by Red Tash
Baptism
Deb
It seemed like we fell forever, his enormous hand wrapped around my tiny arm, my only connection in the cold fog of the night air. My legs flailed around me, my backpack pulling me down like an anchor. I was going to break my leg, I knew it. What then?
I hit the water, relieved to go completely under, the water absorbing my fall. I didn’t even register how cold it was, at first. A full body shiverquake overtook me before I knew what was going on.
“Get her! Get them!” Men growled and women shrieked.
I was pretty sure they weren’t men, at all, actually. But what could I call them? Goblins? Trolls?
I was sure I could hear Angela and those bathroom boys laughing.
Bodies lurched toward us through the fog.
Harlow took me by the shoulders and looked hard into my eyes. “Do you trust me?” he said.
I didn’t know him, but for some reason, I was sure I wanted to.
“Do you trust me?! Do you?” His hands shook, but he didn’t hurt me. So gentle.
“I do. I trust you,” I said.
There was movement through the fog, bodies sliding through the underbrush on the banks of the Wabash. Limbs and leaves tumbled down into the water, and angry voices got closer. A black aura split the fog several feet above us, and I knew McJagger was looking for us, scanning the fog.
A knife. A dagger? It was silver, and small, shorter than one of Harlow’s fingers. He held it up, straight up, pointed toward the sky.
“I name thee, I claim thee, a price of blood you pay me.”
He shoved his fingers into my mouth, and I pulled my head away.
“Don’t fight, don’t fight, Deb. You trust me, remember. Don’t fight.”
I was scared as hell, but I let him put that knife into my mouth. I felt it stab into my flesh, and I screamed, but I didn’t pull away. Maybe he was going to cut my head off—maybe I’d have been better off to have been raped by Dave in his gruesome Cadillac, or to have gone with McJagger, after all. I didn’t know. Maybe it was a spell, but I felt so at peace with whatever would happen next. Resigned. Let it come.
Movement, getting closer. Splashing, the sounds of mud sucking on boots—and wings. I could see them approaching, behind Harlow. My eyes must have told him what I was feeling. I tried to point, to speak, but it was if I were moving in slow motion.
“This’ll only hurt another second or two, and then they’ll never be able to touch you against your will,” he said. “No one will, as long as I live. Now, hold on.”
He reached hard and fast into my mouth, and my knees went out from under me, the pain was so intense. I felt a jerk, and a pop, and then blood was streaming out down my face. Again, on the other side of my jaw, then it was over.
He turned to face the throng. “The price!” he said. “It is done!”
McJagger hurled insults through the fog, and a ball of light spread outward from his shadowy presence, clearing the air and erasing the fog between him and us. He looked down at us, his face reddening, his glower now darker than the surrounding night.
“Out! Out!” he screamed. He pointed at Harlow, and hitched his thumb over his shoulder.
Harlow opened a pouch around his neck, now in no hurry at all, and put my teeth inside. Wisdom teeth, I think—hadn’t even cut through my gums yet. Might as well have pulled all my teeth out, for as much blood was gushing.
He knelt in the shallow river, and took me gently by the hand. “Join me, Deb.”
I knelt before him, the cold water soaking me to my waist.
“Hard part’s over,” he said. He smiled, then whispered, “I know this is weird.” His tusks showed, hard. He looked a little like the Coach when he did that, though, and I reminded myself I could never be scared of The Coach. Harlow didn’t scare me. In that moment, I thought that he never could.
He put his arms around me, and pushed me backward into the water. I held on to his neck, instinctively, my fingers tangling in his blond dreadlocks.
“Three dunks,” he said. “Then we’re outta here.”
There was still screaming, shouting, even some laughter, but no one came any closer. We were encapsulated in this ritual, safe in our bubble inside the fog. To me there was only Harlow, and his golden light, warming me against the water, cold and constant, washing over me. Once. Twice. A third time. Enough.
