Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale (20 page)

“So, you’ve got The Sight,” I said. “Big deal. You see trolls, goblins, what else? Witches? Fae?” I reached into my mojo bag and pulled out a fireblossom. I tossed it into the fireplace, and as its sprites lit into their flame dancing, the kid flinched—then smiled. A dazzling smile, with lots and lots of sharp, pointy teeth.

“Oh, hell. You’re a fairy,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You know—they call it ‘being gay’ nowadays, but sure, whatever.”

“Uh …” I didn’t know how to respond.

“Tell me more about this Sight,” he said. “What else can I do with it? Do I have other powers? I mean, I know I can smell things that others can’t, but what else?”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “You’re a
fairy
! What are you? A changeling?” I’d heard of changelings before, but never really knew one in person—until now.

He looked as though he were no longer breathing, and his eyes were wide as saucers. “What’s a changeling?” he said, so quietly I could barely hear.

“Your folks, man,” I said. “They switched you with a human, I’m guessing. And two humans brought you up.” He looked stricken. “It’s actually a pretty cool thing to do,” I said. “Fairies aren’t very good parents, compared to humans.”

And that was when he burst into tears. His beautiful sweater tore open from behind, and he gasped in what I took for surprise, and most likely pain, as enormous white wings erupted from his back. He looked at once panicked and at the same time joyous, like some country goth angel, as he knelt forward, his white, fragile fingers on the dirty floor of the shack, his wings scraping the walls of the log timbers on either side of us. He looked as though he would explode with power outward and blow the cabin apart, before soaring into the night sky, some skeletal angel, up, up, and away.

But no. Face first into the dirt; passed out.

I didn’t know what to do with him, so … Oh, there’s no easy way to say this. I ran. I left him there, in the dirt, before a roaring fire, on someone else’s land.

But I was a young kid, myself—younger than him, I was sure. I followed my gut, because when everything breaks down, that’s what kids
should
do, right? Well, if I had kids someday that’s the advice I’d give ‘em.

Anyway, it troubled me for months. How could someone not know he was magical, not know he was changing, and then
presto
, like a magic word, some child like myself could unwittingly be the catalyst for a transformation that was totally undoable.

I never, ever learned what happened to him, and it haunts me still—but because of him, I vowed that if I ever, ever encountered another fairy in the process of changing, one who didn’t know what he/she was, I was not going to be the one to say those magic words.

I didn’t want to see another beautiful creature in pain like that, so powerful and so vulnerable.

Another great reason for living away from people, living in the dump. Life was so much simpler there, on my own.

And now Deb was doing the same thing that other fairy had done. I didn’t want to see what would happen once she knew. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. I didn’t know what to say.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Fleeing the Market

Deb

Harlow sighed. As long as we stood there, I couldn’t look away from the flea market building. I knew I was wasting precious getaway time throwing my tantrum there on the grounds, but I hadn’t honestly expected him to pause so long in response. A sensitive, reflective troll. Who knew such a creature existed?

I expected him to pick me up and toss me through the drain pipe, like he’d pushed me into the fridge. Instead, he sighed again and sat down on top.

He patted the spot next to him. “Come and sit by me,” he said. “We might have to make a break for it, and I want you near the portal, okay?”

Next to him, I was small, but I knew I could bridge that size differential at any time, now. Our bodies were inches apart. I felt I could lean into him, fall into his arms, and be safer than I’d ever been in my life. I was equally sure I didn’t want him to know that. He was not, so to speak, my type.

“Answers,” I said.

“You’re changing,” he said. “Before, you were part fairy, part human. You smelled human, you looked human—you could have lived a human life for the rest of your days.”

“What? So, I’m some kind of half-breed?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’s not an issue of DNA, Deb—it’s magic. You’d be surprised how many descendants of fairies and trolls in our neck of the woods don’t even know about their background. As long as they live in peace and no one draws them out, they might even go to their graves thinking they’re no different than their human neighbors. Maybe, you know, they think they have a little ESP, or especially vivid dreams, or they’re just really good with their hands or something … but not you. You’re one of the unlucky ones, kid. You’ve got a destiny, and it’s coming true, no matter how hard I fight it.”

Sounded kind of bullshitty to me. “What destiny? Why would you fight it? And what is this connection between us, anyway? I mean, I take it we are kind of … bonded or something, but what does that mean? Are we married? Why me? Why did you save me? Why don’t you want me to skate?”

He laughed, taking his eyes off the flea market for a moment to look into mine. Such sadness there. “I do want you to skate, Deb—just not for McJagger. He eats the losers of his ‘matches.’ He uses the game to draw in humans to feed his court, Deb. Then, there are the drugs. If you do survive the games—which, I’m sure you would, if you’re what I think you are—the temptation to start faeth is way too strong.”

“Drugs? He’s Dave’s supplier?” And what was he going to do with Gennifer? I was still terrified at the thought.

“Most definitely,” Harlow said. “He supplies his own brand of methamphetamine to most of the Midwest. You could say he’s something of a crossover hit—he deals to both humans and the fae. And adds his own special ingredients.”

“Ingredients?”

“Fairy drugs. Effs up humans pretty badly, and it’s way more addictive than the crank recipe the English use.”

“English?”

“You know,” he said. “Humans.”

“But that’s what the Amish call the non-Amish.”

He smiled.

“Never mind,” I said. “You’ll have to explain that to me later. Right now, I want to know more about Gennifer and me. Is she part fairy, as well? And when you say ‘fairy,’ does that also mean ‘troll’? I’m a little confused.”

