Copper Girl

by Jennifer Allis Provost

  “I didn’t know you were real,” I replied truthfully. “But I’m glad that you are,” I added, enjoying how his face brightened. Then I was in his arms, and all the things I was going to tell him left me. Giving him up was suddenly not an option.

  “Is this the Whispering Dell?” I asked, after he’d kissed me for a while. “I don’t hear any whispering.”

  “Silly girl,” he admonished, “this is only the upper ridge. Come.” He led me away from where the parking lot would have been if I hadn’t been traipsing about in the Otherworld and toward a break in the trees. The crest overlooked a wide, green valley, far prettier than any scene depicted in any storybook illustration. The rolling hills framed the vale, with the occasional sheep dotting the higher pastures. The lowlands were striped with sparkling waterways and what looked like manicured gardens, scattered with homes, here and there, along a main roadway. At the end of the roadway, there was a village, complete with thatched roofs and a few curls of smoke wafting up from chimneys. On a high point near the far end of the valley sat, predictably, a castle.

  “Is that where you live?” I asked.

  “I built it with my own hands,” he replied, proudly. And well he should be. As we moved closer, I saw that, rather than a castle, Micah’s home was shaped more like a traditional manor estate, and instead of the typical brown timbers and daubed white, it was gray. Light gray, that is, highly polished to an almost mirror-like sheen.

  “Silver,” I deduced. “Your home is silver.” I looked at him, and asked very seriously, “Am I supposed to live in copper?”

  Micah chuckled at my ignorance. “A copper abode would enhance your power, but any metal would do. Silver would do nicely.”

  I ignored that innuendo. “Micah, your home is beautiful.”

  “It is--” He opened his mouth to say more, then cocked his head to the side. “I regret to tell you, I am needed below. When may I see you again?”

  “I came to tell you that I shouldn’t see you again,” I said. “It’s just too dangerous. At least, that was what I decided this morning.”

  “And now?” he asked, hopefully.

  “I…” I looked at him, this silver elf who had just thrust himself into my life, and uttered the very words I knew could be deadly. “Now, I don’t think I mind the danger.” Micah smiled, seeming content with that answer for now, and walked me back to the thin spot between worlds. We said a quick goodbye, since he had to respond to his mysterious summons, but when he turned to leave, I called for him to wait.

  “Shouldn’t you give me a token?” I dropped my eyes. “I mean, you have two from me. Shouldn’t I have something from you?” I scuffed the pine-needle carpet with my toe. It was a foolish request, for many reasons. Not only was someone like Micah not likely to want to see an undereducated wretch like me again, I was seriously risking my life just by talking to him. Really, this couldn’t go on.

  Instead of telling me to go back where I came from, Micah pulled a chain over his head, and then stepped closer as he arranged it around my neck. On the chain was a pendant shaped like a silver oak leaf, along with a silver-capped acorn carved from amber.

  “The oaks are my allies, and I take their leaf as my symbol,” he murmured, fastening the clasp behind my neck. “Wear it, my Sara, and be guaranteed safe passage throughout my lands.”

  “Micah, it’s too much!”

  “It’s not.” He closed my fingers over the pendant. “Nothing is too much, my Sara.”

  “Should our tokens be of metal, since we are?”

  “Traditionally, yes.”

  Hmm. He only had fabric from me. I dug in my pocket and retrieved a few pennies. “It’s all the copper I have,” I apologized.

  “I will treasure them,” he murmured. Micah slid the coins inside his tunic, close to his heart. “Just as I treasure you.” He kissed me then, softly, sweetly, almost respectfully. “And, I will see you again.”

  Yes. Yes, he would.

  chapter 4

  I stepped out of the Other world just as easily as I would have stepped from one room to the next. When I was a child, I’d thought walking from one reality to the next was amazingly cool, fodder for endless stories and Hollywood blockbusters. Now, it just made my hands shake and my stomach turn, the fear of discovery having replaced my childhood wonder.

