Unthinkable

by Nancy Werlin

  Fenella shook her head firmly to dispel doubt.

  Ryland at her heels, she went down the hall to Dawn’s room. The child was not there, thankfully. Still, Fenella tried not to look around much. She quickly knelt by a box in the corner filled with outgrown baby clothes. “Stop squirming,” she instructed Ryland.

  I hate this, the cat grumbled as Fenella pulled a stretchy flowered T-shirt over his head, inserting his front paws in the sleeves and settling it around his midsection.

  “You agreed.” Fenella pulled out another garment.

  I know, but—wait! Not a hat! The cat tried to run, but Fenella had him firmly under one arm and a few seconds later, he was snarling at her from beneath the brim of a lacy white sunbonnet.

  “Don’t be rude,” she said, tying a double knot under his chin.

  Tell me again why this is necessary.

  “I want to be sure everybody sees you.”

  The cat glared. Fenella ducked her head to hide a smile. “Go downstairs. Hide. Anywhere but in the knitting basket.”

  Soledad tied the lid on it.

  “Good.”

  I could chew through the ties.

  “D on’t.”

  Fenella got to her feet, yelled through the bathroom door at Miranda to hurry up, and descended toward the kitchen and the scent of coffee. In the kitchen, Zach was stretching, Lucy was looking for an overripe banana she had hidden somewhere so no one else would eat it, and Soledad wanted to know if anybody else had seen a certain item in the news. “We don’t have any milk,” said Leo plaintively. Fenella smiled at all of them, even the child, whose nonsense syllables formed a soft, running babble beneath the other voices.

  Then she stiffened. Walker Dobrez sat at the table with a mug of coffee in his hands and a piece of half-eaten buttered toast before him. He was wearing clothes for running. He looked at Fenella with an expression that was half wary, half questioning.

  Alarm lurched through Fenella. She knew instantly that Walker was not just there for the Boston Cream Pie race. He was also there to find out which to believe: her kiss, or her instruction to go away.

  She would make it clear. It would be fine. He was not the sort of young man who would need to be told more than twice. In fact, it spoke volumes that he had put aside his pride to come back this second time.

  But she didn’t want to be cruel, or to shame him. She liked him. It was just that kissing him had been a terrible mistake. Why had she done it? Then she remembered being with him in his truck, and she knew.

  “Fenella? I brought something for you.” Walker’s voice was shy. He reached into the pocket of his shirt, pulled out a white envelope, and held it out toward Fenella.

  A gift? For her? Fenella’s gaze fastened on the envelope. She knew she ought to say something dismissive.

  Nothing came to mind.

  A gift . . .

  Walker said defensively, “It’s only a little thing. Uh. It was free. I just thought, you know, you might want to do this.”

  Fenella took the envelope. It held two pieces of paper with writing on them. New England International Automobile Show.

  “It’s next weekend,” Walker said, speaking rapidly. “I thought you might want to go. Not necessarily with me. I mean, I’ll take you if you want. But you could also go alone, or with someone else. That would be fine. It’s up to you. I thought I’d tell you about it and get the tickets. In case. They’re free tickets,” he repeated. “Anybody can print them.”

  Fenella stood still.

  Zach looked from Fenella, to Walker, to Fenella, and then to Walker again, at which point Lucy elbowed him. Leo opened a cabinet and stared into it.

  Soledad became absorbed in fastening a barrette into Dawn’s hair.

  Lucy pulled one leg up behind her to stretch it.

  There was more writing on the tickets.

  The perfect place to browse hundreds of the newest vehicles!

  The premier showcase of the newest model year! Imported and domestic vehicles—cars, vans, crossovers, hybrids, light trucks, and sport utilities!

  Factory and dealer representatives will be on hand to answer your questions!

  “Next weekend?” Fenella said. She was only asking for clarification, but Walker’s face lit up.

  Miranda came up behind her. “What’s that?”

  “Auto show tickets,” said Lucy. She stretched her other leg. “Fenella’s going with Walker.”

