"You need to talk to Lani," repeated the little wisp of a woman, sitting astride the crow's neck. She was delicate, even for her tiny size, and her skin was amber-colored. She wore a light dress, black with odd white zebra striping. The tattered orange-patterned wings were still there, though.
"What happened to your wings?" Megan heard herself asking, out of all of the questions that were fighting the headache to rise to the fore in her brain.
"I'll tell you the story later," the tiny girl promised. "But I only have a few more seconds before you won't be able to hear me." A pause. "Yet. We'll talk a lot more later. Right now, you need to promise me that you'll talk to Lani."
The crow cawed, and the tiny girl patted it on the head. "Yes, Count. You're right. Megan, you need to promise to meet with Lani, somewhere private. And you need to listen, really listen, when she talks."
"His name is Count?" Megan managed. It made more sense, at the moment, to ask than anything else occurring to her.
"Yes, yes. I'll tell you that story too. And where babies come from. And where faeries come from. And why you can't tickle yourself. Later. Promise me."
"Okay," Megan managed. She stared a few moments longer, as if expecting the crow or the butterfly to either disappear or make sense. "I promise," she added.
The pair glanced at each other in satisfaction. A few moments later, the scene changed again. It was only slightly less surreal, seeing a butterfly on a crow's back again. Megan blinked once more, trying to form another coherent question. Before she could manage, the crow lifted off, bearing the butterfly away again.
Megan continued trying to frame questions, even after they were gone. She walked around a little more, staring around to make sure nothing else in the neighborhood had changed. She glanced back at her plain, undecorated off-white house and resolved, homework or no, to do something to decorate it this year. Probably after she talked to Lani.
Megan returned to the house, made sure her mother was occupied, and then headed to her room to call Lani. The phone picked up on the first ring. "Hello, Megan?"
"Yes. Someone says I need to talk to you. You won't believe me if I tell you who. I'm not sure I believe me."
"I bet I will. There was a crow involved, right?"
Chapter 4: Bad
Talking about it on the phone when Megan's mother was home hadn't been an option for Lani. Letting Megan walk to Lani's in the dark hadn't been an option for Megan's mother. Neither had driving her, or letting her ask Mrs. Kahale for an unscheduled ride. Megan really wished that Lani and her dad would finish putting Lani's car together already. Assembling a 1992 Chevy wasn't Megan's idea of a hobby, but then she didn't have much to say on the subject of father-daughter bonding.
So they'd agreed to meet first thing in the morning, at the park. Of course, first thing had meant after the medical timer, breakfast, and the multi-colored pills.
The park was on the small side, but it was only a few blocks from Megan's house and had a playground with a slide. That also meant it typically had enough mothers with small children nearby that Megan's mother didn't mind her hanging out there. As they got older, and some of the neighborhood kids started getting their drivers' licenses, most of the locals started traveling further to where there was more space for actual sports, or at least fewer small children, but it had continued to serve as the favored meeting spot for the girls for now.
And now it was time to discuss... a lot. Most prominent on the agenda was the crow-and-Painted-Lady thing, although that seemed even more surreal and impossible right now than it had as it happened.
Despite the obviousness of the looming questions about tiny ladies with tattered wings talking to crows, Lani had some questions of her own first before she let Megan get a word in edgewise. "How are you doing?"
"Okay," Megan answered. "A little headachey. Wondering if it's some kind of hallucination headache, considering."
"That would be a no. It's probably more of a...well, a readjustment-to-a-more-appropriate-dosage headache."
"Huh? Haven't changed my dosage in weeks."
"Well—and I'm sorry about this, and I want to apologize for that right off—you did, recently. The orange pills in your room right now are just Vitamin C."
"Okay, that really doesn't seem like a thing that should happen. At all."
"I know, and I'm sorry. I just couldn't think of what else to do, and it's an emergency."
