Issie asks, “Why iron?”
Devyn goes into full geek mode and answers before I can, “Iron is one of the last elements that is created by stellar nucleo-synthesis.”
I have no idea what he just said.
Neither does anyone else.
“English, Devyn,” Nick commands.
Devyn’s exasperation shows in the way he pulls his hand through his hair. “It’s really heavy. It’s really dense. And its nuclei have these ridiculously high levels of binding energy. It’s strong, really strong.”
“But why don’t pixies like it?” I ask.
Devyn shrugs. “Does it matter?”
Mrs. Nix clears her throat. “That’s one part of the folklore that has stayed consistent about pixies. It always says that they can be killed with iron, that they avoid it.”
“Well,” I say. “Let’s hope that’s true.”
“What’s your plan?” Nick asks.
“To make them prisoners,” I lock eyes with Nick, and then indicate that I’m thinking about the basement. “We have these big metal railroad ties from train tracks. And some wire. Mrs. Nix, you brought some more with you, right?”
“Right,” she says.
“We have duct tape and stainless steel forks,” I check them off.
“This is a weird idea, Zara,” Devyn says. “I mean . . . yeah. Wow. Forks?”
“It is the best I can come up with.” I wipe my hands together, try not to think about my mother trapped in there, try not to think about Jay Dahlberg’s wounds, and try not to think about the possible moral implications of what we’re about to do. “Everybody set?”
Everybody is set.
“Good,” I say. “Let’s get going.”
“You think this will work, Zara?” Issie asks.
We are hiding behind a tree trunk. We’ve got a massive stash of barbed wire and railroad ties behind us.
I grab her hand and squeeze it. “I hope so.”
She squeezes back. “Me too.”
“You don’t have to help, you know,” I whisper.
“Oh, shut up,” she says, blowing warm air onto her hands. “Friends help friends fight pixies.”
“Right,” I say. “Right.”
I glance over at the other trees. Betty is behind one. Devyn and Nick are behind another. Devyn’s in eagle form, and Mrs. Nix is a bear. Everyone else seems human. The end of some barbed wire dangles from Devyn’s beak.
Mrs. Nix lumbers toward the house. She sniffs the air. Her bear paws pad heavily against the earth. She wiggles her ears forward. That’s our signal that no pixies are outside.
Nick gives me the thumbs-up. We haven’t talked much about me being the daughter of a pixie. We haven’t had time. My mom’s more important now. But I’m still afraid of what it might mean for us, for me.
Not important now.
I give the second signal and we go. We sprint toward the house, carrying ties and stabbing them into the earth. One after another, we shove them down. Is and I work together because neither of us are super strong and my arm holds me back. Devyn’s yellow beak glistens in the twilight. Wire hangs from it. He wheels the barbed wire around, connecting the ties. We have to hurry before the pixies notice that something is happening.
Issie shoves a tie into the snow. “You’re sure there’s a house there.”
“I swear,” I say, laying out another tie. My muscles burn from the weight. “I can see it. I promise.”
“Sometimes it sucks being human,” Issie says. We both lean in, slamming down another tie.
“No, Is. No, it doesn’t.”
We hauled all of the iron stuff over here in carts hitched behind snowmobiles that belong to Issie’s parents and Mrs. Nix. I didn’t realize how heavy the ties were then, but they are. It’s adrenalin that keeps us moving. Gram dumps some more. Devyn grabs more barbed wire. His giant wings flap through the air. The circle is almost complete. We only need a few more.
Nick rushes past me, his arms full of ties. He cuts across the front lawn. The front door of the house opens. Mrs. Nix roars out a warning.
I throw down another tie.
“Nick!” I yell. He looks up. “They’re coming out!”
A pixie rushes toward Nick. His teeth are fanged and deadly. He lunges for Nick. Nick lashes out with the barbed wire. It hits the pixie in the face. Steam rises from a burn mark on the pixie’s skin. He stumbles to the ground, hand to his cheek. Nick stands there, waiting.
