Haffling (The Haffling series)

by Caleb James

  “No,” he said. “Magic onions don’t die that easily.” He got up. “Wow… head rush.” He reached out his hand. “Come on.”

  I took it, and for a moment thought we were back at Tchotchke’s Fair. It might have been the same field, only not a soul around, unless you counted a rather large army of frogs and toads assembled around us. “It could be a dream,” I offered.

  Jerod pinched me.

  “Ow.”

  “Nope,” he said. “No dream. And just to be clear.” He was smiling, but his tone let me know he was dead serious. “You’re my boyfriend….” He stared at his feet and then at me. “This is corny, but I need to hear it, say that you’re mine.”

  “Yes,” I said, wanting to see his smile again. “I am yours.”

  “Good. And in case you ever wonder, I am yours.”

  “Boys!” Cedric’s brow was creased with worry. Beside him stood Liam, his blond hair braided down his back, his violet eyes fixed on me. “I could have loved you,” he said. “You didn’t give me the chance.”

  “No.” Jerod stepped between us. “Alex is mine. And I am his.”

  “I see that.” Liam’s lips pursed as though tasting something bitter. He turned to Cedric. “She’ll find them.”

  “I know.” And then to us, “Come. There are things I need to tell you, and we have little time.”

  Twenty-Five

  WE RAN behind the blond duo of my father the fairy and Liam. An army of frogs and toads followed, and rising over them was the black-and-silver horse. It trailed a stream of muck, from which the frogs pulled insects and tiny fish. The green field soon gave way to a dense forest. We crossed a cool stream and came to a meadow ablaze with purple and yellow flowers. It ended in a gentle embankment and a rushing river. Liam leapt onto the horse’s back. Cedric grabbed a handful of the beast’s mane and turned to us. “Come. Hurry!”

  I looked at the river’s white-capped surface. I could barely see the distant shore that was shrouded in fog.

  “Hurry,” Cedric urged. “There’s no time.”

  I looked behind at the sea of frogs as they leapt into the chop, leaving their dull green-and-brown toad comrades behind. The water churned, and schools of rainbow fish darted from the hungry frogs.

  “It’s the Hudson River,” Jerod said. “See.” He pointed to the left, where in the distance I could see the shadow of a massive bridge. “It’s the fairy version of the GW. And that—” His arm swung across the river. “—We’re going to Jersey.” He grabbed the other side of the horse’s mane.

  “Right.” And stepping behind him, I put my hand next to his and gripped tight. “Gross.” I didn’t want him to see my fear…. I felt paralyzed. I wanted to keep him safe. He’d nearly died, and here we were about to go back into the water. I thought of Alice and how I still had no clue where she was or how I could save her, or if… if it were already too late. My teeth chattered. I clamped my jaw.

  Jerod must have sensed it. “It’s going to be okay. Just roll, Alex. You are the magic onion.”

  His words were like oil on troubled waters.

  “Forward!” Liam spoke into the mare’s ear as he dug his legs into her flanks.

  The pooka reared, lifting Jerod and me off the ground. We held tight as it leapt the bank.

  “Holy crap!” Jerod shouted.

  We flew high, maybe thirty feet. We arced and plummeted toward the rolling waters. My breath caught as we landed with barely a splash. Frogs and fish skittered across my legs. I shut my eyes and sucked in a breath, prepared for the dive. It didn’t come.

  Cautiously, I peeked out. We were moving like a barge across the river. Liam hunched forward on the horse’s neck, his eyes on the distant shore. The creature’s broad chest, black head, and silver mane were like the bow of a boat, her strong legs churning beneath us.

  Jerod was looking around, and then back at me. His face was filthy, and he was grinning. “Awesome!”

  “It is.”

  My fear was still there, but also exhilaration. It wasn’t just this unexpected ride that was better than anything at Coney Island. But we weren’t drowning. Jerod was safe… and he was mine. There were no words for this happiness. I smiled so hard my cheeks ached. Oh wait, I thought. This is joy. It didn’t last. Even though I tried to hold onto it, as the wind and water splashed my face and I felt Jerod’s body against mine, my mood plummeted. This was no party. My sister had been kidnapped. Jerod had put himself in harm’s way—for me—had nearly died, and was heading into stuff that could kill us both. “Shit,” I muttered. This wasn’t going to end well. Things didn’t for me. I had no business feeling happy.

