Laurie sucked in her breath. “See her?” She held out her locket.
Nick snatched it, and the Sight sharpened his vision abruptly, making him dizzy. Where there had been only ripples before, he could clearly see a nixie frolicking in the lake. The melody that he’d thought was wind blowing through leaves and frogs croaking and birds singing changed in his ears to her song. It filled him with a swelling sense of longing for something that he couldn’t quite describe. Still singing, she swam toward where he stood.
“Oh, crap,” he said. He couldn’t understand the words, but the melody shivered up his spine.
Laurie shifted the knapsack off her shoulder and took out two sandwiches and a bottle of soda.
“What’s that for?” Nick asked. “You planning a picnic?”
Laurie shrugged, her freckled cheeks abruptly mottled with red. “I thought Taloa might like them.”
“I looked in that book of yours,” he said. “Don’t they eat scum off the bottom of the lake or something?”
“Maybe she’s never had a sandwich,” said Laurie defensively. “It’s just got celery in it.”
“Ooo-la-le-la, Nicholas.” Taloa turned her froggy head to the side, clear membranes blinking across her amphibious eyes. It seemed like she sang the words instead of speaking them. “The heroic Nicholas. Ooole-la Laurie has told me the tale, of how you found my withered body. La-le-la and how the great Nicholas risked punishment from his elders for my sake.”
“Uh . . . um.” Nick was unable to stop staring at the golden flecks in her unnervingly alien eyes.
“La-le-la the people I met before called me Taloa. You may call me that too-le-loo.”
“Okay,” he said, wondering what other people she could have met, wondering too if she’d noticed that his palms were sweaty.
She smiled at him, revealing small, peglike teeth. “I will shower you with my thanks. La-lum-le I will give you that which I gave your sister.” With that, Taloa grabbed his neck in her webbed hands and pulled him backward into the water.
He gulped water, choking, his eyes wide and looking up through the murk. His lungs hurt and he thrashed, Taloa’s face floating above him, her fingers tight at his throat.
Then she let him go.
He sat up. Sputtering and coughing, he wiped his stinging eyes. “What the—?”
The nixie laughed.
Laurie had a lopsided grin on her face. For a moment, she and Taloa both seemed completely alien and terrifying. He’d been drowning and Laurie hadn’t even tried to save him.
“You can give me back my locket now,” Laurie said.
Nick just stared at her. “What?”
She walked over and reached to unclasp it. He pulled away, took the thing off himself, and dumped it in her hand. “Here.”
“Look around,” she said.
He was braced for the nixie to have disappeared, but she hadn’t. He blinked a few times, but Taloa was still there. For a moment, panic flooded him.
“The water?” Nick asked. “It gave me the Sight?” The idea of never being able to not see faeries was horrible.
Laurie nodded. “Because she’s been soaking in it.”
Bushes rustled nearby. Nick spun toward the sound in time to see a creature the size of a large cat cradling a trash bag in its thin arms. It sat on its hind legs, three-toed claws digging into the dirt, and gazed at him with sand-colored eyes. Nick bit back a shout. “What’s that? Do you see that?”
The nixie turned, but the creature was gone. Laurie looked where Nick pointed, squinting.
“It’s gone,” he said. “But I saw something.” The nixie swam closer. “A hob-le-la. The forest fey fled during the burning. I only wish I le-lee knew where my sisters hopped le-la. Mayhaps you-le-loo could help.”
“There were more nixies in your pond?” Laurie asked, walking up to her. The edge of Laurie’s ankle-length skirt trailed in the water.
“We were seven la-le,” sang Taloa, her voice pitched high. “Now I am only one.” She trailed off, looking at the woods miserably. “The leaves do not turn on their bellies le-lee. Le-la that means no more rain. I cannot look for them when the land is dry le-li. Please. La-la-look for me.”
It gazed at him with sand-colored eyes.
She looked so sad that, for a moment, it made her seem almost human. Almost.
“No way,” Nick said.
“She gave you the Sight!” Laurie said.
He wanted to throttle her. “She tried to drown me!”
“She didn’t mean to scare you,” Laurie said consolingly. “She wouldn’t have hurt you. It freaked me out too at first, but she was just playing.”
Taloa bowed her head and sang, “I would be grateful le-lo. The wetlands of our pond stretch le-lale-lo-le-li in many directions. My sisters would follow the water. We may only live in our own water lo-le.”
Nick thought of how his father had made this pond by excavating mounds of dirt until the pit began to fill. All the wetlands in this area were probably connected. It would be too far for Taloa to hop, but he couldn’t forget the feeling of her fingers at his neck. She’d wanted to scare him. She thought it was funny.
“I don’t think so,” Nick said.
Taloa’s golden, froglike eyes narrowed. “You will be sorry lo-le if you do not help la-lee me.”
“See?” Nick said. “Real nice.”
“She doesn’t mean it. She’s just worried about her sisters.”
“She’s not a pet!” Nick said. “She’s dangerous, and if you actually read that book you keep carrying around, you’d know it!” With that, he turned and stormed back to the house.
