Thistle Down

by Irene Radford

  “Historically, very few people, even small children, rode in covered wagons on the Oregon Trail . . .” Joe said. It sounded like the automatic response of a teacher.

  “But this is ‘Pioneer Days Festival’ not the Oregon Trail. Let’s see if your Auntie Dusty will let us ride in the front of the wagon. We can wave to all the people, and you can tell me about the pink ponies with wings.” Thistle offered her hands to the girls. Dum dee dee do dum dum.

  They each slipped hot and sweaty palms into her own, already trusting her as a friend who would never harm them. They began humming along with her.

  “You’ll need a costume, Miss Thistle,” Joe called after them.

  “Auntie Dusty will take care of it,” Sharon replied, keeping her hand in Thistle’s.

  Twenty minutes later, the covered wagon lurched forward to lead the parade. A big white ribbon with a pleated rosette at the top proclaimed third prize.

  “We should have won first place,” Thistle grumbled as she plucked the calico gown away from her sweating body. At least the cloth bonnet shaded her eyes. Dusty had given her several bottles of water to carry in the wagon with the girls.

  “I bet we would have won if they’d let us have pink ponies instead of big brown horses,” Sharon said. She leaned forward on the plank seat to better see the horses.

  Thistle settled more comfortably on the seat. She half turned to the right and waved at Dusty where she stood on the museum porch. The girls waved, too.

  The horses settled into a smoother gait as they rounded a corner on the long winding pathway through the residences and then toward downtown. “Look! There’s Mrs. Swenson, my teacher,” Sharon called, waving wildly. Her sister joined her as they enthusiastically found more and more people they recognized. Thistle waved, too, enjoying the party atmosphere that had taken over the town.

  Normally, when the parade filled the town with noise and strange people, Thistle’s tribe of Pixies took refuge in the shady secret places within The Ten Acre Wood. They had plenty of work to do blurring paths and snapping ferns against the shins of all the extra children who sought treasures there. Thistle had even switched some of the signs identifying plants for the nature trail showing a lowly dandelion as a towering giant cedar.

  She giggled and waved some more.

  A blur of movement whizzed around the horses’ heads and zoomed up and over the top of the canvas wagon cover. She squinted against the sun glare to pick out details. A jaunty blue Pixie led a ragged group of mixed followers, some Dandelions, of course, with a Daisy and an Aster and some other pinks and yellows that spread out too far away to identify.

  “Chicory!” she called to the leader of the mob.

  He and his followers kept right on flying past her. They hadn’t seen her at all. They hadn’t heard her.

  The Pixies were as blind and deaf to her as most adults were to Pixies. To them, she didn’t exist at all.

  Her music died in her throat.

  Chase paced the blocks around the museum, trying to look like a cop on patrol. The parade had come and gone with minimal traffic snarls and only a few pranks—though he’d like to know where those eighth-grade boys got illegal fireworks. The carnival rides were now in full swing up at the community college. That’s where he should be right now.

  He wasn’t sure why he needed to keep an eye on Dusty and Thistle. He just didn’t like that Haywood Wheatland fellow sniffing around. He was back, after an early morning visit.

  Chase watched as Dusty escorted him out of the building and stood a moment conversing on the long shady porch. Chase heard snatches of conversation about the parade and which businesses stayed open during Festival.

  Chase’s gut twisted as Dusty flashed the newcomer a smile bright enough to rival the blazing sun on this heatdrenched day.

  When had Dusty ever smiled at a virtual stranger? She barely raised her eyes to people she knew!

  Haywood Wheatland was trouble. Chase knew it. Why didn’t anyone else see it?

  But if Wheatland drew Dusty out of her shyness, gave her someone to trust, someone who wouldn’t belittle and judge her . . . maybe he was a good guy.

  But if he broke her heart, he’d drive her deeper into her basement solitude.

  “If you hurt my friends, Mr. Smooth and Handsome, I’ll see you rot in a hell of your own making,” he swore.

  Then Chase paced some more, looking at houses for signs of something off kilter.

  All he could think about was Dusty and that man.

