Thistle Down

by Irene Radford

  “The speed and the secrecy involved. Pixel Industries, Ltd is offering about ten times the amount of money they can get back from selling the timber, including the massive amount of old growth oak from the Patriarch Oak by the pond. Which should have been designated a heritage tree long ago but wasn’t, because people were afraid they wouldn’t be allowed to climb it or dig around it for pirate treasure. The money made me wonder why they wanted the timber so badly and why in such a hurry.”

  “Cutting those trees will make a huge mess of the Masque Ball Saturday night if they start cutting on Friday,” Pepperidge mused.

  “Precisely, sir. That led me to believe the entire operation was aimed at ruining the Ball, the fund-raiser for the museum. The timber has been there for a long time. Why this year? Why this week?”

  “Isn’t this the first year Dusty Carrick has taken over the organization from her mother?”

  “Yes, sir. And there is only one person in town who might have a grudge against her.”

  “Phelma Jo Nelson. Wow, that feud goes back a few years.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I thought the girls were friends before that. It turned out well afterward since it forced the school authorities to investigate accusations of abuse in Phelma Jo’s home. She went into foster care within hours of the incident.”

  “Because Dusty’s injuries got infected and wouldn’t heal, she got an early diagnosis of leukemia and was able to have complete remission,” Chase added.

  “Good outcome all around, and yet the feud persists. Who knows what trauma dominated their minds at the age of nine and ten.”

  “Yes, sir. I thought Phelma Jo would have forgotten it, especially since she has made such a success of her life, starting from that moment. She has no reason to be jealous of Dusty anymore. But that’s her name and her signature on the incorporation papers, which are dated only a few days before the offer to the city was issued to the mayor.”

  “And it went to the mayor privately, not through regular channels and the City Council. I wonder if Seth would have even told the City Council about it until after the fact.”

  “I don’t know, sir. You know him better than I do. The fact is, this operation does not look aboveboard and should be investigated fully. There isn’t time to do that before they start cutting timber unless you issue the injunction.” Chase held his breath, hoping he hadn’t been too pushy.

  “I agree. That’s what I told Bill Tremaine a few minutes ago when he called. He’s married to Pam Shiregrove, you know.”

  “Wait a minute, Bill Tremaine? As in William Tremaine, tall guy, white hair, very distinguished, anchors the local news on KRVR?” Chase gulped. Then he had to swallow a couple of times to get around the lump in his throat.

  “Go it in one,” Judge Pepperidge chuckled. “If anyone could get recalcitrant politicians to act on the threat of negative publicity, he can. Seth will be lucky if he’s not run out of town on a rail when Bill gets done with this story. I’m signing this cease and desist order right now, and calling the DA. There may not be anything criminal going on, but I want to find out.” He selected a wooden fountain pen from a cup full of similar writing instruments and signed three copies of a form already prepared.

  Chase’s heart soared. He’d done it. At least he and Bill Tremaine had done it. They’d saved The Ten Acre Wood. Surely Dusty would forgive him for accusing Haywood Wheatland of skullduggery. Especially since it looked like he was guilty.

  “I’ll let you serve this on Phelma Jo personally. And deal with any reporters hanging around her office. I’ll make sure the DA gets a copy, and I’m keeping one locked in my safe to make sure the mayor—or Phelma Jo—doesn’t steal it.” Judge Pepperidge turned his chair around so the back of it blocked Chase’s view of what he did at the credenza beneath the window.

  “Thank you, sir. I hope to see you Saturday night at the Ball.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it. I presume you are escorting Dusty Carrick?” He turned back around, hands now empty, and peered at Chase over the top of his glasses.

  “I hope so, sir.”

  “Good luck with that. She’s worth waiting for.”

  “Does everyone in town know my business before I do?”

  “That about sums it up. Now get going and deliver that injunction before Phelma Jo gets impatient and starts cutting timber before her own deadline.”

  Thirty

  THISTLE TOOK A BREAK from her duties with the old ones who should be revered instead of cast off. Dusty had gone up the hill to visit Mrs. Shiregrove. Dick had appointments in the city. Chase had answered a summons to the courthouse.

