by Caleb James
“It’s my secret,” May said, her amber eyes fixed on my face. She’d changed again, her hair short and spiky, her shimmery gown replaced by jeans, a white button-down shirt, and purple plastic clogs. To one side was a basket filled with gardener’s tools.
“It’s beautiful.” Instantly on edge, knowing nothing was as it appeared, and still reeling from the revelation that my father… my father…. I’d seen my father. And he wasn’t human… which meant I was… yup, a haffling, and all of this was starting to make sense. “You don’t have pointy ears and teeth,” I said as I took in my surroundings. A greenhouse, yes, with a thick glass ceiling and walls, the edges beveled, which caused the light to bend and make rainbows. But no matter how many advanced science courses I took—and I was in them all—things didn’t add up. Lovely prisms… but the colors were all wrong, and even when they were right… not in the expected order—violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. Nope, not here. I threw out hypotheses as to why green was next to purple… some of the time, and pink was attached to yellow. “It’s different here.”
“Yes… that’s truth.” She poured tea, at least that’s what it looked like, from an intricate silver kettle chased with thistles and bugs and pointy-eared creatures peeking from under leaves. She smiled, as though to give further proof to the statement. “I had a bit of work done.” And she mimed a file to her teeth and made scissor gestures with her fingers across the tip of an ear.
I bit back the obvious—why? “Your tea service,” I said instead, checking my words before they dropped from my mouth, “it’s incredible. It’s like stuff Mom used to paint.”
“They say we can’t tolerate different metals—iron in particular. It’s odd how those stories arise. In case you get any ideas, metal has no ill effects on us.”
“Tell me your story.”
“Perhaps. Try the tea.”
I stared at her, and then at the fragile pumpkin-shaped cup in front of me. Steam misted off the surface of a pale-green liquid. She gazed back, her head cocked to one side.
“It’s not poison. If I’d wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Not poison, but drugged?
She chuckled and reached for her tea. She sipped it. Her eyes never left mine. “It’s delicious.”
Glad to hear it, but what else? When I was younger, before all the badness with Mom getting sick, I had a fascination with mythology. Everything I could get my hands on at the library… and not just the kiddy section. That’s the stuff I needed now. The story of Persephone being dragged to the underworld and then eating something that made it impossible for her to ever be free. So maybe the tea wasn’t poison and possibly not even drugged, but were those the only choices? Everything here was twisty. Mom was sane, rainbows came in different orders, and tea could be more than a delightful afternoon drink.
She grinned, enjoying my dilemma. “There’s nothing wrong with the tea, Alex. It’s tea. It’s getting cold. If you don’t want to drink it, I will take no offense.” She sipped and watched.
It did smell good, and there was a plate of frosted pink, green, and blue cakes dotted with crystallized flowers. I picked up the cup, my finger testing the heat through the fragile surface. I sipped. It tasted like berries with a tang that clung to the tip of my tongue. “It’s good.”
“Yes, it’s delicious,” she repeated. “I enjoy your caution… your fear is pleasing, as is your face and your form. I did not expect you to be such a beauty.”
Sure, it was a compliment, but… it sounded like someone finding a car they really liked. I pictured my father—Cedric—and then I thought of Sifu. This little tête-à-tête with May was just like sparring.
“Have a cookie, Alex. They are trick free.” And she reached for the plate, selected a pink petit four, and held it toward me.
“Thank you.” Okay, so maybe the tea’s fine, but these? They looked so good. Everything about her, this place, beautiful Liam… she was trying to seduce me. Is that what happened to Mom?
“Now, I owe you a story.” She arched an eyebrow and popped a cake into her mouth. “Mmm.”
I sat back with my frosted treat and risked a nibble—so good. “I would like to hear your story.” Saliva filled my mouth, and I wolfed down the pastry that tasted like almond paste and raspberries. So good.