  I climbed back into my car and sat heavily behind the wheel, tracing the edges of Micah’s token while I stared at the twisted pine trees. If the trees are the same, why are the worlds different? I squinted, trying to catch a glimpse of Micah or the Whispering Dell, but I only saw the fence separating the parking lot from the abandoned industrial park next door. I leaned to the side and saw the edge of a concrete building that, impossibly, occupied the same valley as Micah’s silver castle.

  Vaguely, I recall learning (from Max, not from any Mundane instructor) that the things we humans create only exist in our world, and the same holds true for beings of the Otherworld. Good thing, too, or there would be a lot of cities with awkwardly placed municipal buildings and sacred fountains. Despite this, the bones of the worlds are the same. This means that natural things, like trees, can exist in both places, but things like buildings can’t. But humans and animals and elves are natural, and we only occupy one at a time, so the tree theory never did fully make sense to me. Then, I remembered that the Museum of Human Triumph exists simultaneously in both worlds, and my head drooped forward to rest on the steering wheel. I had no idea how magic worked, why trees could exist in whichever world they please, while buildings and people are confined to one at a time. I was certain, however, what my punishment would be if I were caught with an elfin artifact.

  I missed Dad. I missed Max. They would know the answers.

  They would know what to do.

  The telltale hum of an approaching drone roused me. Missing Dad and Max wasn’t going to get me any answers, so I tucked Micah’s token inside my shirt and started the car. As the silver oak leaf warmed against my skin, I sped out of the parking lot, not caring if the drone slapped me with a fine for speeding or reckless disregard. Unlike my aimless morning drive, I knew where I was going, though my destination would probably lead to even more questions. I made a left out of the lot and headed toward the only magical place I had clearance to enter - my mother’s house, the Raven Compound.

  She’d been granted the estate in the hasty, unasked-for divorce, along with a generous government stipend that paid for the daily maintenance of the place, not to mention my and Sadie’s living expenses. The estate itself was huge, boasting eleven bedrooms, fourteen baths, and not one, but two ballrooms. The house proper sat upon several acres of land, nestled between groves of oak and ash trees. It was, as you (and the government) could well imagine, the ideal place for a clan of Elemental magicians to work spells unobserved.

  After Dad went missing during the third year of the wars, the government had wasted no time in declaring him an enemy of the state and divorcing him from my mother. You see, under the new regime political criminals couldn’t enter into any contracts, of which marriage was definitely included; really, this was just another way to make us miserable. Mom hadn’t wanted the divorce, and Dad had only been unaccounted for a few months when it happened, but then, she hadn’t even known about any divorce proceedings until the papers were delivered. By armed Peacekeepers, mind you. Being that her husband was missing, magic had been declared illegal and she had three small children to care for, Mom had had other things on her mind instead of her newly-single status. However, she had put up enough of a fuss that we got to keep the house in exchange for turning over all our magical implements, spellbooks included. And once the house had been outfitted with cameras and listening devices, the checks had started rolling in.

  Yeah. As if we were going to invite our Elemental buddies over for a magic party.

  As I drove past the wrought-iron gates of the Compound, I nodded at the ravens standing guard along the weathered metal. On account of their presence, and our surname, we
called the family home the Raven Compound, in honor of the birds who’d always seemed to flock to their namesake. Sometimes they were so still you could mistake them for statues, but the statues all had shiny glass eyes of green or blue. The living birds’ eyes were black as a moonless night.

  The leader of these silent sentries was the copper raven that sat alone atop the gable over the main entrance. Most probably thought he was nothing more than a weathervane, but Dad had always called him our watcher, an agent of The Raven; he was the one who made sure nothing bad got past our gate. When I was a kid, he’d gleamed as if we’d polished him daily, though to my knowledge no one ever had. Once Dad left for the wars, the patina slowly set in; I remember Max saying that the raven missed Dad. Once the Peacekeepers came to serve Mom with the divorce papers, the green had taken over, engulfing him like so much kudzu.

  I watched this raven, our so-called guardian as I parked; even though he was well and truly blanketed by the thick, mottled patina, I still felt like he marked every move I made, for all the good it ever did us. I wanted to yell and scream at the metal bird, throw things at him, tell him that he’d failed in the worst way possible. He was no watcher, no guardian. Through his inattention, we’d lost both Dad and Max.