"Okay. Apology accepted. And I could probably use a little extra Vitamin C. So, now that we've been mature about that, for certain values of mature, I guess it's time to talk about…little winged people?"
“Definitely time to discuss little winged people, and a lot of other people you’d probably find even stranger,” Lani agreed.
“Let’s start with the butterfly and the crow. Then we’ll hit weirder.”
“You’re usually the one who loves the weird.”
“Today is definitely not usual. So, butterfly and crow. Not hallucinating due to my best friend replacing the pills my mom worked so hard to get for Vitamin C tablets?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“And the apology was accepted. I’m not upset. I’m just saying that seems like a far more likely reason for… things.”
“No. Not hallucinating. The butterfly is actually a pixie. Her name is Ashling. And technically, she’s the one who replaced your orange pills for Vitamin C tablets.”
“Only when it was your idea, though, right?” Lani was the one who had apologized for it, after all. “She’s not going to go doing anything else odd?”
“Probably not,” Lani replied, not sounding at all certain. “The vitamin C thing was all I asked for.”
“And she was the one who left my window open, or did she have help?”
“No, that was her.”
“How?”
“So first you think you’re hallucinating, now you’re debating the physics of pixies?”
“I wasn’t even aware physics applied to pixies, because, you know, no such thing as pixies.”
“Shh, you’ll hurt her feelings.”
Megan looked around, not seeing any signs of a butterfly, though there were some crows not far away, but that was normal. “So she’s listening?”
“Probably not,” Lani replied, with the same uncertain tone. “Sneaking around is sometimes something they do, but she usually doesn’t bother. Most people can’t see her anyway.”
“So now she’s your invisible friend? But totally real?”
“You’re being unusually difficult about this.”
“I think I’m being really, really easy about this, considering you just told me that your invisible friend snuck in through my window in order to steal my medication, before riding off into the night on her black steed.”
“Now you’re just having fun with me.”
“Actually, yes,” Megan admitted, finally breaking into a small grin. “Now spill. Pixies.”
Lani sighed. “Okay, one, it's good to have you back—“
“This is neither your weird cult of engineering, nor math class. Stop counting. Pixies.”
“Right. So Ashling is a faerie, specifically, a pixie. Most people can only see her as a butterfly. It's not so much that she changes shape as that the majority of people's minds just fill in what they're seeing with something they can accept. Most faeries are like that.”
"So why was I able to see her?"
"Two reasons. First, at dawn and dusk, it gets easier. Some people can kind of see them, but just ignore it. Others can see, and then, usually a few seconds later, they blink, look again, see what they expect, and forget it."
"And the other reason?"
"Well, some people, assuming they're not in an overdosed haze, have a bit of an edge at seeing something from Faerie as what it is.” Lani took a breath, looking slightly sheepish. “And that's getting into family stuff.”
“Family stu—” but Lani cut Megan off.
"Megan, come on, we need to go! Now!" Lani insiste
d, grabbing for Megan's arm.
At first, Megan didn't move when the shorter girl started tugging, looking around for the source of the alarm. There were people around the park, a couple of joggers, a lady walking her dog, and a guy walking from the play field with a bat in hand, but nothing looked immediately threatening. "What?"
Lani pointed frantically at the man with the bat and a red ‘49ers baseball cap. "We need to go. Run!" she insisted.
Megan's brain caught up with the words and the pointing. The guy with the cap was walking casually, but definitely moving towards them. That realization hit at the same point as she remembered that the park really wasn't big enough for baseball. Trusting in Lani's judgment amid all of the sudden weird declarations, she turned to follow her into a sprint. Megan's first glance back over her shoulder confirmed that as soon as he knew he'd been noticed, with the girls off at a run, the man in the cap was giving chase.
"Lani, what?"
"Redcap. Don't let him catch you!" Lani called back, as the pair picked up speed. Both the girls and the guy giving chase ignored the shouts of the others in the park as they took notice.
