WE rounded the last corner and saw the mantel leaning against a wall. The wood gleamed warm and wonderful under the bright lighting tubes and I couldn’t wait to get inside to smell familiar smells and hug Iris. Coming home when home was no longer a sure thing was a wonderful feeling. Gerald’s wing brushed mine and I’m sure I saw a warmth in his eye, although his expression was as resentful as ever.
I reached for his small hand, but before I grasped it, there was a clunk and the lights went out. A red glow bathed the area and distorted everything. I stopped short and heard Gerald cry out beside me. I pivoted toward Gerald, but he was too close and I ran into him. We tumbled downward, entangled.
“Tuck!” I yelled.
Gerald obeyed instantly, tucking his wings and wrapping himself in a ball. I grabbed him and righted us just before we hit a table.
“What was that?” Gerald asked, still in his tuck.
“Soren said it would be dark soon. I guess that was it. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.” I tossed Gerald away from me like a ball. He spread his wings and hovered.
“Everything’s red.”
“Yeah, it’s weird. Let’s go home,” I said.
Gerald glanced at the mantel. “Home.”
We flew to our front door, hovered and knocked. I hoped that Iris would hear and come quickly. Before I could knock a second time the door flew open. Iris stood in the opening, grinning so wide it looked painful.
“You’re back,” Iris said, shooting out of the doorway into my arms.
I hugged Iris and flew her back through the doorway. Gerald landed on the threshold behind us and made discontented sounds at our reunion. He scowled at us and said, “Something smells weird.”
Iris put her hands on her hips. “Our house doesn’t smell weird.”
“If you think this smells normal, there’s something wrong with your nose.”
I turned to look around the dark hall. Something did smell a little off, but all the feelings fit in the right places in my heart. Suddenly, I never wanted to leave the mantel again. It was my tree, like Soren’s mother said. I never wanted to be separated from it.
“I found Barbara and picked up the rest of the mushrooms, but they’re still not putting off any light. Should we use the torches?” asked Iris, gesturing to a bracket on the wall that held a bundled bunch of sticks dipped in sap.
“I guess we’ll have to. Since the mushrooms are damaged,” I said.
“Do you think Mom and Dad will be mad? Torches are only for extreme emergencies and you know how they feel about fire.”
“I think today counts as an extreme emergency, but I don’t know where Dad keeps his flint.”
“I found it,” said Iris, holding up pieces of flint and metal.
The metal had some fresh scratches on it and I raised my eyebrow at Iris. She ducked her head and handed them to me.
“It’s dark in here without the mushrooms,” she said.
Gerald squeezed past me and pushed up his sleeves.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “I’m the best at making fire.”
“Go ahead, Gerald. Give it a try,” I said.
“Try? I don’t need to try,” said Gerald. “I’ll do it.”
Gerald went to get one of the brackets, but tripped on a wad of blankets on the floor.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I was taking a nap, if you must know,” said Iris. “I wanted to be right here when you came back. I sleep so soundly, I knew I’d never hear you knock unless I was right by the door.”
“Where’s Easy?” I asked.
“Ezekiel? Are we calling him Easy now?”
“We are. It’s loads better than Ezekiel. Where is he?”
“Sleeping. He was really tired. I didn’t know babies slept so much.” Iris turned to Gerald and stuck her chin out at him. Her plump face wry and disbelieving. “Go ahead, Gerald. Make fire. We’re waiting.”
Gerald grabbed a torch and handed it to me. He kicked the blankets out of his way, shook his shoulders like an athlete, glanced at us, and then with the showy affectation of a magician, he struck the flint on the metal. Nothing happened. Not a spark or a hint of one. Iris stifled a giggle as Gerald tried again. His face turned red. He struck and struck until little beads of sweat formed on his brow and still nothing happened.
“Good try, Gerald. I’ll just do it,” I said. The dark was getting to me and the reddish glow from outside wasn’t helping.
“I don’t need any help,” he said.
