by Diana Wagman
“Please tell me what’s happening here. I know things are not normal. I know it.”
Oberon finished his dinner. Sleepily he climbed up on the bench and half into my lap. He looked up over the table at Walker and gave a little humpf. Walker nodded—as if they had communicated somehow.
“Okay. Okay.” Walker sighed. “I’m not supposed to tell you any of this—I could lose my job. I shouldn’t tell you; it should be your mom or dad.”
“I’m going crazy. Is that it? You’re not a psychology student, you’re a psychiatrist and you’ve been sent to take me to the loony bin. Right after my very favorite last meal.”
He didn’t laugh. “I wish that was it.” He saw the look on my face. “Of course I don’t wish you were crazy, but this is hard. And I could really get in trouble, but I don’t know what else to do.” He paused. “You’re almost eighteen.”
“I wish everyone would stop talking about it.”
“It’s an important birthday. Think about it. Have you suddenly grown taller? Do you run faster?”
“How do you know?”
“Any marks that weren’t there before?”
I thought of the flower-shaped bruise on my ankle and decided that wasn’t something I wanted to share. I shook my head. “No. Maybe. Not really.”
“October, do you have any idea how special you are?”
I looked up with a mouth full of spinach and rice, swallowed quickly and had to take a drink of water. “Yeah, right,” I said. “Average height. Average weight. Plain brown hair, brown eyes. Average—” I stopped myself from going on. It’s not a good thing to point out your average-ness to the world’s best looking guy.
“Those are human qualities,” Walker said dismissively. “They don’t mean anything.”
“They do to a human. Like me.”
He sighed. He pushed his curly blond hair back and for the first time I noticed his ears. They were a little pointy at the top. “Remember the fireflies?”
“How do you know about them?”
“They came for you. Only for you.”
He reached across the table and took my hand. I felt that flow between us, the waterway of emotions and thoughts and hopes and fears going back and forth and I know he felt it too. He pulled his hand away.
“I shouldn’t. I can’t. I don’t want to be like him. I’m not like him.”
“You mean Trevor?”
“He wants you for one thing and one thing only.”
I blushed and then Walker blushed.
“No,” he said. “I don’t mean that. He thinks… he thinks if he’s with you then—” “Then what?”
He took a deep breath and leaned toward me. “You,” he whispered with a frown. “I didn’t think you would be you. This would be so much easier if you weren’t.”
Oberon gave a little whine in my lap. I imagined he said, “Oh brother.” I looked down. The dog gave a shake, yawned, and closed his eyes. I looked back at Walker and saw him struggling, fighting with himself. I wanted to be out of that restaurant and some place, anyplace, where we could be alone. I wanted my first official kiss to be with him, only him. What had I ever seen in Trevor? Walker filled me up, my chest and my head and my heart. “Let’s go,” I said. “Where are you parked?”
“Please, Princess,” he said.
“You know I hate it when you call me that.”
“First listen.”
I waited. He looked at me and then looked away. I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to touch me. I reached for his hand, but he pulled his away.
“I need to concentrate,” he said. “I know you’re wondering why all these unusual things are happening to you. I know you think you’re going crazy, but October, listen: none of it is a dream.”
If it wasn’t a dream, then I had fallen into a Harry Potter book or something. And strangely, I was not completely surprised. This restaurant, the dog on my lap whose voice I understood, the violent crows in the park, running through walls, Enoki, and even the club were almost familiar. My shoulders relaxed. My breath slowed and I nodded. It was almost as if I had been waiting for this moment my whole life.
“Tell me,” I said.
“You’re not who you think you are,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell you more gently than that. Your parents are not who they seem.”
“I’m adopted?” It had occurred to me, as I think it does to every kid.
“No,” Walker sighed. “Your parents are just… different.”
“You got that right.”
“Do you ever wonder why your dad’s so fat?”
“That’s what Trevor asked me. He eats too much. Really. It’s not his thyroid or anything. I’ve seen him.”