"A what?" Megan managed between breaths, keeping up with Lani, if barely. She had the longer legs, but wasn't in as good a condition.
"Less talk, more running!” Lani shouted back, reaching the edge of the park and looking around before picking a direction and tearing uphill as fast as she could.
"Where... going?" Megan called, falling a little further behind as they hit the steep hill.
"Don't look back. Run," Lani called, before adding, "Bus."
"Bus?" Megan tried, clutching her own hat and attempting to catch back up.
"Bus," Lani said determinedly, turning another corner at the end of the block. She cut across the street as soon as there was a lull in traffic. A couple of horns blared as Megan charged after her, but she got across the street without getting hit. A glance back that she couldn't quite help revealed the man in the cap looking around at first, then noticing the sound of the horns and picking up his pace again, gaining on them despite the delay.
"Cops?" Megan shouted at Lani, now several feet ahead of her, trying to fish for her phone while she ran.
"Won't help. Run!" Lani shouted back. Another glance back, and the man in the cap was closer still.
Megan saw the bus pulling up at the other end of the block, took a deep breath, and tried to just put her head down and sprint, hoping the driver would see them. She was stopped short when a hand closed around her arm. She tried to pull away, but the grip was like a vise, tightening enough to hurt.
"Megan!" called Lani, turning and starting to run back, before she got a good look at the person holding Megan's arm and paused, frozen in her tracks with a look of terror on her face.
Megan looked back. Unnaturally yellow eyes peered out from under the cap, and though she still mostly saw a person, the man's grin just kept widening, and she would swear he had at least four rows of teeth, each set in worse need of dental care than the last. She got an impression of the baseball bat being lifted. At the close-up look, despite her brain screaming at her to keep fighting, Megan froze, finding her limbs refusing to respond to her urging.
There was a whispering of wind through the trees, and a black shape dove at the man's eyes, knocking the cap to the ground. As he let go of Megan, his jagged fingernails raked at her arm, tearing right through her winter jacket and leaving bloodstained streaks before he stumbled away, covering his eyes.
Lani broke free of the trance first. "Megan, run!"
Not needing to be told twice, Megan shook off the paralysis and sprinted after Lani, adrenaline pushing until she not only caught up, but reached the bus first.
"Ashling won't distract him long," Lani huffed, trying to push Megan onto the bus faster. "Don't look," she added quickly, before Megan could glance out the opposite window.
Lani quickly fished bus fare out of her pocket. The driver, either having seen the chase, or just having waited long enough, pulled away before she'd even finished counting out the right amount. As they stumbled towards a seat, Megan glanced back to see a crow with an oddly colorful decoration on his back flying upward, away from the man with the bat. The man glared after the bus for a few moments, sending a shiver up Megan's spine even from that distance. By the time she pulled her gaze away, he was reaching for his cap.
When Megan turned her eyes back to Lani, her friend was looking worriedly at her arm, reaching for it for a closer inspection. Megan lifted her arm and rolled her sleeve up, glancing at the shallow cuts. "We'll need to clean it out really good. I don't even want to know what was under his nails. But it's not bad," Megan tried, attempting to sound reassuring.
"No, no. It's really bad," Lani replied, staring at the cuts, and going through her pockets to try to find something to wipe at the blood with. "At least we have a head start."
"We could get off anywhere," Megan replied. "Don't tell me he can magically run after the bus or something."
"He won't need to," Lani replied grimly. "He's gotten a taste of you. He can follow you anywhere. Wherever we get off, he won't be far behind."
"Why can't we call the cops? Or your Mom. She knows about this stuff too, doesn't she?"
"Look, it's complicated. Yes, she knows, but she's not going to know what to do about a redcap."
"And the pixie can't help? She has weird stuff too, right?"
"If there were ten of her, he wouldn't come anywhere near us. With just one, she delayed him a little, and even that was brave. Most pixies wouldn't try, and even fewer crows. Redcaps are... well, really bad news."
