Come Fall

by A. C. E. Bauer

  Salman approached the teacher’s desk after the bell rang. He hoped she wouldn’t keep him too long. He was supposed to meet Lu by the front entrance. They were going to go over his lab report for Mr. Ho.

  “Your writing is remarkable,” Ms. R said.

  Salman didn’t reply. “Remarkable” might mean something good. It might mean something bad.

  “How old are you, Salman?” Ms. R asked.

  “Fourteen.”

  Turning fifteen next month, he thought.

  Ms. R nodded as if that explained everything.

  Now Salman felt embarrassed. It wasn’t his fault he had been held back. Each new foster home had meant a new school. Somehow, in third and again in fifth grade, he hadn’t accumulated the right number of days he needed to be moved up. He briefly wondered how many days he’d lose this year when the state switched him again.

  What did this teacher want?

  “Would you like to write for the school paper?” she asked.

  Salman wasn’t prepared for the question. He stalled. “What do you have to do?”

  “Write an article about once a month. The topics are pretty wide open. They usually have to do with something relating to the school.”

  Once a month. Salman didn’t think he was going to be around that long—not if Ozzy had any say about it.

  “No thanks,” he said.

  “Well, think about it,” Ms. R said. “I think you’d be good at it.”

  Would he be good at it? After all, his first foster mother had named him Salman after a famous writer. He pushed the unwanted thought aside.

  He met Lu amidst a stream of other students at the foot of the main staircase. Her huge backpack weighed her down, as usual. She waved at another girl who was walking away and yelled at her over the din, “See you at band, Ruthie!”

  Lu turned to Salman. She bubbled as she spoke.

  “Ms. R asked me to join the paper today.”

  Salman nodded. They headed toward the entrance.

  “Me too.”

  Lu stopped. A couple of kids almost bumped into her.

  “No way! That’s great!”

  Rob Puckett passed them with two other boys.

  “Hey, look,” he said, loud. “It’s Crow. And he’s got his bird tamer with him.”

  Several kids turned to see whom Rob was talking about. The two boys laughed. Lu ducked her head down.

  “Let’s go.”

  The front doors were blocked by a large group of kids who hesitated before rain cascading down the front steps. Lu and Salman exchanged glances.

  “It’s only two blocks,” Lu said.

  Salman nodded. They pushed through and began running almost simultaneously.

  At Lu’s house, they shook themselves out on the porch. Salman thought they must look like a pair of wet dogs. Lu’s bobbed hair had matted to her skull and it dripped all over. A rivulet trickled down Salman’s back.

  Ms. Zimmer met them at the door. She seemed un-fazed by the new kid on her doorstep.

  “You don’t come in until you take off your shoes and socks,” she said.

  The command had been good-natured. Salman unlaced his soaked sneakers and pulled off his socks. Ms. Zimmer handed Lu and Salman towels.

  “Lu, go upstairs and change,” she said.

  “This is Salman,” Lu said before climbing the stairs.

  Ms. Zimmer turned to Salman. He was struck by how beautiful she was. Tall, with green eyes and curly red hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, she glowed, not the least bit abashed by her enormous pregnant belly. Salman averted his gaze.

  “Lu’s your something-or-other buddy?” she said.

  “Designated,” Salman said, his voice just over a whisper.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “You’re a bit slimmer than Ronny, but I think I can find something. Stay put.”

  She, too, climbed the stairs. As ordered, Salman stayed put while he eyed his strange surroundings—and wondered who Ronny might be.

  Compared to the Royals’ trailer, this house was huge. The furniture, or at least what he saw of it, appeared ragtag, and no curtains or blinds hid the windows.

  A tall teenage boy, taller than Salman, stepped out of a door, biting into an apple.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “A friend of Lu’s.” Salman felt odd saying this. He wasn’t exactly her friend. But, after a quick up-and-down appraisal, the boy seemed satisfied with the explanation.

  “You look soaked.”

