by Alex Bledsoe
“Look,” Veronica said.
A small cave gaped in the side of the mountain, a black orifice set in the rocky hillside. It was about as wide as a man with his arms spread, and a little shorter than Justin. In front of it, three twisted hawthorn trees, their spiked branches entwined, grew in the rocky soil.
“See?” Tucker said. “There is a cave here.”
Justin wanted to pull out another frame capture, one that might confirm their location, but since it also showed the fairy girl, he was reluctant. “It sure looks like it. Doesn’t it?”
“It does to me,” Veronica said seriously, trying to watch every direction at once. Even in the bright, cheery sunlight, the place instantly and insidiously gave her the creeps.
“So, y’all gonna go in?”
“Why would we?” Justin asked.
He shrugged. “No reason. Just thought you might want to.”
“I don’t even know how we’d get in there,” Veronica said.
“Carefully,” Tucker said with a laugh. “Here, let me give y’all a hand.” He pulled out a Gerber minitool, snapped the pruning blade into place, and began to saw at the hawthorn branches. In minutes he’d made an opening big enough for a person to pass through.
Justin stuck his head inside the dark opening, then backed up with a frown. He motioned for Veronica to join him. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Tucker said.
“Yeah,” Veronica said. “It’s … music of some kind. I can’t make out the melody, but it’s music.”
“Yeah,” Justin agreed. He stepped over the cave’s threshold, listening intently. “I can’t quite catch the tune either, but I think it’s something I’ve heard before.”
“Ah, up here it’s probably just the wind,” Tucker said, “or a bird, or—”
“Shh!” Justin snapped, then added apologetically, “Sorry, man, I’m just trying to hear.”
He listened as intently as he ever had in his life. What he heard was impossible to describe: it had no melody, but there were harmonies, and no words, though there was a sense of a story being told through the sounds. He’d never even conceived of music like this, both abstract and tangible, both airy and somehow grounded. It felt like a tune he should know by heart, but he couldn’t quite place it.
But he knew he had to get closer to it.
“Justin!” Veronica cried.
Justin turned, and suddenly realized he was ten feet inside the cave. He blinked in surprise; he had no memory of dropping his pack and entering, but he had. Tucker and Veronica were silhouetted against the blue sky behind him. He said, “Just a little farther. I can almost make it out.”
“Son, I’m telling you, it’s just the wind,” Tucker insisted. “One time I had a crack in my chimney that sounded like the horn part of ‘25 or 6 to 4’ when the wind blew out of the north.”
“No,” Justin said with certainty. “This isn’t wind.”
“Wait, I’m coming with you,” Veronica said. She quickly dropped her pack beside his and joined him in the cave.
“Y’all don’t even have a flashlight,” Tucker said.
Justin held up his phone and turned on the flashlight app. “Yes we do.”
“We’ll be back in five minutes,” Veronica said. “We won’t go far. Keep an eye on our stuff, okay?”
And then they were gone.
For a long silent moment, Tucker Carding stood at the cave mouth, staring into the darkness. Eventually their footsteps faded, and the only sound was the song Tucker knew so well.
But then he laughed, a wry sound that conveyed amusement and irony, but oddly very little concern. He took the camp chair from Veronica’s pack, snapped it open and put it in the shade. And he sat down to wait.
30
The blue-white glow from the app cast steady illumination. Justin and Veronica had done some amateur spelunking, so they weren’t put off by the bugs and sleeping bats all around them. The floor was reasonably level, the few narrow spots easily passable, and it wasn’t long until there was darkness behind them as well as ahead.
The music grew no louder. It still hovered just beyond their hearing, drawing them on without change.
“Do you think Tucker will steal our gear?” Veronica asked quietly. Something about the music made her want to whisper.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Justin said. “He seems like a decent guy.”
“They say serial killers are really good at that. Seeming like decent guys.”
“They say the same about Republicans.”
“And they’re not wrong. You don’t think there’s something weird about him showing up in the middle of the woods just where we happened to be?”
“And your first instinct is to jump to ‘serial killer’?”
“Or Republican.” She shivered. “It’s just spooky. And it’s cold in here.”
“It’s a cave. And don’t change the subject.”
Suddenly she grabbed his arm. “Hey, look.”
“Where?”
“On the ground.”
He shone the light where she pointed. In the dust on the floor of the cave were many bare human footprints. They overlapped, and all went toward the cave entrance where Tucker waited.
“Look at that,” Veronica said. “How many are there?”
“Too many to count.”
“And they’re all heading toward the entrance. None of them are going back in.”
“So I guess we know this tunnel opens out somewhere at the other end.”
Veronica ran her fingertip over a rock surface, disturbing the dust. “Wonder how long they’ve been here? They wouldn’t get disturbed much, this far back. And who goes caving barefooted?”
“Probably just kids messing around. Someone probably dared them to come back in here, they got spooked and ran out.”
He was about to start walking when Veronica said suddenly, “Wait.”
“What? Did you hear something?”
“No, turn off your light.”
He did, and the darkness settled around them. Then, as their eyes adjusted, they saw a faint glow ahead.
