Wild Blue Under

by Judi Fennell

  Val needed someone in her life. For years, it’d been just her and her mother, and Tricia knew how strong their bond had been. Strong enough to survive the years Val had spent “finding herself,” or whatever she wanted to call it.

  It was somewhat ironic, and more than a little sad, that Val had chosen to come home after her mother died. But Val was bound and determined to turn this place into everything her mother had wanted it to be, and Tricia couldn’t help but be excited to be a part of it.

  She flicked on the lights to the front of the store and tied back the curtains that divided the two rooms. The electrician would be here soon, so she might as well get started on moving the inventory away from the circuit-breaker box.

  She lifted the top carton—of heavy sand globes, it figured—from the chest-high stack, careful to get a good grip. She didn’t want to drop these; Val couldn’t afford to replace stuff at this point.

  Although, with that inheritance…

  Tricia carried the box to the stack in the corner, working her grip so she could slide it on top of the others when she stopped.

  How had those sparrows gotten in here?

  Maybe Val’s recent paranoia about birds was justified. It could certainly help explain yesterday’s seagull visitor. Now sparrows?

  Tricia backed up very slowly, but the birds seemed too interested in a few crumbs to pay her much attention.

  She set the box down on the desk and, tucking her arms by her sides, tried to slide unobtrusively to the far side of the stack so she wouldn’t scare the sparrows. Which boxes had the fishing nets in them? She didn’t want to hurt the little things, but she also didn’t want to spend time cleaning up anything she didn’t have to, and she’d rather get them out of the shop before Val arrived.

  Pecking away, they didn’t even look up.

  Tricia inched into a space near the back of the boxes. Aha. No wonder the birds were so busy.

  An entire bag of birdseed had spilled. Tricia smiled. Therese had bought a special brand that had kept the front sidewalk filled with songbirds—and with customers. The birds had been a nice draw.

  Tricia lifted the bag. That got the sparrows’ attention. One fluttered behind the door where Tricia saw a sliver of rainy daylight. That’s how they’d gotten in.

  The other sparrow hadn’t budged. Matter of fact, it furrowed its little brow, and Tricia could swear it stomped its foot.

  Stubborn thing. Well, at least it wasn’t flying off in fright. Made it easier to capture this way.

  Tricia swept a handful of the spilled seed onto her palm, and wouldn’t you know? The little foot-stomping sparrow hopped aboard and went right back to eating. The nervous one by the door peeped.

  The brave sparrow lifted its head long enough to let out a pair of chirps, then went right back to eating. Tricia moved slowly toward the door, and the nervous one ruffled its feathers.

  Tricia opened the door, spreading the seed on the pavement outside, and her hitchhiker hopped off to enjoy the feast. The nervous one flew down from the hole.

  That’d been easy.

  But she didn’t want them to come back, so Tricia grabbed one of the T-shirts and stuffed it in the hole. Val wouldn’t mind the lost income from one shirt if it meant keeping birds out of the shop.

  Then she went back to clean up the spill. If Val wasn’t interested in attracting the birds back to the store, her kids would love if they showed up at their house.

  She brushed the spill back into the bag and was turning to leave when something caught her eye. Something wrapped in bright yellow paper.

  Addressed to Valerie. From her mom.

  Oh, no. It was a birthday present. Her mother’s car accident had happened right before Val’s birthday, and she’d never gotten the gift her mother had chosen for her.

  Tricia lifted it, sniffing back tears. She’d give it to Val as soon as she saw her.

  First Rod, then the inheritance, now this gift.

  Aside from the birds, Val was having the best run of luck since, well, ever.

  Chapter 16

  Val was having the worst luck.

  She couldn’t believe it. Things just kept dropping from the sky in a shower of the bizarre—and she wasn’t talking about the intermittent raindrops.

  Pizza crusts, tin cans, an old shoe…

  “Does he have every bird in the Midwest working for him?” she grumbled as she swerved to avoid a wad of soggy paper towels.