"I'm getting that impression. So he can follow us anywhere, he runs faster than I do, and we don't have any magic on our side that will stop him?"
"I told you there were matters of life and death! I just didn't expect a redcap. At least not already. Someone is moving fast."
"The redcap," Megan agreed.
"Really, really complicated," Lani assured her. "I might just know one place we can go, though. If I'm remembering the day right, if nothing else happened, if... well, let's just say there's a lot of Ifs."
"I'm getting that impression," Megan deadpanned. "So where are we going?"
"By the stadiums. Catch your breath, cross your fingers, and get ready to get off the bus running. This will be close."
Chapter 5: Busker
Megan had a few thousand more questions start to form in her head as they rode, but each one disappeared into thoughts of those eyes and those teeth, and trying to ready herself to run. To run for where, she wasn't sure, but at least she knew the area around the stadium. A lot of her mother's clients held their events in the area, or, for the really big deals, at the stadiums themselves. While her mother never attended shows, she'd ended up bringing Megan along to meetings at times.
Even more familiarity came from the Kahales, die-hard football fans, bringing her along to games. Megan liked them. That had less to do with the football and more to do with the excitement and activity, but she kept track of the Seahawks anyway, and the hat Mr. Kahale had bought her at her first game had become a constant of her wardrobe.
Lani left the bus running, with Megan right behind her. Not seeing the redcap was almost worse than if she saw him right behind them. From the moment they were off the bus, Megan was sure she was seeing flashes of the red hat in every group of people and around every corner. She tried to focus straight ahead and just not lose track of Lani.
She would normally never attempt to run on the steep, winding pathways leading down to Safeco Field, especially in the middle of the day, with so many people around. The girls got a lot of angry shouts and calls to slow down, but both ignored them. Lani had an easier time avoiding people, ducking around them. Occasionally the shorter girl leading the way made people at least watch for anyone else running at them, but Megan still ended up ricocheting off a few people, shouting "Sorry!" backwards without breaking stride.
At last she saw him as they were approachi
ng a long stairway and a bank of elevators. He was still some way away, trailing the pair, but Megan was well aware both how quickly he could cover ground, and that if she wasn't careful, she'd end up transfixed again. She tore her gaze away and just focused on Lani as her friend rushed for the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, there was more foot traffic, but spaced out in the wide area around the base of the stadium. A saxophone player stood near one of the support columns, her instrument case open next to her. Megan took the stairs two at a time, trying her best to keep up speed without losing her balance. At the bottom, however, Lani grabbed her arm. Megan's first instinct on being grabbed was to try to fight free, but seeing who it was, she stopped, looking at Lani in confusion.
Despite the dire situation, Lani seemed much more relaxed than she had been on the bus. “Can I borrow a dollar?”
“What?” Megan was getting some kind of psychological whiplash.
“Can I borrow a dollar?” Lani repeated, looking at the bronze-skinned 20-something woman with the saxophone and the open case.
“I'm still a teensy bit bleeding. You said he 'has a taste' for me now and will be anywhere we go, and you ...”
“Could really stand to borrow a dollar, yeah.”
Megan silently reached into her pocket and pulled out a dollar.
“Thanks,” Lani replied, before, with an odd calm, going over and putting it in the saxophone case, as if that was a thing that one did after running for one's life from a monster/’49ers fan. She returned to Megan's side quickly and weathered the confounded staring well.
It took Megan a moment to process what song the saxophone started playing. It would have been difficult even had she not been standing outside with blood staining her torn sleeve and panic fueling her pulse. She'd certainly heard it plenty of times. She just wasn't used to hearing it as a simple melody on the saxophone. She was used to hearing old ladies with guitars, blaring from Lani's stereo—and the voice of every single Kahale present in the house singing along. It wasn't some perfect four-part harmony or anything, but Lani's parents—if her Dad was in town—and her little brother always sang along warmly.
Foul is Fair Page 2
