Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  Closed in and suddenly short of breath, I grabbed Frederica’s shoulder but immediately loosened my rough grip. She was a living porcelain doll and I wouldn’t want to hurt her. But she looked at me, seeming to understand my bout of claustrophobia.

  “Where are we?” I asked her. “What was that illusion of a door?” What was I getting myself into?

  Ever patient, she smiled. “We’re in a fae safe house.”

  “Safe house?” I repeated stupidly. “Safe from what? What’s after us?”

  “We’re vulnerable, Gemma,” she said. “All the time. Innocence is delicate, and the collection is fragile, even though most humans have stopped speaking of fae as real and mischievous or evil, and instead relegated us to Disney movies.”

  Her gentle teasing didn’t ease my discomfort. “Then why a safe house?”

  “They’re for fae to come together, like for tonight’s moon gathering, or just to be able to talk freely to other local fae. It’s a community center. Of course,” she added, “as a safe house, it’s properly equipped as a shelter in case of natural or human disaster. We have rooms to sleep in down there.” She gestured down the hallway. “Well-stocked, brand-new kitchens, and rec rooms with virtual games. Locked vaults. Emergency headquarters with all the technology we need.”

  “Survival,” I said.

  “Yes. Everything we fae do is about survival.”

  “The carved wings?”

  “A marker for a safe house, but also a bit of an inside joke by a fae around the eighteenth century. It was human folklore for a long time that faerie could be killed or frightened off by cold iron. So these simple people would create weapons from iron, and put iron objects outside their homes to keep faeries out.”

  “We live in a major city,” I pointed out. “We’re surrounded with iron and steel.”

  “Exactly. And the Earth’s inner core is made up of iron. We live on iron, and have done far longer than humans did.” She laughed. “Silly. And ironic, isn’t it, that now our safe houses are protected with iron, to keep the humans out?”

  “The bakery’s a front.”

  “A fae-owned front, yes. Like at all our locations. All over the world. We know at all times who goes in and out.”

  “The magic door?”

  “We’re fae,” she said. “What did you expect?”

  Good point.

  She pushed the red door open, and we walked into a room of bright, smiling, laughing people. Or, rather, fae. But they looked like people. Two long tables were set up against one wall, with plates of brownies and cookies, a coffee machine, and a few bottles of soda with stacks of plastic cups. Fae milled around the food, laughing and chatting with each other, and hugging as they noticed one another, happy as friends.

  “I didn’t bring anything,” I said to Frederica, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say.

  She laughed, a birdsong of a sound. “I didn’t bring any food either. But I brought you.” She lowered her voice and took hold of my arm. “Maybe you could contribute some orange soda next time? It’s my favorite, but no one ever thinks to bring it.”

  “Is this everyone?” I asked, nodding my head to the group. “Every one of us in D.C.?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Not even close. There are several meetings like this in the city tonight, in other safe houses. We gather at every new moon, half moon and full moon. And there are a lot of fae who only come once in a while.”

  I opened my mouth to ask another question but realized the group had gotten very quiet as, one by one, they turned to us. To me.

  “Hello, everyone,” Frederica said. “It’s wonderful to see you all again.”

  Her greeting was warm, familiar, but rather than acknowledging her, they continued to watch me. Some moved in closer and squinted as if I was an exotic plant. Others leaned back, wide eyed, as if I was a meteor shower.

  “Oh,” one breathed. “Welcome.”

  “This is Gemma,” Frederica said, and they sighed, a breeze winding through a forest of rustling, soft spring leaves.

  I eyed the wide circle of folding chairs in the center of the room, and had the frightening thought that I might be made to sit in the center with everyone around me, ringside for a show they expected me to provide.

  “Gemma,” a young woman said. She had a tiny, emerald-green nose stud, and bright eyes to match. “You can sit next to me, if you want.”

  “Or sit with me,” a startlingly handsome black man in an azure blue dress shirt said. “It’s so nice to meet you. Gemma,” he said, shaking his head with wonder.

