Quite Contrary (43 page)

“So you had a thing for princesses right from the start.”

“I suppose. It was more like the story she represented,” he lied.

“What was Elizabeth like when she wasn’t drunk? I never really got to meet her,” I asked.

He hesitated, but he couldn’t duck a direct question. “At first, ‘drunk’ is mostly what she was. When the fairy drugs wore off and the fairy magic started pulling at her, she got even worse. She needed my help just to survive. I had to find her an inn to stay at and pay the innkeeper with a trick and find horseshoes to nail up to keep the fairies from catching up to her until their spells let go. No matter how much pain she was in, she was always kind. She always thanked me, and thanked other people. “

“You got her to the City of Iron and Yellow Smoke somehow,” I pointed out.

“She shook off the spells faster than I’d have believed,” he said, “After two days, she could walk, and after that she hardly needed my help. On the first night, she stopped and fixed an old woman’s rocking chair without being asked, and the old woman let her stay for the night. The next morning we were standing in the road looking around, and with the sun shining through her hair, a carter said he knew she was a princess in disguise, and gave us a ride.”

God, his voice sounded light. Talking about her made him so happy. Did he have any idea how obvious it was? “Do you think about her a lot?”

He’d stopped paying attention. “Sometimes,” he said without thinking.

Yes, of course he did. Sometimes.

My hands shook, and my eyes hurt. I tried to freeze my face, but I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down onto my cheeks. “Why did you come back to me, then? Do you think it isn’t obvious you loved her more than me? Are you so stupid you wanted to settle for second best? Did you think I’d be flattered by that?!” I yelled at him.

A distraction saved him from answering. The door of the bar opened just enough for the gray-eyed blonde from the truck to poke her head inside. Maybe the bartender had been properly cautious, or had been worried by my shouting. He had his shotgun out already. It didn’t do him an ounce of good. She winked, and he left the gun on the counter and hurried right out the door after her.

Rat watched him go. He thought he’d gotten out of this. Was I stupid enough I’d forget he practically wrote a love poem to a princess in front of me thirty seconds ago? I shoved my chair back as I climbed to my feet, braced my foot against the edge of the table, and kicked it over. It smashed against the floor, scattering Rat and my food and glass.

That got Scarecrow’s attention. Forget Scarecrow’s attention. I’d been putting this off and putting this off. I was a stupid little girl who’d known what I needed all along. I wrestled myself up onto one of the high bar stools, crawled over the bar itself, and dropped down on the other side.

I needed a drink. That’s where this was going. That’s where it had always been going.

Whiskey, scotch, rum, brandy, tequila, vodka, wine, more stuff I didn’t recognize, all lined up on mirrored shelves behind the bar to catch the eye. It didn’t really matter, did it? I grabbed an ugly green bottle of gin. It would taste like crap, and I didn’t want to pretend I was doing this because I liked the taste.

I wrenched off the cap, tilted it back, and took a big swallow. At my size, that ought to get me drunk right there.

It did taste nasty. Mouthwash would have been tastier. I didn’t know about drunk, but it left the back of my throat burning, and my stomach. The heat spread out. My arms and legs felt wobbly, which was better than shaky. They didn’t give out on me, my body just started to relax.

I needed to relax so badly. I pulled up the barkeeper’s stool, climbed up onto it, and took another swallow.

It felt so good to relax and let the heat seep over me. Maybe a third swallow—but not yet. Probably in a few minutes, but this stuff had barely hit, and another drink might knock me out before I was ready.

I put the bottle on the counter and laid my arm next to it, and my forehead on my arm. I tried to stop sniffling and just feel the booze creeping through me.

Maybe it was time for another drink after all. I grabbed the bottle again, but Scarecrow grabbed it too.

She sat right across the counter from me. She only had that one expression, but her voice wobbled as she begged, “I’m scared. Please stop doing this.”

I yanked the bottle out of her grip and threw it at her face. Barely three feet from me, and I still missed. It smashed against a table behind her.

“Shut up!” I screamed.

She fell back off her bar stool, and I screamed again, “This is none of your business! You should be grateful someone’s willing to put up with you at all, because even made of wood you’re too stupid to survive five minutes on your own!”

She scrambled for her footing, and missed and fell on her butt instead. Sitting on the floor wasn’t far enough away from me. She flinched back, almost lying down, turning her face away.

Oh crap, Mary.

I didn’t try to stop the tears, and they burned down my cheeks over and over. I prayed I wasn’t as drunk as I thought I was. Maybe I wasn’t. I climbed over the counter okay, and stumbled over to Scarecrow, and reached down to grab her hand. She weighed a ton, but I pulled her to her feet and hugged her wooden body tight.

“Please forgive me. I know you can’t, but I’m sorry. You’re right. Not another drink. Never again. I never want to taste alcohol again.”

“I don’t know what to do to help you,” Scarecrow sounded like she was crying, too. I felt a pull on my skirt. Rat was climbing up it. Oh, thank goodness, he’d forgiven me.

