by E M Graham
Or was it for Alice?
The more I thought about it, the colder I grew. What could they want with Alice? And they had known, oh God, somehow they knew about her elf blood. I needed to warn her, about what I didn’t know, but she was in some kind of danger from the Witch Kin, and I had done that to her by my meddling.
It was long past three o’clock by now, and Hugh would be furious with me. He’d squared it with Dad, insisted that I was to be trusted in being let out of the house, and now that was totally screwed up. I had no way of letting him know where I was or what had happened, and for sure Sasha wouldn’t be telling him.
How long was this enforced captivity going to last? A joke was a joke, but this was a bit over the top and now I was beginning to seriously worry about the evening. The dwarf would not be happy to be stood up, not when he was going out on a limb to offer assistance like that.
Alice would worry, too.
And that baby wasn’t getting any younger in the fairy hall. It was all my fault and I was helpless to fix it, stuck in the closet like this.
I must have dozed a bit even in the state I was in, because when I next looked at the phone it was past seven o’clock and I’d missed my appointment with Dirk. There would be no second chances with him, I knew, even with the lure of the fairy gold. Dwarves are known for holding grudges for any perceived slights, I think it comes from spending so much time underground. So now not only did I have the baby and Benjy to worry about, the Witch Kin kids were after me, a dwarf was totally pissed and Hugh and Dad would be sending me out on the next flight to the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. And there was Alice.
Standing, I gave the door an almighty kick from pure frustration, and it rattled in its jamb. The spell was off! I felt around the doorknob, and yes, no tingling, so I turned it and pulled, and almost fell out into the harsh white fluorescent light of the corridor.
The archive directly across from me was closed, the room pitch black through the glass door and no one around, though the main library upstairs must still be open. I took the stairs not the elevator, because I’d had enough of small enclosed places for one evening.
I tore through the main entrance like a bat out of hell, and into the coolly lit night outside. The air was bracing, true, but so good to draw into my lungs to chase out the stale chemicals I’d been breathing for the past what, six hours? Those bastards. They would pay for this.
A rattle of rain started as I headed out the door, the force of it almost driving me back inside. I realized I had to make a decision – get the bus or walk back to Dad’s? The again, perhaps I’d be better off avoiding them all together and cutting directly across town and trying to get Alice and the dwarf back on my side. A cab would cost about fifteen dollars, I figured, and I had just about that amount on me.
As I quickly set off across campus in the general direction of the Southside Hills, my phone began pinging like crazy with messages and missed calls. Alice and Hugh, of course. Well, he would have to wait, especially as I read the latest text from my friend.
We’ll meet you up there.
Alice and the dwarf were going up to the fairy den themselves? This was suicide on her part; she didn’t have the strength of mind to resist the enchantments. Christ, what had I gotten her into?
I began sprinting through the rain, the hard pellets were almost hail despite the unseasonal warmth of the night. I didn’t even pause to call a cab, thinking there would surely be one cruising along the main road.
Bursting out onto the crosswalk of the main road I took my chances that cars would see me and slow down, hanging a left down Elizabeth Avenue rather than take the shorter route across town because by now I was praying for a taxi to show up. Just at the entrance into the enclave of posh new houses I was stopped and almost run over by a car pulling sharply in front of me.
If I’d had the head-space in which to think and wonder, I would have been blown away by this vehicle – it was the Batmobile come to life, or at least it looked like that in the dark rain, a sleek black sporty car screeching up to the curb, the rain beading on it as if it had been freshly waxed.
But it wasn’t Batman who jumped out of the car and began yelling at me. “What the hell are you doing?” That unmistakeable Scots accent was not happy. He rushed over in front of the car to confront me. “Where have you been?”
“Get out of my way.” I was breathing hard from the run as I tried to push past him, but he had a firm grip through my by now soaked jean jacket. “Hugh, leave me alone.”
“Get in that car,” he roared as he oh-so-gently marched me to his vehicle. With his free hand, he opened the door and pushed me inside, knocking my head against the low jamb. After the door slammed shut behind me, he stood for a moment with his finger pointed at me, daring me to move.
He needn’t have worried. I was so hungry and out of my mind by this time that the warmth in the car broke my last defense, and I just sat there waiting for him. Hugh was my only hope right now.
I let him fume and sputter as he put the car back into gear and pulled away back down Elizabeth Avenue, heading east, but before we reached the intersection of Allandale, I put my hand on his arm, pulling the wheel towards the south.
“Don’t bring me back to Dad’s,” I begged. “Not yet. We have to get Alice. She’s gone up to the fairy den with a dwarf, and she’s no match for them. You have to help!”
He shot me a look that would have burned me if it could.
“Up on the Southside Hills in this weather? I don’t think so.” But at least he headed down towards the center of town, past my old high school and then over to the Tim Horton’s parking lot, all without saying a word.
“We don’t have time to stop for coffee!”
“We’re stopping for an explanation,” he said, his voice grim. “And to feed you. You’re as pale as a ghost.”
