by Skye Allen
It was Margaret.
She was wearing that necklace in every memory I had of her. It must have been a present from Dad from before I was born. He’d been the one to bring home her ashes even though he didn’t live with us anymore. And I knew he’d kept the necklace. I’d found it buttoned into his shirt pocket, wrapped in Kleenex in a dime bag, later that week when he came home from the bar and passed out on the couch. I’d been looking for his keys, but I’d left the necklace where it was.
The girl in the poppy dress, the girl Motorcycle Boy had made out of a fern. That was Margaret. I’d known it, but seeing the puppet of my sister now made it worse. And being alone, I had no one to keep a stiff upper lip for. The image flashed of the gray fern man hoisting the little heart up in the air like a trophy. My fingers played with paper Margaret’s file-folder base, trying to realign it where it was slightly crooked.
Margaret’s heart was cut out of her body. I squeezed my eyes shut on the sight of my sister lying half in the bushes by the side of a road 7,000 miles from here.
I knew she was murdered. I thought about those three little words, Margaret was murdered, how the whole thread of her life was just swallowed up by her last few minutes alive. I thought about all the things those words left no room for: Margaret was murdered, and then her mother had a nervous breakdown, and her father retreated even further into a bottle, and her sister sank into the eighty-eight keys of that cheap piano in the living room like a wrecked ship, and as far as I knew her sick, crazy brother turned to stone. He hadn’t come to the funeral, claiming he couldn’t leave the fishing boat. The truth was probably that he didn’t want to face Mom.
And me. I kept going when Margaret died, under the thick blanket that muffled the house. I just wasn’t sure how.
But what was Margaret even doing in the Realm? I searched her manila face. Something came loose in my hands. I’d tugged at the paper doll’s base so hard it had ripped off. Shit, big sister, I’m just making this worse.
I kneeled up to lay her on the stage, next to the horse. I should have been sick with horror, but the feeling that rushed through my body was the kind of hard grief that comes on too fast to fight. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and watched through tears as Margaret’s shiny paper hair blurred into a supernova.
THE AIR was chilly outside the line of junk shops and minimarts, and my bare legs were covered in goose bumps in the cold breeze. I was sure Flea was on this block. The sky was in the last stages of bruise before full dark, and the lights on MLK curved away in both directions. I could hear a BART train screeching somewhere behind me and the huff of air brakes on the freeway overhead. A car turned at the light, bass cranked loud enough to rattle the store windows. I zipped up my hoodie and stuck my hands in the pockets. None of the smokers leaning against the cement planters was Nicky.
Between an adult video store with white-painted windows and a used bicycle shop was a fence with a corrugated metal door wired into it. There was no sign, but a folding chair propped the door open a few inches. I paid the woman who stood behind the chair a five, and she waved me in with a sweep of her pirate coat. Inside was a vacant lot that disappeared into darkness before the back wall, hurricane fence on the sides I could see, gravel and weeds underfoot. Lightbulbs in cages, the kind that were designed for auto repair, were clustered on poles around the stage. I heard the whine of feedback and a handful of fuzzy chords.
The lot wasn’t crowded, but hipsters stood two or three deep against one wall. A card table was flanked by two guys with elaborate facial hair playing a card game where the goal seemed to be speed, whooped on by a cluster of girls with bottles in their hands. I scanned their faces and found Nicky, sitting on a cooler looking up at Motorcycle Boy. He was dressed for the scene in an Italian football jersey and black jeans. My body gave a shudder as I remembered the puppet horror show. I did not come here to hang out with creepy puppeteer guy. I came here to be alone with Nicky, I thought, and then wondered where I got the idea that you could be alone at a show.
Motorcycle Boy saw me first. Why does that guy look so familiar? He bent his head in greeting and at the same time signaled Nicky with his eyes. She swiveled and stood up when she saw me. Curls slicked into a part, long vest made of something not leather but not soft either, baggy pants that ended in ties above her boots. In the uneven mechanic light, everything looked black. She smiled at me, and fireflies kicked awake under my ribs.
