I tried, I insisted in those nightmares. Don’t you see that I tried?
The last corpse I’d stumble over before waking in a cold sweat was always my father’s. The others were silent, but even in death, his lips continued to form the words that rang in my head: Not my son. Not my son.
On waking from those dreams, I finally admitted to myself what I’d denied all along: I’d never really been Dad’s son, and I never would be.
Curled up in the dark, waiting for sleep to return or Joey to rouse me, I thought back over all the signs I’d either missed or ignored, all the little moments that should have proven to me from the start that he would never want me. As I looked through scene after scene of his absence or apathy, I cycled back to my first memory, one I ineffectively tried to keep buried.
In that memory, I was three years old and change, and my parents had company over for drinks one evening—Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, whose daughter, Liana, was in my sister’s class. Hel and Liana had retreated to Hel’s room to play with the boxful of dolls stashed under the bed, but I remained underfoot in the den, pushing a plastic locomotive around the carpet. If it was past my bedtime, no one seemed to notice; the adults were busy with each other and their glasses, and I was busy rubbing my bare knees raw as I sent my train to explore the wonders to be found under the coffee table and the spare chairs. I don’t know why I loved that train so much—it was yellow and red and rounded, very un-trainlike, but having never seen a real train, this didn’t bother me then. I also had no true concept of what trains sounded like, so mine made vroom noises as I gleefully slammed it into the furniture legs.
I was barely listening to the grown-ups, though I kept one ear perked in case someone should mention cookies. My mother had made a tray of break-and-bake chocolate chip cookies with dinner, and having had one, I was hopeful there might be more and so stayed close to the action. The smell of melted chocolate lingered in the den, even though dessert had long since been packed away, and I imagined that my train was delivering cookies somewhere very important, probably to someone like me.
As I crawled near the couch again, absorbed in my train, Mr. Fisher reached down and pulled it out of my hand. “Let’s have a look at this,” he said, and I sat back on my heels, distressed to see my toy in the stranger’s lap. “Oh,” said Mr. Fisher, using the sort of slow and exaggerated tone reserved for idiots and the very young, “isn’t this nice!” He looked down at me then and, with all seriousness, added, “I think I’ll keep it.”
I wasn’t supposed to throw tantrums—Mom and Dad had made that abundantly clear, and I remember fearing a smack across the backside—but the thought of losing my train was pushing me to the breaking point. “That’s mine!” I protested, climbing to my feet to snatch the train back from the giant. “Give it back, that’s mine!”
Mr. Fisher just smiled and pulled a stick from behind him. A wand, I realized—it looked much like my parents’ wands, dark brown and smooth, tapering to a point, not to be touched—and he must have hidden it under his polo and shoved it in his waistband. Before I could reclaim my toy, he flicked the wand in the air and whispered a word, and my train was floating two feet above my head, bobbing out of my reach on a thin streamer of red light. “If you want it,” he said, grinning in challenge, “take it.”
In desperation, I looked to my parents for help, but my mother was sitting tight-lipped on the far end of the couch, and my father just sat back in his recliner and watched me in silence. As I began to panic, I tried jumping for the train, then climbed onto the coffee table and took a flying leap for it, but the toy always seemed to bob just out of my grasp. Panting, frustrated, and on the brink of tears, I stood in the middle of the den and watched it dance above me, waiting for one of the grown-ups to explain the rules of this new game. But after a moment, when no one offered to help, I couldn’t hold it any longer: I burst into angry sobs, sure that my train was never coming back.
And then, over my weeping, I heard my mother tell Mr. Fisher, “Stop it, Chris, give it back to him.”
I wiped my eyes and nose in time to see the train drop to the carpet, and I dove to the floor to scoop it into my arms. When I looked at the couch, Mr. Fisher was frowning—not angry, I knew that face, but upset. “It’s good for them to practice—”
Dad cut him off, his words low and clipped: “Boy’s a dud.”
