by HL Fullerton
It was what he was thinking, but he was also thinking: why would a troll cross the road to get to a high school dance? All the bridges were in the other direction. “Uh, good?”
“He looked exactly the same,” Scarletta said. “Just as I remember him. Like he hadn’t aged a day.”
“Car bounced right off him,” Ollie said.
“I thought you didn’t see anything.”
“I’m not sure I did.” Ollie started to rub his eyes, remembered his contacts, and let his hands flounder in his lap. “It didn’t seem real, but not a dream neither.”
Evangeline parked the car, ending the conversation. “Looks like we’re hiking from here.” They were about as far as one could get from the school and still be on school property, and it was all uphill from where they were. The school itself perched above them in shadows, its edges disappearing into the darkened sky.
“I totally should’ve worn a suit and sneakers,” Scarletta said, climbing out. “Hey. King. You do something different with your antlers? They look really white. Like really white. Glow in the moon bright.”
…and now we welcome the quarry of the hour…
Scarletta and Ollie, Evangeline and Carl were the last to arrive at the dance. The ticket takers had deserted their table inside the entry way and the rhythmic thumping of music thrummed through the lockers lining the hall leading to the cafeteria turned dance floor, which served as the heart of the school, nestled slightly off center between halls and classrooms on the main floor. Shouts, squeals, the general furor of raised conversations ebbed and flowed toward the quartet. They followed the sound, much as if the DJ were a pied piper calling them forth.
Trevor Quails staggered down the corridor from the opposite direction. “King!” he shouted, raising an arm in toast—though he lacked the cup to make a proper one. “You’re everywhere tonight, man.”
The closer he drew, the more apparent Quails’ rumpled dress became, the darker the hall behind seemed, and the brighter his eyes appeared, widened by fever or drink. Carl held still and awaited the boy. His companions halted beside him. Evangeline automatically reached for her bow as Trevor barreled at them before recalling she’d left her weapons in the car.
“I’ve only made it to here,” Carl said.
“Ha!” Trevor said. “Good one.”
“Where did you see Carl?” Evangeline asked.
Ollie whispered, “We’ll see you inside,” and he and Scarletta circled past Trevor, then continued down the dimly lit corridor, glancing back, first every few steps, then none at all.
“Holding court. In the courtyard,” Trevor said and laughed at his attempt at word play. “I’m holding you to our deal, King man. Don’t think I’m not.” He pointed at Carl, bumping into the lockers along the left wall, then stumbled backward into the entry way. “NCdoubleA!”
“Something’s wrong,” Carl said to Evangeline.
“Someone’s an ass,” she said. “Forget Trevor Quails. He’s taken one too many lacrosse balls to the head.” Privately, Evangeline worried she and Carl were about to walk into some nasty prank. “Come on. Let’s go see who else is wasted. We don’t want to miss the best part.”
Carl decided not to mention how Trevor smelt of juniper, but not 80 proof; more forest than barroom. Ever since the gremlin incident, his nerves had been jumpy. Perhaps he fretted for nothing. Still, it felt like something, and he wished there were a spruce around to reassure him.
If sometimes a boy may be mistaken for a fairy king, it goes to reason that occasionally a fairy king may be mistaken for a boy—with antlers.
…something’s here…
The day the King boy was slated to die—not of some animal cancer as his mother had always feared; or of a traumatic brain injury caused by his skull malformation as one orthopedic resident once brashfully suggested before his stupidity had been shushed by a well-placed kick; nor in Evangeline’s jamais vu premeditated hunting accident, but as game in an actual fairy hunt (the likes of which hadn’t been called in two or three centuries)—he studied, for the first time, a hallway he’d walked every day and wondered if it had always looked thus. (It hadn’t.)
The hallway took longer to walk. Carl thought he and Evangeline should’ve reached the cafeteria by now. (But that could be a trick of anticipation.) And it seemed not completely straight although it gave the appearance of being so. Still. It…meandered. (But that was the trick of intoxication.) The air was cold, not as cold as outside had been, but not as warm as usual. And perhaps the air smelled fresher, like someone had opened a window, but unless a locker turned itself into a foyer for the outdoors…such a thing wasn’t possible. (And that was the trick of the fairy winds.)
