Pretty Peg
Page 9
I grinned. “Can we please not talk about girls who are, by the way, not going to be all over me ever again?” While Neil drove I looked at my hands through the smeared light of the windshield and bit a fingernail to even it out where it was lopsided. It looked even worse now, so I scraped it on the seam of my jeans to try to file it.
Nicky’s nails were clean moon slivers. My whole body blushed when I pictured her hands, and I sat on mine to try to stop thinking about her.
She wasn’t there, or at least she wasn’t one of the two people standing like soldiers at Indian Rock. The sun was low, and the brown grass gleamed gold. The rock itself was a massive boulder, bigger than a house. It could conceal anything behind it, I thought, and felt a pang for the millionth time that night that I’d let Neil come with me. I was putting him in harm’s way. I’d played here with Laura when we were little, usually swamp zombies, because behind the rock there was a fallen log that was perfect for an alligator. But this place had never actually felt scary before.
The soldiers were Blossom and Timothy, I saw when I was close enough to make out their features, and they weren’t exactly armed, but Timothy cradled a shoulder-high walking stick in the crook of his arm, and both their faces were set and long-staring. Blossom wore striped leggings and a lacy sweater that reached her knees. I stepped up to them, fingering the dry oak leaf in my pocket, and Blossom’s face tipped into a smile.
“Josy!” She said it like we were long-lost friends. That gave me a warm feeling, like she’d hugged me, even though she hadn’t moved. But we weren’t friends. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being back with the elves at all. I’m just here to make sure Laura is okay. Don’t cloud the mission.
“Um, this is my friend Neil, Blossom, Timothy,” I said and pointed to each of them. Neil swept hair off his face with his shades and reached out a muscled hand. Blossom’s looked pale and tiny in it.
Timothy hung back. When Blossom glared at him, he choked out, “How does she know my name?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, she’s here to help us. Back off, you great lion,” Blossom said in her baby-doll voice, and she poked him in the chest. It occurred to me that they might be lovers.
“Don’t know what another mortal is doing here,” Timothy muttered.
“We need her, and she needs her friend with her, and therefore her friend is welcome,” Blossom said pointedly to Timothy, and then she said to me and Neil, “Sweet things, if you would follow us.” She pointed a rounded arm in the direction of the sunset, behind the rock. I let go of my hope that whatever was going to happen tonight would be right here, in sight of the road, without any people from the Summer Court more intimidating than surly Timothy. My stomach plunged as I stepped onto the springing grass Blossom’s brown boot had just flattened. Here we go.
Tilden Park sprawled across a massive hill above Oakland and Berkeley. Near the roads there were picnic spots, a children’s train, even a fancy reception hall. Beyond those places the park was mostly woods, and I mostly hadn’t been there. I followed Blossom’s ivory-sweatered back, with Neil behind me. If there was an actual trail through the bay laurels and low-growing manzanitas, it wasn’t one I could see. I spotted the shiny leaves of poison oak and silently blessed whatever insight had prompted me to wear jeans. “I really need to quit smoking,” Neil huffed out once in a while.
Then, after what felt like less time than it should take to gain so much altitude, I took one more step and was on a grassy hill under open yellow sky. I turned to look at a flushed Neil with his coat tied around his waist. Behind him was a postcard view of the urban lowlands, picked out in streetlights and electronic billboards and the glittering swoop of the Bay Bridge. San Francisco always looked like the Emerald City to me, and tonight only the skyscrapers pierced the blue fog. I took in deep cold breaths as the sweat on my neck cooled.
Neil goggled at something behind me, and at the same time I felt Timothy, a few steps away, straighten and draw in a swift breath. I followed Neil’s eyes and lost my footing on the slippery dry grass when I saw what he saw.