The Fishers jerked in synchronization, and Mrs. Fisher leaned around her husband to stare at my father. “Now, Howard, you can’t be sure of that, he’s just a little thing. Liana was a slow starter.”
“He’s a dud,” he repeated, glaring at me as I swatted the last of my tears away. “Doesn’t have it in him.”
Mr. Fisher looked at me for a long moment, then turned back to my father as he absently rolled his wand between his palms. “You know, sometimes it takes a little extra provocation to make them spark. Add some gas to the fire, know what I mean?” Dad’s eyes narrowed, and Mr. Fisher explained, “If you push him far enough, he’ll figure out how to push back.”
“And I’m telling you he’s a dud,” said Dad.
“With a sister like Helen? Doubt it.” He frowned at me, then readied his wand. “Come on, let me try—I bet I can get him started.”
I saw Mom shoot a worried glance at Dad, but he shrugged and folded his arms. “You’ll see,” he muttered, and waved Mr. Fisher on.
The wand twitched, Mr. Fisher’s lips moved, and suddenly, the red light was all around me, pressing against me like a blanket of knives. I screamed and fell, my precious train forgotten, as I tried stop the stabbing pain that enveloped me. As I curled up on the floor, I wailed for my mother and scrunched my eyes closed as if darkness would make the agony end…
…and then, as quickly as it had come, it stopped, and I heard my sister’s voice above me: “You leave him alone!”
I uncurled and tried to sit up, but I was shaking too hard to make it off the floor.
Hel stood between Mr. Fisher and me with her arm out and palm raised, blocking the red stream from his wand with a purple stream of her own. I couldn’t see her face, but she had braced herself as if she were pushing against a wall. “That’s not nice!” she shouted at the couch, employing the same cadence our mother had used on us countless times. “We don’t hurt people!”
Mr. Fisher’s wand dropped, and Hel bent to pull me from the floor. “Come on, Aid,” she coaxed, shielding me against her favorite turquoise overalls as she led me from the room. “Come on, we’re going to play in here.”
I didn’t make it far. As we shuffled down the hall, my stomach roiled in warning, and suddenly, I lost my dinner all over the carpet and my shoes. I cried anew, scared and hurting from the acid burning my throat, and registered a fresh wave of shame when my bladder gave way. Hel called for our mother, and within seconds, Mom had carried me into the bathroom and was pressing a cold washcloth against my face. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she murmured, “let’s get you to bed.”
The memory fades there. I don’t know what eventually became of my little train, and I’ve never asked how much trouble Hel got into for chastising an adult. If Mr. Fisher ever apologized for putting me through excruciating pain, I’ve long since forgotten it. You don’t take many memories out of early childhood, which, at least in my case, is a mercy.
But I do remember that my father walked past the bathroom while I was hiccupping away my sobs. He moved purposefully down the hall toward his bedroom, sidestepping the mess I’d left, and he didn’t look at me as he passed the open door.
And so I lay there in the dark tent, tasting bile once again, unsure if it was worse to remember or to dream.
Two days after the bear steaks ran out, I killed a deer with Joey’s nail gun, earning a pleased nod from my companion when he woke to fresh venison.
Maybe the influx of recognizable food had a restorative effect on Joey, or maybe he was just settling into a rhythm, but slowly, his mood began to improve. He wasn’t enjoying our trip by any means—neither of us was
—but after a long three weeks in the bush, the forest had started to thin, and the stronger sunlight seemed to do us both some good. Over breakfast that morning, Joey showed me the notebook he’d been keeping of our trek, including his preliminary maps. “All approximations,” he said as I flipped through his pen sketches of the lakes and streams we’d passed, “but if I could get Georgie up and get an aerial perspective, I might be able to make more sense of it.”
He was finally planning ahead again, I noted, but didn’t comment on it. There was no sense in jinxing us.
The next day, Joey nudged me awake from another bad dream and silently beckoned for me to follow him outside the tent. Fearing the worst, I reached for my sword, but Joey shook his head and urged me to hurry with hand signs. When I scrambled out through the flap into the dawn, I looked through the trees to a little brook we’d missed in the darkness, and my breath caught in my throat.
