Two and Twenty Dark Tales (2 page)

Henderson wanted to ask him what he meant by that, since this land was Los Angeles in the summer and hardly cold. But he refrained. Arawn didn’t like questions.

Arawn had reached into his enormous wool coat and pulled out a heavy velvet bag full of something that clicked. “She is the first of three. If you succeed in helping me with her, there will be two more jobs, and two more payments like this.”

Then, in the most startling moment of all, Arawn had opened the velvet bag, tilted it, and spilled a half dozen gems, sparkling white, red, green, and blue, onto the palm of his hand.

Henderson’s cold little heart had hugged itself at the sight, and Arawn had tossed the gems like jacks onto the desk. Then he turned in a swirl of long embroidered scarf, and vanished through the door. The desk lamp brightened with his exit, as if a scrim of darkness had lifted.

The gems, it turned out, were authentic and of the finest quality. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds worth more than everything else Henderson owned. He’d resolved then to complete this task in good order for Arawn, not only because the man was the type he preferred not to cross, but in hope of the other two jobs and two more payments of gems.

Or perhaps an opportunity would come along, allowing Henderson unrestricted access to that velvet pouch. Arawn was someone accustomed to being obeyed, and men like that were better complied with as far as prudence dictated. Henderson might not be a particularly obedient man, but he was prudent, so he gathered up his binoculars, his notepad and pen, his granola bars, a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, an empty bottle for pissing in, and set out for the group home.

He parked across the street and was on his second soda when Aderyn showed up after midnight. Her heavy black hair was scraped back in a ponytail instead of a bouffant, her cheeks dangerously thin, but there was no mistaking the sad dark eyes from the photograph.

He made a note of the time: 12:05 a.m. precisely, and of her attire. Her stick-thin legs were clad in white jeans tighter than he thought proper, topped with a baggy black shirt and oversized leather jacket, her feet shod in soft black boots.

She paused at the foot of the jacaranda tree flowering in the side yard and pulled a long, shiny knife out of her backpack. She touched one finger to the edge of the blade, as if making sure it was sharp.

Henderson tut-tutted as he made a note. Were county group homes really so dangerous that a tiny girl like her would need a knife like that? That was a shame. A shame indeed.

She tucked the knife away. Then she looked up at the moon through the branches of the jacaranda tree, opened her mouth, and sang melancholy words he did not understand. The mournful melody sidled into Henderson’s soul and pierced his heart. The pain was so exquisite that when he blinked to find the refrain was over, he found her already perched high up in the jacaranda tree. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn she flew there. She balanced easily on the stout branch, looking uncommonly comfortable, and climbed into the third story window of the home.

During the hours he waited for the sun to rise, Henderson tried to hum the tune she’d sung. But no matter how many times he tried, he was always at least one note off, here or there.

***

There was a man in a car outside the group home, watching her and taking notes. Aderyn had seen him the night before as she slipped into the window of the hell-home. She saw him again the next morning. He’d moved his rusty yellow sedan down the block, but he had the same old-timey Clark Gable mustache and was still wearing the same maroon tracksuit, peering at her through mini-binoculars.

Well, the world was full of weirdos, as more than one occasion had taught her. Cop or stalker, it didn’t matter. Nothing was going to get in the way of her plans.

She sped up her pace, hoping to leave the little man in the tracksuit behind, and felt in her backpack for the knife. It was still there, better than money in her hand. Soon she’d be where no one could follow her.

She would have done it last night, but she needed to return the books to Mrs. Davis. The tiny old woman with her dyed blond pile of hair and her black-rimmed glasses would make her tea and ask her how her day was going, and for forty-five minutes, Aderyn would feel that she mattered. She wouldn’t say goodbye, but she could leave the books behind, and Mrs. Davis would understand she was grateful.

The battered yellow sedan followed her all the way to school, sneaking in and out of traffic, disappearing for a few minutes, only to reappear, waiting for her at the drop off. She flipped him off then darted into the school.

She’d reported the abuses at the group home, but had no illusions that he was sent to investigate that. She’d long ago given up the fantasy someone would come and save her. No. The cycle of group home / foster home / new school / rejection / group home would continue on and on, unless she put a stop to it.

