by Carrie Jones
“No, your parent is pixie. You are still human, susceptible to pixie magic, destined perhaps to be a pixie, but you are a girl—just a girl.” Her shoulders move a tiny bit and she steps forward. “You have not yet been a warrior. You have never killed.”
Something steels inside of me. “Do. Not. Come. Closer.” I flip the poker around and jab it toward her. “Or you’ll be my first.”
Her lips twitch almost like she’s about to smile. She doesn’t think I’m a threat at all. She sniffs the air. “Little one, there are pixies approaching.”
She gestures behind me.
I do not turn. I won’t fall for that. “You’re not going to distract me.”
She sighs. “Your warrior’s time has come. I need to hurry before we both lose him.”
Her posture changes. I steel myself for her and I jab the poker. She brushes past me as if I’m a puppy. Her arm knocks me to the side.
“No!” I scream the word like a curse, like a prayer, and twist myself toward her. Lunging, I grab at her ankle just as she pulls Nick into her arms. My nails break her skin. She bleeds red. I use my hurt hand to try to get a better grip. “You can’t take him.”
Her wings tense and tighten above us. They catch the wind and she lifts. She lifts straight up. She lifts straight up, pulling me with her.
“Let go,” she says.
“No!” My feet leave the ground. “No!”
We are moving up. One foot. Another.
Her voice is frustrated. “Let go, girl! Humans cannot enter Valhalla.”
“You can’t take him.” My fingers slip. My hurt arm dangles uselessly. Damn. Damn. “I need him.”
We move higher. We are six feet up now. I don’t care. I am not afraid of heights; I am only afraid of losing Nick.
“Let him go,” I plead. “I can take care of him. Please . . .”
She shakes her leg. “You are worse than a dog, begging. Where is your honor?”
“He is mine!” I yell. My fingers quiver from the stress of holding my weight. “I love him. Please.”
“I am sorry,” she whispers. She shakes her leg again. “We need the wolf for the battle. He is no use to anyone dead and rotting in the earth. Now get off me.”
She kicks at me with her free foot. Her heel smashes into my fingers. They spasm. It’s just for a second that I lose my grip but it’s enough: I fall. My feet hit first. The shock of gravity and contact thuds all the way to the top of my head, but I almost don’t topple over. My knees bend. I stand my ground, then a second later I plop backward on top of the poker. The hard cold line of it is just to the left of my spine. I look up.
They are gone.
I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t keep him.
“No.” I don’t yell the word. I whisper it. I whisper it over and over again until it becomes sort of crazy chant. “No. No. Nono. Nononononono . . .”
Everything inside of me empties like the sky. It’s just this one massive hole that grows out of my stomach and keeps getting bigger and bigger, erasing all of me. Nick. Nick is gone.
Pixie Tip
Pixies don’t care about your loss. They will not send you flowers or hold your hand. Forget about sympathy cards too. They’d rather bite you.
He’s gone. His body bleeding and broken, his beautiful body, is somewhere I can’t reach. His deep, growly voice will no longer speak. I’ll never feel his lips press against mine. His fingers will never twine themselves into my hair. I’ll never be able to tease him about Snausages or fire hydrants.
I spend a while on the ground, just staring into the white sky; staring, staring, and seeing nothing.
Something moves out of the woods. My hand reaches underneath my back, finds the iron shaft of the poker. It’s cold from the snow. My fingers wrap around it, moved by an instinct that has nothing to do with my heart.
“She’s wounded,” something says.
I turn my head to the left but stay lying down. It’s a female pixie. Her glamour is gone. She is all silver eyes, blue skin, and teeth. Her designer dress is tattered. She has no coat and no shoes. She’s bleeding from the leg and arm.
Another one comes from the right. I have to turn my head to see him, too. He’s taller, still capable of his glamour. He’s wearing workout clothes, wind pants, a green and white hoodie. He has deep circles beneath his eyes. They both look . . . hungry.
“Wounded makes the kill easier,” he says, “and we like easy right now.”
