Me, My Elf & I

by Heather Swain

  I consider all this. I’m not sure I believe him, but it feels pretty good to have someone think I’m special, and not in a weird way. Plus, this is what I came for, to perform. Not to mention that I could get even with Bella.

  “Or,” he says, leaning away from me, “you can just be MooMoo at the mercy of Bella like everyone else around here.”

  That hurts. I look at him squarely. “All right, let’s write my résumé.”

  “You don’t think it’s lying anymore?” Ari teases me.

  “I want that ELPH part,” I say coldly, imagining how furious Bella will be if I get the part and she doesn’t.

  “Yahoo!” Ari hollers. He dashes a note quickly to Mercedes:

  —Now Z’s p.o.’d!

  She writes back:

  —Let’s kick some A!!!!!!

  “Let’s,” I say, and vow to myself that I’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure that I beat Bella at her own game.

  chapter 6

  I’M STILL SHAKING with anger as I walk home from Ari’s house through the park, so I cool myself off by casting silly spells. First I whip up a tiny leaf tornado beside the path. A group of kids playing nearby stop and stare at the spinning leaves, then run screaming toward their nannies who sit chatting on a bench. I didn’t mean to frighten them, so I flick my fingers at the leaves, and they float gently to the ground. The kids run back to the pile and poke it with sticks. A hawk flies above me. Seems like every time I’m in the park, I see this same bird, which is sort of comforting. Maybe its nest is nearby. I point to the hawk, trying to catch it in my power, but it soars higher beyond my reach. I settle for a yellow butterfly, instead, and bring it fluttering in a zigzag pattern toward me. I land it on my nose to stare cross-eyed at its wiggly antennae and long curled proboscis.

  Kids do this kind of thing all the time in Alverland. Altering nature is the first way we use our magic and learn the consequences of using our powers for the wrong reasons. There’s always some ornery group of elf kids who dare one another to cast wicked spells on birds and frogs, at least until their magic dries up for a few hours, and leaves them with coughs and runny noses. I let the butterfly go and with it some of my fury about Bella’s blog. Even though I don’t feel as mad anymore, I’m still totally confused. I wish I could talk to my dad. I just don’t understand the erdler world. People act one way in front of you and then call you something horrible behind your back. Why? What good does that do?

  I come out of the park and see the big pine tree in front of our house. It still feels funny to call this place our house. It’s not our house. Our house is in Alverland, in the middle of a grove of tall maple trees that we tap for syrup, next to the stream where I learned to fish for trout, not far from a tangled patch of black raspberries that we pick every summer and cook into jam for the winter. Now syrup comes in a glass bottle with a picture of a tree on the label, and trout is something dead on a Styrofoam tray with no head or tail, and we’ve eaten almost every jar of homemade jam that we brought with us because it tastes so much like home that we can’t keep our spoons out of it. This house is a strange place with its locking doors and shuttered windows and tiny patch of green in the back that we own but do not share.

  I open our front door and trudge through the dark, gloomy living room. “Hello?” I call, hoping that my mom or Willow will answer because I need to talk, but there’s no answer.

  I find my mom in the sunny kitchen humming one of Dad’s songs as she chops up vegetables. That’s a good sign. She hums when she’s happy. In Alverland, she was always humming, but I haven’t heard her pretty singing voice much since we’ve been in Brooklyn.

  “Hi, Zephyr,” she says when I walk in. She stops what she’s doing and wraps me in a hug. “How was your day?”

  I hop up on the counter beside her. “I just don’t understand erdlers,” I say, swiping a carrot from the cutting board.

  “Why not?” She goes back to deseeding a cucumber.

  “I can’t figure them out.” I wave my carrot around. “Are they nice? Are they mean? Seems like they’re both, all the time, at the same time.”

  “I think that would be exhausting.” She slices open a juicy tomato.

  “Exactly!” I say. “I don’t know how they keep track of who they like and who they dislike and who they’re friends with and who they hate, especially because it keeps changing all the time. I mean, one minute Bella is sitting next to me offering to help me and the next minute she’s telling everyone that I’m going to fall flat on my face!”

