Yes, he knew. He knew it in his bones that the obsidian circlet floating above his head in its own pocket dimension would be forever floating above his head. He knew it in his veins, like the burning sensation of barium before an MRI. He shrugged. “Had to try. You guys don’t seem to get that I’m a bad pick for your ruler. I wish you could see that.”
“Majesty is right by virtue of being Majesty. When Majesty is wrong, Majesty is still right.” The Advisor hugged her knees. Unlike her counterparts, she didn’t muster in the neat lines or stand at attention. It made her stand out. Come to think of it, as chaotic as the Chillsprites seemed to be, they all maintained a homogeneous version of their chaos. Except for the little one he’d come to think of as his Stylist, cutting his hair and stealing paper clips for earrings. Their groupthink nature, while very much ingrained, seemed to be less than absolute. For their sakes, he hoped they could develop that further. The poor things were at the mercy of their traditions, otherwise.
“Well, then let Majesty be right about this. I need to get up to the suburbs again tomorrow. Let’s pretend for a minute that I care about not making trouble with any other realms. How would I go about doing that?”
He shouldn’t have asked. The Frostling commander leapt up on the counter and pulled out a tiny sword. “Invasion! Reclaim the northern territories!”
The Frostling troops followed with whoops and cheers that almost drowned out Jack’s panicked response. “No! No, no, and hell, no!” He flung himself in front of the door to keep them from getting any ideas. “Can I visit my friends in the suburbs without starting a damn war?”
“Majesty would have to negotiate the terms of passage through Oddways not within Winter’s borders.” The Advisor—the title was getting cumbersome. He switched mental gears and started thinking of her as ‘Addie.’
“I kind of got that from the other night. But how was I able to get up to my friends’ house before, without causing an international incident?”
“Majesty was dormant. As in the human tribe’s world. When Majesty entered the Wild Place, the Sleeping King awakened.” The little Frostling folded her knees to one side as she perched on the back cushions of his couch. Her back stayed straight as she spoke.
His situation began to clarify. The fog surrounding his relationship with the Winterkin melted away and left him with crystal-clear vision of the chains binding him to them. He glanced up. At the edges of his vision, the obsidian crown shone with a dark negative-light. It’s not a crown at all. It’s a choke-chain. “And now that I’m ‘awake’ to you guys, I have to play by your rules.”
“Our rules. Majesty is one of us as surely as we are all of the Great Mother Glacier, who once enveloped the whole world in Her embrace.” She dipped her blue head, and her white frost-fluff hair covered her eyes. She crossed her wiry arms over her chest in a reverent gesture.
The fervent change to the Advisor’s—Addie’s—tone made Jack glance her way with a more critical eye. “Who—” he stopped himself. As much as his curiosity wondered at anything that might have earned this particular Frostling’s respect, did he really want to know? Could he afford the consequences? “Nevermind. What’s the least complicated way to get me up to the northern ‘burbs?”
Her answer gave him no good feelings. “Subjugate Winter’s Realm to Summer, accept total surrender, and beg Summer’s regents on bended knee to allow Majesty to travel.”
Cold water blanched his soul. “That doesn’t sound uncomplicated at all. And I don’t think I would ever in a million years do that.” Something deep inside him and heretofore unconscious rebelled against the idea at the cellular level.
She lifted her chin in defiance. “So there is a tiny bit of Winter in Majesty’s heart after all.”
His conscious mind had an opinion of its own. “Subjugating anything to anything gives me indigestion.” He raised his eyebrows and jerked his head towards the Chillsprites. “That’s one of the reasons they get on my nerves so much.” He plucked a Chillsprite out of the Christmas tree before it reached the blue glass ball it seemed intent on possessing. “So I guess I have to negotiate passage through territories that are not ours, correct?” At her nod, he braced himself to ask a loaded question. Who am I kidding? They’re all loaded. “Whose turf is it, then?”
