un/FAIR

by Steven Harper

“Theresa!” Alison cried. “Is she going to die? Are the others?”

  “Yes,” said Star. “At midnight, the clock will strike. The sound will shatter the crystals and break the people inside.”

  “You took them,” Ryan said. “You brought them here so I would follow of my own free will.”

  “You would never have come otherwise,” Star agreed, “and your parents would hardly allow it. So I sent a bit of my own string to you. It ensured the elementals would try to kill you.”

  “What?” Ryan could hardly believe his ears. “Why?”

  But even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. He had known it all along.

  “That was the test,” he said before Star could speak. “You gave me a power that made the elementals want to kill me. If I died, nothing would happen. But if I lived, I would come here and be your prince.”

  “I knew you would understand.” Star’s voice was eminently reasonable. “We needed to see if you truly were a prince of the fair folk. Could you command those around you? Could you use your power to destroy your enemies? Could you survive? You did, and we are so proud, my prince!”

  “But why?” Alison echoed.

  “Dearie, really.” The old woman touched Alison’s cheek and she dodged away. “We need Ryan to understand that this world is where he belongs. Here he is a prince, with true power. Imagine the armies he could command one day!”

  “I don’t want to command armies,” Ryan said. “I want you to let my family go.”

  “And I will,” Star said. “Truly. If you like, I will even arrange for that little hovel you call a cottage to be rebuilt so they’ll have a place to live.”

  “And what do you want in return?” Alison countered. “Fai—the fair folk never do anything for free.”

  Star seemed to take no offense at this. “Ryan must stay here, of course. If he refuses, the mortals will die when the clock strikes.”

  Alison looked horrified. “Even though two of them are your daughters?”

  “Ryan will make the right choice, little one,” said the old woman.

  Patterns moved and shifted around Ryan. Star’s words made them clear, and in a rush he understood everything. “You are an immortal who will never grow old. You do not really want an heir. You only want a general. You want someone who can command armies in this world so you can conquer the other one.”

  “Coo, he’ll cut you with that wit,” the old woman said.

  “Sharp.” Star nodded. “He’ll make a perfect general.”

  “Rebuild my house,” Ryan said suddenly.

  Star straightened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I do not believe anything you say,” Ryan told her. The hands of the clock and the sundial moved slowly toward XI, and his heart began to pound. “You twist words and you lie without lying. Show me what you are willing to do. Rebuild the Cottage in the other world. For free. To make me like you.”

  “Hm.” Star reached toward the food tray. On its own, the pot of chocolate poured a sweet-smelling stream into a cup, which floated into her hand. “Very well. It is done.”

  “I do not believe you,” Ryan said.

  “Then look.” Star pulled her hands apart, and the cup widened to the size of a beach ball. Floating inside the liquid was an image of the Cottage. It was good as new.

  Nox the snake whispered in Alison’s ear. “Swear,” she said. “Swear it’s true.”

  Star sighed. “That familiar is a bit too familiar. I swear upon my mother’s blood that everything is exactly as it was before the salamanders burned it down, with no obligation to me or mine.”

  Relief dropped over Ryan. He hadn’t realized how much the loss of the Cottage was bothering him until he saw it repaired. His family would have a place to live now. He glanced at the crystals hanging from the tree on the table. The clock hand moved ahead another minute.

  “All arranged,” Star said from her chair. “You must choose now. Touch those golden horns again, and you will find yourself in my stable, perfectly able to leave. Eat a bite of cake or drink a sip of chocolate, and your family goes free while you stay here forever, powerful and immortal. Your friend Alison can even stay with you.”

  “I—what?” Alison wobbled a little. Her hands went into her pockets.

  “That’s why I brought you here—so Ryan would have a friend. Here, there are no poor relatives, no missing parents, no cruel sisters. You will live in a spacious palace, with all the wealth you can imagine, instead of in a crowded trailer with a loud, temperamental family. Eat the cake or drink the chocolate, and you will be immortal, too.”

