by Edward Aubry
"What were you before? What did you do?"
He swallowed, then sighed. "I worked in a bookstore."
She seemed surprised. "Really?"
"Yeah." He frowned. "Why?"
"I don't know. That seems like a waste of your ability."
He laughed. "You and my mom," he said.
She laughed. "Did you like it, at least?"
"Sure. I liked it a lot, actually. Until the last year or so before the thing happened. Then I got to the point where I realized I was stuck. I felt like I was waiting for my real career to come along, and suddenly I'm in my late twenties, and I saw myself doing this for the rest of my life. I thought about playing politics and climbing the management ladder, but I would have hated that." He stopped himself, afraid that complaining about his irrelevant job woes might be boring her.
"Did you ever want to do anything else?" she asked.
He nodded. After swallowing, he said, "I wanted to teach."
Her eyebrows went up. "Really? What?"
"English," he said. "It was my major. I never used it. Well, I sort of used it. It sort of helped me with my stock knowledge at the store. But, you know, seemed like a waste of four years of college just so I could be a slightly better bookseller."
"So why didn't you?" she asked. "Teach?"
He shrugged. "Chicken shit, I guess. What were you?"
She squeezed his upper arm and smiled. "A teacher. High school social studies. It's not as scary as it looks. Sometimes, anyway."
Glimmer returned at that moment, startling them both. "Well," she said. "We may have a solution to the Alec dilemma." She grinned, and her grin was almost as dramatic an expression of joy as her tears had been an expression of distress. "I found my people," she announced. "I found Faerie."
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Unlike a Pixie
She refused to tell them anything else until the team was assembled outside the buggy. She was obviously very excited. The fear and depression, which had dominated her personality since just before the attack were gone. Now she radiated optimism.
"We're going to be all right," she said. "This is the best possible news."
"Why didn't you look for Faerie before?" Harrison asked her. He was mystified by this new turn of events. He had asked Glimmer to find any sort of possible remedy for Alec's problem, hoping he could hand the reins back to him. She had said she had a few ideas, but that they were all long shots. He had never expected Faerie.
Even as she rolled her eyes, she never stopped smiling. "I did look, numbskull! I looked everywhere. I had given up on it completely, and suddenly there it is!"
"Why now?" There was an edge of suspicion in his voice. "If you looked for it before, why didn't you find it?"
"It wasn't there!"
Jake spoke up. "You think your people can help Alec?"
Glimmer giggled. "Way better than that! This is our big break! We're going to be all right now!"
"So you say," said Harrison. "Something here doesn't sit right. It wasn't there before? Now it's there? All our prayers are answered? Anybody else finding this too easy?"
Jeannette and Apryl both raised their hands.
"Oh!" the pixie cried, "you people are impossible! You don't get it! We're going to see Oberon. We're not alone anymore."
"Did you already see him?" Harrison asked. "Did you talk to him? Is he going to help us?"
"Er."
Harrison waited. "Yes?"
She looked at the ground. "I didn't actually go in."
"What? Why not?"
She looked up, her defensiveness obvious. "I just didn't, okay? I didn't want to go there without you guys."
Harrison threw up his arms. "This is unbelievable! You've been trying to find this place for a year, and then you don't even set foot in it? How are we supposed to react to this? What if you're wrong? What if this is just bait for some trap?"
Suddenly she was gone, leaving her trademark trail of sparks. It led into the trees, and all eyes instinctively tried to track her. She shot straight up into the sky, flew in a loop, then came swooping down on them. Her trail was wider than usual. She was throwing off more sparks and somehow generating the sound of a speeding propeller plane. If anyone had been able to reflect on the sight of her, they might have found her kamikaze dive comical. As it was, they barely had time to throw themselves out of her path. Everyone but Harrison dove away just before she came to an abrupt and silent halt a fraction of an inch from Harrison's nose.
"Why didn't you duck?" she asked.
He scowled at her, disapproving of her theatrics. At the same time, he felt the pang of responsibility for driving her to that extreme. "Okay," he said. "I get it."
"Say it."
He sighed. "I trust you."
"Good boy."
Team members were trickling back, cautious not to upset the possibly insane pixie. "It's all right," Harrison told them. "Glimmer was just reminding me of something." He rubbed his face, and pointed to the transport with his thumb. "Let's saddle up and get this pony moving." He turned back to Glimmer, who had pulled away to a less invasive distance. "How far is it?" he asked.
"Very close!" she beamed. "Two, maybe three hundred miles, tops."
* * *
"It's here."
Glimmer was pointing to a topographical map of North America on one of the monitors inside the transport. Jeannette was sitting in the driver's seat, and Harrison was standing beside it. The spot where the pixie was pointing was somewhere in the mid-Atlantic US. Harrison tapped the zoom function on the touch screen. The map rolled in continuously, showing less and less of the continent, until it stopped (apparently arbitrarily) at an image that showed most of the region between the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay. He mentally noted his own estimate of their current position on the map. They were in what had once been northern New Jersey.