After ordering a hot chocolate and sandwich for me and a tea for himself at the drive through, he parked the car overlooking Harvey Road. Across from us, way past the city and the harbor, the Southside Hills were invisible in the drizzle. Alice was up there somewhere.
He sat and waited.
“Where do you want me to begin?”
“What happened to you today? I promised your father on your behalf that you would go straight home after classes. You made me look like an idiot.”
Chicken salad on a croissant had never tasted so good, and as I ate, I told him all of it except for the cheating on the exam bit. About how I had stupidly gone up to the cafe, knowing my presence was just taunting the Kin students, and how I’d asked for help from Sasha and she had screamed at me. About how creepy her friends were and how they’d locked me in the janitor’s closet with the door affixed by a spell.
His face grew darker and darker as I related the tale.
“And Alice? What’s this about the fairies? How the hell did she get mixed up in this?”
So I told him that too, a quick version, right from the beginning. How Alice was desperate to save her brother. About the baby and the changeling. And then about the dwarf who’d promised to help.
Finally he looked over at me and shook his head. His eyes looked tired and his face was drained. “This is all wrong on so many levels.”
“I know, right? So that’s why we need to go up and get Alice,” I said. “I just couldn’t bear it if I lose her on top of it all.”
“We’ll not be doing anything of the kind.”
17
THE WINDOWS INSIDE the car fogged up as we sat there, for the night outside was warm and wet. Hugh opened his window. We could hear the breeze rustling through the trees but further away, the sounds of sirens filled the night air, coming from all directions as if bouncing off the granite hills that surrounded the old downtown. A smell of burning was on the rising wind.
I took off my sodden jean jacket to give my hoodie a chance to dry out.
“So let me get this straight,” Hugh said as he stared across at the hills across the harbor. “Firs
t, you broke all sorts of conventions by invading the fairy den.”
“I had no idea there were rules against that,” I retorted. The meal had returned my spirits. “I was just trying to save Benjy.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “That’s assuming he’s worth saving. But then you allowed the fairies to steal a baby in your charge. Or so you believe.”
“They switched her out for one of theirs,” I defended myself. “I didn’t invite them in, they ran into the house and upstairs before I could catch them.”
He shot me a dirty glance for interrupting him.
“In your charge,” he continued. “Then you royally offended IronArms by fraudulently claiming to be a representative of your father.”
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“But you managed to convince one dwarf to assist you.”
“Dirk.”
“Dirk,” he repeated with distaste. “Who is abetting you because...?”
“I promised him he could help himself to the fairy gold,” I mumbled. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how Hugh would view this.
“Dirk is helping you because he wants to steal from the fairies,” Hugh agreed in a very patient voice. “And what do you think the consequences of that action will be?”
“Thursk won’t be happy,” I admitted.
“No, Thursk will be extremely unhappy at losing his gold to his neighbors, the dwarves. IronArms will also be extremely unhappy at Dirk bringing shame onto their Dwarfdom. The best outcome would be that Thursk would demand an investigation into the whole sequence of events. The worst, and by far the more likely, would be that Thursk and his band would take matters into their own hands, causing war within Alt Town.”
I hung my head and had no reply to this logic.
“And, pray tell me,” Hugh was on a hot streak now. “How exactly did you plan to exchange the baby? How would Jane react to having two infants all of a sudden? Or were you going to break into her house, do the switch, then gaily run up to the fairies and give them back their sprog? Without the fairies killing you?”
“I hadn’t gotten it totally figured out,” I said sullenly. “I thought we’d come up with a plan between the three of us on the way up the hill.”
My words were met only with silence. Hugh really knew how to make someone feel like crap. The wind outside was picking up even more, it was warm, from the south. A hurricane wind. I could see smoke coming from downtown now, just a haze in the strong wind. It smelled like ancient wood and tar.
“They’re just hill fairies,” I burst out finally. “They’re rotten vermin, and horrible and cruel!”
“That sounds like prejudice to me,” he answered in a dangerously calm voice, the soft burr in his voice becoming more pronounced. “And we all know where that kind of thinking can lead to. They have the right to live as their natures dictate.”
He had me there, didn’t he? The sole reason he was supposedly here in St. John’s was to fight against this very sort of thinking for the benefit of half-bloods like myself. I slumped down into the bucket seat of the sports car and watched the wind dance in the wires.
“So, what? We’re just going to let them keep the baby and Benjy, and...”
“And what?”
“And I’ll never get a chance to undo what I’ve done. What more can go wrong?”
“You’ve also now made an enemy of Dirk, for what that is worth,” Hugh pointed out, not being helpful. “He’ll be annoyed that you’ve gone back on your promise. Dwarf dignity and all that, they can’t stand to be disrespected.”
I stared across at the Southside Hills. The wind had increased steadily, blowing away the rain and allowing the almost full moon to bath the downtown below us in a harsh silver light, yet those hills remained shrouded in a heavy blanket of fog. How could anything remain in this rising wind, why wasn’t it being blown out to sea?
“Alice is up there,” I said softly.
“Where?”
