“That’s Tinkerbell. A piece of Tinkerbell. You know how your sister loves Tinkerbell.”
He had no clue what Tinkerbell was or if his sister loved it. “What’s it for?”
Mom smiled. “I don’t know yet. But it told me it could help us.”
“Right.” He didn’t sound half as sarcastic as he wanted to.
She reached up and actually patted his head. He hated when she did that. She was the one who didn’t understand the world and had to be taken care of and have things explained to her but wouldn’t listen. He might be the kid, but he was the grown-up around here. “If you have a talent you should use it,” she told him, like he hadn’t heard that a million times. Like she was talking about a good pitching arm or being able to fix cars. “Sometimes there’s just a thin line between survival and disaster. Sometimes it’s so thin you can’t even see it. Remember that, son. My abilities help this family stay afloat.”
“Terrific, Mom. That’s really nice. Can we go? Margaret’ll be home and I gotta take a leak.” The second part was very true. He hoped the first part was.
If he started off first there was a good chance she’d get distracted and stop following him and he’d have to go looking for her and Margaret would either be at home alone or not at home and wandering around somewhere by herself. Finally they were heading more or less toward the apartment. Felix sometimes worried that Margaret would forget where they lived today, or that he would. Mom seemed at home everywhere, which was really annoying and kind of creepy.
He was tired of walking but most of the time they couldn’t afford bus fare and he couldn’t get a job to buy himself a car because he had to watch out for his sister and his mother. When he complained Mom just twirled her fingers at him and said walking was good for your mind and your soul. She had her arms stretched out and her head thrown back, singing high and loud, and people on the sidewalk were detouring around her, even the homeless people. She actually squatted by one of them and invited him to sing with her, and he swore at her and walked off. Too crazy for the crazies. Felix trudged along, lugging her bags of junk and worrying about Margaret and hating it that he had to lug and worry.
They could be wearing decent clothes, eating good food, living in a nice house—still living in that house where he’d actually had a little space of his own. But no. She’d rather shop in thrift stores and wear smelly old clothes and eat obnoxious things and mumble under her breath. “Why can’t we have a better life?” he’d say.
“It’s a resource,” she’d say. “Like clean water. You have to be careful or you might use it up.”
“Why do you let people think you’re crazy? Just show them what you can do—it’ll shut them up!” Never mind that she was crazy.
“It’s an art, that means it’s personal, and nothing you can really explain. You don’t know why it works, it just works. And what may work for me may not work for you. That’s what people don’t understand. They try it out, it doesn’t work for them, and they stop believing.”
“Why do we have to live this way?”
“It’s all about luck. You try to line everything up proper, and the luck runs your way. But when it runs your way, you got to remember that means it runs against somebody else. So you have to be careful. You have to be responsible. You don’t want to hurt people, but sometimes you have to just to survive, just to make do for you and yours. And sometimes maybe you let go of the luck so that it’ll work for somebody else, because that’s the right thing to do. You’ll figure it out, Felix. I have faith in you.” Just what he needed.
Could you go to the media with a story about a mother who was a witch and had special powers but wouldn’t use them for the betterment of her children? Devising what he’d say and quietly rehearsing the interviews he’d give to the press occupied his mind so he could tolerate the rest of the walk back to the apartment.
Where Margaret was not.
Felix knew she wasn’t there before Mom opened the door. Something about the energy. He didn’t like noticing energy. He also knew Margaret was in danger. He didn’t know how he knew that. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just imagining the worst, and that would not make it happen. He wasn’t the witch of the family.
Just as he dropped the bags onto the already-full couch, the handle of the health-food bag broke. It wasn’t his job to chase after the bottles that rolled across the floor. Mom talked to them as she gathered them up. She didn’t seem worried about Margaret. She seemed kind of excited or something. He didn’t have time right now to try to figure her out.
On Margaret’s bed in the corner, her lunch bag was open on top of homework papers. So she’d been home after school. She hadn’t been doing her homework, though. Toys were out of the trash bag she kept them in. Crayons and colored pencils were scattered around, and papers with drawings on them of her stuffed animals and dolls with legs going this way and that, kicking at the big empty spaces on the page.