  By the time the horse made land and we’d climbed the far embankment, I was a jangled mess. I plastered a smile on my face to meet Jerod’s look of amazement.

  It didn’t work.

  His smile vanished. My breath caught as he walked up to me and put his face inches from mine.

  I tried to look away. “We should go with them,” I said, indicating Cedric and Liam, who were making toward a misty clearing in what seemed to be a village.

  “Stop,” Jerod said. He butted his forehead against mine. “I see you, Alex Nevus. Whatever awful things are running through your head, you need to make them stop. I love you, and I intend to get through this… with you. And when this is done….” He blushed. “I want to do things with you, Alex. Things I have done with nobody.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I have no intention of letting anything bad happen to you, or Alice… or me.”

  My mouth hung open. He didn’t wait for me to respond. All the horrible things I wanted to mention—kidnappings, murderous fairy queens, horses made of slime—never made it from my head to my mouth as his lips landed on mine and stopped the words. The moment was perfect, the horse’s reek replaced with him. My hands ran up his back and into his hair; it was damp and curled in my fingers. Shivers tingled from my ears to my toes. All the terrible thoughts in my head stopped.

  “Uch! Make them stop,” Liam said.

  “You’re jealous,” Cedric replied. There was sadness in his voice. “As I was a trap for his mother, that was to be your path. Consider yourself lucky.”

  “But you love Marilyn,” Liam said.

  “Yes, now… but in the beginning I was the baited trap, love unrequited. I can never undo the wrong that I caused. Be grateful.” Cedric called to us, “Boys, come now.”

  Jerod pulled back, his eyes fixed on mine. The tip of his tongue flicked between his lips. “Alex, if I were to die right now….”

  I pressed a finger across his mouth. “Do not say it. Not here. Not ever.”

  He nodded, kissed my finger, and then brushed a kiss against my cheek. My toes curled inside my sopping sneakers. “So where are we?” he asked.

  “Ssh… no questions.” I looked across the clearing at a cluster of thatched huts on either side of a dirt road. Beyond them, the mist was too dense, obscuring whatever lay behind.

  Holding hands, we walked toward the hut where Liam and Cedric stood before an open door.

  “Check this out,” Jerod said.

  I bit back the question and twisted the words. “Tell me,” I said.

  “This.” Still holding my hand, he focused on a tendril of mist. He pointed at it and moved his hand as if to touch it. As he got close, it moved away.

  “Huh.” We veered from the path, and like doing a physics lab, investigated the phenomenon. The fog was a solid wall of white behind the huts.

  “No smell,” he said.

  “No,” I agreed. “And it doesn’t seem to like us.”

  “It’s repelled by us,” he said, noting how the fog fled from our approach.

  “Like a magnet,” I added.

  We walked toward a dense patch between two of the huts. Sure enough, the fog rolled back, leaving a ten-foot clearing. Behind us was the village, and around us the mist. We pushed forward. I glanced back to see if the hole from where we’d come would stay open, or would it shut around us. It was like a giant wormhol
e, the river and village still visible through a story-high hole carved into the mist.

  “There’s stuff moving in there,” Jerod said.

  I hung at his side and could barely see something happening deep in the fog. We walked closer, and the mist fled, taking whatever we’d glimpsed with it. But when we just stood and stared…. “There’s definitely something in there.”

  “Make them stop!” Liam shouted from the hut where he stood with my father.

  “They’re learning,” Cedric replied.

  “She’ll see them!” Liam spat back.

  “She already has,” Cedric said. “She’s on her way.”

  “No!” Liam shrieked. “She can’t find me here. She’ll know.”

  Jerod and I stopped our explorations of the fog and watched them.

  Cedric placed a hand on Liam’s shoulders. “The thing is done.”