I calculate my options. They think I’m wounded and I’m not. If I sit up they’ll see the poker. I’ll lose my only advantage, which is surprise. They slink toward me. I know how fast they can be, but they are slow. They act like cats, tormenting their prey.
“She lost her wolf boy,” the woman says in a fake compassionate voice. Ice drips from her words. “Poor defenseless thing.”
The hole in me gets bigger but the edges of it ripple with something dark and fierce. I think it’s hate. It’s their fault. I lost Nick because of them, because of pixies. The hate inside me is cold, but it pushes aside the sorrow just a tiny bit. It gives me purpose.
“It must be hard to lose something so smelly and furry and warm,” the guy says. He leaps forward and lands by my head. His hand reaches out and wipes at my cheeks. His touch is hard. “Oh, she’s crying . . . so sweet. Don’t worry. The pain won’t last too long. And anyway, we’ll give you a whole new pain to think about.”
A crow shrieks in a treetop. The male opens his mouth. His glamour is suddenly gone and his teeth are like nails, pointed and deadly.
“Oh, she’s shuddering, poor baby,” he mocks.
Nick is the only one allowed to call me baby.
I think. The woman is almost to us, slinking up but limping too. I’ll have to take the man first.
“Did she land on her arm? Maybe it’s broken. How fun.” The woman giggles. “We could torture her.”
“Falling from the sky as her wolf was taken from her wasn’t torture enough?” he asks.
“She imprisoned us. Nothing is enough,” the woman hisses.
He turns back to me. His eyes flash. “True.”
He opens his mouth and leans forward. His hands come to both sides of my head. The drawstring from his hoodie dangles down, hits my cheek. He jerks my head back to expose my neck. “Maybe vampire style?”
For a second I don’t react. For a second I think, “Maybe it’ll be better this way. Maybe it’ll just be better to give up.” And yeah, maybe it would be. But not like this. I do not want this. My fingers tighten around the poker.
The pixie leans in. The woman leaps forward. She lands beside me and moans, obviously too injured for fast movement. Good.
“Just take her,” she orders. “Hurry if you’re going to go first.”
“Shut up,” he hisses back. His hands tighten on my face. His teeth come closer.
That’s my cue. I buck my hips up. My legs kick and my arm whips out from behind my back. The poker smashes into his head. His eyes bulge and close. I roll away and spring up. The female pixie laughs. Rage fills me.
“Nice surprise, little princess.” She spits out the word. “It will be so good to taste you.”
“Right.” Not a good comeback. I am beyond good comebacks. I am beyond pretty much anything. Nick’s name echoes inside of me and that is all I hear right now, all I feel. I am on automatic.
A quick glance assures me that pixie man isn’t moving. Pixie woman follows my gaze. “He’s not dead, see? His chest rises. You’re weak like your father. You don’t have enough strength in you to kill us, do you? Just trap us, let us slowly go insane with need because you don’t have the guts to do what you have to do. Do you know how many times I wanted to kill your father with his endless worries? But I couldn’t—oh no—I couldn’t because he was our king.”
She would be beautiful if she weren’t so pixie. Her long black hair flows out with the wind.
“I trapped you because you’re monsters.” I force out the words. “My father is a monste
r.”
“Monsters? Why? Because we admit to the pain we cause? Admit we like it? Instead of pretending we’re some sort of warrior hero like your wolf.” She sneers. Her posture tightens. She’s going to jump me.
“He is a hero. He protects people from things like you.”
“And you.” She sniffs. She smiles. “I can smell the pixie in you.”
“I’m not like you,” I growl.
“No. You’re not. You cloak your evil, your violence, in the mask of good. I am just evil.” She leaps.
I shift the poker so that the barb faces out and thrust it as hard as I can. It hits her in the chest. There’s this sick sucking sound as it goes through skin. Her mouth forms an O. Her face smiles and then grimaces. Her hands reach for my neck. Long claws scrape toward me. I yank the poker out and step back. She falls.
We all fall today.
She doesn’t breathe. I have killed something. I have killed. Moving in slow motion, I check out the other pixie—the man. He rolls over. His eyes aren’t quite focused yet, but he’ll be fine if I just leave him, just walk away. Instead, I raise the poker.