  “Dispatch, this is Sergeant Norton, patch me through to records,” he said quietly into his shoulder radio.

  “Sure, sweetie, what’s you need?” Mabel asked. “You know that I know more about this town than what’s in the official papers.” Anyone but the seventy-something, supposedly-retired dispatcher would get into deep trouble for gossiping and calling everyone by suggestive endearments. Trouble was, she’d been around so long the department wasn’t sure they could operate without her.

  She’d anchored the police department since God was a pup. He guessed that by now she didn’t know what to do with herself anywhere but anchoring reception and dispatch. Except putter in her garden growing the most magnificent roses in the county.

  Funny, he’d never actually seen Mabel Gardiner work in her garden. She was always down at the police station behind City Hall.

  And she knew where all the bodies were buried, who had secrets, and where everyone was at any given time. She had to have a legion of spies.

  “I know, Mabel. But this is about that new guy working for Phelma Jo.” Chase had to smile at finally coming up with a question she couldn’t answer.

  “Haywood Wheatland. Heard about him. Not much on his resume, but he knows how to make Phelma Jo smile. That’s a wonder in itself,” she came back at him. “That child was born angry.”

  Damn, the woman did know something records couldn’t tell him.

  No wonder Haywood Wheatland could charm Dusty, easy pickings compared to dragging a smile out of Phelma Jo.

  “How’d you know about his résumé?”

  “I have my ways, boy. Phelma Jo keeps her private files private, but I know a few tricks she doesn’t. He claims he graduated from that tech college in Portland and knows tricks with office management software. Saw his handle on a search of some city rules and regs regarding parks and recreation this morning, so I guess he knows his way around the Internet. What else you need?”

  “Have the interns in records come up with anything on that full background check? I want to know everything about him right down to his shoe size.” Judging by the scruffy loafers the man wore this morning, Chase guessed a nine narrow. Haywood looked big and impressive, but standing next to petite Dusty as he exited the museum, he stood only half a head taller than her. That put him about five-nine. Five-ten tops.

  What kind of wiry muscles did he hide under that thrift-store-reject tweed sport jacket?

  A flicker of purple near the first rank of trees in The Ten Acre Wood drew Chase’s attention.

  “Mabel?” Chase opened his radio again. “Anything show up on that deep background on Thistle Down?”

  Mabel coughed long and hard. “Sorry, sweetie, I swallowed down the wrong throat. Who’d you say?”

  “Thistle Down. The woman I brought in yesterday morning for dancing naked in Memorial Fountain.”

  “Um, Thistle . . . Thistle.... Thistle. Oh, yes, the darkhaired lady with purple eyes. Nope, nothing on her. No driver’s license or Social Security number under that name. No hits on three fingerprint databases. Signing off until I hear from records on that other check.”

  No comments, no speculation, nothing. Very unusual for Mabel to cut him off rather than gossip a bit.

  Chase’s shoulder mike crackled. “That high school gal summering down in records says she should have something for you by twoish,” Mabel said. She sounded wary, almost uncertain.

  Definitely unusual.

  “I’m walking a sweep of the neighborhood on
the ridge, Mabel, checking on some of the elderly, make sure they’ve got fans and water. Not all of them got to their porches to watch the parade. I’ll make sure they’re okay. Don’t want to have any of them succumb to heat stroke.” Chase turned his back on the museum.

  Dusty retreated inside, and Haywood walked off whistling something jaunty and hauntingly familiar.

  Damn, now Chase had an earworm of that tune, and he couldn’t remember the words.

  Dum dee dee do dum dum.

  A burst of static on his shoulder mike interrupted the almost combination of three words in the song.

  “Sergeant Norton. What do you have for me, Mabel?” That was quick.

  “Get over to Mrs. Spencer’s on Fifth and Oak. Just got word of a break-in in progress.”

  “On my way.” Chase ran like he had a football under his arm, the goal post in sight, and fullbacks closing in from each side.

  Mrs. Spencer hadn’t watched the parade.