“Hi again.” She one-arm-hugged me, but it lasted longer than a regular hug. Under the smells of exhaust and fresh-brewed coffee and marijuana in the air, she smelled like spice cake. I spotted a brake drum on the card table, half-full of hand-rolled cigarette butts.
“Do you want something to drink? There’s beer,” Nicky said.
“I kind of want some of that coffee I’m smelling.” I wanted beer too, but I didn’t want to eat or drink anything that could interfere with my brain. Not after that peach.
The card players were selling coffee from a drip setup with complicated piping that looked like a still. I ordered Antigua and leaned against the fence to wait. “Hang on just a second,” Nicky said, and I watched her sprint across the narrow lot to throw her arms around a guy standing behind a tableful of gear next to the stage.
A very tall woman was standing next to me. I hadn’t seen her approach. Her hair was covered by a hood, and her skin was so dark it blended into the fabric in the dim light so that all I could see clearly were her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak and I saw pointed teeth. Is she fey, or is she just dressed up for a night out? She brushed the hood back with her hand, nails like white-painted talons, and said, “An urgent message from the Realm, Josephine Grant.”
Fey, then. “Okay.”
“You must come.” The way her fingers curled as she extended her hand made me think of an eagle ripping open a field mouse. I looked around for Nicky, but she wasn’t at the sound table anymore.
“Is this about Margaret?” I asked.
She chuckled, a sound like dropped silverware. “Not Pretty Peg, no. There is much for you to know. Leave behind your elf sweetmeat for now.” She gestured for me to follow her and turned her long back.
“Do I have a choice?”
The woman turned back toward me. She didn’t meet my eyes. “There is another sister, one alone. It will serve her and you if you follow.”
“Oh.” I gulped, actually gulped out loud. That only made me more afraid. Now the woman knew I was scared.
Her hood was attached to a coat with a line of silver x’s down the back. I followed the swaying line past a clump of boys with their heads bowed around a bong, and we dodged a stubby guy hauling a huge speaker, and then we were at the bushes at the back of the lot.
The fey woman plunged into the undergrowth without slowing down. I stepped where she had stepped, feeling branches snag in my hair. The ammonia smell of eucalyptus filled my nose. “Where are we?” I couldn’t see much, but black trees arced in front of me, and I saw a bench farther ahead. A fountain behind it made a trickling noise, and I realized the sounds from the club were muffled now. A streetlamp near the bench gave off a dim green light that flickered so much, I wondered if all the power on the block was about to go out.
My eyes adjusted to the faint light as a sucking sound gurgled from the fountain. I watched as a figure twisted up from it, shook itself like a dog, and stepped into the lamplight. Hair plastered to a high forehead, bare meaty arms, a wrestler’s grin with one black tooth among the yellow ones. He clasped my guide’s forearm like the two of them were soldiers, then stood with one boot hoisted up on the bench. “Where’s the rest?”
The woman inclined her elegant head toward the trees behind the lamp. It was lit with a cluster of slender candles, I saw now, not a lightbulb. The trees shook as two things—I couldn’t call them people—stepped out. A slight girl with a pointed face and flat fur covering her arms. Cutoff army pants ended in rugby socks and sneakers. I wondered if her legs were fur too. She bit at som
ething between her fingers and spit. The boy behind her looked more normal, if over six feet tall and almost as wide was normal. The lower half of his babyish face was sprinkled with pale hairs. His tongue flicked out, and my muscles tightened at the sound of a rattlesnake. That wasn’t a person imitating a snake. It was the sound of an actual snake.
“That’s Rex,” my guide said, and she flipped her wrist toward him. She made no move to introduce herself or the others. I felt for the dense bushes behind me, but they wouldn’t provide any cover. And how could I outrun four fey creatures? I had no idea what they could do. Blossom could turn into a bird, but these four already looked like they were half animal. I let my breath out in tiny puffs to try not to make noise and hoped breathing would stop the fear. It didn’t.
