“How old are you?” I asked him.
He blinked at me in reply. Was he stunned? Dazed? Drugged? All of the above?
“Do you know where you are?”
I thought I caught the faintest nod of agreement in response, but he still didn't speak. The enormous beanbag was shifting around him, and he didn't struggle against it. Maybe he felt safer, hidden inside the pillowing chair.
“Small for your age, but I'm guessing you're about seven years old, am I right?”
Still nothing.
“Well, sit tight. I've got some more shopping to do, then I'll get you out of here.” I had no idea what I'd do with the kid, but I'd think of something. There wasn't any good that was going to come of leaving him here, that was for sure.
“Hey, Harlow!”
Skating down the cobblestone aisles on enchanted skates were a pack of rollergirls, Betsy Won't leading the way.
“Hey, Betsy.” I wasn't sure what to say to her. I didn't really know her, and it felt awkward, her being part of Deb's former roller derby team and all. Was the team even going to keep skating together, after Jag's departure? “Merry Christmas.” Gods, that was probably lame, but whatever.
“Deb here?” she asked.
I must have looked suspicious because she hurriedly added “We're getting a team together for RollerCan—totally above board, just need to skate, and a bunch of us want to head out West and take on some challenge matches. Might even form a WFTDA league, if they'll have us.” She handed me a brochure. IF IT ROLLS ON 8 WHEELS, IT WILL BE AT ROLLERCAN!
“I'll pass this on to Deb,” I said. It pained me to think of her skating off with these girls again, but then, April wasn't part of the group anymore, as far as I knew.
Betsy grasped my hand and looked me hard in the eye. “She's a tough kid, Harlow. She can take care of herself, you know.”
“Merry Christmas, girls,” I said. “Stay off the streets, won't ya?” And then they were skating off, a pack of raggedy fishnets and feathery boas, and before I thought better of it, I heard myself invite them over.
“Come by the mansa later, recruit her yourself,” I called from atop the barrow like some magnanimous idiot.
Betsy wheeled around and stopped. She smiled, her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Sure, Harlow.” She agreed so quickly, I was pretty sure she was doing so before I could take it back.
“What am I doing?” I whispered.
BrindleTop growled.
“You're right, you're right, man. Better pick up some food.”
I looked over my shoulder at the tiny pair of holey tennis shoes and the fluffy head peeking out from the beanbag. “What do you like to eat?” I said. “Ham okay?” He wiggled. I took that as a yes.
We loaded up on Gruber's Farms finest, with several hams and a leg of goat thrown in, just in case. All that shopping was thirsty work. I purchased three Croaks—one for me, one for BrindleTop, and one for the boy, who jumped when it opened, its trademark froggy sound bellowing out with the flip of the metal cap.
“It doesn't actually taste like a frog,” I said. His eyes were enormous, looming like two dark saucers. He drank the Croak faster than BrindleTop did his. I slipped him a slice of cheese bread, another Gruber's Farm specialty. Those Grubers were damned good farmers, damned good cooks, damned good wine-makers. You name it. There's no cooking like Amish Troll cooking.
I'd just about spent all the gold I'd brought, and was getting perilously close to having to barter for goods, so I figured I'd call it quits and pick up some Bingo Pull-tabs as last minute gifts for the gang. God only knew who would show up. I'd invited a dozen people, I thought, including the band. Now the rollergirls.
Not to mention, I had a kid to smuggle out of the market. I picked up a few unlimited topping pizzas on the way out, and a couple of whole broasted chickens.
“Why not? It's Christmas.”
Deb
The invitation hung on the air, so delicate and magical, like all things Harlow does.
I missed him.
Hadn't seen him much lately since Mom and I were trying to work it out. I mean, I didn't have to stay with her. Didn't always want to, either, but things had improved so much between us since the whole Jag thing went down. Whether it made sense or not, I still loved my sister and wanted my mom in my life—shitty mom that she was, she was still the only mom I'd ever known.
