by Skye Allen
The twig boy’s head was in the girl’s lap now, and the boy was idly lifting an arm toward the peach branches like he was pointing out cloud shapes. No, I wasn’t the only one whose fever had passed. Okay. Something must have happened to make all of us get sexy. I turned to ask Nicky if the music here always made you want to strip off your clothes, but she pressed a finger to her mouth and indicated with her eyes for me to watch Motorcycle Boy.
I turned to look at him and wondered again why he looked so familiar. He was brandishing a fern leaf. He laid it along his arm like a baby, then closed both hands over it and stood it on the ground. When he stepped back, the leaf was a woman wearing a dress printed with poppies. I heard ooh’s from the crowd, and a ring-around-the-rosy girl squealed.
I watched as the boy turned a second leaf into a man dressed in icy gray. He had some kind of weapon: a knife mounted on a long stick. The gray man circled the woman, and when she turned to follow him, I saw that they were both completely flat, like people painted on leaves.
Like paper dolls.
The woman fought the gray man when he darted in, twice blocking his knife with her arms before he finally slashed her chest, and she crumbled into a heap of dried leaves on the grass. The man was wearing a helmet that covered his face, but it wasn’t his face I was looking at now. He thrust his fist up in the air with a red lump dangling from it.
I stared at the lump, horrified. It was a tiny human heart.
There was applause. I heard gleeful shrieking behind me. Nicky spun around and made a sharp shushing sound. The ring-around-the-rosy girls were whooping, and one had a stick she was using to poke at another one’s chest. They were reenacting the grisly puppet show like it was their favorite story.
“What was that?” I asked.
Nicky’s face clouded. She unfolded herself to stand up and held out a hand for me, and when we were face-to-face, she opened her mouth and pressed her lips closed again as if she had changed her mind about speaking.
I hadn’t let go of her hand. I squeezed it to get her attention. She did answer then. “A pantomime for children. An ugly one.”
“Yeah, I got that. But who were they supposed to be?” I looked over at the circle of grass, where Motorcycle Boy was now making a fern lion wrestle with a fern bear. The little girls were screaming and dancing.
“Josy,” Nicky began. She scrubbed her eyes with her thumbs. She looked tired when her face reappeared, scraped out somehow, like a fruit skin. She shook her head as if she had water in her ears and took a deep breath. “I told you the Lady of Ice can get power from mortal hearts?”
I nodded. Put together what I’d just seen. “That was Margaret.”
Nicky winced a yes.
“She was cremated,” I said slowly. “There was a police report, but all we know about the way she died is what was on there. It said she was strangled, and… I mean, we don’t know anybody who actually saw her body. There were no pictures or anything. So you’re saying her heart was….” And my throat stopped working. Cut out. Her heart was cut out. Like an animal. Someone took my sister’s organs out of her body.
I was a blur of anger and horror then, and a Margaret movie swam up in my mind. Not the movie of her body when she’d been killed, the nightmare movie that was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep these days. This was one from when I had the flu when I was little. Margaret had painted my nails yellow and purple, my favorite colors, and dressed me up in a fuzzy shawl of Mom’s and a crown she’d made out of the comics page. “Now you have the power to grant wishes,” she’d said. “So wish me a boyfriend, okay, fairy queen? A good one, not one of these mouth breathers from McLean.” I remembered how much it had hurt my stomach to laugh.
“I’m sorry. It should never have happened,” Nicky was saying, and I realized I was crying. For the first time in six months, I didn’t feel like I had to answer when someone said they were sorry my sister died. She held her arms out, and I let myself be held. Don’t think about it too much. Just don’t think at all.
Nicky released me, too soon. I looked up to see Motorcycle Boy standing behind her. His horrible puppet show must be finished, then. “Dominica,” he said.
“I hate that name, and you know I hate that name.” She turned her whole body to face him.
“You are summoned by the Lady.” He spun on a heel and strode away toward the small hill where she had been.
“It must be she’s finally going to pin that medal on me,” Nicky said to me with a wink.
