Hidden Charm

by Kristine Grayson

  Zel put her hand in front of her nose, as if she was holding back a sneeze. The purple dust hadn’t reached them. It hovered in front of them as if it had hit a glass wall.

  It probably had. Selda hated faerie dust, even though she knew it had its uses. But it interacted badly with the magical, especially when they were unaware of how best to use their powers, and she was probably protecting the small group standing by the door.

  Henry also knew that she would stop protecting them if the faery dust showed them why it should be allowed to move closer to the door.

  He had never seen this much faery dust at once. Usually it floated like a determined bird, and would wrap itself around an image.

  This time, though, it slowly parted, like a psychedelic curtain, presenting dozens of frozen images, like a series of staged sculptures.

  Most of the images were of Sonny. He wore a T-shirt and short shorts. His curly black hair was buzz-cut on the sides, but blossomed on the top of his head like a slightly out of control garden. He was thinner than Henry realized and more muscular as well. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on Sonny’s body.

  He had clearly walked barefoot across the living room into the kitchen at one point in the morning. His image trail showed that much.

  There were blurs around the sword, things that Henry couldn’t really see.

  Henry blinked, trying to make sense of the hundreds of images. It looked like Sonny had been alone, but Henry knew that wasn’t the case. The blurs told him that much.

  Zel made a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “It’s not complete,” Selda said. Then she raised her voice. “You hear me, Tank? It’s not complete.”

  She sounded annoyed.

  Tank didn’t answer her. Henry tried to peer through the magic to see if there was anything he was missing. He had never tried to talk with Tank during one of these magical dustings. He usually tried not to be near them. They made his nose itch.

  And sometimes they forced him out of his frog persona into his Henry self. Was this the first time he had ever appeared in his Henry self at one of these things?

  He wasn’t exactly certain.

  Zel was trembling. He wanted to put his arm around her, but he didn’t dare. He doubted she even saw him. Instead, she was staring at all those images of her husband, and probably not understanding what they meant.

  Henry certainly didn’t understand them either.

  “Tank!” Selda said. “Fix this.”

  The purple dust glittered even more, and the grape Kool-Aid smell grew. Zel sneezed. Some of the dust had filtered through the barrier, whatever it was.

  Almost without thinking, Henry waved his hand, creating a slight protective barrier around Zel. No one needed a magical interaction with faerie magic in the middle of this big reveal.

  Selda glanced at him, eyebrows raised, as if she couldn’t quite believe what he was doing.

  Zel didn’t seem to notice. Her gaze was ahead, as if she was trying to take it all in.

  “Oh, Sonny,” she whispered, so quietly that Henry hadn’t heard it as much as sensed it. “Oh, Sonny, what the hell went wrong?”

  Chapter 10

  She hated seeing Sonny frozen like that. Or all of the Sonnys frozen like that. Image after image, like a video slowed down to its component parts. It didn’t look real. It looked like things she had seen on the computer monitors at work as the video editors plied their trade, deleting small imperfections that would somehow ruin an actor’s performance or the impact of a scene.

  Only those video images didn’t smell of grape bubble gum. The odor was overwhelming, making her eyes water.

  Selda seemed agitated, and Henry was frowning. Tank had completely disappeared under that purple cloud. And the rest of her posse—all those beautiful, tiny faeries, who looked like they had been designed and marketed by Mattel—had vanished as well.

  For the third time, Selda said (with great irritation), “Tank!”

  From the cloud of purple dust came a loud “Shut the fuck up. You’re interfering with my concentration.”

  That rough deep voice, coming out of Tank, shocked Zel even though she couldn’t see Tank at all. Zel still expected Tank’s voice to be filled with dulcet tones, sweet and bell-like.

  Which showed just how much the Disney/media interpretation influenced everything—something Sonny, and Selda, and Mellie (who, with Selda, had started the Archetype Place) fought every day.