I knew I had every right to leave her after all her lies and manipulations, but she was working so hard to make things right between us, I really felt like I owed it to her to give our family another chance. And, anyway, it was Christmas. She'd promised to spend it with Gennifer and me this year, somewhere other than the Bingo Hall. Nevermind the fact she was still banned from the Hall for diddling the Bingo host. It was the thought that counted.
“You gonna go?” Gennifer asked. We stood outside the Buy-Lo, Gennifer having a clove cigarette while Mom filled up the shopping cart with the gods only knew what would pass for a holiday dinner. Probably Saltines and butter, the way she'd been spending money lately. Another great reason for not leaving her entirely. I wasn't sure she'd survive without someone to pay the utility bills and deliver the rent money to the trailer park office.
Gennifer puffed on her clove, pausing to lick her lips, and smile. She was still pretty husky, but since she was back home, she'd picked up basketball again for her senior year of high school, and seemed to have the faeth pretty much out of her system. I knew she missed it sometimes, knew she missed Dave—or the dream of Dave, whatever it was she was in love with before. I couldn't leave her alone, either. Whether or not the debt I owed her and her mother was legit, magically, in my heart I didn't want to throw my sister to the wolves and walk away. From what I'd seen of the world so far, there wasn't all that much worth sacrificing a loved one over. Maybe when we were both a little bit older, I'd have Mom trained up better to take care of herself, and Gennifer and I would both find our way out of Bedrock.
Maybe Harlow would, too.
“Yeah, I think I'll go,” I said. “You wanna come?”
“I thought you'd never ask,” Gennifer said, stubbing her clove out on the sidewalk with her flip flop. There was an ashtray three feet away, but she seemed to miss it, completely.
By the time we got home, Mom had bitched for so long about why in the world we'd want to abandon her on Christmas Eve, Gennifer and I both had major guilt trips going. As we unloaded the groceries, however, all that changed.
“Mom, you seriously only bought chips and booze?” Gennifer pulled bottle after bottle out of the plastic bags, setting each one up on the table like evidence.
“Captain Morgan, meet your new mama,” I whispered.
“Shut up!” Mom yelled. “I didn't just buy booze and chips.” She rustled through a bag and pulled out a pint of Ben & Jerry's. “I bought the Americone Dream, too!”
My face was firmly into my palm before I even thought about it.
“Everybody change,” I said. “We're getting out of this dump and going to a better one.”
The mansa was lit up like a hot air balloon at night. I'd no idea it was all that big, but it seemed Harlow had made some magical enhancements just for the occasion. Light spilled out from every crack in the canvas, from between each tarp and what would normally be called camouflage. Was there any point in camouflaging the mansa on Christmas Eve, though? I mean, no chance the English would be hanging around the landfill on their holiest of nights, I guess.
“Hey, babygirl!” It was Derek, hugging me around the neck like old times. For once, it didn't bother me. Maybe the fact we'd survived McJagger's together had made me fonder of the redneck gangsta wannabe, but what the hell. It was Christmas. I hugged him back.
“Aw, yeah, that's what I'm talking about,” he said.
“You're a gruesome twat,” I said, pulling away from him.
“Just like you like it, baby,” he said, pushing his hands
through my hair, getting them tangled in the frizz.
“Damn it, Derek,” I said, but before I could chastise him any further, a little boy was tugging on my shirt tail.
“Where'd you come from?” I asked, probably a bit too harshly, because he took his hand off my shirt and backed away. Sometimes I forgot to glamour my teeth, and they were pointy as hell now. Probably terrified the little guy.
“Hey, I'm sorry,” I said, squatting down to be eye-level with him. “Are you lost?”
He pointed toward the mansa, and before he could answer, Harlow pushed open the door flap and bounded out, the sound of an electric guitar doing a sound check unmistakably drifting out from within.
“Deb!” he said, and then his arms were around me, holding me gently and hugging me like I hadn't just seen him the day before. Harlow may not have been my type, but his hugs sure were.
I dislodged myself from his hulking embrace and grinned up at him. “Sounds like a party in there. Brought the fam, hope that's okay.” I gestured over my shoulder to where my mom and sister had been standing, but when Harlow's eyebrows shot up in amusement, I turned to find mom digging through a trash pile several yards away.
