Pretty Peg

by Skye Allen

  It started right away, the Winter Court sending emissaries to her, formal requests for parley at first, trying to set up a battle. Then nastier messages. Says J. I don’t follow it all. Blossom came to me with a backpack full of waybread and a spider cloak lighter than air and the thing that I knew made it a real parting gift, a bottle of rosewater from her clan’s private still. She said it would be better if we both left, on our own. It would minimize the worst. The spell for immortality will wait.

  Timothy says this is going to start a war. Not the skirmishes and token-stealing that go on every time a new knight is made, some Summer boy with a braid of some Winter boy’s hair pinned to his vest. But this is much worse. This is real.

  The Lady gave us until the seasons turn twice. We have to be gone by the first day of autumn. We can return, she says. Let them win this brewing war. The best way to help them is to be out of the way. They have the force and the gathered will, but it would be best if the tempting center point were removed. She said. That’s me, the mortal girl who is going to lick the odds, and the boy who’s making me fey by trading with the Summer Court’s enemies.

  So—I’ll get my stuff together for Doctors Without Borders, back in the World. J can persuade them to take me. He has ties. We’ll meet there together and let this adventure begin in earnest. Alone, together, doing what we said we wanted to be doing anyway. I wonder if there’ll be a way to get back home again.

  A tiny stampede was drawn in blue pencil across the next page. A muscular horse tossed its mane and kicked up a cloud of butterflies. Smaller horses galloped behind it, out from between two dark mountains. I looked at the thicket of blue hatch marks and thought she never became immortal. She never got married. They took everything from her: her hope, her home, her life. A deep chill grew under my ribs. Somehow pushing Margaret out of the Realm to head off a political skirmish felt like the coldest fey crime yet.

  Then she got to Afghanistan.

  September 4, 2011

  WOW culture shock. They were not KIDDING. There’s no way I can last here. And I haven’t even started working yet. This is Day 2 of training. I sleep in a bunk bed. “Sleep” is a relative term. What I actually do is lie there counting the stains on the mattress above me and squeak at every noise I hear outside. Michele—roommate—she’s nice. Experienced, or more than a lot of us. She did MSF in the Congo. She’s only 26 but she’s been all over the world. Me, I want to go straight back to California before the sun sets on this horrible desert one more time.

  The dust is like a wild animal. The wind and the dust. I thought I’d fight wearing a head scarf, but I slap Blossom’s spider-silk right over my face if anyone even mentions going out. Just the ride here from the airport alone was enough to finish me off. Me and my idealistic ass. I’m going to go home and become a soccer mom just like Mom always wanted. I could not believe the gutted buildings. You can’t change the channel on the real thing, complete with sand in your eyes and stink in the air and destitute little kids coming up to your car. They don’t even beg—they just stand there. Dr. Christie (he keeps telling me to call him Hermann, but I doubt that’ll ever take, not after the pre-med brainwashing) told me not to give them anything. He actually said “the poor will be with you always—that’s from the Bible.” But he’s not a Jesus freak or anything. His wife gave him a t-shirt that says In Goddess We Trust that he sleeps in. She’s here too most of the time, on leave in Canada right now.

  Then there’s my own Canadian doctor. J got here a week before me: perfect to get oriented and scope out a way for us to be together. We had to fly separately. We should have been able to swing this thing as husband and wife, only you have to be 24 to get family housing. Funny. Wonder what my ID will look like when I’m 40. I won’t get old.

  All right. Try to stick it out. Reasons: 1) walk of shame if I went back home. 2) doing the right thing with MSF, or so I always thought before I got here and realized how mind-bogglingly unprepared I am. Remember. This is the work you want to be doing. 3) possible student loan forgiveness, if I make it out of here alive. And a possible better chance at a good hospital, after med school, ditto. I do still want to do this work. 4) J. We can have a life here, together, figure out how we want to do this thing. My fiancé. He brought me pomegranates when I got here. We’ll be married when we go back home. Whenever that is.