  “Who’s Bella?” Mom asks. “Did I meet her the other day?”

  “No that was Mercedes and Ari. They’re my friends. But see, it’s weird. How can Mercedes and Ari be so nice to me, someone they hardly know, but then hate Bella so much that they want to make her miserable?”

  “That doesn’t sound very nice,” says Mom. “Are those the kind of erdler friends you want?”

  “I think they’re all that way. And what worries me most,” I continue, “is whether my friendship with Ari and Mercedes is real or if I’m just a convenient way for them to get at Bella. What if Bella beats me at the audition? Will Ari and Mercedes like me anymore?”

  “What audition?” Mom asks.

  “Because if that happens,” I say, ignoring her question, “then I’ll be back where I started on the first day of school when I cried like a stupid baby in the middle of the hallway.”

  “You cried?” Mom looks stricken at the thought of me upset, like she might cry, too.

  “Yeah, but it was okay because then I met Mercedes and Ari and I wasn’t alone anymore.”

  “I don’t know, Zephyr,” she says. “This all sounds very complicated and—” As she says this the phone rings. Without finishing her thought, she answers, as if she’s been waiting for the call. “Yes! Yes!” she says, and I can tell by the tone of her voice that it’s about her naturopath business. She hands me the knife and points to the veggies on the counter.

  I cut a big hunk off the tomato and sprinkle some salt on it before popping it in my mouth. As I chew, I try to puzzle through why Bella makes Mercedes and Ari, the fairy girls, and all the people on the BellaHater blog hate her so much. Wouldn’t it be easier if she was just nice to everyone? But the weirder thing is, if all those people hate her so much, why do they spend so much time thinking about her, talking about her, plotting revenge against her? Then I realize, I’m standing here thinking about her right now, too! Aargh! I have to stop.

  On the windowsill in front of me, I notice an envelope with Aunt Flora’s handwriting. That must be why Mom is so cheery. Suddenly I miss Alverland terribly. Especially my cousin Briar, whose love and friendship I’ve never had to question. I look out the open window over the sink and see that Poppy, Bramble, and Persimmon are in the garden building another bunny hutch out of scraps of wood. Up until now, that was my life in Alverland—happily building bunny hutches with my brothers and sisters and cousins and friends, never having to worry about who liked me and why. Poppy looks up and sees me staring at them.

  “Zephyr’s home! ” she shouts, and they all run into the kitchen. They surround my legs and Persimmon reaches her arms up to me. I pop her on my hip and hand her a slice of cucumber.

  “Come outside with us!” Poppy says.

  Bramble wraps his arms around my thighs. “I missed you,” he coos up at me. I pat his head.

  “Here Fephyr.” Persimmon shoves the cucumber in my mouth.

  “Come on. Help us,” Poppy begs and yanks on my tunic.

  Bramble tugs at my free hand. “Come outside.”

  “Help Fephyr,” Persimmon says, pointing out the window.

  “No, not right now,” I tell them, and set Percy on the floor.

  “But why?” Poppy whines. “We need your help. We haven’t seen you all day. Did you go to school? Are your friends with you? Do they want to help us?”

  I wish Mom would get off the phone so I can talk to her some more about Bella, Mercedes, and Ari. I want to tell
her about the audition and ask her if it was okay to let Ari write a résumé for me. But she’s still blathering into the phone about primrose oil and black cohosh.

  Persimmon whimpers up at me. “Help, Fephyr, help!”

  “I need to talk to Mom,” I say, annoyed.

  “You never play with us anymore,” Poppy shouts.

  Mom glares at us and waves her arms frantically, shooing us out the back door, which makes Persimmon cry. I scoop her up and pull Bramble and Poppy outside with us. Mom slams the door behind us and we all jump, then Percy wails.

  “Why is she mad at us?” Poppy cries.

  “She’s just busy.” I rub Persimmon’s back to calm her down.

  “She’s always busy,” Bramble mumbles. He picks up a hammer and bangs uselessly on a rock.

  “It’s hard for her with Dad and Grove gone,” I say.

  “Daddy?” Percy says excitedly and looks around.