“She didn’t eat her sandwich.” Mom was digging through the bag.
He took the neatly wrapped sandwich away from her. “Mom, she never eats her sandwich. And nobody will trade with her. She throws it away at school or on the way home. Maybe today she was—distracted.” Maybe she was kidnapped. Maybe she was—
“Why not?”
He unwrapped it, took it apart, spread the halves like a biology lab dissection. “Look at this—broccoli, grapefruit slices, and what’s this paste made out of—honey and hummus? And I used to think this was bean sprouts, but it’s that weed from the backyard, right? Gray bread, like chunks of papier-mâché. Who eats like this, Mom?” He thought about keeping it for evidence.
“It’s full of essential nutrients! What has she been eating, then?”
“I give her money. From little jobs I get. And sometimes I just take it from your purse.”
“Stealing is bad karma.” She was looking at the floor.
“Like you never steal. And starving your kid—I bet that’s bad juju too.” He’d heard that word in an old Tarzan movie on TV and had just been waiting to use it on her. “She’s gone, Mom. We’ve gotta go find her.”
She didn’t try to pretend Margaret might be at a friend’s. Margaret didn’t have any friends, because she didn’t want anybody coming here. Felix had been the same way, so by now he didn’t know how to make friends. Once Margaret was back safe, he might just point that out to Mom.
Mom said suddenly, “You look around the room, think about where she might have wandered to. You’re smart, you’ll figure it out before I can. I’m going out to get a tattoo.”
Felix stared at her. “Mom. Margaret’s gone missing.”
“And we’ll find her.”
When she rolled up her left sleeve Felix realized it had been years since he’d seen her bare arms. It was covered by a series of mostly geometric tattoos, some maybe professional, a lot of them obviously amateur—it wouldn’t surprise him if she’d done it herself with a sewing needle dipped in plant-based ink. Gross.
“Look.” He didn’t want to, but he looked. There was a tattoo of a sailing ship. “Look,” and there was a fairy with a wand. “I’ve been tattooing pieces of your and your sister’s lives, your passions, your dreams, maybe a lot of things you aren’t even aware of, onto my body since before you were born. It’s my map to my children. Once I add her disappearance, I’ll know right where she is.”
He found himself focusing on her tattoos, or they focused on him. They were changing, developing, growing longer and thicker, joining and crossing over to display twisted passages and dance-like movements.
He jerked his gaze away. “Aren’t there some practical things, more normal things we should be doing? Like walking down the street, searching the park, knocking on doors? Maybe even calling the police?”
“No need for that. Don’t you understand that the authorities poison us against the natural magic of the world? But go ahead and do that “normal” stuff. Watch and listen. Pay attention to your feelings and let them guide you. I have great
faith in you, Felix.” She hurried out.
For the next few minutes he searched the room. He picked things up gently and put them back where he thought they’d been. Tearing things apart would’ve just made him more scared, and Margaret would be furious when she came home. Books facedown to hold her place didn’t tell him anything. None of her zillion unicorn and castle and enchantress and Harry Potter posters had anything to say to him, either. Real magic was a sham—hard to access, hard to control, crazy and arbitrary and unfair. It promised everything but never gave you what you really needed.
In her lunch bag he found a slip of paper. Mom used to leave notes in his lunch, too—stupid advice like YOU CAN DO IT! And REACH FOR THE STARS! This note had a silly fairy sticker on it that said Tinkerbell, plus a lot of weird designs, circles mostly, with various spokes in them, and scribbles connecting them. If he glanced at them a certain way the circles turned and the scribbles danced. Right beside Tinkerbell, under the glow of her tiny wand, was GO FIND THE MAGIC! in Mom’s one-of-a-kind handwriting.
Tinkerbell told him what it meant, which was a clue to how upset and out of it he was. Mom had sent Margaret away on some impossible quest.
One of his sister’s drawings crinkled under his hand, tingling his skin. He pulled the drawing up against the light and watched as the lines of the furiously dancing doll vibrated.
