by Alex Bledsoe
“My judgment is just fine,” Bronwyn said. “It’s getting my ass kicked from the inside that makes me want to kick a little ass on the outside.”
Mandalay turned around and looked for Luke, but he was gone. He couldn’t have gotten out the front door past them, so he must have slipped out through the kitchen. He’d taken his guitar, too.
She choked at the realization, and something burned in her eyes, but she pushed it down before Bliss or Bronwyn noticed. She had huge, possibly world-shaking issues on her mind—so why did this little crush feel just as important, and far more urgent?
“You need to say something to them,” Bliss said quietly.
Mandalay looked around at the other Tufa. The ones who weren’t staring directly at her were talking in low tones among themselves. They weren’t angry, or even upset; to them, Bo-Kate’s offer sounded eminently sensible. Hell, on the surface, it did to Mandalay, too.
But she was too choked, physically and otherwise, by Luke’s departure to manage any sort of leadership. She said, “I’ve got nothing to say. You two can go.”
“I don’t think we should—”
Mandalay made a fierce, unmistakable gesture with her fingers, one that asserted her authority in a way that left no room for discussion. Bliss and Bronwyn exchanged a look, then replied with gestures of respect, and departed.
17
“Well,” Nigel said as he looked around an hour and a half later, “were one to look up ‘quaint’ in the dictionary, one might find an illustration of this place.”
They got out of the SUV, the only vehicle parked at the visitors’ center. Cricket, Tennessee, was what remained of a Victorian-era plan for an isolated Utopia of creative minds and hard workers. A dozen small, elaborate buildings lined the highway, all built in an unmistakably English style. They were painted in colorful pastels and connected by wooden sidewalks. Now, in the winter, there were no tourists visiting the café or shops, and apparently no workers, because the center’s doors were locked. Nigel rattled them again to make certain, then peered inside. He saw the dim shapes of various rustic exhibits, but no sign of movement.
“Well, it appears our drive was for naught. What did you want to show me?”
“Oh, I’ll still show you. Come on.” She led him past a restored schoolhouse, through a break in the trees, to the front porch of a green building with a bell tower.
“Is this a church?” Nigel asked.
“It’s a library,” Bo-Kate said. “All the books in here are at least a hundred and fifty years old.”
Again he rattled the locked door, which gave a bit. “You’d think they’d have better security.”
“Wouldn’t matter,” Bo-Kate said. She stepped back and kicked where the double doors met. It took three tries, but eventually they sprang open.
Nigel looked around. He saw no sign of anyone else, and no alarm sounded from within. “Uhm, Bo-Kate, my delight, is this—?”
“Come on,” she said as she strode inside. He followed.
The Roy Howard Library consisted of one big, high-ceilinged room. Tall windows rose on both sides, shuttered with heavy wooden louvered blinds. Books were displayed on the reading table. The air smelled musty and exceptionally dry; Nigel assumed a dehumidifier was responsible. Shelves lined the walls, and there were two freestanding shelf units as well.
Bo-Kate pulled a small halogen flashlight from her purse and shone it around. She strode straight to the back of the room, to the end of one of the standing shelves. “Stop gawking,” she said. “You’ve never seen a library before?”
“I’ve never broken into one, no.”
“Come here. This is what I brought you to see.”
He joined her at the back of the shelf, where a small painting in a thick, heavy frame hung. A group of fairies stood among flowers and weeds, watching the figure in the middle of the throng. This subject’s face was hidden, but he wore an odd cap and raised a double-bladed axe above his head. A hickory nut at his feet seemed to be the blow’s target.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Ever seen it before?”
“It looks vaguely familiar.”
“It’s called ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke.’”
“Ah,” he said dryly. “Fairies.”
She ignored his tone. “I want you to look at some of these faces. Try to remember them.”
“Why?”
“Pay attention, Nigel. This is Bliss Overbay, who you saw at the Pair-A-Dice. And this is her sister, Curnen. Up here is Marshall Goins. And this is Snowy Rainfield, before his hair turned white.”
“And this gentleman in the middle with the axe?”
She laughed. “I visited him on top of that mountain.” She reached into her purse, pulled out the tiny axe, and held it up to the painting. It was identical in shape and size.
“So someone painted a bunch of locals into this?”
“Not exactly. This was done in 1864.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me, then.” He kept glancing at the still-open door, expecting guards or police, or at least an irate librarian.
She shone the light on a particular part of the painting. “Who does this look like.”
He bent close to see. “You.”
“That’s right.”
“So you knew the artist?”
“No. I just saw him when he sketched this.”
“A hundred years ago.”
“Time doesn’t work the same—”
“—for everybody, as you keep saying.”
“All these people are here. You’re likely to meet them. You need to know what they really are.”
“Fairies?”
“That’s one word.”
“That’s the word you keep using. What’s another?”
“Tuatha de Danaan. But that’s a mouthful, so over time it got shortened to ‘Tufa.’”
He indicated the man in the center. “So to clarify: this old man with the axe is the same old man you visited and disemfingered.”
She slapped his hand away from the painting. “Don’t touch it!”