  “He’s not here,” I tell her. This sets her tears off again. “Where’s Willow?” I ask, more annoyed now that I’m the one taking care of the little ones by myself when I’ve got my own problems to deal with.

  “All she does is hug her pillow,” Poppy says.

  “She’s sad,” Bramble adds.

  I squint up at the top floor of the house. The hawk perches on the roof peak above the open windows and wispy clouds float by. “You’re right,” I tell Poppy. “All Willow does is stare at the trees with her pillow in her arms thinking about Ash.” And this is annoying, because sure, I’d like to have a boyfriend, too, but at least I’m making an effort to have a life here. I pick up a wood chip and fling it up toward our bedroom window while shouting, “Willow! Hey, Willow! ” Poppy joins me. “Willow! ” we both yell and throw our wood chips. The hawk spreads its wings and takes flight above the trees. Then Bramble and Persimmon start jumping around, throwing wood chips and yelling, too. “Willow! ” we all scream at the top of our lungs. “Willow!”

  For some weird reason the hawk swoops down and lands on the top of our fence to screech at us. “Look! Look! ” Bramble yells excitedly. He starts climbing up the fence to get a closer look. “Do you think its nest is up there?”

  Before Bramble gets very far, the back door flies open and my mom is yelling at us, “What are you doing? Have you lost your minds?” The hawk flaps its wings and lifts off into the air again.

  “You scared it away!” Bramble yells at my mom.

  “I cannot run a business with you howling like a bunch of wild coyotes when I’m on the phone,” Mom shouts. We all start talking at once to protest, but then she zaps us. I feel it in my throat, a deep itchy tingling and my tongue goes numb. We’re all mute. No sounds come from our open mouths. We stare at her—this crazy, shouting woman who used to be our calm, happy mother. She slams the door and we can see her through the kitchen window, pacing furiously while talking on the phone again.

  Bramble has dropped down from the fence. He, Poppy, and I blink at one another. Our mother has never hexed us before. Never. Only the worst, most impatient elfin mothers hex their children. I look down at Persimmon. She wails silently, bewildered by what has happened and where her little voice has gone. My stomach is tight and my head hurts. I want to scream but I can’t.

  Just then, Willow pops her head out the upstairs window. “What’s going on?” she asks sleepily. “Why’d you wake me up?” I’m so angry right then that I pick up a rock and fling it at her. “Hey! ” she shouts and ducks back into the window. The rock bounces off the side of the house. Willow peeks out again. “Why’d you do that?”

  Poppy must feel the same as me because she picks up a handful of pebbles and hurls them toward the sky. They rain back down on us, pelting our heads and shoulders.

  “What’s going on?” Willow demands. I pick up another rock and aim it toward her. Before I can throw it, she zaps it and turns it into a fistful of sand that sprinkles through my fingers to the ground.

  I drop the sand and point to a sparrow flying past the window, toward a tree. I redirect the bird straight toward Willow’s long hair ruffling in the breeze. The bird flaps frantically, fighting against the force of my magic. I see Bramble out of the corner of my eye. He waves his arms and jumps up and down, pointing toward the bird, but his magic is not powerful enough to stop me. Willow, though, is quick and sharp. “Wither Arm!” she shouts, sending my arm flopping uselessly by my side. The bird cartwheels in the air then swoops away and disappears into the branches of a tall oak tree.

  I try to yell at Willow, to tell her that I’m sick of her not helping and that her stupid moping is making everyone else miserable, too, but my voice is still gone. So I run toward the house. I fling the door open with my one good arm (the other flaps like a broken wing beside me) and I charge through the kitchen, past my mom, and up the back stairs. I hear the others close behind me.

  Willow is waiting for us at the top of the steps. “Zephyr, what’s wrong with you?” she asks. “You’re acting like a lunatic.”

  I move my mouth, but no words come out. Then Bramble tackles me from behind. I’m on the floor, Bramble on top of me. I wrench around and see his mouth opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and I imagine that he’s silently yelling at me about the bird. I’m powerless then without my voice while one arm lays like a dead fish on the floor and the other is pinned to my side by Bramble’s strong little legs. Poppy darts out from the stairwell to my rescue. She flings herself at Bramble, knocking him off my back, and they land in a heap on the rug. Willow rushes to them. “What in the name of Mother Earth is going on with you guys?” she shouts.

