“How?”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “In the park.”
I knew she’d have questions for me, but I meant to give her time for those later. So instead I asked her about herself.
She’d just moved to Austin. She didn’t have many friends; neither did I, and I’d lived here almost as long as I could remember. She was an only child, adopted, of course. She loved books—Narnia and L’Engle and Cooper and the other classics. She liked the idea of ordinary kids going into a magic world because it made her think it could happen to her. She’d had no idea she was magical herself, and I could tell she was still skeptical about that.
My parents picked a good place to abandon me—I’d heard some cities took swingsets and water fountains and maybe a picnic table and called it a park, but this one went on for over a mile of trees and undergrowth, with my home buried deep inside.
I used an illusion to cover my camp and keep passersby away. When I stuck my hand through it, Nadia gasped. “I’ve seen that in movies, but it’s kind of weird to happen in real life.”
“I guess I take it for granted.”
I didn’t, really. Abject loneliness constantly reminded me how alien I was. But she drank up every word I said, as though I were an expert gifting her with secrets she’d always longed for, and that was kind of nice.
I’d never bothered to make my home appealing to anyone else. As a kid, I’d lived in a proper house cut into a hill. Now I just had a little hut made of branches and stones.
“It looks like a fairy village,” she said, sitting on a fallen tree. “Are you a fairy?”
“Not exactly.” I clenched my hands at my sides as my stomach turned flips. “Do you—want to see what I really look like? What I really am?”
She nodded, wide-eyed, and sat very still. I took a deep breath. It felt a lot like stripping naked in front of somebody, and I was suddenly shy and awkward, because nobody had seen me without glamour in almost ten years, and she was cute, and she’d probably write me off as a weird freak or an animal or something once she’d seen me. Or maybe not. Now or never, I thought, and I dropped the glamour, like plunging into water.
“You’re a faun!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together.
“Something like that.” I wondered if she’d ever had a crush on Mr. Tumnus. I could probably rock a scarf, I thought.
I made myself uncross my arms from my chest. Soft fur covered my legs, down to my feet-that-weren’t-feet. Between those and the nubs of my horns, it was either faun or satyr. Maybe. She didn’t have to know I wasn’t entirely sure.
“So you can see why I need the glamour.” I fought the urge to cover myself with it again. Nadia’s fascination made me feel like a picture in a book, or an exhibit at a museum, rather than a person.
She shook her head. “Why not just frolic through the forest and be, I don’t know, a wild spirit or something?”
I gave her a disbelieving look.
She seemed undeterred, making a face of open distaste. “Yeah, but… a nerd? When you could be anything?”
Frankly, I was alone in a world where I didn’t belong, with no one to show me the ropes, and I fit better with outsiders. But I flashed what I hoped was a winning smile. “I like nerds.”
She smiled back, and suddenly the years alone seemed worth it.
~*~
I seized the opportunity to parade my talents—such as they were—for her. When I learned she liked horses, I set a tiny unicorn galloping across the leaf-strewn ground, glitter streaking from its heels as I struggled not to let on how tired the illusion left me.
“It’s not really much,” I said. “My parents used theirs to tell stories. They entertained at court sometimes—my mother was the best of the best. She’d show the story while my dad told it, and the whole thing came to life like you were there. I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”
I had tried, so many times, but it was hard to deconstruct it when I only barely understood what little I could do.
“What happened to them?” She stroked the unicorn’s mane.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think a war broke out. They sent me here to be safe until they came for me, and, well, it’s been a long time.”
Nadia pulled her knees to her chest. “I used to wait for my birth parents to come get me, too. It was a closed adoption. I thought maybe I was a princess, when I was a little kid, or—what do you think I am? I’m not a faun like you.”
I might have guessed a dryad, but the magic I sensed on her felt more powerful than that. “Someone from the court itself,” I said. “Maybe you really are a princess.”
She laughed. “A fairy princess? Me?”
“Well, princess or not, magic is your birthright as much as it’s mine. Are you ready to learn?”
Nadia clasped her hands in delighted surprise, but then her face fell. “I don’t know.”
“Do you believe in me?”
“Well, yes.” She poked my not-foot with her sneaker, emphasizing my otherness, even if she didn’t mean to. I swallowed.
“Then believe in yourself, because I know you can do this.”
Her trust felt nice, and for once I didn’t have to feign confidence. I could be her rock, I thought, and her tutor.
~*~
Her magic came slowly at first. More than once, she tried to give up, but I pushed her. I almost quoted Yoda, and in truth that’s kind of how I felt—I got to be the expert, even though all I knew was what my parents had taught a five-year-old. I was so used to glamour that I slipped easily into assuming more wisdom than I had. Eventually, early spring warmed the forest, and Nadia frolicked through the trees wearing shimmering wings she’d made herself.
I’d never been happier, until the day she invited me to dinner. I did a double-take. “Wait, what?”
She dug her toes into sun-warm grass. “With my parents. They want to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve told them about you.” My eyes must have bugged out because she laughed, clapping her hands over her mouth. “No, I haven’t told them you’re a faun, don’t worry! But they wanted to know what I’ve been up to, so I told them.”
