The last time her world had crumbled around her, she’d called Dusty. He prayed that the love of his life would seek out her best friend again.
He took the steep road twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, gears grinding, and turned onto Center Street on two wheels. The driver of a big red pickup yelled something obscene and shook his fist as Dick cut him off.
With a screech of brakes and one wheel on the curb he parked in front of the museum in a handicap spot. “Thistle!” he called as he ran inside. “Thistle, are you here?”
Then, through the side window in the parlor, he noticed the fire engine, police cruiser, and paramedic truck. His feet sped up without conscious thought. “Chase?”
“No running inside the museum,” Dusty reprimanded him as if he were a naughty fourth grader on a field trip.
“What happened? Have you seen Thistle?” He leaned forward, examining paramedic Bill Musgrave’s careful application of butterfly bandages over a wickedly swollen wound along Chase’s temple and cheek.
“I strongly recommend you see a doctor for this,” Bill said sternly as he dabbed away blood and lymph that still oozed.
“I second that,” Dick said. “That gash is already infected.”
“And I agree,” Dusty added.
“Later, when I’ve completed all the paperwork required from this little fiasco,” Chase ground out. “Bad enough I’m going to be patrolling a desk for the next couple of weeks. I need to be out walking my town.”
“I missed something,” Dick said.
Dusty gave him a quick report.
She said nothing about Thistle in her narrative, only suggestions that Haywood Wheatland might have hypnotized the culprits. She couldn’t mention Snapdragon with Bill still hovering over Chase’s wound.
Dick wanted to strangle the malevolent Pixie, right here and now.
He took a deep breath to calm himself. Thistle was unhurt. Upset and uncertain, maybe. Neither Snapdragon or the other Pixie voice—he suspected Alder—had said anything about Thistle being hurt.
Then he bent and looked more closely at the wound, almost like a knife slash. They weren’t telling him everything.
“Your refusal to see a physician is going on my report, Chase,” Bill said. “Since you’re going to be desk-bound for a while because you fired your weapon, endangering four civilians—one of them your fiancée—you might as well spend some of that time at the clinic.” Bill snapped his kit closed and exited.
“What really happened?” Dick asked. He opened an alcohol swab from a pile of packets Bill had left behind, as if he knew they’d be needed.
“I got sideswiped by part of Snapdragon’s army of Pixies,” Chase replied. He only winced a little when Dick cleaned the wound again.
“Did they use hawthorn spikes for swords?”
“Yep.”
“Um… I’m ordering you to get to the clinic. I’ll drop you off on my way. I’ve got to find Thistle, fast.” Worry gnawed at his gut.
“Explain?” Dusty asked, hands on hips, best schoolteacher frown on her face.
“No time for details.” He hauled Chase to his feet with a firm grip on his friend’s elbow. “But while we’re gone, Dusty, get on the Internet or into your personal reference library and see what you can find about ergot poisoning.”
“Moldy rye, Saint Vitus’ dance, great for making a red dye that doesn’t fade or bleed. What else do you want to know?”
“Does it affect hay or straw from grains other than rye?”
Dusty logged onto the computer in the corner of the employee lounge, fingers racing.
“I think Haywood Wheatland may have contracted it while partially underground in the old pioneer jail, where you stashed him while we fought the fire spreading to downtown last August,” Dick replied. “The purple-red pustules on his wings look something like a picture I saw in a biology text years ago. Either that or a fungus. But I can’t think of any fungal infection that would drive him violently insane. So, Chase, you’d better make sure the doctor irrigates that wound with lots of saline just in case Snapdragon poisoned those Pixie swords with his own disease. Come on, Chase. I have places to go and a fiancée to hunt for.”
Phelma Jo stood stock-still in the parking place next to her car in front of the grade school, three blocks from her meeting with Marcus. And with Ian.
An angry car horn and a shout made her jump to the curb. The distraught woman driving a forest-green minivan muttered a string of invectives at her all the while she rammed her car into the empty spot, slammed her car door, and stalked into the grade school. Rabid birds attacking innocent children earned as many curses as Phelma Jo.
