Unbound

by Jeaniene Frost

  “I’ll take my complaint to you!” Jenks shouted, poking his sword at her nose.

  The woman shrieked, robes furling as she swung her fist to miss him completely. “You cut me! You filthy little mouse!”

  Jenks darted back, only to dive in again to slice another cut under her eye. “I’m letting Sylvan go if only to piss you off! You look like a sorority sister in hell week with that discount sheet around you! What is that, a one-fifty thread count? My three-year-old can weave better than that.”

  Clasping a hand over her eye, the woman shrieked, her voice echoing in the darkness. “I’ll destroy you for that!” she cried, spinning to keep Jenks in front of her.

  “Jenks?” Bis said loudly, half hiding behind Sylvan’s statue. “Maybe we should leave the goddess alone.”

  “Goddess!” Jenks pulled up a safe eight feet into the air. His sword glinted red in the lamplight, and his wings hummed. Cocky, he dropped back down. “She’s no goddess. She’s a whiny. Little. Girl.”

  Angry at the woman’s lack of respect, Jenks slashed at her robes with each word.

  “Uh, Jenks?” Bis warbled his creased face bunched in worry as she screeched.

  “Get out of here!” Jenks yelled at her like she was a stray dog. “Go find a museum or something. That’s where you belong! Tell them Jenks sent you.”

  Panting, the woman came to a halt, staring up at him. Her face was red, and determination was equally mixed with anger. A car door slammed in the distance. Someone had heard her and was coming across the wide expanse of lawn. Oblivious, the woman jumped straight up at him with a fierce yell.

  “Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed, darting up. But the woman had sprung to her statue, scattering Bis and using it to make another leap for him. “Whoa! Lady. Chill out!” Jenks shouted as he darted to the nearby tree. Immediately he realized his mistake when Daryl leapt into the branches, following him.

  “I am a goddess!” she screamed, her sword thunking into the branches as he dodged her. “You will die, pixy! Your name will be forgotten. Anyone who aligns themselves with Sylvan is a shade still walking!”

  Maybe he went too far, Jenks wondered as her blade got closer with each swing, but before he could retreat, his wings unexpectedly froze. He had a glimpse of Daryl blowing at him with her lips pursed, and then he plummeted, falling through the leaves to the cement below.

  “No!” Jenks exclaimed as the smacking of leaves against his back ceased and he dropped into free fall. A yelp escaped him when long, thin, gray fingers caught him, pulling him closer to the ashy scent of iron and dry stone. Above, Daryl scrambled to reach the ground.

  “Bis!” Jenks said, dazed as he looked up to the gargoyle’s red eyes. “Good God. We have to get out of here!”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling you,” Bis said dryly.

  In the distance, the sound of car doors slamming and the revving of an engine told him whoever it was, was now leaving. Bis landed again on Sylvan’s statue, shaking in fear. Carefully testing his wings, Jenks took to the air. Daryl was again on the sidewalk, her steely eyes watching them both in evaluation.

  “You okay?” Bis said as his claws scratched the statue’s forehead.

  “Yeah,” he said, stretching his shoulders and wondering if there was a remaining stiffness. “We have to get this bitch away from the garden before she hurts someone.”

  “How?”

  Bis was trembling, his eyes wide and whirling. Grinning, Jenks rose farther up into the air. “I’ll get her to follow me,” he said to the gargoyle, then turned to the woman. “Hey, bright eyes! What’s your problem with Sylvan? Did the dude bump uglies with one of your girlfriends?”

  Jenks shifted his hips back and forth to make sure she knew what he was talking about, and Daryl’s eyes narrowed. With no warning, she came at him silently, her robes furling in the wind from her passage.

  Adrenaline pushing him, Jenks darted into the green field, leading her away. The city was nearby. He’d get her among the buildings, then ditch her. The cops would pick her up for disturbing the peace. Inderland Security would love bringing in a thought-to-be-extinct species of Inderlander with a goddess complex, but that was their job.

  Laughing, Jenks sped across the grass, dark and black with the night. A ripple of wind shifted under his wings, and he looked down. An eerie keening dove down upon him, and in a surge of panic, he found himself tossed in a sudden whirlwind.

