by Неизвестный
There had been pixies in the books. Opal tried to remember what the pixies were like. Little Artie thought they were nasty, vicious creatures, and had caught one in a jar and nearly killed the thing when he left the jar on a sunny windowsill. Why would someone do such a thing to a cute little pixie?
Suddenly, Opal cried out in pain. The pixies were pulling on her hair, presumably attempting to rip it out. She tried to yank them off her hair, but her hands burned when they got close to the pixies. She looked around for something to hit them away with, but as much as she wanted them to stop playing tug-of-war with her head, she didn't want to hurt the tiny creatures either.
“That hurts! Please stop!” she yelled.
They hummed: Of course it hurts, Newface! Shut up and take your treatment. It will be worth it, trust us. Trust us. Trust us!
Opal squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her hands into fists.
She smelled something sour and opened her eyes. The pixies were pouring something on her hair. No, actually, they weren't pouring anything. They were, to put it delicately, going to the bathroom on her hair. Number one.
“That's enough!” she yelled. “No pixie pee! I did not authorize pixie pee! For crying out loud!”
They hummed: Be more grateful, Newface. You're getting the star treatment! So pretty. So pretty. Trust us. So pretty.
Her scalp tingled. This could be worse, she told herself. She wasn't sure how, exactly, it could be worse, but she had to tell herself that.
Finally, when they were done making wee-wee on her reddened scalp, they began tugging up and back again, so hard that her eyebrows raised up from the tension.
* * *
Edwin took his place on the dais at the front of the chapel and waited for his fiancee.
The pixies were taking their sweet time, but they really did do the best beauty work. Edwin had his own hair cut regularly by a troll. The styling of his naturally-wavy blond locks was not the most fashionable, but the troll was consistent, and Edwin appreciated something he could count on in the way others appreciated novelty. A few of his guy friends had taken to growing their hair long, like girls, but that look did not fit a man headed for a political career, such as Edwin was.
Edwin's younger cousin, Peter, came to stand next to him. “Cheese and jam, but you need a haircut,” Edwin said.
“You need to stop acting so old,” Peter said, grinning. He waved to his mother.
The whole family sat gathered in the front row, squirming from either their bladders full of drink, the long wait, or both.
Peter said, “Where did you find her, exactly? Is she really a Russian mail-order bride?”
“I didn't order her, but she is Russian.”
“I would have thought she'd have an accent,” Peter said. “She sounds no different from the movie people. Not much different from us, actually, though she is gullible.”
“You should be nicer. She may have some younger friends to introduce to you.”
“No way,” Peter said. “I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever marry a Newface. Never.”
Edwin chuckled. “Somewhere, a heart breaks, and does not know why.”
“You look good, dude,” Peter said.
“Dude?”
“Mainland term. You're so old and uncool!” Peter punched Edwin on the arm playfully. Edwin was only four and a quarter years older than Peter, but they loved to tease each other about being old and being young, respectively.
“Thanks for standing up here with me. I had two glasses of mead, and I'm still nervous.”
“I bet,” Peter said, and he made the universal hand gesture for doing it.
From the front pew, his mother, Patty, called out, “Peter! Behave yourself or you'll be grounded.”
With a sly grin, Edwin said, “Grounded! I remember that. I'm so glad I have my own place now and I'm not a wee baby.” He tousled Peter's hair and the two began to wrestle.
Their horseplay was interrupted by a young woman running toward them, a good dozen pixies clutching her long, dark hair. In Ystad, it was not uncommon to see a person trying to flee their first beauty appointment with the pixies, but Edwin was surprised to note that the stranger was wearing his fiancee's wedding gown, the one he had ordered custom made.
* * *
Opal had only been able to endure the pixies' star treatment for seven and a half minutes, according to the clock on the wall in the dressing room. She'd begged them to stop, and when they wouldn't, she'd jumped up and tried the door, happy to find it unlocked.