“I bought party favors, honest!” Harlow called. “You don't gotta do that.” He reached into one of his pocket and pulled out some Bingo pull-tabs, shuffling off to catch up to her.
“Keeping it classy, yo,” I muttered.
Gennifer had glommed onto the mystery kid, and was braiding his long hair. “You're a filthy little guy, aren't you?” she said. Despite all she'd been through in the past year, or maybe because of it, she had softened so much. She never would have touched a strange, dirty child before she was kidnapped by drug-dealing trolls and held for ransom.
Derek stooped in front of the kid, too, and held out a small parcel. It looked as if someone without opposable thumbs had pulled a piece of Scotch tape a yard long and hastily applied it to a balled wad of last year's wrapping paper, and I couldn't help but chuckle. “Here, little man,” he said. Then, whispering to me “I was going to give this to you, but...”
The kid unwrapped a shiny new belt buckle, studded with turquoise and red stones against a sterling silver background. Budweiser, it read.
I rewarded Derek with a kiss on the cheek. Probably shouldn't have. Sixteen years as neighbors had taught me that he was the horniest of horndog teenage boys in town, but that business of getting himself kidnapped and then pretty much being my only friend inside McJagger's lair had sort of brought us closer.
“Damn, babygirl,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “I'm all tingly now.”
I stood up and kicked him sideways, everyone laughing as he fell into a pile of frozen garbage.
“You're lucky it's Christmas,” I said. I tried to keep a grim face, but I'm sure the smile leaked out the edges. What wasn't to love? Everyone I loved was here and we were ready to celebrate. The only thing that would have made it better was...
April, my mind filled in.
“Food!” I yelled, unintentionally.
“Did somebody say food?” It was Holly Kingsgaim, the bassist in Harlow's band. No sooner had the “f” word left her mouth than the rest of the band was salivating, spilling out around here into the scene.
“Best break out a case of them Croaks you like, sir,” I said to Harlow. “Otherwise you're going to have a riot on your hands, with this bunch.”
Harlow
And what a riot it was. The food was gone in no time, and with swift purchase the Eve was upon us, all rollicking trolls, friendly fae, and miscellaneous orphans. “Oh come let us adore him,” I sang to the mysterious orphan, and he quite nearly cracked a smile.
My dad even stopped by for a bit, leaving me a package wrapped in a golden cloth, trimmed with a purple velvet ribbon. Hey, he might have been locked in a dungeon for most of my life and presumed dead, but now that he was back on the throne, my dad did the whole King-thing right. I couldn't wait to see what he'd brought me, but I decided to wait until the morning, have a proper Christmas for once.
“Y'all open your gifts,” I said.
“'Y'all?' Since when do you say 'y'all?'” Deb asked, tearing the paper off a Lord of the Rings-branded sword, standing up to swing it, an instant blur above the heads of our friends.
“Hey, watch the hair!” Holly said, unwrapping a Pixies Monkey Gone to Heaven tee shirt, and holding it up to her chest. “Thanks, Harlow,” she said. “This rules.”
The rollergirls arrived not long after, and egged us into improvising a 12 Days of Christmas thing. We'd already worked our way through twelve pixes chanting, eleven Croaks a-ribbiting, ten Grubers farming, nine rollergirls, eight trolls-in-waiting , seven bingo junkies, six golems shopping, five fae musicians, four extra beanbags, three unlimited topping pizzas, and two flea markets. I was just singing “and a changling in a magazine” for what I hoped was the last time, when I realized who the kid was. Call me dumb, but it took a dozen repetitions to place him.
To place him.
I looked around the main room of the mansa, and the kid was nowhere to be found.
“Kid!” I yelled. “Come out! I gotta present for you!”
And then I couldn't help it—my eyes went to the makeshift Christmas tree the gang had dug out of the landfill pickings, an old threadbare silk ficus, probably a Big Lots reject from the year before. The snow pixies hovered about the thing giving it the appearance of lace snowballs, lighting up from within with tiny blue sparks as they rattled their smashed-bell voices along with the music. Beneath it, where I'd left my dad's gift, an obvious hole glared at me. A hole in the gift-time continuum. My prezzie was gone.