  Well, d-uh, Salman thought. But from experience, he knew that if he didn’t want trouble, he was better off being polite.

  “Ms. Zimmer told me to wait here.”

  The boy raised an eyebrow.

  “Mom has—”

  He was interrupted by Ms. Zimmer.

  “Jack. Good, you’ve met Salman. Please show him a bathroom. He can change into these.”

  Jack didn’t seem at all surprised that his mother planned to give clothes to a complete stranger. He grabbed the sweatpants and shirt and, with a tilt of his head, had Salman follow him through the living room, into a narrow hallway.

  “The bathroom’s through that door,” he said.

  The sweatshirt and pants were baggy but dry. When Salman returned to the front hall, Lu was waiting.

  “I’ll put your stuff in the dryer,” she said.

  Salman had forgotten that people owned dryers—almost all of the homes he had ever lived in didn’t have one. He handed his wet clothes to her and followed her into the kitchen. Ms. Zimmer smiled when she saw them.

  “Have a snack.”

  He took in the unfamiliar scene. Ms. Zimmer poured herself a glass of milk while a boy no older than nine or ten ate handfuls of popcorn out of a large serving bowl. Fruit overflowed from a second bowl on the table. Another boy—around sixteen, Salman guessed—just about Salman’s height, leaned against the counter. He was dressed all in white, with sewed-on white knee pads and chest plate. He reminded Salman of a spaceman from a bad sci-fi movie. Lu disappeared at the other end of the room with Salman’s clothes.

  Ms. Zimmer made introductions.

  “Salman, these are Lu’s other brothers, Ronny and Ricky.”

  The spaceboy smiled.

  “Call me Ron,” he said.

  Ricky stuffed another handful of popcorn into his mouth.

  Salman managed a “hi.”

  Ms. Zimmer glanced at the clock over the stove and put the barely drunk glass of milk on the counter.

  “We’d better leave,” she said.

  Ron picked up a white helmet with a mesh face and followed her out the back door. Salman stared.

  “Fencing,” Ricky said between mouthfuls.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you wanted to know, right?”

  “I guess,” Salman said.

  He now understood what it must be like to be an alien dropped into a new world. He needed to adjust, fast. At that moment Lu reappeared.

  “Going to show your boyfriend around?” Ricky said.

  Lu rolled her eyes.

  “Any objections?” she said.

  It took a second for Salman to recognize the sarcasm in her tone—he somehow hadn’t expected it from her.

  “Don’t touch any of my airplanes,” Ricky said.

  Lu let out a small laugh.

  “We’ll try.” She turned to Salman. “Let’s go to the study. It’ll be quieter there.”

  Lu transferred some of the popcorn into a smaller bowl, which she handed to Salman. Ricky nabbed the few kernels that spilled onto the table. She reshouldered her pack and led Salman down a hallway. She pointed to a door on the right.

  “Guest room,” she said.

  She turned left through another door. This must be the study.

  Salman had never seen a study before, but even so, the room looked like one. Books filled the walls. A desk stood on one side of the room, a sofa on the other, and a table with a couple of chairs in the middle. He hadn’t not
iced any airplanes yet.

  “This used to be my dad’s work space,” Lu said, “until he moved his office into town.”

  Salman wondered what Lu’s father did but didn’t ask. The room was peaceful. He breathed in, and out. Adjusting to this place wasn’t going to be so hard.

  Lu took the popcorn from him to place it on the table and dropped her backpack on a chair. She waved to the bowl.

  “Have some,” she said.

  Salman helped himself while Lu unzipped her pack.

  “Crap! Everything got wet.”

  She pulled out several books and notebooks with wilted edges. One of the notebooks slipped out of her hands and fell. Salman reached for it. Lu smiled when he handed it to her. That smile lodged itself somewhere in his chest. He smiled back. She spread the notebook next to the others on the desk to dry.

  Salman checked his pack. All he carried in it were his math textbook and his binder. He didn’t own any notebooks. Ozzy Royal wouldn’t buy him any.