I made a sideways chopping motion at Iris before she could utter a reply. “Fire’s really hard to make. Most wood fairies are terrible at it, which is good considering where we live.”
Gerald’s face got redder than ever and his lower lip trembled. “Of course Iris wouldn’t be any good. She’s so f…”
I clamped my hand over Gerald’s mouth before he could finish the word, but Iris crossed her arms and lowered her eyes anyway. I dropped my hand and gave Gerald a hard look. I put everything I had into that look. We had a deal and he was going to stick to it. Gerald surprised me by lowering his eyes and looking away.
“Go ahead,” he said.
I positioned myself so that Gerald and Iris couldn’t see what I was doing. I struck the flint while concentrating on the torch. A pretty little flame ignited on the tip and lit my face with a warm glow. Iris clapped her hands and Gerald looked with admiration at the flame.
“I guess one’s enough. Mom will be upset that we had any fire at all,” I said. “Where’d you put Easy?”
“In my room. It’s not so bad and there’s no broken glass in there,” Iris said as she stared at the flames. Its light gave her face lovely shadows and defined her cheekbones so that she appeared more adult and prettier than she normally did.
“I hear him. I think he’s awake,” said Gerald. He was looking at Iris, too, and his voice was soft.
Iris turned away from the light. “Better go get him.”
“I’ll go,” I said. But they followed me as if they were afraid to be alone. Perhaps they were. I held the torch high as we trooped down to Iris’s room. We passed our parents’ room, still in distressing disarray, and then approached my room.
I popped my head in to see how it had fared and held the torch up to light the area. My heart sunk to see it in such a state. I’d always been particular about my room. I had the prettiest lace curtains and Dad made all the furniture in a style he called French provincial. I’d collected colorful bits of glass and mounted them in frames. Mom called it my art. Now all that loveliness lay in ruins. Gerald and Iris crowded in around me. I looped my arm around Iris’s shoulders and laid my cheek on the top of my sister’s fair hair.
“Well,” I said. “It’s not so bad.”
Gerald snorted in reply, but I decided to just go ahead and let him snort. If it made me feel better to dissemble a bit, what was the harm? If it wasn’t so bad, then I could fix it, quick as anything. If I said it was a disaster, it would never be the same, and I very much wanted things to be the same.
Iris patted my arm. “You’re right. We’ll fix it in no time.”
“The bed is shattered and there’s stinky gunk on the walls,” said Gerald. He might have gone on, but Iris and I gave him such fierce looks that he stopped numbering the defects of my room and gave it a derisive look instead.
Iris grabbed my arm. “Easy sounds funny. He might be sick.”
I turned, squeezed past Iris and Gerald, and ran the twenty steps to Iris’s room. I flung open the door and saw on the floor a sight I’d never forget. A baby sat on Iris’s mattress in the middle of the floor, but it wasn’t Easy or like any baby I’d ever seen. It looked like a small brown boulder with patchy greenish mold on it. Tiny black eyes with a beetle-like quality blinked at me and it opened its mouth to show off jagged pointy teeth. My mouth opened, but I wasn’t aware that I was screaming until Iris came up beside me.
“Why are you screaming?” yelled Iris.
Iris looke
d past me and starting screaming herself. I pulled Iris back, and tried to slam the door only to find Gerald passed out in front of it. I pulled him by the foot out of the way and slammed the door. Iris had backed up against the opposite hall wall. She’d stopped screaming, but her pale face had lost every ounce of color it ever had.
“What was that?” Iris asked, her voice wavering.
I swallowed. I wasn’t sure I could choke a word out if I tried. Instead, I put the torch in the nearest bracket and leaned on the wall next to Iris. Gerald sat up. He lurched back and forth like he’d been into the elderberry wine.
He looked up at us. “That thing ate Easy!” Then he looked quite sick and fell over in another faint. His head hit the floor with a dull thump as we stared at him with disbelief.
“It didn’t really eat Easy, did it?” asked Iris.
“Of course not,” I said, although I was by no means sure.
