Extraordinary October (11 page)

I parked in the parking lot of a restaurant right near the Los Feliz Bridge. It was as close as I could get in the car. I walked toward the chain link fence and the gate leading down to the bike path. A family came out of the restaurant and walked to their car. The Dad was carrying a sleepy little boy who raised his head and pointed at me.

“Look,” he said. “A fairy.”

I was stunned. What did he see? I was in my jeans and hoodie. Before his parents turned around, I darted through the gate and disappeared into the dark.

12.

I walked down the gravel path leading under the bridge. Streetlights from the road above made the discarded soda cans and shards of broken glass glitter almost like Christmas lights. Or fireflies. But not. There were long grasses and scraggly bushes throwing spooky shadows along one side. On the other there was a steep cement retaining wall and a sheer drop to the river. Some gang had tagged the wall with graffiti, but I couldn't decipher the elaborate script. I called Luisa's name as softly as I could.

“Luisa?”

I was glad that crows were diurnal and usually slept at night. Slobbers I wasn't so sure about. Gang members and psycho murderers were out at all times. I listened and held my breath as I walked. I stayed on my toes, ready to run. It was darker under the bridge but it didn't take long for my new troll eyes to adjust. I turned in a circle. It seemed a very odd place for Luisa to be hanging out for a few days. It was eerie, almost claustrophobic with the sharp drop to the river on one side and the bushes encroaching on the other. I felt both totally alone and as if I was being carefully observed. Plus the water in the river was smelly and there was no place to sit. Luisa might have found this spot relaxing, but I did not.

Across the river in the opposite retaining wall I saw a round portal with the door open. The round portal-like openings appeared intermittently along the river walls—I'd noticed them ages before on a bird watching trip with my dad—but always with the heavy iron door shut. They were circular like some kind of big pipe and I assumed they were conduits for when it rained and the river threatened to overflow. I was about to head back to the car when a light blinked on and quickly off deep inside that open portal. I froze, held my breath. It happened again. A yellow flickering light, not the blue of a flashlight, but more like a flame. A cigarette lighter? I had no way of knowing it if was Luisa or some mass murderer.

The voice in my head spoke. “Luisa needs you.”

Anybody could be through that door. And I wasn't looking forward to climbing down the cement wall on this side and fording the river and struggling up the other side. Plus I was worried about my dad. I could head right to the hospital and ask my mom what to do. Besides, if Luisa was sending me signals with a lighter then how much trouble could she be in? I could just text her. Tell her to cut it out and come home.

“Trust yourself.” The voice again. I hadn't asked Walker if this loud, combative inner voice was a fairy thing or a troll thing.

And then, to seal the deal, a text from Luisa. “Help!”

“Okay,” I said out loud. “I'm coming.”

I climbed over the embankment, crouched down onto my butt, and slid down the retaining wall. It was gritty and when I put my hands down to slow my speed, little rocks stuck in my palms. The stink of the water got stronger the closer I got—not unlike Enoki's odor, ha ha ha—and I could see trash, an old tire, some boards. The good news was I could use those as stepping-stones across the murky water.

I almost lost my balance on the first board. It wobbled and I windmilled my arms to keep upright. I looked down into the water. I saw things that were not fish and not snakes and not normal. Lizard-like, but with flippers and teeth. Perfect, I thought. More weird creatures. No matter what, I could not fall into that water. I took a deep breath and tried to think fairy thoughts, like I was light, lighter than air. Even if I couldn't fly, I could tread so lightly on these boards they wouldn't move or sway. I took two quick steps to the old tire. It seemed to work. I hopped to a rock. I jumped to the next and gasped. I'd almost landed on one of those lizardy creatures. Its mouth was open as if waiting for my ankle.

“Watch out,” I thought.

“Me?” it said. “You're the one skipping all over the place.”

Before I had time to process that I had understood what it said, it slid back into the water. I sprang from rock to old shopping cart to a board across the remaining strip of river to the slope on the other side. I rested for a moment. Cement had never felt so good under my feet, so solid and dry. I looked up. The incline wasn't as steep as the other side and the open portal was not far above me. I half-crawled up the wall using my hands while trying to be as quiet as possible. As I got closer I could feel the cold, damp air spilling out and I smelled rotten eggs. Sulfur. If I wasn't walking into a den of psycho rapists, I would probably be asphyxiated by lethal chemicals.