“We can’t already be through,” Justin said, looking into the darkness behind them. He usually had a good sense of direction, and he felt as though they should still be deep inside the mountain. “Did we get turned around somewhere? Is that where we came in?”
“No,” Veronica said with certainty.
“Then what is that?”
“I think it’s the other end of the tunnel, and we just went farther than we realized. Or it’s a balrog.”
He took her hand. “Then let’s go see.”
“If it’s a balrog, you owe me a drink.”
“If it’s a balrog, it means we’ll come out in New Zealand. Win-win.”
The light grew brighter as they approached, brighter than it should have even with their eyes adjusted to the cave’s darkness. “Fucking hell,” Justin whispered, shading his eyes and squinting. “Where are we?”
* * *
Tucker looked out over the Sadieville valley, remembering the view before the coal company built the town: nothing but trees as far as the eye could see. When it had been cleared, it had been the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, at least until he witnessed mountaintop-removal mining.
He looked up in surprise as Veronica stumbled from the cave, sweaty and covered in streaks of dirt. “Tucker,” she said, out of breath. “Please help me.”
Tucker jumped out of the camp chair and guided her to sit in it. “What happened? Where’s Justin?”
“He … ran … off,” she said, gasping between words.
“Ran off where? In the cave?”
She shook her head, almost hyperventilating. “With … the fairies.”
“With the what? Calm down and tell me what happened.” He handed her the aluminum water bottle from her pack.
Veronica drank until she choked. She took several deep breaths, calming down and putting her panicked thoughts in order. “We found anothe
r valley. On the other side of this mountain.”
“There is no valley on the other side of this mountain. There’s a hollow, but it’s little-bitty and nobody lives there.”
“I know that!” she snapped between gulps. “But that’s what we found. A huge valley, that we could see for miles, and there were no other mountains.”
“That don’t make no sense.”
She swung the water bottle at him, and it clanged when it hit the side of his head. He cried out and stumbled away, both hands to his temple. “OW! What the hell?”
Veronica got to her feet, bottle cocked for another blow. “You may be used to dealing with stupid people, my friend, but you aren’t now. You knew exactly what we’d find over there. It was Tír na nÓg, wasn’t it?”
“What is that?” he said.
She drew back to hit him again.
“All right, all right!” he said, holding up one hand. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“We saw a troupe of people playing music and dancing. I didn’t leave the cave, but Justin ran out to talk to them. The next thing I knew, he was dancing off with them.”
Tucker shook his still-ringing head. “So you got all the way through.”
“We did. And now I need you to go back with me, to help me find him.”
Tucker was silent for a long moment, then said at last, “That wouldn’t help.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t.”
“Then call the police!”
“That really wouldn’t help.”
She threw the bottle at him in a rage. “I can’t just leave him there! Please, you have to help me!”
“Listen, I can’t.”
“Fine, then I’ll go back myself.” She turned toward the cave.
He jumped in front of her to block the way. “Whoa, hold on.”
“Get out of my way,” she said coldly.
“No, no, wait. I can’t help you, but I know who might. If anyone can.”
“Then take me to him,” Veronica said. “Now. Which way is your truck?”
“I’m not talking about the truck,” he said, and put his arms around her.
Her eyes widened, and at first she thought he was going to kiss her. As she drew back a knee to slam into his groin, he lifted her off her feet. “I know this may not be a total surprise at this point, but it’s still probably better if you close your eyes.”
They began to move upward. And she closed her eyes tight.
31
When her feet again touched the ground, Tucker said, “Okay, you can look now.”
For a moment Veronica was as speechless as she’d been at the other end of the cave. Then she blurted, “Somebody here can help us?”
“Like the song says,” Tucker said with an irony Veronica didn’t yet understand, “what you see ain’t always what you get.”
The double-wide house trailer was on a bare lot in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods on three sides and a paved two-lane road in front. A swing set, truck, and car took up the yard. A satellite dish was mounted in the side yard.
She had no idea how far they’d traveled from the ridge above Sadieville. The sun had dipped in the west, and now almost touched the treetops. She turned to Tucker. “Whatever you’ve got in mind here, we have to hurry, it’ll be dark soon.”
Tucker climbed the cinder-block steps to the trailer’s front door and knocked on the metal.
A handsome middle-aged man peered out through the screen. “Tucker?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Darnell. I need to see Mandalay.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. It’s important.” He made a quick, complex hand gesture. “Real important.”
Darnell thought it over, then said, “All right, wait here.”
“You’re not gonna invite us in?”
“Not till I find out if you’re welcome,” he said, and closed the door.
“Who’s ‘Mandalay’?” Veronica asked.
“She’s in charge.”
“Of what?”
“Of the Tufa.”
“Like a mayor?”
“Sorta.”
The door opened again, and Mandalay Harris emerged. She came down the cinder-block steps and stood before Tucker and Veronica. “I hear there’s a problem.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Veronica said. “This is a kid.”