Later on, he would marvel at the way Addie had spread her hands and formed fog in front of him. Or how the little blue girl’s clawed fingers punctured the fog and shaped it around clear spaces to form a crude map of the city outlined by rivers, highways, and the freeway bypass. The child’s drawing took on a reality as blue fingers shaped and shaded additional layers of fog and set them in a jigsaw-puzzle formation up against the vertical wall of base fog. Jack would have used a sophisticated computer program to make a rendering in much the same way as the little Frostling did, layering outlines and coloring independently until they created a deeply-textured, if all pastel, rendering of the city and the territories.
But for now, what struck him—to his very core—was how small the Winter territories were. Winter centered around the urban center of the city, and spread out in blobby fingers of pale blue to the north and east, but only barely encompassed the river to the south, and had taken a deep encroachment on the west side. He pointed to the southern shading, south of the river, a frosted green that extended down into nothingness. “Who’s that?”
“’Tis Summer’s lands.”
“And that?” He pointed to the west side, where a similarly-hued blob stretched north and east. The green arched over Winter’s realm and the twisting, narrow, snake-shaped realm pulsing with a pale lavender-pink that twisted between the fingers of blue Winter, and polyp-like bubbles off the southern edge of the green territory.
“More Summer, albeit a different Realm.”
In spite of the pretty graphic, Jack felt worry start gnawing in his gut. Boxed in on three sides by Summer and— “Who’s this, then? Not more Summer, I hope.”
Addie shook her head. “These are the Lawless lands.” The widest part of the Lawless lands twisted up to encompass the bypass, and the north-south highway that led to Starla’s house.
“Okay, so…mortal enemies on three sides, and the wild, wild west on the last one. Sounds freaking fantastic.” Jack dropped his head into his hands. It’d be easier to send his regrets via email or maybe a Harry & David fruit basket, and hide under the blankets until he died of old age and lonely, bitter neglect.
But the thought of never having another Friday night again—and that included all of it—the birthday shots, the seeing other actual humans, the Lin—depressed him even further. The entire weekend had been one of much more excitement than he’d seen in a long time. Shane’s Saturday morning ambush. Starla’s Sunday morning invasion. The only thing missing was Bailey, and his heart spasmed in a sudden need to see his oldest friend.
That wasn’t just excitement, he realized. That was life. A life. He closed his eyes and had a sudden vision of himself, running out into the street in his boxer shorts on Christmas morning like Ebenezar Scrooge, yelling, “I want to liiiiive!”
He scrubbed his hands down his face and peered through his fingers at Addie. “The Lawless, then. I negotiated passage with that scarecrow the other night. Can I do it again?”
“All negotiations require a gift and the return of a privilege. Majesty must present a gift of equal worth to the privilege.” She cocked her head. “What is Majesty willing to give for this privilege?”
~*~
The doors closed, but the silly grin stayed on her face all the way out of the building and down the block to the holiday trolley stop, where she mingled with families, grandparent-types, and the usual denizens of the city, most laden down with shopping bags already, as the ten a.m. sales were winding down. She was running late, so she texted Shane that she was on her way and stepped up onto the trolley after a mother with a passel of kids who were clearly there to just ride the Dickensian-decorated diesel bus around town.
She shared a seat wit
h a rich-skinned woman in a creamy wool coat. “My goodness! I certainly don’t mind the weather holding out like it has, but what I wouldn’t give for a white Christmas.” Her matching Sunday-morning church hat tilted as she adjusted her straw bag to make room for Lin, who tried to take up as little room as possible.
Once the doors closed, the close quarters on the trolley made themselves known. Lin immediately felt her internal temperature heat up. She fanned herself. “I know what you mean. It just doesn’t feel like winter, does it?”
The lady removed her glasses, tethered by a filigreed gold chain, as the lenses quickly fogged. “You reckon with that global warming, maybe ol’ man winter needs a little help, does he?” She cleaned them and perched them back on her nose, then pinched her fingers together. “Somebody ought to goose him right into giving us some snow for the holiday, eh?”
Lin laughed and shook her head. She didn’t know about goosing Old Man Winter, but she’d gladly goose Jack Winters and see if he could make it snow. Except we promised we wouldn’t talk about that.