  They landed on her wiper blade, pinning the thing against the windshield. Val upped the wiper speed, only to hear a painful whir-whir as the mechanism tried to respond and couldn’t.

  Great.

  “Let’s hope not,” said Livingston. “Oh, and by the way, we prefer the descriptor avian. Bird is so mundane. Leave it to Bipeds to come up with such a harsh-sounding word for creatures who are grace on the wing. Able to soar through the stratosphere, ride currents like waves, dive from great heights, perform tactical maneuvers with elegance and speed and just the right amount of chutzpah—”

  “Incoming,” Rod said, looking out his window.

  “Right!” Livingston squawked.

  Val went right. A Frisbee bounced off the hood.

  “Valerie! I said right!” the gull growled.

  “I went right!”

  “You were supposed to go left.”

  “But you said right.”

  “I meant it was coming from the right. Rod was looking out his window—what other direction could it have been coming from?”

  Val shook her head. Bad enough she had to take directions from a seagull, but now she was supposed to add logistics into the equation?

  “This is really annoying.” She shifted gears, missing the next one and having to rattle the shift to find its niche.

  Hmmm, the parallels to her own life in that maneuver weren’t even worth contemplating.

  “You’re doing great, Valerie.” The warmth in Rod’s voice was worth contemplating.

  For just a moment, it made everything right in her world.

  And then a T-bone hit the side mirror.

  Ya know? Rod certainly was taking all of this in stride. The seagull, objects falling from the sky, near-misses…

  “Rod, what’s going on? This isn’t a normal inheritance, is it?”

  The bird snorted from the backseat. “This I have to hear.”

  Rod looked over his shoulder, a black wave of hair falling just above his eye. She wanted to smooth it back—as she’d done when they’d kissed.

  Uh oh. She shouldn’t be thinking about that right now. Bad enough she’d turned the A/C off for power; thoughts like that only increased the heat in the car.

  “Go left, Valerie.”

  But why banish thoughts when all Rod had to do was say her name like that and there’d be no outrunning that heat.

  Since she wanted to outrun the falling soda bottle, however, she jerked the car to the left and hit the gas. Granted, a plastic bottle wouldn’t normally do much damage, but that thin crack from the fish was spider-webbing upward. One wrong ding from another object, and the windshield could shatter.

  A pacifier was next. A pacifier? What? Had the birds run out of trash to pick so they’d started stealing from babies?

  “Rod, what’s going on? Why is an albatross after us? How is an albatross after us? I’m having a hard enough time with the talking seagull. I mean, birds just don’t talk to humans!”

  “For a very good reason,” Livingston muttered.

  Rod massaged the back of his neck and exhaled. A fine glimmer of perspiration graced the strong column of his throat, the faint musk of man filling her car.

  “I wish I knew what was going on, Valerie.” He lowered the visor and peered in the mirror. “Livingston? What do your sources say? When did this come to light?”

  The seagull clacked hi
s beak. “We don’t have much to go on, Rod. The manatees were the first to report the rumblings of a coup after the wires were found, but JR’s name never came up until the diamonds went missing.”

  “I want someone down in the Keys to question the manatees further.”

  “Already on it.”

  “Hold on.” The car swerved as Val adjusted the rearview mirror. “Manatees? You’re telling me manatees alerted you to a coup? Who are you, Jacques Cousteau?”

  Livingston snorted. “Hardly. That guy spoke French. And he’s dead. If you’ll notice, Rod isn’t dead.”

  Oh she noticed.

  “But manatees? I’ve seen documentaries. They can’t talk.”

  “And you’ve seen documentaries of talking seagulls?”

  Good point.

  “Valerie,” Rod put his hand on her arm in what she supposed was to be a comforting manner but was so not. Which didn’t help. “There’s a lot I can tell you that will seem impossible, which is why I can’t until I have proof. Manatee sentries are one of them.”

