Extraordinary October

by Diana Wagman

  Madame Gold went on and on. “What a waste! Your mom and dad were so disappointed in you. Forget any fairy skills, like flying or stretching or talking to animals. Forget the troll abilities like strength, agility, or speed. You can’t even play the piano or tennis or checkers. Your mom is a scientist and you barely passed Algebra I. You’re not really good at anything, are you? Little October Nothing.”

  By the time she finished I had dragged Walker down to the ground with me, sobbing, agreeing with every word she said. I had said it all and more to myself countless times. Those times when I woke up at three in the morning and lay in the dark remembering every stupid thing I had ever done, every opportunity I missed, every time I fell or flunked or messed up somehow. And there were plenty of them.

  I was ready to surrender to her. There was no point in going on.

  I took a deep breath. “If I die,” I whispered, “Let my father go back to his normal self. Marry him if you must, but let him live out in the human world with his birdhouses. Let Walker and all the fairies be free. Leave Luisa alone. And be nice to Trevor. Let him be King and you Queen and then leave him alone.” It was everything I could ask for. I had asked for it before, but this time I would die to make her do it. I turned to Walker. “If you ever loved me at all, even a little bit, will you make sure she does this?”

  Madame Gold frowned. “What kind of trick are you pulling?”

  “No trick.” I was so unhappy it was hard to stand up. “Promise me and let me have that drink.” It still smelled incredibly good, only it smelled too good for me. I didn’t deserve it, but I would drink it—and I knew it would kill me.

  Madame Gold looked at me with her head tilted to one side. She didn’t believe me.

  “You’re right,” I told her. “I’m nothing. I’m not important. But they are. Walker is smart and brave and wants to do good things for his world. My dad is the nicest man in the world and his birds need him. Luisa and Jed love each other and should live in peace. Trevor is cute and funny and deserves to be happy. Green is a pain in the ass, but he’s just a kid. Even Enoki—you should fix her, if you can.”

  Madame Gold was astonished. “They all left you here to fight me alone. Even your father didn’t love you enough. He never complained, never tried to stop me—not once.”

  I looked over at my dad. I walked up to him and hugged him, the new skinny him. He didn’t hug me back. He was trapped. He had always been trapped, from the very first day Madame Gold arrived at our house. She was right, but I was numb. She couldn’t hurt me anymore because she had already destroyed my heart. I nodded. I agreed with her. Wasn’t that enough?

  “Will the poison hurt?” I asked.

  “Don’t, October.” Walker seemed to be talking from a very great distance.

  “You would really do this?” Madame Gold held out the vial of liquid death. Her voice was almost gentle; she seemed truly dumbfounded. “You would drink this?”

  “Say you’ll do as I ask, then hand it over,” I said. “Quick, before I change my mind.”

  “This is historic!” she said. “In all the reading I’ve done, all the battles I’ve waged to get where I am, I have never seen or heard of any troll, fairy, goblin, or anyone giving themselves up. Plenty have sacrificed others, even loved ones—” She looked at Walker. “Of course many have tried to make deals. But no one has ever offered up her own life. In that small way, you are remarkably unusual.”

  I heard that. I heard the tiny lilt of admiration in her voice. And that was enough to start a little fire in my heart. She was wrong. I knew plenty of stories of humans sacrificing their own lives to save others—in shipwrecks, plane crashes, fires. In my world, the human world, people did amazing things in adversity. The guy that went back into the burning building time after time to get every last person was completely ordinary—he couldn’t fly or talk to birds or anything—until that one moment when he risked himself for another. He was just a regular guy, but out of love he did something extraordinary. That woman in the train wreck who let everyone else get out first—who helped people through the window she could have gone through right away even though she knew if she stayed she’d probably die—she didn’t have super troll strength, she just did what she had to do to save another human. That’s what she was: a human. And so was I.

  But first, before I did anything else, there was something I had to know. “One thing,” I asked, “What is your secret?”

  “What?”

