Etiquette of Exiles (Senyaza Series Book 4)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  The other woman didn’t dwell too much on Robert’s iniquity, which showed a grace that Penny freely admired. Instead, Shandra started with Jenzie, asking if her tormentor had reappeared and inviting her to talk about how she felt about his banishment.

  Blaze stayed away as well, and she might have claimed she was surprised by that too. But she wasn’t. Nor was she surprised when she opened her door around a month later on meeting night, and Robert stood there, his eyes huge and vulnerable.

  “Could I come in? The—the meeting is here now, right?”

  Penny regarded him, then warned, “We don’t have any of your special treatments. Just companionship and talking.”

  He flushed and looked down. “I know. He— he asked me to destroy the prototypes. I did. For him.”

  Silently, Penny stood aside, holding her door open. He entered the house, head still down. She took his jacket for him and pointed him toward where the others would be gathering soon. Shandra and Henry and Miki were already there, but there were other, newer members coming too. He sat down in a chair, his shoulders bowed, and Miki looked at him in unrecognizing curiosity; his demeanor was that different.

  Penny left him alone. When Jenzie came in, she frowned and looked around worriedly, then went to the far side of the room. She’d been the angriest at the change in the support group, but she hadn’t stopped coming and her soul was once again slowly suffusing with color.

  During the meeting, Shandra called on Robert to introduce himself, as if she’d never seen him before. He shifted position awkwardly and said, “He left me, and I didn’t know what to do. I found the flyer I’d made for the first meeting.” He scrubbed his hands across his face. “It was amazing for a while, but I should have known I couldn’t keep the attention of something like him. Like an angel without wings….”

  “We share names here, so everybody can be safer. What was his name?” asked Shandra gently, as everybody else shifted in discomfort or stared in fascination.

  “Blaze,” said Robert, and while he said the faerie’s name, his features glowed with love. Then he sagged again and put his face in his hands.

  “Do you think a treatment would help you feel better?” asked Henry, sweetly. Penny had met Glory, Henry’s personal curse. Once. Briefly.

  “Henry,” said Shandra sharply, “The man’s hurting. Be a friend or go away.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Robert, raising his head to look at Henry. “I thought—I was wrong. Blaze showed me how wrong I was.”

  Shandra snorted. “One thing we learn here, mister, is not to trust anything taught by them. Now. Are you still seeing this Blaze? We can help if he won’t leave you alone and you don’t like that.”

  Robert shook his head. “He told me goodbye four days ago. He said… other things.” The man’s eyes filled with tears. “Cruel things.”

  The meeting went on, Penny sitting a little apart. She still thought about Ettoriel every day, but she didn’t look for him. She didn’t fall asleep wishing for him. At least not most nights. Sometimes, she thought about someone else.

  When the meeting was done and she’d seen everybody to the door, she went out to her porch to take in the night air. She didn’t have long to wait. Blaze came strolling down the sidewalk, his hair black once again and curling to his shoulders. His shirt was orange, his slacks charcoal and very new. He wore a cross around his neck. He raised a hand as he saw her and veered over to her house, exactly as if he’d just been out for a stroll.

  “Very smooth,” she approved. “Well done. By the way, if you don’t have a wallet, how do you get all these clothes? I know those slacks aren’t cheap.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is asking polite?”

  “Tell me anyhow,” she commanded. “We’re practically friends. Asking is okay between friends.”

  “Oh. Well. If we’re friends…. I don’t buy them. But we’re very, very good at copying.”

  “Hmm,” said Penny. “Yes, you are.”

  He came up the steps of the porch. “I sent you a gift today. Did you like it?”

  Penny shook her head. “No, no. You don’t make gifts of something you’ve used up, especially when it’s a person. That’s not how we work. Besides, you weren’t angry on my behalf when last I saw you.”

  “I was!” he protested. “Well, some. It was fuel for the fire. But sending you a penitent man—this was a gift and all for you. I didn’t have to find that flyer of his and leave it where he would see it.”

