Troll or Derby

by Red Tash

  They were chanting, and it sounded like a “tick-tick-tock” noise. We will … we will … rock you, it sounded like, to me. One got in my face, pointing her tiny fist at my nose and shaking with anger. Harlow’s swatter whapped me right between the eyes, and her golden dust turned to goo. I wiped it off with my sleeve and kept going. The meaner those little fuckers got, the less sad I felt about it.

  The greater part of the swarm circled Harlow. Pixies pulled at his dreadlocks and tore at his clothes. I saw one take a bite from his cheek, and dark blood dripped down his face.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I said, and launched myself toward her. The paper struck Harlow hard in the eye, and he winced, but chuckled as I pulled it away, two pressed pixies clinging to the edge of the daily news.

  “Let’s get in the mansa—I’ll collect the rest and put them in a jar,” he said. “Give us some light to read by,” he said, still swinging both arms at the swarm.

  But the pixies laid off once we were inside the house. The one who followed us found a cozy spot on a kitchen washcloth and fell asleep.

  Harlow peeked his head out the flap. “They’re distracted. Good thing about living in the landfill,” he said. “Lots here to catch the attention of the fae. They’re so ADHD.”

  “Will they go back and tell Dave where to find us?”

  “Not if they get lost in all this junk and forget … and with their swarm pretty much broken, they’ll probably do just that,” he said.

  He opened a chest freezer and pulled out some ice cream bars.

  “Hungry?” he said. “Sorry I don’t have more to offer for dinner.”

  I took an ice cream bar and collapsed on my pile of soft covers. “Do you have a generator for that thing, and I just don’t hear it?”

  He laughed. “Naw. Runs off magic.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “I wish,” he said. “I just tap into the power line that the office uses. No one ever notices the extension cords under all the trash.”

  I nodded. “You need to get some furniture in here,” I said. “A couch or something. Maybe a futon?”

  “We can go out rummaging for stuff later, if you’d like,” he said. He smiled, and his expression softened. “Once we’ve found your sister, of course.”

  I finished the ice cream bar and threw the wrapper on the ground beside me as I lay back onto the pallet. Harlow scooped it up and tossed it into a garbage can I hadn’t noticed, before my head could hit the pillow. It felt so good to be safe and relaxed, I thought I could fall asleep right then, in total comfort.

  “Harlow?” I said.

  “Deb?” he answered back. His husky voice was inches from my ear, and I turned my head to find him curled on the ground beside me. I loved the sound of his voice—so much. Too much.

  “I want to know the rest of this prophecy stuff,” I said.

  “Whatever you want to know,” he said. His hand was inches from mine, and for a minute, I thought he would reach out and hold it.

  Chapter 23.5

  Wildflower

  Harlow

  How was I going to explain everything I knew to her? The memories were still coming back to me.

  I could start with my parents, I guess. Where else is there to begin?

  I closed my eyes, and a memory awoke. My father and I, on a walk in the woods. I was chasing animals, picking insects off the trees or out of the air, eating them like a human child would pick wild berries. My dad and I took a lot of walks.

  My dad picked a bouquet of wildflowers in a clearing not far from our home. He did that for my mom, frequently. Daisies, wood poppies, butterfly milkweed, and my favorite, black-eyed Susans. They were hard to pick, sometimes. I’d yank and yank on the stem, and they wouldn’t tear.

  My dad stopped me once—or, tried to stop me—before I pulled the whole flower out by its root. He bent, opened his pocket knife, and deftly cut the flower stem, handing me one pristine blossom.

  “Women are like flowers, Harlow. Some are cultivated and fine, but quite tame. Some are wild and strong, but you’ll have trouble bending them to your will. It helps to understand what type of flower you’re picking, before you end up ripping it up by the roots.”

  I was too little to care about women, about romance, or even about flowers. I was just taking a walk with my dad, picking blossoms for my mom. When I think about it, it’s amazing I remember the conversation at all. How old was I? Seven?

  Funny the things we remember.