Laurie put the sandwiches and the cola on the bank and hurried after him. She looked back at Taloa several times as they walked back to the house, but Nick didn’t slow down. They turned up the driveway, and he noticed two things. One was that there were tons of little three-toed tracks in the dirt. The other was that his father’s shiny new car was filled with sand.
They set out early the next morning.
Chapter Five
IN WHICH Nick Steps onto More Trouble
It took them hours to sweep the last of the sand from his father’s leather upholstery. Even after they’d pushed out the mounds onto the driveway and swept the seats with a broom and vacuumed the glove compartment with a car vacuum, they could still feel the gritty texture of it everywhere they touched.
“My dad’s going to kill us,” Nick said. He pushed back his sweaty hair.
Laurie groaned. “You should have just agreed to help her.”
“Maybe,” Nick said. “Fine. We’ll go and look for her sisters.” He turned toward the water. “FINE! WE’RE GOING, OKAY!” Then he looked at Laurie. “After we do this, we don’t talk to it anymore, right? You swear?”
“She can’t help it. She’s—”
Nick cut her off. “Trouble! She’s trouble!”
“You could have just told your dad that you didn’t put the sand in his car,” Laurie said.
“Sure. I could have pointed out all the little footprints, and he would have been completely convinced, right?”
Laurie ignored his sarcasm. “My mother believes me when I tell her things.”
“No she doesn’t,” Nick said viciously. “She thinks it’s cute you believe in faeries. That’s all.”
Laurie bit her lip thoughtfully.
“Swear you won’t go talk to that thing anymore after we go on its quest.”
“No,” Laurie said finally. “You can’t make me swear that.”
“Fine.” Nick made a final swipe with the broom and started toward the garage. “I can’t make you do anything. Not like your nixie friend.”
They walked into the kitchen. Nick put his head under the tap and turned it on. Laurie collapsed in a chair.
It was too late, and they were too tired, to go looking for Taloa’s sisters. Nick and Laurie sat on the couches in the living room. When Nick’s dad came home from supervising the construction, he looked over at the
m with a severe expression.
“The foreman saw you two messing around inside my car and it is absolutely coated with sand. What were you two doing?”
“We were cleaning it—”
“What’s wrong with you lately, Nicholas? You used to be such a good kid. Did someone put you up to this?” Nick’s dad looked over at Laurie.
“What are you implying, exactly?” Charlene asked. “Are you saying my daughter’s responsible?”
“No!” Nick’s dad said too quickly.
Charlene put her hand on her hip. “Of course not. That’s the problem with your whole family. No one ever says what they really mean. Well, I’m not like that and Laurie’s not like that, either.”
She turned her back on him and walked out of the room before he could answer.
Nick went to bed feeling gleeful and guilty at the same time. He was so worn out that he fell asleep almost immediately, and if he had any dreams that night, he didn’t remember them.
He and Laurie set out early the next morning, when the air was still cool and misty. Laurie didn’t have a bike of her own, so she balanced herself on the handlebars of Nick’s. He straddled the seat nervously. The bike had been a gift from his dad last Christmas, and he hadn’t ridden it more than twice.
“Taloa said her old pond was past some big mangrove,” Laurie said. “Do you know where that is?”
“Yeah. You can reach it from the trail,” said Nick, starting to pedal. His mom had taken him and Jules out to the preserve when they were little and their father was at work. One time, they followed an armadillo, sneaking just enough behind it that it didn’t notice, smothering their laughter. On another trip, they sat in the car with one of the windows rolled down a crack, calling in Spanish to get the attention of an alligator half-submerged in mud.
She’d picked out the location for the development and its name, Mangrove Hollow. Cuenca de los Mangláres. But Nick’s dad never talked about that anymore. Sometimes Nick was afraid he’d forget.
They sped down the trail, past a vibrant grasshopper that barely moved out of their way, past the place where the alligator had been sighted. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw a cloud of large insects. One darted out in front of him, and he could have sworn he saw a humanlike face on its chitinous body. He swatted the air in front of him, causing the bike to wobble.
“Watch it,” said Laurie.
“Did you see that?” He glanced back, but it only looked like a rippling in the air, the way gnats sometimes seem before you’re close enough.
One darted out in front of him.
“What?” Laurie asked him, twisting around. They’d sped on far enough that he didn’t think she’d see anything at all.
Nick turned back and stopped his dirt bike abruptly enough to make Laurie lose her balance on the handlebars. She yelped, but he was too busy staring openmouthed at the fire-blasted trees to notice what had happened to her.
“This is weird.” He hopped off and absentmindedly leaned his bike against a tree.
“What’s weird?” she asked with a glare.
Controlled burns were used in all the parks. He’d witnessed that plenty of times—smelled the scorched wood and seen the blackened trunks—even from the road. Nick’s dad had explained how the burns kept the kind of wildfires that destroy houses from starting.
But something about this was different.
“It doesn’t look right,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Laurie asked.
He shook his head, not sure himself.
Where there had once been a shallow wetlands pond, there was only cracked dirt. On the outer edge of the burnt area, leaves hung like shriveled rags from charcoal limbs. Smoldered ferns drooped over seared moss. Everything was still. No cicadas buzzed, no birds called.