Her appointment to see Mrs. Davis was the only thing she looked forward to, today or any day. And even kind old Mrs. Davis couldn’t save her. Aderyn felt her backpack for the outline of the knife and was reassured to find it there.

As she walked up to her locker, a lady jock in the hallway gasped, “Have you heard? Did you hear?” and ran over to shout to her soccer teammates that Mrs. Davis had been killed that morning on her way to school.

A car accident, she said. A hit-and-run.

***

Mrs. Davis’s office had smelled vaguely of chamomile and tar. Aderyn liked to think that, in between counseling sessions, Mrs. Davis cracked the window overlooking the street and secretly had a cigarette, exhaling the smoke through the gap to mix with the traffic below.

Aderyn had said nothing to the old lady for the first two sessions, of course. She was there because some bureaucrat had labeled her “at risk.” She didn’t understand how talking to a little old lady was going to change that. Mrs. Davis had asked questions and cracked quaint jokes. She’d pinned and re-pinned her unlikely pile of blond hair and made endless cups of tea.

During the third session, Mrs. Davis had pulled out a book and read aloud from it. Aderyn hadn’t really understood what was going on at first, but as the words rolled out of Mrs. Davis like waves on a beach, pictures formed in Aderyn’s head. They were images she’d never seen anywhere else—of horses flashing in the dark, of hay as high as houses, of owls and the moon, and fire as green as grass. She flew over the sunrise with black and white wings, and when Mrs. Davis finished speaking, she came to rest gently on the earth again, tears on her cheeks.

“It’s by Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet,” Mrs. Davis had said, holding the book out. “Would you like to borrow it?”

She’d eaten that book whole and moved on to more poetry, history, and mythology. She’d discovered that her name meant “bird” in Welsh, and that the old Welsh myths were like dangerous bedtime stories left unfinished, to loom over her dreams at night.

She never remembered her dreams before, but now she started to write them down. Dreams of black and white wings flying over green hills. Most of the time she flew only to be caught in a net and held in a silver cage. But a few joyous times she took someone by the hand and taught her to fly too. That was the best dream.

She still had two of the books. One contained old nursery rhymes, the other Welsh history and myth. The subjects often seemed to intertwine. Mrs. Davis had loaned them to her after Aderyn had come to a session sporting a black eye, still smarting after a girl in the group home punched her in her sleep. When asked why, the puncher—who sported a black eye herself—said it was Aderyn’s turn. Aderyn hadn’t really understood that, since she barely knew the girl.

Mrs. Davis had a long silver stickpin in the shape of a bird she always wore on the neck of her favorite pink cardigan, the one starting to pill at the elbows. She’d run her fingers over the pin thoughtfully and let Aderyn cry and talk and yell. Then she’d looked over her black-rimmed glasses and said, “Bad things cycle round and round. Those who were harmed seek to harm. Those who were blamed seek to blame. If we all choose to do otherwise, maybe someday it will stop.”

Aderyn had found strange comfort in those words. It was then she’d started planning how to stop the cycle without blaming or harming anyone but herself.

***

Now Mrs. Davis was dead, killed in a hit-and-run. There was no one left to speak to. No one to give the books to. No one to make smelly tea and read her words that sent the world reeling.

Aderyn did not cry, but she stood there staring at nothing for a long time. Then she opened up her backpack. Mrs. Davis’s books lay next to the stolen knife. It was ready.

She didn’t see the boy approach at first, so focused was she. He made no sound as he got near; no shadow loomed. He was suddenly very solidly
there
, standing by her locker, smiling. He had to be new. She would have remembered him otherwise.

His hair was the gold of sunshine on a wheat field. His skin was smooth and young, but his eyes were as blue as the sky and just as old. They pierced her, and an ache began in her bones that made her want to fly, fly into those eyes.

He looked at her and took her hand away from the stolen knife to kiss. His lips were soft and warm. His shoulders were broad and strong. In his ancient blue eyes she saw herself reflected, beautiful and desired.

