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Spring Ceramic DM™: WINNER POSTED!
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<blockquote data-quote="mythago" data-source="post: 1526280" data-attributes="member: 3019"><p><strong>mythago vs. Zhaneel</strong></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="color: Yellow">Sighting</span></span></p><p> </p><p> Chandra’s nephew Darnell came into the house when he was exactly two weeks old, three days after his mother tried to kill him by leaving him in a garbage can.</p><p></p><p> The grown-ups hushed when they thought Chandra was near enough to listen, but she was the quietest little girl when she wanted to be. She heard them shake their heads over poor crazy Imani, leaving that pretty little baby out with the trash and wasn’t it just lucky that the newspaper man made his rounds a little early that morning and heard Darnell crying. Imani was in the psychiatric ward up in Northville and her baby was home with Chandra’s parents until the state got everything sorted out. Chandra was figuring out what to do herself. She didn’t understand why the grown-ups couldn’t see that Darnell wasn’t her big sister’s baby, didn’t look anything <em>like</em> a baby. When she tried to tell her mama she got slapped for her sassiness. She hung around the fringes of the living room when the visiting aunts and cousins and assorted relations fussed over little Darnell, waiting for somebody to see, the way she saw, that pretty little Darnell had pointed ears and fur around his face and big moon eyes, but nobody did. Eventually she got fed up and went over to Grandma Woodard’s house. Grandma always listened, even when she said things that would have gotten her spanked at home for telling lies.</p><p></p><p> Grandma wasn’t too strong these days, so Chandra had to wait until Grandma woke up from her nap. Then she explained how there was something wrong with Darnell and none of the grownups saw it, and how maybe Imani knew it too and so maybe it wasn’t really her fault that she’d tried to kill the baby. Grandma nodded along, and sat so quiet that Chandra was afraid she’d fallen asleep again. When she finally talked it surprised Chandra so bad she almost spilled her jelly glass full of milk.</p><p></p><p> “Honey, did your mama ever tell you much about the white side of the family?”</p><p></p><p> “No, ma’am,” Chandra said. “I tried to ask her once because Orell at school asked me if my granddaddy was white, because he’s darker than me, and Mama got all mad. <em>Was</em> he white?”</p><p></p><p> Grandma chuckled. “No, sweetie. But your great-great granddaddy was. Most people have some white back in their family from the slave days. Your mama’s people, the Baileys, one of their ancestors was Irish and that’s where they got the last name. That’s where you and Imani got the Sight from. Lot of magic back in Ireland in the old days, see.”</p><p></p><p> “I see, Grandma,” Chandra said politely, though she didn’t see at all. Ireland? What did this have to do with her strange nephew and her crazy sister? </p><p></p><p> “Chandra, you ever get in trouble for telling your mama and daddy things that they thought you made up? Like seeing things that weren’t there, or talking to people you couldn’t see?”</p><p></p><p> “One time, at the zoo…” Chandra hesitated. “We were on a field trip last year when I was in Mister Carlyle’s class, and we went to see the new Arctic part of the zoo—“</p><p></p><p> <em>The </em><em>Arctic</em><em> Ring of Life sounded kind of silly to Chandra, because she knew from the Lion King that it was supposed to be the </em>circle<em> of life. And it was cold and she had left her new fall jacket on the school bus and Mr. Carlyle wouldn’t let her go back and get it. So she was glum and dragged her feet past the penguins and the harbor seals. Her field-trip buddy left her behind just when they got to the polar bears, the whole class going to watch the zookeepers throw the bears some fish, and Chandra stood there waiting for the group to come around and find her. Some bald guy started yelling to his friends in Spanish and pounded on the glass, trying to get the polar bear to swim over, and then it did, and it looked at Chandra and burbled, </em>“Tell that man to come on the other side of the wall, little girl, and you’ll see something better than watching us snap up fish.”[1]</p><p></p><p> She felt stupid again telling Grandma, sure that she would laugh like her classmates had laughed, or that she’d get in trouble like she did from Mr. Carlyle. But Grandma just nodded as if Chandra had said something right. “Not just the Sight, then, honey, if animals talk to you. What about Darnell, though? He say something to you? Or you see something strange that nobody else could see?”</p><p></p><p> Chandra nodded eagerly. “Yes! I tried to tell mama that Darnell didn’t look like a baby and she—“</p><p></p><p> “That’s because he’s not,” Grandma said quietly. “Least, the baby they have at home now isn’t Darnell. It’s a changeling. Fairy folk steal babies and leave their own behind, to cause mischief. They make little spells so nobody sees, but you got the Sight, so you look right through that. And I bet your sister has a little of it, too, enough that she went crazy when she looked for her baby and saw a hairy little man looking out of the crib.”