Realmwalker

by Jonathan Franks

  Emily said, “I gotta go now. Now is when the people come over to my house.” Emily walked away.

  Ivy and Gen examined each other intently, although it was easier for Gen to look Ivy up and down that it was for Ivy to do the same.

  They spoke at the same time.

  “I’m Genevieve --”

  “I’m Ivy --”

  Then they broke into laughter, the same, melodious, contagious laugh.

  “What in the world?” Gen asked.

  “She’s right,” Ivy said. “I’m your fairy. You’re my human.”

  “My fairy?”

  Ivy nodded.

  “What does that mean?” Gen asked.

  “You don’t know the stories here? That when a human laughs their first laugh of joy, the spirit of the laugh creates a fairy.”

  “Like in Peter Pan? That’s really real?”

  Ivy shrugged. “I don’t know what Peter Pan is. But, yeah, it’s really real.”

  “Does everyone have a fairy?”

  Ivy nodded. “Yup.”

  “Wow,” Gen said. “Am I, like, allowed to see you? I mean, you don’t have to kill me now that I saw you or anything?”

  Ivy giggled. “Don’t be ridiculous. If you die, I die. That’s how it works.”

  “If a human dies, their fairy dies?” Gen asked.

  “That’s right.” Ivy looked over Gen’s shoulder and her eyes widened in fear. “Someone else is coming!” She ducked behind the edge of the monument.

  “He’s okay,” Gen said. “This is Jim. He’s my boyfriend.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Jim asked. “Are you okay? You looked pretty shaken up.”

  “I am,” Gen said. “But something amazing is happening. Look.” She stood on her tiptoes, trying to see over the edge of the monument but she wasn’t tall enough.

  “What are you doing?” Jim asked.

  “Look!” She hissed at him, then turned back to the statue. “Come on, Ivy. It’s okay.”

  Ivy flew to the edge of the monument and gazed down at Jim.

  He stumbled backwards. “Jesus H fuck!”

  “Jimmy!” Gen chided him.

  Jim gaped at Ivy and shook his head.

  “Stop it,” Gen said. “You’re scaring her.”

  “Scaring her?” Jim said.

  They heard a call from where some of the humans were still gathered. “Genny?”

  “It’s my mom,” Gen said.

  “Your what?” Ivy asked.

  “My mom! Can you come with me?”

  “Where?” Ivy asked.

  “To my house. I have so many questions!”

  Herron stepped forward and said, “We’re on an important mission.”

  “Oh my god! Another one!” Gen cried.

  “Genny!” Her mom called her again.

  “In a minute, mom, I’m just looking at something! I, um, need a minute!”

  “This is Herron,” Ivy said.

  Gen blinked, then shook her head and said, “Come on. I have to go. My mom is waiting. Are there any more of you?”

  “No, it’s just the two of us,” Ivy said. “We’re trying to stop an evil fairy from killing his human and being immortal and returning to the fairy Realms to do unspeakable things!”

  “Whoa,” Gen whispered. “Can I help? Come with me. Come to my house and we can talk where it’s safe, then I can help you!” She looked from side to side, making sure nobody was watching. “Is it, like, degrading if you hide in my purse?” Gen asked.

  Ivy and Herron looked at each other.

  “We’ll just follow you,” Herron said, flexing his wings.

  “Wow,” breathed Gen. “Okay. We’re in that white minivan with the wood paneling.”

  “What’s a -- Oh.” Ivy quickly figured out what a minivan must be, because it was the only one of the vehicles in the area that Gen had gestured to that was white. It had thick stripes of wood coloring on the sides.

  “Come on,” Ivy said to Herron, and they flew to the minivan and ducked down behind the roof rack.

  Gen and Jim walked back to the group and a few minutes later, Gen’s mom started the car and headed home.

  -

  Gen rushed into the house and ran to her room. Jim followed her.

  Gen’s mom called up to her from the bottom of the stairs, “Remember, honey, if you need to talk, I’m always here.”