Opal ran up to the dais and grabbed Peter's arm just as music began to play—a song that sounded quite similar to a wedding march.
“Peter, you have to get these fairies off of me.”
The pixies howled with outrage, pulling her hair even harder. We are not fairies! We are pixies and you are bad! We are pixies and you will be sorry!
The tall young man standing next to Peter in a similar suit had his mouth open, but he stood still, looking shocked and concerned.
Peter took Opal's hands in his and calmly spoke to the whirring mass of naked, angry, peeing pixies. “Good pixies, noble pixies, this girl's hair is the most beautiful I have ever seen. Are you finished? You must be finished, for her hair is perfection.”
The pixies whirred and chirped, finally releasing Opal's hair, which fell in soft, shining waves around her shoulders.
The music reached a crescendo and finished with the crowd gathered on the pews applauding.
Opal crossed her arms and said to Peter, “I demand to see my great-aunt. Her name is Waleah. I don't know if I'm saying her name right. Wa-lee-ah. I'm not going anywhere until I get some answers.”
The guy standing next to Peter kept staring at her with wide, blue eyes. With a similar square jawline, he could be family to Peter, though his hair was blond and short, and he had no freckles.
The young man glared at Opal and demanded, “What have you done to Svetlana?”
Everyone gathered on the seats behind them gasped and grew silent.
“I don't know any Svetlana. I'm Opal, and I'm here to live with my great-aunt.”
There were more gasps, and a noise like a sack of potatoes dropping—the sound of a fainting person hitting the floor.
“How did you get here?” the young man asked.
“By boat, and then by suitcase, then chalk stairs, a goat trail, and the train, of course. The train that goes into the side of a mountain. I'm assuming that's normal around here.”
“Why are you wearing her wedding dress?”
Opal looked down at what she was wearing. White. Lace. Beading. How could she be so clueless?
Fainting was not an option, nor was fighting these two guys, so she turned and ran, sprinting for the exit, pushing past the gathered audience. The blisters on her feet were not a problem, because she couldn't even feel her lower body, let alone her feet.
Before she reached the door, it burst open, and a horse came galloping in, with a burly-looking woman with short hair at the reins.
The woman stopped the horse and dismounted as everyone turned to stare. The horse was blocking the only exit she saw, so Opal backed away slowly, trying to disappear. The pixies were still swirling around her, deep indigo and seemingly intrigued by the drama, but hair-pulling pixies were the least of Opal's concerns.
The woman, who looked about thirty and quite capable of kicking anyone's butt, said, loudly and clearly, “There's been a murder. A woman's body has been found in the woods.”
Some people screamed.
She said, “I'm sorry, Edwin. She matches the photo of your Svetlana.”
Opal inched along a wall, looking for a gap between the big horse's dappled hindquarters and the door.
The woman strode to Opal and seized her arm. “Newface, you're coming in for questioning.”
“Am I under arrest?”
The woman wrinkled her face. “You're not under anything. You're coming with me.”
“I'd rather not. Don't I have
rights?”
The woman pointed to the shiny brass star on her vest. “You have the right to get hit on the head until you do as I say.”
Chapter Five
Opal sat in the jail cell, behind sturdy metal bars. The cot in the cell was actually quite comfortable, considering. The mattress was soft and conforming, possibly memory foam.
Opal considered her situation. Things seemed bad, but being in a dry cell with a soft cot was better than being thrown off a fishing boat in the middle of the night. She thought back to her complaints the week before, which included having to study for a chemistry exam. In retrospect, that didn't seem so bad either.
The tough-looking woman sat at the desk on the other side of the bars, doing paperwork. A gangly man with bright blue hair brought in some folders for the sheriff, gave Opal a suspicious look, and left again. A few minutes later, a pregnant woman came in with more folders and papers, though her gaze was on Opal the entire time.
I'm the star attraction, Opal thought.
She repositioned herself to sit with her back against the stone wall, and put the pillow from the cot behind her head.
