Authors: Irene Radford
Thistle Down (34 page)
“But . . . but he kissed me. It was magic. I can’t be that bad a judge of character. I know I can’t!”
Anger sent heat to Chase’s head and heart. “When and where have you given yourself the opportunity to learn enough about people in general to judge a man’s character?”
He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. He got as far as reaching for her.
“What about you, Chase Norton? I thought I knew you. I thought I could trust you.”
“I fixed your damn music box!”
“Then you go manufacturing evidence against a man who says he loves me. A man who makes my heart lighter and my toes tingle.”
“I didn’t manufacture anything. I found evidence that links him to this operation. Thistle watched him give bad mushrooms disguised in chocolate to a bunch of kids, encouraging them to blow up the cell tower and start fires with illegal fireworks. They talked about tipping over the Ferris wheel at the carnival.”
“You drew conclusions on bits and pieces of evidence because you can’t stand that I like him. Thistle doesn’t like him. She hasn’t . . . she . . .”
Too angry to speak, he clenched her tight against him and ground his mouth into hers.
She pounded his chest with her fists. Three blows came sharp and fierce and frightened.
He loosened his grip and softened his kiss, tasting, savoring the tenderness of her inexperience. If this was the only time in his life he got to hold her this close, he needed to make the most of it.
Then her fingers spread and clutched his shirt. She rose on tiptoe to come closer.
His blood sang. The world fell away.
And still they kissed, explored, cherished this moment out of time. Nothing existed but the two of them.
They pressed closer. He needed to merge with her body, mind, and soul, become one being, one thought, one life.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take advantage of her innocence and inexperience. With a monumental effort, he contented himself with exploring her mouth, her eyes, her neck, with his kisses.
Slowly they relaxed and drew apart.
Chase’s hands shook and his knees knocked together.
“What just happened?” he whispered into her hair, too afraid of shattering into a million pieces if he let her go.
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Dusty, I . . .”
“This is too much! Too soon.” She wrenched away from him and ran, thrashing through the woods. “I don’t know who to trust. Who to love.”
“Dusty!”
The only reply was the sound of a sapling thwapping against a bigger tree as she thrust it aside in her headlong flight.
Twenty-eight
“D
USTY, PLEASE COME OUT of the basement and talk to me,” Thistle called down the deep black hole into Dusty’s lair.
USTY, PLEASE COME OUT of the basement and talk to me,” Thistle called down the deep black hole into Dusty’s lair.
Why did her friend have to hide
down
there?
down
there?
Dusty mumbled something Thistle couldn’t understand.
“I know you feel hurt and betrayed, Dusty. The same thing happened to me. It’s why—it’s why I’m exiled.” Thistle had to swallow hard to get the words around the lump in her throat. Then she swallowed again.
“What?” Dusty appeared at the bottom of the crooked stairs, her face a pale blob in the darkness.
“Please, Dusty, come up. You know I can’t go down there.”
“Why not?” She came up a few steps, enough for her face to resolve into two huge eyes and a mouth surrounded by shadows.
“Because underground is death to Pixies. Elves and Faeries live underhill, at least during the day, and banished us to the sun when they removed themselves from humanity.”
“That’s folkloric nonsense.”
“So are Pixies.” Thistle giggled for the first time in hours. “Want to know what happened between me and Alder? I can almost guarantee it’s more embarrassing than your date with Haywood. Some day I’ll be able to laugh about it. Not yet, though.”
“Is that the beginning of some sage advice?” Dusty moved closer to the light.
Thistle breathed easier and signaled with a hand wave for M’velle and Meggie to back off. She couldn’t do anything about Joe trying not to be obvious in his listening. But his office door was open and he read the same page on his computer three times without touching any key to make it move.
“Advice in the form of a long story that I can’t tell you while you hide.”
“Oh, well, it has to be more interesting than Dick promising to always take care of me. He had the audacity to tell me I didn’t need a man of my own, he’d always be there for me. But he can’t. He won’t. He’s my brother, not a potential lover.”
“Another good reason for you to take charge of your life and stop hiding.”
“Bad habits die hard,” Dusty sighed, emerging from the cool depths of the dreaded basement. “You can go back to work, girls,” she called, without having to see Meggie and M’Velle hovering around the corner. “But thank you for your concern.”
“They’re your friends,” Thistle whispered. “You can’t have too many friends.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
A large tour group entered the front door of the museum. “Is this place air-conditioned?” a woman asked, presenting admission tickets to M’velle.
“No, ma’am. It’s well designed with deep overhangs and shade trees. We try to keep the place as authentic as possible.” She led them off into the parlor.
Meggie greeted the next smaller group and led them upstairs so the tours wouldn’t overlap.
“First time I’ve known those two to jump into tours without protests or at least rolled eyes and huge reluctance to heave themselves out of their chairs.” Dusty stared in the direction they’d departed with hands on hips and pursed lips.
“They are learning. Today, they know you and I need to talk, so they’ve given us the back room.” Thistle looped her arm through Dusty’s and led her into the lounge with its refrigerator, worktable, and blessed air-conditioning.
Thistle had never thought about the outside temperature in summer. Heat was heat, a fact of life that couldn’t be avoided. In winter, when cold nearly froze her wings, that was when she sought shelter.