  Liam’s eyes were bugging as he looked toward the river. He spotted the two of us. “It’s all your fault.” His mouth twisted, one of his pointed canines visible over his lip. “You were supposed to fall in love with me.”

  I could see he was frightened… but more. I looked at Cedric… my dad. “You were going to explain,” I shouted back, my words muffled by the fog.

  He swept his hair back from his pointed ears. “There’s no time now… but Alex, I am your father, and while it’s difficult to believe, I do love you and your sister… and your brother.”

  “I don’t have a brother.” Wondering what the hell he was talking about, and hearing the unmistakable roar of a subway heading into a station.

  “Yes,” he said. He shouted over the deafening sound of an approaching train. “You do, his name is Adam.”

  Twenty-Six

  THE ground shook and the water churned. Fish leapt into the air. Frogs stampeded the shore as the river—defying the laws of physics—arched a hundred feet high.

  Jerod gripped my hand as we stared down our misty tunnel at the towering wall of water. Our ears were deafened by the screech of a train’s brakes. The river’s edge fell away, sending a wave flooding toward us and the little village. It spilled around our feet and splashed against the walls of the huts, and where it met the mist, it sizzled and vanished.

  Liam keened as if in pain. “No. No. No.”

  I tried to make sense of what I saw. Where the water had fallen away from the river was a dark tunnel. Smack in the center was an old-style Pullman car. It was bright blue with gold trim. Several doors were opening and various creatures were spilling out. There was a gaggle of the pastel-colored sprites, and May’s secretary Dorothea with her mantis legs and arms. One of her pincers held a door as May, dressed in an elaborate red Victorian gown, made her entrance. Her blonde hair was swept up, and rubies sparkled around her neck and from her ears and wrists. Taking Dorothea’s extended limb, she daintily alit. Her head pivoted, and she made eye contact first with Cedric, then with the panicking Liam, and finally, with a broad smile, she found Jerod and me in our misty tunnel.

  She clapped her hands. “Fascinating. You boys are most inventive. It’s the snips and snails. But it’s time to come out. Alex Nevus, you’ve played yourself into a corner, and it’s time to….” There was a thunderous drum roll. From outside our misty nook we heard a screeching of birds. May threw her hands up and traced circles on the ground with her dainty feet. She giggled. “I hate to dance, and sometimes it’s essential. But now, Alex Nevus, come out, come out, because it’s time….” And another deafening drum roll. “To pay the piper.”

  I looked at Jerod.

  “We could run,” he said. “She wants us to come out. I don’t think she wants to follow us in.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Don’t even think of running,” she said. “Because….” And the stupid drum again.

  I watched as three towering ogres pushed my real mom out of the train. Behind her followed a young woman with long blonde hair, and finally, a little red-haired boy, a couple years younger than Clay. Mom was no longer pregnant. Her hands were bound behind her back. I looked from her to the pretty blonde woman in jeans and a T-shirt. Her liquid-blue eyes found mine…. “Oh shit!”

  Jerod followed my gaze.

  “This can’t be,” I said. But of course it was. “Alice.” I glared at May, my feet moving fast toward our tunnel’s opening.

  “Alex, No!” Jerod shouted. “It’s what she wants.” He ran after me.

  “No! Stop!” I shouted. There was about fifteen feet of fog tunnel between Jerod and me, and another fifteen feet on the other side. We faced each other. “Look, Jerod… I think you’re safe in here. If you go out there she’ll use you. She’s got my mom, and Alice… and there’s a sea of weird shit headed my way. I don’t want her to get you too. Please, stay safe.”

  “I can’t leave you,” he said.

  It felt like something was ripping inside of me.

  May was singing from the village. “Come out, come out!”

  “Jerod, she’s crazy, and she’s dangerous, and she wants something from me. She thinks nothing of killing, and the more she has to bargain with….”

  He stared at me, and then he was right in front of me. “I get it,” he said. “So don’t go to her.”

  My hands were on his face and his on mine. I felt his breath against my cheeks. “I don’t have a choice. She’ll hurt them if I don’t. She already has.”