  Alison pulled her hands from her pockets. Her face was white. The hands of the clock and the shadow of the sundial touched XI. Ryan wavered. He couldn’t let his family die in those crystals. But was there another way? The patterns didn’t show—

  In a swift move, Alison dove toward Star’s chair. Ryan caught a glimpse of metal. With a shriek, Star snatched her skirts away. Alison slid across the floor and stabbed Star in the foot with the last iron nail.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Star howled in pain, and her face stretched like melting rubber. Fangs sprouted in her mouth and claws grew from her fingertips. She lunged for Alison, but Nox the snake bit her hand. Star swiped at him, and Nox tumbled across the room, arcing clear blood as he went. He lay still on the floor. Alison rolled away. Star tried to reach for her again, but her foot was nailed to the floor. Ryan felt how the nail tore through the patterns, scattering them like feathers.

  “Mother!” Star cried. “Help me!”

  The old woman looked torn between Star and Alison, then hobbled toward her daughter’s side.

  “Run!” Alison shouted. She yanked the crystals from the clock, grabbed up Nox, and dashed toward the table with the horns on it. Ryan followed. “Take one!”

  “No!” Star and the old woman cried at the same time.

  “So long,” Alison said as they each seized a horn.

  Chaos twisted around them a second time, and Ryan found himself in the box stall again with his hand on the cow’s horn. It was attached to the placid silver cow.

  “Are you all right?” Alison demanded.

  “Yes. We should not stay,” Ryan said.

  “I was talking to Nox,” Alison replied. Nox lay in Alison’s arms in serpent form. A great gash lay open along his side and it wept clear fluid. Nox made soft weeping sounds. “Does it hurt, Nox? We can fix you.”

  “Kids!” Mom rushed into the stall. “What are you doing here? What’s been going on?”

  A dreadful scream tore the air. Ryan clapped his hands over his ears and his heart jerked. Such a noise violated the orderly rules. It made him sick with pain and fear.

  “What did you do?” Mom asked.

  “No time!” Alison thrust the crystals at her. “Can you hold these?”

  Mom looked at the crystals and made a small sound of her own as another scream ripped through Ryan’s head. Cracks appeared in the stable walls. The cow rolled its eyes and bawled. “Run!” Mom said.

  They ran. Their path took them through the library, the mirror hall, and the entry foyer. The library was a wreck of books, papers, swords, and red-brown blood. Ryan didn’t look at it too closely. Alison explained in breathless words as they ran. The floor trembled and the walls thundered, and Ryan worried that something would collapse on them at any moment, but nothing did. The patterns rippled and warped all around them, and Ryan couldn’t read them. It frightened him.

  “You freed me from the stable when you nailed my mother’s foot to the floor,” Mom panted as they reached the front door. “It’ll take time for Grandmother to free her, and you two can escape if you hurry.”

  “What about you?” Alison panted.

  “I’m already leaving.” Mom held out a hand as Ryan opened the door. “Mother summons me here every year with that clock of hers, and when it strikes, I have to go back home. She’s making it strike early this year.”

  There was no sign of Red Caps or the b
rownie. They ran out the cottage door, across the moat, and down the path. Alison clutched Nox to her, and her shirt was growing wet from his transparent blood. They ran through the woods, and saw no sign of fairy animals or the elemental army. Ryan wondered if they were hiding from Star’s anger.

  And then they were at the staircase to the lake. It had taken almost no time to get there. They pounded down the steps to the beach. The sundial edged toward XII. The ground rumbled, and fire rushed across the sky. Hot gusts of wind tore at Ryan’s hair. Frothy waves whipped the lake. Mom was sweating and growing more transparent. Ryan could see the patterns wrapped around her like a quilt, pulling her toward the lake and home.

  “Hurry,” she said. “We can break the crystals with the touch of cold iron.”

  “Use my knife!” Alison yanked it out of her pocket as they ran toward the water. Nox meeped pitifully. His shape, his pattern, was starting to slide away.

  “It won’t work here. We can only break the curse in our world, the place where it was set. Quick! Into the lake!”

  And Ryan halted. “No.”

  Alison and Mom stopped, ankle-deep in water. “What?” Alison said.

  “I will not go back.” Ryan folded his arms hard. “I am staying here.”