Felix had no idea what he was doing. Like his mother always said, he let himself be led. With various pencils, pens, crayons, he extended the lines on the paper so that they wrapped, cocooned, buried the dancing doll in a hard shimmering tunnel. Then the spiral spread off the paper to contour the folds of sheets, comforter, pillow, until he dropped everything, hands shaking, and stood back.
Vaguely he recognized the park by that shelter they’d stayed in for a few weeks last year, elaborate slide system with a tower where kids waited their turn. On the wall of the playground was a mural he couldn’t see in the drawing, wizards and fairies, gnomes in fur coats like rats escaping a sewer, that had always creeped him out when he’d taken Margaret there. So had all the old guys hanging around like wizards who’d lost their powers, or who’d just hallucinated them, now convinced all the tasty magic was there in the bodies of the playing kids. Margaret had always wanted to say hi, and Felix hadn’t let her. The lines didn’t show anything but the dancing of the kids and a space of no-dancing, no-motion, watching.
The deep-shadowed tangle behind the playground hid the entrance to a secret cavern, or something more every day. The sewer. He’d yelled at Margaret to keep away.
When Felix got into the park it felt like dusk although he didn’t think it was that late, hoped Margaret hadn’t been left alone that long, didn’t stop to check the time on his phone. Homeless guys were sitting on the wall. There was the mural, more faded and dirtier than he remembered, layered in a graffiti of filthy, hysterical requests. The opening of the sewer pipe was huge, protective mesh broken into fringe. It quivered like it was singing.
Margaret was in there. Looking for a magic place. Because she was a kid, and magic could be anywhere her mother said it was.
Felix dropped onto hands and knees and, without allowing himself to think about it, started into the pipe. Then the darkness detached into a ragged bulk of shadow backing out. The man grunted, hit his head and swore. The seat of his pants was muddy. He had Margaret. Her pale face popped up on one side and then disappeared.
Felix’s first impulse was to block the exit, trap the guy inside the pipe and call the police. He fumbled for his phone. Then he thought he might have a better shot at saving his sister if he moved out of the way. The guy kept coming, dragging Margaret, his fist swallowing her hand. Felix grabbed at the guy’s shirt and was about to throw himself at him when Margaret yelled, “No! Felix! He’s my friend!”
The big, red-faced, dirty guy was all the way out, and he reached back into the pipe with both hands and pulled Margaret out. She hugged him before she hugged Felix. The homeless guy growled, “You better tell somebody, dude.”
Into Felix’s neck Margaret said, “I’m scared, Felix.”
“Of him? What’d he—”
He felt her shake her head. “Of Mom. She makes me do stuff. She doesn’t take care of us. My friend says it’s not right, kids shouldn’t be treated like that.”
“Felix, you found her!” Mom went to hug Margaret but Margaret turned away. “I knew you could do it—I’ve always had faith in you.” To the homeless guy she said, “Thanks, Woody,” and kissed his cheek.
“You sent her out here, right?” Felix didn’t care who heard. “A test for me.”
Mom looked at Margaret and lowered her voice. “She loves magic but she didn’t inherit my abilities. You did.”
“I want it!” Margaret wailed. People were looking at them. Woody patted her head, told Felix again to tell somebody, and shambled off to find saner company. Felix finally found his phone.
“You have great talent, son. And if you didn’t find her, I was your back-up.” She was actually proud of herself.
She’d think he hated her, but he didn’t. He just didn’t have anything more to say to her. He waved his hands once, twice, and the lines danced around them. He didn’t know if Mom couldn’t see them, but she definitely couldn’t see him or Margaret. He called 911.
SWIFT, BRUTAL RETALIATION
MEGHAN MCCARRON
Meghan McCarron’s [www.meghanmccarron.com] stories have recently appeared in Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and Unstuck, where she has since become an assistant editor. She lives with her girlfriend in Austin, Texas.
