Extraordinary October (12 page)

I whispered to him, “What are you doing?”

“Searching for mushrooms,” the fairy answered.

“Why?”

“For her.” He wouldn't say her name.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “It's killing the trees and without these trees, we fairies will die. We're already weakened because so many have come down.”

I heard a woman, Madame Gold, shout, “Work harder, my lovelies!”

The fairy jumped as if struck. He hurried on to the next tree.

Madame Gold. In her flowing dress of rusty orange and red she was the only spot of color in the dreariness. She looked like an enormous flame burning on top of the platform where she stood. A dangerous, undulating, wicked flame. There were crows perched on the railings beside her, crows circling above. They did her bidding, swooping down and pecking at prisoners who weren't working hard enough.

Madame Gold, I thought, of course.

Of course it was she who had sent the crows to attack me. She who had sent the slobbers. But what could she want from me? She walked to the edge of the platform and I gasped. Behind her my dad sat on a stool drooping and thin and not moving. She truly had zombie-fied him. Had the ambulance ever really come? I knew she was evil. I had known it from the beginning. I looked at my hands, red welts were appearing. The back of my neck felt hot and tight. I touched my cheek and felt a rash there too.

The voice in my head said, “October. Come out now. I know you're there.”

The voice in my head, the voice I'd been hearing all along, was Madame Gold's.

13.

I leapt out from behind the rock so angry I didn't even think to be frightened of the crows or the slobbers or her. “What have you done to my dad? What are you doing to these people?”

“They're not people,” she said. “You know that.”

She was perfectly calm, her voice as soft and low and controlled as when I met her. It set my teeth on edge. My stomach threatened to return all the Chinese food I'd eaten.

“Dad!” I shouted. I ran toward the platform. Crows launched themselves toward me, ready to attack. I pointed at them. “Stop it!” They stopped in mid air. I pointed at the slobber running toward me. “Go away!” It disintegrated. The noise of the saw stopped and it was quiet. The prisoners were watching me. I put my hands on my hips and stared at Madame Gold. “Give me my father. Now.”

“You are not Queen yet,” she said. “For now, I am in command of this place. I have much work to do in the next nineteen hours.”

She clapped her hands. The giant backhoe started up again and another tree rocked back and forth. The prisoners were forced back to work. I made another slobber and another disintegrate, but Madame Gold was creating new ones as quickly as I was destroying the old. I had to make her go away. That was the only way to save my dad and stop this destruction.

I jumped, almost flew, right over the fallen tree and ran to the platform. Even though I wasn't eighteen yet, my abilities seemed to be expanding. She backed up as I clambered to the top. My father didn't even look at me. I advanced toward Madame Gold. I was going to kill her with my bare hands. She wasn't a fairy. She wasn't a troll. And I was both.

I heard her voice in my head. “Don't bother. It won't work.”

“Shut up,” I said. I leapt at her and grabbed her neck. I squeezed but she only smiled at me, flapped her stupid sleeves and somehow twisted away, out of my hands. I came after her again, but at the last minute she stepped to one side and I almost fell off the platform. Again I ran at her and she pushed me—with one hand—and I went flying back and crashed into my dad. I looked up at him.

“Help me.”

I could see him struggling, see that he wanted to, but he was trapped. She had locked him in this new skinny body. His hair was curling, the angles in his face had returned, but his eyes weren't blue anymore, they were a dark, murky gray.

I stood. “I am almost Queen. My powers are growing stronger.”

“Your powers?” She laughed, a terrible screeching sound like a dog in pain. “We'd know by now if you had any real power. You can't fight me.”

“I will be powerful. I had a powerful itch.”

“Yours was nothing compared to mine.” And she laughed again.

She had experienced the itch? But she couldn't be a fairy. If she was, why did she want to destroy the trees? They had to be as necessary to her as to any other fairy. I couldn't understand what made her different, what made her so big and strong and beautiful and red-haired, green-eyed. She was right though; I couldn't fight her. Not physically. I looked down at the poor prisoner fairies.

“Where's Luisa?” I said to her. “What have you done to my dad?”

“Once your mother is gone—any moment now—your father will marry me and I will be officially queen. I just have to get you out of the way—before you turn eighteen.”

She came toward me slowly, a horrible smile on her face. For a moment her straight white teeth looked pointy like Enoki's, pointier than Trevor's. Just for a moment.

She waved her sleeves back and forth slowly as she spoke. “So young,” she said. “So special. They say you're the only one of your kind.” She nodded. “We'll stuff you and put you in a museum.”