  “I know you’re not all fairy.” That was an understatement. “I want to know what you really are. That’s what your secret is, right? You’re not who you appear to be. Show me. Then you can give me the drink.” I nodded at the poison.

  Walker touched my arm. He put a finger under my chin and turned my face up to his. “We can fight her,” he said.

  “No, we can’t. We can’t do anything. Not anymore.”

  “You don’t understand,” he began.

  I ignored him. “Show me,” I demanded Madame Gold. “Give me my last request. I want to see my enemy as she really is.”

  “No one sees me like that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not fighting you anymore.”

  Madame Gold considered it. Finally, she nodded to me. “It won’t take long. You’re going to be dead for eternity. What’re a few minutes more?” She waved her arms at Walker. “Go. I mean it, go!”

  Walker looked at me. I turned away. I didn’t want to see him leave. I didn’t think I could stand it. I heard the warehouse door shut and I turned back to Madame Gold. She put the lid on the vial of poison and put it in a pocket somewhere. She took off her dress, and as it passed up and over her head she suddenly disappeared. Or I thought she did. I heard a small voice. “Here I am.”

  Sitting on the floor was a tiny misshapen young woman, with strange black and silver hair, both straight and curly. She had a bizarre, ugly face. One eye was blue, and one was brown. One was big and one was small. Her nose was hooked, but her mouth tiny. She had enormous hairy feet, troll feet, but totally out of proportion and one long leg, one short. She was only three feet tall. Her arms were too long for her body. She was skinny on the bottom and barrel-chested on top. Her skin was blotchy and she put her hands on her uneven hips and scowled at me. Her expression was angry and superior and cruel, but when I looked at her I saw myself.

  “You’re a half-breed,” I said. “Like me.”

  “You think you’re so special. You think you’re the first. I was the first,” she exclaimed proudly. “My parents weren’t royalty, my father and mother had a one night stand and when I arrived, my mother gave me away to a human family—who couldn’t stand to look at me.” She did a quick spin. “You think you had trouble in high school? How do you think it was for me? Then four years ago, when I turned eighteen—all alone, without parents or fairy guides to help me—I discovered that I too had a power, the power of thought and mind control. Just like you but better, bigger, more. Plus I’m smart. I’m quick. I read about those mushrooms your mother discovered and I knew they would make me stronger. I’ve spent the last four years working on my power, developing it, discovering the right combination of red and green fungus. I can make people see whatever I want them to see.”

  “You can be beautiful.”

  She laughed, but it was the titter of a sad child. “It’s been payback time ever since. Ha! So you got the pretty parts of fairy and troll. I got the ugly. But I will be Queen!”

  She wore little girl rumba underpants with a zillion ruffles on the back and a white sleeveless undershirt with a pink rose in the center. She wasn’t a child, far from it, but I guessed that was all that fit. She waited, her one big eye staring at me, the small one squeezed shut. She was challenging me to say something rude. I wanted to, at first. But no wonder she was lonely. No wonder she was afraid that if people knew this about her, she would never find love. We were both weirdoes. Maybe my oddities were on the inside, but we weren’t so different. Neither of us really belonged anywhere. And I k
new how bad it felt not to belong anywhere. At least I’d had my parents. Her mother had given her away.

  So I just said, “What cute underpants. They’re adorable.”

  Her little mouth fell open. “Really?”

  She turned to look at the ruffles across her baby-sized ass and I jumped her. It was easy. I may not be strong or agile or anything special, but she was tiny. I pinned her down. She wiggled and tried to slide out of my grip. With my last bit of strength I bored into her mind. I showed her a picture of life as it could be. People who accepted her as she really was. Friends walking down the street with her. Someone who looked at her with love.

  “You can’t!” Her little voice was filled with tears. “That’ll never happen.”

  “It could!” I knew it was true. “I could be your friend. I would be if you weren’t such a bitch.”

