She stops and leans on the marble railing. Her hands look so different from each other. I stare at them as she says, “You cannot say what you will never do, Zara. Loki is trapped unfairly. Though I am partial because he is my relation. But it is better for him to stay trapped than to kill all in your world. Still, there will be circumstances that may sway you.”
I ask, “Can you see what happens like Cassidy does?”
“The girl with elf blood? Like her, I see only glimpses.” She sighs, uses her ghoulish hand to pick a speck of dust off of the railing. She holds it in the air and lets the current of wind whisk it away. It catches the light and then I can see it no longer. “Let me tell you what I can: you need an army that has nothing to lose.”
Her voice matches my insides like they are made of the same sad emotion. Where do I find an army that has nothing to lose? I think about all the kids we’re training. They all have so much to lose. Still, we are fighting against an apocalypse, so we sort of have nothing to lose. I start to explain this and ask her if I’m right. She gives a slight shrug, the kind of shrug that makes me think I am probably wrong.
“Can you tell me anything else?” I ask.
“Only magic will stop them.”
“A magic thing?”
“The kind of magic that comes from inside.”
Something beneath us has caught her attention. I figure out where she’s looking. It’s past the galloping horses fountain, past a lovely old couple in tweed, over to the left a bit and—
“There’s something going on down there,” I say.
“There is,” she agrees.
“Should we check it out, maybe? Is everything okay?” I’m worried by her lack of concern.
The air in the room seems to empty out. The flute stops. I see him.
My voice fills the void with a rushed whisper. “That’s my dad, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
He’s leaning against a wall, talking. His legs are crossed casually at the ankle. He stops in midsentence and his head slowly moves up so that his gaze meets mine. His lips part just the tiniest bit like they always do when he’s surprised.
“Daddy!” It’s a little-girl word, but I don’t care. That’s what he is. That’s who he is to me.
I fly down the stairs, head spinning, any resolve I had before about not seeing him no longer mattering. My father—here. He is truly here. I hadn’t quite believed it. And so close. And he is running too, racing across the marble floor. People part for him, stepping out of the way so we can get to each other more quickly.
“You’re here! I mean, I knew you were here, but I’m not supposed to see you. I chose …” My words have rushed out of me before I even know what I’m saying, and I break them off as he scoops me up into what we used to call the Daddy Bear Hug. He squeezes and squeezes and I clutch on to him. Nothing has ever felt so good. Not ever. I hold on and hold on. I will never let go.
My feet come back to the ground, but we still hug.
“You died?” he whispers. “So soon?”
“No! No! I’m still alive, just trying to save the world.” I rush out the briefest explanation I can and since he’s my dad and ridiculously smart he understands all of it pretty much instantly.
“I’m so sorry I left you like that, Zara,” he starts. His voice breaks and he tries again. “I-I’ve been so worried about you and your mother. I’m so sorry. So sorry I’m not there for you, to help you, to take care of you.”
“Daddy, you can’t apologize for that.” My fingers flutter up, go to each side of his beautiful dad face. He is scruffy. “You didn’t choose to die. It’s not your fault at all.”
He swallows so hard that his Adam’s apple visibly rides up and down in his throat. An icicle of light shines in his brown eyes.
“I saw him at the window and I was so shocked. My heart froze in my chest. That’s what it felt like …”
“Saw who, Daddy?”
He eyes me. “Your biological father.”
The air whooshes out of me. All this time, that’s what I’d thought had happened, but knowing it still shocks me. My biological father frightened my dad to death. The horribleness of it makes my stomach clench.
My dad’s hand moves across the hair on the top of my head. “I am so proud of you. We never told you so much about who you are, our history, and you—you are so strong and beautiful, Zara. You’re so strong.”
I shake my head and laugh the kind of laugh that means you think someone is being silly. “I wish, Daddy. I wish I was. I wish you were still with us. I’m so glad to see you, but we miss you. We miss you so much.”
“I miss you and your mom and Betty, too, honey. So much.”
“Daddy? Why the books? Why did you hide pixie notes in books? Why not just write them straight out in a notebook or something?”
He smiles. “I thought people might find them and think I was crazy. If I wrote them in margins of books, people might think I was writing my own. I was young, Zara.”
“I wish you’d just told me. You and mom.”
“We wanted you to be safe. We wanted you to grow up free of fear.”
People around us murmur. Have they all been listening? I forgot they were here.
“Zara, we don’t have much time.”
“What do you mean?” Throughout all of this, I’ve pretty much refused to blink because I don’t want to miss one second of seeing him. Trying to memorize his face all over again, I watch his lips move as he talks.
“When we are done with what we are meant to do here, we move on to another place.”
The room goes silent. There are no murmurs.
I speak into that silence. “What other place?”
“Nobody knows.”
I whirl around to look at Hel because she must certainly know.
“What place?” I demand.
My dad’s finger touches the point of my chin and gently turns me back to face him. “Not even she knows. But it’s good. We know it’s good and I can feel it happening. It’s happening now, honey.”
“How can she not know? How can you know it’s good? Daddy, explain this to me.”
