Quite Contrary

by Richard Roberts

  Ah, I got it. He blamed himself. He might be right. Eh. I’d gotten locked in a crawlspace by myself. But it meant a lot to him, because his voice was full of high pitched awe as he went on, “I didn’t think you’d get out of that alive, Miss Mary. I’ve seen people get lost before. They need someone to take care of them, or a Wolf gets them. You played him like you were just waiting for a story of your own. You didn’t break down at all. You’re amazing.”

  Oh, hell. He had to come out and say it. He had to call me brave.

  I stopped. The tree next to me stood especially tall, and had a little space around it not completely filled with bushes. “If I’m going to keep doing this, I’ll need food, Rat. You can do that for me, right?”

  “Here?” he asked in surprise, “I think so. There will be something.”

  “Now, Rat,” I ordered him, my voice as hard as I could force it.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Mary. I didn’t think,” he apologized as he slid down my dress. “I’ll find you food and be back in a blink.” He hit the ground and scrambled off into the darkness.

  The world spun as the dizziness hit. I was so fucked. I couldn’t see any way out of this. I was lost, and not in the pretty way, Rat-In-Boots meant it. There was no way home, no way back to anything I even recognized. I hadn’t had much, but I’d lost it all now. And what had I gotten? A rat and a wolf. Not even a wolf, a monster psychopath of hair, muscle, and teeth. All those pretty words meant ‘I’m going to enjoy killing you’, and the rat said it would happen, guaranteed. Mary Guisse Stuart, you are so stupid. If someone pointed a gun at your head, you’d stick it up your nose and dare them to pull the trigger. I was going to die.

  I heard my breathing rasp, and forced myself not to snuffle and whimper. I couldn’t stop the tears that burned the edges of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, but I could put my hands over my face to hide them.

  My body was going numb. I fell back until my shoulder hit the big tree, and slid down to sit on one of its roots. I didn’t want to feel anything. Stop thinking, Mary. Just let yourself be afraid and it’ll be over sooner.

  Eventually, I swear the tree started talking. In the voice of a sleepy old woman it told me, “Once upon a time, a boy sat next to me, right where you are. He cried, like you’re crying. Every tree has one wish, and I gave mine to him. He wished for boots that would take him far, far away. I granted that wish. He’s gone, and so is my wish, but I can give you his old shoes. He buried them right next to you.”

  I rubbed my nose, looking like an idiot I’m sure, and peered up suspiciously at the old tree. It stood there, like trees are supposed to stand there. “Shoes? You’re giving me shoes,” I snarked. What do you say to something like that? Then I remembered I must look like a mess, and rubbed my face on the inside of my cape. It would make a smeary mess out of my Halloween makeup, but I wouldn’t look like I was crying when Rat-In-Boots got back.

  Rat-In-Boots got back. The tree hadn’t said anything. He came back dragging a bag, and inside the bag was a ham. Seriously, a ham. A cooked ham. “Where did you get this?” I asked him. I bit in sharply. A honey glazed baked ham.

  “A traveler in the woods hung it up from a branch to protect it from bears. He should have hung himself up the same way,” Rat-In-Boots explained. Solemn, but no big deal. That must happen all the time in fairy tales.

  You know, like wolves swearing to kill you.

  Or trees offering you shoes.

  I put the ham down. My stomach was too twisted up from crying, but I could distract Rat from noticing that. “If a tree offers me a pair of shoes and then shuts up again, do I trust it?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he squeaked immediately, “It means you’re a heroine, not a victim. Magic is drawn to you. Where are these shoes?”

  “Buried right here, I guess,” I answered him, standing up and prodding the ground with my toe. “They’re not magic. They’re just ordinary shoes. She gave the magic shoes to someone else.”

  “That’s still how it’s supposed to work. Can I have the shoes, Miss Mary?” He pounced on the spot as eagerly as he’d pounced on the idea of me attracting magic. Little pink hands flung away dirt with impressive speed.

  Still. “Not likely,” I corrected him. “If they fit, I think I’m a little more in need than you are.” I lifted one foot and wiggled my toes. The tiny white socks that had come with the Red Riding Hood costume were covered in dirt and ragged already.