  She didn’t believe me, she didn’t want to hear it, and she still wanted to be Queen. She managed to grab a corner of her dress, to reach into a sleeve and pull out another mushroom. She popped it into her mouth before I could stop her. Instantly, she grew, changed, one body part at a time, back into her beautiful illusory self. She tossed me easily to the ground.

  “As long as I eat these mushrooms, I can look like this. I can have this much power. There is no way I will ever give that up.”

  I scrambled back away from her. She was searching for the poison somewhere in her voluminous dress. If the vial was closed, I could resist it. Plus I knew her secret. Could I use it?

  “Walker!” I shouted.

  He ran into the warehouse. Had he seen? Or stayed away?

  “Her eyes,” he shouted to me. “Don’t let her look into your eyes.”

  She was walking toward me with the vial in her hand.

  “Don’t look in her eyes,” he said again. “Trust me!”

  I would never trust him again. I got to my feet. I was strong. Maybe I was more human than troll or fairy, but I could be as strong as she was. I stared right at her and she stared back at me. I defied her, thinking I could deflect whatever she did, but I was overcome by the oddest feeling, as if me, whatever made me, was draining down the back of my throat and slipping away. She waved her sleeves in my face. The top of my head was no longer mine. Then my forehead. Then my nose. I knew when she reached my chin, my thoughts would be gone and she would have me completely under her power. Like Luisa. Like my father.

  “Think!” cried Walker. “Think your thoughts! Your human thoughts.”

  It wasn’t easy, but I thought about school, and I thought about being hungry, which surprisingly I was, and I thought about college in the fall. I was sorry my skirt and sweater were ruined. I worried that my hair looked awful. It worked. Mostly. I stopped her from going further, but I couldn’t free myself completely. I kept thinking typical teenage girl musings like the look on Jacob’s face when he saw me that morning and what I would wear to graduation. It worked only because I was so ordinary, so human. And I remembered that humans don’t believe in witches and ghosts and goblins. I hadn’t believed in fairies since kindergarten. She tried, her eyes drilled into mine, and I couldn’t step away, but she couldn’t take over completely.

  I felt her frustration. We really were sisters in a way, the only two of our kind. She had gained full power and it wasn’t working. She found the vial of poison. In my peripheral vision I saw her begin to take the top off. If she opened it, I was doomed. I wanted that drink. Already, just seeing it, made me desperate for it.

  Walker ran to her, tried to knock the vial from her hand. She pushed him back—throwing him clear across the room. He staggered to his feet. He was going to come at her again. Far away, beyond my mind, I heard chirping and flapping and the

  high voices of little birds.

  “Stop her!”

  “Get her!”

  “October! We’re here.”

  The air was filled with birds, hundreds of lovely yellow and black Tanagers, led by Oberon. And with them came all kinds of flying bugs. Bees, wasps, flies, mosquitoes. I heard their clamoring little voices yelling to each other to get her, to stop her. The birds and the bugs swooped around Madame Gold, landed on her head and shoulders, flew up inside her sleeves. She swatted at them, turned around and around, got tangled in her big dress. The birds plucked at the fabric, pulled it this way and that. They pecked at her hands. The wasps stung her. The mosquitoes bit her. Through it all I could smell the poison. I could smell it and I wanted it. I watched it in her hand, open now. It tipped as she slapped at the birds and a few drops spilled. I tried to catch them, but Walker was there first. He pulled me back and we watched the drops hit the floor. They sizzled and smoked. Even as I watched the liquid burn holes in the cement, I craved it. But I could tear myself away. If I concentrated on Madame Gold, I could forget about my drink.

  I watched her smack a bird, smash it into the ground, and laugh.

  “I am ordinary,” I said. “But you are just plain nasty.”

  “You said you’d drink it! You said. You said.” It was her childlike voice. I concentrated on that voice, on the true self I had seen. “You said you wanted to do it!”

  I was absolutely sure that no matter what I did, she wouldn’t keep her word. I couldn’t save anybody by killing myself.

