“What do you think Willow and Ash’s wedding will be like?” Briar asks, a little dreamy.
I shrug. “Probably like every other wedding in the history of Alverland.” My sister is traditional, to say the least.
“Isn’t it exciting that she’s going to get Mama Ivy’s land?”
“Ivy’s not dead yet,” I remind Briar as we tromp through heavier snow dotted with squirrel prints and a few bird tracks.
“She’s 199!”
“Grandmother Aster lived to 206,” I say, but then I sigh. “I do love Ivy’s house, though.” We’re quiet as we think of the small stone cottage in a glen, surrounded by giant red pines and goldenrod, that my sister will inherit because she’s the firstborn daughter in a long line of first daughters—my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and all the way back eight generations to Ivy, who’s the oldest living matriarch in our family now.
“It’s so romantic!” Briar says with a sigh. Then she stops. “But if you marry Timber you wouldn’t be allowed to live in Alverland.”
“Stop,” I say, but a little ripple of excitement goes through my chest at the thought of marrying Timber. “I’m not going to marry him. I can’t even get him alone. And besides, who says I want to live in Alverland?”
“I know,” Briar says. “But it could be a problem. Falling in love with an erdler.”
We turn at a big Norway maple and head down a steep hill with old sled tracks packed into the snow. This trail will take us to the road that goes by our house.
“You know what I miss most about Alverland?” Briar asks.
I shake my head because I can think of twenty things I miss right now.
“Dancing,” she says.
“You dance every day at school.”
“No, not that kind. With you and our sisters.” She reaches out and spins herself around the trunk of a small tree. “The fresh snow makes me want to dance an elf circle.”
I smile. “I miss that, too.”
We follow the track down through the trees, talking about our favorite dance spots in Alverland, but before we get to the road, we both jump when two people come out from the midst of the pines. Both of us fling our hands up, ready to cast mischief if we need to, but a guy and the girl in puffy white coats and white knit hats step back.
“Sorry,” says the girl.
“We didn’t see you there,” the guy adds.
It takes a second for all of us to register that we know each other.
“Hey,” Briar says. “Didn’t we just meet?”
“At the coffee shop,” the girls says, nodding and smiling.
“You were with Bella,” I say.
“And you were with Timber,” says the guy, then he laughs. “Guess we all had the same idea about a snowy hike off the beaten path.” He sticks out his hand and reintroduces himself. “I’m Clay Corrigan. This is Dawn.”
Dawn smiles as we all shake hands. Her teeth are as white and straight as the guy’s. “Not many people like to come up this far in the woods.” She looks up into the graying sky above the trees. “Especially when the sun is starting to sink.”
“We’re on our way home,” Briar says.
“You live near here?” Clay asks.
“Yeah,” Briar says, and starts to point toward our house.
I grab her arm. “We should be going, before it gets dark.”
“You look familiar,” the girl says to me. “I’m sure I’ve seen you before. I mean before we met at the coffee shop today.”
What’s funny is, they look familiar to me, too, but I’m sure we’ve never met. “Probably seen each other around the park.”
She shakes her head and steps closer to me. We’re almost exactly the same height. “Nope. I know I’ve seen you somewhere. Are you an actress or something? I feel like you’ve been on TV.”
“I’m not an actress,” I say, walking away. “We should be going.”
As we crunch past them in the snow, Dawn yells, “Aha! I’ve got it. You’re the daughter of that singer, Drake Addler, aren’t you? I saw some documentary about your family on VH1 a few months ago.”
I cringe. We were on VH1, trying to show what a normal, happy family we are when my dad was trying to prove that he isn’t the leader of a weird pagan cult (a chat-room rumor I think Bella started). “I didn’t think anybody saw it.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen everything about your dad,” she says.
“We’re big fans,” Clay adds with his signature toothy grin. I wonder if he’s going to hand me a card to give to my dad.