  “Talking birds another?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And the fact that you’re a prince from a country you have yet to name?”

  He did that cute, one-sided, kicked-back smile, probably to disarm her, but she wasn’t going to let it.

  “Valerie, my kingdom isn’t… well, it isn’t one you would have heard of.”

  “Oh, she’s heard of it.”

  “Livingston, if you don’t mind. There are ways to do this, in case you’ve forgotten?”

  “Pardon.”

  Wow. Livingston had apologized. She hadn’t known the bird long (and what was wrong with that statement?), but she had a feeling that wasn’t a common occurrence.

  “As I was saying, in my kingdom we try to keep to the old ways and not involve Hum—that is, outsiders.”

  “So, is it some insulated little world?”

  “You could say that.”

  “What would you say?”

  “Well, I’d say,” Livingston grumbled, “that Valerie might want to keep her attention focused on the road.” The bird flicked his beak toward the windshield. “Take a gander at that.”

  Dead ahead were four crows, flying in tandem like a Blue Angels squadron. Only these birds weren’t doing tactical maneuvers. No, these four were flying in perfect timing with… a blanket hanging from their feet.

  “Oh, for Zeus’s sake.” Rod exhaled and raked his fingers through his hair. “What do they hope to accomplish with that?”

  “It’ll stop us.”

  “Only until we remove it.”

  “He’s getting desperate.” Livingston tap-danced from foot to foot. “JR is running out of avian power. That’s good for us.”

  “Yay, but we still have to dodge this very large bullet.” Val fiddled with the gears again. Did one slow down for a blanket or speed up to outrun it?

  “Pick up speed when they drop it, Valerie.” Rod saved her from having to come up with the answer. “The draft you create should whip it over us.”

  The three of them peered forward, eyes glued to the eight scrawny, black legs that were zooming in fast.

  Val checked the road. So far, so empty.

  “Get ready…” Livingston rocked forward. “Get set…”

  Then the skies opened.

  The rainstorm hit so fast and so fierce that it was as if a tidal wave had been unleashed from the heavens.

  The pounding rain knocked the crows off their trajectory. Then a huge gust of wind dragged the blanket—and the crows—into the field alongside the road.

  “Go!” Livingston shouted with a laugh. He jumped onto the dash and held a webbed foot up toward Rod. “High four!”

  High four?

  Val glanced at the bird’s foot. Four toes. Well, three in the webbing and one in the back. Bad enough the bird could speak, but now he had culturally appropriate anthropomorphic behavior?

  She needed some explanations—and she needed them now.

  A bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky, followed by thunder so loud it rattled the car. While it was a little late to be tornado season, this storm had the makings of one.

  Yeah, not her luckiest day.

  The rain sluiced down her windshield, heavy drops splashing the runoff and everything merged with the spider-veined crack so she couldn’t see. She turned the wipers back on, only to hear the whir-whir again. The damn thing was stuck under that wad of towels, which, with the rain, was only getting heavier.

  “Let’s get moving, Valerie!” Livingston settled himself in the middle of the backseat again, a grin from ear to, er, did seagulls have ears?

  “I can’t see anything.” Val meant visually but metaphorically wasn’t off the mark either. She rolled the window down, not particularly looking forward to getting soaked, but she did need to see.

  She reached for the paper towels, missing them when the car hit some residual “shrapnel.” The wheel jerked right, and the paper towel obstruction went sailing off the windshield, the wiper kicking into service with a frenzy.

  Val grabbed the wheel, trying to regain control of the car and roll up her window while another bolt of lightning ripped through the air. Thunder reverberated around them like the percussion section of an orchestra. Rain slanted sideways, and Val struggled to keep the wheel heading straight. This was insane.

  “We have to get off the road,” she said, clinging to the wheel with both hands.

  “What?” Rod yelled over the din.