“Get back, Nick!” Gram yells.
Nick hesitates. His muscles seem to bunch up and shake. He wants to turn wolf. I know it.
“Now!” Gram orders.
He rushes back toward her, leaping over the wire and tires, outside our almost circle.
More pixies leave the house. They are all dressed up for some sort of party. The velvet and satin gowns flap in the wind. The tuxedos all seem perfectly tailored. They should be beautiful, but I know what they are. They are not beautiful, because beauty is about grace and love and hope. They are all about need.
Mrs. Nix takes the last bit of barbed wire out of Devyn’s mouth and wraps it around. The circle is complete.
“Change,” Gram orders Nick. “Now.”
A railroad tie falls over. I rush to grab it. My hands try to push it deeper into the cold hard earth. It wobbles, pulling at the pressure of the wires, destabilizing the whole thing.
“Gram!” I yell. “A little help here.”
She runs to my side. We both force the tie down, using all our body weight to stabilize it. The pixies start chanting, some crazy monotonous words that my head doesn’t understand, but my body shudders, chilled and terrified.
Nick appears at my side, wolf again. His hackles raise. He growls, teeth showing. The muscles in his back tense.
I press my hand on his side. “No. Stay outside the circle. With me.”
The pixies are still funneling out the door, ignoring the injured one by the steps.
My mother appears at the doorway. She’s wearing a long white gown that has way too much lace on it. She starts across the snow, one foot in front of the other. She slips along the side of the house, while the rest come forward, one horrible mass of them.
The circle wobbles. It has to hold. I grab the tie, try to steady it.
The wind blows Issie’s hair. Her eyes are all terror. She can see it now, obviously. “Zara, back up.”
Then the king strides out. The wind lifts his hair. He glares at us, at his pixies. He knows what we’ve done. He raises his arms. The chanting becomes louder, evolves into war cries, wild and frenzied, but the pixies themselves are still moving slowly, judging us and the situation, waiting for orders, I think.
“Can you see him?” I ask Nick, as Devyn lands on his outstretched arm. The talons rest on a special glove so they won’t cut through the skin.
Nick growls.
Gram says, “They’ve dropped the glamour. I see them.”
“Don’t change,” I say. “Okay?”
She nods.
The pixie king makes eye contact with Gram. In less than a second he is standing in front of her. He is taller than she is. His eyes have gone silver. Only barbed wire and railroad ties separate them.
“Tiger?” His face shakes with anger. “You . . . you did this.”
Gram laughs at him. She laughs at the pixie king like he’s nothing. “Naw, I didn’t think this up. Your daughter did.”
He turns toward me. Zip-flashes in front of me. His eyes are all silver and liquid like the iron we’ve surrounded him with. “You’ve trapped us.”
The white thread that’s been around my finger since my dad died breaks off and flits in the wind. It crosses the iron bars and he catches it in his hand. He pinches the thread between his fingers, stares at it.
Mrs. Nix’s bear form swats a pixie man out of the way. She strolls the inner boundary, growling, creating a diversion.
“Your highness!” one of the pixie women says. Her voice panics in the wind.
??
?Do not approach the bear,” he orders. “Only in groups of five. Surround it.”
Mrs. Nix stands on her hind legs. Devyn flies to the roof, a wire hanging from his beak. He attaches it to the chimney. A pixie dangles out a second-story window, trying to snatch him. He misses Devyn and roars.
“The queen, your highness!” the same pixie woman yells.
The king breaks his glare for the tiniest fraction of a second and looks to see what is going on off to his side. This is where my mother is. I know he sees her about to cross the wire circle. I know, but he doesn’t do anything. That’s when I realize how trapped he really is, trapped by his nature and his role, trapped by his need. Still, he’s making a choice, a kind choice.
“Your highness!” the pixie repeats. Her blond hair flies wildly in the wind.
He ignores her, just stares straight into my eyes as Issie helps my mother across the barbed wire. Mrs. Nix leaps after her, back to us, back where it’s safer.