“What exactly did you tell them?”
“That I’ve made a new friend.” She looked at me slyly. “That he likes books. I told them you were writing a novel and I’ve been helping you.”
“I don’t write.”
“They don’t have to know that! It’ll give you something to talk about. Tell them about the Faerie Court and they’ll think you’re brilliant for making it up.”
~*~
Against my better judgment, I agreed. I spent a long time deliberating over how to present myself, as nervous as if I were meeting a girlfriend’s parents. Though reason pointed out that we weren’t dating, I worried that my being male would bring all sorts of baggage to the literal table.
I’d never seen Nadia in a dress before—it looked good on her, so good that I started feeling optimistic. But my first mistake was following her upstairs to her bedroom so she could turn her music off, a move that did not endear me to her parents.
The rest of the evening wasn’t much better. I’d expected to talk about books and my make-believe story that was neither make-believe nor a story. Instead, her parents grilled me about school and my family, and I stumbled through a series of lies. My mother was an artist, I said, and my father was a storyteller. When Nadia’s father asked if they had day jobs, Nadia told him to stop. She seemed as tense and uncomfortable as I was. After dinner, I thanked them politely, and though Nadia’s eyes asked me to stay, I left.
It was well and good to be a magical forest creature with weird legs hanging out and practicing glamour in the park, but that didn’t mean I belonged with normal people like her parents. I wished I could be what she thought I was, some sort of wise forest spirit like I’d read about in books and stories or seen in movies. But I was only me.
~*~
After the debacle of family dinner, I stayed hom
e for a week. I thought maybe Nadia would forget about me or decide she was better off without me, but instead she tracked me down one evening while I was patching up the side of my house.
“Robin?” She waited outside my barricade. “Are you avoiding me?”
“No,” I lied.
“I’m sorry my parents were jerks to you,” she said. “They liked you, though.”
I tried to think of a response to that, and something nasty caught on my tongue—yeah, they seemed to get off on interrogating me, at least—but it wasn’t her fault, so I bit it back. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shrugged. “I probably won’t see them again, anyway.”
She finally stepped inside, but her eyes avoided mine. “I meant it about my parents,” she said. “You have to filter what they say to get what they mean. They wouldn’t have asked you so many questions if they didn’t care.”
I scoffed. “Why would they possibly care?”
“Because you seemed intelligent and like you had potential. They hate it when people with potential have big ideas that won’t go anywhere.”
Not for the first time, I wondered what my own parents would think of my little camp. At least they’d been civilized, with a house, friends and neighbors, and a proper role in the world. They’d been respected. Loved.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Nadia said.
“Yeah?” I couldn’t bring myself to sound enthusiastic.
Nadia frowned in concentration, sticking her tongue out, a sure tell that she was making magic. It took me a moment to realize that what she was building around us was supposed to be the fairy court. Not as I remembered it, but as Nadia imagined it. Glitter, mother-of-pearl, and gleaming marble, with dozens of lords and ladies flitting about in all shapes and colors.
I’d dreamed of it many times, of clinging to my parents’ hands and trying not to wake up. I wondered whether the court even existed anymore or if the whole thing had been obliterated and that was why they hadn’t come for me. Maybe they were all dead, even the queen and her consort—even my parents.
Nadia’s face was radiant, a little slick with exertion but proud. “Surprise.”
Farther down the hall, a banquet covered an enormous table, and I could swear I smelled it, like I thought Thanksgiving dinner would smell. Fairy food was sweet and floral, or dark and earthy—nothing like this.
“It’s not perfect,” Nadia admitted. “Not just the court but the glamour, too. But what do you think? I was up half the night trying to fix it for you. It took me all week to figure it out.”
All week. She’d done in one week what I had spent years trying to do. “That’s great,” I said.
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I get that you feel bad for humiliating me in front of your parents,” I said. “So thanks, I guess, for trying to cheer me up.”
“Obviously it’s not working.”
“I’m sure they’d be glad to know that their daughter is playing magical make-believe with a fairy boy in the forest. There’s a bright future in that. Top salaries, snazzy suits, fancy cars. You’ll be an executive in no time.”
Nadia stared at me like I’d thrown up on her lap. In a way, maybe I had. “What?”
“Just don’t tell anyone about the unicorn rainbow glitter. It might get in the way of climbing the corporate ladder.”
“My father is a professor,” Nadia said tightly. “He doesn’t want me to work at a corporation, but he wants me to do something with my life instead of throwing it away.”
Which, I assumed, was what he thought I was going to do. I wondered if that was how she felt, too. “Wonderful. Maybe you can be a movie special effects artist, then. Make your mark on the world that way. Keep your fairy bits secret unless you want to wind up in the tabloids.”
“What’s wrong with you today? Are you that mad about my parents, or are you jealous, or what?” Her eyes widened. “Is that it? I can do something you can’t do, so you’re going to act like a five-year-old and throw a temper tantrum? Maybe if you got over yourself, you’d be able to do more magic than just pretend.”