  The bottom of the page was filled in by a blue pomegranate tree that grew up the sides and cupped the last paragraph with curling leaves. I wanted to eat a pomegranate right then, feel the seeds explode in my molars. The two breezy letters Margaret had sent home were nothing like her diary. These pages were full of doubt and verve and her unfiltered mind. I never knew her, not really. I never will. The brick of grief in my gut loosened, and I felt crying start in the back of my throat, the crying you feel before the tears actually come.

  I read about her and Jerome having picnics on the dusty back stoop of the office, where Margaret wouldn’t have to wear her headscarf and they wouldn’t have to worry about the curfew that clamped down on the city like a pot lid at night. They would climb up on the roof to watch the moon and the dim city stars. Fall started, and Margaret noted that day in her diary, but there were no consequences from the Realm. Or any word from the Summer Queen. She was sad about that. She said she curled up into herself more every day.

  By the next month, she and Jerome were fighting.

  October 20, 2011

  Oh my God, what the HELL is the matter with me? I let a boy put me in this position AGAIN? I hate Jerome for calling me limited. Damaged. Why would I confide in him? He’s just a stupid bighead doctor. No room in that crowded little psyche for anyone but Jerome.

  Never give your heart to the fey. No kidding.

  And I freeze up. Damage damage damage. He gets under my skin because he’s RIGHT. I can’t remember what my argument is when he’s there, just stare at that patch of plaster coming out through the wall over his head and lose my mind.

  Don’t tell a boy you were… whatever. Attacked. Mauled. By your brother and his steady stream of paying friends. There’s no way he won’t take it personally. As a challenge. Just another hill of turf to piss on. Why did I turn out like this? Running from my ghosts all the way to Afghanistan, only to find them sitting there with a warm Pepsi, waiting for me to account for myself.

  Running all the way to the Faerie Realm. And it’s mine all mine, my sack of stones, still there on my back.

  And there’s the R dream, back again on nightly reruns. Like being awake is such a relief in this concrete breadbox with 4 Canadians who lost all their hope somewhere between customs and the UN aid distribution center. I don’t want to think about R. I want to think about stupid bighead J and how I can get him on a plane back to SF so I can have some privacy. In this gigantic empty desert of a country, I can’t take one step without him underfoot. I swear I’m going to go embedded. Put on a burka and a pair of army boots, everybody’ll think I’m a male reporter. Problem solved.

  I almost threw up today. In the kitchen. Jerome bounded off in his stupid boundy floppy-hair way to go do some important world-saving in the stockroom, and the walls spun. Just like before. But then—can’t take a step without a doctor underfoot—there’s Hermann, singing When Johnny Comes Marching Home, horrible morbid song, fussing with the Great Canadian Teapot, not leaving me alone. That guy always wants an audience. His wife needs to come back to town so we can all have a night off.

  I’m an asshole. Nothing wrong with Hermann.

  And I didn’t throw up. Because I don’t DO that anymore. Because I’m a tough bitch and I have to take care of myself.

  All right, stop. I don’t want Michele to see me crying. God help me, she’ll want to talk girl talk.

  I read that page over and over again until the letters didn’t look like an alphabet I knew anymore. By your brother and his steady stream of paying friends. I felt my body ice over. I felt my organs stop working. I was not taking that information in. My body was rejecting it. I looked at m
y hands, still dirty from being in the woods today, shaking now on the satin edges of my sister’s diary. I couldn’t feel them. I pushed air out through my teeth to see if I was breathing. Your brother and his steady stream of paying friends. I’d always known Robert had done something sexual to Margaret, ever since she explained to me and Laura why he was really moving out, but she didn’t tell us anything specific. I realized now that I’d let myself assume it only happened once, that it didn’t hurt, that it was just Robert. That was all awful enough. I never guessed it was this. Gang rape. I made the words march across the screen of my brain, but I couldn’t make them mean anything.

  Oh, Margaret. And not even your fiancé understood.

  That scared little doctor was almost my brother-in-law. I let that parallel universe unscroll for a second in my head. He’d be sitting in my chair at the kitchen table at Thanksgiving, saying “White or dark?” with carving tools in his colorless hands. Margaret would have a half-fey toddler on her lap who would probably only eat larvae or something. Margaret’s whole future. It was all in my imagination now.