“This is for Nick.” I jab it in, rip it out. Do it again. “And this is for me.”
Pixie Tip
Pixies have this fear of metal. Metallophobia.
There is blood on my hands, blood on the wrap around my wrist, blood on my jeans. There is probably blood on my face. I don’t care. I leave the blood smears there to rot and crust and cake on. I climb back on the snowmobile. I drive to the road, get to Nick’s MINI. His key fob. It is always in his pocket.
“God!” I sob the word into my hands and it’s not a swear, it’s a plea, a real plea and then I lose it. I just lose it. I shut off the sled and sob and sob and sob on the silly snowmobile. I don’t know how much time passes. I don’t know anything. I just know that Nick is gone like my dad.
I’m alone.
The world is still. There’s no sound of cars or wind or animals. Even the trees are still and lonely. I’m murmuring words softly to myself—or to this self that is me but not me, me without Nick.
Without Nick.
Without.
Nick.
I’m murmuring words to myself, to God, to Nick, but I don’t think anyone hears.
“I can’t do this,” I whimper. I wipe at my face with my good hand, try to get rid of the tears. “I can’t—I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can.”
My head lifts up and I move my body just enough to see him. He stands there, snow billowing down all around him. His leather jacket isn’t ripped or torn. His jeans aren’t dirty. There are no wounds. He wasn’t at the house at all. Flakes land in his hair and stick, morphing the blond to white. He tilts his head as we stare at each other, then he reaches out his hand. “Zara.”
“I’m not coming to you.”
He keeps his hand raised. “I didn’t do this, Zara. You did. All this power trapped and contained, ready to be exploited. It had to explode.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right but I can’t bring myself to say anything to him. What’s the point, really? I’m not even making my silence into something. I’m done looking for meaning, done worrying about what’s going to happen to me, because the worst has happened already. People keep dying on me. First my step-dad, now . . .
The air stills. Far away in the distance something screams. I breathe in. Cold air pushes its way into my lungs. I breathe in again. My hand moves up to wipe at my face. The tears are icy against my cheeks. I breathe out.
Astley watches all this. His eyes glint with the reflection of snow. His nostrils flare.
“I can smell another king on you—not your father.” He sounds like some sort of emotion. Worried? Yeah, I think that’s it.
“He was there.” I sway. “He hurt my father. He k-k-killed Nick. And that stupid Valkyrie took him.”
I start to lose my balance. The world dizzies around me. Astley moves forward so fast that I barely notice and he catches me against him. The leather crinkles smooth against my face. It has no texture. It’s just sleek and smells like dead cows.
“You are not well,” he says.
“How can I be well?” I hiccup. I struggle against him. “I can stand up by myself, though.”
He ignores me and sweeps me into his arms. “You should stop lying to yourself.”
I struggle for a second and then give up. The snowflakes curl their paths to the ground, waiting for something to come, for explanations, for meanings. They land, one after another, piling up, covering things. They don’t give me answers. Nobody just gives me answers. I always have to reach for them. “What do you mean, lying to myself?”
He sniffs the air. He cocks his head and listens to the wind and the woods the same way Nick used to. Astley’s eyes shift.
“What is it?” I ask. “Do you smell something?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead his arms tighten around me.
“Tell me. What is it?”
“Death,” he says more softly. He jostles me against his chest. His fingers adjust to where they hold the side of my knee. His voice is heavy with sadness. “Oh, Zara. I can smell his death. You’ve had a shock, a tragedy. Come on. Let’s go somewhere safe.”
I don’t answer. I can’t answer. Having someone know about Nick makes it even more real and I don’t want it to be more real. My throat closes up. He drops my knees and presses me against him, both arms around my waist, and we lift into the air. His words are soft in my ear. “Don’t be scared.”
The world beneath us blurs. Trees meld into each other, just a mass of white. We travel over the woods—so fast. The wind whips against my cheek. My eyes water from the cold force of it.
Finally I find my voice. “This isn’t my first time flying.”
“Your father?”
“Yeah. When he kidnapped me. He smelled like mushrooms when it happened. You do too. Why is that?”