“Do you think Easy’s in there with it?” asked Iris.
I jumped over Gerald’s inert body and flung open the door. The boulder baby stood in the middle of the mattress on lumpy legs that looked way too small to support it. The baby waved at me and proceeded to poop on Iris’s mattress. A stench that would’ve made a latrine smell good in comparison wafted over me. I pinched my nose and stepped in, looking around the room for Easy. He wasn’t there. The window lay on the floor. Its hinge pins scattered among the debris.
“Is Easy in there?” said Iris.
“No,” I said.
Gerald came up beside me with his shirt pulled over his nose and mouth. “What is it? It smells like dead frogs.”
The boulder baby did smell like dead frogs, lots of them. Even with the window open the smell seemed to get worse and worse until I started to gag. I backed out of the room and shut the door again. It stopped the worst of the stench, but it was still strong enough to make nose pinching necessary.
“Where’s Easy?” said Iris.
“I’m telling you it ate him,” said Gerald.
“Shut up, Gerald. It didn’t eat Easy. It’s a baby,” I said.
“That’s not a baby,” said Gerald. “Smells like gross dead stuff.”
“That’s because it’s a baby spriggan,” I said.
Gerald crossed his arms. “Oh yeah? How can you tell?”
“You said it yourself. It smells like dead frogs, just like the grown-up spriggan and it kind of looks like the big one did. I mean, it looks worse, but similar.”
“But what’s it doing here? And where’s Easy?” Iris asked.
“How should I know?” Just when I thought I’d fixed one problem another replaced it. I wanted to bang my head on the wall.
“Hey!” a voice yelled from behind Iris’s door.
All three of us jumped and my skin tingled in a most unpleasant way.
“Hey!” The voice got louder and sounded quite annoyed.
“Oh, no,” whispered Iris. “What’d we do?”
“Something else got in,” said Gerald. “Maybe it’ll eat the spriggan.”
“We need to lock the door,” I said. “Where’s the key?”
“It’s in the room,” wailed Iris.
“We can’t lock it in?” asked Gerald. “Great, Iris. Why’d you leave the key in your room?”
“Well, I didn’t know I was going to need it to lock a monster in, did I?” Iris tucked her head into my shoulder and sniffed.
“Hey! Come back! I’m hungry!”
“Who are you?” I yelled, wishing I still had my earring to protect us.
“Are you coming back or what?” yelled the voice with something that sounded like a juicy belch.
“Did you eat the baby?” asked Gerald.
“It’s gone,” yelled the voice.
“What’s gone?” I asked.
“I’m hungry.”
I gestured at the door. “One of you see if you can hear exactly what’s in there.”
Iris pressed her ear against the smooth wooden plank, while Gerald glanced around the hall as if I couldn’t possibly have been talking to him. I gave him a wry look and stepped back from the door.
“Well?” asked Gerald, when looking nonchalant became a chore.
Iris straightened up and smoothed her dress. “I think it’s alone in there.”
“What’s alone? The baby?” I asked.
Iris nodded and I made a decision. “All right. Here we go. Iris, you and Gerald go to my room and lock yourselves in. I’m going in there.”
“No way,” said Iris.
“Forget that,” said Gerald. “We’re staying with you.”
We? When had Gerald and Iris become a we?
“Fine, but don’t blame me if that thing tries to gnaw your legs off,” I said.
From behind the door, the voice yelled, “I’m not a thing and I don’t bite… much.”
Gerald and Iris nodded at me as I grasped the door handle and pulled. The door swung open easily and revealed the baby now sitting on Iris’s mattress next to its pile of poop.
“It’s about time,” the baby said. “I’m hungry. Where’s the food?”
I ignored it and began looking around the room. I peeked in Iris’s closet, under her broken bed and even under a pile of clothing.
“What are you looking for?” asked the baby. “I’m right here.”