  Fenella tried to hand Miranda the tickets, but Miranda shook her head. “No, I mean the leaf.” She took the envelope from Fenella and pulled out a large, glossy green oak leaf, tender and flexible as springtime.

  “Pretty,” she said, and twirled it on its stem.

  Chapter 17

  Walker looked astonished. “I didn’t realize I put that in there.”

  Miranda grinned. She handed the leaf to Fenella, and slipped past her into the kitchen. “May I have the rest of the eggs?”

  Leo stared at her. Then he seemed to pull himself together. “Nothing would make me happier than to see you eat.”

  Miranda heaped a plate with scrambled eggs. “When do we leave for the race?” She opened the refrigerator and took out orange juice. She loaded the toaster with two pieces of bread.

  “Twenty minutes.” Lucy’s gaze—and Leo’s—and Soledad’s— and Fenella’s—followed Miranda around the kitchen. Miranda opened a cabinet. “Is there peanut butter?”

  “In the refrigerator,” Soledad said. “Third shelf. You’ll have to give it a good stir.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” said Lucy. “Do you want coffee too?”

  “No, just juice.” Miranda poured herself a giant glass. She sat down to eggs, peanut butter toast, and juice, as if she ate this amount every morning. Everyone pretended not to watch her eat. Soledad surreptitiously pushed a bowl of apples nearer.

  Fenella discovered she was gently rubbing the surface of the oak leaf. She looked down at it. The leaf was unusually large. Its skin felt smooth and subtly cool; its veins stretched out in a symmetrical pattern.

  Touching it had a calming effect.

  Fenella pictured tree roots, taking nourishment from the soil, and giving it back in the form of falling leaves. She watched Miranda eat. Miranda, who had touched the leaf.

  The leaf.

  She felt her blood warm. The leaf!

  “We need to get ready to leave,” said Lucy. “Ten minutes.” People scattered on various errands, leaving only Miranda, Walker, and Fenella in the kitchen.

  “Eat something,” said Miranda generously to Fenella.

  Fenella nodded absently. She sat down next to Walker and across from Miranda. She put the leaf down on the table and asked Walker, “Where did you find this?”

  “It was on the ground outside my apartment. It caught my eye, maybe because it’s so green. Most of the leaves are turning color now. I must have put it in the envelope without realizing. Embarrassing.”

  “I like it,” Fenella said simply. “I’m glad you picked it up. Can I keep it?”

  Walker smiled at her. “Yeah.”

  He said nothing else. Fenella knew he was waiting. She stroked the leaf again and glanced across at Miranda. Miranda put her hand on top of Fenella’s, where Fenella was touching the leaf. Miranda too smiled, and it smoothed the lines away from her forehead.

  “Fenella’s not in a place where she wants to date anybody,” Miranda said to Walker, as easily as if she were talking about the weather.

  Fenella smiled gratefully at Miranda and then at Walker. “I would like to go to the auto show. But . . .” She lifted a hand.

  “I see,” said Walker slowly. Then, remarkably, after a few seconds, he said, decisively, “I get it. Okay. Well, let’s go to the auto show as friends, then. Because you would really, really like it. Miranda, want to come with us? I can print out another ticket.”

  Fenella looked at him, impressed.

  “Sure. Thanks.” Miranda cut her second piece of peanut butter toast corner to corner, and h
anded half across to Fenella. “You’re not eating. Here.”

  Fenella took a bite. The silence in the kitchen felt awkward, but not in a bad way. Had her problem with Walker really been solved so easily by Miranda? And was Walker truly taking it well? Yes, he was. She felt a tendril of regret, which she knew she should uproot. She nibbled on her toast. She eyed Walker sidelong—and saw his jaw drop.

  Ryland had raced into the kitchen, fully dressed in Dawn’s old clothes.

  Dawn toddled behind him at remarkable speed. Her outstretched hands brushed the cat’s fan tail before Ryland leaped to the top of the kitchen table. For one instant, his jeweled eyes glared at Fenella from beneath the brim of the lacy white baby’s bonnet. Then he jumped from the table to the counter.

  Dawn screeched with delight. She toddled to the counter and held on, looking up in ecstasy, babbling nonsense syllables.