I nodded at the hills. “Up there. The last text I had from her said they’d meet me up there. She’s with Dirk.”
Hugh swore softly.
“I know,” I said. “That’s my fault too.”
“Call her.”
Why hadn’t I thought to do this already? I took out my phone and pressed my name. The ringing went on for twenty seconds which felt like two minutes, then cut to a busy signal.
“There’s something wrong with the phone,” I said, and dialled again. This time it immediately went into the short staccato beeps of disconnect. I held out the phone so Hugh could hear.
“Right then.” Hugh started up the car and put it into gear. It was a stick shift, of course.
“Don’t take me to Dad’s, not yet,” I begged him. “I need to find Alice, make sure she’s okay. I promise, I won’t even bother going up the hill to the fairies, really, if you just let me get her.”
He drove to the exit onto Harvey Road. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me? Anything I need to know about the whole situation?”
“Aside from the fact that I cheated on my exam this morning, and I think Sasha’s crowd are a bunch of fascist pigs, no that’s about it.” I sat back in seat, finally defeated.
“What?” He paused before turning on to the road, unmindful of the cars behind him.
“I used my powers for bad,” I confessed. “I hadn’t studied, and I just don’t get this math stuff.”
“No, not that. Sasha’s friends...”
I quickly debated if I should tell him my suspicions, then I remembered how they had taken up the chant of Alice’s name. My blood ran cold. “I think... they may have something to do with the killing last June.”
“At the last solstice.”
“Yeah.”
“And tomorrow night is the fall equinox.”
“Shit.”
“And Alice is not answering her phone.” He took the time to stare at me, as if not believing how dumb I really was despite the evidence.
“Please can we go look for her?”
His face was grim. “That’s exactly where I’m headed. Which is the fastest route across the harbor?”
“Oh my God, thank you,” I said fervently. “Hang a left here, we can avoid the worst traffic lights.”
The tires peeled off the pavement as he cut across the evening traffic. He almost missed the turn down Garrison Hill, I swear the outer wheels left the road as he took that sharp right at the last moment. I’ve never sped so fast down the length of Queen’s Road. Thank God there weren’t any drunks wandering into our path.
As we raced down the hill past the end of Duckworth, I witnessed the source of the sirens and the smell of smoke which filled the air. It was Zeta’s store, flames licking out of where the plate glass window used to be. Fire crews and police had the street blocked off.
“That’s the magic store burning,” I said, straining my neck to watch in horror. “Zeta must have left the candles lit or something.”
“I think you’ll find that’s not an accident,” he said grimly. “She’s another casualty of the prejudice which won’t die in this godforsaken backwater.”
I sat back in the bucket seat and braced myself again. I was shaken to my core. Such evil in my own home town, it was hard to conceive.
The coin in the basket. I hadn’t thought of it since that day in Zeta’s when she sold me that stupid useless unmagical spell. That slim disc of metal had been the only thing with any power in her whole store, but it had been dark and grief-stricken and I had longed to take it with me. Would it be destroyed in the conflagration?
The car swerving brought me back to the present. Just the one traffic light that turned unexpectedly green a split second before Hugh roared up to it, and then a moment’s hesitation as I directed him down Job Street, then rescinded when I realized it was a one way street.
“No matter! You can take the left up there, down Brine Street!”
We passed the tiny old houses of that road, then Deanery Row and without eve
n pausing for the stop sign we were past the church and headed back down to the main road. The sleek black car wove through and passed the other vehicles on the road as if it were made of water itself. Again at the intersection of Leslie Street and the road up to Shea Heights the light turned green, this time with the arrow to allow Hugh to turn left without slowing down, and then we were across the river and flying by Alice’s house on Southside Road.
“Where were you supposed to meet her?”
“Further along, by the overhanging rock, just outside the dwarves tunnel.” I pointed up ahead.
He screeched to a stop, and we looked around. No sign of Alice or Dirk here. I hadn’t expected to see them.
“Wait here.”
As I sat in the car and watched him cross the road, I realized there was something very odd happening here. All around was pitch dark except for the light of the moon with no electric lights anywhere, just like in Alt, yet I was sitting in the car. How could this be? It was as if the veil of Alt was nothing more than a gauze curtain and the two worlds were intermingling.
I watched as he leaped across the road and pounded on the thick oaken door, then slunk down in my seat when IronArms appeared, not wanting to be spotted by that giant of a dwarf.
A quick and terse conversation began between the two, but it quickly deteriorated into a shouting match with much flinging of arms on the dwarf’s part. I don’t think they were fighting, dwarves are just loud like that. Their voices were muffled through the closed car windows. Eventually IronArms looked over his shoulder into the tunnel and roared something out.
Dirk was the next player to show up on the scene, head drooping down and feet shuffling as he tried to look casual. Finally, he began speaking and gesticulating up the road, and up the hill while shaking his head. He spoke for a long time, and it looked like he was confessing all. After IronArms had clouted him over the head twice, once with each hand, and yelled some more, the two disappeared back into their tunnel.