I try to smile graciously, but my stomach knots up. “I’ll tell him.” I start down the path again.
“Hey, what are your names?” the girl calls after us.
“I’m Briar!” Briar shouts over her shoulder. I elbow her hard in the side, but it doesn’t do any good. “And she’s Zephyr.”
“Will we see you tonight at Bella’s gig?” Dawn asks.
“Yes!” Briar says, waving to them. “We’re all coming.”
“Bring your brother Grove,” Dawn says. My stomach flutters. The fact that she knows so much about my family might mean she’s one of those nut-job fans. They have Web sites and chat rooms to speculate on my family’s life. A few months ago, one of them tried to find Alverland.
“See you at the club,” Clay says.
I yank hard on Briar’s arm and pull her down the path away from them.
“What is your problem?” she asks, wriggling away.
“Could you be friendlier to those weirdos?” I whisper as I maneuver through the trees.
“Just because they rep Bella—” Briar starts to say.
“That’s not it.” I look over my shoulder to make sure they aren’t following us. “They’re creepy. Walking around up here in the woods.”
“We’re up here in the woods,” Briar points out.
“Exactly,” I say as we come down from the hill onto the road that circles the park. “And we aren’t your normal, average erdlers, are we?”
“You’re paranoid,” Briar says.
“And you’re naïve,” I say.
“But they like your dad.”
“This isn’t Alverland, Bri. Not everyone is nice.” I stop and look over my shoulder one last time. The woods are quiet and we seem to be alone. “Besides,” I whisper, “they could have overheard us.”
“They wouldn’t know what we were talking about.”
“That’s just it,” I say. “We can’t let anyone know. Ever. Don’t you get it? We’re different from everybody else and we have to protect that.”
“Whatevs,” Briar says, and snatches her arm out of my grip. We walk side by side out of the park, to the main road. “But,” she says as we wait to cross the street to our house, “it was kind of cool that they recognized you, don’t you think?”
“They only recognized me because of Dad,” I say, pausing for the traffic to clear.
“What difference does it make?” she asks.
“If I’m going to be recognized,” I say, “I wish it’d be for something I do, not because Drake Addler is my father.”
I can smell the fire crackling in our living room as soon as I open the front door. As much as I miss our house in Alverland, I’ve grown to like this place with its cozy rooms, creaky steps, and wheezing radiators.
“Zephyr and Briar are home!” Bramble shouts as he catapults from the middle of the stairs. His brown tunic flies up behind him like a cape, and his little green cap tumbles off his head. “Did you see that?” he asks, looking up from a crouch near our toes. “Seventh stair because I’m seven years old. I bet I could jump from the third highest rock at Barnaby Bluff. There’s no way Lake could do that.”
“I don’t know,” says Briar, unwinding her long, red scarf that her mom (my aunt Flora) knit for her. “My brother’s a good jumper. I think he was already jumping off the third rock when I left.”
Bramble bounces up and climbs the steps again. “I’m going to keep practicing so when we go b
ack I can jump farther than he can.”
“Where is everybody?” I ask as I shrug off my coat.
Bramble climbs to the eighth step. “Kitchen or out back, maybe. Doing Harvest stuff. I’m a bobcat!”
“It’s called Thanksgiving here,” I remind him.
He growls then leaps again. Briar and I hop out of the way of his crash landing. “Be careful, would you?” I tell him. “And don’t call it Harvest Festival when everyone is here tomorrow, okay?” But he’s already back up the stairs, ignoring me.
Ever since my mom had the bright idea to invite all my friends and their families over for “Thanksgiving” at our house, I’ve been half dreading tomorrow. First off, elves don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. We have a Harvest Festival, which from what I can tell is similar, but not the same. And for that reason I’m absolutely sure that my family will do something embarrassing in front of everyone.
