Extraordinary October

by Diana Wagman

  I tried my royal blood. “I’m your Queen,” I said as majestically as possible.

  “Not for twenty-two more hours,” she said. “Right now you’re nothing. Who knows what will happen when you really turn eighteen. Probably nothing. Nothing.”

  The way she said ‘nothing’ was like a stone hitting my chest.

  “You know nothing.” She went on. “You’re the queen of nothing. You can do nothing. You are nothing.”

  Each time she said it was like another hit. It was hard to breathe. I was upset—over nothing. Stop it, I told myself. Nothing is fine. I had been happy being nothing. I had my parents. I had college to look forward to and studying the animals I loved. In college I always hoped I would make friends with people like me. But as Enoki pulled me down lower and lower, darker and darker, I realized there was no one like me. I was the only one and I would never have a friend.

  “Where is Luisa?”

  She smiled and her teeth were pointier than Trevor’s. “Don’t think she cares about you. No one cares about you.”

  It made sense that Luisa wasn’t my friend. She was in on this, just a way to get me here, into this dungeon leading under the earth.

  “Walker!” I shouted his name.

  “You shot him down pretty hard. He’s not coming to save you.”

  “Walker!” I screamed again.

  “You were just a job and his job is done. He doesn’t care about you anymore.”

  I couldn’t listen to her. I had to fight back. I thought if I could get out of her grip I could run into one of the walls and transplant. But she held on tight and I couldn’t see anything and the tunnel was getting shorter and narrower. I bumped my head and my shoulders against the rough, bumpy walls. I had to stoop. There was no room to get the running start I needed. I wanted my mom. I should have listened to her. I should have gone home and explained what was happening and asked for her help. My poor mom. Her husband was a zombie and her daughter was nothing.

  If I could only see. I thought about how we take light for granted, how we flick on a switch and the lights go on and in the morning the sun always comes up. We’re so rarely in the dark unless it’s by choice, at the movies or to sleep at night. I thought about the fireflies, the beautiful, twinkling fireflies in the empty lot near my house. I was happy I’d seen them once in my life before I died. Because I was sure Enoki was taking me somewhere deep beneath the earth to kill me. I tried to concentrate on the amazing fireflies instead of what Enoki had in store.

  I heard a gentle swoosh and there they were. A thousand fireflies all around us. They blinked and sparkled and twinkled. I felt instantly better. Their light wasn’t bright but it was enough for me to see the walls of the tunnel and the path under my feet. And they flustered Enoki. She swatted at them with her free hand, but they flew in her face and in her hair and down the collar of her shirt. She hopped and wiggled. She let go of me to flap both arms at them and that was my chance. I took off. I couldn’t get around her to go back up to the river, so I ran down. Some of the fireflies flew with me to light my way. “Thank you,” I whispered. They were incredible in so many ways. “Thank you.” They brushed my face with their soft wings.

  I scurried around a bend in the tunnel and saw a dim light ahead. Maybe it was another way out. Maybe a big enough space so I could transplant. I ran as fast as I could in my hunched position. And then I was free. The tunnel spilled into open air and room to stand up. I was outdoors. A light drizzle was falling and the rotten egg smell was worse and the scene before me was not pretty.

  I stood on the edge of a forest of enormous trees like the giant redwoods in Big Sur and Yosemite, but these trees were dying. The ground at the bottom of each one was dug up and the roots were exposed. The trees leaned, close to falling over without the earth holding onto them. They were huge, and a golden color instead of reddish with no branches until way up high, but their leaves had turned brown and there were streaks of gray up and down the trunks. They must’ve been beautiful once, but on that dark, cloudy day they were sad and ominous. I looked back to the tunnel opening, a small black hole in a boulder. Enoki couldn’t be too far behind. I ducked around the far side of a tree. A small wooden plaque with a picture of a hyacinth was fastened to the tree. I looked up and through the leaves I could just see the bottom of a platform or tree house of some kind. I ran to the next tree, and the next and the next. There were plaques with pictures of flowers or pinecones or leaves on every one—like house numbers—and tree houses up above, but they all looked old and faded and frayed. The wood was cracked, a lot were broken apart. I remembered Walker telling me that fairies lived in the forest canopy, way up high, but he said it was bright and colorful and this looked so dismal. I couldn’t hear a voice or a sound. No one was living here. The sulfur smell was definitely coming from somewhere nearby. I knew this couldn’t be the Fairy Canopy. Walker had said it was exquisite. There were no flowers and everything was gray. Strangest of all, there were no birds. No squirrels or even insects. Empty. Post-apocalyptic.