  Shakily, I turned off the car. First, I was taking trips to the Otherworld and making dates with elves, now I was getting into fights with the decorations. Hoping I still had some time left before I totally lost my mind, I got out of the car. My feet crunched on the raked gravel driveway and, after a quick wave at the passing drone, I strode purposefully toward the door.

  The foyer of the Raven Compound was ridiculously, over-the-top, ostentatious. It was circular, the curved walls clad in gold-flecked marble and gilded plaster. The ceiling was a full three stories high, held aloft by eight pillars half as wide as I was tall. An enormous crystal chandelier, dripping with multicolored glass baubles, took up the top third of the room. Portraits and statues of significant ancestors had once encircled the foyer, but they had all been confiscated as evidence during the war trials. In an effort to brighten things up in their absence, Mom had placed some potted hydrangeas around the pillars. It was nice.

  “Mom?”

  After a moment, I called out again, a bit less softly, but Mom was nowhere in sight or earshot; the estate was so large you could easily go for several days without seeing another living soul. Once we had been allowed to move back in after Max’s arrest, and it was just Mom, Sadie, and me, the three of us regularly went a week or more before all of us were in the same room. Now that Sadie and I had moved out, me to my tiny apartment and Sadie to the university dorm, Mom was all alone with her memories and a vegetable garden. She doesn’t even like vegetables.

  I sighed, unsurprised by Mom’s lack of response, crossed the foyer, and entered the front parlor. It was my favorite room at the Compound, since it was the only one left unscathed during the war trials; the government, true to their “beneficent” nature, had deemed that nothing in it was spelled, so they had let us have one whole room of family memories. Mom re fuses to set foot in the parlor, since she’s convinced that the Peacekeepers laid a trap in it and they’re just waiting for her to slip up.

  Hidden listening devices or no, the parlor was a nice room, if a bit outdated. Flocked red velvet covered the walls, and it was crammed full of dark wood furniture and tarnished silver bric-a-brac. A behemoth of a china cabinet graced the far wall, stuffed full of childhood drawings and lopsided plaster ashtrays, along with what was left of the eggshell-thin heirloom plates that Mom’s ancestors had carried over from Ireland, and a set of crystal handed down by Dad’s mother. The deal was that whichever girl married first would get her pick of the plates or glassware, with the other set going to the other, later-married sister. Since I’m a realist, I’d never had my heart set on either.

  Despite the many familiar items, the aspect of the parlor I liked best was something intangible: its smell. The parlor held that distinctive odor of all rooms magic had been worked in: musk and brimstone, a touch of rot, sweet incense, and sour, bitter herbs. I breathed deeply of the smells of my youth, since they had been sanitized out of the rest of the house.

  A few deep breaths later, I flopped down on the mustard-yellow divan and looked at the tiny framed photograph resting on the end table. It was of me, Max, and Sadie. We were out back under the big oak tree, which was where Max taught us spells. Max would tell us a story, or give us bitter herbs to chew, then he would have Sadie and me stare upward and squint until we could see the fairies frolicking in high branches. When I got older, I had assumed the fairies were one of Max’s illusions, but after meeting Micah I was not so sure.

  Ironically, with all the effort the government had expended on removing every iota of magic from the Raven Compound, they had left the stately oak intact. When we moved back in after Dad had been declared dead, we’d expected to find it little more than a pile of sawdust, but there it was, welcoming us back to our home. Max had laughed and said that this oversight was further evidence of how clueless the Peacekeepers really were; normally, we ignored Max’s rants, but he’d had a point. The oak tree had been the hub of magical activities for hundreds of years, which was one of the reasons the Raven Compound had been built nearby. You didn’t need to be an Elemental to feel the tinge of magic covering its bark, hear it rustle in its leaves, and yet the Peacekeepers hadn’t given it a second look. They were so busy hauling off badly composed portraits of long-dead Corbeaus that they had left behind a veritable fountain of power.