  “Loose-leaf works just as well,” the man had said.

  The binder’s plastic cover had protected Salman’s papers. He turned to his lab notes.

  Lu leaned over. “How’d you fit it all on half a page—including your sketches?”

  Salman didn’t reply. He wrote small. He was allowed only a few sheets of paper at a time: Ozzy kept tabs on his stack.

  “Let Salman be,” Tina had said. “It’s for school.”

  But Salman didn’t waste any space or paper. He had learned that lesson well before meeting Ozzy. Even his last foster mother, Ms. D, told him, “No need writing things down all the time. Keep the paper for assignments.” So when he did get a sheet of paper, he used every bit of it, carefully.

  Lu sat at the table.

  “Did Mr. Ho give you an outline?” she said.

  Salman showed her the photocopied sheet Mr. Ho had distributed: it listed ten questions about the worm dissection they had completed.

  “I follow this?” he asked.

  Lu shook her head.

  “Nah. He doesn’t make it that easy. I’ll show you.”

  She took a blank page from Salman’s binder. He tried not to wince. She paused.

  “Mr. Ho likes graph paper. Do you have any?”

  Salman frowned. He didn’t have any, and Ozzy wasn’t going to buy him any, either. But that didn’t deter Lu.

  “You can use some of ours.”

  She opened a desk drawer, pulled out a pad, and tore off a bunch of sheets, which she held out to Salman. He stared at them. After a few seconds, Lu placed them on the table.

  “Take them. They don’t bite.”

  “I can’t pay you back,” Salman said.

  Lu shrugged him off.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a few pages.”

  Salman did have to worry about it. He counted the pages. There were three of them.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  For the next hour and a half, Lu showed him how to divide up the topics, where the drawings were supposed to be placed, even the size of the margins.

  About halfway through, they paused to eat more popcorn. He felt comfortable enough to ask the question that had been bothering him since they had left the kitchen.

  “What airplanes was your brother talking about?”

  Lu frowned, but her eyes crinkled with amusement.

  “Paper airplanes,” she said. “Ricky’s been experimenting with designs.”

  She told him how he had left dozens strewn all over the house until their mom had warned him that if he didn’t clean up, she was going to use them to light a fire in the grate.

  Lu must have noticed Salman’s horror because she stopped to reassure him.

  “Oh, Mom wouldn’t have done it. But it did get Ricky to store ’em in his room.”

  Salman nodded.

  “There’s still a few around, though,” she added, laughter in her voice. “Dad got pretty annoyed when one showed up in the bathroom.”

  Salman imagined a paper plane marooned in a sink and grinned. They returned to work.

  When he finished the report, it fit onto both sides of one sheet of paper.

  “Wow,” Lu said. “I usually use four pages.”

  Salman didn’t explain.

  He was placing his binder in his pack when Ms. Zimmer stepped in, her skirt damp around the hem.

  “Will you stay for dinner, Salman? We eat in about an hour, when Lu’s father gets home from work.”

  Salman glanced at the clock on the desk. It was already five o’clock.

  “I need to head back,” he said. “They’re expecting me.”

  “I’ll give you a ride, then.”

  Salman’s clothes, now dry, hung on the back of a kitchen chair. They felt scratchy after the soft fleece of the sweats. Ms. Zimmer insisted that Salman borrow Ron’s old slicker.

  “Just got you dry,” she said. “No point in letting you get wet.”

  Her generosity, genuine in every way, warmed him. He left the slicker in the van before dashing into the trailer.

  Tina and Ozzy didn’t ask Salman where he had been. After Salman dropped his pack in his bedroom, Tina told him to set the table. Ozzy stood at the window, beer can in hand, watching Ms. Zimmer back up the driveway. He returned to his TV.

  “Nice van,” he said.

  Salman sighed. Nice people.

  10—Puck

  No particular grace

  My king waylaid me after my audience with the queen. He had conjured an image of the boy sitting on an invisible chair and eating. He pointed at the image.