  She was alone. Time to find some answers. She needed to talk to Alder, who seemed to be at the heart of all the problems besetting her friends.

  From Mrs. Jennings’ house, she walked two blocks north and then another three west until she faced a seemingly impenetrable wall of trees and undergrowth. The bracken and sword ferns had grown so intertwined they obscured any path that might lurk beneath them. Even the narrow drainage ditch between the graveled shoulder of the rotting road and the ferns looked solidly overgrown.

  They drooped with dry dust, looking tired and extremely thirsty. All the life and luster had drained out of them.

  No matter. She could find the path. She’d flown along the narrow opening dozens of times a day for as long as she had sought friends among the children playing in the forest.

  One step in the center of the ditch and her foot sank deep among the tall grasses, thistles, tansy, and Queen Anne’s lace. Most of the plant tops tickled her knees. Except the thistles. Her namesake. Those prickled her arms all the way up to her elbows. She scratched the irritating dots.

  Then she paused, wondering if she scratched and annoyed people the way the spines of the plant did. Even as she thought about it, some of the stickers worked their way under her skin, persistent, incapable of being ignored.

  She giggled at the thought of how she had worked her way into the lives of Dick and Dusty. Unrelentingly.

  But she couldn’t let laughter and fun deter her from her task.

  She took another step, up this time into the first thicket of bracken and more grass going to seed and thistles flowering, brilliant purple and delicately fragrant. A few of those had begun to fluff white as the seeds worked their way outward from the center. The season marched toward autumn. The days grew shorter.

  Surely rain and cooler temperatures had to come soon to give the humans and the plants some relief.

  Pixies thrived in summer heat and the cool spring and autumn. Only in deepest winter did they seek shelter, huddling together and sleeping most of the day and night until the days brightened again.

  “I must be truly human now if I’m uncomfortable,” she mused as perspiration trickled down her back and between her breasts. “The time is long past for me to return to Pixie. Maybe then I won’t hurt so bad because I can’t let Dick love me.”

  She took one more step and . . . flew backward, landing on her butt in the rough gravel.

  Her hands stung and her back ached. Her senses reeled and darkness crowded in from the sides. She desperately needed to put her head down.

  Nothing soft and comfortable showed itself within reach.

  “What?” Tears flowed down her cheeks in pain and disappointment. This was the second time she’d been thrown out of Pixie and landed in a humiliating lump.

  “You’re an exile. You can’t go back until Alder says you can go back,” a man laughed from behind her.

  She twisted around to see who mocked her.

  “Haywood Wheatland.”

  He bowed formally, like a proper Pixie. He stayed a good twenty feet away. Not proper Pixie protocol. He should come to arm’s length and wait for an invitation to rub wings.

  “Who are you?” she asked, scrambling upward, desperately seeking balance and dignity. Her head took a few heartbeats to catch up with the rest of her. She stumbled and had to plant her feet in a wide stance to stay upright.

&
nbsp; “Look closer at your precious Ten Acre Wood, Thistle Down. Look and see what rejects you.”

  She peered at the line of trees marking the boundary of her tribe’s territory. A wall of shimmering energy, much like the aura around frantically flapping Pixie wings swam into view.

  “You and only you are the reason for that wall. Now no Pixie can enter or leave The Ten Acre Wood until Alder takes it down. And he won’t. Not until Milkweed agrees to a mating flight.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to keep Milkweed from returning to her valley home?”

  Haywood gulped, then paused in thought. He finally nodded agreement.

  “She’s both smart and stupid,” Thistle spat.

  Haywood cocked his head in question.

  “She’s smart not to trust Alder. Trusting him to a mating flight is no guarantee he’ll be faithful to her afterward.”

  “You should know.”

  “Yes. He betrayed me, and probably others.”

  “Then why is she stupid?”

  “If she took the mating flight, the treaty between her tribe and Alder’s would stand. She would be queen. A powerful leader of the most important Pixie territory. She could wrest control from him as soon as she exposed his underhanded manipulation of his tribe. Then she could dictate who could use the Patriarch Oak and when.”

