“Right. So that’s why my skin is blue.” My stomach threatens to knock a hole through my skin and leave my body in protest.
“Zara . . .” Nick’s voice is a warning.
“She’s just sad,” Is says. “That’s why she’s being all snippy. Or else it’s the pain meds.”
“They are mood altering,” Devyn agrees.
“I am not snippy. I’m mad because nobody is listening to me.” My hands ball into fists. “What? Just because you don’t want to believe it, Nick, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I remember how you acted when you found out who my father is. I remember you running away, okay? I know how you totally hate pixies and if I’m a pixie that obviously means that you—”
His arms reach out to me, but his hands are fists. “Zara—”
“Just. Don’t. Say. Anything.” I stare at all of them, take a step back. “Nobody say anything. This is not your problem. This is my problem. Mine. I’m the freak here. Me.”
Betty starts laughing. “Zara, think about who you’re saying this to.”
“You’re weres. Except Is. Weres are not pixies. They aren’t all evil, okay?” I yell. I grab the doorknob on the emergency exit door and turn it. It’s locked. I turn the little lock mechanism in the middle of the knob. My fingers fumble and shake, but I finally manage to do it.
“Where are you going, honey?” Issie asks. She moves a step closer to me.
“Don’t.” I yank open the door. Cold rushes in. “I’m just going, okay? I’m just going.”
I rush out the door, slam it shut behind me, and race across the parking lot into the muddy edge where it meets the woods. Before the door closes I hear my grandmother say, “Just let her go. She needs to be alone. She’s always been that way ever since she—”
I run away, stumble through the mud, slosh it up into the cuffs of my jeans, and head out to the woods. I run away, but the truth is, I don’t have anywhere to go.
Pixie Tip
Pixies will whisper your name and try to get you lost—usually in the woods. Do not listen. You will not come back. In general, it’s always best to avoid contact with disembodied voices.
I have the emotional maturity of a two-year-old. I know this! I know, but it doesn’t make me stop trying to escape my grandmother and friends and the pity in their eyes and in Nick’s eyes . . . the eyes I suddenly can’t read.
So I run as best as I can through the sloshy snow and mud. My feet take me far enough into the woods that I don’t hear cars anymore. I don’t hear anything. No wind blows through the high branches of the spruce and pine trees. Their thin, pale brown trunks don’t creak with the weight of snow and ice. No birds sing. No squirrels chitter and squeak and make all those noises that squirrels make.
Nothing.
No noise.
Nothing.
That is not normal. I sniff in and smell. It’s just wet wood and old pine needles. Olfactophobia is the fear of odors. Odor fears get more specific, though. Bromidrosiphobia is the fear of personal odor. You know, body odor. Luckily, I don’t have that. There is no name that I know of for the fear of a lack of odor. There is no name that I know of for the fear of lack of sound. The fear of sound itself is acousticophobia.
Why are there no names for the fear of the absence of things? Why is there no name for the absence of humanity? Because that is my fear, right here, right now. I am worried that I am losing my humanity.
I’ve seen what happens then. Jay Dahlberg was tortured and bled and bitten when I found him in an upstairs bedroom at my father’s pixie mansion home. Jay doesn’t remember any of it. I do. I remember his body shaking as I tried to help him down the long flight of marble stairs. I remember the smell of his fear permeating everything.
Pixies did that.
I can’t be one of them.
I can’t.
I force the images out of my head and stand here, leaning against a tree for about a half an hour, just trying to understand why I ran away, but the truth is there’s not much to understand: I don’t want to face that I’m turning blue.
My footprints show the way back to the parking lot, to the ambulance, to reality. I walk, staring at those dark footprints indented in the snow. Then it happens: spiders creeping on my skin where no spiders are. And something else: an ache. I fold over in half. My hand presses into my stomach.
“Even your moans are lovely,” says a voice. It is male, deep, husky but with melody, like a country singer. I recognize it. “I should not be surprised.”
The feelings intensify. The snow impressions blur. I use a tree trunk to help me stand up straight. My throat closes, almost trapping my words. “Oh wow, not you again.”
“You sound panicked.”
Trees surround me. Half-gone snow. Everything dull and white and gray brown, gray green. No place for a voice. I say as toughly as I can, “I wouldn’t be panicked if you weren’t hiding.”
“What form would you prefer?”
What form? It takes me a second. Pixie or human? That’s what he means. I sway toward the tree. My hand slips down the rough edges of the trunk. “Human.”
“Human it is.” Hands grab me, steady me. I jerk back, but they are surprisingly gentle. He doesn’t smile as I turn to see his face. He just stands there, letting me inspect him. He’s tall with a wide forehead and dark blond hair that’s cut short. His green eyes are deeply set beneath that forehead. His lips are wide and rugged like the rest of him. His hands have huge knuckles like he’s a boxer or arthritic or hits walls. He looks like he did when he pulled me out of the car, but stronger, taller somehow. He must be completely healed. He looks my age and he looks good, like the guy in high school that everyone, even the teachers, fall in love with.
I shake him off, step back, press into the tree. “You’re the other king, aren’t you?”
“The king, really, since your father is not doing so well currently.”
“You figured that out?” I manage to say. I look for weapons. A tree branch? Could I break off a tree branch? But do I need a weapon? He saved me before. I stall for time, try to think. “You figured out who I am?”
He sighs, rubs his hands over his hair, and changes the topic. “It is so cold here in Maine. Your poor father is stuck with this territory. He must have annoyed someone.”