There was no mistaking the Folk who stood on that hillside for humans. A man covered in something that blinded me with flashes made a clicking noise as he stepped from foot to foot. It was mica, I saw when I could see at all, and chunks of beach glass and shells, set into a loosely woven mail. Beside him was a woman whose hair budded with small leafy twigs. Strips of bark outlined her torso like a tight corset, and a breastplate of gleaming yellow wood covered her from collarbone to belly. Another man with twists of berry-covered vines that sprung from his head carried a spear as tall as he was, knotted with clumps of cactus spines, and beyond him was a fur-legged creature with a smooth human face who wore a knee-length vest made of gray pebbles. At the center of the row was the Queen of the Summer Court, in a long coat the color of madrone bark and with her black eyes flashing in the deep yellow light. The scar on her cheek looked more pronounced.
Blossom murmured in my ear, “Knights of our court.” I thought of knights as mannered and old-fashioned, but these looked like they were ready to pick their teeth with your bones.
“You do not come alone,” the Queen said to me, and her eyes swept over Neil and back to scroll up my body in an assessing way that made me stand up straighter and suck my stomach in.
“Neil, my lady, a mortal and a friend.” That was Timothy, all the sullenness scoured out of his voice.
“Allies in many guises. Friend Neil, be welcome. Josephine Grant, I am grateful that you have returned. I greet you with the warriors of the Summer Court. They will come to your side should you need aid,” the Queen said. I felt Neil swaying beside me, and when I glanced at his face, it was frozen in private ecstasy. I wondered if that was how I’d looked when I ate the peach that first night in the Realm. Neil hadn’t eaten anything, but he was completely gone with enchantment now.
Nicky had said I was “hard to glamour.” Were we being glamoured now? I took a sharp breath in and rocked on my feet, toe back to heel, and felt the slick grass under the soles of my high-tops. The wind was colder now that my sweat was dry, and I felt the rubberiness of relaxed skin and muscles after stiff exercise. But Neil was in another state altogether. I wondered if that meant he wouldn’t remember anything that happened here later. Whatever he was feeling, it didn’t affect me. As far as I knew.
Which was strange. Because yesterday in the meadow, with the Queen, I’d felt… stirred. Tipsy, snapping with power, crazed with the itch to dance or fight or serve the electric current in my body somehow.
I thought about Nicky. And exactly what I’d wanted to do to unleash that wild energy. How the music had stopped just in time. And I bit down hard on the fist of feeling that punched up my throat. Anger, humiliation, disappointment. I was just a fat girl at the butt end of one more practical joke.
And now I was here because my sister was dead. And Laura was going to be next if I didn’t do something to stop the bad guy. Me. I jammed my hands into my pockets and felt Dad’s soft hat engulf my right fist. I looked at the row of terrifying fey who fell under the inadequate heading of “knight.” I was a bit player in this, not any kind of fighter, and I didn’t know anything. Why didn’t the Queen send that Fantastic Four honor guard out to find the Woodcutter?
I drew breath in to ask that question, but the Queen spoke first. “I understand that you have come to reconsider my offer of a bargain.”
“Yes, my Lady.” I hoped that was right. Should I kneel? I glanced at Neil, still with his eyes glazed and his lips twitching up in a mindless grin. Better to stay standing in case he teetered and I had to catch him.
“Since our glamour did not have its expected effect, let us deal plainly,” she went on in a voice of soft steel. “You will drink from the cup and be bound to my Court and my kin. For our part, we will see to it that if it is in our power, those of your clan will not come to harm by any magical means. It will be thus until the seasons are in balance.”
Clan. I thought about what that
meant. After last night, I didn’t want to be tricked again by any member of the Faerie Realm. “So you’ll take care of Laura and make sure she doesn’t get hurt?”
“So long as it is in our power to do so,” the Lady answered. Her voice was sunlight on still water.
“Okay, but my clan. That means Neil too. He’s in my clan.” I was improvising, but his being here meant he could get drafted just like me. I knew they needed a mortal, and I still wasn’t clear on why that had to be me, but Neil was a mortal too. The thought of him getting hurt struck me suddenly, and tears sprang up as if a bee had stung me.
“I will extend the favor of my kingdom to your companion.” She landed her smile on him then, and I felt him inhale languorously, as if he was stepping outside into the sun.