He pulled me to my feet, rolled something between his hands and tossed it into the air, then the world around us shimmered, blurred, and was gone. We were moving, through fog and into the night—moving without walking, as the landscape melted around us like a sand painting caught in a breeze.
I couldn’t stay upright, and Harlow caught me. The blackness overtook me again, but this time it was the golden sunshine of Harlow’s face that I saw as I drifted into the ether, into the waiting virtue of night.
Chapter 12.5
Married Man
Harlow
A spell had lifted, there was no doubt about that. My head was opening up like a cracked piggy bank, assorted memories tumbling out all over, some rattling and clattering away before I could catch them.
But who had cast the spell? Would I remember? And was it lifting over Deb, as well?
It was going to take time for all the memories to come back, though—time I wasn’t sure we had. We needed to get to Zelda, get some answers, but first I wanted to get my new wife away from the Fog, away from McJagger, get her someplace safe where I could apologize for saving her life.
Was she going to understand? Once I explained, would she be able to forgive me? I was asking her to trust a complete stranger, after all.
I thought about these things as I carried her across the Wabash in my arms. She’d passed out, like a sleeping baby. He body was light, limp, boyish. She was just a girl.
I had no idea if she intended on being my ally. Just because her parents and my parents had promised us to one another didn’t mean she was going to go for it now. To be honest, she didn’t even strike me as the type who was interested in the opposite sex—not that I was interested! Swear to the gods, I wasn’t.
But I digress.
“Biggie!”
I called, and the Thunderbird swooped down from his holding pattern. I lay Deb gently across his back, as wide as a fishing boat, and scrambled on behind her. As Biggie pushed off the ground and into the sky, I leaned down against her tiny body and made sure she wouldn’t slip off the back. It was at that point I knew—my feelings for her were more than those of obligation and magic, more than rebellion against my evil uncle and asshole cousin.
No matter what happened, I was no longer alone. I finally had someone to call my own—whether she was going to like that or not was another story, but in troll law, ‘til death do us part is a very serious vow. If she dies, I die. And vice-versa.
Biggie didn’t laugh this time at all, when he flew us home. All I could think about was how I was going to tell her that at age 15, she was a wife. To a troll.
Chapter Thirteen
Answers
Deb
There’s only one thing that smells like a landfill. No question about it. I awoke to the charming scent of of Eau de County Dump.
It was dark, and I was indoors. I lay on top of a sleeping bag, a fleece blanket covering me. My backpack rested on the floor near my head. I’ve still got my skates? Thank God.
The room was cluttered with unfamiliar objects on huge wooden shelves that doubled as wall supports. And books! There were tons of books and magazines. A ray of sunlight streamed in through a skylight, straight into a cushy reading chair in one corner of the room.
Except for the smell, I liked it.
Daylight splashed the opposite wall as Harlow pushed through a flap and entered the room. The whole place shook. Was this is a tent? Some kind of teepee?
I sat up. “Where are we?”
He opened a folding chair that had been stowed against the wall, and sat down. “This is my place,” he said. “My humble home, as it were.” He ges
tured grandly, as if he were presenting me with a prize.
“As it were,” I said, laughing. The guy talked funny.
He laughed, and looked down at his shoes. He looked really human when he did that, except for the tusks sticking up behind his lips.
“So, what the hell are you? And why did you save me from—”
“From McJagger? From a fate worse than death?” He made a dramatic face and put his enormous hand to this throat, mockingly.
We both laughed, and his tusks showed again, bigger than life.
“What’s with the tusks?”
“God, you really know nothing about all this? Do you even know what you are?”
The way he said it made me feel really stupid all of a sudden. I mean, there were a lot of things I did know: there was some mumbling about a prophecy, I was allegedly my sister’s Protector or Guardian or something, I couldn’t go back home without her, and now I knew that there were all kinds of grisly men roaming the countryside sprouting tusks. I also knew there was no point in bullshitting this guy about any of that.
“I don’t know jack shit, dude. You better start talking.”
He laughed and crossed his arms, leaning back in his seat. “Where should I begin?”