“But do you know why?”
“He loves food.”
“He’s a fairy.”
“He’s gay? Oh my God!” I was stunned. “But he and my mom—.”
“No, no, no. Listen,” Walker gritted his teeth. “Don’t talk, don’t say anything, just listen.”
I nodded.
“Your father is really, truly, honestly, completely a fairy. A magical fairy. Like the kind with wings that flit around and live in the woods. The kind from fairytales.”
Dad was the least fairy-like person I’d ever seen. “Where are his wings?”
“He had to give up flying to be with your mother.”
“So why is he fat? I thought fairies were little.”
“Fairies can’t handle alcohol. One sip is too much and then they can’t stop. Those poor creatures in the cages were fairies—and addicted. Your father, amazingly, got over his alcoholism. He’s one of the very few. But he turned to food instead.”
Insane. “What about Mom? She’s so skinny she must be a fairy.”
“Your mom is a troll. Like Trevor. A troll.” He didn’t say it like he liked it. “She should be shorter and more muscled. Trolls are very strong. Life as a human has stretched her, weakened her.”
“She’s a troll and he’s a fairy.”
“Your parents have a mixed-marriage. The very first of its kind.”
“I don’t believe it.”
But somewhere deep down inside, I did. Little things made sense. The way my father looked up at the trees and frowned on a summer evening. Maybe he missed flying. My mom would get frustrated she was so weak. Once she cried because she couldn’t open a jar of spaghetti sauce. Maybe she missed her muscles.
“Your mom is a mycologist because she’s a troll. Growing and harvesting mushrooms is what trolls do. Your dad loves birds because he’s a fairy. Birds are to fairies like dogs are to people.”
I gave Oberon a pat. There was something feathery about the fur around his ears and over his eyes. “If all this is true, then what am I?”
“Unique. You’re the only half fairy, half troll in the world.”
“But what does that mean?”
“Your powers could be amazing. Fairies can fly, we can do that crazy transplant thing.”
“Where we run into walls or out open doors and end up in sand?”
He nodded. “It’s called transplanting. It’s a way we can travel safely, go where we need to go. We’re very smart.”
I interrupted. “You’re obviously a fairy.”
He smiled, shrugged to say of course. “We can talk with animals and we live in the highest tops of trees.” Then he posed for me, like an ad in Vogue, until he laughed. “Fairies are also the most beautiful creatures on the planet. All the top models are fairies.”
That explained why models were all so tall and thin. “And trolls?”
He sneered. Trolls were obviously not high on his list. “Base, vulgar, shallow, self-serving, self-important.”
“Will I be like that?”
“You’re not so far. Maybe you’ll get their very few good qualities: strength, agility, speed.”
I remembered how fast I ran when I jumped out of Enoki’s car, how falling on blacktop and rolling to my feet didn’t hurt at all.
Walker shuddered. “Trolls spe
nd their lives underground, in the dark. They stink.”
I wanted to sniff my own armpit. I had noticed Walker’s sweet, floral scent. It was nothing like mine. Maybe I was more troll than fairy. I’d learned about genetics in biology. I knew some traits were recessive, some dominant. I had brown hair and brown eyes like the trolls—mine was a little lighter, but it was nowhere near blond, or blue, or silver. My ears were definitely human ears and my feet were big for my height.
“When will I know?” I asked. “I mean, about my powers, what I can do?”
“When you turn eighteen. At least that’s the way it usually works.”
If my birthday officially started at midnight, then I had twenty-six hours to go. I was a little taller, a little thinner, I could sort of understand Oberon, but inside I was still the same old insecure me. Walker went on and on, giving me a crash course in the fairy and troll worlds. I wasn’t really listening. It was too much to get my head around at once. Transplanting was running into hard things and ending up somewhere else. Fairies lived above ground, high in the treetops in a special forest. It was only when they came to the human world that they took human size. Trolls lived below ground or in caves or sometimes dense, dark woods where the lower foliage was so thick it kept out the light. Appropriately, many trolls had mushroom names, like Enoki. Like my mom, Russula. Slobbers were those humanoid, blobby creatures that had come after us in the park. They were the pets of the trolls, made from trash and litter found in the forest.