I couldn't move. She had frozen me like Dad. “St…stop it.” She kept coming. Help, I thought it as hard as I could. Like the fireflies, someone had to come help me.

Bam! That someone leapt onto the platform and scooped me up in his arms. Trevor! He held me tight and jumped, landed on his feet and looked back up at Madame Gold.

“Trevor!” she said. “You will pay for this. We had a deal.”

“Screw the deal.” He took off with me still frozen in his arms.

“After him!” Madame Gold commanded.

The slobbers and the crows came after us. Away from her, my trance broke and I could move again. I disintegrated as many slobbers as I could. I commanded the crows to leave us alone. I looked over his shoulder. I could stop the crows—they listened to me more than her—but more and more slobbers were coming from all directions.

“Can you fly?” I asked him.

“You mean like a fairy? Are you crazy? We don't need to fly. Hang on.”

I put my arms around his neck and he took off, jumping, leaping, turning somersaults in the air and literally bounding off the trees. It was exhilarating. It was great. I hoped that a minute after midnight I would be able to do it too. We easily left the lumbering slobbers behind.

We continued more slowly through the stumps and then the remaining tall trees until Trevor jumped down a hole under a bush. It didn't look big enough for him with me in his arms, but inside it opened up into a smooth walled tunnel. It was like a rabbit warren with multiple passageways and burrow rooms. We were going quickly, but I saw beds and rugs, tables and chairs, like a troll apartment building. I tried to ask him about it, but he wasn't stopping and too soon we went up and up a darker, empty shaft until we were back in the real world right by the parking lot. The moon was out and the bushes that had seemed so forbidding glittered in the silver light. It had been daylight in the Fairy Glen. Time was all screwed up. How long until I was eighteen? Without my phone, I had no idea.

Trevor set me down gently.

“Thank you. Madame Gold is going to be furious with you.”

“You're my Queen. I had to save you.”

He took my arm and tried to drag me toward the gate into the parking lot. I was tired of people dragging me around.

“Stop,” I commanded. And he did. “I know what you are, Trevor. I know what your sister is and why her name is Enoki. I know who I am.”

“Did Walker tell you?” he asked. I nodded. “He could lose his job over that.”

“Doesn't look like he has a job anymore—thanks to Madame Gold.”

He sighed and then he bowed, actually bowed to me. “Your Lowness.”

“Not yet. I don't think. Not until midnight. But then I will be Queen and I want—I demand—to know what's going on. First, what is Madame Gold doing in the forest?”

“She's harvesting mushrooms. She needs them. For something. Some plan.”

“Why not use trolls? Trolls love mushrooms.”

“But trolls might steal them or eat them. They're hard to resist. They're very special mushrooms.”

It made no sense to me. None of it did. “Okay. Second, what kind of deal did the two of you have?”

He kicked a rock gently and it landed all the way across the river. “No one had even heard of her until a month ago. All the trolls started talking about your birthday and wondering if you'd come back and rule the fairies or us. And then our King—your grandfather—died and the Fairy King—your other grandfather—died too and she just showed up and took over. She made Enoki her ally. She tried to make me…” He stopped and sighed. “You see how powerful she is.”

“But what does she want from you?”

“She wants to be Queen.”

“How can you make her Queen?”

“I'm next in line after you. My father was your grandfather's third cousin.”

I understood. If she got rid of me, then he would be King. The deal was he'd have to marry her. “But what about my dad? She said she was going to marry him.”

“Marry him first.” He sighed again. “She'd be Queen of the Fairy Canopy. Then—when he's gone—she'd marry me. She'd be Queen of both kingdoms.”

I knew what ‘gone' meant. Like my mother would be ‘gone.' She was one sick hypnotist and there were so many things I didn't understand. “She hates the fairies.” That was obvious.

“Why does she want to be their queen?”

“She doesn't like the trolls much either.”

So what was she? And what did she really want? Because being Queen was not going to make her happy, of that much I was sure.

“You're in trouble,” I said to Trevor. “Saving me was a bad idea.”

“I had to. I don't care about her. I had to save you.”

He held my shoulders and looked into my eyes. His hands were large and strong and his eyes were warm. He was so easy, so normal—for being a troll. My breath caught and I rose onto my tiptoes even though he was not much taller. We were eye to eye, nose to nose, practically lips to lips with just the thinnest column of air between us. Nothing really keeping us apart. Maybe he didn't like fairies much, but he liked me and he knew what I was. Walker had said it was only because he wanted to be King, but it didn't feel like that. Not the way he was looking at me. Not the way he was making me look at him. After all, he could have let Madame Gold kill me and then he would be King. His arms went around me. His eyes closed. I had wanted to kiss Walker—before I knew his true personality. Was it terrible that now I wanted to kiss Trevor?