“Let the mortal child go home. She shouldn’t have to witness your scolding,” said a wispy voice. It was Blossom, walking toward us. “And the Court has dealings with a Winter envoy.”
“Scolding? Did you do something?” I asked Nicky.
“Dealings? Now? At a feast?” Nicky said at the same time.
“It was unexpected,” Blossom answered.
“A spy?” Nicky said. Blossom stared at her. “The Lady of Summer doesn’t exactly wait,” Nicky said to me, and she squeezed my hand one more time and was gone.
“We need to be quick. I’m to see you safely to the border and then return to my Lady,” Blossom said to me. She drew her arm through mine and speed marched me back across the wet meadow. She moved faster than me, until I tripped over a clump of tough thistles and felt a rock bite into my hip.
I struggled upright. “Are you badly hurt?” she said, and she sounded genuinely concerned as she helped me up.
I tested my walk. I didn’t think so. “Nope. Ow. No.”
“Then if you can stand it, sweetness, it would be best to hurry.”
I limp-ran beside Blossom all the way back to the massive oak where the empty rope swing dangled. I wondered what happened to the girl with two faces.
We stopped on the far side of the oak, where the branches dipped low enough to touch. “That way.” She pointed into the woods, darker and more choked with underbrush than I remembered. She wasn’t out of breath, but her nostrils flared, and her eyes looked hard under the glittery eye shadow.
I was out of breath from the fast walk, and my hip throbbed. “What was that about?” I asked.
“Pretty mortal, please believe if I could tell you everything, I would. But if you do not run home this second, I will never be forgiven for leaving you unescorted.” And she shoved me, hard, out of the circle of the tree.
I stumbled and looked back, but she was out of sight. Beyond the oak, all I could see was more dense trees. No meadow. No sounds either, other than my huffing to catch my breath. I heard the whine of an insect after a few seconds. Running water trickled somewhere out of sight. But the clearing and all the fey creatures in it were gone.
Chapter 4
THE PATH back through the woods was steep and twisted and no wider than a bicycle tire. I didn’t notice when the ground turned from moss to gravel, but just when I was sure I was lost, sweating my way through the juniper bushes and feeling a spot on my heel go raw, I looked up to see the glint of cars in bright headache sunlight. I was in the hedge behind the school parking lot.
I didn’t even try to figure out how it was possible that I came out of the—Realm, that was what Nicky had called it—at a different place from where I went in. I touched the dirty stucco of the school building to reassure myself that I was really here. I dropped my head down to my knees and encountered grass smears on my ripped gray tights. My hair fell over my face, dry pink Barbie hair. I felt hot and sticky. Okay, Josephine Grant. One more leg on this journey. I crossed the parking lot to the bus shelter and leaned against the hot plexiglass with my arms draped over my head to block out the glare. When the bus pulled up, I managed to stumble into the seat behind the driver, the one marked RESERVED FOR SENIORS AND PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES. I prayed nobody would get on who needed my seat.
Laura was at the piano when I got home, swimming through a watercolory piece. I stood in the doorway looking at the wavy brown back of her head and let the cool air soothe my hot face. I imagined telling her what I knew. There are
bad fairies out there who want to kill us. They killed Margaret. That new teacher you worship so much isn’t human. Nothing seemed like a good opener.
My eyes passed the eight-by-ten of Margaret in her McLean graduation cap at the exact center of the family picture wall over the piano and drifted to the picture of Dad and ten-year-old Robert shooting out of the Toy Story ride at Disneyland. Dad’s eyes were closed—didn’t they warn you about the camera?—and he looked just like he looked when he was drunk. A balloon burst in my ribs and spilled out the unbearable missing-Dad feeling I mostly managed to keep in. I was hungry and dirty and bruised. I felt the chemical aftermath of adrenaline wilting my body. In general I tried not to want what I couldn’t have, but right then I needed a TV dad, kind and giant-sized. Just a no-strings adult to rest my head on.
Laura lifted one hand to turn a page. “Oi,” she said without turning around.
“Oi.”
“I have to keep going on this Debussy. It’s for class tomorrow.”