  I heard Enoki yelling and pounding down the tunnel toward me. She had gotten past the fireflies. Quickly I ran to another tree, further away. At my feet was a channel of yellow water. It gurgled and bubbled and when a bubble popped the sulfur smell made me gag. The trench was manmade—or fairy made or troll made—but it was hard to imagine fairies dumping toxic sewage.

  I took a quick glance around the tree. Stupid Enoki was looking the wrong way. She ran off in the opposite direction. “I’ll find you. I will!”

  I almost laughed. I ran from tree to tree, light on my feet, my sneakers making no sound at all on the dug up earth and fallen leaves. The trees weren’t sick. Someone had done this to them. In the distance I heard a powerful machine attempting to start. It revved and died. Revved and died.

  I went from tree to tree, hiding and peeking out, as I moved toward the noise. I saw a yellow backhoe, a digging machine, through the healthier trees ahead of me. The machine started and roared so loudly I wanted to cover my ears. The big shovel in the front lifted and fell into the earth below one of the giant trees making it shudder as if it had been punched. It dug and I saw roots torn up in its claws. Was that a fairy driving? It was so gray and slumped that it couldn’t be a fairy. I circled away from the backhoe and saw a dilapidated industrial warehouse. It was made of corrugated steel, rusty and falling apart. Out the end I saw the disgusting yellow sludge pouring into the trench.

  I heard a voice yelling something that sounded a lot like “timber!” There was a loud creaking and I looked up to see one of the gray and dying tall trees rocking back and forth. As it rocked forward I saw a little house, a fairy home, plummet from the top spilling beds and dishes and chairs that broke into a thousand pieces against the forest floor. Poor fairies. The tree hit the ground with such a tremendous crash the earth shook. Then I saw movement through the trees, lots of people swarming over the fallen giant tree. I crept closer and closer.

  Slobbers formed a line with their backs to me. They guarded prisoners who were falling on their knees to dig with their hands in the ground turned up by the fallen tree. Most of the prisoners were tall and impossibly thin, but like the one driving the backhoe, they were all as gray as the coveralls they wore. I couldn’t believe these unhappy beings were fairies. One of them turned away and threw up. I saw tears—she didn’t want to dig. She didn’t want to hurt these trees. A slobber slapped her hard and knocked her down. It stood over her threateningly. Her neighbor helped her up and she went back to scrabbling in the dirt. When they found something—I couldn’t see what—they dumped it in a bag they each wore over their shoulders. None of the skinny prisoners seemed to be finding much. They weren’t strong and whatever they were looking for was gross—more than one found whatever it was and gagged.

  A slobber sent a prisoner into the woods to tag the next tree. He trudged in my direction, thick ribbons of black material in his hands. He checked the wind, the path the tree might fall, and to my surprise flew
up into the canopy. It looked like he was checking the little house to make sure it was empty. It must’ve been. He came down and tied one of the black strips around the trunk. Like a mourner’s funeral armband. He slumped further and further into the woods, marking tree after tree. I snuck over to him and let him see me. He stared, and then pretended to keep working.

  I whispered to him, “What are you doing?”

  “Searching for mushrooms,” the fairy answered.

  “Why?”

  “For her.” He wouldn’t say her name.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “It’s killing the trees and without these trees, we fairies will die. We’re already weakened because so many have come down.”

  I heard a woman, Madame Gold, shout, “Work harder, my lovelies!”

  The fairy jumped as if struck. He hurried on to the next tree.

