un/FAIR

by Steven Harper

  Ryan checked the little sundial. The shadow was on III now. He shoved it into in his pocket, then tied one of the silk towels into a loose bag, put the four elemental objects in it along with the card box, and left the shack to go exploring. He had no idea where Mom and Dad and the aunts might be, but he wouldn’t find them down here.

  The staircase up the cliff had also changed. It was no longer a set of straightforward, blocky steps of raw boards. Here, a staircase made of tree roots and flagstones twisted its way gracefully up the cliff. Deep green ivy made lush curtains along the sides. The last five steps, the ones Dad had modified so there wouldn’t be 144 steps, were perfectly even with the others. Ryan hadn’t realized how much those final uneven steps had bothered him until he saw these nice, smooth ones here. He climbed.

  A gentle breeze wafted by. It smelled of grass and lake water. It lasted for exactly seven seconds and died away. Forty-nine seconds later, another breeze wandered by, and it lasted seven seconds as well. Even the air was regular. That felt right, too.

  By the time he reached the top of the stairs, the sun should have slid beneath the lake, but the little sliver of orange remained just above the water, and the soft twilight quietly refused to descend into darkness. Ryan realized it was always twilight here, never quite day or night. There was enough light to see by but no harsh sun. It was both comfortable and comforting.

  But he had to find his grandmother so he could find his family. He had no idea what he would do when he found her, but he would think of something. He was the child of time, and that had to mean something. Maybe he could talk to the fairies and explain to them that he didn’t want to destroy the world, since that would destroy him, too. Or maybe he could check ahead to the future and try different things until a future emerged in which he won through, just like Hoshi always did in Flashcard Battle Brawl. The hero always won through in the end, after all. That’s the way it worked. Those were the rules.

  A cold thought stole over him. The fairies saw Ryan as the bad one. To them, Ryan was a villain who was trying to destroy the world. Did that mean a hero fairy would win and Ryan would lose? Ryan’s breath caught hard at the idea. Could he be a villain? His stomach churned. Still, he had to keep going. He had to find his parents, and he wouldn’t destroy anything. Not ever.

  Just like at home, the staircase came out at a wide plain dotted with trees. However, there was no sign of a house. The trees were all exactly the same height, and they were symmetrical. They reminded Ryan of a child’s drawing, or something from a poorly-rendered video game. The grass looked like a golf course—perfectly green, perfectly straight, perfectly cut. Every blade was the same length. Down below, the waves rushed back and forth in regular rhythm and up above, the breeze rustled leaves every forty-nine seconds. Birds sang in the trees, and Ryan’s perfect pitch told him they all twittered in the same key.

  It was perfection. It was home. In a glance he could tell that everything happened with absolute regularity. No changes, no surprises. No chaos. Despite his worries about his family, a smile spread across his face.

  A road curved through the trees. Here he felt patterns everywhere, the same way a fish felt the ocean or a bird felt the air. They were very much like the patterns he had drawn in the air when he was little, except here the patterns bound everything together, like the pattern of the ridges in the sand or the pattern in the spiraling numbers of the Fibonacci sequence. If he reached out his hand, he could touch the patterns, perhaps even—

  Ryan heard a sound in the air, and instantly recognized the buzz of sylph wings. Their movements stirred the air, changed the patterns. He dove back to the staircase and pressed himself against the ivy that twined around the roots that made up the rail. A flight of sylphs darted over the trees. Ryan’s eye instantly counted thirty-four of them. Their dragonfly wings and diamond-hard arrowheads gleamed in the dim light. They swooped and climbed, dashed and dove in a spiral that expanded, contracted, then expanded again, chattering and squeaking all the while. They were searching for something—Ryan—and the ivy leaves wouldn’t hide him for long.

  The patterns moved. The ones in the air avoided mingling with the ones in the earth. Mom’s words echoed in his head: Everything has its opposite. Ryan thought fast. With chilly fingers he dug the clump of dry earth, opposite of air, out of the bag and crumbled it. It puffed into a dust which hovered about him for several seconds in a symmetrical cloud.