“Start with your freaky-ass teeth, and we’ll move on from there.”
He laughed again. “The teeth are the most obvious difference, and, honestly, the fact you can see them tells a lot about you, Deb. Most humans can’t see them at all unless they’ve got The Sight.”
“Obvious difference between …”
“Between us and them,” he said. “I’m a troll, Deb. McJagger’s a troll. Dave’s a troll. That biker who brought you to the Fog was a troll—”
“And the Coach? Coach is a troll?” I was horrified. What did this mean?
“Oh, yeah, Coach, most definitely. Good guy, the Coach.”
“You know him?” I asked.
“We’re old friends, Deb. He’s the one who sent me after you. And Moe’s not entirely bad, either.”
“He was going to sell me out to that old black thing—that McJagger guy.”
“Moe? Naw. Don’t believe that. He was friends with my dad back in the day. Didn’t he tell you my name?”
“Yeah. But you’re losing me with all this info. What was that name thing about? What happened at the Fog? And where are we now? Why does it smell so bad?”
“One thing at a time, girl! One thing at a time!” He laughed. “Funny,” he said. “You don’t even know about the spells, and yet you know just how to break one.” He laughed again, and scratched his beard. He pulled some of his dreads back away from his face, and tied them into a ponytail, with a leather band from his wrist.
He continued. “The thing is, Deb, there are lots of prophecies. Some come true, and some don’t. It’s like the weather.”
I nodded.
“And in the world of trolls and fairies and worse, there are a lot of people who’ll move heaven and earth to control that sort of thing. They use whatever they can, you know? Spells, manipulation, lies—just like humans.” He took a deep breath, and leaned forward in his chair, looking me in the eye. “Best I can tell, someone put a really powerful spell over me to keep me from contacting you. When you called my name out like you did, you broke it. So good going, really.”
“I was just following my gut,” I said.
“You’ve got a good gut, I’d say.” He laughed again.
“So, how does this whole Protector thing work?” I asked. “You have to look out for me now? And do I have The Sight, or whatever you called it? Do you know where Gennifer is? What did McJagger want me for?” The questions just came tumbling out. Suddenly I was shaking.
Harlow knelt before me on the floor. “Easy, easy, Deb.” He patted my head and I felt exhaustion sweep over me.
“You took my teeth,” I said, as I felt myself melting back into the sleeping bag. “That was so weird.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. He patted his chest, where the pouch hung. “Had to. It was the only way.”
“I want to know everything,” I said. “I want to stay up and talk.”
“You need to rest, and you need to eat,” he said. “How many days has it been since you had a decent meal? I’ll go find us some food—you relax. Take a nap.”
I gave in. A Star Wars pillow caught my head as I let go and collapsed into the bedding. So fluffy and soft. It smelled like hay and sunlight. Like Harlow.
“You’ll tell me the rest, right?” I asked.
Harlow didn’t answer. I turned my head to ask him again, but he was already gone.
Chapter 13.5
Your Way, Right Away
Harlow
Not for the first time, I was grateful I’d chosen the Laurents County landfill as my home. The mansa was easily hidden with a simple glamour amidst the piles of garbage and refuse. Everything I needed was delivered to my door via truck. The best part, though, was the smell. Not only did the sour, ever-present rot of human consumption strike me as pleasant, but it hid me from anyone who might be looking to find me. Bleach, and garbage and dirty diapers, and leaking corroded batteries—these were my saving grace, all these years of hiding.
But Deb wasn’t going to be satisfied with a half-rotted bucket of dark meat chicken from the freshest corner of the dump. I was going to have to sneak into town and find her something decent—something human—to eat. Even though she wasn’t human, she didn’t know that yet, and I wasn’t about to shock her by bringing her a basket of fairy food. There was plenty of time in the future for tasting the variety of rotten tomatoes and mushroom spores that were sure to delight her palette.