  “Mom,” said a little girl. I couldn’t even see her through everyone’s knees. “Is she –“

  Someone shushed her.

  A few people stepped closer and I didn’t know if I actually edged away to the door or if I just wished I could without seeming rude. I started to lift my fists to my face, ready to defend against the soft smiles and beatific gazes, but Frederica beat me to it. She held up a slender hand. The fae retreated a bit, and the room grew silent again.

  “Gemma is new tonight,” she said to them and in those four words, she made it very clear that I was new not just to the group, but to everything. She then turned to me, continuing to hold my elbow and although it was nothing but a feather on my skin, it held me steady and standing and I hoped she wouldn’t let go just yet. “Gemma,” she said to me, but clearly wanting all to hear, “we will leave you be. Leave you to be quiet if that what you need. Feel it out, ask questions if you like.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The group must have sensed my inner panic, because one by one, they moved to the circle of chairs, respectfully obeying Frederica’s unspoken command but peeking over their shoulders at me.

  Frederica guided me to the circle, where there were two empty seats together. We sat and there was silence. Not a shuffle, not a cough. I looked into my lap, picked a fuzz off my jeans and let it go. It didn’t fall, but rather hovered in the air beside me, swaying in one direction, then the other, as if trying to decide which path to take to the floor.

  I looked around again and now that fae were hushed and seating themselves, I could see the walls were covered with paintings. Paintings that glowed with colors my eyes weren’t accustomed to distinguishing, and I could taste them. The art leaped off the wall and came in close.

  And the music—gentle swaying notes I’ve never heard but have heard a thousand times. I could see the music dancing before my eyes.

  I leaned into Frederica. “The music,” I said. “The paintings.”

  She knew right away the source of my confusion. “It mixes your senses,” she said. “Synesthesia, and fae art draws it out of you, of us.”

  It was beautiful.

  “Welcome,” Frederica said to everyone then. “Welcome to our moon gathering. Tonight we meet on a new moon, heralding new beginnings and reaffirmations of what already is.”

  No kidding.

  “I am Frederica Diamond,” she said, “and to those visiting us tonight from other communities, I am the guide here and we extend the hand of kinship. We are all bound by fae blood and history, and we come here tonight to experience anew the wordless joy of our long ago, to commit once more to the task of its re-creation, and to celebrate its hopeful rebirth with our descendents.”

  I ventured a look around the circle but I wasn’t the main attraction anymore and I began to feel a tingling at my tailbone that slid up my spine and bloomed at the crown of my head. There was something powerful here, strong and supple. They felt it.

  I felt it.

  “Let’s join hands,” Frederica said, and she took my right hand in her cool, comforting one. I turned to my left and found a woman with auburn hair pulled into a ponytail with a perfect curly bounce. She was maybe around my age, wearing an orange cashmere sweater and jeans. She was a soccer mom. She was fae? She was normal. She smiled at me and took my left hand, then closed her eyes, as did everyone else, I noticed.

  After a minute of indecision, I did
the same.

  When Frederica spoke again, her voice vibrated down her arm and into my hand, and somehow, I felt it in my left hand too, even though the soccer mom hadn’t said a thing. It was being passed around, a continuous electrical current.

  I tried to recall what Mom had said. This gathering was to reconnect to the Olde Way, and to hold it—hold it for longer, I imagined, than the few moments I’d held it in my palm in the coffee shop today. It felt like a million years ago, which now seemed appropriate, because we were about to channel a million years ago. Or more?

  I became aware of a humming that was nothing at first, just a gnat passing by my ear, but the humming grew and lengthened and grew and lengthened, and in that split second before I let it take over my mind, I let go of everything, willing to give myself over to the colorful, musical formlessness, the peace and perfection, the place of nothing important and everything beautiful.

  Then I hurtled forward into a black void, shoved down into endless darkness, pushed farther and farther as the space around me narrowed. I gasped and choked with fear but I couldn’t hear myself. I was deafened, and I was going to get stuck.