  Sonny used to wonder why Zel didn’t hate it all more than everyone else—after all, her story had been portrayed (or incorrectly told) dozens of times. And she didn’t care. She knew her truth.

  She didn’t need validation from outside.

  And there she was, again, letting her mind focus elsewhere because she was faced with something she didn’t entirely understand.

  She sneezed again. The growing cloud of dust didn’t even move, despite the power of that sneeze.

  And then, suddenly, the dust coalesced. The dust itself vanished, and what looked like a live action three-D video played in front of all of them.

  Sonny walked out of the hallway, like he did every morning, wearing his usual T-shirt and shorts. He padded barefoot across the wood floors, not really looking at anything, just getting to the kitchen and the marble covered island. He usually cooked his own breakfast, often something elaborate, and he seemed ready to do so now.

  He looked at the mahogany refrigerator cabinet as if it told him what to make. Only he didn’t really move. It was as if the cabinet had caught his attention for the wrong reason.

  Something gray and slimy slid down the front of the mahogany, and landed with a plop on the kitchen floor. The air around that area dripped gray slime.

  It was the only thing that moved.

  “Tank!” Selda’s frustrated voice made Zel jump. She looked at Selda who had her arms crossed. “What is causing the delay?”

  “For the sake of all that’s magical,” Tank said, “if you don’t—”

  “Something’s wrong, Tank.” Henry spoke quietly, as if he was trying to calm Tank down.

  “Ya think?” Tank asked.

  Zel still couldn’t see her, even though the purple dust had dissipated.

  “You want to see what’s down the hallway or can I bring reinforcements in here?” Tank asked.

  “Is there anything unusual down that hallway?” Selda asked.

  “Um…” a different voice spoke. It did sound like bells—not quite tinkling and not filled with dulcet tones—but a lovely treble sound nonetheless. “Maybe stuff the wife shouldn’t see.”

  Zel’s cheeks flamed. Sonny had brought someone home the night before. They had agreed that their bedrooms were private, and Sonny often brought friends home. But they appeared in his bedroom and disappeared from his bedroom, with no access to the rest of the house. She never heard anything. Sonny was polite that way.

  But having the secrets of her life out here in the open, their unusual lifestyle and the way that their marriage wasn’t what it appeared to be, embarrassed her more than she wanted to think about.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “If it’s important, we need to see it.”

  Henry glanced at her, as if he wanted to meet her gaze, but she wasn’t going to look at him. Instead, she focused on the frozen image of Sonny and the gray dripping goop.

  The goop was spreading throughout the entire image, as if the images were melting.

  “That’s a hole in the magic, right?” she asked, pointing at the refrigerator and the dripping goop. “Is that important?”

  No one answered her. No one seemed to have heard her. She clenched her fists.

  “What’s behind the cabinet?” Selda asked her, as if Zel hadn’t spoken at all.

  “The refrigerator,” Zel said. “And it’s not behind. It’s just camouflaged. Some design thing.”

  Which she had thought a little stupid. Who cared if a refrigerator was in a kitchen? But Sonny tho
ught it was nicer to have cabinets and an old-fashioned looking range than it was to have tech all over his kitchen.

  He had a point: the magical didn’t like tech much.

  But it had always felt to her as if he had designed the house for a photo shoot, not for his magical friends.

  “You think that’s some kind of portal?” Henry asked Selda.

  Selda shook her head. “No one has tried that refrigerator trick since it was outed in the original Ghostbusters.”

  “That was decades ago,” Henry said.

  “Movies never leave the cultural zeitgeist,” Selda said with a bit of irritation. “Why do I have to repeatedly explain that to you?”

  The images were melting all over the kitchen. Sonny (all of the Sonnys) were turning gray and dripping out of existence. Zel didn’t need to see that. It felt metaphorical. It felt…wrong.

  The tears threatened again, and she blinked them back. She didn’t have the magic to deal with this, and she hated the discussion of movies and everything else.