“Cool. I’m going to make pasta.” I was craving my special spaghetti: overcooked, extra sauce, with a mound of cheese and whole black olives. That was how Dad showed me how to make it. I saw him slouched in the kitchen doorway with a beer bottle dangling by two fingers while I filled the sink with steam, and the twist of loss tightened into a knot.
“Don’t make any for me. I’m eating after my lesson with Professor Hill.” High notes trickled out under her right hand, and her voice swelled on his name.
Professor Hill, the dwarf. The Summer Queen’s bodyguard. Did she know about him? I watched her gauze-clad spine as she bent into the keyboard again. I didn’t want to tell her, but when I shifted my jacket where it was hanging over one arm, it hurt the ribs on my right side where I’d fallen down. No, the danger was real, way too real, and I had to tell her. We were both going to get hurt, maybe even killed. I didn’t care how crazy I sounded. “I have to talk to you.”
There it was, the drop in her shoulders before she turned around. Disappointment. Impatience. “What?”
“Um, did Professor Hill happen to say anything about Margaret?”
“And magic and stuff? Yeah. It was cute. We don’t have anything to worry about, though. He’s pretty mighty, like a knight or something? And I’m going to play with the band at the revel. Turning of the year. It’s this weekend.” Her voice was breezy. She sounded like a little girl, I realized. That was what was different.
I hadn’t really looked at Laura’s face when she first turned around. She was my sister—I knew what she looked like. Now I saw the glassy look in her lake blue eyes and the way her jaw seemed looser than usual. Like she was half-asleep. Or on drugs.
I heard Nicky in my head: “I can see you’re not easy to glamour.”
I said, “Lor, didn’t you have dinner with Professor Hill last night too?” She nodded. “Did you have anything with peaches in it?”
“Yeah, in the lamb tagine! He sent some home for you in a pie plate, it’s….” And she flapped a hand toward the kitchen.
“That’s okay. You keep practicing.”
How long does this glamour roofie thing last? Is it supposed to keep her safe? Because that doesn’t seem likely. At least she knows. She might think she can jump off the roof and fly or something, though. She’s going to see Professor Hill in a couple of hours. He’s supposed to take care of her. I went toward the kitchen, thinking I’d make coffee and jolt Laura awake.
But she’d seemed normal at first. Before I brought up magic.
I decided to test my theory. “Hey, I’m spacing, where did Mom hide the car keys? I’m going to hit Trader Joe’s,” I called through the kitchen pass-through.
She almost stopped playing. “What? You can’t drive.”
She was right. I didn’t have a license yet. So she was tracking some things. I added, “The shifter girl had to haul me out of the Realm today in a big hurry because a spy showed up, and all the elves in the Court were going to interrogate him.”
“Yeah. They’re pretty.” There it was, the dreamy voice. Someone who didn’t know Laura wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between that voice and the way she usually sounded, but I could. So the glamour only worked when she was talking about the fey. Or thinking about them.
I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me too. Until I turned around, and my bruised hip glanced off the stove, and pain flamed up. No, today was real.
I filled a pot with water and muscled the lid of a jar of marinara until it snicked open. We didn’t have any black olives. I browsed the spice rack for something that could take their place, opening jars at random. I felt shaky, like something could jump out of the pantry. I looked out the smeary window over the sink at the cherry tree, hip-deep in the long bleached grass of the backyard, with a few leathery knobs still clinging to the branches. The cherry tree in the Realm had been in bloom. It was September here, but there it felt like spring. Right now that unnerved me as much as all the impossible creatures I’d seen.
The smell of Blossom hit me. I looked down at the little jar in my hand. Rosemary, the label said. Blossom turned into a mockingbird. Those words hung on the frame of the melody Laura was playing like a creepy religious chant. Blossom turns into a mockingbird.
I wondered what Nicky was doing now. If she was being punished for whatever it was she did. Would I get to see her again?
And the spy. It had to be the Woodcutter. Did they catch him? Were we okay now, Laura and me? I pictured the gray puppet-man slicing into my sister. Had the real Woodcutter been there in the Realm today all along?
