worst of all, iron pricked his nose. Iron permeated the store, suffused the air, weighed down the earth. His skin went tight again, and the circle on his palm burned. Automatically he counted groupings of objects as he passed them, categorizing them and forcing them into at least a kind of order—twenty-three pairs of pliers, ninety-four paintbrushes, seventeen cans of varnish—but even that didn’t help.

  “I don’t like it here,” Ryan whispered to Dad. “We need to go.”

  “Think of it this way—no fairies can touch you here.”

  “But I will throw up very soon.”

  “We’ll hurry.” Dad caught up a basket and towed Ryan down the aisles. Thirty-seven pairs of garden gloves. Seven tool boxes. Five thousand, one-hundred-and-forty-five square feet of floor space, if he was multiplying the floor tiles correctly, and he was. “Nails and screws are excellent defenses. You can throw a handful at a fairy and it’ll hurt a lot, plus they’re easy to carry. Back in the old days, there was a story about a girl who nailed a fairy’s foot to the floor to keep the fairy from catching the girl, and people put nails under their beds to keep fairies away. Of course horseshoes over the door did the same thing, but I don’t think we’ll find horseshoes here, unless they have them for decoration, so maybe we should buy a couple of hammers or—”