  The boots peeked out, and I crouched down and helped yank them free. Wow. Just wow. I’d just scored a pair of massive leather clodhoppers, worn and ugly but as tough as iron and an inch thick on the soles. And they actually looked the right size.

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry,” babbled Rat in a rush. He didn’t look at all surprised as I slid my feet into both shoes and found they fit perfectly, as snug as gloves. What were the odds?

  In a fairy tale? Pretty high.

  I laced the shoes up tight, and despite the bleakness of it all, I started to grin. Just a tiny bit, but the crying had left me washed out, and washed out pleasure was as easy to feel as washed out despair.

  “These are shoes,” I conceded, lifting a foot. It was like wearing a brick, the boot was so heavy. “Thanks, tree. I think I’m in love with these shoes.”

  The tree didn’t answer, but these leather battering rams on my feet were all the magic I could ask for.

  I’d recovered enough to take charge of my life again. Yeah, right. Well, I could get moving.

  “We’re still in fairy tale land?” I asked Rat-Not-In-These-Awesomely-Ugly-Boots.

  “We’re in the woods, Miss,” he explained, “THE woods. The ancient, the original. When you step under the trees and you don’t know the name of the forest or how big it is or where you’re going, that’s where we are now. The woods used to surround Man on all sides. Now, they’re hard to find. This is the breeding ground of fairy tales.”

  Great. My rat had a streak of poetry. Maybe we don’t get the rat we deserve after all. “My question is, where else can we go? Zombie horror might be worse than wolves, but I’ve got to have more options.”

  He stood on a tree root and scratched behind his head. Crap, he was adorable. Why do other people not like rats? “In theory, everywhere, Miss Mary. Every kind of story or land of magic a little girl could wander off the path and end up in is available, if we can find it. That’s the difficult part. This is the part of the world outside of maps. If there’s somewhere you want to go, I could look for entrances.”

  “I want to go somewhere that talking serial killer wolves aren’t welcome.”

  Okay, he didn’t want to answer that. He looked off into the trees instead of at me, and he paused before answering. “I could take you home, or try to. Where you’re from, wolves aren’t allowed to talk. That’s the only place you’d be absolutely safe.”

  “I’m not going back home.” He’d better not argue.

  He didn’t. “Then if we keep moving, we’ll find somewhere,” he went on awkwardly. “It’s easy to get from fairy tales to lands where children are welcome and something as evil as the Wolf—”

  “They don’t want me in Oz either, Rat,” I told him.

  “It’s a darker place than you think, Miss Mary,” he answered sheepishly.

  “It’s not fucking dark enough to want someone like me,” I growled, anger stirring bitterly inside me again. “I’m not the kind of girl who gets to visit Wonderland.”

  He winced at the word ‘fucking’, and in a very carefully calm voice asked, “Miss Mary, could you please not swear? That kind of language can get you killed here.”

  Bile churned inside me, hot fury that made me yell, “Who the fuck are you, my fucking mother? I’ll goddamn fucking talk however I want! I just told you I’m not some bullshit brain dead retard girl who skips when she walks and never fucking talks back, and I’m not going to fucking pretend that I fucking am!”

  He shrank as I yelled, his loaf-shaped body becoming less long and more round, but his voice
stayed the same, calm but also emphatic as he asked, “Please?”

  That little bastard. My fists clenched. My shoulders and chest got so tight I felt like I’d rip apart from how much I wanted to hit him, or scream at him, or stomp away. “I don’t like to be led by the nose, Rat. You get one ‘please.’ Just one. You know that? You just wasted it asking me to watch my language. Is that what you want?” I had to force the words out, and I heard my voice rasp.

  His tiny dark eyes stayed straight on mine. He meant this. He really meant it. “It’s worth it, Miss Mary, if it makes you safer. You don’t mind if you look like a bad little girl, but the people who do will kill you the moment they hear a word like that out of your mouth. Worse, they won’t chase you or make a story out of it. They’ll just kill you out of hand.”

  “G—” I started, then ground my teeth and rephrased what I’d been about to say. “Don’t try this again,” I hissed at him.

  “Thank you,” he replied. His voice sounded as quiet and humble as mine sounded strained, and if he wasn’t honestly thankful, I couldn’t tell.