  “We need to get off the road!” But as she looked through the few seconds of clear vision the wipers created, she didn’t see a single place to go. Acres of fields on either side.

  “Keep driving!” Livingston ordered in her ear. He’d fluttered up to the headrest behind her. “Nothing is going to be able to keep track of us in this. It’s a gods-send!”

  A godsend? Maybe for him since he was a seabird—and sitting in the backseat—but driving in it was a nightmare.

  Chapter 17

  Angel Tritone didn’t like the silence she encountered in the High Councilman’s domed, oval office. Dad and Charley usually weren’t so quiet—especially with a bottle of champagne between them.

  She set the slate tablets she carried onto the desk that’d been carved by the Human, Bernini, and nudged aside the sea anemone who’d taken a liking to the corner. Anemones did not belong on the furniture. The decorator had included perfectly good pedestals along the far corner for just such a reason.

  “You are sure she’s the one, aren’t you, Dad?” Angel turned to her father, resting her amethyst tail against the desk and running her hands over the beveled edge.

  Gods, what she wouldn’t give for this desk to be hers. Humans had such interesting items. Since she collected whatever she could get her hands on, she knew what a find this was. But something like this, a cultural treasure on land, was guaranteed to be one off-land as well, something she’d never be allowed to own in the private sector. She’d had a tough choice between majors in college: museum curator or humanologist.

  Humanologist won, but only because she harbored the hope to go on land one day and interact with Humans. And once Dad signed off on these land-study program slates, she could.

  “It’s her, Angel. Erica’s law-enforcement friend handled the DNA analysis the gulls brought back,” Charley answered while Dad set the champagne down on the sideboard among the marble busts of previous High Councilmen.

  He and Mom had brought several bottles back from Reel and Erica’s wedding. It was good, much better for catching a buzz than kelp wine, but the fact that Dad was drinking the hard stuff bothered her.

  She glanced at the timepiece. It might be five o’clock somewhere, but not here. Dad wasn’t usually a big drinker, and he’d had a good portion of that bottle.

  “Did the Ones
On High confirm it?” She didn’t like that Dad hadn’t answered her. Yes, Charley was her father’s Olympian Advisor, but if this were on the up-and-up, why did Dad look so worried?

  Which only worried her more.

  She smoothed the Human tankini top Mariana had given her for her birthday, her fingers tangling in her necklace—dog tags, Erica said it was called, which made no sense. There were no dogs on it.

  She untangled her fingers. “Rod’s tail will come back, right? I know the mythology says so—and Reel’s did, but Reel started off with legs. Earning a tail through heroics was all well and good for him, but what’s heroic about Rod bringing a Human to our world?”

  Nothing. That was the problem. What Rod was doing was simply a transport mission.

  Dad turned around with a flick of his tail, the tip of one fluke dislodging a few arms from the basket starfish lounging against the table leg. “Yes, Angel. Rod will get his tail back.” He took off his glasses and folded the ends together in the middle. He’d taken to wearing them only recently. About the same time she’d realized he was getting older. “You did give him the gods’ oil when you dropped off the clothing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then everything’s going according to plan,” Charley answered, putting the stopper back in the bottle and resting the champagne in the wine rack. He nodded to a pair of sea ravens floating in alcoves beside the office door. The fish glided into place beside her, the yellow one puffing itself up to the size of the orange one. “Thank you for bringing the slates by, Angel. Your father will get to work on them right away.”

  She knew when she was being dismissed—and she wanted to know why.

  She pushed off the desk and ditched her “escorts,” swimming around Charley to put her hand on Dad’s arm. “If everything’s okay, Dad, what are you so worried about?”

  Yes, he was the High Councilman, and, yes, people usually didn’t question him once he made a proclamation, but at this moment, he was simply her father.

  Finally, he looked at her, rubbing his fingers across his brow. “I’m not worried, urchin. Merely uncomfortable having him so far away on land.” He glanced at Charley. “It’ll be all right.”