Into the Woods: Tales From the Hollows and Beyond

by Kim Harrison

  Still on his lap, Matalina reached for Jenks’s half of sweetball and put it in his mouth. “Then ask Ivy,” she said as he shifted it around. “She’ll help you.”

  “Ivy?” he said, his voice muffled. “It’s my job, not hers.”

  Collapsing against him in irritation, Matalina huffed. “The vampire is always asking you to help her,” she said severely. “I don’t begrudge it. It’s your job! But don’t be so slow-winged that you won’t ask for help in return. It would be more stupid than a fairy’s third birthday party for Vincet to lose a newling because you were too proud to ask Ivy to be a distraction.”

  Jenks thought about that, lifting Matalina to a more comfortable position on his lap. “You think I should ask her?” he asked.

  Matalina shifted to give him a moot look.

  “I’ll ask her,” he said, feeling the beginnings of excitement. “And maybe have Jumoke come out with me, too. The boy needs something other than his good looks.”

  Matalina made a small sound of agreement, knowing as much as he did that his dark hair and eyes would make finding a wife almost impossible.

  Grinning, Jenks pushed them both into the air. She squealed as their wings clattered together, and a real smile, carefree and delighted, was on her as he spun her to him, hanging midair in the closed rolltop desk. “I’ll teach Jumoke a trade so he has something to bring to the marriage pot beside cold pixy steel and a smart mind,” he said, delighting in her smile. “I can teach him everything I know. It won’t be like Jax. I’ll make sure he knows why he’s doing it, not just how. And with Ivy distracting the nymph, I’ll blow up the dryad’s statue. I already know how to make the explosive. I just need a whopping big amount of it.”

  Matalina pulled from him, holding his hands for a moment as she looked at him in pride. “Go save them, Jenks. I’ll be in the garden when you get back. Bring me a good story.”

  Jenks drew her close, their dust and wings mingling as he kissed her soundly. “Thank you, love,” he said. “You always make things seem so simple. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You’ll get along just fine,” she whispered, but he was gone, already having zipped through the crack in the rolltop desk. Smile fading, Matalina looked over the empty desk. Picking up the discarded fabric, she followed him out.

  FOUR

  The shouts of his kids came loud through the church’s kitchen window, their high-pitched voices clear in the moisture-heavy air as they played hide-and-seek in the early dark. The boys, especially, had been glad to get out of the desk and into their admittedly more-cramped-than-a-troll’s-armpit quarters in the oak stump. More cramped, but vastly more suited to a winged person smaller than a Barbie doll.

  A parental smile threatened Jenks’s attempt at a businesslike attitude as he stood on the spigot before the window and cleared his throat. Jumoke’s apprenticeship had begun, and Jenks was trying to impress on him the sensitivity needed in mixing up some pixy pow. It wouldn’t be napalm, which pixies had first used to get rid of weeds—then fairies when it was discovered to their delight that it would go boom under the right conditions. And it wouldn’t be C4, C3, or any other human explosive. It would be something completely different, thanks to the dual properties of stability and ignition that pixy dust contained.

  “That’s it, Papa?” Jumoke said doubtfully as he penciled in the last of the ingredients on one of Ivy’s sticky notes. Unlike most of Cincinnati’s pixies, Jenks’s family could read. It was a skill Jenks taught himself shortly after reaching the city, then used it to claim a section of worthless land before the proposed flower boxes existing on a set of blueprints went in.

  “That’s it,” he said, gazing at his son’s hair. It looked especially dark in the fluorescent light. For the first time, he saw it as perhaps an asset. It wouldn’t catch the sun as his own hair did, a decided advantage in sneaking around. Perhaps Jumoke was the reigning hide-and-seek champion for a reason.

  Bis, newly awake and doing his sullen gargoyle thing atop the fridge, rustled his wings in disbelief. “There is no way that soap, fertilizer, lighter fluid, and pixy dust is going to blow that statue up. It’s solid rock!”

  “Wanna bet a week’s worth of sentry duty?” Jenks asked. “I use it all the time. A pixy handful will blow surveillance lines and fry motherboards, QED. We’re just going to need a lot more.” Rising up, he eyed the rack of spelling equipment hanging over the center island counter. “Can you get that pot down for me?”