Even as I speak, he seems to change, to glow. He unclicks the big silver diver’s watch from his wrist. It has a blue face and lots of dials. I used to love it when I was little. We buried him in it.
“Take this,” he says, and slips it over my hand, onto my wrist. It’s far too big for me and hangs off my wrist bones. “Know that I love you, that I always will love you no matter what choices you make, what paths you have chosen, and what paths you choose in the future. I will always, always love you, baby girl.”
I can feel my face squish into itself, the way it does when I try not to cry but the tears just want so badly to come. My dad smiles a sad, sweet, tender smile.
“You can’t take something from Hel without giving something up in return,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Zara. It has to be something that matters to you.”
“But I just have my clothes and they are just clothes …” Then I realize I’m wearing Nick’s anklet still. It’s the only thing on me that matters even the tiniest bit. It’s the one last thing I have from when we were happy together, and even though it’s dorky I don’t want to be without it, but still I squat and reach into my boot to unclasp it. A dolphin and a star dangle from it. The color changed again. Every time I change species, it changes. I have no idea why. In that short amount of time that I’ve been fiddling with it, my father has changed too. He’s turned completely gold. He’s shimmering with it, shimmering and beautiful. I hand him the thin chain. “Here.”
He takes it and tucks it into his shirt. “Thank you. Tell your mother I love her, and know, Zara—please, please know—how I love you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper.
He taps the watch face on my wrist with his big, solid finger. “I am always with you. Always.”
He steps back.
“Daddy!”
And then he smiles, one fin
al, slow smile that reaches his eyes. He tilts his head and mouths the words “I love you” just before the light coming out of him becomes too intense to witness. I close my eyes for the briefest of seconds and feel it—the rush of him leaving, the good soul of him hanging in the air like the sweet smell of magnolias in Charleston.
“He’s gone.” I gasp as people around me start to applaud.
As I struggle to take it all in, Hel’s arm wraps around my shoulder. “This is a halfway place, a step toward somewhere else.”
“What somewhere else?”
“Your father spoke the truth. I do not know.” She squeezes a little and then drops her arm. “However, I am positive that it is somewhere good for him. Do you not feel it?”
The gold of the air still shimmers around me. “I feel it.”
“It is not always so,” her voice warns and then lightens again. “Your companions await. You must go.”
My fingers reach out to touch the watch that dangles on my left wrist. It is there, solid, functional, and completely my dad. Still, it feels right and I am so glad it is there.
“You let me see him. You said it was an either-or situation. Either I see him or you tell me how to stop the end, but I got both.”
She doesn’t answer my question, but instead leads me back toward the marble stairs. “Come with me.”
I follow, wiping at the tears streaming down my face. People stare at us as we walk up, make way for us as they come down the stairs. The balcony is empty when we get there. She leads me to an overlook. The courtyard below us has filled with people—all sorts of people of different races and genders and ages—and there are animals that I assume are weres, and there are tiny Tinker Bell–type people, flitting about the water fountains and resting on full-sized people’s shoulders. There are a couple people who might actually be giants, and there are pixies, blue in skin. Then, as I’m staring the room doubles and then triples in size and instead of looking down at hundreds of people, I’m looking down at thousands.
“What?” I start to say, but Hel speaks over me.
“Earn your army.”
“What?” I say again. “What do you mean?”
“They have nothing to lose, Zara. Make them fight for you when the time comes.”
“But I’m not even a pixie anymore.”
I swear she rolls her eyes the same way Betty does when she’s completely exasperated with me.
“It does not matter,” she says, looking down at the thousands below us. “It is your character that makes the difference, not your species. Now begin.”
Begin? How do I begin? They stare up at me, thousands of eyes and heads, thousands of souls, waiting to listen to me, Zara White, former pixie queen, current human being. I remember failing so miserably when I had to first talk to our pixies. I’d been so immature. And now? Now the fate of our world might depend on this speech. I breathe in as deeply as I can and grab the railing. The marble is cold beneath my fingers. I want to make my dad proud of me. Actually, I want to make me proud of me.
“My name is Zara White,” I begin, “and I am asking for your help.”
I don’t imagine everyone in their underwear or anything because some of them are pretty gross already and they need all the clothes they have to cover up wounds and sores and burns. It’s never good to vomit in the middle of a speech. Plus, it just seems kind of pervy to imagine everyone half naked. Instead, I take a couple big breaths to calm myself down.
“My name is Zara White,” I repeat. “I stand before you to swear that this will not be the end of the world, but a beginning. I stand before you to beg for your help.”
There’s a murmur among them. Hoping it’s not a disgruntled murmur, I continue. “Centuries ago there was a description of a great apocalypse that would befall the world, the Ragnarok. All but two humans would die. It is my responsibility to stop that fate, and I need your help.”
There is another murmur. I scan the crowd for Astley, Nick, Issie, and Amelie, but I don’t see them there, can’t find them among all the heads.