  “I know, mom!”

  Gen closed her door, then opened her window. Ivy and Herron flew in.

  Ivy flew all around Gen’s room, touching the walls, looking at photographs and drawings on the walls, touching the toys and stuffed animals Gen had kept.

  “Wow!” Ivy said. “My room was laid out just like this.”

  Gen and Jim sat on Gen’s bed.

  Ivy turned and flew to Gen’s desk so she could stand in front of Gen and Jim.

  “Why does Emily look so different from you?”

  “What?” Gen asked, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s very short and her proportions are very different from yours, different kinds of features. Very… soft, I guess.”

  “She’s a little kid!”

  “A what?”

  “A kid. A child. You don’t have children?”

  Ivy looked blankly at her.

  “Oh,” Gen said. “Well, it’s complicated, but when a man and a woman love each other —”

  “No,” laughed Jim. “Don’t give your mom’s speech. I don’t think that’s what she’s asking, anyway.” He said to Ivy, “Humans start out as little babies, and we grow and we change, from babies to little kids, to teenagers like us, to adults. What about you?”

  “We’re pretty much like this from the time of our arrival, then years and years go by, and we’ll start aging until finally, we die.”

  “Wow! You were born just like this?” Gen asked. “Like, a grown up? Walking and talking and everything from your very first day?”

  “Sure,” said Ivy. “Not you, though, huh?”

  Gen shook her head. “No. But you still, like,” she whispered, “have sex?”

  “Yeah,” Ivy said. “Sure.”

  “But you don’t have babies?”

  “No, only animals have babies!”

  “Really? Fairies don’t get pregnant?” Gen asked.

  “No, we don’t. I never really thought about how new humans would be made,” Ivy said. “I guess I just assumed they would arrive in their normal form, like we do. Wow.”

  Gen started to ask another question, then shook her and stopped. “Okay, that’s enough of that. There’s more important stuff to talk about. Start from the beginning. How did you find me?”

  “Well,” Ivy said, “how we found you isn’t really the beginning.”

  Ivy told them the story, from when Herron found the tears in the Chamber of the Heart, to Nai’s insisting that they go together to find out what was happening, their adventures through each of the Realms, finding Sen and visiting The Deep, then seeing The Meadows fade into The Void and traveling into The Caves to come to the human world and leaving Hope behind.

  “And where is Hope now?” Jim asked.

  Ivy’s face fell. “She was hurt. She had to stay behind. If she didn’t get attention from a healer, she could have died. But we have really good healers that could fix her right up. She just had to make it back to The Peak, which I’m sure she did. She had to.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gen said. “You must really care about her.”

  “I do. I’m in love with her,” Ivy said. “Do humans feel love?”

  “Of course,” Gen said.

  “Are you two in love?”

  Gen and Jim looked at each other. Gen smiled warmly at him and said, “Yes. We are.”

  Jim blushed and looked at the floor.

  “I love you, Jim,” Gen said.

  Jim nodded.

  “Do you love me?”

  Jim looked at her. “You know I do.”

  “Then tell me,” Gen said.

 
; “Hope and I had almost this exact conversation right before we came here,” Ivy said to Herron. “She had a hard time saying it, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Herron said. Ivy nodded and looked back at Gen and Jim.

  “I do,” Jim was saying. “It’s just hard for me to say. The last person I said it to...”

  “It’s okay,” Gen said, and hugged Jim tight.

  Ivy tried to fight the tears, but she knew they would win. She ducked behind a stack of books on Gen’s desk just in time. She took out her own golden arrow and put it on the desk. She cleared her throat and said, “Show me Hope.”

  The arrow didn’t move.

  “Ok, then. Show me Hope’s human, instead.”

  The arrow spun, then stopped. Ivy flew just high enough to see above the books, and saw the arrow pointed directly at Jim.

  -

  After Jim went home, Gen borrowed one of her dad’s road maps and spread it out on her desk for Herron to examine.