"There." She pointed again, this time just north of the Chesapeake. Harrison hit zoom again. The map pulled in until the lakes and coast were no longer visible. They were now looking at a rectangle in several shades of green with a blue squiggle running down the center. She pointed to the squiggle, and one zoom later they were looking at a blue river.
Harrison tapped a square that said Map Overlay. This gave him several options, one of which was Political. He selected that one and was prompted to be more specific. He wasn't sure why he had to do that, but assumed that the display was programmed to show political maps from different points in history, or maybe for different priorities. There was a small keypad on the panel next to the monitor, and Harrison pecked out "State of Pennsylvania," which showed in a small field on the screen. He tapped Enter, and the program displayed the message No Record on a red field.
He frowned. "What the hell?" He looked at Jeannette. In all reality, he had no need to know where this spot was in relation to the world as he had known it, but he was curious. He felt it would help him get a bead on their goal. He hoped Jeannette felt the same way, but she seemed disturbed, almost angry. It occurred to him that he might be wasting time with this nonsense. He did not want to lose her respect. The team needed to stay coherent, and if they started to doubt him, it might unravel. Just as he was about to say-in a way that would make him appear totally confident-that they shouldn't bother with this map, Jeannette made a suggestion.
"Try Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."
He did. It worked. Harrison shook his head at the electronic hair splitting.
The map stayed green, but now city names and markers appeared on it. Harrison did not recognize most of them, but just north of the center, near where Glimmer had been pointing, he saw Harrisburg. Just as Harrison was adjusting to the context, Glimmer touched the screen again.
"There," she said. "It's right there. Is that close enough for you to get us there?"
Harrison stared at the map. "Holy crap," he whispered. He turned to Jeannette. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked.
"Yes. And I don't want to discuss it right now."
Plenty old enough to have vivid memories of Three Mile Island.
* * *
None of the survivors except Alec had ever driven the transport. Although Glimmer insisted that the curse to which he had fallen victim would not incapacitate his driving ability, Hadley brought up the very real possibility that Alec might find it embarrassing to wreck the buggy. The consensus was that Alec should be disqualified from driving. The rest of the team agreed to share the task, and they spent the rest of the daylight giving each other lessons. Harrison estimated that their travel time, over totally unknown terrain, would be about two days. The rest of the team accepted this assessment.
Standing outside, and at a considerable distance, Harrison and Apryl watched the buggy back into a small bush. They had been the first two to teach themselves to drive it. To his surprise, Harrison had found the experience only slightly more imposing than driving a van. Like every piece of new technology he had encountered during the past year, it was absurdly easy to operate. The vehicle rolled right over the shrub, but when the bush was about halfway along the underside, whoever was driving apparently noticed it and slammed on the brakes.
"Yeesh," said Harrison. "Who's driving?"
"Jake, probably," said Apryl. "He said he wanted to make himself useful."
Harrison looked concerned. "Does he even have a license?"
She gave him a scolding look. "Does it matter?"
Harrison thought about this. "Guess not. I suppose he'll need to know how the buggy works as much as any of us in a pinch. We should probably get Claudia behind the wheel, at least once, before we head out tomorrow."
"That's not a bad idea." As she spoke, the buggy started up again, slowly pushing itself away from the crushed bush. They could hear branches snapping. "See?" said Apryl. "He'll get the hang of it."
Glimmer flew up. "Hey," she said, "I've been scouting like you said, and I think I found a pretty good route for the big car. We can't go straight, because there's a yucky bog that would swallow you up before you ever saw it coming, but otherwise it's mostly patchy forest."
While Harrison paled slightly at her casual mention of a death trap none of them would have seen, he was otherwise pleased with her report. The buggy was more than capable of plowing through underbrush, so as long as they had a path where the trees were thin enough, they would have no problems. He held on to his two-day estimate, but secretly hoped they would make better time. The sooner they got Alec the help he needed, the safer they would be.
"That's good," he said. He looked at the sun, hanging low. Its proximity to the horizon gave the illusion that it had grown, and the angle of the sunlight gave it a pale orange hue. He imagined that it was sucking up all the daylight, until it was swollen and taxed beyond its ability to keep them warm. "We should call it a day soon. Get some rest so we can move out at the crack of dawn tomorrow."
"Yeah," said Glimmer, half listening. "Hey, Apryl, do you mind if I take a moment of Harrison's time?"
Apryl seemed surprised by the courtesy, and Harrison realized it was probably the first time anyone had asked her permission for anything since they had found her. He appreciated that Glimmer had no reason to think of the two New York survivors as anything other than equals on this expedition.
"Sure," Apryl replied. "I'll, uh, flag down the transport. See if they need anyone to take over watching Alec." She looked at Harrison, perhaps waiting for a cue.
"Okay," he said. "I'll be back there in a little bit." Apryl nodded and smiled, but did not seem in a particular hurry to leave. "Hey," he added, "tell Jake, if that was him, he's doing fine."
She laughed. "He won't believe me, but I'll tell him you said so." As Harrison turned to Glimmer, Apryl walked away.