The baby appeared to be speaking, but I couldn’t reconcile its age with the voice coming out of its mouth. It couldn’t be real. Something or someone else had to be speaking for it. We searched the room, keeping well away from the baby. It tilted its head and watched us. Intelligence glimmered in its eyes. It was an odd thing to witness. The baby was easily the most repulsive thing I’d ever seen and its smell was unspeakable.
Gerald took a couple of tentative steps toward the mattress. “It’s not a baby,” he said.
“I certainly am a baby,” said the spriggan.
Gerald jumped back. “It heard me.”
“Of course I heard you. I’m sitting right here, numbskull.”
“It can’t be,” said Iris. “It just can’t.”
“It’s not a baby,” Gerald said again.
“I am a baby. Am. Am. Am.” The spriggan got to its feet and hopped up and down on the mattress. The poop began to jiggle back and forth with each hop and the sight made me feel ill. It was hard to say what was worse, the hopping baby or the jiggly poop.
“Oh, please stop that. It’s too gross,” I said.
It sat down and said with an air of expectation, “I’m hungry.”
“How come you can talk?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Babies don’t talk.”
“Obviously we do.”
“Wood fairy babies don’t talk.”
“True. Your babies are slow, but valuable,” it said.
“Valuable?” Iris’s brow wrinkled as she puzzled over the idea of a baby being valuable.
“Yes. Very valuable or I wouldn’t be here.”
I went over to the window and breathed in the fresh clean air until my lungs were ready to burst. “Why are you here?”
The baby’s expression turned glum. “I’m payment in full.”
A queasy knot formed in my stomach. “Payment for what?”
“That other baby, naturally.”
“You mean your family stole Easy and just left you here like we wouldn’t know the difference?”
“They thought you might notice. But, really, why would you care?” The baby spriggan shrugged. “I’m Horc by the way, and about the food.”
“No food. Where’s Easy? Where’s our baby?” I resisted the urge to yell or to stamp my feet. The only thing I didn’t want to do was to shake the truth out of it. That would require touching it.
“They took it.”
“We know that. Where did they take it, I mean where did they take Easy?” I asked.
The baby got to its feet again and slowly said, “I’m hungry.”
“You, you better tell us where they’ve taken him o
r I’ll, I’ll spank you,” I said, raising my hand.
“What’s spank? Is it tasty?”
“It’s not tasty. It’s a spank.” I was going to have to touch it. The idea was absolutely repulsive, but I would do it, if I had to.
The baby gave me a blank look. “I’m hungry.”
“Look, you,” I said as I kicked the edge of the mattress. “I’m not feeding you until you tell me where our baby is.”
The baby raised its eyebrow lumps at me. “Feed me and I’ll tell you.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was being blackmailed by a baby.
“Maybe we should just feed it.” Iris had left the room and was peeking around the door with her fingers pinching her nose.
“I agree,” said Gerald.
I didn’t want to feed it. If I fed it, we might never get rid of it. But what choice did I have. I couldn’t starve the thing. I glared at the baby with my hands on my hips. If I’d been the baby, I would’ve been frightened, but it just sat there looking at me, blinking.
“What do you eat?” I asked.
“Everything, but I’m partial to stink bugs.”
“Gross. You eat stink bugs?”
“You don’t?” The baby’s eyebrow lumps knotted together.
“Maybe that’s why you smell so bad,” said Gerald. “Eating stink bugs can’t help.”
The baby got to its feet and wagged a finger in Gerald’s direction. “I’ll have you know, my scent is perfect. My mother worked for hours to get it just right.”
“You mean, you don’t smell like that naturally?” asked Iris.
“My natural smell is quite odious, but my mother thought I could use a little help,” the baby said.
I turned to Iris. “Go see if you can find some hoecakes in the second storeroom.”
Iris returned with a basket heaped with round corn-colored cakes. She handed it to me, and then rushed out of the room. I handed a cake to the baby. He sniffed the cake, and nibbled the edge. Then he shoved the whole thing in his mouth and swallowed without chewing.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“No kidding,” said Gerald. “You should chew your food. It’s bad for the digestion.”