She wished she could shimmy out of her coat, but there just wasn’t any room. By the time the trolley arrived at the mall, she felt physical, sticky sweat clamming up under her shirt. As she rose to exit with the other passengers, her seatmate winked. “You tell Old Man winter to get cracking with that snow, dear. Don’t let him play hard-to-get.”
She could have used about a foot of snow when she got off the trolley—she would have rolled in it like a dog. All she could do, however, was shrug out of her coat and breathe a small sigh of relief as she slung it over her shoulder and headed for the Tea House.
The cropped pleather jacket, dyed electric blue, came with a faux fur collar whose added warmth was supposed to make up for the fact that it didn’t have a bottom half. On a day like today, when the sky hung low, but the rain wouldn’t show, it just made her neck itch with sweat. As she passed under the pagoda-shaped gazebo sheltering the entrance, she twisted up her hair off the back of her neck and secured it with a clip she kept in her purse for just that reason.
Some weeks, brunch with Shane was a quiet affair, both of them lost in their own worlds and content just to touch base with each other or play co-op games on their smartphones.
This wouldn’t be one of those weeks. She was surprised that Shane didn’t beat her here after he’d spent yesterday interrogating her via text message when he was supposed to be working. Of course, Starla hadn’t kept to herself that Lin’s car was still parked in her driveway Saturday morning. And of course, Shane wouldn’t leave it alone. She promised some heavily-edited details today in exchange for some perspective—just the kind of bait that would have Shane biting.
And she needed his perspective. In the space of a weekend, she’d lost her job, hooked up with the One That Got Away, and took a shortcut through Middle Earth. If there were criteria for triggering a mid-life crisis, the weekend seemed like a ripe place for one to start.
~*~
Jack buried his face in his hands. It felt like hours since he’d brought home ice cream and a positive attitude about the future returning to some semblance of normal. He felt like he was speaking from the bottom of a deep, dark hole when he faced Addie. “I have no chance at not failing this.”
The little blue creature sniffed. “Majesty is making this overly difficult. ‘Tis a simple enough thing to follow thy nature when it comes to negotiations.”
“I am following my nature. I can consult with them on building services, or render them a lovely architectural drawing of a building of their choosing—this is what I do when I’m not Majesty-ing all over the place with you guys.”
“Majesty is not acting in his nature!” The little creature threw up her hands. Her aurora-borealis eyes swirled in agitation. “Majesty is thinking like a human-tribe!”
“I am human-tribe,” he retorted.
Her silence gave him a pause that bore all the weight of the silence on a snow-covered mountain right after the loud noise. And right before the avalanche. “I…”
The swirl of her eyes slowed. “Majesty must direct his attention to negotiation. And listen to his nature.”
Well. Thank heavens a critter who looked like a half-pint Smurf could peel him off the ceiling and bring him back to the task at hand. “What’s my Winter nature telling me to do? I have no clue. I don’t even know what it sounds like. Part of me wants to say, ‘fuck it all’ and go wherever I damn well please. But that didn’t go so well Friday night.”
He scrubbed tight fingers down his face, pausing to dig into his eyes at the headache behind them. “You do it.”
When the spots got too intense, he stopped trying to blind himself and opened his eyes again to see her staring up at him, a curious expression on her face. “If Majesty speaks in jest,” she said, barely above a whisper, “Majesty is indeed cruel.”
“I’m dead serious.” The quiver in the pit of his stomach grew to a churn. “And stop calling me cruel. I’m asking for your help.”
“Frostling tribe will serve Majesty as Frostling tribe’s nature dictates.”
Jack glanced towards the living area, where scuttles, shuffling feet, squeaks, and thumps made a background noise that could almost be called soothing if it didn’t also come with the understanding that the Chillsprites were destroying his furniture. Little feet scrabbled toenail-claws into the slubbed fabric of his couch. Handprints dulled the chrome accents and glass tops on the coffee and side tables. The Frostlings were practicing what sounded like military marching drills or hardcore calisthenics workouts, but his carpets and throw rugs had been hopelessly jumbled. Let them in a little and…
“I’m not asking the tribe. I’m asking you. Be my representative to this negotiation thing. You have a better idea of how things work anyway.”