  Twelve

  THE NOISE AND CROWDS from the parade had dispersed. Dusty retreated inside the museum. Dick went off to do something he called work. That left Thistle alone, tired, hungry, and thirsty. She wandered back toward Dusty’s house, wishing she could just spread her wings and fly.

  A laughing golden Pixie she didn’t recognize circled her head. At least he could see her.

  “Go away. I’m not one of you anymore,” she cried, batting him away, much as she’d seen humans do to the Dandelions who got too close.

  “And you never will be again,” golden boy taunted her. He flipped in midair and zoomed straight for her head, grabbing at a few tendrils of black hair. “Who ever heard of a black-and-pink Pixie. Looks diseased to me!”

  Thistle slapped at her head where the pulled hairs stung her scalp. “Who are you? You’re bigger than most Pixies.” She squinted her eyes a bit to catch a glimpse of his aura.

  Red-and-orange flames encircled his yellow, green, and brown life energy.

  “You’re part Faery!” she gasped. She’d heard stories of such strange creatures. Myths of bizarre matings that took place before the Faeries went underhill. The half-breeds were bigger than either their Pixie or Faery parents, with more potent magic than a Pixie but less than a Faery.

  That was long, long ago. Before Thistle was born. This jeering fellow looked too young to have come from the before times.

  “You don’t exist. You can’t exist!”

  “Neither do you!” He flew off, zipping in wild circles and loops, showing off the magnificent wings formed from splayed grain stalks.

  “Lost. I’m lost to Pixie and lost to myself,” she cried.

  Her stomach growled and her throat grew sour with thirst. She bent in front of a rhododendron no one had bothered to deadhead. The flower stamens still held their loads of pollen. A nice Pixie meal.

  “Eew!” she spat out the sour grit. “That’s not what pollen is supposed to taste like.” Hastily, she sought a few drops of dew to rinse her mouth.

  Nothing! The morning had grown too late and too hot. All the plants and gardens looked dry and sere. Ah, there on the side lawn of the big old house, a hose curled around a rack. A quick flick of the tap and she’d have a drink before trudging back to Dusty’s home.

  A curtain flicked in the widow of a house across the street.

  Thistle felt eyes following her every move as she stumbled while rising from her crouch. Damn, she’d depended upon her wings to right her and they weren’t there anymore.

  “So, I’m as big and lumpy as a human. I need to be careful about trespassing and being seen. I can’t flit about, as unnoticeable as a dragonfly.” A tear welled up in her eye. She dashed it aside. That just made her thirstier.

  So, she walked a few steps farther down the sidewalk until the itchy crawlies along her spine quieted. Her next step went sideways (where she tripped again with the shift in balance), on the other side of the overgrown rhododendron, onto the scraggly grass of the big old house with peeling gray paint and a sagging porch.

  The tap didn’t twist easily. She tugged at it with both hands. Rust flaked off as she shoved it one quarter of a turn. Water gurgled lazily through the coils of the hose, leaking out of slits in the worn rubber. She captured a few drops with her fingertip and sucked the moisture greedily.

  It tasted warm and acidic. A closer look revealed more rust in the water.

  A dog howled from the shaded window above her.

  “What’s up, boy?” she asked the graying muzzle that pushed aside the slats of the covering blinds.

  Extreme distress gushed from the animal. Help us.

  “I didn’t quite get that, Horace. That is your name, right?” When she was a Pixie, she could converse with all the dogs and cats. But she avoided the cats. They were mean alien monsters bent on murder. She knew them all intimately. Not this one.

  Another whimper, this time in agreement. Help us.

  “Um, I’m not supposed to come inside without an invitation, you know. Pixie Law. Human law, for that matter, too.”

  Horace howled again.

  “Okay, I guess that’s an invitation. Are the doors locked?”

  Horace didn’t know.

  Thistle rose on tiptoe and peeked through the tiny opening Horace had left between the slats. His muzzle still poked through, his whines becoming more urgent.

  A bloated leg covered in a thick opaque stocking with a hole in the toe lay on the floor unmoving.