“So your sister,” the hooded woman said. Rat-girl untied something from around her waist and unfurled it to lay it on the four feet of ground between me and them. My stomach twisted when I saw what it was: the dirty white skin of some animal, with a bare rim in uneven patches that looked like old blood. “You think you can save her,” the woman went on.
“Sunburn babies there think they have you in their jar now. Think everything’s going to be just peachy, don’t you? Yeah.” The muttering was coming from the wrestler boy who had climbed out of the fountain. He squatted beside the fur and formed his stubby fingers into obscene twists. Out of his fist he extracted a fat silver cord that looked like one of those long balloons for kids’ parties, tugging it out until it hung in the air vertically, taller than me. He blew on its middle, and the silver shape buckled, swelled, tossed wavy hair, and hoisted a familiar tote bag.
It was Laura.
“Wanna see the future, little mortal?” the wrestler asked.
Like an old movie projected onto a sheet, a city backdrop rippled behind my sister. She was walking past caged trees and shopping carts full of trash bags. A mermaid sign in a bar window flashed behind her, and I recognized the neighborhood: she was on her way to her school in San Francisco.
I knew what was going to happen before it did. Out of the backdrop, a man in a gray trench coat appeared and blocked her path. It was daylight, and there were pedestrians, but none of them stopped for Laura when the man’s arm shot around her. He pulled her into a narrow slot between a hotel and a convenience store. Her bag hit the ground as a taxi pulled up, too fast. I must have imagined hearing the car door slam when the gray man shoved Laura into it and climbed in behind her. The taxi swooped toward me and veered into profile so I had a clear view of the third passenger. His eyes were squeezed shut, but I recognized the curly white hair and hooked nose of Professor Hill.
They grabbed him first. Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
“Oh yeah.” I must have spoken out loud, because Wrestler answered. “Thought you should know what’s up next. Little fun for the piano player. Little heart surgery.” He shook out his fleshy arms and made a stabbing gesture.
“How is that even—that’s not right now! She’s supposed to be—” Shut up. She’s not safe. I thought she was safe. I let myself relax. Stupid.
“Not tonight. But it will come to be, and soon. Did you think your vacant sister had the wit to dodge us? A girl who hardly remembers to dress herself?” The tall woman’s voice was bored, like she was ordering a drink.
They’re going to cut out her heart. Just like Margaret. This can’t be happening. I have to get home. I was fumbling for the opening in the bushes, keeping the pack of fey monsters in sight. Praying this wasn’t like the meadow from this afternoon, where the way out of the Realm was not the same as the way in.
Hot breath on my ear. How had I not seen the rattlesnake boy right next to me? His face weaved around mine, inches away. “He thinks you’re pretty,” Wrestler said. A pasty hand landed on my neck, pressing until my swallow muscles were immobile. The rattle came soft and threatening. I saw his tongue again, pink and black.
“Leave her,” commanded the tall woman. The wall-sized man coiled away, puffy arms tucked behind his massive back. I swallowed hard over and over and felt sweat release down my sides.
He’s the Woodcutter. He’s going to be the one to do it. “You’re the Woodcutter,” I said out loud. I felt reckless. Giddy. I was going to say something stupid. I should shut up.
“Wrong,” the woman answered.
Rat-girl rolled up her grisly rug and slunk with it behind the bench. Wrestler swaggered back to the fountain, and in the second before he dove in headfirst, I saw his wet black clothes slick down and transform to sleek fur. A seal? I didn’t stop to think for too long about what he might be.
The tall woman spread her arms wide, and her dark coat spread out behind her. “We Winter Folk relish a good fight. If only our sunburnt kin had sent us a good fighter,” she said as she stepped backward into the trees, and then she was gone, leaving a faint rustling sound as if a small bird had landed on a branch.
I could collapse now. For the second time tonight, I tried to give myself up to the well of sobs I knew was down in my body, but they wouldn’t surface. I sat on the bench, my mouth pressed into the fabric over my knees, but all I felt was a hard dry terror. Laura was going to get killed just like Margaret. In the same horrifying way. There was nothing I could do. And for no reason at all, the killers were going to make sure I knew about every slow instant of her death. And then it would be my turn.
