“No! No untying!” I yell. Then I put my hand over my mouth. “That sounded mean, didn’t it?”
Issie nods. “It’s okay, though. You’re not good at the tough stuff. That’s why we have Nick.”
“I need to be good at it. We can’t depend on Nick for everything,” I say.
The voice comes back. “I’m also not altogether comfortable being tied up with iron wire in a motor vehicle made of steel.”
“That’s a big hint,” Issie yells back. “And we are so not taking it, Mr. Pixie.”
I clutch the steering wheel with my right hand, flick on the directional to signal I’m going out on the road even though there’s no sign of cars anywhere, just woods, woods, and more woods. The pixie house is hidden pretty deep in there. I explain to Is, “It’s just not cool to kidnap people.”
“They aren’t people. They’re pixies. And technically we aren’t kidnapping him because we’ve already imprisoned him. This time he agreed to be tied up and dumped in the back of the car. Right?” Issie logics out. “This is a mutual agreement and not a kidnapping at all.”
“Right. Right,” I say, but I’m still thinking about what that other pixie had said. I’m still wondering about making a massive generalization based on just my own anecdotal evidence. But that guy was a different guy and this pixie, the pixie we’ve hauled out of the house and put in the back of Yoko, this pixie I know has done some evil bad things. I know it. I will not feel guilty.
I lean toward Is and whisper, “I feel guilty.”
She fake punches me. “Not allowed.”
“Tell me how you controlled the bird,” I yell toward the pixie.
“I talk to him. Some of us are capable of that,” he answers.
“Then why didn’t you have him get you rescued for good, have someone take down the iron around the house?” I ask.
“Zara!” Issie frantically whispers. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
As I curse myself, he explains that most people wouldn’t notice a bird carrying a note. The paper is so tiny. It would be ignored. It turns out he sent the bird about five times before I finally saw it. Then there’s the fact that it is Maine in winter. There aren’t a ton of birds here anyway.
I pull out onto the road, trying to let things process. The bird thing is not even my priority. For most of my life I thought the world was normal, round, safe, populated by people (good and bad) and animals (wild and tame), but then it turns out that’s not the way the world is. Reality isn’t round, it’s flat. There are edges where you can fall off and this October when I moved to Maine, I fell off one. That’s when I learned about pixies and shape-shifting weres. That’s when I learned about need and pain and how unsafe, how unround the world can really be.
“We’ve trapped them,” I say, convincing myself all over again. “So people would be safe. That’s the right thing to do.”
“We had no choice,” Issie says, biting her nails. “No choice at all.”
“And talking to him now? Just because he summoned us?”
“We have no choice about that either.”
It’s a solution, yes. But lately I’ve started to wonder if it’s the right one.
I park the car behind Hannaford’s, the Maine grocery store chain. Big, elevated cement docks for loading produce stick out of the back of the building. Tire tracks mar the snow. Ugly green Dumpster covers rattle in the breeze. The wood creeps in behind us.
Issie gulps as I turn off Yoko. “Maybe we should’ve just gone to your house.”
“No. Nick or my grandma would have smelled him there. You know their noses.”
“Like they aren’t going to smell him in your car?”
“Good point. Okay. Good point.” I run my hands over my face. “But they never actually get in my car, do they?”
“That’s because nobody would voluntarily ride in your car because you’re such a bad winter driver. No offense.”
“You volunteered.”
She half smiles. “I’m a little nuts. Plus, I love you. Plus, I am a worse driver than you.”
I pull on the knit hat that my mom ordered me from American Eagle. There are no outlet stores up here. No malls. It’s crazy. The big place to hang out is actually the grocery store.
“Let’s just do this,” I say.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
“Girls . . . ,” comes the voice from the back of the car.
“Do not talk!” I yell. “If you talk I will just haul you back to that house and put you inside, got it?”
“You plan to do that no matter what I do,” he says.
Issie’s hand twitches on the door handle. “He has a point.”
The wind blows loose snow across the back lot in random patterns. It has no path. It doesn’t know where it’s going. It just moves and settles, moves and settles.
“Okay. I’m going.” I push open my door and hustle around to the back of the car. Issie does the same. We stand there together, staring at the back of my Subaru. It’s covered with road filth. Sand and slush obscure the license plate.
“We don’t have to do this,” Issie whispers. Her hand grabs my coat sleeve.
I take in a deep breath. “He said that Nick was in danger.”
“He could be lying.”
“He might not be.”
“True. But I’m not in a super trusting mode since he is Mr. Evil Pixie Man.”
“He let us tie him up,” I argue.
“True.” Issie lets go of my arm. “But maybe he thought we sucked at knots.”
I reach forward and squeeze the handle-latch thing that’s underneath the middle part of the door. I don’t know what to call that. Luckily, the word doesn’t matter. The action does. The back of the Subaru slowly lifts open.
There’s a blanket there, an old red quilted blanket. Issie and I sewed iron into the batting last night, filled it up with tiny bars. Then we wrapped iron wire around his feet and hands.
“You think that’s enough to hold him?” Issie asks.
“He didn’t escape when we were driving.”
“True. I kept thinking he was going to jump up and strangle us.”
“Me too!”