  “She’ll hurt you.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think she’ll kill me. She wants something else. I think if I give it to her, she’ll let them go.”

  “Maybe she won’t.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t, please.”

  “I have no choice.” We kissed. It was sad, and it was beautiful. I knew it was for the very last time. Our lips parted. “Jerod, promise me you won’t follow, no matter what.”

  “I love you.” His jaw twitched, and he was crying. “Don’t do this, Alex. Stay with me.”

  “I love you too. You have to promise. I’ll be okay if I know you’re safe. You have to get home to Clay, he needs you. I have to try and save my mom and Alice, they’re going to need you too. Tell me you won’t follow. Please. Promise.” I was sobbing.

  “Okay.” He butted his forehead against mine. “I fucking hate this. You better come back to me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “No!” he shouted. Tears down his face. “Don’t say that. Tell me you’re going to come back to me.” He sounded angry, his hands tight on the sides of my face. His eyes bored into mine.

  “I will come back to you,” I said.

  “Promise!”

  “I promise. I will come back to you.” I swallowed. “You have to let go,” I said.

  “No.” I felt his hands loosen.

  I pulled back and looked at him a final time. “I will come back to you.” The words sounded good, but as they left my mouth, I knew they were a lie.

  I turned and left the safety of the mist.

  May was waiting, her arms extended toward me. “My goodness,” she said. She looked behind me at the tunnel, Jerod still visible. It was too painful to look at him, and I was frightened that he’d try to do something impulsive and heroic. “What a long road it’s been, Alex Nevus.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to steady my nerves. I gritted my teeth and smiled, all the while piecing together the information being thrown at me. Behind May stood my mom, with her hands bound, my sister—who was too old to be Alice—and a red-headed boy of around seven, who looked a little like me. “Tell me about Alice,” I said.

  “She wasn’t ripe,” May answered. She glanced back. “And now she is.”

  “You stole years from my sister.” Rage bubbled inside, the kind Sifu warned against. Anger needed to be controlled.

  “Just a few,” May said. “She’s beautiful and nearly as clever as you. If it weren’t for your little brother, she would have run away. Thank goodness for the ties that bind.”

  My eyes fell on the boy. He stared back at me with g
reen eyes fringed with long red lashes.

  “I’m Adam,” he said. He seemed frightened, his gaze darting from me, to Mom, to Cedric.

  “Hi,” I said, feeling a rush of emotion. “I’m Alex.” I didn’t know what to expect. Was he even real.… But Mom had been pregnant, and now she wasn’t. I felt sick. How could someone… some creature, do these things?

  I glared at May. She was smug, so certain she had me over a barrel. I stepped across the opening to my family.

  “Alex,” Alice whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  I took her hands, so used to having to tilt my head down, but now… she was tall and beautiful, her hair loose around her shoulders, a great flowing wave of rippling blonde. Her eyes, still the same liquid blue. “Not your fault,” I said. “None of this.”

  Adam stared up at me… this was my brother. I couldn’t imagine what his world was like. How do you go from being nonexistent to seven years old in a day or two? I sank to my knees and did the only thing that made sense. I hugged him. Dangerous questions swirled, and while I held his skinny body close to mine, I felt May’s eyes on us.

  “Free her hands,” May instructed one of the ogres. “She’ll play no games with all of her eggs in my basket.”

  Mom’s hand was on my back, and we were having that rarest of things… a family hug. Alice gripped one of my hands, and the other was wrapped around Adam. He was solid; he was my brother… and she’d stolen his first seven years.

  “So,” May said, breaking the moment. “It’s time to pay up, Alex Nevus. And I must say, with a sister, brother, mother, and father in my hand… unless your boyfriend wants to join in, I’ve got a full house.” She chuckled.

  I batted away tears and stood. Turning from my family, I met her gaze. “I have what you want… or else you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

  “Well said.” Her ruby earrings sparkled as she bent her head first to the right and then to the left. “But that is why we’re here.” She turned her gaze from me, to Alice, and then to Adam.