“I know,” Tucker said. “But—”
“I don’t know exactly what’s happened,” Mandalay said to her, “but if there’s anyone in this valley who can help you, it’s me. I know what I look like. And I really am a fifteen-year-old girl. You’ll just have to accept that what you see ain’t always what you get.”
Something in the girl’s voice, something heavy and ancient, stopped Veronica’s next comment. Those eyes belonged in a much older face, one that bore the signs and marks of hard-earned wisdom. “I’m sorry,” Veronica said. “I’m a little upset.”
“I can tell. What happened?”
“You really don’t know?” Tucker said.
“I know everything, but not all at once,” she said with a little smile. “Tell me.”
Tucker nodded at Veronica.
“My boyfriend and I went into a cave in the hills above Sadieville,” Veronica said. “We came out the other end and…” She stopped, unable to find the words that wouldn’t make her sound like a lunatic.
“What?” Mandalay prompted.
Tucker stepped up. “You remember that thing the Conlins guarded for so long?”
She looked hard at him. “Yes.”
“Well, her and her boyfriend found it.”
Mandalay’s eyebrows went up. “With your help?”
“Maybe. Kinda.”
The girl’s eyes turned hard as granite. “So just like Sophronie Conlin, you’ve lost another canary.”
He took the heat of her gaze without flinching. “I deserve that. But Sophronie was my family; the baby she lost was even named after me, and losing her hurt more than I can say. And I’m doing all this for the Tufa.”
“Excuse me, but what are you two talking about?” Veronica said. “Who is ‘Sophronie’?”
“I’m sorry,” Mandalay said. “There are things involved in this that you don’t know about.”
“Or care about,” Veronica said. “Tucker says you can help me, and I’m willing to listen. But not if all you’re going to do is gossip. I’ll just go back and—”
“No,” Mandalay said firmly, “you won’t. Now tell me what happened when you got to the other end of the cave.”
She gave a short version of the day’s events. “I don’t care where it was, or what it was,” Veronica said, “just that my boyfriend ran off into it. He wasn’t himself, he’d never do that. It’s just like in the old folk tales, when people stumble onto fairy dances.”
“They are old folks, that’s for sure,” Mandalay murmured. “Come on inside where it’s cooler.”
The trailer was cramped but neat. Darnell stood in the kitchen sipping a beer. Mandalay gestured for Veronica to sit on the couch, and Tucker took the seat beside her.
Mandalay’s stepmother Leshell came out of the bedroom, picking lint from her black pants. “These things’ll pick up anything except men and money,” she muttered, then jumped when she saw the others. “Lord a’mercy, I didn’t know we had company.”
“They’re here for me,” Mandalay said.
“I hope so, ’cause I’m on my way out. Picking up a late shift stocking at the grocery store over in Bristol. If y’all will excuse me?”
“I’ll drive you over there,” Darnell said with the weariness of someone used to this sort of thing. “I imagine Mandalay will want to speak to these folks in private.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” the girl said.
When her parents had gone, Mandalay sat down on the coffee table, knee to knee with her guests. “Tell me again exactly what you saw in that other place,” she said to Veronica. “Don’t leave out anything, any detail. I need to k
now everything that happened, if I’m going to help you.”
Veronica looked questioningly at Tucker. “Is this girl for real?”
“She is,” he assured her.
“I am,” Mandalay said.
Veronica swallowed, took a deep breath, and poured out the story in all the detail she could muster.
When she was finished, Mandalay said, “So Justin just ran out to talk to these people?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
The image of the Death card flashed in her mind, just as it had in the cave. “Because I realized where we were,” she said, which wasn’t technically a lie.
Mandalay got up and paced as much as the tiny room allowed. “Could it really be true?” she asked aloud, not really expecting an answer.
“Wait,” Veronica said, “you don’t believe me?”
Mandalay gave her an impatient scowl. “I know you’re worried about your boyfriend, and you’re right to be,” she said as calmly as she could. “But there are some other considerations here, and they have serious ramifications for the Tufa.”
“Are you people fairy folk?” Veronica asked bluntly.
“Yes, we are,” Mandalay said just as plainly. “Eons ago—and that’s not an exaggeration—we were exiled here. The only way back home for us was through that passage you may have found, but it’s been hidden from us by glamour. Until now.”
“So what do we do?” Tucker asked.
Mandalay finally stopped pacing. “Tucker,” she said, “bring Veronica to the Pair-A-Dice at six.”
“Will do.”
Veronica immediately glanced at the clock on the wall; it was a little after five. “Wait, what’s the ‘paradise’?” She immediately thought of that wondrous world where Justin had disappeared.
“No, it’s ‘Pair of Dice,’ Pair-A-Dice,” Tucker said. “It’s a roadhouse.”
“How will that help us find Justin?” Veronica said, and looked up into the girl’s eyes. She saw what lurked there, and even though she couldn’t put a name to it, she felt its weight and power. It was not the gaze of a teenage girl, but something older, more primal, more fierce. She was glad, she realized, that it wasn’t focused on her with anger.
Mandalay put a hand gently on Veronica’s arm. “I know you’re scared. I promise you, we’ll do everything to help bring your friend back.”