In the kitchen, we find my mom, my older brother Grove, and my little sisters, Poppy and Persimmon. Grove sits on a stool in the corner, noodling on his guitar while the girls plunge their arms deep into a mixing bowl full of thick dough. Mom chops something at the side counter. Cinnamon and nutmeg permeate the warm, moist air. Usually, I love when my mom bakes, especially for special occasions like the Harvest Festival, but now I’m worried. “What are you making?” I poke my finger in the bowl.
Mom turns around and smiles, radiating her familiar blond-haired, green-eyed charm. “Hello, my little fawns.” She opens her arms to us and we both accept a hug. She’s wearing her blue tunic, so soft and worn that it feels like a blanket against my cheek. Her amulets click together as she embraces us. “How was your day?”
“We went to the co-op to buy apples,” Poppy tells us, proudly, before Briar or I can speak.
“For bumblings,” Persimmon adds.
Mom laughs and wipes flour off Percy’s nose. “Dumplings.”
Persimmon nods. “Daddy likes bumplings.”
“But Mom,” I whine. “Erdlers don’t eat apple dumplings for Thanksgiving!” I march over to the refrigerator and pull down the list of traditional erdler foods that I printed off of Wikipedia. I turn to page two. “Right here it says they eat pumpkin pie or pecan pie.”
“But I don’t know how to make those,” Mom says.
I shake the papers at her. “I printed recipes for you.”
“Not everyone has to follow your directions,” Grove says.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, hoping at least he’ll understand what I’m saying.
“He’s at a meeting with his agent,” Mom says, then she cocks her head to the left and looks at me for a moment. “Zephyr, honey, tomorrow will be fine. Your friends will bring the traditional erdler food, and we’ll share our food with them. That’s what Thanksgiving is about.”
“And we’ll look like big freaks,” I mutter as I toss the papers aside.
Briar swipes a bright green apple off the counter, then tosses one to me. “Are these apples any good?”
“Surprisingly, yes,” says Mom.
“There was cow’s milk in a purple carton with a picture of a cow on it,” Poppy tells us. “And I tried a banana. Have you ever had Pirate’s Booty?”
My sisters are still amazed that you can buy food at a store. I’m still amazed that my mom joined the Park Slope Food Coop. When we first moved here, she hated going out among the erdlers. Although, after going to the co-op with her, I realize that we probably aren’t the weirdest family in Brooklyn. All kinds of strange people shop there.
“Where’s Grandma?” I ask, crunching into the apple that is surprisingly good—something I never thought I’d say about erdler food other than pizza.
Mom bites her lip then turns back to her cutting board. “Outside.”
“You want some help?” Briar asks her.
“You girls can roll out the dough and start cutting circles,” Mom says.
“In a minute,” I say, heading for the back door. “I want to say hi to Grandma first.”
Sometimes I swear my grandma Fawna is the only person in this house who really understands me. For example, she’s the only one who studied the sheets I printed with the Thanksgiving traditions.
I find her in the garden, bent over the round wooden picnic table where she’s made a small pile of dried twigs and leaves. She’s mumbling as she adds more from a leather satchel tied around her waist. If we were still in Alverland, Briar and I would start our spell-casting apprenticeships soon. That’s when we study with one of our grandparents. I’m not sure how my other cousins in Alverland are coping with my grandma gone, but Fawna says there’s plenty of magic to go around, so she’s not worried.
Even though everyone in our family still dresses in Alverland clothes every day (except Briar and me when we go to school), Grandma Fawna kicks it seriously old school. Her pine-green tunic nearly sweeps the ground it’s so long, and she wears dozens of amulets around her neck, plus bands up her left arm. When I was little, I loved sitting on her lap, counting the amulets then the bands, taking in every detail of the feathers, claws, tufts of fur, and smooth rocks. She’d catalog their uses: speed, grace, cunning, stealth. Then we’d look at her tiny bags of moss, herbs, leaves, and dried berries, and she’d tell us each one’s healing properties. Elf children aren’t expected to memorize all of those things until we’re sixteen, but growing up with it makes it easier when the time comes.