  The flight of sylphs passed overhead in a pattern that made Ryan think of the seeds in a sunflower. It was beautiful and deadly all at once. Their bows were nocked with deadly diamond arrows. Still chattering, they spread out again. Three of them looked straight at Ryan. His heart went dead in his chest. But they flew on with the others and rushed away on the next puff of wind. That same little wind dissipated the dust, but Ryan was safe for the moment. He watched the sylphs go, both frightened and excited, scared and exulted.

  He didn’t know what to do or where to go after that, so he decided to follow the road. Since it seemed to bend in a circle, his choices were to go clockwise or counterclockwise. He chose counterclockwise because that was the direction the sylphs had gone. That direction fit the pattern. He checked the sundial again. Even though there were no real shadows here, the gnomon cast one at IV now. Time was passing. Ryan sped up.

  He had only walked 233 steps when he sensed a change. The regular puff of wind was a tiny bit warmer, and it was moving a little faster, as if something was pushing it. The patterns were changing again. Ryan ran to one of the trees and scrambled upward with the bag in his teeth, automatically noting that the branches were neatly arranged in the proper sequence—one main trunk that split into two trunks, while higher up one of the trunks split again to create three, and higher still two of the trunks split to create a total of five, and so on further up. As Ryan climbed, he caught the numbers: one, two, three, five, thirteen, twenty-one. The next number in the sequence was created by adding the two numbers that came before it. one plus two made three. Two plus three made five. The Fibonacci sequence.

  He climbed higher, to where the branches split into five. There were flowers up here, some open, some closed. They smelled like lilacs but looked more like giant tulips.

  The sulfur smell grew stronger now, and Ryan heard crackling. He curled nervously against the trunk of the tree. Five huge salamanders, each the size of a horse, skittered down the road. Their bodies blazed with flame, and they crackled and hissed to one another as they came. They scanned the road left and right, looking for Ryan, just as the sylphs had done. As they came closer, Ryan could see each salamander was actually made of thousands of smaller salamanders linked together, and those salamanders were made of tinier salamanders linked together. He wondered how far down it went.

  Two of the salamanders sniffed the air with a sound like a fire shifting, and flames shot from their nostrils. They had his scent, and their pattern was intertwining with Ryan’s. They turned off the road, following his footsteps across the grass. The other three made a coughing sort of bark that sent icicles over Ryan’s skin. The grass burned brown beneath the salamanders’ feet. Ryan’s hands shook. From the bag he pulled the water jar and poured it over his head. Some of the water ran down the tree trunk. It washed away the fire pattern that was touching his own pattern.

  The salamanders stopped a few feet from the tree. They sniffed and snorted, blasting the grass ahead of them with gouts of flame. The grass withered and died. It would have bothered Ryan if he hadn’t been so afraid of the salamanders themselves. One of them circled the tree like a small dragon, leaving twenty-one burned steps in the grass. Ryan held his breath. As one, the salamanders turned and skittered back to the road. Ryan collapsed against the tree trunk with relief. His clothes were wet. He didn’t like that. But it was better than being roasted alive.

  Except Ryan hadn’t noticed the pattern in the tree itself, and that it was connected to the fire pattern of the salamanders. When he pushed against the bark, the two salamanders caught
his scent again. They rushed back to the tree with a roar. One of them circled around the bottom while the other climbed steadily toward Ryan, hissing and crackling as it came. Heat blasted Ryan like a small sun.

  We have you, hissed the millions of salamanders within the salamander. We will roast your skin and melt your fat.

  Ryan couldn’t move, couldn’t think. “Leave me alone! I won’t touch time!”

  You will. It’s in your nature. The salamander climbed higher, scorching the bark. It was only a few yards below him now. Ryan thought about dropping out of the tree and running, but the other salamander stood guard at the bottom. Just as it’s in our nature to burn. Burn you. Burn your house. Burn your family.

  At that, the anger worm came to life with power of its own. The salamander reached for Ryan’s ankle. A drop of water ran over the design on Ryan’s palm, and he felt the soft liquid pattern, traced the millions upon millions of droplets, followed them all the way back to the lake. He pulled on it, and the design glowed. A water pattern thundered through him. Water summoned from the lake itself poured from his hands and mouth and eyes in a fire-hose torrent.