“What about the crows?” I asked. “Why weren’t they your friend? And if I’m half-troll, why did those slobbers come after me? Why did Trevor want me to take a drink?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I was sent to watch over you, to keep you safe through the transition. And to see how much fairy is in you. I didn’t think you’d be… Look, October, I’m just a regular fairy. You are way, way out of my league.”
That was the funniest thing he’d said yet. “This has to be a joke. Where’s the hidden camera? Me? I’m just an ordinary, run of the mill, human girl.”
“How can you say that?” Walker protested. “Look at you. You’re brave, you’re smart, you’re intuitive and it’s not even your birthday yet. Plus, you are beautiful. Truly beautiful. Unusually beautiful. But you’re out of my league for another reason.”
“Isn’t that enough?” I joked.
He gave a sad smile. “The reason I call you Princess is because that’s what you are. Your mother was Princess Russula, only child of the Royal Lownesses, the King and Queen of Trolldom. Your father was a prince, Prince Neomarica, only child of his Royal Highness, King of the Fairy Canopy. When your parents decided to run off together they had to give up being a fairy and a troll and any claim to their royal titles. Now your grandparents are dead and you are the only heir. When you turn eighteen you will be Queen.”
“Of which kingdom?”
“Officially you’ll be the queen of both. But I hope you’ll choose mine.” His eyes shone remembering. “It’s beautiful. The Fairy Canopy is amazing. Flowers everywhere and colors and birds and squirrels and deer and the air is soft with this perfect smell of pine and jasmine.”
“Nice.” It was a lame thing to say, but I was too overwhelmed with everything to be clever.
“But I’m worried.” Walker went on. “Things have changed since I was there. I hear that after our King died, someone else took over.”
“Who?”
“Could be the trolls. Ugly, awful trolls. I hate to think of them in my forest.”
“Wait a minute.” I thought of my parents, the way they still held hands when they sat on the couch to watch TV, the way they looked at each other when they thought I wouldn’t notice, the little things they did for each other. They were still crazy in love. “My mother is a troll. My dad is a fairy. So my parents gave up their homes, their status, their friends and families to be together?”
“They had to. We’re not allowed to intermarry.”
“Who says? Why not? My parents love each other. What’s wrong with that?”
Walker’s open face closed down. “Trolls have no business interacting with us. They should stay on their side of the forest. The dark and ugly bottom side.”
“But—”
“Think of the trolls in that club, the way they smelled, that black hair, those enormous feet. Disgusting.”
“I’m half troll.”
“Hardly. I’m not sure you have any troll attributes at all.”
I thought of Trevor. He was handsome, even appealing when he wasn’t being creepy. I liked the nervous, excited feeling he gave me. I liked all his energy and strength. I even liked the way he smelled. I was sorry he was mean to those fairies, but Walker made me wonder what the fairies did to trolls.
“Do you keep trolls in cages?”
“No. We use more moderate methods to make them work for us. They do the low stuff, take out our garbage, clean up any mess.”
“Do they want to do that?”
He shrugged. He didn’t care. I was terribly, horribly, sadly disappointed. Walker was not who I had imagined him to be at all. He wasn’t open or accepting or as sweet as he appeared. I looked across the table at him and at that moment he wasn’t even very attractive.
“Now I know why fairies are so small,” I said. “Because they have such very, very small minds.”
I stood up, forgetting about Oberon. He tumbled to the floor with a little complaining bark.
“Sorry,” I said to him. Then I turned politely to Walker. “Thank you for dinner. I’m sorry I don’t have any money to put in for my share.” I looked at the empty dishes and Walker’s clean plate. My share was all of it.