  We arrived home with the bouquet, and of course my mother was pleased. “My darling boy,” she’d said. “Some lucky girl will be so happy to have you.” She’d kissed me on the forehead, her soft lips so gentle between her sharp, gleaming tusks.

  The Wheelers had been sweet on one another, too. They brought that baby to our house all the time—my mom had even helped Marnie Wheeler when the labor got tough.

  I stayed out of the room while that was going on, but I’ll never forget how the two women’s eyes shone with joy when they called us in to see baby Debra. Marnie and Mannox were over the moon with joy.

  I realized I was dreaming, then, because in my mind, I was completely in the past—back at that scene. The smiles were fresh, the fairies and trolls that were my parents and godparents were as alive as they’d ever been.

  “Harlow,” my mother said. “Come and see the baby.”

  Marnie’s hand lay on the baby’s back, where someday her wings would sprout. “It’s a girl, sweetheart,” she said.

  “A real wildflower,” my father said—and though I was only seven, I felt he was addressing me as an adult. Well, if this were my dream, I could turn and ask him, couldn’t I? Why not ask him about Deb?

  “She’s my wildflower, isn’t she?” I asked him.

  My father opened his mouth to speak, but before I could get his answer, I felt the weight of glamour layered over glamour, like a pile of heavy blankets. I fought to get out from under, but they were everywhere, and so thick.

  My mother’s face changed—gone slack, like an animatronic version of herself. The Wheelers’ faces changed, too. I looked for my Dad, but he was gone, and so was the baby.

  “Sleep, Harlow,” the slack-faced ladies crooned. “Sleep.”

  I fought to wake—fought as hard as I had for anything in my life—but they were too much for me.

  That’s where I was when I failed to hear Deb sneak out of the mansa. That’s why I wasn’t there when she needed me most.

  Wildflower, indeed. More like kudzu.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dreamweaver

  Deb

  He didn’t touch me. He didn’t try, and I wouldn’t have let him.

  I rolled away, too tired to look at him. All that raw emotion, and all these questions of my parentage, my marriage—ugh, too much.

  I don’t want to know.

  I’ve got to know.

  Gotta stay up and talk about it.

  But I couldn’t. I fell into the darkness—into the dreams.

  I was running, running down an enormous, dark aluminum pipe. Dave was chasing me, but his tusks were way more pronounced than I’d ever seen. I looked down, and my skates were caked in mud and grime. I tried pushing, skating away, and then—boom!—I was on a roller derby track. A banked track, and flying.

  A horde of women with wings and tusks beat each other with their hips, their torsos, and worse. An iron mace, wooden clubs—some just digging into one another with pointed armored shoulders, and all of them skating so fast, it was like watching a hypnotic dance on wheels. Brutal and hypnotic.

  Then I spotted my sister. Gennifer was tied to a stake in the center of the track, and glowing pixies were buzzing around her chanting “tick-tick-TOCK, tick-tick-TOCK.” The crowd was clapping in a rhythm. “We Will Rock You” again.

  McJagger’s dank odor washed over me. I was buffeted through the pack, bouncing off wings and bones, narrowly avoiding the mace before I managed to break free and shoot out ahead. A voice over the PA announced
that if I won, Gennifer would go free. “And if Roller Deb can’t make it through …”

  I skated desperately.

  Dave laughed on the sidelines and threw teeth at me.

  I woke with a start. Teeth?

  Harlow snored on the floor beside me.

  I had to get to Gennifer. I didn’t understand what Harlow was doing, keeping me in his house like a pet.

  Furthermore, I didn’t understand what the connection was between the two of us—this troll and me. Why he was so obsessed with watching out for me—and why hadn’t he just given me answers?

  And then it hit me. The food. Had he been drugging me? Harlow had given me all my food and drink since we’d met at the Rustic Fog. He’d cut out my teeth, and was keeping them in a pouch around his neck. I might not have been an expert on troll magic, but I knew creepy when I saw it. Could I leave Harlow, even if I wanted to?