We kissed. My first official kiss. It finally happened only hours before I turned eighteen. Other girls tried to lose their virginity before they went to college. I was happy to be kissed. And it was a good kiss. A warm and friendly kiss. I'd read first kisses were often awkward. You don't know which way to tilt your head, where to fit your nose, how open your mouth should be, tongue or no tongue. No tongue. It was nice. I didn't feel much more than that, but when we opened our eyes and looked at each other, I was ready to try again. I closed my eyes and leaned toward him.

“October,” he said more seriously than I'd ever heard him.

I opened my eyes. He held both my hands.

“October,” he said again. “Will you marry me?”

“Are you crazy?”

“You kissed me.”

“I was just trying it out. One kiss. Are you some kind of fundamentalist?”

He looked confused. “You're almost eighteen. I've been eighteen for a while. It's time.”

He hadn't mentioned love once. “And you don't mind that I'm half fairy?”

“It doesn't thrill me. But it's okay. It makes you…unusual. As long as our children are brought up to be trolls. As long as you stay in Trolldom and we rule together.”

Walker was right. Trevor wanted to marry me so he could be king. “What makes you any different than Madame Gold?” I shoved him away. “You want to marry me just because you want to be king?”

Trevor looked at me sharply and I saw a hunger, lust in him, but it wasn't for me.

“I will be King,” he said. “I'm next in line. I am a cousin.”

“I don't want to get married.”

“Madame Gold wants to kill your whole family. Marry me and we can stop that. I don't want your family to die. I'd rather be King with you.”

He looked at me proudly, as if he was some superior being because he didn't want to kill me and my mother and father. He just wanted to marry me and make me miserable. Make us both miserable.

“I think you're nuts.”

“I will be King. I've been preparing for it my whole life. Then I heard about you. That you existed. It's just lucky you're female so we can propagate.”

“How lovely you make it sound. Is there anything about me you actually like?”

“I like your feet,” he said looking down at my muddy shoes.

“I'm getting hair on my toes,” I said. “Troll feet.”

“But still fairy-sized,” he said. “I've never seen feet so small.”

They were pushing against my shoes, growing as we spoke. I wasn't sure how big they would eventually be. My legs and arms and hands, on the other hand, were longer and slimmer and way more sensitive. I put a finger on his arm and I could feel his blood moving through his veins.

“I have to go.” I looked toward the parking lot. “I still haven't found Luisa.”

“Too late,” Trevor said. “She's…gone. Madame Gold knew she would get you to the portal to the Fairy Canopy. She was just a decoy.” He shuddered all over, like a dog shaking off a bath. “Luisa was a fairy, but she'd been in the human world too long. Other than her Frisbee skills, she didn't have any powers.” As if that made killing her okay. “Your grandfather hired her. She looked after you for years.”

“What?” I heard the truth in his voice. My legs wouldn't hold me; I collapsed on the path. Luisa was dead. And it was because of me. Because Madame Gold didn't want me to be Queen. Poor Mrs. Flores. Poor, poor Luisa. It wasn't fair. I hated Madame Gold more than ever.

“We have to go. She's coming after you. Get up,” he said. “Come on.”

I struggled to my feet. Trevor lifted me easily and carried me to my car. He set me down and put his arms around me.

“I know a safe place.”

I pushed him away. Nowhere in the world was safe anymore.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he said. His smile was sweet, his eyes the color of dark chocolate. “I do like you, October. Something about you makes me want to take care of you. I never knew a fairy before, even part fairy. Everyone I know is just like me.” His voice lifted, what he was saying was a revelation to him. “You can make me a better troll. We will be the best King and Queen ever. Trolldom will rule.”

“But I'm not a troll,” I said. “I'm not a fairy either.”

“That's the thing.” Trevor lifted my chin. “Nobody knows what you are. Maybe you will be the most amazing Queen ever.”

My car keys were still in my pocket. My phone was gone, but I had my car. I had to find my mother. I had to tell her she was in danger. She had to tell me what to do to save my father, save the fairies, and the trolls.

“I don't want to be Queen,” I said. “Why didn't Madame Gold just ask me? Why is this happening? I want to stay in the human world.”