She blinked rapidly, her features set in suspicion. A frown creased her brows and she didn’t respond for a long minute, which stretched out far enough for Jack to begin to doubt himself. “Look, I swear—I’m not trying to get you in trouble. But me going into this negotiation thing right now would be far worse than me sitting here and doing nothing.”
“B-but Majesty must know that Envoy is Proud, not humble.”
Knowledge of the role, its formal title of Envoy, and some of what it entailed fit itself into his brain like a suddenly-remembered name to go along with a vaguely familiar face. Envoys were tasked with carrying communications—usually negotiations—to and from other realms. It was generally a pretty important position, like an ambassador.
Majesty must know, huh? Humble or not, this little critter knew the magic words to force knowledge upon him. He understood now, what she was talking about before. “So, class warfare exists in the Realm, eh?” She wasn’t referring to hubris and humility. Proud and Humble were classes of Winterkin. And since she’d said he must know, he did know that the Envoy position was part of the upper echelons of crazy. As, apparently, was he. Lucky me, I get to be a better class of nut-bar. “Well.” He made a show of glancing around the room. “I don’t see any other Proud Winterkin around here. And if I’m captaining the team, I get to pick my teammates.”
The little Frostling rocked back on her heels. “Frostling tribe does travel the boundaries, and shares much knowledge of the other Realms.”
“There you go.” He smiled, and she stretched her tiny mouth back in a hesitant, answering grin. “So. Find out what you have to do to take care of this Envoy business for me, and then do it.”
She tapped her chin. “But Majesty must know that—”
“Okay, hold up.” He held up his hands. “Let’s lay down some ground rules. If Majesty must know something, Majesty will ask. That’s the deal. I can’t afford to get tripped up any more than I already have with Oddling stuff. I’m only following the rules I know about.”
“And that has worked so well for Majesty thus far, has it not?”
Now it was his turn to fold his arms and give her the stink-eye. “I’m making it work. I want my life back, and
the only way I can do that is to keep this life—” he waved his arms at the chaos, “—out of that one.” He made a vague gesture to the doorway. “So while I’m with any of my friends, you guys scram. When they’re gone, I’ll try not to disrupt too much of your world.”
Addie frowned at him. “Majesty must accept that Majesty is Majesty.” Sullen resentment darkened her tone.
He resisted the urge to ruffle her hair. “These are the terms, kiddo. If I have to be your Majesty, we’re doing it on my terms. So when you’re off being an Envoy, I’m going to attempt some control over what might eventually be my love life.”
“If Majesty requires aid—” If inhuman eyes could swirl in a crafty manner, she had it down pat.
“No! I mean, thanks, but I’ve got this. I think.”
~*~
The quiet interior of the Tea House, punctuated by the strains of traditional music, enveloped her as soon as the door closed.
The host nodded to acknowledge her before he disappeared into the back room. The Tea House was actually only half of the L-shaped building; the other half held a bar and a Pachinko parlor. The back of the teahouse part led to a courtyard formed in the lee of the building where she and Shane would meet for their brunches in warmer weather. Today it might be warm enough to sit outside, but the humidity made everything feel heavy, including her head. She opted to sit at a lacquered table to wait for Shane.
Another, younger waiter emerged from the kitchen, tying an apron around his waist as he went. She didn’t recognize him from before, and he’d be memorable, with hair dyed that outrageously red. Of course, her own blue streaks didn’t give her much room to talk.
“Hey.” He fumbled with a menu and set it down in front of her. “I’ll be serving you today.” He patted his pockets and sighed. “As soon as I get back with a pen. Sheesh. Running late when I just started. Not an auspicious beginning.”
She glanced up at him, the corners of her lips twitching. Definitely new here. She lifted one hand and subtly motioned to the top of her head. “It’s okay. I’m sort of a regular, and I’m waiting on someone.”
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 18