  Suddenly I was sure I did want to leave, even just to test the theory. If Dave and McJagger were holding my sister hostage—dream or no dream—then what good was I doing, hiding out in a garbage dump with a troll who didn’t seem to have the time to give me answers? Better to free Gennifer, return her to Mom, and go on with my life than to sit here swatting at pixies and wasting my time.

  Worse, I needed to skate like a junkie needs his fix. I needed to get on the road, and then get on that track. As scary as it was thinking of the wild women from my dreams targeting me with a blood thirst, the sensation of skating was still in my body. My leg muscles twitched and I was dying to get out. I was used to skating every day, all over town. I felt pent-up, and the tension was unbearable.

  Derek was Dave’s slave. Was I Harlow’s? I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. All I knew was I wanted to get free, and it seemed that my chance had finally come.

  I crept out of the mansa, lifting the flap as slowly and lightly as I could. I could hear Harlow snoring inside. My backpack on, I opened the fridge door, and stared into the tunnel of swirling fog.

  I wasn’t sure how it worked, exactly, but I took a chance. McJagger’s roller derby—someplace near it. I concentrated as hard as I could, then I leapt inside.

  Chapter 24.5

  Here Comes Your Man

  Harlow

  I woke like any other day, on my back staring up at the sunbeam coming in through the skylight.

  Then I remembered I wasn’t alone anymore, and I turned to ask Deb how she’d slept.

  And she wasn’t there.

  Fear gripped me, twisting the pit of my stomach like an old washrag—gripped me so hard, I didn’t know what it was. A spell? A lightning bolt? Some gastrointestinal curse? I thought I’d die.

  The flap of the mansa came off in my hand, and I headed out the door and into the dumpscape around me. “Deb!” I screamed. I waited, listening hard for some response, my heart thumping so loudly that I wasn’t sure I would hear her, anyway. I took some deep breaths. Tried to still myself. Had she gone? Why would she leave?

  “Deb!” I called one more time, listening for a response. All I could hear were the sounds of bulldozers, burying garbage acres away, on the other side of the landfill.

  A tear in my eye, I went back to the mansa. The door flap had come unsewn, but the leather strappings weren’t broken, thankfully. As if that mattered. As if anything mattered without her.

  Inside, I could still see the shape of her body in the covers of her pallet. I glanced into the corner of the room, hopeful that I was mistaken, that her skates would still be here—I knew she’d never leave without them.

  Backpack gone.

  The jar of pixies was ecstatic. Bouncing off their glass chamber walls in laughter, holding their stomachs, pointing at me and making faces, they were really yukking it up.

  “Stupid pixies!” I picked up the jar and threw it. The walls of the mansa were too soft for it to break, so it just fell to the ground and the pixies landed in a pile on the floor.

  I know you’re thinking that’s harsh treatment of pixies, but magical beings do not bruise easily, so to speak. I was tempted to let them go, too. If they hadn’t certainly been spies for Dave, I probably would have. But there was no telling what those little buggers would rat me out for.

  Then it hit me. It wasn’t as if there were no witnesses to Deb’s departure.

  The pixies stopped laughing and pointing at me, as I picked up their jar and held it up to my face.

  “You little buggers are going to talk, and none of that ‘tick tock’ stuff, either.” They pouted, turning their squared-off shoulders away from me, with their arms crossed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Big Blue

  Deb

  The ground was soggy and cold, and I was disoriented. Where was I? How many days had I been gone from home? It was hard to remember. Two? Three? Had it been weeks? Months? They say humans lose track of time when they’re in the fairy realm. Years can be gone in just a moment—at least, that’s how it works in the movies.

  But this was no movie. This was what was left of my life.

  I took a look around me, trying to get my bearings. A sea of faded asphalt poured out before me. Rough, ragged, patched all over, not nearly as smooth as I’d have liked for skating—but I didn’t care. I got out my skates and geared up. As I started rolling, my memory returned. I’d come to find Gennifer, and I’d asked the tunnel to drop me near McJagger’s place.