  Jumoke made a small noise, and Bis’s pebbly gray skin went black. “Rachel’s spell pot?” the gargoyle squeaked in apparent fear.

  Hands on his hips, Jenks hummed his wings faster. “The little one, yes. Jumoke, go see if you can find Ivy’s lighter fluid out by the grill. We need more propellant than we have dust.”

  The young pixy darted out into the hallway, and Jenks frowned at the worried tint to his son’s aura now. Tink’s titties, he could use Rachel’s spelling equipment. The woman wouldn’t mind. Hell, she’d never even know.

  Ears pinned to his ugly skull, Bis hopped the short distance from the fridge to the center island counter, jumping up with his wings spread to pluck the small copper pot. It would hold about a cup of liquid and was Rachel’s favorite-size spell pot. She had two of them.

  “Can I have the other one, too, please?” Jenks said dryly, and the kid’s tail wrapped around his feet, his ears going flatter. “I can’t touch anything but copper,” he complained. “And if I use the plastic ones, they’ll smell funny. Will you grow a pair and get the bowl?” he said, darting upward and smacking it to make it ping.

  “Don’t blame me if Rachel yells at you for using her spell pots,” Bis muttered as he plucked it from the overhead rack and set it rocking next to the first. The draft from his wings blew Jenks back when Bis hopped to Ivy’s chair at the big farmhouse kitchen table, pulling first the phone book, then Vixen’s Guide to Gathering Guys and Gals down and onto the seat. The guide was the larger of the two.

  “Don’t blame me if Ivy de-wings you for using her computer,” Jenks shot back as Bis settled onto the stack of books and shook the mouse to wake the computer up. One day he was going to get caught, and then there’d be Tink to pay. Tugging a bowl to the middle of the counter, Jenks felt a moment of guilt. “Rachel will never know. What’s the problem here?”

  Bis looked up from the keyboard. His thin fingers were curved so his nails touched the keys, and he snapped off Ivy’s password without looking. “You didn’t ask her.”

  “Yeah, like you said pretty-please for Ivy’s password,” he said, and Bis flushed dark black. Smug, Jenks pulled the recipe closer and wondered how he was going to size up the amounts. “I’ll polish the stinkin’ bowls when I’m done,” he muttered, and Bis smirked. “I’m not afraid of Rachel!” he said, hands on his hips.

  “And I’m not afraid of Ivy.”

  They both jumped at the hum of dragonfly wings, but it was Jumoke. “It’s metal,” he said, his expression going confused when he saw the panicked look on their faces. “What did I do?”

  “I thought you were your mother,” Jenks said, and Jumoke’s wings turned a bright red as he drifted backward, giggling. It didn’t seem right to be teaching a six-year-old how to make explosives. The giggling didn’t help. But now was the time to start teaching him, not two weeks before he left the garden like he had Jax. There was a moral philosophy that went along with the power a pixy could wield, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Jumoke as he had with Jax.

  Bis stood, stretching his wings until the tips touched over his head. “I’ll help,” he said, and the two flew out into the hall and then the back living room. The cat door squeaked, and Jenks sighed, glancing at the clock. He’d already called Ivy, but she wouldn’t be home for a couple more hours. The three of them would have to make a whopping amount of explosive before she got home; he didn’t want Ivy to know he could make this stuff. Word would get out, and then Inderland Security would start drafting them into servic
e. Pixies liked where they were, on the fringes and ignored . . . mostly.

  Jenks drifted down until his feet hit the polished stainless steel, harmless through his boots. The squeak of the cat door brought him back to reality, and he pretended to be estimating the depth of the bowl when Bis and Jumoke flew in with the reek of petroleum.

  “Because their horns don’t work,” Bis said. “Get it? Because their horns don’t work?”

  The thunk of the tin can hitting the counter was loud, and Jenks’s hair shifted in the gust from Bis’s wings. “Jumoke, what do you think. A cup?” Jenks asked, measuring the bowl off at his shoulder and pacing around the perimeter.

  “I don’t get it,” Jumoke said, and after landing inside one of the bowls, he added, “A cup and a third to the brim?”

  “You know, their horns?” The gargoyle reached up and touched the tiny nubs where his would be when he grew up.