“You don’t understand.” Walker stood up too.
“I understand plenty. We’ve worked hard in my world to make it okay for people to love whomever they choose and get married if they want to. Fairyland sounds like the dark ages.”
Walker jumped to his feet. “It’s not us. It’s the trolls. This is their fault. Why would anyone want to be with a troll?”
“My mother is wonderful. And Trevor doesn’t stink. And he’s nice to me.”
“Trevor wants to be King.”
“Fine with me.”
“Only you can be the head of Trolldom. He can’t be King unless he marries you.”
“Fat chance. Why don’t you all have elections? Like normal people? Leaders should be trained. They should have some knowledge about politics and the world and the way things work so they can actually do some good.”
In my ear, low, so low I almost couldn’t hear it, the voice—my conscience, my alter ego, whatever—whispered, “Luisa needs you.”
I waved at my ear, like at a mosquito. Walker frowned. “What is it?”
The voice continued, “Half-breed. You don’t have any powers. Come to Luisa, that’s the best you can do. She told you where to look for her.”
“October, what is it?”
“Nothing.” And just like that I had a flash, a spark that went off in my brain. I knew where Luisa was. I knew it. I should have known it all along. “I’m leaving now. I am an ordinary teenager. When I turn eighteen I will still be an ordinary human. And I like it that way. So too bad. All you fairies and trolls will just have to govern your petty, backwards, prejudiced selves by yourself. Good luck with that.”
“But I—”
“I forbid you to follow me.” I decided to use the princess thing one time. “I never want to hear about any of this again. I’m going back to my completely normal life as a plain old high school senior.”
The surprise was he obeyed me. He stayed right where he was as I—regally I hoped—strode out of the restaurant.
Outside, I took a deep breath. The sky was a dark ultramarine. Stars were visible, not a usual occurrence in Los Angeles. Were they out for me? Like the fireflies? Every little girl dreams of discovering she is a princess. I was no exception when I
was five or six, but that was a long time ago. At that moment thinking about it made my head hurt. And my heart. I was not who I seemed, but neither was Walker.
Then Oberon came running out of the restaurant barking like crazy.
11.
“Watch out! Danger! Danger! Danger!” Oberon barked and growled and his hair stood up in a line down his back. “Slobber over there!”
I saw it slinking behind the parked cars across the street. I heard a crow caw and another crow answer.
“What do I do?” I asked the dog.
Oberon took off after the slobber. A bus was heading my way. I started running to the bus stop.
“Princess!” Walker ran out of the restaurant. A crow swooped over my head.
I looked over my shoulder. A slobber leapt down from the roof onto Walker. It pulled him to the ground and sat on him, pummeling his head and face. I hesitated. The bus had almost arrived. Mr. Bob rushed out with his tray and wacked at the slobber. The tray was not a very effective weapon. Walker was getting his ass kicked. The creature was twice his size and a hundred times nastier.
“Use your powers!” I yelled at him. “Fly away.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“I’m getting on the bus.”
A crow swooped down to me and landed on my shoulder. I writhed and jumped, trying to shake it off, but it held on and pecked at my head and neck. Out of nowhere, Oberon leapt up and grabbed the crow in his jaws. Blood squirted all over me as the crow exploded under his teeth. It was gross, but the other crows fell back.
“Go help Walker!”
Oberon ran to his master and leapt at the slobber. And then a slobber grabbed me from behind. I wriggled around and tried to push its face—or where a face should be—away. It was slimy like one of those sticky, stretchy wall-walker toys. Gross, but I tried to find its eyes with my fingers just as I’d been taught in self-defense class. The whole time I was thinking, “stop it” and “let me go” and “I hate you,” not on purpose, but because naturally that’s what I was thinking. What I didn’t realize was that each time I thought, “let me go” I was growing stronger and larger. “Go away!” I finally shouted and to my shock the creature whimpered and disintegrated into a lot of unconnected trash.