“Aderyn,” he said. “I’m Matthew, and I’d like to take you out.”

“Hi,” she said, for she was only seventeen, and life in a series of foster homes had not prepared her for his formal tone, his firm touch, his bemused gaze. “How did you know my name?”

“I saw a girl, delicate, clever, and kind. So I asked around.” Self-assurance emanated from him like cologne. She envisioned herself pressing against him and some of that warm scent rubbing off on her. “Let’s sneak out now,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

She said, “Yes,” and he didn’t let go of her hand as they walked down the corridor. She hoisted her backpack over her shoulder. The knife could wait.

***

His car was big and black with opaque windows, like something going to a funeral. He opened her door and saw that she was safely bestowed on the shiny leather seat before shutting it with a gentle thump.

As he settled in next to her, she asked, “Did your parents give you this car?”

“I stole it,” he said, and turned the key so that the engine revved. “I’m a thief.”

She asked, “Are you stealing me?”

His laugh was a delighted shout. “Yes,” he said, and peeled out into the street.

She was too captivated to see the mustachioed man in the tracksuit turn his yellow car to follow them.

At the drive-thru, Matthew bought her a chocolate shake and French fries without asking, just as she always did for herself. All the while he blasted a song she loved on the car stereo. He listed off her favorite colors (black and white), her sign (Aquarius), and her dreams (of flying). He seemed to understand what she meant before the words left her lips. And each time she confirmed these things, he drew closer to her, as if she had passed some kind of test. When he again intertwined his fingers with hers, and took her photo with his phone; warmth she had never felt before was kindling in the center of her chest.

The car purred down the boulevards toward the ocean. He rolled aside the moon roof so she could stick her head and shoulders out and pretend she was flying.

When he pulled up to the motel near the beach, she saw the rolling silver ocean first, and the dreary neon motel sign second. Disappointment tugged at her as he, still in the driver’s seat, grabbed her legs and pulled her back down where he could run his hands up into her hair, freeing it to pour like black water around her face.

“Always so beautiful,” he said, his blue eyes gazing on her as if remembering another time. “That’s why I stole you. That and because he loved your song so.”

“He?” she said, pushing away from him a little. His nearness made her heart beat fast as a baby bird’s.

He cocked a smile at her, the way a cowboy cocks a gun. “Come inside, and I’ll tell you what I mean.”

“A motel?” she asked, and shook her head. “If you knew me as well as you claim, you’d know better than that.”

“Aderyn Adain?” He leaned in close and touched his nose to hers. “I’d know that beak anywhere. For I have known you over many lifetimes. And if my luck goes badly, I will know you for many more. Here.” He pulled from his coat pocket a bundle of papers tied with a string. He tugged the string free, and photos spilled onto the seat.

“But that’s me!” She picked up a square black and white photo with a thick white border around the edges. Her own dark eyes looked back at her from under the brim of a black cloche hat with a white ribbon around the brim, her thick black hair in a bob with bangs cut straight across. “It can’t be me.”

“Neither can this,” Matthew said, pointing to a photo of Aderyn in a black poodle skirt and white sweater, books tucked under arm. “Or this.”

Aderyn stared at herself, this time with her hair in a teased black bouffant, eyes limned in winged eyeliner. Strange recognition stirred, and with it, hazy alarm. Aderyn had never known her parents. A homeless man had found her, newly born, in a Dumpster. No one looked like her. No one till this, till now.

“How’d you get these?” she asked. There were other unlikely photos of her, and of two other girls that looked familiar: a redhead and a blonde. There were drawings too, in colored pencil, of a black and white bird in a blue sky, of a white hound with red ears, and of a great white stag emerging from the forest, antlers pointed like daggers at the sky. Something about them nudged her memory too. “Do you know my mother or grandmother or something?”

Matthew gathered up the photos, tying them together again. As he tucked them into his pocket, the lapel of his coat slid aside to show a flash of silver in a winged shape. She leaned in, trying to see more, but he turned and opened his car door. “Come inside,” he said. “I’ll tell you about yourself.”

Then he was up and striding toward the motel room door, the last rays of sunset gracing his head like a gold crown.