  His sense of direction vanished. Tumbling, the wind beat at him, almost a living force bending his wings and tearing his breath from his lungs. Starved for air and out of control, he fell out of the sky and slammed into the ground. The wind collapsed on him, bringing him to his knees. Eyes shut, he held his wings to his back, one hand gripping his sword, the other clenched upon the grass to keep him from spinning away.

  Just as suddenly as it came upon him, the wind broke into a thousand pieces of shrill voice and vanished. Dazed, he looked up, still kneeling.

  Daryl was standing over him, her silver eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark. Wheezing from the pollution, she raised her foot. “You are rude, and you will die.”

  “Oh, shit…” Jenks whispered.

  A dark gray streak slammed into her chest, and, stumbling, Daryl fell back.

  “Bis!” Jenks exclaimed as the gargoyle swung back around, plucking him from the ground and holding him close. “Tink loves a duck, you’re a great backup!”

  “You can’t fly,” Bis said breathlessly. “You’re too light. Let’s get out of here!”

  “’Kay,” Jenks said, grateful but feeling somewhat sheepish. This was the kind of spot he was always getting Rachel out of. He didn’t like being carried, but if the woman could whistle up the wind, then he’d be better off with Bis. The moon had shifted, and Vincet and his family would be okay for another day. If the garden was sacred, Daryl wouldn’t be likely to tear it apart.

  Behind them came an infuriated shriek, and Jenks cringed when the roar of the wind came again. Wiggling, he inched himself up to look over Bis’s shoulder, not liking the dips and swerves Bis was putting into his flight. Squinting, he looked behind him expecting to see a frustrated women standing alone, but the grass was empty. Satisfaction filled him. Until he saw the black, boiling cloud bearing down on them, rolling over the grass to leave it untouched.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed, seeing a tiny white figure at the center. “Bis, she’s flying! The freaky bitch is flying!”

  Bis’s smooth wing beats faltered. Glancing back, he gulped. “She’s riding a ley line. Jenks, I don’t know how she’s doing it or what she is!”

  Pointing at them with her sword, the woman clenched her teeth and grinned, clearly eager for battle. Her oiled ringlets lay flat, and her robe plastered to her like a second skin. The chugging of heavy air reverberated off the nearby buildings, but the trees were utterly still.

  “Go!” shrilled Jenks, smacking Bis’s shoulder. “Go to ground!”

  The heat off the street was a wave as they left the park. Town homes gave way to buildings, flashing past and reduced to blurs. Cars were moments of light and noise, and still she came on, leaving the sound of horns and folding metal in her wake. Glass shattered, and Jenks hunched into Bis’s protection, a new terror filling him as he realized that to take to the air now would be his death. Bis’s flight grew sickeningly erratic among the buildings, and Jenks looked behind him.

  They weren’t going to make it.

  “Down!” he screamed, voice lost in the shrieking wind. “Go to ground, Bis!”

  Twisting wildly, Bis brought his wings in close, diving for a gutter drain.

  “Oh-h-h-h-h no-o-o-o!” Jenks exclaimed, ducking his head.

  Wings back, winging furiously in the sudden dark, Bis hit the wall with a grunt, sliding down to land in a sludge of water and goo. Putrid muck splashed up, coating Jenks in cold. Shaking his head, he lay on Bis and tried to figure out what happened.

  I’m in a hole, he realized, his pulse hammering hard e
nough to shake him. I’m alive.

  Above him, the wind shrieked, sounding like a woman screaming in battle. Bis shifted underneath him, and Jenks put a finger to his own lips when the gargoyle’s eyes opened. Together they listened to the destruction as glass shattered and heavy things hit the earth. Slowly the roaring wind faded to leave the frightened calls of people and the growing sounds of sirens.

  Shaking, Bis began to wheeze in laugher. “Holy pigeon poop. That was close,” he said, sitting up slowly until Jenks took to the air.

  Jenks’s flash of anger at Bis’s mirth dissolved as he realized they were okay and they would both live to see the sun rise. “Watch this! I’ll get her to follow me, Bis!” he said, shaking his wings until a sludgy dust spilled from him to light the hole.

  Bis stood shin-deep in the muck, his skin shifting toward pink as he upped his body temp. Appreciating the warmth, Jenks moved to his shoulder and tried to wipe the muck off his clothes. Matalina wouldn’t be happy, and he enviously watched the mud dry and flake off Bis.