  The salamander’s claws brushed Ryan’s shoe when the torrent of water struck straight on. The creature screeched and hissed and howled and fell from the tree to land on its partner at the bottom. Water gushed over both of them. They steamed and writhed and screeched, trying to get away. But there was no escaping the wrath of Ryan’s water. Their flames flickered, then with a whoomph, they went out, leaving nothing but lizard-shaped holes in the grass.

  Water dripped from Ryan’s face and fists, and a wave of tiredness washed over him. He leaned against the tree—safely, this time—and just breathed. How had he done that? But that was a foolish question. He knew exactly how he had done it, and he knew how to do it again. With a sense of awe, he spread his left hand and looked at the elemental design on his palm. The fairy realm was truly a wondrous place.

  Here, he had power.

  You do, my prince! whispered the voice. The pattern is yours!

  He was about to climb down when he heard a faint rustle. Just above him, one of the tulip-like flowers opened a little, revealing a sylph. It was smaller than the others Ryan had seen. It was naked and wet, and its eyes were shut. The flower opened further. The little sylph slid free of the petals and plunged toward the burned ground. With a gasp, Ryan snapped out a hand to catch it, but missed.

  “No!” Ryan cried.

  The little sylph’s eyes popped open. It tried to flap its wings, but only two of them moved. Moisture weighed them down. It tried again. This time the other two moved while the first two remained still. Ryan watched helplessly, rooting for the poor sylph even though its relatives had tried to kill him only a few minutes ago. Less than a second before it would have hit the ground, all four of the sylph’s wings burst into motion and it halted a hair’s breadth above the ground. Its bare back brushed the sooty grass. The flower coughed up a silver bow and a quiver full of diamond arrows. These Ryan did catch. The little sylph hovered near the ground a moment longer, then flew among the tree branches with squeaks of utter joy. Ryan laughed with more than a little envy. It would be a fine thing to fly.

  The sylph darted about the tree. It seemed to be looking for something. Ryan whistled softly and held up the bow and arrow. The sylph flicked over to pluck them from his fingers. Its touch was light as a petal caught on a bit of mist. It squeaked at Ryan, sped giddily twice around his head, then sped up to the sky.

  “You’re welcome,” he whispered. Wow. The birth of a fairy. Hoshi had never seen that.

  With a whisper of movement, the remaining flowers opened, and more sylphs spilled out. They fluttered toward the ground like the first one had, trying to start their wet wings. Ryan reached out to catch one, but his fingers only brushed it, and it continued to fall. Something shifted in the air patterns around the tree. The sylphs’ wings sputtered to life before they hit the ground, and they rushed up to catch the new bows and quivers from their mother flowers. All but the sylph Ryan had touched. It crashed in the center of a salamander’s dead footprint and lay fluttering like a broken baby bird.

  Horrified, Ryan scrambled down the tree with the bag in his hand. The sylph whimpered. Two of its wings were broken and one leg bent at a sickening angle. Blue blood leaked from a gash on its thin chest. It was in pain and dying. He could see the pattern of its life unraveling like badly woven cloth. Ryan felt sick with guilt. He had touched it, disturbed its pattern. That’s why it had fallen. The other sylphs spiraled around Ryan and their fallen comrade, chattering uncertainly. Ryan looked up at them.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he pleaded. “Tell me what to do!”

  But they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer. They hovered, waiting anxiously. It occurred to Ryan that they didn’t yet know they were supposed to kill him. They were still new and innocent.

  The dying sylph’s wings fluttered more and more weakly. The light was leaving its pale eyes. Tears pricked the back of Ryan’s eyes. This was his fault, and he had to do something. Those were the rules. But he didn’t know what to do to make things right. He desperately wished for his parents or even Alison.

  The sylph’s eyes slid shut. The hovering sylphs squeaked in sorrow. Ryan’s gaze fell on the bag again. Everything has its opposite. If that was true, the statement itself had an opposite: everything has its match. Ryan pulled out the feather. Air swirled around it. He might need it later, but never mind that—the pattern felt right. He brushed the sylph with it. The feather glowed faintly, just as it had done back at the lake. Like a broom, the feather was sweeping the sylph’s pattern back into order. He brushed the sylph with it a second time, and a third.