“This is stupid,” Evangeline said. “We’re flinching at shadows, and we haven’t even reached the main event. Let’s go home. Call it a night.”
Carl nodded his agreement. “Except I think we have to know for certain first. And who better than you to start a war or end an apocalypse.”
Evangeline wished upon her fate: Let dealing with Trevor Quails be the worst thing that happens tonight. She reached up and counted Carl’s points with her fingers. For luck. For courage. For heart, head, and soul. Then she checked her boyfriend for bull’s eyes because midwinter’s nights were upon them, frissons and all. “I could’ve rocked a bow and quiver with this outfit, for reals.”
“Let’s hope it don’t come to that.” Carl held out a hand. Evangeline took it and they walked slowly down the hallway, scanning for who or whatever was about to jump out and yell, Surprise! Tiles which had clicked and clacked, that had echoed under their shoes when they first arrived, were now somehow springy, like a latex-bound track, thought Evangeline; soggy, thought Carl, as if it weren’t winter at all but spring and he’d walked off the beaten path and across the loamy forest floor. Either way, it seemed the school’s hall was melting, but neither mentioned it. They simply squeezed hands together and followed the music around the bend.
“This doesn’t look like a dungeon at all.” Amazement colored Evangeline’s words. In front of them weren’t cheap decorations and mounds of toxic plants, but a veritable glade. With a scattering of saplings complete with spring green leaves and air perfumed with forest freshness and a hint of wild flowers about to bloom—crocus and gladiolus, shooting stars and forget-me-nots, although no flowers were in sight. Unless one counted the couples dotted across the room and a rather large clump, almost a clot, in the center of the space, dancing as if stiff breezes were tossing their petals about. The music they swayed to was not the music playing and the resulting frenzy was unnervingly beautiful.
“No, it doesn’t.” Carl was more alarmed than amazed.
“Are those real trees?”
“No, they aren’t.” And that was worrisome because they looked real. He walked up and ran his hand down a trunk. It tickled his palm with the soothing scrape of real. And yet it wasn’t. Unless…unless he’d lost his ability to converse with flora, and that was even more upsetting than the cafeteria’s transformation.
Evangeline crinkled her nose—not in a cute, bunny sort of way but in the I’ve-scented-something-nasty manner. “Do you smell that? Underneath. Like something…rotting.”
Carl stilled and raised his head to sniff, and Evangeline was seized with the compulsion to reach for a rifle and end him, then and there, so animal did he appear to her in that moment. Perhaps it was good that their arsenal—her arsenal—was locked in the trunk of her car, down the hill and a football field away. She forcibly thrust away the feeling and tried to soften her facial muscles, which had frozen in hunter rigor. What if Carl didn’t see the Evangeline beneath the mask? What if Carl fled from her? What if she chased? Everything felt base and alogical. “What?” she said, realizing she’d missed what Carl had said, so lost in her head was she.
“I said, ‘skunk cabbage.’” (Technically, it was Jack-in-the-Pulpit, but close enough.) Carl’s arms waved about his words, and it was so Carl, so human, that Evangeline fe
ll in love with him all over. “The smell. This room. It’s wet, muddy spring about to burst. What happened to ‘winter nights’?”
“A Midwinter Night,” Evangeline corrected. Carl seemed puzzled, so she added, “The theme. It’s Midwinter Night. Singular.”
“Knight with a ‘k’ or night with a ‘good’?”
“Dark like the solstice and as long as,” Evangeline said. She pointed at the Spring Fling going on around them. “This can’t be good.”
And that’s when she spotted Carl through the windows in the courtyard standing atop a picnic table as if it were some sort of raised dais. She reached out to grab Carl’s sleeve, and the moment she felt the material beneath her fingertips and reassured herself that Carl was still by her side, she saw the thing in the courtyard didn’t look at Carl at all. Its antlers were all wrong, more menacing than graceful. “I think I found your twin,” she said, and her words were light and breathy—like frost—which was not how she’d intended them at all.