“I don’t know what century you all are from, but the world is still full of goodness and badness. It is still full of love and pain. And each person in it holds the power to determine his or her own fate. Each person has a chance to live his or her own life to its absolute fullest, to choose to live kindly or not, to love or not …”
I spot Astley in the crowd. He nods at me and smiles. My heart warms from seeing him moving, looking alive, looking at me.
“But the side of evil, of unchecked needs and lust for power, is strong now, too strong, and it wants the world to end—the world that you all probably loved so much, the world that I love so much despite all its problems.”
Nick stands by Astley, just behind him and to his right. Despite the massive crowd around them, I can see his face. It looks like he’s holding his breath. My ankle feels empty without the chain there, but it will be okay. We all have to feel empty sometimes.
“I’m just a human, but I know that I can’t dare to forget, today or any day, that I have a responsibility to my friends, to my town, to my world. And I know that you were once of that world, too, and I know that you have left that world behind and that this place—this place—”
I remember my dad glowing so beautifully, so full of love.
“—is just one step in your journey, in all of our journeys, toward something bigger and more beautiful and more glorious. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a responsibility to others, to let them have the lives they need to have, to let them have lives free of terror, to let them have lives where they can be the best people they can be.
“I beg of you to help me when the time comes, to choose to fight for those you’ve left behind, for the world you’ve left behind. It is not perfect, but it is your legacy. It is not perfect, but it is a testament to years of human courage, of hardship, of joy. No, it’s not perfect, but none of us are. Our lack of perfection doesn’t mean that we should not be brave, love, and do perfect deeds. I know that when I think about the people I love that I dare not forget where it is I have come from. Do you? You leave behind you the heirs of humanity, and it is our duty—our absolute duty—to keep them safe. You have one more chance to do one more selfless thing. You have one more chance to save our world. Please join me when the time comes. Please show the world that evil does not always triumph, that good can overcome. Thank you.”
They are silent. Did I blow it? I think maybe I’ve blown it.
One small baby girl, maybe about five years old, yells, “Hooray!” and then there is applause—huge, thunderous applause. The balcony echoes with it and it sounds like horses stampeding to the rescue, like hope, really. Yes, like hope. My heart beats again. My eyes close.
“You have your army,” Hel whispers in my ear, and somehow I can hear it despite the noise of the dead clapping. The smell of vanilla and death is overwhelming again.
I argue. “But I’m not magic. You said that magic stops—”
“Sound the alarm. They will come.” Hel smiles at me. “Trust in yourself, Zara White. Have faith.”
And then she claps a rotting hand on my shoulder and says, “I hope when your time comes to pass, that you will stop here and not Valhalla.”
“Me too,” I say. “Me too.”
COUNTY SHERIFF 911 TRANSCRIPT
Boy: I can hear my name. Someone’s in the woods by the road saying my name.
911 Operator: What’s your location?
Boy: Can you hear that?
911 Operator: Sweetie, I need to know where you are so we can send help.
Boy: The Shore Road by Water Street. I’m walking. Oh … I can hear …
911 Operator: Hello? Hello?
It’s hard to find my friends again because of the milling crowd below and then I spot people moving aside, as if others are trying to get through to me. Nick is pushing his way through the dead, the others trailing behind him.
Issie’s thin voice yells, “Sorry! So sorry! Excu
se us.”
It makes me smile. And then Astley must give up, because he soars up through the crowd and lands on the balcony next to Hel and me. He manages to land on one foot and wobbles a bit, but doesn’t fall down.
Once he’s steady, he looks to Hel and they exchange greetings that are formal and boring and then he sputters out, “Freezing us was decidedly uncalled for!”
She raises an eyebrow. “I needed to talk to Zara alone. Do you dare confront me in my own realm, Star King, and tell me my procedure is unwarranted?”
“Yes. No. It’s just—”
“You can see that your queen is unharmed and you have been unfrozen. Do not make me regret my hospitality,” she says with a warning tone, and then she retreats a few steps back and calls to a man to come attend her. The moment she is gone, Astley swoops me into a hug and lifts me up, spinning me around.
“You were brilliant!” he gushes. “So brilliant and queenly.”
“No bunny pajamas this time,” I kid.
“I was so proud of you, I almost forgot to be angry at her,” he says, kissing the side of my head and letting me back down.
As Nick, Issie, and Amelie get closer I grab his arm and whisper, “I saw my father.”
His eyes widen. “Which one?”
I explain it was my stepfather, the one who raised me, and his smile grows so big that his face can hardly contain it. “That is so wonderful!”
He spins me around again in his joy and I laugh with him, letting happiness fill me before everyone else comes. They rush up the stairs, and then for a second we all just stand awkwardly around. My feet plant on the floor. Issie glows with happiness despite the fact that she was frozen a little bit ago. Nick looks part angry and part confused.
“You know,” Nick says, breaking the silence as he surveys the scene around him. “This isn’t at all what I imagined Hel would look like.”
“Me neither!” Issie chirps. “I imagined it a lot less frozen outside, with demons and pitchforks and hellfire flames everywhere. This is totally better.”
Amelie raises an eyebrow.
Hel’s voice rings over us, much more commanding than it was before. It seems to have layers of depth to it. “I hope it is a pleasant surprise.”