  Madame Gold. In her flowing dress of rusty orange and red she was the only spot of color in the dreariness. She looked like an enormous flame burning on top of the platform where she stood. A dangerous, undulating, wicked flame. There were crows perched on the railings beside her, crows circling above. They did her bidding, swooping down and pecking at prisoners who weren’t working hard enough.

  Madame Gold, I thought, of course.

  Of course it was she who had sent the crows to attack me. She who had sent the slobbers. But what could she want from me? She walked to the edge of the platform and I gasped. Behind her my dad sat on a stool drooping and thin and not moving. She truly had zombie-fied him. Had the ambulance ever really come? I knew she was evil. I had known it from the beginning. I looked at my hands, red welts were appearing. The back of my neck felt hot and tight. I touched my cheek and felt a rash there too.

  The voice in my head said, “October. Come out now. I know you’re there.”

  The voice in my head, the voice I’d been hearing all along, was Madame Gold’s.

  13.

  I leapt out from behind the rock so angry I didn’t even think to be frightened of the crows or the slobbers or her. “What have you done to my dad? What are you doing to these people?”

  “They’re not people,” she said. “You know that.”

  She was perfectly calm, her voice as soft and low and controlled as when I met her. It set my teeth on edge. My stomach threatened to return all the Chinese food I’d eaten.

  “Dad!” I shouted. I ran toward the platform. Crows launched themselves toward me, ready to attack. I pointed at them. “Stop it!” They stopped in mid air. I pointed at the slobber running toward me. “Go away!” It disintegrated. The noise of the saw stopped and it was quiet. The prisoners were watching me. I put my hands on my hips and stared at Madame Gold. “Give me my father. Now.”

  “You are not Queen yet,” she said. “For now, I am in command of this place. I have much work to do in the next nineteen hours.”

  She clapped her hands. The giant backhoe started up again and another tree rocked back and forth. The prisoners were forced back to work. I made another slobber and another disintegrate, but Madame Gold was creating new ones as quickly as I was destroying the old. I had to make her go away. That was the only way to save my dad and stop this destruction.

  I jumped, almost flew, right over the fallen tree and ran to the platform. Even though I wasn’t eighteen yet, my abilities seemed to be expanding. She backed up as I clambered to the top. My father didn’t even look at me. I advanced toward Madame Gold. I was going to kill her with my bare hands. She wasn’t a fairy. She wasn’t a troll. And I was both.

  I heard her voice in my head. “Don’t bother. It won’t work.”

  “Shut up,” I said. I leapt at her and grabbed her neck. I squeezed but she only smiled at me, flapped her stupid sleeves and somehow twisted away, out of my hands. I came after her again, but at the last minute she stepped to one side and I almost fell off the platform. Again I ran at her and she pushed me—with one hand—and I went flying back and crashed into my dad. I looked up at him.

  “Help me.”

  I could see him struggling, see that he wanted to, but he was trapped. She had locked him in this new skinny body. His hair was curling, the angles in his face had returned, but his eyes weren’t blue anymore, they were a dark, murky gray.

  I stood. “I am almost Queen. My powers are growing stronger.”

  “Your powers?” She laughed, a terrible screeching sound like a dog in pain. “We’d know by now if you had any real power. You can’t fight me.”

  “I will be powerful. I had a powerful itch.”

  “Yours was nothing compared to mine.” And she laughed again.

  She had experienced the itch? But she couldn’t be a fairy. If she was, why did she want to destroy the trees? They had to be as necessary to her as to any other fairy. I couldn’t understand what made her different, what made her so big and strong and beautiful and red-haired, green-eyed. She was right though; I couldn’t fight her. Not physically. I looked down at the poor prisoner fairies.

  “Where’s Luisa?” I said to her. “What have you done to my dad?”

  “Once your mother is gone—any moment now—your father will marry me and I will be officially queen. I just have to get you out of the way—before you turn eighteen.”

  She came toward me slowly, a horrible smile on her face. For a moment her straight white teeth looked pointy like Enoki’s, pointier than Trevor’s. Just for a moment.