  “Please,” she said with a thread of steel in her tone, “can we solve this?”

  “Trying!” Tank’s voice reverberated out of the living room.

  With a start, Zel realized she couldn’t see Tank, and hadn’t been able to see Tank since the purple faerie dust spread all over the house.

  “Listen, Tank,” Selda said. “I think we should let the magical crime scene—”

  “NO!” Tank shouted the words. “This magic is too powerful. Let us deal with it first.”

  “You don’t have enough—”

  But as Selda started to speak, the buzz of wings grew so loud that Zel wanted to cover her ears. Faerie after faerie after faerie flew into the house, all through the open door behind Zel. The faeries flew like tiny fighter planes, moving in different directions—some heading toward the hallway, others to the kitchen, and still others toward the skylight where Zel had last seen Tank.

  One of the faeries hit something near that skylight with a resounding clank and floated backwards for a moment.

  Little glittery stars appeared above the faerie’s head, something Zel had never seen before. It reminded her of the chirping birdies and stars that circled the heads of injured characters in those ancient cartoons Sonny didn’t want her to watch.

  The faerie put a tiny hand to her head, then swept the glittery stars away. She looked up, and seemed to find what she seeking. She shot like a bolt upwards, and through a space between the ceiling and the slowly encroaching goop.

  “On three,” Tank said, sounding like she was very far away.

  Zel grabbed Henry’s arm, surprising both of them. She had an old habit of reaching out like that, grabbing Sonny for support, but he wasn’t here. Only usually when she grabbed Sonny like that, she used her right arm. And if she had done so now, she would have grabbed Selda.

  Zel didn’t want to think about the reason she had reached for Henry instead.

  Tank counted down, sounding farther and farther away with each number. Then another purple cloud rose, followed by the overpowering stench of grape bubble gum.

  The dripping goop didn’t dissipate. If anything, the images dripped away faster.

  Tank cursed—and that came through loud and clear.

  “Tank!” Selda said. “You’re feeding it. Stop!”

  “Stop talking to me like I’ve never done this before,” Tank said. More purple dust rose and that grape bubblegum smell became so overpowering that tears ran down Zel’s cheeks—and those tears weren’t for Sonny.

  The goop stopped dripping. Then the images reconstituted themselves for just a moment, and they collapsed as if they had never been.

  The collapse revealed a wall of faeries, all of them moving their hands in tiny circles, all of their wings beating so hard they looked like little blurs.

  Sonny’s sword remained on the floor, only now it looked like it hadn’t been touched in centuries. The blade was black and the hilt appeared to be dented.

  The faeries in the main room formed a circle around the sword. The circle ran from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. Their little wings looked like scribbles against their backs. Their pink and purple skirts moved slightly as the faeries themselves moved.

  A strong breeze—with the faint lingering odor of grape bubble gum—blew across Zel’s face, making her sneeze again.

  Henry glanced over at her, a frown on his face. He hadn’t moved away when she grabbed him. His arm didn’t feel like solid muscle, the way that Sonny’s arm felt. Henry’s arm actually felt like soft flesh with a bit of muscle, and bone underneath.

  The way that most people’s arms felt.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Zel wanted to shake her head, but she didn’t dare. This wasn’t about her any more—if it ever was. It was about Sonny, and the powerful, powerful magic that had invaded her home.

  The other faeries—the ones who had gone down the hall, were linking arms. They created a solid line from the circle of faeries all the way down the hallway, and probably all the way to Sonny’s bedroom.

  But Zel was just guessing. She hadn’t been able to move away from this spot.

  “On three,” Tank said from inside the circle. “One…two…three!”

  The entire circle rose and lowered as if it had been slapped on the top by a gigantic hand. The circle bounced several times, up and down, then down and up. It vibrated sideways. It seemed to get smaller, then larger.