“I’m not the one making excuses for my judgmental parents!”
“At least I have-” she said, but she cut herself off before she finished it, covering her mouth with her hands.
I was shaking, literally shaking, my face burning. “Get out of here,” I said. “Maybe you can conjure yourself up some real friends, while you’re at it.”
She looked like she was a moment away from yelling or crying, with neither of us sure which it would be. Instead, she fled, crunching through the undergrowth like any other unwieldy human who didn’t belong in my forest.
~*~
I alternated between wallowing in self-loathing and anger at Nadia, replaying our conversation again and again in my head because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if either of us had been in the right.
At first, I told myself I didn’t need someone who would say such hurtful things. Never mind that I’d been less than kind myself. I picked up my old hobbies—I snuck into movies, pretended to be a student at the high school, tried on a hundred different faces to see what kind of reaction I’d get for each. Suddenly all the stories I’d ever read about breakups made sense. And we’d never even dated.
I wasn’t really kidding myself, and I knew it. I went to the movies I thought she’d like and hung around the lockers at her high school because I thought I might see her, though the one time I caught a glimpse of freckles, I hid in the boys’ bathroom.
“Great job, idiot,” I told the reflection of a face I didn’t recognize, though it moved in time with mine.
Every night I went home and sulked in my hut, alone. I even stole ice cream from a gas station because I’d heard it might help, but all it did was make me hate myself a little more. Normally I foraged for nuts or berries or leftover French fries. My parents wouldn’t have approved of stealing. Nadia wouldn’t have approved of stealing. I didn’t approve of stealing. Yet here I was.
After a while, I started getting weird looks sometimes when I went out. It didn’t take long to realize that even my pathetically simple glamour was beginning to wane, or at least waver often enough for people to notice something odd about me. And how surprised could I be? I had the skills and talent of a not especially patient five-year-old, and I was never going to surpass what I’d learned as a kid, let alone do something as wonderful as my mother, or even Nadia, was capable of.
I was stunted, magically speaking, and I was losing even that. Sooner or later, somebody would find me and I’d wind up in a lab or sideshow without enough magic to free myself.
I decided to resign myself to my fate with dignity, but first, I needed to see Nadia one last time and apologize.
~*~
At midnight, I set out for Nadia’s house, hoping anyone who caught a glimpse of the real me in the flickering streetlamps would think I was some sort of theater performance artist, or just another resident kook.
Pebbles marked the edge of her parents’ flower beds, and I scooped up a handful of them and tossed them at her window. Her window slid open, and though I couldn’t see her, I could hear her voice. “Who’s there?”
“Robin,” I stage whispered.
A light clicked on in her bedroom, and I could make out her form, if not her face. “Oh my god, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I need to talk to you.”
“Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
I crossed my arms over my chest again and tried to figure out how to say everything I wanted to tell her. Then Nadia stepped through the front door and shut it gently, and I forgot what I was planning to say. She was wrapped in a bathrobe and wearing bunny slippers, which I thought was pretty adorable.
She stopped on the steps. “What are you doing like that? Here?”
“I’ve come to say goodbye.”
That seemed to stun her. “What?”
&nb
sp; “Goodbye. You know? What people say when they won’t see each other again.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m an idiot.”
“If you’re trying to say you’re sorry, I accept your apology. I was a jerk to you, too.”
“It’s not just that,” I said. “I’ve been leading you on. I don’t really know anything. I can barely do any magic at all, and the little bit I can do, I’m not good at.”
“Robin…”
I felt smaller with every word I said, and rather than look at her face, I decided to memorize the way her thin ankles tapered above her slippers. “I know you think I’m some kind of fantastic forest spirit—”
“You are a forest spirit,” she said. “And aside from saying some not very nice things to me last week, I think you’ve been pretty fantastic.”
“I acted like I knew what I was talking about—that was a lie.”
“You think you’re the first guy to have played up what he knows to impress a girl?” Nadia asked, smiling, and when I glanced at her I thought she might be blushing.
“Well, I’m incompetent. I can’t even keep my glamour up anymore. So I’m going to go away for a while. I wanted to apologize to you before I left.”
She finally came close enough to touch my horns gently. It was an odd feeling, not entirely unpleasant. “Is that why you’re, you know, like this?”
I nodded.
Nadia covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Robin. You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”
Even though I’d said it myself, it hurt coming from her. “Harsh. Not unfair, but harsh. What am I doing this time?”
“The first rule of magic,” she said, putting her hand on my bare chest. I swallowed. “Come on. You managed to survive here for, what, ten years on your own?”
A light flicked on beside the door, temporarily blinding me. Nadia, too, froze. But in that moment between the light and the door opening, I could feel the buzz of her magic—soft, sweet, but strong, like her—fall over me.
“Nadia.” Her mother stood on the doorstep, clutching her own bathrobe, looking so much like Nadia that a lack of blood relation didn’t matter. “What is going on.” It wasn’t a question.
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