"Can we head to the grove?" the pixie asked. "I'd like a little privacy. Before we get to Faerie, we need to have a talk."
He had been expecting this since before New York. His emotions were mixed. The timing seemed very odd to him, though, and she sounded in much better spirits than he had been picturing her when he imagined this conversation. "Yeah," he said as he walked, and she glided, the several dozen feet to the cover of the copse. "Um," he added, then stalled out.
"I owe you an apology," she said.
He hadn't seen that one coming. "You owe me an apology?"
"Well, obviously you owe me one, too, but we're going to start with mine."
"That's fair."
She waited a beat. It gave her introductory remarks more dramatic impact. It also served to give them just enough time to cross the threshold into the little grove. Then she said, "You're not a pixie."
Harrison frowned. "Are you just now figuring that out?"
"No." She used both hands to wave away his stupid question. "I figured it out a few days ago. I'm just bringing it up now."
"What tipped you off?" he asked. It surprised him not to hear sarcasm in his voice.
"You're a virgin," she said bluntly.
Harrison blushed. He had felt foolish enough sharing that with the team, especially since it turned out to be useless information. Until now, everyone had been tasteful enough not to bring it up. "What? There are no virgin pixies?"
She nodded. "That's right."
"Oh, come on," he said. "That's just stupid. When did you lose your virginity?" He was preparing to catch her in an obvious contradiction.
"I never had one of those."
"Then you-" he started, then realized what she said. "Wait a minute, what? How," he started again, but had trouble forming the question. "How does that make any sense at all?" He was starting to become agitated.
"This is exactly what I mean!" She gave a triumphant smile. "It makes perfect sense to me, because I'm a pixie!" She opened a new topic. "Why are you a virgin?"
This was becoming much too intrusive. He accepted his part in the conversation because he felt like he owed her a great deal and wanted to heal their friendship, but still. She was taking him down a path he did not want to go. The truth was, women frightened him. He had never seen himself as desirable, and he had never been comfortable pursuing women he found attractive. He had long since resigned himself to loneliness. All he was prepared to say on the subject, however, was, "It's complicated."
"See?" she said. "See? To you, this is complicated. To me, it's absurd! Does your penis work?"
"What?" He looked around furtively to see if anyone else could hear.
"I said-"
"I heard you!" Then through gritted teeth, he whispered, "Yes."
"But you never use it! How does that make any sense at all?"
"It makes sense to me," he said coldly.
She beamed. "And therein lies the point. You couldn't possibly be a pixie and understand that. You don't think like a pixie, you don't act like a pixie, you don't even love like a pixie!"
Harrison was flabbergasted. He had no idea whether to feel guilty or defensive. "That doesn't mean I don't love," he said cautiously.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes," he said without hesitation or qualification. He had wanted to say it for a very long time, but given the nature of their relationship, he had been afraid she would misunderstand. "More than I can say."
"But you don't want us to be lovers," she said. There was no sense of criticism or rejection in her tone.
He shook his head gently. "No," he said. "I don't."
She smiled. "I get it now. I didn't before, but I do now. Do you remember when we met?"
"Of course."
"All the other pixies were gone," she said. "Then I found you. You were so cute, all on your own, trying t
o make a life as the last human on Earth. And I thought, 'Hey, this guy is like me! We could be pals!' So I tailed you for a while, and then I introduced myself."
"I remember." He smiled at the memory.
"The thing was," she said, "I had never been friends with a human before. I mean, I've known a few, but never what you might call well."
"Aha." He was beginning to follow. She was talking about humans from her own world. For whatever reason, every human still alive was from his world. He wondered if he met one of the humans she had known, would he notice any significant differences?
"So, anyway," she continued. "When I met you, I kind of, well, pretended you were a pixie. It helped. And then I figured, here we are, two pixies. Happy as …" She looked for the right simile. "Well, two happy pixies. And it was wonderful, and special, and everything I ever wanted in a relationship." She looked away for a moment, and Harrison waited, knowing she had to finish the thought. "And I hoped," she said, "that if I just kept pretending you were a pixie …"
He gave her a couple of seconds, then finished the sentence. "I'd start pretending you were human."
For the first time ever, Harrison saw her blush. "No," she said. "I hoped you'd start pretending you were a pixie, too."
He closed his eyes. He couldn't believe he had been so blind. All she had wanted, all she ever wanted, was the same thing he wanted. She wanted to be with her own kind. For him, that had been relatively easy to achieve, at least once he had finished his thousand-mile trek. For her, until now, that opportunity had not presented itself. He looked back on the last year, on his behavior with her, and regret wriggled into his reflections. From the start, he had treated her as something other. The reality, of course, was that she was completely different from him, physically, emotionally, and in every other way he could conceive. But he cherished her differences. They were what had held them together, what had propelled him forward, and what had changed him, forever, into a better man. He felt his throat close as he imagined what she must have felt when he consigned her to the category of freak, when he made his human friends. She must have thought he was revolted by the very thing he adored about her.