  The faeries that formed the line leading into the circle moved as well. They acted just like a rope. Sometimes they had a lot of give, and sometimes they snapped into place.

  “What are they doing?” Zel whispered.

  Henry put a finger to his lips—using the other hand, attached to the arm that she wasn’t clutching.

  Her heart pounded.

  The circle collapsed inward, then expanded outward. A few more faeries zoomed in from the front door, joining the circle and filling in gaps.

  Then the circle exploded outward—faeries flying head over feet like big pieces of shrapnel. Zel ducked as several faeries whizzed past her. They were accompanied by tiny screams, and then the thwap! of bodies slamming into the wall.

  Faeries were careening in all directions. The line had broken up, and those faeries were trying to catch their colleagues.

  Dust rose and it wasn’t purple. It was gray and black, and looked like heavy particulate matter.

  None of it landed on Zel. Instead, it formed a square box around her, as if she were inside a previously invisible barrier that was now being coated with junk.

  Then she realized: she had been inside a barrier. So was Selda, who was crouching beside her.

  Only Henry remained standing. His entire body was coated with debris, and in his hands, he held two faeries. He placed them on the floor beside him, alongside several other faeries that appeared to be out cold.

  The air smelled like burnt sugar. Unconscious faeries littered the floor and covered the walls. Slowly, they started sliding down the walls, leaving tiny purple trails behind them.

  Zel hoped that she wasn’t seeing tiny faerie bloodstains against those walls, but she really had no idea. It would make sense if she was.

  Selda was pushing against the barrier that surrounded her. As she burst out of it, she shouted something about stretchers and triage.

  “Only people with minor magic right now!” she yelled. “Nothing elaborate. We need to quarantine this entire area. Now!”

  Zel touched the inside of her barrier. It was smooth to the touch, and just a little bit hot. She pushed, and the barrier’s lid moved. Something slid along the top, and she realized she was going to dislodge another faerie, maybe hurting her.

  Zel snaked her hand outside the barrier and grabbed the faerie around the middle. The faerie moaned, but didn’t move. Zel leaned out of the barrier, and put the faerie next to the other faeries that Henry had—caught?—she wasn’t sure of that.

  Then slowly, she stood up.

&
nbsp; Her entire house was covered in that gray and black dust. Some of the furniture had shattered. The skylight was impossible to see, and the walls were coated with that purple liquid that might or might not be faerie blood.

  Some of the faeries that had been sliding down the walls had gotten hung up on the swords (thankfully, all of them were sheathed) or on the edge of the picture frames.

  There was a litter of faeries along the baseboards, and a handful on the seats of chairs (tiny purple trails showing that those faeries had slammed into the backs of the chairs and fallen as well).

  A few faeries were lying on their backs on the kitchen island, and two were climbing out of the farm sink.

  Those two appeared to be the only ones who were conscious.

  Then Zel realized they hadn’t been part of the circle. They had been part of the line. They were pulling injured faeries out of the sink and placing them on the marble countertop.

  Selda had moved closer to the door. “Walk cautiously,” she said. “There are injured everywhere.”

  Zel pulled herself out of the barrier. The burnt sugar smell was stronger now, and accompanied by a purer grape smell, one that seemed concentrated somehow.

  Faeries were pouring out of the back hallway, making sounds of distress as they flew to their colleagues.

  Zel didn’t see Tank anywhere.

  Then she looked up.

  Tank was pinned against the underside of the skylight, arms and legs splayed, her face pointing downward. Her dress didn’t hang down, and her wings seemed to be gone.

  Her eyes were open, and for the briefest moment, Zel thought Tank was dead.

  Then Zel realized that Tank’s mouth was moving. She was saying something, but it was impossible to hear.

  Zel turned to Henry to tell him about Tank, only Henry had moved away. He was working with a cluster of faeries, dressed in blue, who did not seem to be part of the original group that had come to the house. They had tiny stretchers, and they were helping move the injured onto those stretchers.