She stared at the woman blankly, her mind jumping from Ian’s rejection, to the disjointed and nonsensical words, to the image of Haywood Wheatland as a weird dragonfly/moth/Pixie biting Ian’s finger.
“Oh, my God!” She clamped her hand over her mouth, gaze darting right and left, up and down.
Haywood Wheatland, the boy toy she’d flaunted in front of the town last summer was some kind of miniature flying pest. Right out of some fairy tale, and it sounded like he’d attacked a child. Images flickered through her memory: stuffing a purple dragonfly into a mason jar with a wolf spider and having Dick steal it, claiming the bug was really a Pixie. Then watching the dragonfly perch on Dick’s outstretched hand and morph into the tiny figure of Thistle Down as she blew him a kiss of thanks. Haywood Wheatland binding her with magic before he ran out of energy and substituted duct tape. The flitting lights that streamed out of The Ten Acre Wood ahead of the fire. The sound of chiming laughter haunting her whenever she walked around town, especially in the environs of Dusty’s museum.
“I’m going crazy,” she reassured herself. “I have to be. Pixies do not exist.”
But she’d seen them with her own eyes.
Frantically she searched the soggy shrubbery next to the sidewalk where she suspected a deranged Pixie might hide and taunt her with the loss of someone she really cared about. No sign of the yellow bug with red splotches on its wings.
Nothing. If the creature existed outside of her mind, he’d found other people to torment.
Torment. That was a good word for the way Haywood had treated her, compelling her to set fire to The Ten Acre Wood, beloved by the entire town.
She shook her head, forcing the mind-numbing loop of questions aside. “I have too much work to do to waste time standing here in the rain.” With Halloween banners and scarecrows fluttering in the breeze, mocking her very existence.
Resolutely, she got into her car and headed toward her office building on the north end of town overlooking the river and the railroad tracks.
Something deep within tugged her away from her reality toward Dusty’s museum and The Ten Acre Wood. Answers. She needed answers. Answers that Dusty seemed to hold close to her chest, hidden from the world. Just as she hid herself.
“Shyness, my butt. She’s a silent manipulator hoarding the town’s secrets as if they were ancient artifacts.” Mabel did much the same thing.
Four minutes later she parked beside the museum.
“Why is it that everyone in town ends up here sooner or later?” Phelma Jo asked the air as she entered the dark but cozy entry.
“Because this is our history. We can ground ourselves in our roots here,” Dusty replied, looking up from the rocker by the hearth. Flickering electric lights of a fake fire glowed behind the glass plate of the old iron stove in the corner. She stilled the motion of the chair and stood up. Dressed in a faded calico gown with a dirt-streaked apron and looking pale, frail, and insubstantial, she could have been a ghost.
Phelma Jo stepped back, hand to her heart. She forced herself to breathe deeply, center herself in the reality of today.
In decades past, Dusty’s shyness had kept her in the background, looking in on reality occasionally; otherwise living in her own world of books and history and artifacts. A metaphoric ghost.
Maybe she was just rehearsing f
or the after-dark tours scheduled throughout the week.
“I discarded my past. I look to the future,” Phelma Jo said haughtily.
“Do you? Is that why you built your steel-and-glass, high-rise condominium and office building on the lot where your mother’s shack used to stand?” Dusty stepped over the velvet rope that divided the front parlor from the entryway and casually walked to the back of the old home. “Can I get you a cup of tea, or did you want to pay admission and take the tour?” she called over her shoulder, as if she expected Phelma Jo to follow her.
“I’ll take the cup of tea and a bit of your time.” Phelma Jo forced aside a sarcastic retort, relying on politeness. One of her foster mothers had urged her to try politeness when anger and derision failed. Sometimes it worked.
“What do you need, Phelma Jo?” Dusty asked as she filled two mugs with hot water from a simmering electric kettle. She set them on the long worktable along with a box of tea bags, sugar packets, and spoons. “If you take milk in your tea, I think I’ve got some in the fridge.”