The more he looked at the burnt area, the more he thought that it didn’t seem controlled at all. No trees could grow back from this, at least not for a long time. And it stretched out in two directions, starting near where the water had been, like two great blasts had been shot at random from a flamethrower.
He walked up a sandy hill to get a better view. The earth seemed soft under his feet, and he wondered if that was another piece of evidence.
“Hey,” he said. “Come feel this.”
Laurie didn’t answer. He turned to see her watching three ashen shapes like she was waiting for them to move. They looked oddly like bent black branches, or maybe bodies.
He swallowed hard and then took a deep breath. His voice shook anyway. “I guess we should tell Taloa that we didn’t find her friends.”
“Sisters,” said Laurie, a hitch in her voice. Her eyes were wet. “They were her sisters.”
“Sisters.” Nick echoed. The word felt strange in his mouth. He jumped off the hill, and as he did, the hill rose.
Black eyes blinked slowly in the sandy soil. A massive swell curled into a fist. Roots ripped loose where vast limbs had been half-buried. The ground split and an enormous creature rose from it. Laurie screamed. The sound snapped Nick out of stunned staring and into action.
He ran toward his bike. As he threw one leg over the frame, he looked back.
The hill was standing, towering over them. It was wider than their house. Taller than the cranes that towered over the construction site.
“Get on!” he yelled. Laurie stumbled, her long skirt catching in the spokes as she hopped up on the seat. Nick pedaled anyway, hearing the fabric rip and feeling her fingers dig into his back.
He pedaled hard.
“It’sfollowingit’sfollowingit’sfollowing,” Laurie said, her voice high and urgent.
Branches snapped, something thudded, and the ground shook. The bike wobbled and turned on its side. They both fell. Nick’s knees burned and his head was ringing as he pulled himself back on his feet. Laurie was already up, her skirt torn and her cheek smeared with dirt. Blood stained her lip, and the chain around her neck had snapped.
The giant loomed above them, bellowing. Sand and dirt rained from its maw.
Nick lifted the bike as one of the giant’s feet slammed down beside him. Something wasn’t quite right with the front tire, but he didn’t have time to do anything but hope as he hopped onto it. Laurie got on behind him. He pedaled hard, wishing that he’d ridden his bike more, that he was more athletic, that his legs would move faster. If Julian had been there, he would have biked so fast the giant would never have caught them, but Nick was slow and they were going to be crushed because of it.
Nick ignored his ragged breathing, ignored the pain in his muscles, ignored the sounds of smashing and crashing behind them and the dust pluming around them. Sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes. He concentrated on pumping his legs.
“Right behind us,” Laurie squeaked.
Nick jerked the handlebars hard to the left, like he’d seen people in car chases on TV do, but instead of veering onto another path, he hit an embankment. The bike jumped into the air. He gritted his teeth and tried to hold it steady. This time they didn’t tip when they hit dirt. Nick just kept pedaling, faster and faster, as they sped through the woods.
“How about now?” he asked, grinning. He couldn’t believe how good that had felt. He wanted to cheer.
“He’s looking for us,” Laurie whispered. “Stop the bike! We have to hide.”
Nick hit the brakes. Laurie’s head banged into the back of his.
“Ow!” she said.
“Shhhh.” They stumbled off the bike, dropping it onto the grass. One wheel still spun. Nick got down on his hands and knees, crawling toward a large palmetto bush.
They were close enough to the development that they could probably make it on foot from this point. He looked back, trying to see the giant through the dense foliage. It seemed like the giant was rooting around in the dirt. Then, lifting a miniscule wriggling thing in between two massive fingers, it dropped the thing into its mouth.
“What’s it doing?” Nick whispered. “Eating a lizard?”
Laurie had taken off her glasses. It was only then that he noticed the bridge had cracked and her glasses were now in two separate pieces. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” she said numbly.
“Like what?”
The massive creature opened its mouth and breathed hard, like it expected something to happen. It breathed again.
“Laurie! Concentrate. What’s it doing?”
She squinted. “In the Guide, giants—that’s got to be a giant—um, I think they eat lizards.” She stopped. “Oh.”
“What?”
“They eat salamanders to breath fire.” Laurie lifted one dirty finger to push back her glasses automatically, but there were no more glasses, so she just smeared the ridge of her nose with grime.
It dropped the thing into its mouth.
Nick felt suddenly light-headed, as though all the insanity hit him at once and it was too much for his brain to comprehend. “Why would salamanders make it breathe fire? And if they do, why isn’t it working?”
“Not all salamanders are faeries. The Guide thinks the magic ones might be baby dragons or something. I guess the giant can’t tell the difference.”
“We better get out of here before he finds the right one. Just stay low to the ground. We’ll have to crawl.”
Laurie put her hand on his arm. “Wait. Look.”
The giant had stopped. With a sigh, he turned and started to pick his way back through the trees. Nick let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Laurie sagged to the ground.
In the distance, Nick heard the faint sound of music. In a man-made lake in Mangrove Hollow, the nixie was singing her creepy, melodic song.
The giant swung around, cocking his head. Then, lurching forward and knocking aside trees, he crashed toward the development.
The Nixie’s Song Page 3