“There isn’t anything. There just isn’t. I can’t help myself, either. I’m going to keep trying anyway,” I said.

I let go of the hug, but wrapped one of my arms around hers. When I started walking towards the door, she didn’t make me pull her. She wanted to leave more than I did.

“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered.

I pushed the door open and stepped out into the late afternoon sun. Still no traffic. No adults. I couldn’t see a single one. Other shops in the center had lights on, but were empty. Plenty of children stood around looking confused, and a couple of them were crying.

The pink sweater couldn’t be missed. There was the girl I’d robbed. I pulled the headphones off from around my neck and unbuckled the walkman from my waist. I still had no idea what the CD inside was. I dragged Scarecrow over to her and shoved the walkman into her hands before she could run away. From the way she flinched, the girl really wanted to run away.

“Here,” I said as I grabbed her shoulder, and pushed her towards the biggest knot of kids. “Listen! I think your parents are dead. Even if they’re not, they can’t help you. That naked woman wandering around? She’s a monster, or alien, or I don’t know what. She’s taking your parents, and she makes adults stupid and they can’t fight her. You can run away if you want, or try and fight her if you want, but she’s going to be much, much stronger than a regular person.”

A couple of kids heard me. Some more grabbed the sweatered-girl’s arms and she repeated my words for them. I wasn’t getting involved in any of it. I turned and started walking up the street.

“I’m going to walk home,” I whispered to Rat and Scarecrow. “I don’t know if I can get there. There’s nothing else I can do anymore. I’m going to keep walking, and either I’ll get across, or the Wolf will catch me.”

I tromped through an abandoned intersection. Right past it was an on-ramp leading up onto a freeway. At the top, I saw a sign: ‘Lexington, 10 Miles.’

I knew where I was. No, not yet, but I knew how to get there. Pulling Scarecrow along, I climbed the ramp.

walked along the side of am abandoned freeway. On and on. The only difference between this freeway and the last one was that trees soon swallowed up the sides of this road. They looked very, very familiar. Drive five minutes out of town back home and I’d have been drowning in trees. I didn’t recognize this road, but it led home.

The walking must have been clearing my head, because there was a problem with that fact. I stared at a chopped off stump by the road as I wrestled with it. Finally, I just had to turn around and say it.

“Rat, take Scarecrow and go back. Take her back to fairy tale land. Help her become alive. If I make it to the end of this road, you’ll turn into a regular stupid non-talking rat. Scarecrow will just die.”

I tried to scoop Rat out of my hood while I talked. I wanted to hand him to Scarecrow. He wouldn’t go. He hooked his claws tight into the fabric, and if I pulled any harder I might take his finger off.

Rat grunted as I tugged at him. “I’m staying with you no matter what. No matter what.”

Scarecrow put her hands behind her back. She wouldn’t take him from me if I got him loose. “You need me.”

I gave up. They’d decided. It was none of my business. I let Rat go, and headed down the road again. I was a good walker, but I figured it would take another hour or two to reach the city limits. That would put me somewhere on the map. I wasn’t on the map yet, because I didn’t recognize all these tree stumps. With all the forests I would have thought there’d be plenty of lumbering, but I couldn’t recall any.

Rat twisted around until he could peek out of my hood again. Scarecrow’s footsteps plodded on the asphalt behind me. It wasn’t my business to change their minds.

It was completely my business. They were tagging along for one reason. I was so close, and they were sacrificing themselves to make sure I made it. I wasn’t letting them do this because it was their decision. I was letting them do this because they were standing between me and those sharp, curved teeth hooking between my ribs and chewing them up like potato chips, while—stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!

I took a couple of deep, slow breaths. Rat and Scarecrow watched me, not wanting to say anything.

I started walking again. What else could I do? Three hours was being conservative to walk just ten miles. I might be halfway. I didn’t need a map, just an arrow.

The road curved up a small hill, broken in two by a stream’s deep gully. I got halfway up before I spotted what I wasn’t seeing. A bridge. A few more feet and I could see over the edge. The metal bridge had never been much, and now it was broken off entirely.

I couldn’t know anything until I got to the edge itself, so I kept climbing. The logging must have been recent, because plenty of tree trunks jammed the waterway. One huge log lay on top of the broken off bridge at the bottom of the gully. The multiple dams had made a mess of the little river, but that didn’t make a difference to me. I could still get across. One of the log jams was dry over the top, and the bank sloped down and back up slowly enough I could climb over it there.

This was just a nuisance obstacle. I could even keep the road in sight. I couldn’t get lost again.

I knew I was wrong when Scarecrow twisted around, head turning this way and that. “This doesn’t look right. It looks like an event.”

Rat’s nose turned every which way, but he didn’t have to smell anything. He pointed back down the road. “Is that what I think it is?” The quiet horror in his voice made my heart clench up in my chest.