  “You’re terrible,” she informed him.

  “Yes,” he said modestly. “Are you pleased?”

  Penny hesitated, then didn’t lie. “A little.” She reached out and took Blaze’s hand, lacing her fingers in his. “But you really were terrible.”

  “I sent him to a group that will help him,” said Blaze dismissively, moving his other hand to her hip.

  “Yes,” said Penny. “And I’m going to help him. You’re so very charming, Blaze. I’ve dreamt of you. But— Blaze. Go away. This time, don’t come back.”

  The door slammed in her soul and away he went.

  But he went away smiling.

  The Winter War

  There’s this little old man who lives in a shack on the south edge of town. I have no idea what he is, some kind of brown. And he is mean. I mean, he’s little, he’s old, he’s brown, he lives in a shack with the roof falling off, who can blame him for being grouchy, right? But Jen Klay told me once she got into an accident right outside his house and he came out to his porch and looked at the wreck and went right back inside again and, get this, locked the door behind him. That is cold.

  But folks have reasons, right? Mama didn’t raise me to judge. I know all about Boo Radley and I try to keep it cool.

  I was out trying to earn a few bucks shoveling drives one day when the snow had let up some. We’d stopped trying to convince ourselves the snow was done for the season; nothing but June was going to save us from this winter and I think some of us had given up on that. I saw a book come out called The Year Without A Summer and I couldn’t bear to pick it up and see if it had a happy ending. But people need to get to work and snow needs to get shoveled, so there I was, with my shovel and my snow boots, carving another day out of the endless white.

  Somehow or other, I end up on the south edge of town, right near the old man’s house. It’s not exactly a clear day, unless your point of comparison is an outright blizzard. And hey, that was where we were. But I noticed the clouds parted over his street and an actual sunbeam hit the old man’s house. I stood on the other sidewalk for a while, just kind of enjoying the hint of blue sky. Then I realized nobody had ever shoveled his walk.

  There was absolutely no chance he was going to pay me, and I figured it would be wrong to ask him anyhow. But I had some cash already and, hey, Boo Radley, right?

  Now, when I shovel old Mrs. Ee’s walk, I don’t bother to tell her first. I just get it done, and she wakes up to a nice surprise, and maybe later I get fresh cookies. Everybody wins. But the old man was just cranky enough that I figured I ought to make sure I wasn’t going to get attacked just because he was confused about why I was there. So I go to knock on the door and let him know what’s what before I get to work.

  As soon as I step into the sunbeam, the temperature drops ten degrees, like cold is just pouring down out of the hole in the clouds. But I’ve got my muffler, I’ve got my mittens, I adjust them up, then go knock on the door with my shovel held in one hand.

  He throws open the door immediately, like he’s been waiting for me. Except when he sees me standing there, he jumps back, because I’m not who he’s expecting.

  He really is a shrimp, too: short and hunched over, with deep wrinkles around his brown eyes but not so many around his mouth. He throws a huge hand up, like he thinks I’m going to grab him and shake the change from his pockets. I guess mufflers do kind of make you look sinister.

  I hold up my big snow shovel but before I can say anything, he says, “No! Go away! You shoul
dn’t be here!”

  Talking’s hard in a muffler too, so I tug mine down despite the over-the-top cold and say, “Nah, I’m here to do it for free. A present, you know? I just wanted to let you know so it didn’t shock you or anything.”

  He just stares at me, blinking in the cold. Then he glances up at the sunbreak, but he doesn’t actually say anything else. So I shrug and turn away to get to work.

  I’ve just dug my shovel into the crusted old snow under yesterday’s powder when he says, “You don’t want to be here, kid. It gets cold here.”

  “It’s winter,” I tell him. “It’s cold everywhere. I’ll be fine.”

  “Hah,” he says, and slams the door.