“How about that?” Joey whispered, grinning beside me.
I considered the white stallion on the far side of the water, who had bent for a drink. He was beautifully formed, tall and muscular, unmarred but for a little dappling of gray on his flank. More striking, however, was the long horn he sported, a spiraling white spear with a wicked point.
“Unicorn,” I whispered back, at a loss for more helpful commentary.
Joey nodded. “Gorgeous, isn’t he? That boy’s got to be at least seventeen, eighteen hands. Hard to tell from here, but…wow.”
“Going to take a closer look?”
“Not a good idea. See the horn on that thing?”
I cut my eyes to him and smirked. “Come on, man, I thought you were good with horses. Not even going to try?”
“First, that’s not a horse,” he replied, waving dismissively at the unicorn. “Second, if I remember my folklore correctly, he’d never let me get close.” It was Joey’s turn to smirk. “Takes a virgin to tame a unicorn. Be my guest, bud.”
“You don’t know if that’s actually true,” I protested.
“What, that you’re a virgin?”
I glared at him, then looked back at the stream in time to see the unicorn raise its head. It spotted us and stared for a moment, then nickered, tossed its mane, and trotted off into the shadows.
“Well,” said Joey as it disappeared, “there goes your chance to prove me wrong, stud.”
My face flushed, and when Joey looked at me again, he saw my embarrassment and started to laugh. I tensed, trying to find a way to defend myself, then gave up and punched him in the stomach. Joey bent with the blow, gasped, and laughed all the harder—genuine laughter, the kind that turned his face as red as mine and squeezed tears from his eyes. He collapsed to his knees and kept laughing, and as I watched him, I felt the laughter well up within me, too. We still didn’t know where we were or what had befallen the people we cared about, but we laughed. And we sat there together in the weeds, howling at nothing and everything, until the anxious birds around us cried out and flew for their lives.
CHAPTER 10
* * *
Joey was in relatively good spirits over dinner and offered to take the first watch, so I found myself sitting alone outside the tent as the world shifted to the bluish-black of impending dawn. Truth be told, I preferred the second watch—I’d acclimated somewhat to our abbreviated sleep schedule, and so rising in the wee hours of the morning was becoming an excuse to get a jump on breakfast. Granted, it wasn’t thrilling to sit in the cold for a few hours by myself, but it beat returning to the dreams that had plagued me throughout our expedition.
At least I had something to do that morning besides sit and listen to unidentified noises in the forest. We hadn’t collected enough wood the night before, and the fire was burning low. I’d seen a couple of downed trees near our campsite, however, and so I cracked on a glow stick and laced it onto a lanyard to go gather another armful of branches before Joey woke.
It wasn’t hard to backtrack to the spot I remembered—my eyes had adjusted to the low light already, and the glow stick, while not powerful, was enough to keep me from walking into trees. A short hike later, I found the deadfall and threw the lanyard around my neck to free my hands. I picked up a few long sticks, kicked a rotten chunk out of the nearest tree, and was contemplating hacking a larger piece out with my sword when an owl screeched overhead.
Assuming the bird was just another inter-realm wanderer, I glanced up to see where it was heading, but then I noticed something yellow and luminescent gripped in its feet. The bird began to circle me—whatever it was holding was jerking in its grip—and with another cry, it released its prey and took refuge on a low-hanging branch. The glowing thing plummeted into the middle of the deadfall, and I dropped my bundle of sticks to take a closer look. I couldn’t tell whether the owl had been carrying something that glowed with magic or in the mundane spectrum. Maybe it was due to my chronic lack of sleep, or perhaps to the simple fact that I was alone in the woods and bored, but my curiosity got the better of me.
Before I could climb over the tree in my way, however, the owl decided to press its luck. I saw it rise and flap toward me…and then I saw it dive for me, talons extended.