The woman said sarcastically, “Comfortable enough in there for ya, missie? Perhaps you'd like a cup of hot redfruit tea?”
Opal had dealt with mean girls and tough teachers in school. Katy taught her that the key was not to engage in the topic of their choice, but to switch directions, tacking back and forth like a sailboat.
“Why don't you use a computer?” Opal asked the woman.
The woman snorted. “Don't need 'em.”
Opal looked around at her cell. Everything was gray, except for the art on the wall, which was a series of still life paintings, some with fruit and some with flowers. Rather than try to make conversation with the sheriff, Opal pulled the pillow from behind her head, snuggled under the blanket on the cot, and attempted to sleep.
She'd already explained to the sheriff who she was, and that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. She'd even described the screams she'd heard in the woods, while she was with the goats on their path. The only thing that seemed to help prove her innocence was the mention of her great-aunt's name. The sheriff sent someone to get the relative, but for “security reasons,” Opal would still have to wait in the cell.
An hour earlier, she'd gotten lippy with the sheriff, saying, “I can understand how terrifying a fifteen-year-old girl in a wedding dress is, but do you really need to lock me up?”
The sheriff had replied, dead serious, that Opal would soon learn how appearances could be deceiving. The way she said the words gave Opal a chill, and she heard Peter's warning, about being dead before the next sundown.
Opal turned in the cot so her back was to the woman, and she tried to sleep, though every time she started to drift off, the sheriff would suddenly and loudly stamp something, in triplicate.
* * *
The sun was up and shining in Opal's eyes.
She'd been having the strangest dream, that she was sleeping in a jail cell.
Someone was shaking her arm.
“Bet you're hungry,” came a woman's voice.
Opal's eyes flicked open. The dream didn't evaporate; she was in a jail cell, but at least she wasn't alone.
She sat up to get a better look at her visitor, a white-haired woman.
“Are you… Wa-lee-ah? Is that how you pronounce it?”
“Close enough,” the woman said, offering her hand to shake. She had the same sparkly eyes as Opal's grandfather, which reminded Opal of how far away he was.
To keep from crying, Opal hugged the woman, her great-aunt, squeezing her tight and mashing her face into the woman's shoulder.
“Little light, little Opal,” the woman said. “That was my mother's name.”
Opal sat back and rubbed at her eyes, doing a fake yawn to make it seem she was wiping away sleep gunk and not tears. “I didn't know I was named after anyone,” she said.
“There's probably a lot you don't know,” the woman said. “You can call me Aunty, or Aunt Waleah, or just Waleah.”
“Thanks, Aunt Waleah.”
“How exactly did you get here?”
Opal noticed that the blue-haired guy who worked with the sheriff had been pretending to sweep the same section of floor for the last few minutes.
She whispered, “Can we talk about my exciting voyage later?”
“Of course.” Waleah stood and offered her hand to Opal to help her out of the cot.
To Opal, the woman seemed familiar enough. She looked like one of the retirees that walked their rounds inside the mall on weekday mornings, thanks to her light purple track suit with white racing stripes.
“Everyone here dresses so different,” Opal said.
Sounding a bit defensive, Waleah said, “I like to be comfortable.”
“I didn't mean anything by it. I like your track suit. I run track and field at my high school. Or… I used to.”
Waleah looked her great niece up and down. “Wouldn't guess by how you look today. That's quite the dress you have on.”
Opal looked down at the sparkles and felt a wave of nausea.
She would have torn the thing off if she didn't think public nudity would make a terrible impression on her new guardian. She wore the wedding dress of a murdered woman. Even though she'd been cleared by the sheriff, she felt the weight of guilt. She was the girl who had shown up, instead of Svetlana.
The sheriff said newcomers, called Newfaces, were unusual, and Opal wondered if her arriving the same day another girl was murdered was a coincidence at all. Could the murderer have been sent to kill Opal, instead, and made a mistake?