“Well, why isn’t it under glass?”
“You don’t put glass over an oil painting, you doofus.”
She took out a nail file and, with four quick swipes, scratched off the head from the Fairy Feller. Then she walked away, whistling. Nigel took out his phone and snapped a couple of quick pictures of the painting, then rushed to catch up.
* * *
Snowy Rainfield lay naked on his back on the bed at the Wildwood Motel while Tain Wisby, also naked, straddled him. Despite the snow outside, the room was hot, and both of them gleamed with sweat. The dim afternoon light bled in around the closed curtains, and the only sounds were the wind and their own exertions.
“Snowy, why don’t we do this more often?” Tain asked, brushing her bangs back from her face.
“Your dance card’s usually pretty full,” Snowy said, lifting her with his hips.
“Yeah, but I’d always work you in.”
He laughed as much as his heaving chest would allow. “That’s mighty considerate of you.”
“When I was born, the night winds told me I could either have a great memory, or be a great lay.” She frowned in pretend confusion. “Aw, shoot, now I forgot what I was going to tell you.”
He laughed. She bent slowly and kissed him until they both had to break for air. “Working you in is the best I’ll ever be able to do, Snowy, you know that,” she said. “I am who I am.”
“I know. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Really?”
“Really. And you and I both know that if I hung around too much, you’d get bored with me.”
He reached up and cupped her breasts, at which she sighed and moved her hips against him. He gasped and gritted his teeth, but he knew she wasn’t ready to let him finish. She would hold him right here, on the edge, until she got what she wanted. That had been the danger of this rendezvous, and while it certainly had it
s attraction, he also knew how thoroughly in her power he’d placed himself. Tain had the talent of being whatever the man with her wanted her to be, and at this moment, she was the most beautiful and arousing thing he’d ever seen. And he wanted to finish in her so bad, it was almost agony.
Still, he’d experienced it before, and he was a Tufa like she was, so his life and soul weren’t in danger. Men from outside Cloud County, with no Tufa blood in them, found themselves so obsessed with Tain that her subsequent disinterest in them led to broken marriages, shattered families, and suicides. Tain had a body count higher than most people knew, but she remained blithely unconcerned. Her conscience was clear; she never seduced anyone who didn’t make the first move.
Snowy rose on his elbows. “Can we talk now?”
“Talk?” she said with a sensual laugh. “Sure. You want me to tell you what it feels like to have your cock inside me?”
“Honey, I’d like nothing better. But I mean about your cousin.”
She lowered herself so that her breasts were in his face. He took one hard nipple between his lips and sucked. She hissed at the sensation and rotated her hips against him. “You sure that’s what you want to talk about, Snowy?”
“I’m sure,” he said, his mouth still full.
She sat up, put her hands on his chest, and pushed him flat on the bed. “What do you want to know?”
“How did she get back here?”
“I don’t know, honestly. She just showed up and moved back into her old room with her boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Some black English guy.”
“What did she say?’
“Nothing, really. You know how she is. She talked a lot, but it was all just … snark.”
“What did they do today?”
“Beats me. I’ve been at work.”
“Is there a way to stop her?”
“Shoot her in the head like a zombie? Other than that, I don’t know of one.”
“And you don’t know what she’s up to?”
“No, I swear. But she went somewhere alone last night.”
“Without her boyfriend?”
Tain nodded. Then she bent and kissed him furiously, crushing their lips, mashing their teeth against each other. His hands slid to her hips and pulled her hard against him as he rose beneath her.
He kissed around to her ear and whispered. “You must have some idea where she went last night, Tain.”
She pulled his hand between their bodies to cup her breast. “She’s family, Snowy. I can’t rat her out.”
He gently pinched her nipple, and enjoyed the shudder that went through her whole body. “She’s not family anymore. She was sung out. And if she’s back, it’s bad for everyone.”
She sat back up and slid her hand between them, to stimulate herself. “I do know that when I went outside to ride the night wind.…” She sucked in air and yanked her hand away, not wanting to come yet. “I didn’t see her.”
He watched her face wrench into what might have been a desperate grimace of pain as she fought to hold back. He had to concentrate with all his might to follow her implications. He used his thumb to pick up where she left off. “She went into slow time?”
“Oh, God … oh, Jesus,” Tain said. She grabbed his wrist, but couldn’t bring herself to pull his hand away. “Yes … I think so. I think there’s … something or someone hidden in there … waiting for her.…”
And then they couldn’t resist any longer, either of them. Their mutual cry would’ve summoned the police or at least the guests in the adjacent rooms, if the woman who ran the motel hadn’t known all about Tain and put them far away from anyone else.
Later, exhausted, they lay entwined on top of the covers, the musky smell of their bodies enveloping them in something neither of them really expected.
Snowy kissed Tain’s shoulder. “I could fall in love with you pretty easy, Tain.”
She didn’t move. The words hung in the air, echoing like a scream or a song.
“I’d be a terrible wife, Snowy,” she said at last. “And a worse mother. I’m not meant for just one man. I’ve always known it. And the thing is, I like it.”