…let’s make a deal…
The thing—it preferred my King—but since neither Evangeline or Carl had spoken to the not-quite-a-doppelganger, they didn’t yet know that—smiled at the couple through the windows and gestured for them to join him and his clamoring admirers. He appeared tall—far taller than Carl—but then Carl knew better than anyone that antlers and a slim build could make a skyscraper out of a fence post. There was something not quite person-like about Carl’s almost twin, as if he had monster potential, but it could be bad lighting and he’d be a fine man once you got to know him. Still, it gave one pause. That invitation with his name on it—to dinner or the holiday potluck—might find itself ‘lost’ in the mail.
Despite the man-thing’s mostly normal-looking appearance, he oozed the heebie-jeebies. As Carl had antlers himself, he couldn’t fault another for sporting the same. Another person—an out-of-towner, for example, who’d not been raised up with antler boy seated the next row over—might consign him straight to monsterhood and kneel before him in awestruck terror. Evangeline’s instinct was to shoot the threat first and puzzle out the specifics of why he was a threat later.
“Do I ask him to leave?” Carl said.
“Do we kill—” Evangeline began only to have Carl torn away from her. She’d had such tunnel vision for not-Carl she forgot about scanning for danger. Ready to fling herself into hostilities, she stopped short when it registered that Carl was only being mauled by an enthusiastic classmate in a glittery silver dress. Evangeline would’ve helped free him of Myla and her unexpected hug, but that’d mean turning her back on the monster in the courtyard. Even with a thick sheet of plexiglass and thirty feet between them, she didn’t dare. She’d already been caught off-guard once, and she doubted the antlered beast was as harmless as Myla Davis.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Myla repeated. “You are the best, King. The. Absolute. Best.”
“You’re welcome,” Carl said, struggling to regain some personal space. First Trevor thanking him, then Myla. “But why am I the best?”
Myla giggled. “I won’t ever forget what you’ve done for me.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Not yet you haven’t!” she teased, twirling behind a nearby tree and flickering out of sight.
“Did you see that? Evangeline? Did you see? She—poof!—disappeared.” Evangeline didn’t answer, and Carl turned to her. Her gaze was locked on the person pretending to be him. “Evangeline?” He tugged on her arm to catch her attention.
“He doesn’t look like you.”
“It’s the antlers. All boys with antlers must be Carl King.”
Her reply was slow in coming, too slow, and her words trickled out as if her brain was winding down like a pendulum clock. “He isn’t you.”
“No. Maybe you should stop staring at him. Evie?” Her eyes remained locked with his doppelganger. A cloud of mist swirled between them, and he held tight to her wrist, fearing he’d lose her in the fog. “Evie!”
“Carl.” She turned, eyes dilated and unfocused. She broke his grasp and gripped his shoulders. The doppelganger was successfully passing as a teen boy—as Carl King, in fact—but he was not young, just ageless. His antlers had more points, tallying years Carl had not lived, the beam thicker—a stag among young bucks. His face was unlined, all smooth, tight skin, yet the plump glow of youth was missing. The suit, green like Carl’s (although shades darker), hid the imposter’s body, but his movements spoke of years of coordination and confidence and Carl, as all teenagers, was still growing into his flesh and bones. This man had spent ages in his, and it showed; he was soul old. “That isn’t a boy. They just think he is. We can’t let them think that.”
“Okay, Evie. Okay.” He removed her hands from his shoulder, held them tight in his. He chose to pretend, for both their sakes, that Evangeline hadn’t suggested killing as a possible solution, scary interloper or not. “We’ll tell everyone he isn’t me. We’ll make him leave.”
She seemed to come back to herself and scanned over his shoulders. “Carl, I think there are more trees sprouting up. And I haven’t seen any chaperones.”
“Maybe the trees are the chaperones.” At the look on her face, Carl added, “I’m joking. It’s dim in here. I’m sure there are adults around.” Yet neither could spot any.
Evangeline tilted her head toward the courtyard and asked, “Any chance he’s your dad?”