“That’s okay. Black is fine. With a little bit of fake sugar.” Phelma Jo took a chair at the far end of the table, amazed that she didn’t have to wipe dust off the seat.
“I presume you haven’t come to apologize for rubbing my face in the dirt during recess in fourth grade,” Dusty said, fixing her gaze firmly on Phelma Jo. She stirred a disgusting looking pale syrup into her herbal tea. Agave syrup was the name on the bottle. Who ever heard of that?
“No, I haven’t come to apologize.” Phelma Jo returned the stare, amazed that Dusty had finally learned to stand up for herself. She supposed that her engagement to Chase had filled her with more self-confidence than she’d exhibited in fifteen years.
“I’ve already apologized to you for my part of that fiasco,” Dusty looked at her shoes. “We both need to admit it all turned out for the best. You got out of an abusive situation and into foster care. I got an early diagnosis of leukemia and life-saving treatment when the scrapes didn’t heal.”
“Agreed. But I nursed the hurt so long, as a coping mechanism, it’s become very hard to let go.”
“So why did you seek me out today?”
“I… I’ve seen some strange things lately. I thought you might be able to answer some questions.”
“Because I’m strange?” Dusty cocked her head and hid a smile by taking a sip of her tea.
“No… well, yes. You always did live in a different reality from the rest of us. Living in your imagination and writing little stories about your so-called adventures.”
“What did you see?”
“A bloated yellow dragonfly with red donuts on his wings and the face and voice of Haywood Wheatland. Call me crazy and send me to a shrink. But I swear that’s what I saw.”
“Sort of a combination of these three things?” Dusty asked, shoving her open laptop to where Phelma Jo could see the screen.
Right there on the glossy surface, in three separate windows, Dusty had arranged a picture of a dragonfly in brown and gold, a yellow-and-red snapdragon blossom, and sheaves of grain with alien reddish-purple pods instead of seeds on the tops.
“I don’t see…”
“Close your eyes and let your memory of each image overlay on top of the other,” Dusty suggested.
Phelma Jo obeyed. Slowly she visualized each item and let them merge until… until she saw in her mind the nasty bug that had bitten Ian and taunted her.
“Oh, my!” she gasped involuntarily.
“Oh, my, indeed,” Dusty echoed.
“What is that?” Phelma Jo pointed to the picture of the mutated grain.
“Ergot.”
Phelma Jo cocked her head in question. “Should I know what that means?”
“It’s a poison fungus that infects damp grain. Mostly rye and barley, sometimes wheat. In advanced cases it causes muscle spasms, hallucinations, and insanity as a prelude to a painful death.” Dusty sounded calm and rational. Dispassionate. But her fingers tightened into fists.
“Dick and I think that when you were first arrested, when we sent you to the hospital and put Hay into the pioneer jail that is half underground, he may have been infected from the dampness in the ground. Add to that a general body weakness and suppression of his immune system from the iron handcuffs, and he succumbed. That’s why it took him almost two months to regain enough energy to shrink back to his normal form and fly away from jail.”
“By that time he was already insane,” Phelma Jo mused. She told Dusty about her visit from Haywood the day he escaped.
“That was the day of the big accident on the freeway. A number of drivers reported a nasty yellow-and-red bug as big as a small bird nearly slamming into their windshields.”
“Damn,” Phelma Jo said, thumping her half-empty teacup onto the table.
Dusty raised her eyebrows.
“I… I think I saw him do the same thing downtown the day he bit Ian.”
“Downtown? Was it today? In front of the courthouse?” Dusty leaned forward, shoulders tense with anxiety.
“No, it was a few days ago. You and Thistle had just gone into the Bridal Shop. Dick was in his car talking on his cell, not far away.”
“Do you know why Thistle ran away from Dick today?”
“No. Other than that she woke up and realized what an unfaithful ass he can be.” What had Hay said? Something about separating Dick and Thistle, humiliating them, sending Thistle back where she belonged?
Where did she belong? Sometimes she acted like she’d come from another world.