  “Ryan!” Mom put her fading hand to her mouth. “You can’t mean that.”

  “I mean it.” From his pocket he took a bit of cake and balanced it on his palm above the four-colored design. The design glowed faintly. “I took it from the tray.”

  “No! If you eat that, you’ll never leave this place.” Mom’s voice was high-pitched.

  “Here I am a prince. Here I know everything I need to know. Here I am powerful. That world is chaos and fear and cold. This place is order and beauty and perfection. I will stay forever.”

  Mom fell to her knees in front of him, and a part of Ryan couldn’t help but think that was what people were supposed to do in front of a prince. “Oh, baby. You can’t do this.”

  “You will not stop me. I want to stay here.” In his other hand, the sundial slid forward, more than halfway between XI and XII. “You must go home and break the curse. I will stay forever.”

  “But didn’t you hear?” Alison reached out to touch his hand, then pulled back. “Ryan, your grandmother and great-grandmother want to use you. If you stay here, they’ll convince you to command the elemental fairies, and they’ll destroy our world.”

  “No. I am a prince.” He wished he could explain it to her, but words were a slow and foolish way to communicate. They stood on the beach, disrupting the perfect rivulets in the sand. “I will be able to resist. You don’t have to worry.”

  Nox gave a cry of pain. Alison set him on the beach and slashed her palm with the jackknife. Blood dripped into his wounds, but nothing else happened.

  “What’s wrong?” she gasped. “Why won’t he heal?”

  Mom said, “You’re a mortal, and mortal magic only works in the other world. If you want to save him, go now.”

  “Not without Ryan!” Alison looked near to tears. Nox was beginning to dissolve.

  “Ryan, you need to come now!” Mom got to her feet. She was almost a ghost. “If you love me, if you love your family, you’ll come.”

  “I like it here. I will stay.” Ryan raised the cake to his lips. The sundial touched XII.

  “All right!” Alison said. Tears ran down her face. “Ryan, if you need to stay, then stay. I’ll miss you so much. I’ll miss watching the new season of Flashcard Battle Brawl with you and eating Fibonacci pancakes with syrup and listening to you talk about quantum reality. You won’t ever see me again because I won’t be able to come back ever. I accept who are you, Ryan. I always did. But I have to go back.”

  She gathered up the melting Nox and stepped into the lake. A great bell tolled once. The vibrations throbbed against Ryan’s very bones. Mom gasped and pulled the crystals out of her pocket. Tiny cracks scattered across their surfaces.

  “I have to go, too, Ryan,” she said in a choked voice. “The clock is striking, and I can’t stay. Goodbye, darling. Never forget that I love you forever.”

  The bell tolled a second time. Ryan stood there with the cake at his mouth as Mom and Alison waded into the lake. And then Star, sunlight beautiful, appeared at the bottom of the stairs. A trickle of blood ran from her bare foot. She held out her arms to him.

  “My prince,” she called.

  Ryan looked at her, then at the retreating backs of Alison and Mom. The bell tolled a third time.

  It was family that gave him power. Power to walk through a hardware store and face a Red Cap and run all the way home with a stitch burning his side. Fairy Power wouldn’t rebuild a prime-number staircase for him, wish a happy birthday for him, stay friends with him even after a meltdown fight. Power wouldn’t love him. Why had he never seen that before?

  Ryan dropped the cake and dove into the water.

  The bell tolled a fourth time. The world twisted around him, and then he was crawling onto the beach. A summer moon coasted through a black sky scattered with white stars. The bell tolled a fifth time.

  On the beach just ahead of him were Alison and Mom. They knelt on the sand in the moon’s silvery light. A breeze moved across Ryan’s skin in harsh, chaotic patterns, and the sand made no sense. He wanted to retreat.

  “It’s not working!” Alison moaned. “Why isn’t it working?”

  “We’re not strong enough,” Mom choked. “My mother’s magic is more powerful than this knife. We need more. I don’t know what to do.”

  The bell tolled a sixth time. Ryan hurried up to them. “What’s wrong?”

  “Ryan!” Mom exclaimed. “Oh my God—you came back!”