“Thank goodness. I’d started to think you didn’t believe me. Eat all you want. While I start at the beginning.” She pushed the three-tiered pastry tray toward me and settled into the cushions. “The fey,” she began, “were here long before humans. Some believe that mankind arose from the mating of fairies with creatures of the material world. The truth is unknowable. But fairy nature being what it is, possible, which means probable, which means that’s the way it happened. We like to touch, to feel. But more than anything, we need love and attention.” She sighed and gazed at one of the crystal panes to her right. Its surface turned opaque, and a scene appeared of a Grecian temple. “We need you, and I suspect that one of my ancestors created your kind as a sort of food. You would love us, worship us… and keep us strong.”
My attention went back and forth to her and the scene playing on the crystal. Priests were offering sacrifices of lambs and baskets of food. Blood seeped down altar steps, and apples burst as they were tossed into a roaring flame. The next window flashed, and a scene of a South American pyramid surrounded by jungle came into focus. The structure was capped with an elaborate stone crown and slab, where a dark-skinned priest in a feathered headdress slit the throat of a man. Other windows came to life, and with a shock I realized these were actual scenes from hundreds, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of years ago.
The greenhouse had turned into a multiplex with hundreds of simultaneous features. The unifying themes were worship and adoration, some too awful to watch. Others were simple worshipers in stone circles or at altars in the woods. A child leaving a basket of bread and fruit at a tiny shrine. A woman praying, her face focused as she chanted to a female statue on top of her fireplace. She tossed a chunk of bread into the fire.
“By the time of my birth,” May said, “things had changed. My parents and the other ancient ones said it was for the best. ‘Things must run their course.’ I was too young, as were my sisters, to understand how pathetic we had become. The world that was ours had drifted from our control.”
The scenes shifted, and where they’d been crystal clear, they grew hazy, like a layer of gauze had been placed over a lens. Children playing games, skipping over cracks, women tossing bits of bread into a fire or out the back door. Their intentions not clear; was this a sacrifice, or crumbs for birds?
“Like you, Alex, they learned to shut us out. And what they couldn’t see became unreal. The see became the unsee. And with it came the mist. And no one cared… but me.”
“That’s what’s clouding the scenes,” I said, keeping my inflection flat at the end of the sentence.
“Yes.”
A fog rolled across the images. My attention was now drawn to isolated scenes where the mist rolled back. In one, men in hooded robes, their arms inked in swastikas and iron crosses, drank beer around a fire. Behind them, three men hung dead from a tree. Another scene of a concentration camp, the sky thick with black smoke. To my right, a window sparked with a scene of men running through a night jungle with machetes dripping blood. Another showed a buxom brunette in a tight sequined gown on a shopping show, displaying expensive fairy dolls. Words flashed beneath her screen, and a red warning indicated the Princess May doll was nearly sold out.
“We are misunderstood,” May said. “We must be worshiped. The blood is not necessary. Yes, it’s nice, shows the devotee is committed, but not essential.”
The screens were all clouded now; here and there, one flashed an image. I focused on those, trying to figure the connections. Google and Bing searches for fairies, and words with confusing Gaelic spellings. One screen flashed a fairy figurine on eBay. The little statue looked like it could have been
modeled from a relative of Nimby’s, right down to her swirly gold tattoos.
“We lost relevance.” May’s voice sounded hollow. “No one cared. No one stopped it from happening. This, Alex Nevus, is all that remains of Fey. We are surrounded and hounded by the mist. It seeks our annihilation. My own sisters had no concern, as one walked into the mist, and the other….”
I couldn’t tell how much of her emotion was an act. Still, this was information that might prove useful. “Tell me the locations of your sisters.”
“They took veils,” she said. “Lizbeta went into the mist with my parents and most of the fey. And Katye.” May stared at me. “She crossed into your world.”
The screens went blank and then back to their crystal state. Through the prisms I saw perfect lawns that stretched in all directions. I sipped tea and tried to make sense of… the senseless. She was scared of the mist, wanted to be worshiped, and missed her family. Okay, I could sort of get a handle on that. But there was more. An idea formed. It seemed ludicrous at first, but…. “You need a platform. That’s what you’re trying to do. And not a little one either. You need something massive. You want to bring back the fey.”