  She waved her sleeves back and forth slowly as she spoke. “So young,” she said. “So special. They say you’re the only one of your kind.” She nodded. “We’ll stuff you and put you in a museum.”

  I couldn’t move. She had frozen me like Dad. “St…stop it.” She kept coming. Help, I thought it as hard as I could. Like the fireflies, someone had to come help me.

  Bam! That someone leapt onto the platform and scooped me up in his arms. Trevor! He held me tight and jumped, landed on his feet and looked back up at Madame Gold.

  “Trevor!” she said. “You will pay for this. We had a deal.”

  “Screw the deal.” He took off with me still frozen in his arms.

  “After him!” Madame Gold commanded.

  The slobbers and the crows came after us. Away from her, my trance broke and I could move again. I disintegrated as many slobbers as I could. I commanded the crows to leave us alone. I looked over his shoulder. I could stop the crows—they listened to me more than her—but more and more slobbers were coming from all directions.

  “Can you fly?” I asked him.

  “You mean like a fairy? Are you crazy? We don’t need to fly. Hang on.”

  I put my arms around his neck and he took off, jumping, leaping, turning somersaults in the air and literally bounding off the trees. It was exhilarating. It was great. I hoped that a minute after midnight I would be able to do it too. We easily left the lumbering slobbers behind.

  We continued more slowly through the stumps and then the remaining tall trees until Trevor jumped down a hole under a bush. It didn’t look big enough for him with me in his arms, but inside it opened up into a smooth walled tunnel. It was like a rabbit warren with multiple passageways and burrow rooms. We were going quickly, but I saw beds and rugs, tables and chairs, like a troll apartment building. I tried to ask him about it, but he wasn’t stopping and too soon we went up and up a darker, empty shaft until we were back in the real world right by the parking lot. The moon was out and the bushes that had seemed so forbidding glittered in the silver light. It had been daylight in the Fairy Glen. Time was all screwed up. How long until I was eighteen? Without my phone, I had no idea.

  Trevor set me down gently.

  “Thank you. Madame Gold is going to be furious with you.”

  “You’re my Queen. I had to save you.”

  He took my arm and tried to drag me toward the gate into the parking lot. I was tired of people dragging me around.

  “Stop,” I commanded. And he did. “I know what you are, Trevor. I know what your sister is and why her name
is Enoki. I know who I am.”

  “Did Walker tell you?” he asked. I nodded. “He could lose his job over that.”

  “Doesn’t look like he has a job anymore—thanks to Madame Gold.”

  He sighed and then he bowed, actually bowed to me. “Your Lowness.”

  “Not yet. I don’t think. Not until midnight. But then I will be Queen and I want—I demand—to know what’s going on. First, what is Madame Gold doing in the forest?”

  “She’s harvesting mushrooms. She needs them. For something. Some plan.”

  “Why not use trolls? Trolls love mushrooms.”

  “But trolls might steal them or eat them. They’re hard to resist. They’re very special mushrooms.”

  It made no sense to me. None of it did. “Okay. Second, what kind of deal did the two of you have?”

  He kicked a rock gently and it landed all the way across the river. “No one had even heard of her until a month ago. All the trolls started talking about your birthday and wondering if you’d come back and rule the fairies or us. And then our King—your grandfather—died and the Fairy King—your other grandfather—died too and she just showed up and took over. She made Enoki her ally. She tried to make me…” He stopped and sighed. “You see how powerful she is.”

  “But what does she want from you?”

  “She wants to be Queen.”

  “How can you make her Queen?”

  “I’m next in line after you. My father was your grandfather’s third cousin.”

  I understood. If she got rid of me, then he would be King. The deal was he’d have to marry her. “But what about my dad? She said she was going to marry him.”

  “Marry him first.” He sighed again. “She’d be Queen of the Fairy Canopy. Then—when he’s gone—she’d marry me. She’d be Queen of both kingdoms.”

  I knew what ‘gone’ meant. Like my mother would be ‘gone.’ She was one sick hypnotist and there were so many things I didn’t understand. “She hates the fairies.” That was obvious.