The sheriff must have had the same theory, as she'd asked Opal about her enemies. Except for a few people she didn't get along with at school, for perfectly understandable and justifiable reasons, Opal didn't have any enemies. That she knew of.
* * *
They stepped out of the gray building and Opal immediately sneezed, twice, as did Waleah.
“Family trait,” Waleah said. “My mother was a sneezer, and her mother too.”
“Why wouldn't my parents tell me I was named after my great-grandmother?”
“They didn't tell you about me either, did they now?”
“Good point.”
They set out walking through the town square, Opal gawking at the sights and sounds, which were different, but no less exciting than the previous night's festivities. Food carts lined the street, selling hot meals that smelled of cardamom. Opal's mouth watered at the glimpses of sugar-dusted pastries people were buying. She'd not eaten since the little bowl of stew the night before, and seeing other people happily buying one, two, or three pastries made her want to punch them in their smug faces.
As her walk slowed, she asked Waleah, “What's the financial system like here? Do people have banks, or do they use a gold-based currency? Can I transfer funds here from my bank on the mainland, or should I get a job?”
“Opal, if you want a pastry, just ask.”
“Really?” She scrambled to get in line at the food cart with the longest line and the chocolate smell. “So everything's free? The fruit comes by bird and by goat from the ocean, and what else?”
Waleah pulled a wallet from her purse, an orange-hued satchel that didn't go very well with the lavender track suit, and drew out what looked like a bank card, but perfectly round. “No, nothing's free. I meant I'd pay for it. Your family is not poor, and you will not want for things, but it's best to not have too many things, or too nice, all the same. A new dress may please you less than it displeases others.”
“So, don't be a show-off. I get it.”
When they reached the front of the line, Waleah ordered two of the pastries for each of them, a latte for herself, and a juice for Opal. The juice, Opal learned, was from the fruit that had come out of the sea, and was simply called redfruit. The name seemed overly simple to her at first, but then she remembered that staple of the economy where she came from: oranges,
which were called… oranges.
Waleah blew over her latte and took a sip.
Opal said, “You guys have coffee here?”
“Grown locally, on the side of Innocent Mountain.”
Waleah led the way, and they sat on a bench in the shade of some trees, at a little park in the midst of the busy downtown square. There were no vehicles around, and no traffic noise or exhaust fumes. People pedaled past on bicycles and other contraptions, some covered, and some with wagons. The people around were of all ages, like in a regular town, and they seemed to come in all colors and races. A brown-skinned man in a turban cycled by with two toddlers being towed on a shared tricycle behind him.
Opal had a million questions, but started with, “Why's it called Innocent Mountain?”
“In honor of all the brave young women.”
“Who did what?”
“Who were thrown into the volcano, back in the early days.”
Opal grimaced. She didn't feel like asking any more questions just yet, not until she was prepared for the answers.
The pastry was surprising, with bits of something like a hot dog inside, as well as chocolate, and chunks of the tiny bananas. By the second one, she quite liked the combination. Additionally, she quite liked not being in a jail cell, and not being alone in the middle of the ocean.
Staring straight ahead, Waleah said, “My brother is dead.”
“No, he's just sick. You can still visit him. You really should.”
Waleah shook her head, tears starting to fall. “He is gone.” She held a hand to her heart. “I feel it.”
Opal became still and tried to feel what Waleah was sensing. She imagined her grandfather, doing his morning shopping and chatting with the other seniors at the grocery store, then meeting Artie, Flora, and the others for coffee and cards at the seniors' center. She imagined him feeling better and getting stronger, preparing to call her back to him.
* * *
After a quiet meal in the park, Waleah stood, and the two of them started walking again. In addition to the food carts, there were flower vendors, and people selling jewelry and scarves. Behind the carts were shops along the street, shops that were not that different from the ones in Opal's neighborhood on the mainland, except there were no recognizable brand names or chain stores. A shoe store sold runners that looked quite comfortable, and Opal paused to stare through the window at them, wondering exactly how generous her aunt might be.