  Right about then, it gets just a bit warmer. Not enough to pull down my muffler, let’s not get crazy now, but enough that I noticed. But the sun break sticks around and for a little bit it’s nice, mindless, sunny work.

  But sun on snow isn’t something I can deal with for too long without a headache. I had sunglasses somewhere in my parka pockets, but digging them out was a hassle so instead I just took a break, leaning on the rickety post supporting the porch roof and resting my eyes.

  I probably should have done that earlier, because I’d barely relaxed when I started seeing things. A breeze started making flurries out of the powder I’d sent flying and there were people dancing inside them, like sugarplum ballerinas or something, made of snow and sunlight and shards of ice.

  They spun across the mountains of snow in the yard and twirled their way up the broken drainpipe, they fluttered against the windows and one of them dug her way up out of the snow I’d moved. I didn’t move, not at all, because would you? If it was a hallucination, it was pretty, and if it wasn’t, I didn’t want them noticing me.

  Some of them were as big as me, and some of them were the size of Tinkerbell, and the one that came up from under the snow, she was right in between. And they crowded up onto the old man’s porch. One of them noticed me, I swear, but it didn’t say anything to its friends and I was glad about that.

  So at first I think they’re coming for the poor old man and I wonder if I can use my shovel to turn them back into snow powder and ice. But they don’t knock on his door or kick it down or anything, they just wait there. Sometimes they giggle, and it sounds like frozen leaves chiming.

  Then the second batch of things shows up. These aren’t sugarplum ballerinas. There’s no dazzle to them, and I can’t pretend they’re just snow flurries brought to life, which is what I’d been doing so far. These things are made of old ice, the sort of ice that refuses to melt even after the flowers have come in and you’re eating strawberries. They creak when they move. There are no pretty giggles, not even from the porch. One of them opens a maw and it sounds like a drum section when it talks. I have no idea what it said, but I’m not really concentrating because… Because ice piles are walking around, people.

  One of the ballerinas attacks first, leaping off the porch with a sound like a frozen tree falling over, straight onto one of the ice creatures. Then the calm sunbeam explodes into a blizzard. Just like that, it’s the kind of weather you never go out in without a rope. The wind is howling and there’s snow everywhere, it’s as white and terrifying as a blank page.

  My first thought is that the storm is just within the area claimed by the sunbreak and if I can just get back to the street, I’ll be fine. I’ll be safe. But I don’t know that and I do know a lot better than to go wandering into a blizzard. Instead I hang onto the porch support and pull my muffler over my face and hope like heck none of them decide I’m on the other side.

  Then a hand grabs my shoulder. It’s cold as frozen steel, and I’m sure it’s one of the ice creatures. But it’s not. It’s the old man. Once he has my attention, he jerks his head toward the open door to his house.

  Some things I don’t need to be told twice. I fought my way up the porch stairs, though I had to lose my shovel to make any headway. The thing was like a sail and the house wasn’t doing anything to block the wind howling off the yard.

  As soon as I’m inside, the old man slams the door and the howl of the wind cuts off. I go to tug down my muffler and he says, “Don’t! You’re all bundled up, that’s good. Stay bundled up. I think you’ll be safe.” He rubs his hands together like he’s cold and for the first time I realize that although his house is freezing, he’s not wearing any kind of winter wear.

  “The last thing I need right now is some dumb kid turning into an ice pop at my house, and at least in here you won’t get skewered by an icicle.” He laughs when he says this, but it’s not a very nice laugh. “Just stay quiet and out of my way and you can go on home again once they’re done out there.” He gives me one final glance, then goes to the window.

  The house is as much a disaster area inside as outside. There’s food packaging everywhere, the stuff used by the local Meals on Wheels crew, and pizza boxes and sandwich wrappers. And there’s books everywhere, too. Old paperbacks with the covers torn away, hardbacks with no jacket that are falling apart at the spine, library sale sci-fi books, textbooks that my mama used in high school, those big picture books that take over the sale rack at the bookstore. And there’s two dictionaries open on the table, crammed in among the juice boxes and the chocolate milk cartons. There’s an old TV in one corner, but it’s almost completely hidden behind a stack of books. It’s a little bit like a smelly paradise.