  “Bis, I don’t get it!” Jumoke said, clearly embarrassed. “Dad, what’s next?”

  Jenks smiled, pleased. A cup and a third. Jumoke had it right. Jenks looked up to find Bis and Jumoke watching him eagerly. Teaching an adolescent pixy and teenage gargoyle how to make explosives might not be such a good idea. But hell, he’d learned when he was five.

  “Mmmm, Ivory soap,” he said. “Ivy has a stash of it—”

  “In Rachel’s bathroom under the sink,” Jumoke finished, already in the air. “Got it.”

  Bis was a moment behind, his wind-noisy takeoff making the bowls rock.

  “Just one bottle ought to do it!” Jenks shouted after them. “We’re blowing up a statue, not a bridge.” The Turn take it, they were far too eager to learn this.

  When the sound of their rummaging became muffled, he braced himself against the copper bowl and pushed it to the can of lighter fluid. Taking to the air, he tapped the can with his sword point, moving down until he heard a sound he liked. Marking the spot with his eyes, he darted back, aimed his sword, and flew at it.

  With a stifled yell for strength, he jammed his sword into the canister. The hard pixy steel went right through. His elder children had fairy steel, taken from invaders testing their strength. Jenks’s blade was stronger, and the thin sheet of metal was nothing. Grinning as he imagined it was an invading fairy he had just pierced, Jenks put his foot on can for support and pulled the sword out, darting back to avoid the sudden stream flowing out and arching into the bowl . . . just as he had planned.

  Wiping his sword on the rag over the sink, Jenks listened to the changing sound to estimate how full the bowl was getting. Little splashes spotted the counter, and he dropped to the floor, slipping into the cupboards by way of the open space at the footboard.

  It was a weird world of wooden supports and domesticity behind the cupboards, and using his arms as much as his wings, he maneuvered himself to the kitchen’s catch-all drawer. Vaulting into the shallow space, Jenks hunched over, vibrating his wings to create some light as he moved to the front, dodging dead batteries and mangled twist ties until he found the spool of plumber’s putty. The trip out was faster, and eyeing Bis and Jumoke standing on the counter and panicking about the rising level of lighter fluid, he expertly plugged the hole.

  “More than one way to empty a can,” he said, vertigo taking him when the flow stopped and the fumes hit him hard. “Don’t get too close, Jumoke. I swear, this is the worst part.”

  “It stinks like a fairy’s funeral pyre,” the boy said, plugging his nose and backing up.

  Standing on the counter beside his son, Bis looked huge. There was a bottle of soap in his grip, and the gargoyle easily wedged the top open. Jenks could have done it, but it would have been a lot harder. “How much?” Bis asked, poised to squirt it out.

  Still reeling, Jenks covered his eyes, now streaming a silver dust as his tears hit the air and tuned dry. “Put it in the empty bowl. I’ll say when.”

  “Rachel’s spell bowl?” Bis said, hesitating.

  “It’s soap!” Jenks barked, rubbing his eyes and staggering until Jumoke grabbed his shoulder. Holy crap, it was nasty stuff until it all got mixed together.

  The squirt bottle made a rude sound as it emptied, and feeling better, Jenks peeked over the edge to see how much they had. “That’s good,” he said, and Bis capped the bottle by smacking the tip on the counter. “Jumoke, see the proportion to the lighter fluid? Now all we need is the nitrogen and the pixy dust. Lots of nitrogen to make the boom intense.”

  “Fertilizer,” Jumoke said. “In the shed?” he asked, and when Jenks nodded, Jumoke rose up. “I’ll check.”

  In an instant, he was gone. Glancing out the night-darkened window, Jenks watched Jumoke’s arrow-straight path, the sifting dust falling to make a gold shadow of where he’d been. His siblings called out for him to join them, but Jumoke never even looked.

  Pleased, Jenks turned to find Bis trying to get the fridge open by wedging a long claw between the seals. It felt good to be teaching someone his skills. Tink knew that Jax had been a disappointment, but Jumoke was genuinely interested. He already knew how to read.

  Leaning against the bowl of soap, Jenks scratched the base of his wings, watching Bis hang from a fridge shelf with one hand and pull out a tinfoil-covered leftover with the other. His claws scrabbled on the linoleum when he dropped, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Bis shook the leftover lasagna into the trash under the sink and ate the tinfoil instead.