I stepped into the dark. “Luisa?” I peered into the blackness. So much for troll vision, I couldn't see an inch in front of me. The dark was like a blanket absorbing all sight. Where was the flickering light?

My phone chimed. Automatically I looked down and the light from the screen blinded me. I blinked frantically, rubbed my eyes, stumbled, and someone grabbed my arm. Someone strong. I smelled dirty water and mold. Enoki.

She flicked on her lighter and I saw her grinning.

“I knew it was you by the smell,” I said.

“I knew you'd come to find Luisa.” She laughed. “We both knew it.”

“You and Trevor?”

“Trevor is an idiot. He still thinks we can do this his way. We know better.”

She grabbed my cellphone from my hand and threw it into the river. She yanked me deeper into the tunnel. I resisted, but she was much stronger and her hand on my arm squeezed until it hurt. She flipped off her lighter and it was as if a thick black hood had fallen over my face. I wished Trevor was there, or Walker, or even little Green. Someone who would be on my side.

I tried my royal blood. “I'm your Queen,” I said as majestically as possible.

“Not for twenty-two more hours,” she said. “Right now you're nothing. Who knows what will happen when you really turn eighteen. Probably nothing. Nothing.”

The way she said ‘nothing' was like a stone hitting my chest.

“You know nothing.” She went on. “You're the queen of nothing. You can do nothing. You are nothing.”

Each time she said it was like another hit. It was hard to breathe. I was upset—over nothing. Stop it, I told myself. Nothing is fine. I had been happy being nothing. I had my parents. I had college to look forward to and studying the animals I loved. In college I always hoped I would make friends with people like me. But as Enoki pulled me down lower and lower, darker and darker, I realized there was no one like me. I was the only one and I would never have a friend.

“Where is Luisa?”

She smiled and her teeth were pointier than Trevor's. “Don't think she cares about you. No one cares about you.”

It made sense that Luisa wasn't my friend. She was in on this, just a way to get me here, into this dungeon leading under the earth.

“Walker!” I shouted his name.

“You shot him down pretty hard. He's not coming to save you.”

“Walker!” I screamed again.

“You were just a job and his job is done. He doesn't care about you anymore.”

I couldn't listen to her. I had to fight back. I thought if I could get out of her grip I could run into one of the walls and transplant. But she held on tight and I couldn't see anything and the tunnel was getting shorter and narrower. I bumped my head and my shoulders against the rough, bumpy walls. I had to stoop. There was no room to get the running start I needed. I wanted my mom. I should have listened to her. I should have gone home and explained what was happening and asked for her help. My poor mom. Her husband was a zombie and her daughter was nothing.

If I could only see. I thought about how we take light for granted, how we flick on a switch and the lights go on and in the morning the sun always comes up. We're so rarely in the dark unless it's by choice, at the movies or to sleep at night. I thought about the fireflies, the beautiful, twinkling fireflies in the empty lot near my house. I was happy I'd seen them once in my life before I died. Because I was sure Enoki was taking me somewhere deep beneath the earth to kill me. I tried to concentrate on the amazing fireflies instead of what Enoki had in store.

I heard a gentle swoosh and there they were. A thousand fireflies all around us. They blinked and sparkled and twinkled. I felt instantly better. Their light wasn't bright but it was enough for me to see the walls of the tunnel and the path under my feet. And they flustered Enoki. She swatted at them with her free hand, but they flew in her face and in her hair and down the collar of her shirt. She hopped and wiggled. She let go of me to flap both arms at them and that was my chance. I took off. I couldn't get around her to go back up to the river, so I ran down. Some of the fireflies flew with me to light my way. “Thank you,” I whispered. They were incredible in so many ways. “Thank you.” They brushed my face with their soft wings.

I scurried around a bend in the tunnel and saw a dim light ahead. Maybe it was another way out. Maybe a big enough space so I could transplant. I ran as fast as I could in my hunched position. And then I was free. The tunnel spilled into open air and room to stand up. I was outdoors. A light drizzle was falling and the rotten egg smell was worse and the scene before me was not pretty.