  Three or four pages from the end, I found the real clue.

  December 22, 2011

  Oh. Innocence. Is it over for me here? Midwinter last night. The masked ball. Now that’s random, some formal dance in the middle of—Kabul. And everything that means. But of course I wasn’t IN Kabul last night. Wasn’t in the mortal world at all. I’ll never understand how that works.

  Quit stalling.

  Robert was there. FUCKING ROBERT. I know it was him.

  The long mask faces, hooked bird noses. Plague Doctors, that’s who they were supposed to be, but it was Robert.

  I don’t even know if he saw me. But how could he not? I recognized him.

  It doesn’t help / Jesus CHRIST I haven’t seen him, not even SEEN him in, since that hideous Xmas they tried to bring us all back together when I was 15 / it does not help that he wore a mask like that back then. Those days. Then. Just say it. The years from when to when, I don’t even remember far enough back. It was him and his friends, then. Ski mask on that gorilla of a boy. I’m older than all of them now. The virgin boy. I wasn’t a virgin then. I was 9 that time.

  But this is now, last night. 2011. This year. In my place of refuge.

  I must have let out a sound then, when I read that, because Neil said “Everything okay?” And then he looked at my face, and then he was on the couch next to me.

  I just shook my head. If I tried to answer, I’d probably start singing. I pointed at the page, my finger on the nine. “I’m almost done,” I said, or I tried to. My voice came out like torn paper.

  Neil glanced at the page and gasped like he’d been slapped. He jumped up and ran out of the room. I was afraid he was going to throw something, but he came back with a roll of toilet paper. “Here.” He handed it to me.

  “I’m… thanks.” I hadn’t even known I was crying. “I’m almost done, and then we can figure this out, okay?”

  “I don’t even know what to say. Yeah. Let me read it when you’re done,” he said.

  There was only one more entry.

  December 23, 2011

  I talked to Jerome. Fuck fuck fuck this is fucked.

  Twice a year, at a feast, the Winter and Summer Courts come together. Or—all the Folk are invited. I never heard of Blossom or Sadie or… well, Jerome and Timothy would have, they DID go to the Winter revel last year. Look where that got me. Anyway, it’s a time of truce. Exiles are invited home for one night. So, Midwinter revel on neutral turf, Winter fey are there. Not many. Slinking around. Some skeevy-looking creatures, and then clumps of elves in masks. What else could they be? They looked human, people-sized, usual number of legs, normal hair. There were men and women dressed for a regular revel, the whole range of funky Edwardian to animal skins to the boy in the corset made of actual tiny whales that were swimming up and down his spine. God. I love the fey. But they all had these feather masks, peacock or raven or that one that was all one huge white feather. Blossom told me everyone in a mask was Winter, that’s just how they do it, everyone knows who they are, it’s like your neighbor kid trick-or-treating. Anyway. Then there were six or seven elves, all men, in those Italian masks with gold paint. And at least three Plague Doctors.

  I came apart then, back to the tree, mead in me, wanted more. Wanted

  Yeah. But I said I’d stay. Alive. I said I’d stay alive. It would hurt Jerome, if he was mortal I’d be saying it would kill him. It would hurt Mom and the girls and Dad. And Robert would win. That’s what it would do.

  It would be bad if I was immortal. Bad and crazy and I would need to die every day and I could not. Can they even commit suicide? Could I? I won’t be fey, I just won’t be able to get old. For this ever to end.

  But it’s not every day, I know it’s not. Anyway.

  If it wasn’t Robert, that elf was his height (thank you 15-yo hypervigilance, I could indeed pick my brother out of a lineup, he is 5’10, I come up to his ear), and had his hair, and his hideous red overgrown hands. And spoke with his voice.

  And said, I hope you’ve said your prayers. You won’t see spring.

  So it wasn’t an elf, it was R, and he was with the Winter fey, and that is fucked fucked fucked. Because I’m not safe there after all. Because I have no home anywhere now. Because now it’s him and what army.