“It’s the earth calling us back. Won’t be long,” he says. “Close your eyes if you need to.”
I don’t. I want to see. In the distance, over on Route 3, I think, there are the flashing lights of rescue vehicles. Gram’s there. That must be the accident. There’s a big bus tilted on its side, but before I can focus we’re past it.
Images of Nick and the other pixie force their way into my head. Blood. Teeth flashing. Skin ripping. The pixie’s evil low voice and his smile. Shuddering, I ask Astley, “Are you stronger than the other one?”
His arms tighten. “I hope so. Someday I’ll need to be. I can’t believe he found the house first. I’ll never forgive myself for that. I got too—distracted.”
I swallow hard. A sob threatens to reach my throat. I push it back and say, “I think it’s my fault too.”
He doesn’t answer for a minute and then says, “You know, that is what I thought too, when I first met you and when I found out about the—situation—but now . . . You didn’t have many choices, did you? We haven’t handled things well. Your father should have been dealt with by his own kind long ago.”
I don’t know how to answer. Even though the cold stings I tilt up my head and scan the sky looking for Nick as we start to get lower. We’re by my house. The house where Nick and I slept and kissed and made breakfast. It wasn’t long ago. It feels like forever.
Astley’s hands shift. “Hold on, we are landing. I am not the best at landings.”
He thuds to a landing and flops on his butt. I land half on top of him. He blushes and then smiles.
“Oh.” I roll off of him. “You really aren’t.”
“We all have our weaknesses,” he explains, hopping up to his feet. I stare at the house. It looks so calm and normal. It looks like nothing has happened. It looks good and fine and safe, but nothing is good and fine and safe.
I walk slowly up the porch stairs. Astley follows me to the door. He keeps his arms out around me, but not touching, ready to catch me if I fall, I guess. I fumble with the doorknob.
“Here, let me.”
He inserts my key and turns it for me. I step inside. He inclines his head.
“I can’t let you in.” My words come out slowly.
He closes his eyes for the briefest of seconds. “You don’t trust me.”
I don’t answer. I am too tired, too sad to answer. The sun pokes out from behind a cloud. The light sparkles off the snow. I shield my eyes with my hand. It’s too bright. Nothing should be bright. I start to step inside.
Astley’s hand grabs my arm. “I can’t just leave you like this. You’re barely capable of communicating.”
“You have to.”
For a second neither of us moves. For a second the world seems to stop dead still. His hand slides up my arm and he holds me by my shoulders. I don’t have the energy to shrug him off. “Do not let anyone in here. It’s dangerous now.”
I almost laugh, that’s such an understatement. Behind him, the MINI’s tire tracks are gone, covered up by snow. He lets go of my shoulders and pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. He writes a number on it and puts it in my hand. He closes my fingers around it.
“My cell. Call it if you need me,” he says.
“I won’t need you,” I tell him, looking at the paper—a receipt from Holiday Inn—and stepping inside, “but thanks.”
“Zara—” His voice stops me. I turn around. “You might.”
I close the door behind me but don’t lock it because there’s no point. The only pixie who can get in here is the one that’s already been invited and that’s my father. It’s a weird pixie rule, one of many. All of the pixies must be rampaging since they are finally free. They are probably searching for food, for revenge. The desire must be pounding through their weakened bodies. I know how that feels. It pounds through mine, too. Vengeance: that’s the kind of feeling that belongs in a safe, shut off from the rest of the world, away from mothers cuddling babies, away from children on swings, away from humanity.
I fall on the couch, press my face against the red fabric, and breathe deeply, trying to catch the smell of Nick somewhere, something left over from last night, but I can’t smell anything. My nose isn’t that good. I smoosh a pillow into my face, but still nothing. There is no Nick: not on the couch I’m sitting on, not in his MINI still parked on the side of the road, not working at the hospital, not hunting in the woods, not anywhere at all. He’s not here, even though I want to tangle my fingers into his dark hair, breathe into the depths of him, let him breathe into the depths of me, even though I want him here with me right now, all the time, forever. Even though, he’s not here.