A History of Glitter and Blood (22 page)

“Because you put me there!” She pulls back. “
This
is why you didn't want me to hang out with Piccolo! I
told
you, there's nothing—”

He says, “No. This has nothing to do with that.”

“What, you expect me to believe you were just looking out for the gnomes? You want to know why I can't be in love with you?”

He doesn't move.

“Not because I'm in love with Piccolo, not because I'm scared of getting hurt the way Josha was if
somethinghappenedtoyou
, because I am in love with one fucking thing, and that thing is
not being at war
, and I can't forget that, I can't let myself forget about that for one second.”

“You don't understand.”

“This isn't supposed to be a love story! History isn't a love story. Do you know who taught me that?”

“I don't want to write this.” He presses his palms into his eyes. “I don't want to write this.”

“This is a shitty way to tell me you're in love with me,” she says.

“I didn't know how else to do it.”

She walks to the sink because she doesn't know what else to do.

“You could have just told me,” she says after a minute. “You could have just said something outright. But you've never been that guy. You don't know how to be that guy. What the fuck kind of romantic hero . . .”

“I've told you I love you, don't give me that.”

“Yeah, the way we tell Josha and we used to tell Cricket! You could have just
told me
. Just stopped thinking and stopped writing for a minute and just
told me something
!”

And he says, as fast and as loud as he's ever said anything, “I have to tell the gnomes today that I'll be their king or they're going to eat me.”

She hears all these things that she'd never noticed before.

The click of the clock above the stove.

The dripping sink.

Scrap's heartbeat.

And Josha heard it, Josha is out of the room, Josha is yelling at him like this is all Scrap's fault and he has doomed them and like he has already decided what the fuck he's going to do.

“It's protocol,” Scrap says. His voice is so hoarse. “Protocol . . . I killed the last king, I have to succeed—”

“It was self-defense!” Beckan cries. “You weren't trying to—”

“It doesn't matter.” Scrap sits down, hard. “They don't have organization, and they think they need this huge push through the ground to get any sort of headway, and they've let me in on all this stuff. And they know about you guys. They know you guys are planning.”

Josha says, “You told them.”

Beckan stares at Scrap.

Scrap says, “What?” like he's so exhausted.

“You told them about me and Piccolo and Beckan. You tipped them off that the tightropers are going to be weak.”

“No,” Scrap says. “Leak did.”

“Leak?”

“He runs the elevator. He saw you going down to the mines, he knows you're involved with Piccolo, they heard you and Rig and Tier talking. You guys were not careful.” He breathes out. “The gnomes are just waiting for you to weaken the tightropers, and then they're going to take over. All of the tightropers are going to get hurt, and you could be too, now that they realize you give a shit.”

“You're
betraying us
!” Josha yells. “You're going to be their king and make this a gnome city.”

“That's the idea,” Scrap says. Quietly.

Beckan makes her eyes as narrow as they will go. “You're bringing the war back. They're starting the war up again. You're going to lead them in it.”

He nods heavily. “But—”

“You asshole!” Josha knocks a chair to the floor. “You had us tell you all our plans so you could use them against us.”

“So I could
figure out how to keep you alive.”

“Who knows that they're making you be king?” Beckan says.

He rubs his forehead. “All the gnomes. Most of them haven't known for as long as I have.”

“Tier?”

“Only recently. They . . . don't tell him much. They were afraid he'd want the job.”

“They're going to eat you?” she says.

“Only if I don't take it.”

Scrap stays still for a minute, then he shakes off his boot and then his sock and holds out what remains of his foot. Three of the toes and half the side are missing.

He was what was cooking. He was the yellow smoke.

Beckan sinks to the floor.

“They already destroyed most of the arm,” Scrap says.

“What happens if they eat you?” Josha says. “Who's king then?” “One of Tier's brothers. No better for the city.”

Josha says, “This is fucked up.”

And then something inside of Scrap breaks.

“You think I don't know?” he says. “Why are you standing here telling me it's my fault? Why are you fucking lecturing me like you disapprove?
I didn't ask for this
. There
isn't
a good outcome here— do you think I can't see that? There is no getting out of this.”

“Get out of the fucking city!” Josha yells.

“And leave you here to get yourselves killed with Crate's sons in charge?”

“At least that would buy us some time, wouldn't it?” Beckan says. “While they figure out how to organize around one of Tier's
brothers . . . we need time.” She sits down at the table. “I need to think.”

Josha says, “We could plan a strike against them while they try to organize.”

“They'd eat you. They know they're about to be back on top. They wouldn't hesitate.”

“Maybe we should all leave?” Beckan says, quietly.

Josha says, “We're not leaving this city to be destroyed.”

Scrap shakes his head, breathing hard. “We can't get out. You know they have guards around the entire edge of the city. They're adding more every day. Th-the only solution I can see right now is to try to get the fairies back, and I've been making this gnome kid who owes me a favor go out every day looking for them, feeding this fucking kid all I have and he's traveling farther and farther every day but he hasn't found them.” He shakes his head quickly, then says, “Maybe if I did it . . . took the job. Maybe I could protect us. Protect you guys. They would never touch you.”

“We'd be two fairies in a gnome-dominated city. You couldn't babysit us every second,” Josha says.

Scrap says, “Becks is half gnome.”

And for a second, they are quiet.