Nick thumps his tail against the ground. He and Mrs. Nix guard her, using their bodies as an extra layer of protection.
“You trapped my mother,” I say. “I had to get her free.”
The king stares at me. I stare back. The coldness of him is immense. Nick comes and presses against my side. I stare at my prisoners. I don’t know if this is right or not. I don’t know if Amnesty International would approve, or if my dad would approve, but it’s all I can think to do.
Another pixie leaps forward, arms open, trying to capture my mother. His tuxedo hits the iron wires first. Then he starts to burn. Three other shrieking pixies pull him back. I grab the tie again, trying to stabilize it from the wiggling.
Nick growls.
The king finally, publicly, notices that my mother is out, free, walking next to Issie, coming closer to me.
He roars, “What have you done?”
I don’t answer. My heart beats crazy happy just to see her get across the iron. She’s not burned. She’s still human.
“Zara.” His voice is measured. “I need her to maintain control.”
“You don’t need to be in control. You’re all trapped. So there’ll be no more stealing boys, no more shooting arrows in the woods, getting people lost. It’s all over.” The metal is cold on my fingers.
Devyn grabs more wire, starts another flight. A group of pixies leaps for him, screaming, a wild, chaotic mess. They start clawing at each other, lost in fear and hunger, angry. A pixie in a pink dress shrieks when another wearing a black gown lashes at her, slashing through the skin on her arm.
“Zara?” The king tries to be calm and nice. He tries to look human. It doesn’t work. “Do you know what this means? Do you know the power that I’ll lose? The need? We will fight in here. We will kill each other.”
“I know,” I say and my voice shakes as I stare at him, this man who is in my blood, but not me. He is not me. Still, I understand his need, his fear. He is stuck in this awful place where there is no moral way to move forward. “I’m so sorry.”
And I am.
I let go of the tie. I turn my back.
He rushes at me. The moment he moves my mother screams, lunging forward. She can’t help. She’s too far away. His hands curl around my arms and he pulls me closer to him. His hands and arms are burned and blistered from going over the iron. He’s still strong, though. My broken arm jostles. My teeth clench. The pain is crazy. Snarls come from my right and left.
“Stay back, Mom.” I yank a fork out of my pocket and jab it into the king’s leg. He screams and loses his grip, toppling backward.
“Get in there,” I demand.
He glares at me. Steam comes from his burning skin.
My mother stands next to me. She’s holding a bread knife. “She means it.”
He stands up and moves back. His face flinches. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would do anything for my daughter.” She says. Her hand doesn’t even shake.
“In the house,” I order. “All of you. Now.”
They turn and move like ants, streaming back into their nest. He is the last one to go inside. He waits.
I offer him this, “If I can think of something else to do, I’ll come back. I promise.”
His head barely moves. His voice is a whisper in the cold, bitter wind, but I can still hear it. “Are your promises like your mother’s?”
“No,” I say. “My promises are like mine.”
My mother wraps her arm around my waist. She kisses the side of my head. I’m not sure which of us is trembling more. She doesn’t say anything as he shuts the door.
“Okay. Fast,” I order. We hurry. Nick turns human again, climbs up to the second and third floor, duct-taping knives and forks to the windows, taping wire across the panes. We do the same thing on the lower floors.
“I hope it holds,” Issie says, ripping duct tape off and slapping it on some wire, sticking it to the wall.
“We’ll come back every day and check,” I say, twisting the wire over a window.
A pixie smashes her face against the glass. She shows her teeth, growling. Nick leaps down, jumps toward the window, snarling, protective but still human. I slap a spoon right where her tongue is. Even though there’s glass between us, she leaps away.
Gram and Mrs. Nix finish sealing off the door. Bear paws are like hands. I never knew that.
We all step back and step over the wire. The entire place is full of wire and iron and railroad ties, duct tape and silverware. It looks bizarre, like some sort of Disney house warped by an angry filmmaker.