  F- RRRRG. Don’t choke on this, Mary.

  “We’re leaving, Rat. That Wolf was too smart not to figure out I’m not coming. We’re getting away from here. I know this much, the Wolf rules the woods. Absolutely anywhere we go is better than here, so we’re going.” I’d already started moving as I barked all of this. I had pretty long legs for my age. I let them swing, walking as fast as I could and making him scurry to catch up. I had one tiny comfort, at least. These shoes were just awesome. They crushed thorn bushes like origami, and I couldn’t feel a single sharp rock or jagged twig. Under these lead soles, the earth was stamped flat. It was great.

  The trees opened up again. This time it wasn’t to create space around a particularly large tree. Instead, the bushes ran out, giving way to brown grass that made a blatant backdrop to a circle of mushrooms. Big, fat mushrooms, but also blackened and sagging.

  “Walk around that. It’s a fairy ring. Fairyland is dangerous,” Rat-In-Boots squeaked behind me.

  He’d asked for way too much already today. I stomped right up to the ring. I would have stomped through it, but a boy dropped out of the trees in front of me, somehow without breaking his neck.

  He looked older than me, but not by much. He was a mess, too. Not much dirt, but his dark hair went everywhere and brown leaves and scraps of fur covered so much of him that I wasn’t sure what was clothing and what was just stuck to him. Still, he smiled gaily and declared, “Welcome, mortal girl! If you will tell me what brings you to the gates of the Fae, I will escort you through our lands with pleasure.”

  He was cute. Not that I got drooly and stupid over boys, but his face was pretty without being at all a girl’s, and he had an infectious smile, showing a lot of little white teeth. He took my hand in his as I stepped over the mushroom threshold, and reached out to lay his other hand on my shoulder.

  I kicked him in the balls and listened to him wheeze as he fell over in a tight little ball. Rat squeaked with alarm. I kept walking, and the grass rustled as Rat ran up. The weight of him jerked on the back of my skirt as I stormed through the center of the ring and the forest peeled away and became a very different forest.

  he mushroom ring was gone. I knew the way into fairyland wouldn’t be the way out. I’m not that ignorant. Fairyland itself was a big step up from Rat-In-Boots’ “the woods.” Scenic trees, springtime green and lots of brilliantly colored flowers, and spaces where the sky showed between the canopy. All of that should have been cloyingly cute, but here they painted a schizophrenic’s arboretum. A few things, like a giant rubber duck, just didn’t fit. Mostly there was no coherent sense of scale. The rubber duck was as big as a hill, a stand of tall grass proved to be teeny tiny pine trees, and crows thronged on the branches of a thistle as tall as a lighthouse. Acorns scattered around the path were merely the size of footballs. I saw trees the right size, grass the right size, and most things matched, but everywhere else I looked something was the wrong size or out of place.

  Pretty cool. I kept walking down the nice dirt path, which made a welcome change from the tangled woods. A few more footsteps and the trees and flowers to the right of me lined up at a perfect angle to form a picture of a deformed, leering face.

  I liked this place. Finally, a little of the magic I’d supposedly wandered into.

  I watched the face slide apart into pieces over the next few steps, proving that it had been nothing but an illusion. A weight tugged at the back of my skirt as Rat-In-Boots started to climb.

  “You kicked him!” he squeaked from somewhere behind my hip.

  “Don’t you dare give me any trouble about it,” I warned him, my momentarily lighter mood snapping.

  But the rat just asked, “How did you know?”

  Okay. Maybe, just maybe, I’d gotten that right rat after all. As much as I didn’t want to, I explained myself. “He was being too nice. I didn’t trust him. The first thing he did was put his hands on me. Not only was he up to something, he was ready to use force when I tried to get away. He was so nice and happy to see me that he just had to grab my hand? Yeah, right.”

  “The Wolf was anything but nice. You didn’t trust him, either,” Rat probed.

  “I don’t trust anybody. Is that what you want to hear?” I barked as my temper snapped. Yes, he respected my judgment, but push, push, push! “Don’t give me the goody two shoes lesson about not everybody being like that. Everybody is like that, and you know it. Everyone is using you for something. You’re using me. Do you think I’m stupid and I wouldn’t notice? You were waiting for me in that horrible hole in the ground I’m sure you don’t hang out in for fun. Now you’re suddenly my best friend and you’ll die for me. Yeah, you mean it, sure, but you get something out of it, right?”