  The rasping sound of teeth on metal made him shudder. Black dust sifted from him, and seeing it, Bis shrugged, crawling back up onto his elevated seat before Ivy’s computer. “A gargoyle doesn’t live on pigeon alone,” he said, and Jenks winced.

  Pushing off into the air, Jenks rose into the hanging utensils for his own snack. There was a pouch of sweets for the kids in the smallest ladle. Rachel never used it. Opening it, he popped one of the nectar and pollen balls into his mouth, then grabbed another for Jumoke. The kid had a lot to learn about maintaining his sugar level. Unless he was snacking in the garden. How long did it take to look through the shed, anyway?

  Angling his wings, Jenks dropped to the dark windowsill and pocketed the second sweet. Hands on his hips, he stared out into the dark garden and watched the bands of colored light sift from the oak tree. Jumoke wasn’t among them. The individual trails of dust slipping down were as pixy-specific as voices, and he knew them all. There’d been no new patterns to learn in years.

  No more newlings, he thought, more melancholy than he thought he’d be. He’d done it to save Mattie’s life, and it had seemed to have worked. A healthy pixy woman gave birth to more sons than daughters by almost two to one. The size of the brood, too, was telling, which was why only two children were born that first season, none the next, then eight, eleven, ten, twelve . . . then seven—four of them girls. That was the year he panicked, going to work for Inderland Security. Matalina had borne only three children the year he’d met Rachel, two of them girls. None had survived to naming. His wish for sterility had saved her life. Another birth of newlings might have killed her.

  What he hadn’t anticipated was with the absence of newlings, both he and Matalina had time to spare on other things. He’d gone from side jobs to a full-time career outside the garden, gaining enough money to buy the church and the security that went with it. Matalina had been able to help their eldest daughter take land before taking a spouse, something that only pixy bucks traditionally managed. Not to mention Matalina pursuing her desire to learn how to read, and then teaching the rest of the children—all impossible if caring for a set of newlings. Children were precious, each one a hope for the future. How could they be detrimental?

  Frowning, Jenks tried to figure it out, failing. Perhaps he wasn’t old enough yet, because it didn’t make sense to him. Maybe Mattie could help him. She was the smart one. As soon he got her to take the Tink-damned curse, he’d rest easier. They’d live in the garden for another twenty years, then, watching their children grow, take their places . . .

  The sharp taps of
Bis on the keyboard stopped, and the gargoyle ruffled his wings. “Listen to this,” he said, his high, gravelly voice pulling Jenks’s attention from the window. “ ‘Dryads declined with the deforestation, and many ghosts have been blamed on them as they learned to live in statues placed on ley lines.’ ”

  Jenks flitted close, thinking he looked nothing like Ivy. “Kind of like pixies adapting to city gardens. Humans. Learn to live with them, or die trying.”

  Bis blinked his red eyes at him. “We’ve always lived with humans. I can’t imagine living in the woods. What would I eat? Iron ore and sparrows?”

  Ignoring his sarcasm, Jenks moved closer to the screen. Now that he thought about it, gargoyles were dependent on people. The picture of the dryad on the monitor was his size, and he tapped it. “Look at that. It looks like the statues in the park, doesn’t it?” He turned, starting when he found Bis unexpectedly inches from him. Holy crap, didn’t the kid breathe?

  “Yeah . . .” Bis said softly, not noticing he had jumped.

  Trying to cover his surprise, Jenks walked across the keyboard to the “down” arrow, scrolling for the rest of the article. “ ‘Because they declined before the Turn,’ ” he read aloud, proud that he could, “ ‘little is written about them without the trappings of fairy tale, but it’s commonly accepted that they live as long as the tree they frequent does, perhaps even hundreds of years. Though generally thought of as meek and gentle, Grimm has placed them several times in the position of wildly savage.’ ”

  Chuckling, Jenks put his hands on his hips. “Yeah,” he said as Jumoke flew in trailing a disappointed green dust. “And the freak had kids shoving witches into ovens, too.” Scraping his wings for his son’s attention, he tossed Jumoke the pollen ball.

  Catching it, his son tucked it away, saying, “It’s not there. I think Rachel used it.”