  “I dressed Ryland up for the race,” Fenella said as Walker’s and Miranda’s faces swiveled her way. “I’ll push him in the doll carriage. Doesn’t he look cute?”

  The cat spat.

  Miranda put one hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook with laughter.

  “He won’t go in the doll carriage,” said Walker. “Not unless you tie him down or put him in his carrier.”

  “He’ll go,” said Fenella blandly. “He promised me he would. Didn’t you, kitty-kitty?” She let herself enjoy a brief fantasy of pushing Ryland in the doll perambulator, dressed in his baby clothes, into a large crowd of people who would all laugh and comment and want to pet him. She could almost hear the furious curses Ryland would direct at her.

  It would be so worth it.

  “But—” Walker began seriously.

  “Kidding,” said Fenella. Another new word. “I dressed him up for fun. I know I can’t take him.”

  Walker looked relieved.

  On the counter, Ryland sat down on his haunches and clawed at the bonnet with his front paw. He succeeded only in twisting it over one eye. Fenella and Miranda laughed. Dawn screeched and began trying to jump. Walker stood and picked Dawn up, delighting the child, who at first thought he was lifting her toward the cat. When she realized that he was instead taking her out of the kitchen, she yelled her displeasure.

  Fenella got up and shooed Ryland to the floor. He stayed close by her ankles as she helped Miranda clear the dishes and put them into the dishwasher. This was another fascinating piece of machinery that worked by pumping heated soapy water in a directed stream across the surfaces within its enclosure. Then clear water. Then there was a drying cycle. Machines were so wonderful.

  There would be many vehicles at this automobile show. Fenella wondered how different their engines would be from each other. Would she be allowed to look within them? To touch? Surely. She would study up beforehand, so that she could better appreciate everything.

  Fenella?

  She met Ryland’s eye, the one that was not hidden behind his askew bonnet brim.

  Are you ready?

  Fenella bit her lip. For a few minutes, she’d gotten lost in pretense. She’d drifted into thinking that she’d go to the race. That she’d watch for Lucy and Zach and Walker, and Lucy’s friend Sarah, and cheer wildly as they went running by. That she’d come home afterward and eat pie and study up on engines, so that next week, when she went to the auto show with Walker—

  But none of this was going to happen.

  She put her hand on the leaf. It vibrated gently. It was alive; it was fey. She knew it. Receiving it felt like encouragement that she was doing the right thing.

  She slipped it into her pocket. She nodded at Ryland as the rest of the family crowded back into the kitchen. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Great. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Leo held the outside door open. “Fenella, do you want a sweater? Soledad, I’m dropping the kids at the start of the race. Then I’ll meet you guys—where?”

  “Moody Street on the corner by the ice cream shop,” said Soledad.

  Walker said, “I thought I was going to take Lucy and Zach with me in my truck.”

  “No, leave your truck and come in the van with us,” Lucy said. “That way you don’t have to park.”

  Dawn spotted the cat and began screaming again. Soledad barely managed to keep hold of her. “If we don’t go, there won’t be any space left for us to stand on the street.”

  “All right.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where’s her binky?”

  “I’m coming!”

  There was a mad cram. As Fenella had instructed, Ryland slipped through the doorway with everyone else, and lingered out of sight on the porch. Soon Lucy, Zach, Walker, and Leo were in the van, the wailing Dawn had been strapped into her stroller, and Soledad, Miranda, and Fenella began walking toward Moody Street, Soledad pushing the stroller.

  Then Ryland ran. He was gloriously visible in his white bonnet and floral top. He raced from the front porch, down the steps, across the small front lawn to the driveway. He wove artfully around the van, and then did a double circle around the stroller, tangling himself briefly around Soledad’s feet. He stopped for two seconds where Dawn could see him, long enough for her to scream even louder in delight.

  Then he trotted briskly across the street and disappeared into Mrs. Angelakis’s bushes.

  “I’ll grab him and put him in the house,” said Fenella. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.” She jogged across the street to Mrs. Angelakis’s house, calling Ryland’s name, poking ostentatiously into the bushes.