Timothy, behind her, thrust the silver cup into her outstretched hand. I wondered if he conjured it up from thin air. She lowered her glossy head, and I saw the knife near her face, only for a second, and then she gasped as if the cut on her lip surprised her. She drank first, then turned the two-handled cup in her brown hands so that when it faced me I had to drink from the same spot her mouth had touched. There was no blood on the silver rim. I seized the slender handles—they were warm from her hands—took a deep breath, and shut my eyes.
My stomach churned, and I felt myself gagging. What if I couldn’t swallow it? What would happen to me when I did? This could still be a trick. Just get it over with. I brought my face down to the cup.
The drink was cool, and it tasted like the lemonade Margaret used to make for me and Laura on hot days when we would play high seas under the cherry tree. Tart and sweet and a little bit gingery. Mom sleeping on the couch, Margaret whisper-shouting “Grog, me maties!” from the kitchen door. My throat swelled with the memory.
I let the cup go with an exhale that was drowned out by shouts. The warriors were cheering. I looked at them in amazement. The man with the cactus spear thudded it on the ground in rhythm to their yells of “Hup! Hup!”
The cup was pried out of my fingers. Blossom, beside me, took it in both her hands. Her pink-and-white face was exultant, eyes huge.
“The source of all Faerie is within you now, and your place is among our kin. Be welcome,” the Lady said again, but this time there was a dark thrill in her voice, and I understood her meaning, more than I could have before I drank: I’m hers now. I felt it, as I tasted the last of the summery drink. I knew without being told that no matter what else happened, I would be changed forever after tonight.
She went on, “I would bestow on you a second gift to aid your quest, for I know that you, brave mortal, will seek the Woodcutter whether we would have it or no.” She said the last words in a quiet voice, standing close enough that I felt her warm breath on my eyelids. She was half a head taller than me, and the feeling of being a child broke open in my solar plexus like an egg. Being taken care of, having an adult who knew without question what to do. How long since I’d had that? Ever? I breathed in the scent of almond and didn’t resist as she took both my upper arms in her hands and ran down them to catch my wrists. I didn’t know what to expect—some kind of weapon, maybe. But she bent her head and took my face in her hands and kissed me on the lips.
It was completely different from any other kiss. I felt a burn through my body, but it didn’t feel sensual. It felt like I was a candle that she touched a flame to. Like a time-lapse video of a seed germinating. Like something that had been curled and dormant in me came alive with that kiss and twisted toward the sun.
I opened my eyes when the Lady’s face drew away from mine, and a cold breeze lifted my hair. “Now we must attend other matters,” she said in a voice pitched for her entourage to hear. In another breath, the warriors were gone over the hill, silent in spite of all that armor that should jingle and clink.
The Lady turned to follow them, but Timothy remained, his body arcing up the hill behind the Lady but his feet planted. “My liege,” he said with his face toward me and Neil. “Surely you did not intend for the companion of a bound mortal to witness and have knowledge of our traditions? A kindness extended with no thought of repayment?”
Her face was motionless when she turned back to look at him, but fear tumbled down through my ribs. Something was wrong. “Speak carefully, knight, when you accuse your queen of thoughtlessness.” Her voice was conversational, idle even, but Timothy recoiled like he’d been slapped.
He lifted his head again. This guy would jump into the polar bear habitat at the zoo on a dare. I held my breath.
“Caution,” the Lady said. The word hung in the air like a sheet of ice, and when she raised the blade of her palm, it seemed unnecessary. I was sure that voice alone could kill him.
A long, barbed silence. Then Timothy flinched. “I rejoice in today’s victory. Please, I beg my Lady, release my hasty words of their weight,” Timothy said, eyes on his boots.
The Queen dropped her hand to her skirt and swept up the hill without another glance. I heard Timothy breathe out and seem to deflate. He buttoned his pale green sweater up to his Adam’s apple with precise movements and looked at Blossom, who stood with her arms folded, watching the Queen retreat.
“Idiot,” she spat at him, and he paced up the hill to the left, a long distance away from the Queen’s path.