“Damn!” he yelled, smacking his face, as if squashing a mosquito. The pixies were back, and this time, they were angry.

He shoved me off the drain pipe, and I crawled down into it as fast as I could. Harlow climbed in behind me, and I could hear him scratching on the aluminum.

“Out! Out! I’ll smash you like a bug!”

A rush of fog and the feeling of riding a roller coaster straight down, and then we were tumbling out of the old refrigerator, at the dump. I fell on my knees in the dirty soil, and Harlow came jumping out after me.

“Fudge,” he said. “That was rough.”

I sat back on my knees and laughed. “Fudge?”

He tried to keep a straight face. “What?” he said, shrugging.

“You sound like Ralphie in
A Christmas Story
,” I said. “Oh … Fudge …”

That was it. We both lost it. I felt the giggles roll up through my body, and Harlow doubled over in laughter.

“You—you—” I fought through a fit of laughter to speak. “You—were—swinging at—Tinkerbell!?” I lost it. I thought for a minute I would wet my pants, I was laughing so hard.

We were probably so stressed out that it seemed way funnier than it actually was, but …
naw
, it WAS pretty funny.

Okay, maybe you had to be there.

“I’m going to die,” he said. He held his hand up, his palm toward me. “Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”

And then I heard it. The buzzing inside the fridge door, and the tiny tapping of miniature fists. I knew I should be serious—this was a big deal—but I lost it again.

I fought through the laughter to ask, “Is it possible?” and I lost it again. He rolled on the ground, beside me, and I began to wonder if this weren’t some kind of magic, the way the laughter was so impossible to overcome.

He looked at me through squinted, watering eyes, and I tried to point at the fridge, my stomach aching from the muscle spasms. My cheeks hurt from smiling, but I pressed through it best I could. “Could some of those pixies be in there?” As soon as I’d said it, I was overcome again.

And then, a reprieve. As long as I didn’t look at him, I could sit up, look around, even start to catch my breath. I seriously needed to pee.

“More than possible we were followed,” he said. “Highly probable. There’s only so much I could do with my bare hands.” I kept staring at my feet.

He stomped off into the mansa, and came back out with a newspaper and a fly swatter. I lost it again.

“Deb! Deb! C’mon!”

I tried to keep a straight face when he handed me the rolled up the paper. “We’re going to—” I busted again. The giggles rolled through me like a fresh wave. “We’re going to swat them like flies?”

He smiled, and nodded. He stuck out his index finger and twirled his flyswatter on it. “You ready?” he asked. When he smiled, his tusks glinted in the sunlight.
Dazzling
.

I nodded, trying like hell to be serious. Killing pixies was no laughing matter.

Harlow flicked open the fridge door, and the pixies streamed out.

“I thought there’d only be a few!” I said, swinging at them with my newspaper. One flew into my mouth, and nearly choked me. I spit her out and stomped on her. Something inside me died a little.

They were chanting, and it sounded like a “tick-tick-tock” noise.
We will … we will … rock you
, it sounded like, to me. One got in my face, pointing her tiny fist at my nose and shaking with anger. Harlow’s swatter whapped me right between the eyes, and her golden dust turned to goo. I wiped it off with my sleeve and kept going. The meaner those little fuckers got, the less sad I felt about it.

The greater part of the swarm circled Harlow. Pixies pulled at his dreadlocks and tore at his clothes. I saw one take a bite from his cheek, and dark blood dripped down his face.

“Oh no you don’t!” I said, and launched myself toward her. The paper struck Harlow hard in the eye, and he winced, but chuckled as I pulled it away, two pressed pixies clinging to the edge of the daily news.

“Let’s get in the mansa—I’ll collect the rest and put them in a jar,” he said. “Give us some light to read by,” he said, still swinging both arms at the swarm.

But the pixies laid off once we were inside the house. The one who followed us found a cozy spot on a kitchen washcloth and fell asleep.

Harlow peeked his head out the flap. “They’re distracted. Good thing about living in the landfill,” he said. “Lots here to catch the attention of the fae. They’re so ADHD.”

“Will they go back and tell Dave where to find us?”

“Not if they get lost in all this junk and forget … and with their swarm pretty much broken, they’ll probably do just that,” he said.

He opened a chest freezer and pulled out some ice cream bars.

“Hungry?” he said. “Sorry I don’t have more to offer for dinner.”

I took an ice cream bar and collapsed on my pile of soft covers. “Do you have a generator for that thing, and I just don’t hear it?”

He laughed. “Naw. Runs off magic.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I wish,” he said. “I just tap into the power line that the office uses. No one ever notices the extension cords under all the trash.”

I nodded. “You need to get some furniture in here,” I said. “A couch or something. Maybe a futon?”

“We can go out rummaging for stuff later, if you’d like,” he said. He smiled, and his expression softened. “Once we’ve found your sister, of course.”

I finished the ice cream bar and threw the wrapper on the ground beside me as I lay back onto the pallet. Harlow scooped it up and tossed it into a garbage can I hadn’t noticed, before my head could hit the pillow. It felt so good to be safe and relaxed, I thought I could fall asleep right then, in total comfort.

“Harlow?” I said.

“Deb?” he answered back. His husky voice was inches from my ear, and I turned my head to find him curled on the ground beside me. I loved the sound of his voice—so much. Too much.

“I want to know the rest of this prophecy stuff,” I said.

“Whatever you want to know,” he said. His hand was inches from mine, and for a minute, I thought he would reach out and hold it.

Chapter 23.5

Wildflower

Harlow