  She popped the lid all the way off the bottle and I had to concentrate harder not to reach for it. More of it splashed onto the floor. The birds continued to surround her.

  “Watch out!” I told them. “Don’t let the poison touch you.”

  She lunged at me. Walker sprinted around behind her and stepped on the bottom of her dress. She stumbled, almost fell, then whirled and tried to tip the poison onto him, but it got tangled up in her enormous sleeve and she only succeeded in spilling more of it.

  With luck, I thought, she’d spill it all.

  “Run, October,” Walker said. “Get out the door. I’ll stop her.”

  A look passed between us, just for an instant, and in that look I knew everything he was thinking: I’m sorry; I thought I could save you too; I really do love you. All true. But I couldn’t think about him. I had to concentrate on her, her secret, what she really was and what she didn’t want anyone to know. Like peeling an onion, I took off layer after layer. First I made her dress disappear until it seemed she was fighting in her under-wear—her little girl underwear. Then I made her hair, that glorious, luxurious red hair, go away revealing her misshapen head with the awful hair. Walker took a step away from her. I saw that Trevor had returned. And Luisa had come back too, with Jed still carrying his saucepan. They were all there to help me fight, to help me beat her, and I was glad, but I didn’t need their help. They stood behind me and watched. I showed them Madame Gold’s big troll feet covered in hair. And her legs, one long and skinny like a fairy, one muscular and squat like a troll. The birds pulled back. She was twisted, almost naked, and lopsided. Only her beautiful face remained, incredibly beautiful, magically beautiful, hard to resist beautiful. I was sweating I was working so hard, but I just had to do it. I closed my eyes and I took away her fake face and showed everyone the real Madame Gold.

  There was silence. She spun from one of us to the other. “No. This isn’t me. This isn’t really me.”

  Luisa stepped forward. “I think it is. I think the human saying is true, ‘Pretty is as pretty does.’”

  “How could you?” Madame Gold beseeched me.

  “I had to stop you. This was the only way. It doesn’t matter. Maybe now we can talk.”

  “Talk? To you?” She whirled in a circle until she was back to the beautiful, tall, imposing figure she hid behind. She held the open vial in her hand and I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t want it. She looked at Walker, then at Luisa, finally at Trevor, and they each turned away from her. She was defeated, crushed, and silent tears coursed down her perfect cheeks. It hurt me. I was the same freak. I was every bit as deformed as she was, and I wasn’t anywhere near as powerful.

  “Let’s figure this out,” I said. “There�
�s a job for you, I’m sure of it. Advisor. Head wizard. It’ll be fun.” I finished lamely.

  She shook her head. “Why you?” she asked. “Why you and not me?”

  “Really, you don’t look that bad. If you would just stop being so mean to everybody.”

  “If I can’t be Queen—”

  She brought the vial up toward her mouth.

  I dashed forward, tried to pull her arm away. She was too strong and in a single gulp she drank it all down. She screamed, a painful, sad, truly bloodcurdling scream. She fell onto the ground, writhed and squealed, shrank and disappeared under her dress. We heard sizzling and smelled something like plastic burning.

  Walker and I stared at the pile of fabric. Gingerly, I pulled it up. She was dead, her odd face surprisingly peaceful in death. Eyes closed. A little smile. She was almost pretty. I really was sorry. She was the only other creature like me in the whole world. Not that we would have started a club or anything.

  24.

  My father fell to the ground when Madame Gold died. He didn’t move and I was scared he was so connected to her that her death had killed him.

  “Dad?” I put my hand on his chest. I tried to feel him breathing. I tried to will him to breathe.

  His eyes fluttered and opened. “Pumpkin?” He was disoriented and sore all over, but I could see him in his eyes, my real Dad. He was himself again.

  Luisa yelled from the other side of the room. “October. Over here.”

  My mother was moving, waking as if truly from a sleep like death. It was all an illusion. Madame Gold couldn’t kill my mother, but she could make her look dead. My father staggered to her side and they embraced. Their love was real.