I stood on the edge of a forest of enormous trees like the giant redwoods in Big Sur and Yosemite, but these trees were dying. The ground at the bottom of each one was dug up and the roots were exposed. The trees leaned, close to falling over without the earth holding onto them. They were huge, and a golden color instead of reddish with no branches until way up high, but their leaves had turned brown and there were streaks of gray up and down the trunks. They must've been beautiful once, but on that dark, cloudy day they were sad and ominous. I looked back to the tunnel opening, a small black hole in a boulder. Enoki couldn't be too far behind. I ducked around the far side of a tree. A small wooden plaque with a picture of a hyacinth was fastened to the tree. I looked up and through the leaves I could just see the bottom of a platform or tree house of some kind. I ran to the next tree, and the next and the next. There were plaques with pictures of flowers or pinecones or leaves on every one—like house numbers—and tree houses up above, but they all looked old and faded and frayed. The wood was cracked, a lot were broken apart. I remembered Walker telling me that fairies lived in the forest canopy, way up high, but he said it was bright and colorful and this looked so dismal. I couldn't hear a voice or a sound. No one was living here. The sulfur smell was definitely coming from somewhere nearby. I knew this couldn't be the Fairy Canopy. Walker had said it was exquisite. There were no flowers and everything was gray. Strangest of all, there were no birds. No squirrels or even insects. Empty. Post-apocalyptic.

I heard Enoki yelling and pounding down the tunnel toward me. She had gotten past the fireflies. Quickly I ran to another tree, further away. At my feet was a channel of yellow water. It gurgled and bubbled and when a bubble popped the sulfur smell made me gag. The trench was manmade—or fairy made or troll made—but it was hard to imagine fairies dumping toxic sewage.

I took a quick glance around the tree. Stupid Enoki was looking the wrong way. She ran off in the opposite direction. “I'll find you. I will!”

I almost laughed. I ran from tree to tree, light on my feet, my sneakers making no sound at all on the dug up earth and fallen leaves. The trees weren't sick. Someone had done this to them. In the distance I heard a powerful machine attempting to start. It revved and died. Revved and died.

I went from tree to tree, hiding and peeking out, as I moved toward the noise. I saw a yellow backhoe, a digging machine, through the healthier trees ahead of me. The machine started and roared so loudly I wanted to cover my ears. The big shovel in the front lifted and fell into the earth below one of the giant trees making it shudder as if it had been punched. It dug and I saw roots torn up in its claws. Was that a fairy driving? It was so gray and slumped that it couldn't be a fairy. I circled away from the backhoe and saw a dilapidated industrial warehouse. It was made of corrugated steel, rusty and falling apart. Out the end I saw the disgusting yellow sludge pouring into the trench.

I heard a voice yelling something that sounded a lot like “timber!” There was a loud creaking and I looked up to see one of the gray and dying tall trees rocking back and forth. As it rocked forward I saw a little house, a fairy home, plummet from the top spilling beds and dishes and chairs that broke into a thousand pieces against the forest floor. Poor fairies. The tree hit the ground with such a tremendous crash the earth shook. Then I saw movement through the trees, lots of people swarming over the fallen giant tree. I crept closer and closer.

Slobbers formed a line with their backs to me. They guarded prisoners who were falling on their knees to dig with their hands in the ground turned up by the fallen tree. Most of the prisoners were tall and impossibly thin, but like the one driving the backhoe, they were all as gray as the coveralls they wore. I couldn't believe these unhappy beings were fairies. One of them turned away and threw up. I saw tears—she didn't want to dig. She didn't want to hurt these trees. A slobber slapped her hard and knocked her down. It stood over her threateningly. Her neighbor helped her up and she went back to scrabbling in the dirt. When they found something—I couldn't see what—they dumped it in a bag they each wore over their shoulders. None of the skinny prisoners seemed to be finding much. They weren't strong and whatever they were looking for was gross—more than one found whatever it was and gagged.

A slobber sent a prisoner into the woods to tag the next tree. He trudged in my direction, thick ribbons of black material in his hands. He checked the wind, the path the tree might fall, and to my surprise flew up into the canopy. It looked like he was checking the little house to make sure it was empty. It must've been. He came down and tied one of the black strips around the trunk. Like a mourner's funeral armband. He slumped further and further into the woods, marking tree after tree. I snuck over to him and let him see me. He stared, and then pretended to keep working.