“Yes.” She clapped her hands. “You’re not nearly as dumb as everyone says.” She smiled, letting me know she’d made a joke. I heard harp music and wondered if it was coming in response to my brilliant deduction. I felt the vibration in my pant pocket: it was my cell phone.
“Don’t answer it, Alex,” May warned. “Leave them be.”
“Tell me who’s calling.”
“I won’t…. Leave them be. It’s in their interest and in yours.”
As she spoke, the buzz and strum of my phone pulled at me. I shook my head, stood up, and dug it out of my pocket. It said, “Missed call.” Then a single strum of the harp and a text message appeared. “Where are you?” It was from Alice.
Then a second strum and another text message. “Problems, come home now!” Still Alice. Followed a couple seconds later by another message—Alice was a whizz with her thumbs. “Not home home, but Jerod’s.” I stared at the screen, and the greenhouse shook. I braced. It wasn’t unheard of for New York to get earthquakes—little ones that did enough to remind you how puny we all were. And when I’d been really young, I still remembered how the ground shook on 9/11.
“Put the phone down, Alex.” May’s smile was taut. She seemed tense and not quite solid. Even the smells of the cakes and the tea seemed distant, like in the next room and not a couple feet in front of me.
“Family comes first.” I pressed the number for Alice’s cell.
“Your family is here,” May said with a warning in her tone. But something more, my thoughts were pulled… literally, like a war for control of my attention. I was holding the phone…. Why are you holding the phone? And then I pictured Alice and remembered. I pressed Alice’s number. The phone rang.
“Alex.” May’s voice snapped like a whip.
“Alex.” Alice’s voice through the phone.
“Wha….” I caught May’s delighted expression as I nearly blurted a question. I caught myself midsyllable. “… Tell me what’s wrong, Alice.”
“They’re looking for us… me in particular.”
Very little rattled Alice, or at least not to where she’d let people see. She sounded terrified. “Tell me.” I didn’t want her to know I was dealing with my own pile of shit.
“Lorraine called. She told me I have to go to a shelter. That it’s temporary till they find a foster home. They won’t let us stay together, Alex.” She was sobbing. “You’ve got to do something. She said you’re too young to look after me, and that they’ve been digging through our case….” She hiccoughed. “Alex… I can’t go to that shelter. I can’t… tell me you found Mom. Maybe if you got her back and….”
“I found her… I’ll figure out something. Put Jerod on.”
“He left,” she said.
“Wha…. Whe…. Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
Crap…. “Jerod.”
“When he left? Where he’s going? What’s wrong, Alex?”
“Tell me, Jerod, all the above.”
“About an hour ago. He said he’d use his GPS to locate you. What’s going on? You sound weird.”
“He left you alone,” I stated. I felt May’s attention pulling at me. I refused to look at her. Things couldn’t be worse. Lorraine, not just bailing, but actively throwing Alice from the boat. And now Jerod. I asked him to take care of the one person who meant the world to me… and he left her alone.
“We’re not by ourselves,” Alice said. “They have Blanca—she’s their au pair. She doesn’t speak a lot of English…. What are we going to do?”
I was about to admit that her brother—king of the improbable plans—had nothing, when a voice intruded.
“Alex, what are you doing in here?”
I startled at the sound of his voice. This is not possible… and really bad. Jerod had just walked through the wall of the crystal house.
“No!” I shouted.
May squealed in delight, “Wheeeee!”
The teahouse vanished. Lights popped all around us.
“What’s going on?” Jerod asked. Confusion in his eyes, the beginning of fear.
“Shut up!” I shouted. I ran toward him, as painfully bright lights made it impossible to see.
“Alex?”
A buzzer dinged. The floor shifted, and the gorgeous glass mosaic reappeared. “Jerod. Listen to me! Stop asking questions.” I ran into him, nearly sending us both tumbling to the floor.