  Thistle ran to the front door and knocked. She pounded her fist against the solid wooden barrier. The only sound of stirring that answered her was Horace’s claws on the other side. Mrs. Nosey across the street might object if Thistle waltzed into a stranger’s house through the front door. Was that a good or bad thing?

  Thistle tried the doorknob. It remained solid, unyielding.

  She jumped off the broad porch and ran along the side of the house toward the back. More signs of neglect here in the weeds running riot through the rose beds.

  “Wonder if the rose pollen will taste any better than rhododendron?” she mused. “Or has my tongue changed now that I’m big?” She shook her head and proceeded through the sagging wooden gate. She had to help the old lady Horace companioned. The gate hung crookedly, no longer able to close completely or latch.

  “I know something’s wrong, Horace,” she said to the dog who paced her progress from window to window.

  The door of the screened-in porch also sagged so that the latch didn’t work. Thistle pulled it open with little resistance. She stepped into the shadowed room lined with more screen than wall. “Heaps of discarded furniture and a fine sanctuary for spiderwebs,” she mused. It reminded her of a hollow log Pixies had abandoned to beetles and ants when it began to crumble in the winter rain and no longer sheltered the tribe. “If Horace weren’t inside begging me to come in, I’d think this house abandoned for a long, long time.”

  The back door, however, had a sturdy lock. Rusty, but still firmly engaged.

  Horace began barking, his anxiety now filled with hope. Human or Pixie, Thistle couldn’t abandon him.

  “If I were still a Pixie, I’d just fly through the keyhole. Keyhole. Hmmm, what does it look like inside?” Thistle closed her eyes trying to remember what keyholes looked like from the inside.

  Blackness surrounded her memory. “Faery snot!” she cursed.

  Horace barked louder.

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming. If I only had a little Pixie dust left . . . Well, I did yesterday morning. Let’s see if I can find any more.” This time when she closed her eyes, Thistle placed her fingertip over the hole and blew with her breath and her mind.

  Bright sparkles erupted out of the hole, encasing her hand in warm tingles.

  “I am going to be in so much trouble if Alder ever finds out I did this.” Without thinking further, she twisted the knob, felt the lock give way, and pushed the door open.

  Horace jumped against her, paws landing heavily on her chest. His golden fur looked oily and matted. He sm
elled strongly of dog in need of a bath. Then he bounced away dashing for the nearest bush in the yard. He lifted his leg and poised there seemingly forever.

  Thistle took one step inside. Waves and waves of hot air poured over her, leeching her energy. She nearly dropped to her knees in exhaustion. Not knowing what else to do, she crawled through the kitchen to the sink, then hauled herself up to the drainboard. This tap worked easily. But the water flowed warmly over her hand. She splashed some on her face and felt better. A tall glass stood upside down in a plastic drainer. She filled it drank down one glassful, refilled it, and walked slowly inward, taking an occasional sip.

  Horace trudged back in and led the way. She followed him and the smell of sour bread rising. Not good. Not good at all.

  In the front parlor, a tiny old woman, not much taller than Dusty, but much stouter, lay sprawled on the floor beneath the window.

  “Oh, dear. We need help, Horace.”

  Help us.

  “What’s that number people shout when they are in trouble? What is it?” She racked her memory and came up blank. She had to call someone. Who?

  An old black phone sat on a lamp table at the end of the sofa. Thistle grabbed the receiver as she’d seen humans do for as long as she had befriended them. There on the base in big red letters she saw 911 and a red cross.

  “Let’s hope that’s right.” She dialed the three numbers, waiting a long time for the rotary to return to its original position in between.

  “911, do you need police, medical, or fire?

  “Um . . .”

  “Stop! What are you doing?” Chase yelled from the archway to the kitchen. He stood, feet braced, a wickedlooking pistol held in both hands, menace written all over his face.

  “Help us!” Thistle shouted, pointing with the hand that still held the glass of water. Liquid spilled and splashed all over the old woman. She stirred in the slight relief.

  Suddenly, the heat, the exhaustion from throwing Pixie dust, and the smell robbed Thistle of all her strength.

  She gave in to the need to lie down. Right here. Right now.