I pulled out my phone to call Laura. There was no cell phone service here. Normally I’d get a NO SERVICE message, but now the screen was just black. I pushed the On button over and over, but the phone wouldn’t come to life. Great. I swallowed a fresh wave of frustration and tried to force myself to be logical about where the path back to Flea could be.
It wasn’t hard to find. I pushed through rhododendrons the size of houses that I didn’t remember from the way in, and when I picked my way through a clump of bushes covered in bad-smelling flowers, I could see the lights from the stage. The bushes ended at the chain-link fence. I had to crawl along it for a few feet to find a hole, and I heard fabric rip when I hauled myself through it.
There, on my hands and knees with my hair brushing the gravel, I saw Motorcycle Boy’s black-and-white saddle shoes. He stood bending from the waist, careful to keep his red beer cup upright.
“Are you lost?” he said, and it finally hit me why I’d recognized him this afternoon: he looked like Jerome. He looked just like Jerome. Margaret’s boyfriend from Afghanistan, the guy she was going to marry when they got home. They’d worked together in Doctors Without Borders. Jerome was from Canada, and very young to be finished with medical school already, as Dad used to mutter in a tone of voice that meant “and he has two priors for grave robbing.” I had a picture of him on my dresser, with Margaret’s brown hair blowing across his goggles and an openmouthed grin exactly like the one Motorcycle Boy had on right now.
“No, I’m—just getting up,” I said, and I did, running my fingers over a bruise on my shin that hadn’t been there before. He watched me as I struggled to my feet, his bulbous eyes not blinking. I wanted to tell him about the four fey creatures in the woods, but he looked so forbidding I couldn’t make myself admit to being cornered. Besides, I didn’t trust him, not after that puppet show. Even if he was just telling the story, it was creepy how much he had relished doing it. Instead, when I was standing, I asked him, “You knew my sister too, right? Margaret?”
“Of course. Pretty Peg was beloved of the Summer Court, and I am one of its chief attendants,” he said coolly.
“But are you—” I shifted my weight on the sharp gravel and considered my strategy. I had to get home, but maybe I could find something out from this guy if I pushed him. Did he know I knew? I started walking in the direction I thought the exit was. “Sorry. I never caught your name.”
“It has not been borne in air,” he replied, but he fell into step beside me.
Aggravating. I tried again: “It’s just that you look like…. I know Margaret was involved with somebody. In Afghanistan, a doctor she wo
rked with. Am I way off base here? This can’t be a coincidence.”
“I was not your sister’s lover.” His voice dropped those words like ice cubes. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he added, “She did not choose wisely. Never give your heart to the fey. We warn mortals against mindless attachment, for their own good, but they do tend to fail to listen.”
I wanted to punch him. “She wasn’t mindless. She was the smartest person I knew. How can you even talk like that? I thought you loved her.”
“She was beloved of the Summer Court.” His white face was carved from stone.
“But she did have a boyfriend who was—not—who was fey?” A boyfriend who looked exactly like you. Why are you lying?
He took a deep breath then, and the ice mask softened as he nodded. “You are speaking of Jerome. My brother.”
I looked down at my dirty yellow shoes next to his polished ones. Margaret had been engaged to Jerome. So Motorcycle Boy was almost my brother-in-law. Weird. I squeezed my eyes shut to do a quick sort on all the new information. I had a million questions. I wanted to know what happened in Afghanistan. How Margaret got from there to the Realm. If Jerome was with her when she died. “Is he here? Can I talk to him?” I asked.
Silence. I looked up at where Motorcycle Boy’s annoying face had been, but he was gone. People in dark clothes stood with their backs to me everywhere, waiting while the band set up. A boy with wiry hair picked out in yellow by the stage lights turned my way, and I thought it was him, but the stranger had square glasses and a goatee.
My phone vibrated, making me jump. The screen looked normal now. I pressed the speed dial for Laura.
“What?” she said. I heard room noise behind her, and a shout of laughter.
“Hey, where are you?”