  “Think she’s gone?” Bis asked as he gazed up to the rectangle of brighter dark.

  Jenks darted to the opening and the fresher air to hover with his head in the opening. Hands on his hips, he whistled long and low. “She tore up the street,” he said loudly, looking up at the broken streetlights. “Power’s out. Cops are coming. Let’s get out of here.”

  The scrabbling of claws made him shiver, and he made the quick flight to the sidewalk when Bis slid out like an octopus. Bis shook his wings and sniffed at his armpits, then turned black to remain unnoticed. The sirens were coming closer, seeming to pull the distraught people together.

  Frowning, Bis somberly clicked his nails in a rhythm that Jenks recognized as Mozart as he took in the tossed cars and broken windows. Fingers shaking, Jenks wedged a sweetball out of his belt pack and sucked on it, replenishing his sugar level before he started to burn muscle.

  “Do you think all nymphs were like that?” Jenks asked, glad the muck hadn’t gotten to his snack.

  “Beats me.”

  With a push of his wings, Bis was airborne. Jenks joined him, shifting to fly above him where they could still talk. The night air felt heavy and warm, unusually muggy as they flew straight down the street and to the park. Only a small section of the city was without power, and it looked like the park was untouched.

  “Maybe we should check on Vincet,” Jenks said, and the gargoyle sighed, turning back to the cooler grass to check, but Jenks was already thinking about tomorrow. He had promised to help Vincet, and he would—even if it was a dryad trapped in a statue by a warrior nymph.

  He had to help these people, and he had to do so before midnight tomorrow.

  3

  Even from inside the desk, Jenks could hear Cincinnati waking up across the river. Under the faint radio playing three houses down, the deep thumps of distant industry were like a heartbeat only pixies and fairies could hear. The hum of a thousand cars reminded him of the beehive he’d tormented when he was a child and living in the wild stretches between the surviving cities. It wasn’t a bad life, living in the city—if you could find food.

  Worried, he sat in his favorite chair, thinking as his family lived life around him. The doll furniture he reclined in had been purchased last year at a yard sale for a nickel, but after stripping it down, reupholstering it with spider silk, and stuffing it with down from the cottonwood at the corner, he thought it was nicer than anything he’d seen in any store Rachel had taken him in. Nicer than Trent Kalamack’s furniture, even. Distant, he rubbed his thumb over the ivy pattern that Matalina had woven into the fabric. She was a master at her craft, especially now.

  A faint sifting of dust slipped from him to puddle under the chair, but his glow was almost lost in the shaft of light slipping in through the crack of the rolltop desk. The massive oak desk with its nooks and crannies had been their home for the winter, but after Matalina had perched herself on the steeple last night to wait for his return, she’d breathed in the season and decided it was time to move. So move they did.

  The voices of his daughters raised in chatter were hardly noticed, as was the bawdy poem four of his elder sons were shouting as they cheerfully grabbed the corners of the long table made of Popsicle sticks and headed for the too-narrow crack.

  Matalina’s voice rose in direction, and the rolltop rose just enough. It wasn’t until Matalina sent the rest of them out to scout for a nest of wasps to steal sentries from that it grew quiet. All his children had lived through the winter. It was a day of celebration, but the weight of responsibility was on him.

  Responsibility wasn’t new to him, but he was surprised to feel it—seeing as it was coming from an unexpected source. He’d always felt bad for pixies not as well off as he, but that was as far as it had ever gone. A part of him wanted to tell Vincet that he chose badly and he’d have to move, newlings or not. But Vi clinging helplessly to him had gone through Jenks like fire, and the smell of the newlings on Vincet kept him sitting where he was, thinking.

  Jax had been his first newling he’d managed to keep alive through the winter. Jih, his eldest daughter, had survived in Matalina’s arms that same season. Scarcely nine years old, Jih had moved across the street alone to start a garden, and Jax left to follow in his father’s footsteps by partnering with a thief instead of devoting himself to a family and the earth.

  Jenks had never wanted more than to tend a spot of ground, but four years ago, forced by a late spring and suffering newlings, he’d shamefully taken a part-time job as backup for Inderland Security, finding that he not only enjoyed it, but was good at it. Working for the man had eventually evolved into a partnership with Rachel and Ivy, and now he was on the streets more than in the garden. Turning his back on his first independent job wasn’t going to happen. Blowing up the statue wouldn’t be the hard part—it would be getting around Daryl to do it.