It wanted my glow stick, I realized too late, just before the bird grabbed a clump of my shirt in each foot. I yelled and tried to beat it off with one hand—my other arm had gone up to shield my face—but the owl held fast until the lanyard broke. With its prize secure, the owl left me as quickly as it had come, flying off with its useless trinket dangling behind it like a fading beacon.
I caught my breath, checked myself for injuries, and looked around until I spotted the glowing thing in the pile once again. Now equal parts irked and curious, I scrambled over a rotting trunk and peered down into the nest of dead branches where the owl’s intended meal had landed.
It was definitely glowing, I noted, not reflecting active magic, and I had to squint to make out details. Something moved in the center of the radiance, and, without thinking, I reached down to pick it up.
The thing below me shrieked incomprehensibly as my hand loomed, and I bent closer, not quite believing what was coming into focus. “That’s…impossible,” I whispered to myself, and then I yanked my hand back, yelping in surprise at the sudden pain in my finger. Sticking it in my mouth, I tasted blood—and I finally accepted that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.
The creature in the deadfall was tiny, maybe six inches long if he stretched. And it was definitely male—he was humanoid in appearance and naked but for a sword belt and a brown loincloth. His eyes were too big, though, like an anime character come to life, and they glared up at me through the golden haze surrounding him. His left hand clutched a long, sharpened thorn like a sword, which he waved at me as a warning. But the real kicker—the thing that made me question whether this was all just a weird dream—was the two pairs of delicate wings that sprouted from his shoulder blades. The ones on the left looked much like those of a monarch butterfly, orange and black with white speckles around the edges. As for the ones on the right, I couldn’t say; he had fallen hard, and his wings had crumpled beneath him.
A fairy. I was being threatened by an honest-to-God fairy.
He squeaked again and scowled, accenting the sounds with jabs from his makeshift sword, and I understood that he was speaking—I couldn’t make sense of it, but he clearly wasn’t stupid. “Hey, there,” I said in Fae, backing off a step with my empty hands raised, “you’re all right. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The little thing lowered his sword and watched me uncertainly, waiting for the blow.
“Help?” I asked, cocking my head.
He frowned—I supposed my language was as foreign to him as his was to me—and tried to stand, but he cried out when the branches beneath him shifted and sent him tumbling.
I stepped closer and knelt beside the trap in which he’d landed. “Help,” I murmured, showing him my empty hand, then slowly lowered it into the nest of branches and waited.
He considered this deve
lopment with great suspicion, then tried again to stand. Something was wrong with his right leg, though, and the effort failed with another squeak of pain. He sat back on the branches, clutching his calf, and watched me with a mixture of fear and defiance.
I lifted my hand out of the nest and looked around for a moment—the glow had cost me some of my night vision—before finding a suitable twig. Snapping it free, I carefully lowered it into the nest and held it in front of him like a handrail. He studied my offering, realized my intention, then gingerly pulled himself upright, leaning on his good leg. I managed to get my palm under him before he lost his balance again, and he tumbled back into my hand, no heavier than a young bird.
Before he could have second thoughts, I raised him from the deadfall and stood, and he clutched my thumb to steady himself as we rose together. When I was sure he wasn’t going to fall off, I lifted him closer to my face for a better look and confirmed what I’d suspected: his right wings were wrecked, and his right leg was oddly bent and swollen in a familiar way. I knew all too well what a fractured bone looked like. His big eyes were less defiant now, and his thin chest rose and fell as he fought his visible fear. “Help,” I said again, ruffling his disheveled blond ponytail with my breath, and, keeping my other hand beneath my outstretched palm just in case, I carried him back to camp.
By the time Joey woke and started gawking at the newcomer, I’d begun first aid. The firelight had revealed scratches and bruises I’d missed earlier—he hadn’t gone willingly with the owl, that much was apparent—and I’d convinced him to try a numbing gel by demonstrating it on the stab wound he’d given me. I offered him water as well, using my plate to make a shallow enough surface, and ripped the pad off a bandage to give him something to work with. That still left the problem of his broken limbs, though. I didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do with his wings, but legs were old hat.
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