  Was Gennifer nearby? If I went to McJagger willingly, would he let her go? Would anyone explain to me what was going on?

  I could see my breath in the breaking daylight. I was so, so cold, but too frustrated to care. I worked up some speed and skated figure eights in the empty parking lot.

  Across the street, a huge blue aluminum building hosted a couple of pick-up trucks and a menagerie of aluminum windmills and other assorted farm equipment. Good old Big Blue. I remembered when Mom used to take me shopping there. If only I had my Carhartts, now. As ugly as the damned things were, they really did keep me warm. Of course, after I’d been beaten up two dozen times to the tune of “Smear the Queer,” they finally came into style—I immediately stopped wearing them, no matter how cold it got.

  I don’t know what drew me to the store, exactly—maybe the fact that it was heated and I was not? I dunno. There weren’t too many other buildings around, and I wasn’t sure where I’d find McJagger, or even if I’d managed to land in the right place. Another car pulled into the Big Blue parking lot, and a stocky man in a plaid flannel coat and a John Deere hat went into the store. I followed him.

  Crossing the two-lane county highway was no sweat. Even though the speed limit was 60 miles per hour on it, nothing was coming but an old tractor that couldn’t have been going any faster than 15, anyway. I skated across and straight through the automatic door.

  The smell of cedar and farm animals washed over me. So familiar. A few squawks and tweets, and I’d located the cages of baby ducks and chicks. I couldn’t help myself, and skated over to them to have a look. There were so many, and despite the smell of chicken poop, they were adorable. A couple of large cages on the floor held bunnies, and I got down on my toe stops to look at them, too. I’d always wanted a bunny. Maybe someday. Would I ever have a home of my own, and time for a pet? Not if I didn’t find Gennifer. I had to find my sister, get my life back.

  “Can I help you?”

  The voice startled me, and I almost fell off my skates. I stood up in a hurry.

  “Uh, normally we don’t allow skates or Heelies in here, Miss,” she said. She was about my age—maybe a year or two older, and she had long, silky hair. It was so blonde, it was practically silver. She wore it down, and it lay in perfectly straight sheets of platinum over her flannel shirt and bright blue apron. She reminded me of those little plastic versions of porcelain dolls they include with Happy Meals at McDonald’s. She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, and I saw she was wearing an enormous ring—a silver skull with ruby eyes.

  I glanced at her name
tag.

  Big Blue Store - April - May I Help You?

  “April, do me a favor, okay?” I said.

  She smiled. “If I can.”

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I’m looking for a roller derby team.”

  April looked over her shoulder, and then made a sweeping glance around the store. Two farmers were whooping it up in the PVC pipe aisle, their hands thrust deeply into their own pockets, one of them rocking on his heels. Her gaze lingered their direction for a moment, then she faced me and squinted.

  “You do know you’re at a feed store, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And that we carry farm supplies.”

  I nodded again, feeling like a complete idiot. I could feel my face flushing, and I shoved my shaking hands into my own pockets. I was sick with embarrassment.

  Then April winked, and her nose wrinkled in such cuteness that I couldn’t breathe. She leaned in close, and whispered into my ear. “When you go back outside, you’ll see a building across the street. Don’t go inside without me. Wait outside—no matter who comes out to ask you in, and no matter what they say.” The skin on my neck tingled and I heard the echo of faint musical undertones in her voice.

  She leaned away, smiling. I was dumbstruck, and must have looked it, because she laughed at the expression on my face.

  For a second, I saw a flicker of tusks and wings, and a tiny set of horns protruding through her flawless hair. She gestured to her feet, and I saw a set of hooves on skates. I blinked and tried to look again, but her feet had changed. Now she wore work boots. Dickies.

  “I get it, April.” I didn’t know what to say. I hoped that passed for cool.

  She walked back to the entrance of the store, and I followed, passing a huge rack of specialty candy on the way. A dozen flavors of brightly-colored licorice were piled high. My stomach growled. “I don’t guess you’d let me have some of this candy, would you?”