“Quiet, wood fairy. What you know wouldn’t fill my stomach.” The baby belched and held out his hand for another cake.
Instead of giving him one, I gave one to Iris and Gerald. I put another to my own lips and took a large bite. The baby made a sound that was a cross between a growl and a whimper.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll get more if you cooperate. Now where’s our baby?”
“Home, I expect.”
“Where’s that?”
“Underneath the second cash register. The smell of money is delightful.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“You really are as slow as my uncle said. It’s in the center of the mall.” He held out his hand.
I handed him another cake and watched him gulp it down.
“So wood fairy babies are valuable,” I said. “Why? Easy can’t do anything. He can’t work.”
“They’re valuable because they don’t come on the market very often, but that baby was something more. When my uncle came back and told everyone what he’d found, they all got very excited.” He held out his hand again.
“Why? What’s special about Easy?” Iris asked.
“No idea,” said the spriggan.
I handed it a cake. “If you tell me, I’ll give you another one.”
The baby snorted, took the cake from me and scarfed it down. When he finished, his eyes closed halfway and he rolled over on his side, belching and farting. I didn’t think anything could make Iris’s room smell worse, but I was wrong.
“Don’t go to sleep,” I said. “How do we get him back?”
“You don’t. He’s theirs now, fair and square.”
“Fair and square? Are you crazy? They stole him,” said Iris, coming back into the room.
“They traded. Him for me. Fair and square.” The baby closed his eyes until I kicked the mattress again. “What?” he asked.
“If you help us, we’ll take you home. Don’t you want to go home?” I used my most comforting tone. It was a baby after all. He must want to go home and I wanted him there, too.
The baby snuggled and grunted himself into a more comfortable position. “I’ll stay here.”
“Really?” I asked. “What about your mother?”
His eyes popped open and narrowed at me. “She traded me. Will you?”
I didn’t know what to say. Of course, I’d never trade away a baby, but I didn’t want to keep the baby spriggan either.
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
“Good, then here is better. Good food. It’s not stink bugs, but maybe you’ll get one for me.”
The baby started snoring and we went down the hall to the kitchen. I found a carrying bag in the rubble and filled it with some fruit leather.
“What are you doing?” asked Iris.
“Going after Easy.” I didn’t look at Iris when I said it. I didn’t want her to see how worried I was.
“But it’s dark,” said Iris. “And…”
I handed my water jug to Iris and slipped the carrying bag over my shoulder. “And what?”
“Remember the things I heard earlier?” Iris rubbed her hands together like they were ice cold.
“I went out before and it was okay.”
“They weren’t all awake then.” Iris turned to Gerald. “Tell her, Gerald.”
Gerald’s resentful expression returned to his face. “I don’t see why you have to go after that baby anyway.”
“Gerald! How can you say that?” Iris’s face turned pink and her hands trembled.
“He’s not ours. Why should you go out there in the dark and leave us here? Those spriggan could come back and take us, too.” Gerald advanced on me with his wings spread.
I smoothed down Gerald’s wings and put my hands on his shoulders. “You’re not ours either and I went after you.”
Gerald ducked his head and pulled away from me. “At least wait until morning. There’s too many of them.”
“I can’t wait. It might be too late. What if I’d waited to go get you? Something terrible could’ve happened.”
“That’s different,” Gerald said.
“Why? Because Easy isn’t a Whipplethorn?”
Gerald’s head jerked up. He looked like he was waiting for me to say he wasn’t a real Whipplethorn either. But I didn’t. I patted his shoulder again. “I’m going.”
Iris took my hand and led me to a window. She unlatched the lock and swung it open. “Look there,” she said with a gesture into the darkness.
The mall was dark, but not as dark as I would’ve expected. Besides the strange red glow, there were other lights. Pinpricks and patterns of lights shimmered all over the mall. I couldn’t hear anything, but I sensed a great deal of activity.
“I can hear them all,” said Iris. “If you’re going after Easy, then I’m going, too.”