  Thistle vented her anger by brushing dirt and gravel off her skirt and legs. Jagged bits of rock clung to her, stinging worse than thistle spines. Scrapes burned, and she ached all over. Long scratches and drops of blood trickled down her arms and legs, like the stream trying to gain enough momentum to plunge over the cliff in high summer.

  “Granted. Milkweed needs to control the situation,” Haywood mused. “That doesn’t change anything, though. You are still exiled and powerless. Soon the chain saws will bring down Alder and the Patriarch Oak. Soon he’ll have no power, no prestige, no queen, and no territory.” He smiled, showing too many pointed yellow teeth the same color as his hair. In the slanted afternoon light he looked like sun-ripened hay ready to ignite into flames if the temperature increased one degree.

  Hay? Haywood?

  “Stars above and earth below, you’re Milkweed’s brother!”

  “Guilty as charged.” He bowed again, laughing. But his mirth sounded harsh and gravelly, not at all bright and chiming like most Pixies.

  “You! You’re behind the logging,” she accused.

  “Not me. I signed nothing. Everything is in Phelma Jo’s name.”

  “She hasn’t the imagination to think this up. She couldn’t see Pixies as a child. She thought we were all dragonflies.” So did Chase, but he was learning that life grew beyond logic and the limits of practical explanations.

  “The mayor and the lawyers won’t believe that,” Hay smirked.

  “You’re from the valley. I bet you learned all about computers and bending rules from the boys you befriended. But how can you get close to anything digital? They go all static . . .” Oh, my. A fiery aura, compatibility with computers, pointy teeth.

  He was no ordinary Pixie. She’d bet her wings that he was only half Pixie. Dusty had it right. Half Pixie and half Faery gave him control over all four elements and which ones dominated.

  That was why she couldn’t get close to him. His Faery blood repelled her, like . . . like magnets or something.

  She backed up two steps in fear.

  “My boys do love their video games. They learned to like blowing things up from their games. And they love hacking, just to see how far they can get inside other people’s computers. I am their faithful friend, learning as much from them as they do from me. Tonight they’ll succeed at both their hobbies by taking control over all the computerized carnival rides and then blowing up the Ferris wheel.” He almost glowed with pride. Or was that just Faery fire?

  “Doesn’t it bother you that besides destroying our oldest and grandest tradition, you will break Dusty’s heart? You lied to her from the beginning. You said you loved her and then you kissed her. That shreds the first law of Pixie, never to hurt a friend.” Thistle clenched her fists. She wanted to hit him, knock him over the cliff, send him back to his traitorous forebears.

  But she needed to find Chase, or Dusty, or Dick, someone who could stop the boys from hurting people at the carnival.

  “Dusty is my only regret,” Hay sighed. “I had not intended to fall in love with her. She is so cute and innocent. Still very much a child in many ways. She tugs at my heartstrings in ways that my betrothed never could. But my engagement to Rosie was negotiated long ago. I will not violate that treaty.”

  “You truly love Dusty?” Emotions surged and ebbed within Thistle. She didn’t know what to think.

  “Yes, I love her. I have not lied to her. I do not regret the destruction of your tribe and the Patriarch Oak. I have my orders. Pixies must give way to the greater power of Faeries. Murdering humans are about to destroy our hill in their need to build and expand. A cell phone tower and a discount store. It is just too humiliating. They can’t even dignify the destruction of our home with a palace or a grand courthouse or something.” His face turned ugly with angry distortions, his ears pointing, chin lengthening, eyes extending into an elongated and distorted slant.

  He took a deep breath to calm himself, and the alien visage dissolved. “We need a new place to live. Pixies overrun our chosen spot, The Ten Acre Wood. They must go. But I do regret that I must hurt Dusty.”

  “You lying cheat!” Phelma Jo screamed from the end of the pavement half a block from where they stood.

  “It’s not like that at all, PJ. She tricked me,” Hay protested.

  “Don’t call me PJ. I hate that.”