Like Pixie.
“You do know where she is! Which way did she go?” Dusty sounded breathless with anxiety.
“Not today. I haven’t seen her or Dick today. But I bet if you find that horrible creature, you’ll find Thistle Down.” She pointed to the computer screen.
Phelma Jo and Dick seemed to be in the same boat. Separated from their loves.
That did not mean she’d take Dick back or comfort him. She wanted Ian, not a poor substitute pining for his lost love.
Twenty-four
CHICORY INSPECTED THE SLATS across an attic opening that overlooked the porch roof of Juliet’s home. All he could see beyond the roof was another house with grass that hadn’t seen a mower all summer and not much in the way of shrubs. The house was smaller than Juliet’s. Hmmm, a yard that truly needed a few Pixies to take care of it.
The other members of his tribe flew from corner to corner, trunk to box to rafter, exploring their new winter home.
“We usually cover the inside of that vent with plywood for the winter,” Juliet said. “Cuts down on drafts. But I can leave it open if you and your tribe need to come and go. We do have a few bright and dry days in the winter.” She rocked idly in an old wooden chair that creaked with each forward movement. “Of course that will increase our heating bills. I certainly hope your work in my garden is worth the trade.”
“You may cover the vent.” Chicory flitted from the slats to hover in front of her. He moved forward and back with each of her rocks so that he stayed the same distance from her. “When we hibernate, we only go out once in a while during the false spring in February. We can go through the house if we need to.”
Her movements were making him dizzy. But he had to maintain his authority. I’m king of my own tribe! he chortled to himself.
“’Now is the winter of our discontent,’” Juliet muttered, eyes half closed.
“Huh?” Chicory asked. Maybe he really was too dizzy to understand his new protector.
“Just a quote from Shakespeare,” Juliet said brightly. “I do love the way his words trip so blithely from my tongue.”
“Who lives across the street?” Chicory asked. He had to get the conversation back to something solid, that he could keep straight in his head.
Juliet stopped rocking to look over her shoulder toward the vent. “Which house?”
“The small one with the peeling gray paint and neglected yard.” Chicory took up
a perch on the open drawer of a walnut wardrobe cabinet. A peek inside showed him a nest of old bed linens. Hmm, nice place to sleep away the cold weather. Just big enough for the eight of them. Four couples. By spring they’d probably have at least one baby Pixie to increase the tribe.
As king, he’d have to make sure they all took mating flights. Juliet had a big maple in the back corner, a hundred feet high at least. Plenty tall for a good long mating flight. He grew warm just thinking about it. And scared.
What if his wings weren’t strong enough to support both him and his Daisy-love? What if he failed…?
No. He mustn’t think about that. “I’m king. I have to take care of my tribe,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh, that house,” Juliet scoffed. “Phelma Jo Nelson’s mother rented that house for a while when the children were small. She lost her job at Norton’s Diner and moved to someplace cheaper. I don’t know who owns it now. But I think it recently sold. I hope the new owners take better care of it. It’s an eyesore that should have been torn down ages ago.”
“It needs some Pixies to take care of it.” Chicory gnawed his lip. That yard needed friends. The prime duty of every Pixie was to befriend those in need. As king, he should make sure that house had friends. But his tribe was so small they couldn’t take care of both yards, and Juliet offered them shelter during the winter…
He had no idea being king was so hard. He had to make decisions. He had to think.
He needed Thistle’s help. She knew how to think and weigh consequences.
“Where’s Thistle?” he asked Juliet.
“What? Oh, at Mabel’s house, I guess. She moved over there a couple of days ago. Something about watching the property while Mabel is in the hospital.” Juliet rose gracefully from the rickety rocker and opened the doors of the wardrobe, inspecting the dusty clothing inside. “I wonder if I could persuade Dusty to wear her great-grandmother’s wedding dress since she won’t wear the gown I had designed for her.” She fingered a frilly gown with odd puffs and drapes. It had once been cream-colored with an overlay of lace. Now it looked gray with dust.
Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles Page 17