I’d asked if he was there, but I couldn’t remember if Nicky or Blossom had given me a straight answer. The whole thing felt like a bad dream now that I was home. I’d never met any of those people before today, other than Nicky.
And I met her yesterday. That was impossible.
I reached for my phone to text Neil, but I stopped myself. What would I say? Hi, I just spent the afternoon in Middle Earth, and I have the bruises to prove it? I made out with someone whose last name I don’t even know? I bit my tongue on that thought. I definitely wasn’t ready to talk to him about Nicky.
The Debussy switched to major for a few seconds, sunlight breaking through the clouds, and I thought about how much time Laura had left to play. Months? Weeks? I should have stayed in the Realm longer, until I knew exactly how Margaret got us into this mess and until I got someone to tell me who the Woodcutter was. And how to stop him. They can’t have really caught him. They would have told me. Wouldn’t they?
Instead I’d tried to run away, eaten food that was apparently drugged, gotten myself all… entwined… with Nicky like the world was ending, let Blossom kick me out supposedly for my own safety. I thought about the glazed expression on the double-toothed fairy’s face as her boyfriend drew blood, and I felt a cold touch on my spine that wasn’t the breeze from the screen door. How safe would it have been to stay?
But nothing about the Realm was safe, not for me and Laura. My mind dove into a movie of the puppet girl being stabbed, but this time she had Laura’s face. With her willowy body and her deer-in-headlights expression, my sister had “victim” written all over her. I already had a constant warning blip about her being attacked in a parking garage or letting some “cable guy” into the house when she was home alone. The Woodcutter, whoever that was, could probably just walk in the front door and… I forced that movie to stop.
When the spaghetti was ready, I took it and my laptop into my room and closed the door. I was embarrassed by what I was going to search for. The top ten hits for “Realm” were all gaming sites. “Sprite,” “fairy,” and “elf” turned up pages of gooey fantasy paintings and a bunch of True Blood fan sites.
And an instant message window from Nicky: Can we talk?
Excitement darted down through me. I leaned back until my head bumped the white metal bars of the bedframe. Nicky could theoretically have gotten my e-mail address from the school website, but it was more likely that a g
irl who knew secrets about my family had other ways of getting personal information.
Sure, I typed back. I’d just spent hours with her, but I still didn’t know any more about her. And she knew a lot about me. An uncomfortable lot.
NickyM: Meet me tonight?
Me: Where?
NickyM: Flea @ 9
A place and a time. Neil had told me about Flea: one of a handful of temporary clubs run by some loose group of musicians with no chairs, no license to sell the beer they sold, and at best one working speaker.
Me: C U there. I closed the chat window and told myself It’s not a date. I’m only going so I can clear a few things up. I’m not letting some girl just summon me.
I thought that, but I stood in the shower for a long time and used Laura’s expensive Lush body bar because it smelled like something I wanted to put in my mouth. I picked out a yellow T-shirt with a sand dollar on it and my denim skirt. The high-tops with clean socks, no holes in these—this time Nicky was going to give me a real answer when I asked her why she spit in my shoe—and my favorite monkey barrette. Its orange face clashed with my pink streaks.
I snarled in the mirror. Ready to go kick some butt? This time I was going to be the one in charge. I wasn’t going anywhere with Nicky until she told me what I wanted to know.
Margaret’s puppet theater looked childish to me now, with its thick-painted lines for mountains and the uneven blue curtains stapled to the detergent-box frame. A little girl’s idea of magic. It sat on my dresser, wedged between the window and a mound of clean laundry. I went to retrieve the blue horse from my bag, the last place I’d seen it, but now it was standing on the tempera-painted stage.
I brushed the stiff paper horse with one fingertip, and my hand knocked down another puppet that had been standing with its back to me. I thought it was Mom: a slim figure in a skirt. But the puppet I picked up and set back on her cardstock base was wearing a white dress printed with red poppies.
All the puppet faces were simple drawings. Black lines for nose and mouth, black dots for eyes. This one’s hair was shredded tissue paper, a metallic brown that caught the light. And around her neck on a twist of gold wire was a tiny four-petaled flower.