  A nymph and a dryad, he thought sourly as he sucked on a sweetball in the quiet. Why couldn’t it be something he knew something about? Nymphs had vanished during the Industrial Revolution, and the dryads had been decimated by deforestation shortly after that. There was even a conspiracy theory that the dryads had been responsible for the plague that had wiped out a big chunk of humanity forty years ago. If so, it had sort of worked. The forests were returning, and eighty-year-old trees were again becoming common. Nymphs, though, were still missing. Sleeping, maybe?

  And what about Daryl, anyway? A deluded nymph, Sylvan had said. A goddess, Daryl claimed. There were no gods or goddesses. Never had been, but there were documented histories of Inderlanders taking advantage of humans, posing as deities. He frowned. Her eyes were downright creepy, and he hadn’t liked demons being mentioned, either.

  Jenks started, jerking when his chair moved. The breeze of four pairs of dragonfly wings blew the red dust of surprise from him, and he looked up to find four of his boys trying to move his chair with him in it. They were all grinning at him, looking alike despite Jumoke’s dark hair and eyes, in matching pants and tunics that Matalina had stitched.

  “Enough!” Matalina called out in a mock anger, her feet in a shaft of light, a dusting rag in her hands, and a flush to her cheeks. “Leave your papa alone. There’s the girls’ things to be moved if you need something to do.”

  “Sorry, Papa!” Jack said cheerfully, dropping his corner to make the chair thump. Jenks’s feet flew up, and his wing bent back under him. “Didn’t see you there.”

  “Dust a little,” Jaul said, tangling his wings with Jack’s, and Jack dusted heavily, shifting as he pushed him away. “The fairies will think you’re dead,” he finished, sneezing.

  “Come and carry you away,” Jumoke added, his wings lower in pitch than everyone else’s. It made him different, along with his dusky coloring, and Jenks worried, not liking how Vincet had looked at him as if he were ill or deformed.

  Jake just grinned, his wings glittering as he hovered in the background. Apart from Jumoke, they were the eldest
in the garden now, as fresh-faced and innocent as they should be, strong and able to use a sword to kill an intruder twice their size. He loved them, but it was likely this would be the last spring they’d help the family move. Jack, especially, would probably find wanderlust on him this fall and leave.

  “Go do what your mother said,” he grumped, grabbing four sweetballs from the bowl beside him and throwing them to each boy in turn. “And keep your sugar level up! You’re no good to me laid flat out in a field.”

  “Thanks, Papa!” they chorused, cheeks bulging. It kept them quiet, too.

  Matalina came closer, smiling fondly as she shooed them out. “Go on. After the girls’ room, find the big pots and fill them. Check for cracks. I’m soaking spider sacks tomorrow for the silk. They’ve been in the cool room all winter. If we’re not careful, we’re going to have a hatching. I’m not going to make your clothes out of moonbeams, you know.”

  “Naked in the garden is okay with me,” Jumoke mumbled, and Matalina swatted him.

  “Out!”

  “Remember what happened the last year?” Jaul said, his words muffled from the sweetball as they headed for opening.

  “Webs everywhere!” Jack said, laughing.

  “Yeah, well you’re the one that moved the sacks into the sun,” Jumoke said, and they were gone, the dust from them settling in a glowing puddle to slowly fade.

  “How else was I going to win the bet as to when they were going to hatch?” came faintly from outside the desk, and Jenks chuckled. It had been an unholy mess.

  Slowly their voices vanished, and Jenks watched Matalina’s expression, gauging her mood as she smiled. Wings stilling, she walked across the varnished oak wood to settle next to him, their wings tangling as she snuggled in against him. Slowly their mingling dust shifted to the same contented gold.

  “I can’t wait to get back into the garden,” she said, gazing at the pile of laundry across the room. “I’ll admit I don’t like moving day, but I’ll not set myself to sleep like that again with the fear of guessing who might not wake up with me in the spring.” Reaching to the bowl, she deftly twisted a sweetball into two parts and handed him half. “You’re quiet. What’s got your updraft cold this morning?”