  There was no time for anybody to argue with her. The van pulled out. The walkers called encouraging things as they moved down the street.

  Within a minute, everybody was gone, and even Dawn’s screams had faded.

  Ryland came out of the bushes next to where Fenella knelt.

  They’d have seen me just fine without the baby clothes.

  “Maybe. This worked, so why don’t you stop criticizing?”

  Okay, whatever. It’s time to blow up the house. After you get me out of these clothes. The cat turned to go.

  Fenella hesitated.

  Aren’t you ready?

  Fenella put her hand in her pocket to touch the leaf. “Yes.”

  They walked silently back to the house and into the kitchen. Fenella fiddled with the gas line that led to the kitchen stove, and then with the stove controls.

  This is the right thing to do, she told herself again. Everybody is away. Nobody will be hurt.

  She waited with tense shoulders while the kitchen—and the other rooms downstairs—filled with gas.

  The smell of the gas got stronger and stronger. It filled her nostrils and her lungs. She tried to breathe shallowly.

  Once, her right hand twitched forward on its own toward the controls of the stove to turn it off. She snatched the hand back and held its wrist fiercely with her other hand, the one holding the matches.

  She swallowed the terrible taste of the gas.

  Ryland stood on all fours near the kitchen door leading outside. His tail was at half-mast and his whiskers twitched convulsively. As the seconds ticked by, his expression changed from bland to curious to astounded.

  You’re really doing it.

  Fenella nodded. She couldn’t speak. She could feel the gas pressing up against the back of her throat as if it were a solid.

  “Run now!” she said to the cat. “Now!”

  The cat raced from the house.

  Then Fenella was too afraid to wait another second, lest she change her mind. Which she couldn’t, she couldn’t. Hands trembling, she struck a match.

  A flame burst into being between her fingers.

  Then the flames were all around her: blue, purple, yellow. Sucking all the air from her lungs. Exploding in her ears. Melting her skin. Gobbling her eyes.

  In the split second before her entire body exploded in flame, Fenella flung her arms wide.

  Please, she thought, before she lost consciousness. Please let me die right now.


  Chapter 18

  She did not die.

  A half hour later, on the other side of a portal inside

  Faerie, Fenella stood unsteadily before Queen Kethalia. She was unsteady because her feet were burned stumps. It was not possible to understand how they held her up at all.

  Ryland sat on his haunches a short distance away, cleaning ash from his fur with a fastidious pink tongue. When he glanced at Fenella, there was wary respect in his gaze.

  Fenella’s damaged lungs were trying to breathe. Her damaged eyes were trying to see. She raised her skeletal arms. They were horrific even to her blurred vision, with blackened crispy edges around flesh melted into a red and yellow lava-like substance. In some areas, her skin had burned away entirely to expose bone.

  She could sense pain hovering. It would rush through her, beyond excruciating, once she regenerated sufficient nerve endings to receive it.

  “Fenella,” said the queen. “Sit down. There is a chair behind you.”

  She managed to sit, even though that hurt more than standing.

  Then the real pain swept through her body and it was worse than she had imagined. If her lungs could have managed screaming, she would have done it.

  She endured.

  Sometime later, she realized that she must have regrown her eyelids, because they were closed. Despite the glass curtain of pain enveloping her, she opened them.

  The female before Fenella had the queen’s voice, and her carriage, but she looked like someone else: a human girl with long, silky hair and supple skin. The girl wore jeans and a soft orange cashmere cardigan that was opened two buttons at the throat. The girl’s eyes were lovely and deepset. There was self-confidence and power in them, but also loneliness.

  “Why are you staring at me?” said the girl tartly. “You were helpless. I had to drag you into Faerie so that you wouldn’t be seen in your current state. It was necessary for me to take human form. Ryland certainly couldn’t do it.”

  This really was the queen, then.

  Fenella managed a nod as a new kind of pain swept in. It was the inexorable tide of renewal. Her muscles and skin knit together. Her nose and ears regrew. Smoke began to clear from her throat. Helplessly, she leaned over and retched.