  Now I’m peeved at Bramble, the little toad, for tackling me. I zing a hiccupping hex at him, but in all the confusion of arms and legs with Willow trying to separate Poppy and Bramble, my hex hits all three of them and they are instantly seized by tiny squeaking convulsions, “Hic! Hic! Hic!” I try not to, but I laugh because it’s so funny to see them all hiccupping in unison. And wouldn’t it figure that that’s when my voice comes back so they all hear me. My magic must be getting weak, though, from all the spell casting, plus I’m out practice, because the hex lasts only a few seconds, then all three of them are glaring at me as I snicker meanly from my place on the floor.

  “No, no! ” I squeal, because my voice is faint. I skitter backward across the rug. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Poppy is as mad as a cornered skunk. It’s almost funny to watch her try to summon some kind of spell to get me back. She lifts up on her toes and raises her arms above her head, then she yells, “Poop!” with all her fury as she flings her arms toward me. But her magic is so puny that in the tense seconds following her mighty attempt to zap me with a horrid hex only an itty-bitty squeaky fart escapes from my butt. Then we all lose it. Even Willow. We are all on the floor rolling, clutching our sides, and howling with laughter until our eyes are full of tears and we can barely breathe.

  The only thing that stops us from laughing until we’re sick is my mom, who storms up the stairs yelling, “What in the stars is wrong with you kids!” She stands over us with her hands on her hips, then suddenly asks, “Where’s Persimmon?” Each of us pops upright. We look around.

  “Percy?” we say. “Percy, where are you?”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Come out.”

  “Come on, Persimmon, no hiding now,” Mom says firmly, but our sister doesn’t reappear.

  We comb the upstairs, each of us sure that she followed us up the steps. But she’s not in her room, not under her bed or anyone else’s bed, not in any of the closets, or hiding in the bathtub, or squatting behind a chair. We fan out. Willow and I go to the first floor, my mother is on the second floor, while Poppy and Bramble continue looking on the top floor. We all call to her, our pleas going from gentle coaxing to angry demands that she show herself. We meet up in the kitchen after five minutes of fruitless searching and then we begin to panic.

  “W
hen’s the last time you saw her? ” my mother asks.

  “Outside,” we tell her. “But then she came upstairs.”

  “Are you sure? ”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I went first. Bramble, did you see her? ”

  “I followed you,” he says and turns to Poppy. “Did you? ”

  “I thought she was behind me,” Poppy says, but my mom is already out the back door, not interested in our excuses. We run behind her.

  The garden is tiny and with the five of us scouring every square inch, it doesn’t take long to realize that Persimmon’s not here either.

  “Where is she?” Poppy crumbles to a little quivering heap on the ground. Bramble’s chin quivers and soon he’s sobbing, too. My eyes fill with tears because I know this is all my fault. I should have been more mature. More responsible and helpful instead of so self-centered, focused only on my stupid problems at school and how much Willow is bugging me.

  My mother stands motionless in the center of the garden. She closes her eyes and then slowly lifts her arms. Soon, the air is still, the breeze is gone, the leaves above us no longer flutter, and the birds are quiet. We wait. My mother raises her head to the sky, her arms are above her now. We feel her, inside of us, pulling at us, bringing us toward her, drawing us back into her heart. Her magic is so strong that it almost hurts and we wince, whimper, moan a little, but we stay put so her power can go through us to our lost baby sister. My mother strains, calls all her children. Somewhere Grove must feel the tug of her, too. We each add our own yearning for Persimmon, making the force of our family undeniable, and then we hear her. A distant cry from behind our garden.

  We run to the fence, shouting her name. “Persimmon! Persimmon!” Bramble is the first to pull the ivy and honeysuckle away from the fence. He sees a hole at the bottom and tunnels down like a groundhog. The rest of us claw at the vines as my mother scrambles to the top of the fence. She hops over and disappears.