I wrap my arms around myself to keep warm in the chilly air, but Fawna doesn’t seem to notice the cold. She takes a short, smooth stick from a pocket of her tunic. I recognize the intricate designs my grandfather carved around the base. She closes her eyes, lifts her head, and mutters something as she points the stick at the table. The pile of twigs and leaves ignites, sending a puff of orange fire then a plume of purple smoke curling toward the sky.
“Grandma!” I rush toward her, waving the smoke away. “You can’t do that here,” I whisper harshly. “What if someone sees you?” I look all around at our neighbors’ windows surrounding us on every side, making sure there are no curious faces peering out.
Fawna continues watching the smoke as it rises for a moment, then she turns to me and blinks. “No one cares what a crazy old woman does in her garden.” She turns her attention to the ashes on the table. With her stick, she traces the design. “Look here,” she says to me. “What do you see?”
I can definitely see a symmetrical pattern with interlocking loops and maybe some kind of square in the center, but I don’t know what any of it means. I shake my head.
“Hmmm.” She looks troubled for a moment with her eyebrows flexed and her mouth in a tight, straight line.
“What’s it mean?” I ask.
She blows the ash away, scattering it across an empty azalea bush. There are no marks from the fire on the table. “Who knows?” she says with a shrug.
“You do.”
“Perhaps.” She smiles and puts her stick back in her pocket.
“You’re supposed to teach me these things.”
“Ah.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and brings her face close to mine to look deeply in my eyes. My heart slows and my stomach calms like the surface of a pond after the wind dies down. “You’re getting old enough now,” she says quietly. “Your apprenticeship should start soon. But we must start with something simpler than that.”
I look over my shoulder at the ash sprinkled across the snow-covered ground. “What were you trying to figure out?”
Fawna pauses and looks down at me. Then she lifts her head again. “I’m not sure yet,” she says. I follow her gaze. Night has nearly enveloped the sky, turning it charcoal gray with a few streaks of fading pink. “Something feels off to me.”
“Grandma,” I say, “can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“Are dark elves real or did you make them up to scare us?”
Grandma sighs. “Aha, that’s the question of someone ready for her apprenticeship.”
“Well?” I as
k, waiting for a real answer.
“What do you think?” she asks.
“Grandma!” I whine, because it’s always the same with her. Ask a question, get a question in return.
“I had a cousin,” she tells me. “Her name was Hyacinth. She is the daughter of my aunt Iris, my mother’s youngest sister.”
And if it’s not a question, you get a long story. “Is there never a straightforward answer?” I ask. “A yes or a no?”
She ignores me and continues. “Hyacinth left Alverland, you know. Married a man from a different clan. We were all heartbroken.”
“Where’d she go?” I ask.
Grandma shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but some people believe she turned dark.”
I lean closer to her. “What’s it mean, when someone turns dark?”
“What do you think it means?” she asks.
“Again with the questions!” I say, but this time I laugh.
“Consider this an apprenticeship question,” Grandma says, putting her arm around my shoulders. “Get back to me when you think you know. Now,” she leads me toward the back door, “let’s go help your mother.”
“She’s in there making apple dumplings for tomorrow, not pumpkin pie,” I complain.
Grandma leads me up the steps to the back door. “Ah, well, what can you do?”
“But Grandma ...”
She holds up her hand. “My dear, you can’t control everything.”
“But ...”
She pats my arm. “But what?”
I look in the kitchen window. My mom and the kids have formed an apple dumpling assembly line. “Couldn’t you cast a spell or something to turn our food into erdler food?”
Grandma shakes her head. “Good granite, my dear. That would be a waste of my magic when your mother’s food is so good.”
“So that would be dark magic,” I say, half kidding.
Grandma laughs. “It’d be a start. Now then,” she says as she opens the door, “tell me about your day. What was the twist so big it was going to blow your pipes?”
Selfish Elf Wish Page 5