“That might help you,” Scrap says.

“Shut up,” she says.

“Did you ever think that this type of racial pride is what got us into this war in the first place?”

“Don't talk to me about what started this war when you're about to profit from it.”

“Being half gnome is going to save you,” he says. “The same way being half fairy saved all of us.”

“We're not half. . . . ,” she says, because fairy is fairy, this is what she has been taught, this is what is real, this is the one thing she has
never really thought to question and she will leave forever so shutupshutupshutup.

“What about me?” Josha says. He sounds like a kid for a moment, sounds like when he would chase after Beckan when her father came to pick her up from play group:
what about me?

Scrap starts, again, “But I'm—”

Beckan feels the sudden overwhelming urge to go to sleep, to curl up on the floor while they yell and have to do nothing but close her eyes.

Scrap is very quiet now. “I didn't know how to tell you guys,” he says. “You seemed happy lately.”

And Beckan's about to laugh before she realizes that, yes, she has been happy lately.

I don't hate gnomes
, she thinks to herself.
Not anymore
.

“I have to find Piccolo,” Josha says, and he's out the door.

Beckan breathes into her hands.

“What should I do?” He looks up at her. “What do I do now?”

“You take the job,” she says. “Because you're not an idiot.”

He shakes his head a bit.

She says, “And then I hate you a little for the rest of my life.”

Beckan.

“You should have told us,” she says. “You shouldn't keep secrets from us. How'd that work out for Cricket? Why didn't you tell us, baby?”

He looks at his book.

“I thought I had time,” he says.

She runs after Josha.

Beckan.

Becks.

Beckan.

She is on the street now, charging toward Josha down this street, left on this one, right on this one, right on this one, and there he is, talking to the boy dangling from the ropes.

“Josha,” she says. “We have to go.”

He doesn't look at her. “No.”

Piccolo says, “Beckan, get out of here.”

“No. We have to go.”

“I'm not going home.”

“I'm not talking about home! We need to get out of the city. We need to find the other fairies and we need to bring them back.”

“No one knows where they are,” Josha says.

“They said they were going—”

“And
nobody's
heard from them. They sent no word that they reached their destination. They've made no contact. They could all be fucking dead. We don't know.”

Beckan watches Piccolo. “He knows.”

Piccolo makes eye contact.

“I swear to you,” he says. “I swear to you that I don't. I've been through all the papers. No one's heard from them. I'm guessing they got absorbed right into the big cities. Your fairies don't want to be found, Becks.”

“No . . .” That can't be true. It just cannot be.

Piccolo takes the gun out of the pocket of his jacket. She notices, for the first time, that Josha is wearing one just like it. How long has he had it?

Why hasn't she been watching him?

Piccolo loads the gun. “You need to go, Beckan.”

“What are you doing?”

Josha says, “What do you think we're doing? We're saving Scrap.”

Beckan looks at Josha and sees something in him that she hasn't in a long time.

“He's going to be okay,” she says.

“Look.” Josha points.

There is Scrap, aboveground, at the end of the block. He is arguing with a gnome they don't recognize. He is being pushed and pulled around. The gnome is laughing at him.

Piccolo says, “Go home, Beckan. Somewhere safe.”

“Home isn't safe.”

And then she hears Scrap's voice, louder than anything she's ever heard—
“NO!”

And the last she sees before the ground explodes, before there are gunshots, crying, screaming, is Scrap's face, at the end of the block, as he is finally, finally overwhelmed.

So much happens at once.

There's yelling, there's growling as the gnomes drill up through the ground, there's Josha and Piccolo's absolute panic. There's tightropers coming down from the skies with rifles and orders belted in that language Beckan doesn't speak, and there's dust, so much dust in her throat, and she coughs, it's in her eyes, and she can't see anything.

Josha's voice, somehow far away: “What do we do?” and she doesn't know, she doesn't know, because she has no idea what's happening.

She hears ropes break, and feels nets coming down on top of her, and it sounds almost like wings—

And she's thrown to the ground. She sees orange bodies coming up, climbing with pickaxes and bare hands and horrible smiles. She feels the ground crumble underneath her and she falls, hard, into what was once the top level of the gnome tunnels.

She sees Leak.

And he says, “Are you all right?” and he looks like he might really care (so many days in the elevator and he never drops her), but she can barely hear him.

The gnomes have broken through. She is lying in what was once a tunnel but is now open to the sky and only a ditch in the ground. The gnome beds, their clothes, their books, are scattered to the streets, are blowing everywhere.

The gnomes are snatching up tightroper soldiers and bringing them to their mouths—

“Josha!”
she hears, but she doesn't know if it's her voice or Scrap's or Piccolo's or a hungry gnome's—

“Beckan!”

“Scrap!”

It's chaos, it's dust, it's three races in the same space at the same time. This is what Piccolo wanted and he thought it would be so different. This is what Beckan was afraid of and she hoped that she was wrong. This is what Josha needed to finally be a part of.

And she sees glitter.

More glitter than she has seen in so long, and a young voice she doesn't know yelling,
Scrap, I did it! I found them! King Scrap!
and what is
happening
—

Then there's a hand on her arm, it's a body, it's someone, and she falls into it and she clings and she does not care who it is, but then she feels the roughness of the clothes and the height of the shoulders and the curls in her hair and it is Rig, it is Rig, it is Rig.