“Good,” I say.
“Good.” My mom grabs my hand and walks me back to the snowmobile.
The pixies howl in the distance.
“I can’t see it anymore,” Issie says.
I can.
“You’re too far away from it now,” Gram says. “The glamour hides it from humans and shifters.”
I can still see it.
A pixie screeches from somewhere inside the house. The woods seem to tumble under the weight of the noise.
Nobody says anything, not even when we get back on the sleds and ride away. Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes you just face your fears and you capture them, locking them away.
Days pass. We struggle through them. My mom and I head out on snowmobiles and stare at the house.
“I can’t see it,” she says.
“That’s because you’re actually human,” I say.
“If the glamour hiding it is still there, he must still be alive.” She shuts off the snowmobile and we just stare. “I can’t even see the wire.”
I can see it all. It must be that pixie side. It looks ridiculous. A beautiful house circled by railroad ties and barbed wire. Forks and knives and spoons duct taped to windows.
Wind blows some loose snow in swirls around us, tiny snow twisters. I close my eyes against the cold.
“You okay, sweetie? Does your arm hurt?” she asks.
“I’m good,” I answer and open my eyes. There’s no point trying to shut out the house. I can see it in my dreams.
“It’s safe, right?” I ask. “They can’t get out.”
She nods. “They can’t get out. It was a smart idea.”
She leans off the snowmobile and grabs some snow in her hands. She balls it up and throws it. The snowball splats against the side of the house. She suddenly looks younger, more powerful, more like she did when my dad was still alive.
“That felt good, even if I couldn’t see it hit.” She smiles. “Want me to make you one?”
It’s crazy how we can change, how even your mother—who you thought was the wimpiest of all wimps—can pull out a hard-ass stance against a supernatural being. Like even you yourself can be tough.
I reach out my hand for her snowball. “Yeah.”
Everyone can be brave, right?
I’m into that. I throw the ball. It smashes into the side of the house, splats, and falls. My mom throws her arm around me for a second and we stand there.
The
pixie king stood in my grandmother’s living room just a week ago. I’m back at school again, but things are different. My arm is in a cast. I can’t run anymore so Issie has roped me into planning the annual Harvest Ball that is on Halloween.
My mom and I don’t know if we’re going to go back to Charleston. We think we might stay. It’s not fair to Devyn and Issie, Mrs. Nix, Gram and Nick to be the only ones to check that the pixies are still trapped in the house.
“I’m so sorry about all of this,” she tells me, right before she starts the snowmobile. She tells me this every single day.
And I say what I say every single day, “I know.”
My mom drops me off at school. She’s commandeered Yoko, which is totally unfair.
“Hurry. You’re late.”
I rush through the doors as the bell rings and try to get to homeroom, but Nick catches me by the arm and pulls me into the gym supply closet. Soccer balls and nets surround us. The air smells like leather sports equipment and mold and Nick. We have to stand close. I look up into his face. There’s stubble on his chin, rough edges to the straight lines of him.
“Jay Dahlberg’s doing better,” he says. His eyes are dark and sad. “He doesn’t remember anything. Devyn’s parents say it’s his brain’s way of protecting him.”
I swallow. “That’s good.”
“Everyone thinks Megan has moved away. Nobody knows what happened—that Betty killed her. And they think that Ian was kidnapped by the same guy who got Jay. His family is out of control, going on CNN, Fox News, everything.”
I stare at a scoreboard. There is no score, just blank places where the numbers should be. There’s no winners, no losers, nothing.
“Zara?” his voice sounds gruffs. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?” I shrug like I have no clue.
“When I freaked about your father.”
My eyes meet his eyes.
“You were a jerk,” I say.
His hands move to my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
I pull away, but I can only go an inch before I bump into lacrosse sticks, not that I really want to go any farther. “Nope. No way. You do not get to kiss me yet.”
He pouts.
“Do you admit that my idea of how to trap the pixies using iron was good?” I say using my best lawyer voice.