“So tell me why you feel betrayed and why it’s worse than Chase thinking Hay is the culprit behind the logging order,” Dusty ordered while fishing the pitcher of iced tea out of the refrigerator. “And maybe the instigator in the recent rash of vandalism. I find it hard to believe. Very hard to believe. He’s sweet and kind.” She looked out the back window toward the cliff and the waterfall.
“Talk, Thistle, or I go back downstairs and try to piece together that Russian pot found in a Chinook tribal midden.”
“You know about the Patriarch Oak and mating flights,” Thistle said quietly, trying to find a way to say this so it wouldn’t hurt any more than she already did.
“Enlighten me.”
Drawing a deep breath, Thistle told her how important a mating flight was, told her about absolute trust. Told her about how the public display was an announcement of soul mates finding each other.
“Is that why Meggie has convinced all her friends to call their latest crush Pixie love?”
“She said something about that.” Thistle covered the ache deep in her chest by taking a long sip of tea.
“Who took you to the top of the Patriarch Oak?” Dusty smoothed her skirts and took a seat across the long table from Thistle.
“How’d you know?”
“You said you’d been betrayed and that your story was more embarrassing than mine.”
“Alder,” Thistle choked out.
“King of your tribe?”
Thistle nodded.
“But don’t your kings and queens have to marry outside the tribe to keep the peace?”
“Yes. We hadn’t had a true king in our tribe for ever so long. The old Faery in the tree ruled us. So when he finally went away, we didn’t know for sure what to do about a treaty or electing a new king or anything. Alder knew. I think he knew the old guy was on the verge of going away and arranged the treaty and the election beforehand, without telling anyone. The Patriarch Oak is supposed to belong to all the tribes. Alder is now refusing to let anyone but himself use it. The other tribes have to make do with their own trees. I thought . . .” She swallowed her pain and blurted the rest. “I thought when he took me up to the top that he meant us to be together always. He took me all the way to the top of the tree at noon, proclaiming to one and all that we were mates. He didn’t mean it. He sent for a Princess from the valley tribes to be his mate the next day.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” They sat in silence a moment, each wrapped deep in her own thoughts. The whir of the air conditioner and the soft murmur of voices barely intruded.
“So why’d he exile you?” Dusty finally broke the silence.
“Pixies have treaties with some of the bird flocks. Mostly robins and their cousins, the varied thrushes. We help them find the juiciest worms and they let us ride on them when we have to go long distances.”
“And . . .?” Dusty prompted.
“I bribed the varied thrush sent to carry Milkweed to The Ten Acre Wood. He flew the wrong way and led Milkweed and her whole family astray. They were two days late to the wedding.” Thistle giggled over that.
“Oh, you are nasty.” Dusty smiled, a laugh twitching at the corners of her mouth.
“Alder sure was mad. And I’m told that Milkweed hasn’t consented to a mating flight yet.”
“Trouble in paradise. If I were Milkweed, I wouldn’t trust Alder either. I presume, like most men, you aren’t the only one he betrayed.”
“Yes. But not all men are as selfish and greedy as he is. Dick . . .”
“Dick is incapable of making a commitment. He hasn’t had a relationship last more than a month, ever. Chase isn’t much better.”
“So what if Haywood is the rogue Pixie trying to cut down The Ten Acre Wood?” Thistle asked gently. She covered Dusty’s hand with her own. “I know he bribed a bunch of teens to blow up the cell tower, maybe some of the carnival rides tonight. He’s tying them to him with mushrooms.”
“I refuse to believe that he could be that devious. He kissed me. And it was glorious. The world sparkled.”
Uh-oh. Thistle didn’t know if she should suggest an alternative to those colored lights.
“He said he loved me,” Dusty insisted.
“Alder said he loved me.”
Another long silence.
“I don’t know whom to trust. A man I’m very attracted to who says he loves me, or the man I grew up with who has always been a friend. He fixed my music box.”
“Don’t trust either of them,” a new voice said. A high chiming voice that came from the air somewhere close to Dusty’s ear.
Thistle searched wildly for the source.
Dusty batted at her ear as if at an annoying insect.
“Hey, watch it, lady! I’m not going to sit around all day and get squashed just because you two are deep into crying over spilled milk. Though, if you spill it on a rhododendron, I’d enjoy lapping it up,” a little blue Pixie said.
“Chicory,” Thistle said on a long exhale, not sure if she should be annoyed or relieved. “What are you doing here? This is still part of Alder’s territory.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, so I’m not sticking around long.”
“Chicory.” Dusty choked on her tea. She looked pale and a little green around the edges. Her eyes lost focus and threatened to roll upward. As if her mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around the reality of the obnoxious blue boy with a cap that looked like an upside-down chicory blossom on his head, knickers and tunic the same shade, and darker blue skin and hair. His blue green wings stilled their constant flutter as he landed on the table, regarding Dusty with concern.
“So what brings you into dangerous lands?” Thistle prodded the tiny man.
“Mabel sent me.”
“Mabel? As in police dispatch Mabel who has an army of Pixie spies?” A little color returned to Dusty’s face and her eyes focused firmly on the Pixie.
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