  The first day we moved back, we had tried to have a picnic in front of the oak, just like old times. That hadn’t turned out to be the best idea, since before long Mom was weeping for the loss of Dad, Sadie was terrified that a Peacekeeper would leap down from the branches and get her, and Max was yelling at them both to keep it together. Me, I had just concentrated on my sandwich, and hoped it was all just one long, terrible nightmare.

  That had been the last time the four of us had visited the oak; sometimes, I wondered if the tree missed us, or if he was glad not to have three rambunctious children snapping off his twigs and leaves. My hand strayed to the pendant Micah had given me that morning, and I traced the edge of the oak leaf, felt the amber acorn warm in my hand. Was it a sign that Micah was allied with the oaks, just as the Corbeau children had been?

  Micah… I shoved his image from my mind, for all the good it did. I wondered if he’d enchanted me, if that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I mean, I had gone to the Otherworld to tell him to leave me be, and ended up practically begging to wear his token. Yesterday, I hadn’t known what a token was. Today, one dangled against my breast like a supernatural calling card.

  Of metal… Micah had just known that I was of metal, as surely as if I’d hung a sign around my neck. I’m not ashamed to admit that, after a lifetime pretending to be nothing more than ordinary, it rattled me that he had keyed into my true nature almost instantly. I wondered if anyone else could divine my Elemental nature just by looking at me. No, probably not while I still dyed my copper hair a dark, earthy brown. Micah’s…astuteness had been just the result of a wardrobe malfunction.

  Yeah. That had to be it.

  Max had had copper hair too, and freckles, just like Sadie. Sadie hated her speckled nose, but I’ve been jealous of her freckles for as far back as I can remember; a face without freckles is like a sky without stars, as Meme Corbeau used to say. It was something Sadie shared with Max that I never would. Then they took Max, and now Sadie’s freckles are all alone. It just isn’t fair.

  “Hey, baby.”

  I looked up and saw Mom in the doorway. She was muddy from the garden, still wearing thick gloves, with her blond hair tucked under a hat; Mom’s skin, freckle-free and smooth and white as a porcelain doll, burned something fierce at the mere mention of the sun. Her blue eyes were tired and sad, as they’d been every day since Dad had gone. She hefted a basket, multicolored produce spilling over the sides. Food grown in the groun
d, as opposed to a hydroponic greenhouse, is a rare treat in the post-war world.

  I set the frame back on the table and joined Mom in the hall. “Tomatoes?”

  “Eggplant,” she replied. “I have zucchini, too.”

  I followed her into the kitchen, which was full of granite counters and state of the art appliances, all thanks to the government’s magnanimous nature, and watched my mother bag up the assorted vegetables. When I was younger I couldn’t understand her rampant need for gardening, since she always grew ten times what we could eat. Now that I had worked at REES, I got it; the routine tasks completed by her hands allowed her mind time to roam.

  “I know you didn’t come here for vegetables,” she said once the last bag was full. “What’s on your mind?”

  Oh, so many things. “Do you ever think about Max?”

  We weren’t supposed to say his name. Hell, we weren’t even supposed to have any pictures of him, either, but the goons had missed the one in the parlor. Usually, Mom scolded us for being careless, but today, she only sighed.

  “Every day,” she murmured. “Every blessed day.”

  chapter 5

  After I left Mom and the creepy birds behind, I did some more aimless driving. I didn’t want to go back to my empty apartment, and I absolutely did not want to go into the office on my day off. Now that would be pathetic. Far, far more pathetic than mooning over an elf lord from the Otherworld, whose very presence in my life could mean imprisonment and/or death.

  Yes. Wouldn’t want to be caught with a work ethic, now, would we?

  Since I was already on the wealthier side of town, I parked my mechanical next to the Promenade and headed over to the open-air market. Great. Now, I was even thinking like Micah. There, in booths ranging from little more than mildewed cardboard held together with dental floss, to palatial tents of multicolored silk fit for a king, you could purchase anything, or anyone-a maid, a handyman, maybe even a bride- your heart desired. Well, as long as you had the money to burn or an item to trade.