  “He is no small child,” he said.

  “No, milord.”

  The king glared at the boy. “Why does she insist on following this human? She knows my opinion of him.”

  Of course Queen Titania did. She had given him up as an infant only after the king, in a fit of jealousy, had forced her to. That is precisely why I had been given this thankless task. The queen wished to provoke my king. To get back at him for having visited Nimue’s island over her objections. (Curse, curse, and curse again the circlet!) She followed the boy because she knew how angry it would make the king.

  But this answer wouldn’t please my queen if I spoke it. And my king’s rage, in turn, would be too dangerous to bear. I decided on a blander truth.

  “My queen told the boy’s mother, before her death, that she would keep the boy safe until he reached manhood.”

  King Oberon brushed that aside. “So Titania says. Yet she has ignored him since he was a babe, swaddled in his foster mother’s arms. And look at him! He’s on the cusp of manhood. Not the least bit pleasing to her eye!”

  I bowed. There was no good reply. The king paced, his words forceful.

  “I have had enough of this. The boy does not deserve her attention!”

  He dismissed the image with a wave. The queen would be happy when she heard of his anger, I thought.

  “If she is so eager to keep track of this whelp, perhaps I should give her something to keep track of.”

  I did not like the sound of this.

  “Milord?”

  “Tell me what you have learned.”

  The queen had not forbidden me, and so I had to report. But fear tinged my words.

  “One of the queen’s namesakes cares for him, milord.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Titania Royal,” I said. “But she has none of Her Majesty’s grace and beauty.”

  “That could not be expected in a human, Puck. But this bodes ill. The name carries gifts of its own.”

  I agreed. “She is extremely bountiful.”

  “Bountiful?”

  “Her garden is prodigious,” I explained.

  Oberon nodded again. “Tell me more.”

  “Her mate broods and imbibes.”

  The king seemed pleased with that, so I clarified, “But she is his equal—she protects the boy.”

  He paced again, thinking. “I cannot strike at his home. To do so would pr
ovoke outright war with Titania.” He stopped pacing. “Does the boy have any companions?”

  “Two scholars, milord.”

  “Conjure them.”

  I did. The king walked around the silent, moving figures.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “The young man is both like and unlike us.”

  Oberon paused his perpetual motion.

  “Like and unlike? Could he be a changeling, one of Faery?”

  I shook my head. “He is human. I am certain. But he sees the world as it is and not as humans would have it be.”

  “This is a strange gift. What of the other?”

  “A mentor, Your Majesty. She is helpful.”

  Oberon looked at her carefully. “No particular grace. Yet her eyes show intelligence. Her limbs, strength and musical ability. Her face is comely in its way. She will grow into a fine figure. Does the boy grow fond of her, Puck?”

  “He may.”

  The truth. But it only increased King Oberon’s interest.

  “Well, well.” He snapped his fingers and the images vanished.

  “You have reported this all to the queen?”

  I bowed.

  “Yes, milord.”

  “And she approves?”

  A direct question that required a direct answer.

  “Yes, milord.”

  “And has she given you instructions?”

  I remained impassive. I had to.

  “To continue my observations.”

  King Oberon smiled.

  “Of course. Now tell me, Puck, tell me true. Are there any in the girl’s circle of acquaintances whom you have influence over?”

  This was a cruel question. Everyone has influence somewhere—it is our private joy and power. To be forced to disclose it … Only a sovereign can demand it, and only from his vassal. I bowed my head, hiding the resentment that must have shone in my eyes.

  “Among the scholars. There is a boy.”

  “Not the ungainly one you conjured?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who then?”

  “A certain Robin Puckett.”

  “Ah.”

  He rubbed his hands.

  “You must sow discord, Puck.”

  Finally! A way out.

  “I cannot, milord. I am bound to protect the boy. My queen has demanded it.”

  “Of course,” the king said. “But you are not bound to protect the girl.”