There was a sandwich shop about ten miles down the road. Ever since they’d started selling footlongs for $5 each, you could count on a dumpster full of fresh bread, and nightly toss-aways of buckets of meatballs. For her, though, I was going to go all-out.
I glamoured myself to look like the blonde, stocky street singer that was my favorite disguise, and walked into the sub shop, a tiny tinkling bell announcing my arrival.
An employee straightened her hairnet with her gloved hands, as I stared at the menu dumbfounded, realizing I had no idea what the girl—my wife—liked to eat.
Just to be safe, I ordered one of everything.
I regretted it almost instantly. The pleasant lady behind the counter with the thick Middle Eastern accent took her sweet time asking me what kind of bread, cheese, and dressing I wanted on every sandwich. When she asked me if I wanted lettuce and tomato on the BLT, I growled and flashed my tusks through the glamour for a split-second, hoping to speed her up. The questions ceased, but she grew so visibly nervous that I wished I hadn’t done it.
Waiting for the food was torture, and I began to pant. Was it the spell of some great charm master? I felt as though I couldn’t stand to be apart from Deb. To say I was worried about her well-being is an understatement. Even though I knew she was safe in my mansa, and more than likely asleep in exhaustion, I battled the impulse to run screaming out the door of the sub shop, sandwichless, to return to her side.
The sandwich maker finally rung me up, and as I handed her a business card I’d plucked from their fishbowl (Win a free lunch! Drop your card here!), glamoured to look a credit card, the simple woman’s facial expression changed. She grasped my hand, her tiny human fingernails digging into my skin. Her accent changed, as well.
“She’ll be fine, Harlow,” said the voice of Zelda, out of this strange woman’s mouth. “But do not dally around long, getting her to me. You come see Zelda soon, yes?” The woman winked—or, rather, Zelda winked through her—and dropped my hand.
I stared at the sandwich lady, in awe. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I must have spaced out.” She handed me back the card, which I returned to the fishbowl without her noticing. “Have a nice day, sir,” she said, as she pushed a box filled with sandwiches across the metal countertop toward me.
Before the word “sir” had left her mouth, I had the
food and was out the door, its tiny tinkling bell a distant memory.
Chapter Fourteen
Down in the Dumps
Deb
The sandwiches he brought back were good—just not what I’d expected.
“You thought I was going to drag in a billy goat, didn’t you?”
“Or a kid,” I said.
He stared at me a long moment. “You mean a child? Or a goat kid?” The corners of his eyes crinkled. Laugh lines. I was safe.
I shrugged. “Either one.” I took a big bite of the meatball sub he’d given me. After a minute, I added, “You know—whatever’s available, right?”
He laughed. “Right. Whereas the sub shop is only ten miles down the road …”
We both laughed. He passed me a two-liter of Big Red and a plastic cup that spelled out the IU basketball season from the previous year, in faded red letters. I had the same cup at home. Home.
“Will I ever be able to go home?” I asked.
Harlow’s smile slipped down the hard lines of his face. “Do you really want to?” he said. “You’re safe here. I mean, I know my place is a little small, and it could probably be cleaned up a little, but from what I’ve heard about your mother …”
“What have you heard?” I stood up. “Have you heard anything about Gennifer?” I scanned the room for my shoes.
Harlow put his sandwich down and stood up himself. “You deserve some answers. I’ll tell you everything I know—but, please, Deb, you’ve got to sit down, eat something, get some rest. You can’t pass out from exhaustion or blood loss every night of your life—not if you want to live to see your sixteenth birthday.”
There was something about his tone, the look on his face, the sympathetic tilt of his head—I trusted him. I truly did.
“Why do I trust you? I don’t even know you. Is it a spell?”
He laughed. “So you do trust me? Well, that’s a start.” He took a big bite of his third sandwich and sat back down on the desk where he’d been perched above me and my pallet. “The thing is, Deb, there’s a lot to tell. Lots. And I won’t be able to get through it all if you ask a lot of questions—but I promise I’ll tell you everything I know, and I’ll help you find out the rest, no matter what.”