  The bell tolled a seventh time. Lying on the sand were the four crystals and Nox. Nox was almost completely shapeless, and a spider web of cracks obscured the crystals. One of Alison’s hands was bleeding, and she clutched her open jackknife in the other. Ryan could feel the greasy iron blade.

  “We can’t break them, and my blood isn’t healing Nox.” Alison was crying now. “We can’t get them out!”

  Ryan’s palm itched, and the design glowed. “Only a good prince can break the curse of an evil queen. Opposites.”

  The bell tolled an eighth time, and the cracks increased. Swallowing his distaste, Ryan took the knife from Alison with his left hand and used the blade to tap the first crystal. “I break this curse,” he said.

  Light and sound exploded all around them and Alison’s sister knelt panting on all fours on the beach. Her hair was wild, and her clothes were torn. She was missing a shoe.

  “Theresa!” Alison shouted.

  The bell tolled a ninth time. Ryan tapped the second crystal and repeated the words. Another explosion, and Dad lay on the beach, too. The bell tolled number ten as Ryan tapped the third crystal and recited the words, freeing Aunt Ysabeth, who gasped hard for air. The last crystal, Aunt Zara’s crystal, was nearly broken. Bits of it had flaked away. The bell tolled eleven. Ryan was reaching down to tap it when a hard hand snaked down to grab his wrist.

  “No!” It was the old woman, Ryan’s great-grandmother. She had appeared from nowhere. “You will not!”

  Aunt Zara was dying in the crystal, and the old woman was touching his wrist. Trapping his hand. Trapping him. Anger and disgust wrenched Ryan, and he felt a surge of power in his left hand, in himself. Here on the beach, at the border between two worlds, he saw the patterns of the fairy realm and the chaos of the mortal realm overlap, and he saw how to move between them. He twisted, and then he was standing … elsewhere.

  The beach was black sand, the sky was a deep red, and the water was bright yellow. A gold moon hung in the sky. He was alone, except for the old woman, who still clung to his wrist with gnarled fingers as powerful as oak roots.

  “Where are we?” she said sharply. “What have you done?”

  “We’re … between,” Ryan told her. “I don’t think this place exactly exists. It’s like when Hoshi played the limbo card
in the second season finale of Flashcard Battle—”

  “You see what you can do?” the old woman interrupted. “You see what you can accomplish? You are foolish, boy, for thinking you should stay in that tired, drab world, with its tired, drab people. Come back. It’s not too late.”

  “You tried to stop me from freeing Aunt Zara before the last bell rang,” Ryan said, “even though you knew she would die. She’s your granddaughter.”

  “There are two more just like her.” Her horrible grip tightened. “Come back, boy.”

  “I won’t. Let go of my arm.”

  “Or what?”

  Ryan stabbed her hand with the jackknife. The blade barely scratched her knobby skin.

  The old woman barked a laugh. “You think you can injure me, boy? I am the ancient one. My hair was gray when the water retreated from the shore and the first growth of algae slimed new rocks. I pulled the iron nail from my daughter’s foot. The metal holds no terror for me.”

  “I won’t go with you,” Ryan maintained.

  “We have plenty of time to discuss it,” the old woman countered. Her hand was still clamped around his wrist. “You may as well give in, boy. You will never be able to hide from us in the mortal world. This will see to that.” She turned his hand over to show the symbol with its raised ridge of skin all the way around it. “We’ll bring you to us eventually, and you will command armies to conquer the mortal realm.”

  Ryan stared down at the design and circle on his hand. It had only appeared there this morning, but it felt as if it had been there forever. The circle had no beginning, no end. It gave him power, made order out of chaos, changed him from an autistic freakazoid into a potent prince. But the circle, the pattern, would never end. Not unless …

  “… I break it,” Ryan whispered.

  “What are you nabbling about now?” the old woman said.

  “I break this curse!” Before he could lose his nerve, Ryan flicked the jackknife down again, but this time he slashed his own hand. He slashed deep with the bit of iron, and the pain set his hand on fire. He had dipped it in molten glass, coated it in melted gold. Blood gushed over his skin. The cut exposed a bit of silver. Ryan hooked the tip of the knife under it and yanked.