  I’m not really sure what to do, so I sit down in the chair in front of the dictionaries. I knock the table, ‘cause graceful is not the word for moving in snow gear, and a whole pile of juice boxes fall to the floor. They’re frozen solid.

  “Why is it so cold in here? Is your heat out?” I try to ask through my muffler, but what comes out is probably more like, “Mmmmmrrrrrr.”

  Still, he glances at me. “Heat hasn’t been on since the blizzard started. Since they found me. And I ain’t going to apologize because you shouldn’t have been here in the first place. Shoveling a man’s walk. That’ll give everybody the wrong impression.”

  The door slams open, and the old man jumps back from the window. One of the ballerinas is standing in the door and it doesn’t take more than a glance to see that she’s the lead ballerina, the one in the prettiest skirt with the tiara. Her eyes are like blue jewels and she looks right at the old man.

  His eyes are bulging like somebody’s squeezing him. I seriously think he’s having a stroke or something. I don’t know what to do, but I don’t think anybody ought to be hurt by the icy stares of snow ballerinas, so I throw one of the frozen juice boxes at her. It slams into the wall beside her and she turns to look at me—which wasn’t really a consequence I’d thought about—and then another figure steps up behind her.

  This one is all sleek planes of the black ice of a bottomless lake. There’s no pretty, whirling snowflakes here, just the foreboding of sudden death. She’s the evil counterpart to the ballerina, although given the ballerina’s eyes, I think ‘evil counterpart’ is probably assuming some things.

  The ice queen puts her hand on the shoulder of the snowflake princess and says, “Mine,” in this slow, deep voice. Then they’re fighting again, right in the doorframe. The poor old man is just standing there, staring at them like he’s terrified, so I stumble over to the door and slam it closed, right in their faces.

  It gets quiet again inside the house. After a minute, the old man shakes himself and says, in a normal kind of voice, “Stupid kid. I said I didn’t want any human ice pops around my house. Just wait it out if they come back.”

  “What do they want?” I blurt as I sit down again.

  He presses his hand to his heart and gives me a grim graveyard smile. “Me.”

  That’s too much. I knock the chair over as I stand up again. “There must be some way to save you!”

  His little smile turns into a really nasty look, and then that look changes into something sort of thoughtful. He glances at the books on the table behind me, then comes over to me and rights the cha
ir I knocked over. He’s not moving like somebody who’s maybe having problems with their heart or their brain, which is good.

  “Sit down. Shut up. You ever read books?”

  “Well, I read To Kill A Mockingbird a few times,” I admit.

  His eyes get all narrow. “Is that the one about the idiot shut-in and the lawyer what liked the losing battles?”

  I say firmly, “Sir, that is not a nice way to refer to Mr. Boo Radley.” Then, because I was getting a little tired of how he kept acting, I added, “Especially for somebody like you.”

  “Hah!” He laughs, just like that, which I always thought was just a sound effect for comics. “Well, he liked kids and I don’t, so we’re different that way.” He stares at me some more. Something bangs against the window and I jump, but he don’t even blink.

  Instead he says, “See this?” He holds out one of his huge hands and on it he’s wearing a delicate silver ring.

  “Sure, I see it. Is that what they’re after?”

  “Back in November,” he says, like I didn’t say anything, “Some people come to my door. The snowflake woman and her friends. They talk about this and that but eventually it comes out, they want me to join them.”

  I blink a lot. “What, like become one of those ballerinas?” It’s a ridiculous thought and I snicker.

  He just shrugs, and his eyes glitter so bright that it just sweeps my laugh away.

  “Told them I’d think about it, and they said they’d give me a couple of days. The next day, the ice woman and her friends come by, and they tell me the same thing. They want me to join them. And I tell them to come back in a couple days, too.”