“I know. I’m trying to decide if I can live with it.”
She rose and looked at him. In the low light, his white hair looked silver. “I can’t be with someone who can just ‘live with it.’ You’d start to resent it sooner or later. If you want to be with me, you have to like it, too.”
“Like that you go out with other men all the time?”
She nodded. “And like that I stay home with you.”
He looked into her eyes. They had known each other since they were children, and watched each other grow up. Snowy had seen Tain move among all the Tufa boys and many non-Tufa ones, leaving broken hearts and secret smiles in her wake. He had the same Tufa nature as she did, but Tain had it in a special way, and there was no changing it. She was meant to be a fairy lover, immune to love herself but inspiring it with all the men who crossed her path.
“Do you say this to every man who sticks around after you’re done?” he asked.
She smiled a little. “Sometimes. If I think it’s what they want to hear.”
“And you think it’s what I want to hear?”
“You brought up love.”
He ran his fingers through her black hair as much as the tangles allowed. “You almost had me there, Tain. Almost.”
“Oh, Snowy, I can have you whenever I want.” She kissed him, nipping at his lower lip. “See?”
He looked down and saw that he was, in fact, ready for action again. “Well, look at that,” he said. He rolled atop her, and they slowly moved their bodies together, no urgency this time, just a lazy, mutual enjoyment.
* * *
Leshell Harris came into the Pair-A-Dice and waited for her eyes to adjust. She heard murmuring and whispers, and at first thought they were directed at her. Then she saw her stepdaughter seated on the piano bench, staring at the keys but not touching them.
Parenting a girl who could, at any time, switch from being a typical preteen to the leader of her entire people was challenging, and at times like this, only the immense affection Leshell felt for the girl kept her from running screaming into the woods. She worked her way around the room.
Mandalay had been less than a year old when Leshell and Darnell started dating, barely two when they married, and so by all rights, Mandalay should think of Leshell as her only mother. Yet even as a preverbal child, at times Mandalay would look out at the forest or sky and Leshell knew she was seeing things no one else could. As the girl grew, Leshell found those moments more and more unsettling, contrasted as they were with times of normal childhood activity. And although she didn’t do it anymore, for a time Mandalay had prefaced statements with, “Mommy told me…,” and Leshell knew she hadn’t meant her. The spirit world spoke to the girl, and everyone knew it.
She skirted the wall until she reached the piano. “Who called you?” Mandalay asked before Leshell could speak.
“Bliss. She told me about the scene with Bo-Kate. She was … concerned.”
“She should be.” Mandalay continued to stare at the keys. “I’m lost.”
Leshell sat down on the bench beside her. “I assume you don’t mean like the other night.”
“No.” She trembled as if she wanted to say something, but couldn’t decide where to start. “I’m lost just sitting here.”
Leshell stroked the girl’s hair. “Because…?”
“Because the ancient me and the current me are both out of their depths.”
Leshell scooted closer. “I can’t speak to the ancient, but I might know something about the current.” When Mandalay didn’t continue, Leshell guessed, “Is it about a boy?”
Mandalay half smiled. “I’m that much of a cliché, huh?”
“Is it a cliché to fall down when you’re learning to ride a bike? We all do it, and it’s pretty damn scary the first time for everybody.”
<
br /> Mandalay turned and looked at her. The ache in the girl’s eyes shot straight to Leshell’s heart. “He ran out on me,” she said softly. “He didn’t even stay to see how things turned out.”
“He’s a child.”
“So am I.”
“Not in the same way. Imagine if you didn’t have all that time in your head, that instead you had only twelve years to pull experience from. That’s what he has.”
The girl’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “So it’s always going to be like this? I’m going to be this different to every boy I meet?”
“I can’t speak to that. I’m just saying, him being scared makes sense. Only you can decide how it changes what you feel about him.”
Mandalay put her arms around Leshell. Her stepmother hugged her tight. “You’ll be okay, baby girl,” she said softly.
And Mandalay felt, for that moment, that she would be. Then she remembered Bo-Kate. And not even Leshell’s hug could help with that. It was time for Mandalay to get over herself and get back to work.
18
An hour later, just after sunset, Bo-Kate strode into the Catamount Corner as if she owned it—which, of course, was part of her plan. She whistled cavalierly as she looked around at the excessive countrified decorations, imagining the bonfire all that lace and pastel-painted wood would make. Nigel locked the front door behind them and stood with his back to it, again in “intimidating black guy” mode.
Peggy Goins came out of the stairwell that led to the second floor holding a bundle of towels. She froze when she saw the other woman.
“What do you want here, Bo-Kate? Planning to burn me down, too?”
“Is something on fire?” Bo-Kate asked innocently.
“You best get on the road,” Peggy said, putting the towels on the front counter. “’Bout the only thing that’ll save you is to not be here when they come looking’.”
“When who comes looking? The First Daughters? The Silent Sons? Some other inane secret club? Maybe the Boy Scouts or the Brownies?”
“Get out, Miss Wisby,” Peggy said. She now stood defensively in front of the counter, feet apart and fists clenched.