  “He can’t be trusted, Phelma Jo,” Thistle called and started toward her. Haywood’s repulsion sent her into the yard of one of the neighbors. Trespass. She had no permission to walk here. She kept going, doing her best to get closer to Phelma Jo, reason with her. Make her an ally.

  Phelma Jo wheeled around and began running.

  Hay loosed a long arc of Pixie dust that twinkled and floated.

  Thistle caught the brunt of the magic. It rooted her feet to the dirt and gravel, almost as deeply as if she was just another plant.

  Only a few flakes touched Phelma Jo. She slowed her hasty retreat, but did not stop.

  “Don’t make me come after you, PJ.”

  “Too late,” Thistle mocked. “You lied to her. And now she knows about it. You’ll never gain her trust again. You’re a lousy half-breed without logic. How can your Faery friends make The Ten Acre Wood their new home if you destroy it? Perhaps Alder threw up that force field to keep Faeries out instead of his queen in.”

  Haywood Wheatland turned and marched away in the opposite direction, back straight, muttering to himself in words Thistle couldn’t understand, but a language she recognized.

  Faery. He spoke a Faery spell.

  Phelma Jo flung open the door to her office suite. “Out. Everyone go home. I’m giving you the rest of the day off, just get out of here right now.”

  “But I’m in the middle of closing a deal,” her best real estate agent protested.

  “Finish it on your cell phone in your car.” She couldn’t bear to lose money, even to satisfy her own immediate agenda. “Just get out!” she screamed at the woman. Twenty years of experience; she should know how to close a deal elsewhere.

  The staff of six scrambled to stuff papers into desk drawers, close down computers, and hasten away from Phelma Jo’s temper tantrum.

  “Lying, thieving, son of a bitch. Delusional, too.” She slammed the door to her private office with a satisfying crash. The glass in the upper half rattled.

  She didn’t care. The bastard was going to be out on his ear. She pulled up the paperwork on the computer for termination of employment before she even sat down. She started typing as soon as the page finished loading.

  “Employee number?” She nearly screamed at the computer. It refused to advance to the next line until she filled
in the box. Cursing, she opened another window with personnel files. “What do you mean you can’t find anyone by that name? I set you up to respond to my needs, stupid software.”

  More curses escaped her as she rummaged in the file cabinet on the opposite wall. Every neatly labeled, redundant file folder bore a familiar name. All except the one she sought. “I know I had you fill out an application and tax forms.” Her fingers flew through the ten folders, hoping it had gotten misfiled. But it hadn’t. Nor was it stuck inside one of the others.

  “Phelma Jo Nelson,” Chase Norton said from behind her.

  She spun to face the doorway, feet braced for . . . something aggressive and violent. She didn’t know what yet, but the urge to slam her fist into a face, any face, nearly overwhelmed her.

  Chase stood in the doorway to her office, too far away to slug, tall and blond and as handsome as ever. His air of calm authority doubled his attractiveness. Not to her. She needed control of her relationships.

  He knew that. He looked just as disapproving and hostile as when she kicked him out of her bed and her life because he called her “Dusty” in the throes of wild hot monkey sex.

  Passion without rules or limits, as only teenagers can truly indulge.

  She was a high school senior then, he home from college for the summer. And he still loved the mousey little brat.

  Dick Carrick wasn’t much better, still pining after some bimbo who left town when he was a pimple-faced adolescent with a cracking voice.

  “What do you want?” she spat at Chase.

  “I have here a court order putting a temporary halt to the logging of The Ten Acre Wood, a designated city park.”

  “Let me see that.” She ripped the document out of his hands. He remained calm.

  “So what? My work order is signed by the mayor. This minor judge can’t override that.” She flung the paper on the desk and assumed her chair, as if it were a throne.

  “Yes, he can. And he has. If the work crews remove so much as a twig before this issue is resolved, I’ll haul them and you off to jail. So will any other officer under my command. Unlike some people, I can’t be bribed. And William Tremaine’s camera crews will record it all, report names, and dig deep into private files with and without permission.” He leaned his clenched fists on her desk and met her gaze with determination. It was the first emotion he’d shown since invading her private space without invitation.