  “The scale of this thing is tremendous!” He said. “I can walk on it.”

  Gen shrugged. “I think they’re sized pretty well for us. Can you still use it?”

  “Yes,” Herron said, turning his head this way and that to read the city and street names. “Show me where we met.”

  Gen leaned over the map to find the cemetery but she stopped when she saw Herron’s tiny golden arrow turned and pointed in and easterly direction.

  “Wow,” Gen said. “That is amazing! Is that, like, a magic arrow or something?”

  “Yeah,” Ivy said. “It points toward whatever you want it to. Except for other fairies. For some reason, it doesn’t do that here. But it did back home. Watch! Show me Jim.”

  The arrow turned toward Jim’s house across the street.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” Ivy asked. “Show me my human.”

  The arrow turned toward Gen.

  “Show me Herron’s hu--”

  “No!” Herron hissed angrily at her.

  “No? Don’t you want to know who your human is?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?” Gen asked.

  Herron said, “I know we’re connected to our counterparts. But I am who I am, and that’s all I want to be. I want to know myself for what I’ve done. I don’t want to make excuses for myself or diminish and of my own accomplishments because someone else may been in a different situation. I don’t want to know.”

  Ivy looked at the floor, ashamed. “I’m sorry. I should have asked first. I just assumed... I’m sorry.”

  Herron grunted acknowledgement and nodded, then resumed walking around the map, then looked at Gen. “Please, show me where we met.”

  Gen pointed to the cemetery on the map.

  “And where are we now?”

  Gen looked at the map, and pointed roughly where her house was.

  “Thank you. I’d like to study this for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

  Gen and Ivy looked at each other.

  “Is there somewhere we can go?” Ivy asked.

  “Yeah,” Gen said. “Let’s go outside. Don’t let my parents see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I... I don’t know how they’d handle it,” Gen said.

  “Okay. I’ll keep out of sight.”

  Gen went downstairs and Ivy followed her. They went through the family room where Gen’s mom and dad were sitting. They were each reading a book. Gen’s mom had changed her clothes.

  “I’m going to go sit outside for a little while.”

  “Take a sweater, honey, it’s getting chilly,” her mom said.

  “I left it upstairs. Can I bring the blanket out with me?”

  Gen’s mom nodded and Gen pulled the afghan off of the sofa and brought it outside. She got into the hammock and arranged herself, then got herself all tucked into the blanket. She looked around, and Ivy flew to her and settled on her chest.

  “How long have you known Jim?” Ivy asked.

  “All my life. When we were babies, our parents used to take us to the park and they became friends.”

  “And your parents are the ones who have sex and that’s how they make babies, which grow up into humans?”

  Gen laughed. “Yeah, you got it. How long did you know Hope?”

  “Not that long,” Ivy said. “About a week, I guess.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty fast.”

  “When you know you’re in love, then you know,” Ivy said. “I knew from the moment I saw her that I was in love with her. I felt like we had a strong connection, like she was familiar and comfortable. We felt like we’d known each other forever.” She hesitated, then asked, “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s about humans and fairies and I don’t want to upset you like I upset Herron.”

  “You can tell me anything,” Gen said.

  “Hope’s human... It’s Jim.”

  Gen opened her mouth in surprise. “Wow. No wonder you felt connected. I’ve been completely in love with Jim since we were little kids.”

  “It’s good to see you two together. I miss Hope a lot. It was really hard to leave her. I almost couldn’t do it.”

  “It must have been terrible. But she’s okay?”

  “Jim’s okay, so she must be. I’m sure she made it back to The Peak and the healers took care of her,” Ivy said.

  “Tell me about this evil fairy,” Gen said.

  “I don’t really know much about him. I just know that he and Hope used to be... you know... together. He was doing something with some dark magic and he killed someone and did something bad with his essence or something. He destroyed three whole Realms. He’s evil. We’re all very worried about what he’ll do back in the Realms if he becomes immortal. But I don’t know him.”