Two girls in wrinkled black dresses sat in the front pew at their older brother’s funeral. They had never sat in the front pew in church before, and they disliked how exposed they felt. Behind them stood their brother’s entire eighth-grade class, the girls in ironed black dresses and gold cross necklaces, the boys in dark suits, bought too big so they could get another use. Few expected more funerals, but the suits would serve for graduation in May—which, after all, was a funeral, too.
The girls’ aunt gave the second reading, which was one of the letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. The younger sister, Brigid, loved the rhythm of those words, “Saint Paul to the Corinthians.” She didn’t know who the Corinthians were, but she imagined a small, dusty town, the people crowded around the town square as someone stood, just like her aunt, and read the latest letter from Saint Paul. This letter informed the Corinthians that though their outsides were wasting away, their insides were filling with the light of God. Life was a wobbly tent, but God had built a sturdy house in heaven. The older sister, Sinead, thought this God-house probably sounded good to people in the desert two thousand years ago, but her brother’s house wasn’t just sturdy: it had a pool. Also, her brother’s insides had not grown stronger. He had wasted away, all of him. This stupid reading confirmed her suspicions that God was like any other adult who lied and told you horrible things were for your own good.
Sinead and Brigid felt as alone as it was possible to feel while smushed up against someone on a pew, unaware that the other person was also furiously contemplating God. They were doing their best not to be aware of anything. Noticing things, they had discovered, was dangerous. Was that Ian’s English teacher sobbing three rows behind them? Was that the priest saying Ian’s name in the homily? Were those flowers already wilting on the coffin in the early-September heat? Before, Sinead would have gotten angry about these things. Brigid would have tried to figure out their meaning. Now, the sisters found it safer to sink into the fog of mourning, though they didn’t know to call it that. They were just trying to be very still, in hopes that events would pass them by.
A few pews back, two of Ian’s classmates trailed out, sobbing. The reading had ended, and the cantor began to sing “Alleluia.” The congregation rose to their feet, and their mother’s hymnal slipped out of her black lap. She chanted along in a low, flat voice neither of them had heard before. Their father did not stand, but sat upright at the edge of t
he pew so stiffly he almost looked funny. His suit was rumpled and he’d slathered himself in cologne to hide the scent of alcohol. Sinead and Brigid were used to the cologne, but they had never seen their father look so small before. They had done a good job ignoring their surroundings, but their strange, frightening parents dragged them back into reality. They stared hopelessly at Ian’s fat, luminous coffin.
The reception after the funeral filled the house with earnest thirteen-year-old girls bearing food made by their mothers. Every girl in Ian’s class brought food, and most of it was lasagna. Lasagna with beef, lasagna with pork and spinach, “garden lasagna” featuring broccoli and Alfredo, Mexican lasagna with hot peppers and tortillas, and one particularly vile concoction made with whole-wheat pasta and dairy-free cheese. All of the lasagna piled up in the kitchen, since the girls’ parents had brought in caterers. Their mother didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so she shunted it to the refrigerator.
The sisters spent the reception hiding in plain sight, or trying to. They glued themselves to their grandmother, who had flown in for the occasion. Their grandmother was a sour old lady who smelled like cigarettes and gin fumes. But she was also tall and heavyset, so they could literally hide behind her as she talked to second cousins and great-aunts and even a step-something, the girls didn’t catch what. Sometimes the sisters held hands. Brigid was the one who did the hand-seeking-out, but Sinead was secretly glad for something to hold on to when strangers stooped down to say they were sorry. Where were they when Ian was sick? Sorry? Sinead would make them sorry.
There were still people in the house that night, straggler aunts and loud neighbors. One of Ian’s coaches was out back with their father, smoking cigars and laughing too loud. At some point, their mother noticed the girls scavenging in the kitchen and sent them up to bed. Sinead made Brigid go up first, since her bedtime was an hour after her sister’s, but once Brigid was gone Sinead felt unmoored. She was too proud to give up her older-sibling right to a later bedtime, but she also didn’t want to be in the room with the loud, sad adults. She found herself contemplating the whole-wheat dairy-free lasagna. Their mother had left it out to rot, and the faux cheese was buckling and sweating.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven Page 67