He grabbed me by the shoulders to keep from falling. The closeness, the feel of his hands. My eyes burned from the lights as I scanned up from his red sneakers, to his jeans, and T-shirt, to those full lips, to his golden-brown eyes… which weren’t squinting at all, but the opposite. His pupils were wide, as though he was in a darkened room. How come he can see clearly, and I can’t? “Alex.” His face was inches from mine. His hands weren’t letting go of me.
I felt the whisper of his breath across my lips and cheek. “What’s going on?”
And there was that damn bell, and the sound of the frog and bird band.
“What was that…? That noise. Did you hear it?”
Ding and another ding, and the band was going to town. “Stop asking questions, Jerod. For God’s sake. Please, no questions.” My hands went to the sides of his face. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I just needed to make him shut up and stop asking questions. But I held him like that, staring into his eyes, feeling his bare cheeks against my palms. The touch of flesh on flesh sent shocks from my head to my toes. “Please. It’s not safe here. Go back and look after Alice.”
A hand landed on my back.
“Who the hell is that?” Jerod’s eyes widened. His jaw dropped, and his pupils shrank to the size of a pinhead.
The bell rang again, the band swung into a raucous jig, and I saw May’s triumphant reflection in Jerod’s eyes.
His mouth gaped, and before he could blunder into more questions, I clamped my hand over it. The softness of his lips thrummed down my spine. Blue sparks danced around my hand.
“Finally,” May said. “Look at all you’ve learned today, Alex. I can only imagine.”
Still holding tight to Jerod… and he to me, we took in our new surroundings. A variant of May’s dream kitchen, only this had the feeling of a game show set. There was a low-lying table to one side with three—judges? Contestants? In the middle was Dorothea. To her right was a lantern-jawed ogre in a red-and-green plaid suit, and on her left, a bearded man with goat hooves visible beneath the table. It was like the fairy version of Mom’s DSS hearing.
May turned from us and spread her arms. Three ogres holding water mirrors followed her movement. She addressed the one in the middle. “Welcome,” she said. Her clothing shimmered, as though trying to decide what it should be. Finally, a tight red dress painted itself onto her body, and her hair twisted up into a sleek French knot. S
he glanced at us. “We are so pleased to have Alex Nevus with us today, and the boy he’s in love with…. Tell me his name, Alex.”
My hand was still clamped on Jerod’s mouth. His head turned from the crazy game show set to me.
I felt my cheeks flush. “You bitch!”
“As everyone knows.” She winked at me. “I speak the truth… the whole truth… and nothing but the truth, so help me, me.”
“Now, your young beau has racked up.” There was a drum roll. “Seven questions. So many things your handsome swain wants to know. All questions can and will be answered, if….” A much louder drum roll, “It doesn’t kill you.” A sign—saying just that—burst into life, its eight-foot letters made of tiny sparklers. Thunderous applause came from darkened bleachers behind the mirror-toting ogres.
“You have got be kidding.” I let go of Jerod. I didn’t want to think about what she’d blurted out and how this straight boy was going to deal with my having a huge crush on him. This was not the time for that. “It’s no wonder,” I said, advancing on May. “That the mist has wiped you out. This is boring, and this is dull. This—” I did my own TV show wave toward the set. “—has been done to death.”
From beyond the water mirrors came worried shouts. “Not true,” someone yelled. “He lies. Humans lie. It is well-known.”
“We sure do,” I said. “We also know bullshit when we see it. And this… you’re just making cheap copies of stuff that’s been done before. Stephen King did this in The Running Man, then we’ve got The Hunger Games. That should be this show’s title, Done To Death.”
May’s smile vanished.
I’d scored a hit. I was frantically trying to piece things together. The mist that wiped out her world, these crazy TV remakes of things on basic cable. All those mirrors, even Jerod’s appearance… he couldn’t see her at first, as though his mind needed to be primed for this all-out whack fest.
May tore at her face. She stomped her foot, and the lights went on in the bleachers and behind the cameras. “Dorothea!” she shrieked.