  “Tell me about your home,” Gen said.

  Ivy told her about The Meadows, about her farms, about Nai, about the vibrant, lush, green meadows and prairies and about her friends, then she realized she didn’t know what happened to any of them except for Nai. Nai had said she’d sent a bunch of fairies to The Marsh, and that Realm was destroyed, too. Ivy wiped her eyes.

  “I’ve been crying so much lately, I didn’t think I could have any tears left,” she said. “But what’s happened has been so horrible that sometimes I just can’t stop.”

  Gen cupped her hand around Ivy. “You’re too little to hug,” she said.

  Ivy turned around and wrapped her arms around Gen’s thumb and hugged it. “That’ll do,” she said. “You’re warm.” Ivy nestled into the palm of Gen’s hand and rested her head in the crook of her thumb.

  “You’ll help us?” Ivy asked, so quietly that Gen could barely hear her.

  “Of course I will.”

  “Thanks, Gen. I’m really glad I got to meet you.”

  “I’m glad I got to meet you, too,” Gen said.

  chapter 31

  Andi hung up the phone. She was talking to Emmet Mitchell’s doctor’s office, trying to get the results of his last checkup. Emmet hadn’t signed one of the release forms and the office was unable to fax her his test results. She was frustrated. She dialed Emmet’s number.

  “Hello?” Emmet slurred on other end of the line.

  “Mr. Mitchell? This is Andrea Leeds.”

  “Hi Miss Lee -- Andrea,” he said.

  He’s stoned out of his mind, Andi thought. Putting his money to good use, I see.

  “Emmet, do you have time to meet any time soon? I have an additional medical release I need you to sign.”

  “Sure, any time.”

  “How about this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Emmet said. “There’s a little cafe up the street with a nice outdoor area. Cafe del Sol, I think it’s called.”

  “How about four thirty?”

  “Okay, yeah. Do I need to bring anything?”

  “Nope. I’ll have everything I need with me,” Andi said. “See you at four thirty.”

  She hung up the phone, then swiveled her
chair to look out her window at the golf course. It’ll be a miracle if he shows up.

  -

  Pepper and Hish were following the arrow, staying close to the rooftops. They’d been following the arrow for two days and they were finally getting used to this world’s noise and light and glare. The arrow had subtly changed course a few times, and today, they were following it when it suddenly veered to the side.

  “He must be moving,” Pepper said. “Let’s keep going.”

  They followed the arrow and flew over blocks and blocks of buildings. Eventually, they crossed a street and the arrow spun around in the opposite direction.

  “I think we just passed him,” Hish said. “He must be down there.”

  They landed and turned around to face the street they had just crossed. They looked down on a small restaurant or bar of some sort. There were tables with umbrellas in front of the place on the sidewalk. Pepper told Hish to wait and he flew a circle around the cafe to verify that was where the arrow was pointing. It definitely was. He spiraled in tighter and the arrow was definitely pointing to a table outside. There were two humans sitting there.

  A man and a woman were seated at the table, talking. The man signed some papers and handed them back to the woman.

  Pepper flew back to Hish. “There he is. Look at him. He is definitely sick. We can’t do it here, in public, in the middle of the day. We’ll need to follow him when he leaves.”

  Hish nodded. “I still have nothing, no inkling of anything. I’m completely powerless here.”

  “It’s okay, friend. We’ve found him.” He looked at the arrow, smiled wickedly, and put it away. “Now,” Pepper said, “we wait.”

  -

  “Everything all right, Emmet?” Andi asked.

  “Oh, yeah, everything’s fine,” Emmet said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You look like you’ve had better days.”

  “Well,” said Emmet, defensively, “you contract a terminal disease and let it start destroying you and you can talk!”

  Andi flashed him an angry look.

  Emmet cringed. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I’m just not feeling great. I haven’t been getting out much.” Then he looked at Andi, cocked his head, and looked hard at her face. “Something’s wrong with you, too.” He crossed his arms and scratched at his shoulders.