  Until I hit a wall—not hard, but a blockade that bounced me off and sent me down, down, down. I couldn’t see myself. But then there was light and pictures rushing by me on both sides, fire and stars and water and people. Then came the sounds: laughter, cannon blasts, sobbing, ice cream truck tinkling, crickets chirping, dishes breaking, snow falling off a branch onto the ground. Every sound I’d ever heard twisted into one hard, bright knot and filled my brain to bursting and maybe it did, because I hit bottom, and there was nothing.

  Only my breathing. But I when I checked myself for broken bones, I wasn’t there.

  My nonexistent fingers brushed the pine-needled ground, and I pushed myself to standing on my nonexistent feet. I turned my invisible head and saw I was standing beside a woman.

  Her hair was pulled under a dirty white headwrap, and the few dark strands of her hair that had escaped were tangled. She stared at me…

  And then I was her.

  I took a deep breath, and broke into a run.

  I wasn’t sure my leather-shod feet could keep up with my intention. I weaved through trees, over rocks and logs I should have tripped over. I pushed away branches, but missed one, and it scraped my cheek and warm blood pushed to the surface. The russet wool of my long tunic should have slowed my running, shortened my stride, but it didn’t.

  I knew where I was going.

  A house, solitary and still. Slits for windows. I blinked and I was at the door. I blinked again and I was inside.

  I saw, I smelled, I felt in flashes.

  Cold, packed dirt floor.

  Single candle, burned halfway down.

  Bowls and bowls of powders and liquid.

  Dried animal heads dangling from the ceiling, a fox, a squirrel.

  Dust in my nostrils, body odor.

  A table. Half-filled bowls of foul-colored mixtures.

  Malice staining the air.

  Witch, my mind screamed. Dark witch. Evil.

  I won’t let her …

  A bowl on the shelf, then in my hand.

  Emptying it into my apron. Little tiny teeth.

  Grab them, I silently ordered myself. Get them all, don’t lose them.

  I paused. Someone coming…

  I bundled my apron into a little sack, twisting the top. Then I whirled and caught my own face in a dirty, cracked mirror.

  I saw me. I saw her.

  Peasant girl. White witch. Fae.

  Warrior.

  I lashed out an arm, upending the candle into a potion bowl.

  Flames whooshed to bright life. I looked up at the macabre heads.

  Thank you, the fox said into her brain, into mine. Go, said the squirrel. Go now.

  I fled through the door, took cover behind trees. I wrapped my fingers around bark and splinters pierced my fingernails.

  A violent scream ripped behind us, a long, hard howl of anger, defeat, surrender.

  Clutching at the apron, my relief flowed through my blood. Innocence stolen back, nefarious plans now going up in smoke.

  I laughed, and my soul pulled away, and I was looking at the woman again from my Gemma eyes.

  The fire’s golden glow lit up my companion’s smile of triumph. She lifted her apron to her nose, inhaled, and threw her head back, eyes and mouth wide open, one arm extended, embracing the sky. Wings, wet and glistening, burst from her back and wrapped around her.

  Then they unfurled, and she was gone.

  Everything grew silent. I exhaled slowly, and my breath was loud, air puffing and dissolving in front of my lips.

  Only one still, cold breath.

  Then I was yanked back. I groped at my neck, but I was tossed once again into darkness.

  Down, down, and this time I anticipated my crash landing, but my jaws snapped painfully shut when I hit earth.

  Eerie, blank landscape, like the surface of the moon, desolate, dry, horizon splitting into sky.

  I looked down at my hands again to find no me where I should have been. I wasn’t alone, and the presence with me was solid, confident. I turned to find a man, a young man, dark-haired with sharp eyes, in khaki with a name label over his breast pocket: Brown. He looked into me…

  And I was him.

  Dark Arizona desert, he thought, I thought. A dust storm hides the prisoners from view better than we can.

  I wiped at my gritty lashes and rubbed at my stubbled jaw, then turned and entered the barrack.