“No,” Carl said. “He’s just a man with antlers.”
“I’m not so sure about the man part. Carl, I think he’s like the gremlins.”
“Not like a gremlin at all. I’m the Erlking.” From right beside them, the man with antlers introduced himself. Evangeline yelped and jumped two steps back, dragging a startled Carl with her.
“You were on the other side of the glass,” Evangeline said, freeing her hands from Carl’s with a desperate twisting motion.
The Erlking, who was standing not twelve inches from them, dipped his chin in agreement. The sight of those antlers lowering even an eighth of an inch made Evangeline skittish. The Erlking, she was certain, was in skewering mode, yet his voice was as friendly and sincere as a five-star customer service representative. “I was.”
Carl slid his body in front of Evangeline’s. At that, the Erlking smiled. “The girl can go. It’s you I came for. Unless”—his eyes flashed like St. Elmo’s fire and settled on Evangeline—“there’s something you want?”
“If I want something, I can get it myself,” Evangeline said.
The Erlking shrugged. “Have it your way.” He made a shooing motion with his hand. There was a crackling sound like a tree about to topple and Carl turned to push Evangeline out of the way…only to discover her gone. Carl turned in a circle. “Where did she go?”
“Maybe you should ask, ‘where are we?’”
Carl’s feet slipped and, when he regained his balance, he and not-him were outside. Outside outside. In the woods behind the school. “What’s this about?” Carl asked.
“You are not the Erlking.”
“No. I’m Carl. Carl King.”
“I’m king of all fairies. There’s only one; there will only ever be one, and I’m he.”
“Okay. King’s just my last name. It’s not a…ah… I’m not an actual king. It’s like something people call me. You want me to just go by Carl? I can do that.”
The Erlking’s eyes narrowed. “They think you’re me.”
“Well, this is where I go to school. And we both have antlers.” Carl pointed at his head, then the Erlking’s. “You sorta tricked them.”
That pissed off the Erlking. “Deal-making is my realm.”
“Okay,” Carl said.
“I can’t have you flitting around making deals in my name.”
Carl objected to the man—the fairy? the king’s?—use of flitting. Antlers weren’t conducive to flitting. Carl had never flitted in his life. But Carl wasn’t one to argue semantics. Didn’t he refer to his antlers as his head? “I haven�
��t,” he said, thinking that this disagreement could be easily settled, he could go back inside, the Erlking could go on his merry way, and all would be set right.
“But you have.” The Erlking tilted his head just so, and the points of his antlers were as fixed on Carl as the Erlking’s dark eyes.
A peculiar sensation flared in Carl’s antlers. It seared into his skull; engulfed it and then all his other bones, right down to his littlest toe. Which briefly made him wonder if the Erlking had toes or hooves. He thought hooves, and that was when he identified the sensation as anger. He was angry down to his very bones. And apparently, to his tongue too. The Erlking was here pretending to be him; he had never, never pretended to be the Erlking. “When?” he demanded. “When have I made a deal as you?”
“The troll.”
“I didn’t make any deal with Brigham.”
“You offered him a house.”
“It was a suggestion. I don’t even know if he took it.”
“He did. And who guards my bridges now?”
“That was his decision, not mine. If you’re the boss of him, just tell him to go back.”
“The pine tree.”
“He’s a spruce.”
“You promised him true love.”
“He was already in love. I just listened to him and told him to follow his heart. That was advice.”
“Same thing.”
No. No, it wasn’t. And apparently, Carl was the type who argued semantics because he proceeded to do so. Not that it did any good. The Erlking had conquered semantics centuries ago and, with Carl so new to the field, it was a resounding defeat.
The Erlking corrected each word, shaded every meaning. Twisted words until you weren’t sure which ones were his and which were yours. From confusion, comes understanding. But what Carl didn’t understand—and he wasn’t alone, no one the Erlking ever dealt with understood this until it was much too late—was that once you engaged in the argument, you’d already lost. Once you sip from the cup, you can’t unsip. As they say, a deal’s a deal.