  For a dreadful moment, nothing happened. The sylph lay motionless on the charred ground. Then the feather crumbled and disappeared in Ryan’s hand. The sylph gave a tiny cough. Its wound closed. The torn wings sealed themselves. The sylph’s eyes opened and it sprang into the air.

  Ryan clapped his hands and yelled. The sylphs danced another gleeful spiral as the newly healed sylph claimed its bow and arrow from its flower. Then it came down and hovered in front of Ryan’s face. It put a tiny hand on Ryan’s forehead, bowed once, and buzzed away.

  Ryan had never seen that gesture before and didn’t know what to make of it. He flipped through a dozen different possibilities in his head, and the closest he could find was happy.

  “I’m glad you are happy,” he called. “I am happy, too.”

  The sylphs all drew arrows and nocked them. Ryan scooted back in sudden fear. They were going to attack after all. The sylphs loosed arrows by the dozens, and they landed all over the dead places where the salamanders had burned the grass. Each arrow burst into a scattering of seeds. In seconds, new grass swallowed up the salamander tracks, leaving no trace they had ever existed. The sylphs flew around Ryan one more time.

  “That’s why the tree created you,” Ryan breathed. “To fix it.” This world became more and more wonderful by the moment.

  The sylphs laughed, then started to fly away.

  “Wait!” Ryan said. “I’m looking for my family! And Theresa. Do you know where they are?”

  Most of the sylphs ignored him, but one, the one Ryan had healed, hesitated. It swooped in close, drew an arrow from its quiver, and scratched Ryan’s arm deep enough to draw blood. Ryan jerked back. It hadn’t hurt, really, but it had caught him off guard. The sylph loosed the bloodied arrow toward the road. The arrow grew to the size of a street sign and hovered there a moment, pointing down the road in the direction Ryan had been going, then vanished. Ah. The arrow pointed toward more of Ryan’s blood. Everything had its match.

  This time, Ryan did know the proper response. “Thank you.”

  But the sylph was already gone.

  Ryan checked the sundial. It pointed to V. He continued up the road, trying to stay wary and having a hard time of it. Even though he was worried about his family, the fairy realm itself was comforting, relaxing
. Everything was always the same. He saw strange animals—rabbits with antlers, a giant frog in a tree, a pair of snakes with bat wings. He saw perfectly normal ones—a black cat with a white spot on its chest, a horse whose coat dripped with water, a goat with yellow eyes. All of them he gave a wide berth. They either ignored him or didn’t see him. Perhaps only certain fairies were actively hunting Ryan, or perhaps they just weren’t expecting him here. In any case, the patterns made life so much easier. The chaos of the other world seemed distant and foolish, even with the sundial in his pocket pointing toward death.

  It seemed to Ryan that he should be getting tired or hungry, but he felt neither of those things. The eternal twilight, the matching trees, and the regular breezes all kept him fed and awake.

  The road ended in a wide clearing. In the center stood a single-story cottage of stone. Ivy twined over and around it, and a pair of trees guarded either side. Strangely, a moat perhaps eight feet wide surrounded the cottage as well. The road led right up to the moat, and there was no bridge across it. Water sloshed around in it as if the moat was an angry washing machine. Despite the sloshing, the water was perfectly clear, and was only about three feet deep. Ryan edged warily closer, ready to jump back.

  A figure floated at the bottom of the moat. It was a girl. Her dark hair floated around her face, obscuring it. The water sloshed some more, and the hair moved aside. Ryan’s legs went weak and he staggered. The girl was Alison.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Before Ryan could react further, the water swirled and pulled itself up into the form of the beautiful, watery woman he and Alison had met down at the lake only that morning. Her flawless face looked like a statue made of ice, and droplets ran down her cheeks like tears. She cocked her head in a way Ryan did not like at all.

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Ryan told her.

  “Not at all,” the undine bubbled. “Wherever water is, there am I. You could not kill me any more than you could stop the rain or dry up the ocean. But you—you broke the rules, Ryan November. You were to choose one of us so we could trade a life for a life. Instead you brought chaos to Fairy.”