“What was that? Just now?” I asked her.
She ran her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold. “He shouldn’t have spoken to the Lady like that. Not in company, and not with such rudeness. He is bitter and young. It scares me, how he’ll take his own safety into his hands like that out of arrogance.” Her brown eyes met mine. “The Folk have lived a long time. Words have come to assume a value for us, more of a weight than they do for mortals. His insult was ugly, but she does love him. Nothing bad will happen to him, if he can keep his head cool enough to give her a wide berth.”
I nodded, then thought of another question. “How long—what did she mean, the thing about the seasons in balance?”
“That is the rise of autumn, the equinox. A time suspended between summer and winter, in balance or in battle. I suppose it’s lucky, in that neither side can claim a natural advantage during fall or spring.”
“What about helping Neil with nothing in return? What Timothy said?”
“You are quick, lovely mortal. The rumors are true.” She gathered her flimsy sweater around her with an air of finality: no more answers. “Let me show you your way back to Indian Rock.”
Neil, who hadn’t said a word since the Summer Court first showed themselves, shook his head like a wet dog. For a long moment I took in the hardened muscles at the corners of his mouth, the unblinking black eyes fringed by too-long lashes that made everybody at school say he wore mascara, a pulse visible in his neck above his gray T-shirt. Then he plunged down the hill into the woods.
WE WERE in Neil’s room. Technically it was also Ariela’s room, but she was asleep in her mother’s bed down the hall. I imagined the three of them, Mrs. Hernandez’s face slack with sleep surrounded by a tangle of limbs and soft baby curls, one-year-old Sofia in a ball like a kitten by her hip.
“I mean, holy God. I’m still coming down. They’re real. That blew my mind,” Neil said. He’d been saying things like that all the way back to his apartment.
“Told you.” I peered at his long face, lit blue by his computer screen. The glamour apparently didn’t work on me, but he was acting like he’d just won the lottery. “So—what’s it feel like? Do you remember everything?”
“Um, like the most vivid, most awesome dream. It felt amazing. It’s like the best endorphins. I feel like I just drank a quad espresso and took ecstasy and then jumped in a freezing cold ocean.”
“So you didn’t care when they made you take off your pants and do that number from Wicked?”
“You can’t fool me. You can try, but you won’t succeed,” he said. So he didn’t remember something that didn’t happen. That was good. “I’m in your clan now,” he added with a silly grin.
“So, Timothy. You’re wrong,” he said. We’d also been talking on the way here about the Woodcutter.
“Timothy was such a jerk. It’s always the jerk,” I answered.
“It’s always the boyfriend. You said so yourself. So look at this.” He leaned out of the way so I could see what he was looking at: the Médecins Sans Frontières website.
“What?”
“It’s what’s not there. Jerome’s name. He doesn’t work there anymore.”
“Come on, we don’t know that. This might not even have been updated since last year.”
Neil thumbed the tiny print at the bottom of the screen: Last updated 2 September 2012. Not even three weeks ago. “Plus, look at this.” He clicked to a memorial page about staff who had died in the field. There was a paragraph about Margaret, listing the date she died and Jerome’s name as her fiancé. “Jerome Desroches returned to North America,” I read. “Why didn’t I know that?”
“Where? And isn’t he Canadian?”
I looked at Neil. “I don’t know where. But if he’s not there anymore, if he’s back here instead? Jesus, it could actually be him.”
“Yeah, but he could still be anywhere. Why would he come to the Bay Area? Did he ever call your mom or anything, I mean, after…?”
“Not that I know of.” I imagined the creepiness of that: Margaret’s killer, if he was her killer, on the phone with my grief-stupefied mother. I’m going to find this guy. Now. Tonight. I remembered Nicky saying last night that if they could find the Woodcutter, they’d be able to stop the damage in time. I kicked my legs out from where they were bent up to my chest from sitting on Ariela’s bed. The Buzz Lightyear bedspread had that toddler smell of Cheerios and flannel over a base of pee.