  I smelled, I felt, I saw in flashes.

  Heaviness of hundreds of sleeping people.

  Flashlight shining into gray desolation.

  Sweet, sweet penny candy store air. Where is it…

  Next door, no. Next door, no. Next door, no.

  Final door, inhaling confectionary sugar into my brain. Hesitating.

  Mr. Ishikawa. Pear farmer, driven inside four walls. The only pear trees now, drawn in poetry, Japanese letters of swirling black beauty. Smiling wife. Son Kevin, born here but trapped by 1942 ethnic misfortune.

  Not so many innocents here, not so many innocents anywhere now.

  I blinked and I was inside. I blinked and I knelt at the boy’s side. Handkerchief out, I swept the little tooth off the shaky table.

  A hitch of breath.

  A sudden light.

  A yell of terror.

  Kind man. Pain in my heart. My own face in the small, streaky mirror.

  I saw me. I saw him.

  Soldier. Night watchman. Fae.

  Warrior.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped. Fled out the door, ran down the hallway, burst outside.

  Dust blurring my eyes, coating my lungs, crunching in my mouth.

  Cry behind me. “Herman!” They know, they know… no escape. “Herman!” A bullet powered past my ear, then another.

  Blinding pain, my back split open, pulling off the ground and whirling around.

  “Herman?” Uncertain, frightened.

  I hovered before him. My fellow watchman. My friend. He fired. I fired.

  Heat blasted Gemma out my open back, and I was thrown face first into sand. Two bodies before me, still. One wide-eyed forever, one crumpled among transparent, gossamer silk that shimmered and dissolved.

  Grab the tooth. I pushed my formless hand through sand, grains sharp under my nails, fingers barely brushing tooth before I was pulled away into the darkness.

  Down, down, longer, deeper.

  No crash landing—only a roll to a stop on softer earth.

  Fae all around me but different, Different from what I knew, different from each other.

  Bright eyes, long ropes of shiny hair. Dewy skin in colors I’d experienced and colors I haven’t.

  Fae in groups, two groups. Somber expressions seemed out of place on every face. All their faces looking at her.

  Beside me, a fae but human, a woman who could gaze in a mirror and find herself looking back at so
meone like me.

  Nervous. Serious. Half and half, and torn in half.

  Gemma pushed out the back of my neck, and I was her.

  A whisper surrounds me, repeating, echoing, “Choose, choose, choose.”

  I—she—shakes our head.

  The fae. Light and dark. Shadow and sun.

  Midnight and morning.

  Choose…

  On opposite sides they sit.

  Divided in purpose, dividing the future.

  On opposite sides they wait.

  Choose…

  Come with us. The dark seduces with silver words on the wind. We are closer to what you are. We will make this world ours, recover what humans took. Be with us, fight for us. Become our legacy, our warrior.

  Come with us. The light beckons with golden words on the wind. You are closer to what we are. We will bring our world back, recover what humans lost. Be with us, fight for us. Become our legacy, our warrior.

  I am the warrior. Decision is mine. Destiny of warriors to come is mine.

  Moving to light. Choosing innocence. Choosing love.

  A scream splits the purple sky. “It is midnight,” the dark fae cry. “The first moment of the divide.”

  Dissolved into the night. Midnight fae, gone.

  A hum, a song closes the yellow sky. Hands join. The morning fae will welcome the day together.

  A hand reached for me, my hand reached for them. Gemma me tore away and even though I was aware that I had to leave for who knew where, and even though they couldn’t see my anymore, I reached out my own hand.

  Falling ...

  The rush of light and shapes. The rewind of sound: the machines, the screams, the laughter. Wind rustling through trees in a whisper.

  Silence. Silence. One bird’s song. I raised my eyes to open sky. One drifting cloud.

  Then I gasped, and fell to the hard floor.

  When I looked up, the florescent lights hurt. A few dozen fae were stretching out hands. I bowed and covered my head with my forearms, wrapping myself into a ball.