  He said You and what army? when I said I’d kill him. Then. Now he has one.

  Rock rock rock. Shake. Die. Just die here in this clean white paper, J doesn’t have to know.

  My brother Robert went to the Realm. He was with the Winter Folk. He’d been theirs all along.

  He’d threatened Margaret at that party. You won’t see spring.

  The book hit the floor as realization sank in. It’s Robert. He’s the Woodcutter.

  Chapter 12

  I CLOSED Margaret’s diary and crossed my arms over it against my chest. Robert wasn’t there. He’d been 285 miles away the night Margaret died, working in Kandahar. I didn’t need to look at my map of Afghanistan to remember that. I knew it by heart.

  But now Margaret was telling me that in December, three months before she died, Robert was in the Realm.

  He was the one who killed Margaret.

  “What?” Neil said. I must have spoken out loud.

  My coffee was cold mud. I noticed that dimly and then realized I was staring at Margaret’s blue handwriting without seeing the words. I reached up to the lamp and fumbled until I found the switch. Darkness was what I needed. I made my way to the kitchen and poured my coffee down the drain. I leaned against the sink and told my lungs to release the air they were holding hostage. The tulip light over the kitchen table was still on. I turned away from it.

  A normal person’s reaction would be to cry, I told myself when I felt a bite in my palms and realized I was clenching my fists until the nails threatened to break the skin. Really cry, not stand there numbly with my face wet, miles from my body.

  My eyes landed on a spoon in the dish drainer. I wished it was a steak knife. I picked it up and bit it crosswise, the way you’re supposed to brace the tongue of someone having a seizure. I made the pain grow from my molars until it bloomed all the way up my skull.

  The yellow light that fell on the floor in front of me went black. Neil was behind me. Friend distance, a few inches. I could feel his hands wide around the space of my shoulders, not touching them. “Hey, hey,” he said in the voice of Ariela’s big brother.

  “Neil, he—my brother.” And my throat closed. I turned around to look at him, and in his face, I saw how bad it must be.

  His arms went around me, and it was like being hugged by an eagle—he was all fierce grip and pointy shoulders and hair gelled to stiff points. He released me and stepped back and told me, “It’s worse than we thought.” Which I already knew.

  “Can you just read it? I can’t—” My voice was thin, too much milkshake sucked through too narrow a straw. “—tell you. I can’t read it out loud. I’
ll just go all Johnny Cash or something if I try.” Laughing hurt. And nothing was funny.

  “Sure.” But he didn’t move. I led him to the couch and picked up the little turquoise grenade of a book. My legs felt like statues, and I couldn’t feel my stomach when I tried to breathe. My whole body was turning to granite right here in my living room. I’d be a tombstone soon. They’d have to wheel me out on a dolly.

  He looked at me with black eyebrows in high half circles, and I said, “It’s the last entry.” Spoken like I was a librarian. An archivist cataloging a crime that happened in the last century.

  A crime. What Robert did was a crime. I knew that already. I’d always known. But what Margaret had told me and Laura was pretty vague. He’d touched her in a way he shouldn’t have. That was all I really knew.

  Now I stared at the wavy yellow light reflected in the kitchen window and watched the movie in my mind, where Margaret was trapped between Robert and the garage door, him wrenching off his belt with one hand. Other boys waiting their turn.

  She wasn’t a virgin anymore by the time she was nine.

  Robert was in the Realm. Margaret’s safe place. The place she’d run away to.

  Crazy, violent Robert was in the Faerie Realm.

  He’s the Woodcutter. He’s the one who’s going to kill Laura and me.

  I kept trying to pin that thought down to the surface of my brain, but it kept wriggling away.

  Neil stood lamp-straight, with only his long head bent, and read the diary, bracing the book’s edges with his fingertips like he didn’t want to get it dirty. Him reading it made it true. It was in someone else’s hands now.

  He looked at me when he was finished. Opened his mouth like he was going to talk about it, and I didn’t know if that would even work, because of the spell. But then his phone rang, four or five stretched-out notes from “Black Coffee.” He waved to dismiss it.