“Damn it, kid!” I yelled, this time with more anger than I'd have liked, but what the hey, man. I might be a nice troll, but I'm still a troll.
I ran out of the mansa and into the dumpscape. The snow as coming down good now, and the tyke had left tracks. I set off after him, his smell filling my nose, fresh with longing and desperation. He was young and confused, well-fed and not particularly afraid of us, but perhaps this night had been too much—I still had no idea what he'd been through at the market, how he'd come to be there or how long he'd been among the fae. Heaven only knew what he thought we'd do to him this Christmas Eve.
The clanging of smashed bells behind me told me the snow pixies were on my tail. “Go back to the party,” I said. “I've got this covered.” These were nice pixies, but, still—as a species, they had a way of getting in one's way at the most inopportune times.
I ran several acres away from the mansa, past the mountains of recent trash and into the tundra of frozen ecopoisons, when I found him, a tiny bundle silhoutted on the white plain of snow, now thick enough to swallow up his backside as he crouched over something. He had to be freezing in his worn and grubby clothes.
I reached down to scoop him up. “C'mon, kid,” I said, “let's get you back ins--” That was when I saw it. The gift my dad had given me. The boy clutched a golden microphone in his hands, a tag hanging from it. Gently scrolling calligraphy moved across the slip of parchment in red and green ink, twinkling as it went.
I am a magic mic
For wishes and for chants
This Christmas night
Speak true and right
For one is all I'll grant
I'm told you are a singer
Of charisma and prowess
Perhaps you'd like a record deal or
A rollergirl princess?
And should you waste your wish
Don't worry
Don't you fret
For a tender price you might
Buy another yet
The Wizard
“What a weirdo,” I said.
The child clutched the microphone to his chest.
“You know that was a gift from my dad, right?”
The kid just looked at me, his white-blonde hair gleaming in the enormous moon. His skin shone pale as the snow i
n that ethereal light. I was reminded once again of the changeling-turned-movie star from the Moonlight films. His eyes were huge and dark, but I saw the hope within them. Maybe hope he hadn't dared to let grow until just now.
I sighed. I could hear the pixies clanging from the distance, and I glanced over my shoulder to see a blue glow approaching from the direction of the mansa. From the sounds of it, the whole party had come in search of their errant host, and as he was me, there was only one thing to do.
“Go on and make your wish, kid, before the crowd shows up and it goes all hooey.”
He leaned forward, cupped his hands around the mic, and spoke so quietly, I wouldn't have heard him at all if I weren't magical.
“Let me go home,” he said. I felt something inside me crack, where I didn't know there was anything left to break.
As the gang gathered round, smiling and smoking and singing in the moonlight, the child looked up at us all, a smile on his face.
“Hey, I don't know which one of us is going to take you home, little man, but it has to come true now, doesn't it?”
And then, I did know.
The old, bony hand of The Wizard pushed its way through the circle of friends. Skinny as a breath and remarkably decked in red and white robes, his roman sandals peering out from beneath, the old man lay a finger aside of his nose, and all fell silent.
“You called?” he said, looking over cresent moon glasses to face me. Although he was at least a foot and a half shorter than me, he felt taller.
I pointed to the kid.
“Naturally,” the Wizard said. When he spoke, his voice sounded gruff, as if it hadn't been used in ages, or perhaps it had been used too much, too often. Extending his staff to the child he motioned as if the child should reach out and take it.
“Wait a second, wait a second!” Deb yelled. “Where are you going with this kid?” She didn't know the Wizard—not that I did, but she'd never lain eyes on him, to my knowledge. “What if I'm his protector, are you gonna go through me to get him?”
The Wizard regarded her cooly, then bowed his head in reverance. “My dear lady, I have no desire to challenge a Wheeler to duel on this most hallowed of nights. I am only here to fulfill the child's wish, and escort him safely home.”