  Was he going to argue anyway? It had been a terrible night, and my temper glowed inside me as I waited for him to try.

  “Pride,” he answered finally. I stopped feeling so tight. He wasn’t stupid either, and that was a relief. “I get to prove how smart I am, that like Puss-In-Boots before me I’ve figured out how it all works. I was born in a fairy tale, and I’ve learned how stories go. If I make a story go your way, then it’s my story too.”

  I answered him with a grunt. If he’d told me it was really all for my own good, I’d have known he was a liar. Instead, he’d admitted the selfish part, and left out the good. He wanted his life to be worth something, so he’d decided to help someone. I didn’t have room to give someone grief who just wanted to be proud of himself.

  I wanted to let it drop, and I got my wish. The pretty-faced moron boy dropped out of a tree again in front of me. How did he even—no, fairies, right? He didn’t land nearly as gracefully this time, like maybe he was sore. Heh.

  “Now, not so fast, my lady,” he said, holding out his hand to block my path. At least he didn’t try to grab me this time. “You and your talking pet smell of magic. I must tell my Queen what walks in her domain before you may pass in freedom.”

  My lips were already parting to tell him about his Queen and his mother, but—RRG. I’d promised the rat. He’d said ‘please.’ He’d better be smart enough to do more than push my buttons.

  “I don’t know rat squat about magic, but apparently I’m Little Red Riding Hood and the vermin hanging from my costume wants to be the next Puss-In-Boots. I’m guessing your magic is the two fairy tales with their fists around our throats,” I answered.

  “I was raised by fairies, my lady. Neither you nor your pet are fairies, despite your magic,” he returned, smug. He thought he was being clever.

  But not, like, sarcastically clever. I reached down to Rat-In-Boots, and as my hand came near he grabbed the sleeve of my costume and skittered up to hang by my shoulder. “Why doesn’t he know what I’m talking about?” I asked Rat.

  “He’s a human stolen as a baby and raised by fairies. He doesn’t know any story but his own,” Rat answered in a hush, “Most people don’t. I lea
rned, because I had to in order to control your story. The life I know isn’t the life he knows, because fairy tales and fairyland aren’t the same.”

  Leaf boy’s patience started to crack. “It isn’t polite to talk about someone as if they can’t hear you, my lady.”.

  I kicked him in the balls again. It seemed to catch him completely by surprise. My perfect shoes must have hit him like a mallet, because he fell over, half curled but so rigid he couldn’t even yell.

  If he had, I wouldn’t have heard it. Fairies were everywhere, laughing as if they’d just seen the funniest thing in their entire lives.

  The creepy kid had come out of nowhere. The fairies, it turned out, had been there all along. Crows fell off the giant thistle, spraying feathers and kicking their feet as they were revealed to be hunched little gnomes in bird suits. Acorns bounced with glee, and the top split off one to let a tiny, willowy green girl beat the ground with her fists. Something huge and yet squat lost its balance and fell out of its hiding place behind the rubber duck, hitting the ground with an echoing boom. Someone wire thin and built of bits of straw and twig unfolded out of the tall grass, pointing at the boy I’d just kicked as it made shrill, squeaky giggles.

  I’d arrived in freak show central. These things were ugly, and there wasn’t a pretty little blond Tinkerbell to be seen.

  Mind you, if there had, I’d have stomped on her.

  “What the heck?” I yelled.

  “Fairies aren’t like people,” Rat-In-Boots whispered from my shoulder, “Don’t try to predict them. They’re at the same time the smartest and the stupidest people you’ll ever meet. A fairy can whisper words over your cradle that will twist your life around until you give her an orange on your eighteenth birthday, then fall for you giving her a yam.”

  “Crazy fairies, right,” I agreed as if I’d known that already. “I meant him.” I gave the boy another kick. Hardly more than a nudge. He was still curled up with his eyes closed, locked in pain. “It’s not that hard for a boy to dodge. He didn’t try!”