</p><p></p><p> Chanda waited while Grandma, tired from such a long talk, drank her tea. When Grandma leaned back on her big sofa and started to snore, Chandra shook her awake even though she knew it was very rude. “Grandma, how do I get Darnell back? The real Darnell.”</p><p></p><p> “You have to go to the fairies for that,” said Grandma. “How you get there, honey, I have no idea. Go down to the library, look in the books. Maybe they help you. Don’t try and tell your mama, though.”</p><p></p><p> -----</p><p></p><p> Chandra felt bad about skipping school, but she didn’t see any way around it. Her textbooks were at home, stuffed under the bed, and her backpack bumped uncomfortably with all the strange things she’d put in it. She felt even worse about taking change out of her daddy’s dime and nickel jar for the bus fare down to Belle Isle Plaza, and scared of all the adults who gave her suspicious looks, a ten-year-old riding a bus downtown all by herself. She didn’t really know where she was going anyway. Chandra had been riding buses around the city all day long, trying to figure out the right place to go to get to Tir Nan Nog, the place the books said was where the fairies lived. A city didn’t seem a good place, but the buses didn’t go out into the country.</p><p></p><p> She got off at the plaza and was relieved to see that there were other children still playing so late in the day. It was still a hot, sticky summer day. The city had spent a lot of money fixing up the old waterfront, trying to get rich white people from the suburbs to move back in. Not too many did, but at least the junkies kept out of the park when the sun was up, and the fountains were mostly working and spraying up water. The little kids were playing a jumping game, shouting and hopping through the water in circles, moving widdershins—</p><p></p><p> Chandra stopped, puzzled, shook her head. Widdershins? One of the words from the books, but she didn’t know what it meant until just right now. Her stomach was starting to feel funny. She dug in her pockets for another Fig Newton but came up with a handful of nickels. She wandered across the plaza. The little kids paid her no mind and kept up their chanting. [2]</p><p></p><p><em>"Blue bells, cockle shells, easy ivy o-ver</em></p><p> <em>Jump from the tree and fall in the clo-ver</em><em></em></p><p> <em>Mama went to market to buy some meat</em><em></em></p><p> <em>Baby in the cradle was fast a-sleep—"</em></p><p> </p><p> Her stomach knotted and she knew it wasn’t just from missing dinner. There was something about the plaza, something only she could see, or maybe the little kids felt it enough to move in a circle. She walked to the middle of the fountain square, stepping around the scampering children. Her toe stubbed on something hard. She looked down and there was a trap door, plain as could be, cut into the tile with a little pull-knob. Chandra pulled on the knob, expecting it to be locked, and nearly fell on her behind when it came open easily. She looked around to see if any of the bored parents were looking, but nobody paid her any mind. Reminding herself that Grandma told her it was okay to look for Darnell, she jumped through the doorway. She fell onto soft grass covering hard dirt. Rubbing her bruised rear, she stood up and looked around. It was night, but awfully bright out. Chandra looked up and saw that the light was coming from the stars. There were so many of them, more than she had ever seen in her life, and the sky between them was so dark it looked solid. They lit up the whole world like candles.</p><p></p><p> Chandra stopped to take her jacket out of her backpack, because it was pretty cold out here on this grassy hill at night. She turned it inside out first, which felt funny, but the books said it kept fairies away. Next she got out the blue cardboard box of Morton’s salt and filled her jacket pockets. Mama would be mad when she had to do wash, but the books said that was good to protect you from fairy magic, too. The backpack was still heavy, so she wiggled it over both shoulders and kept walking.</p><p></p><p> She thought about Darnell, not the changeling in Darnell’s Pack-and-Play wearing Darnell’s newborn Pampers, but the real Darnell she’d never seen, round and laughing like her sister’s boyfriend Jamal, with big brown eyes and lots of hair like Imani. She let her feet carry her up and down the hills as she thought, and it didn’t seem like long before she found the fairy lady.</p><p></p><p> If it had been back home, Chandra would have been surprised that she didn’t see or hear the lady coming. But this was the fairy land, so she figured the rules were different. The woman was as thin as a bird, and pale, with cornsilk hair that rose and drifted around her face even though there didn’t seem to be a breeze. She was wrapped in a sky-blue cottony robe Chandra thought she looked a little bit like the statue of Mary at church.</p><p></p><p> There was a boy with her, taller than Chandra but just as thin as the woman. His hair looked like Chandra’s would if her mama didn’t do it for her every day, wild and tangled. His ears were pointed, just like the changeling’s. Chandra was surprised to see that he wore Levi’s, tattered and faded the color of the woman’s robe. He moved himself between Chandra and the fairy lady and snarled at her. Chandra planted her feet and put her hands on her hips, and stared right back at him. The fairy lady put her hand on the boy’s shoulder.</p><p></p><p> “Little girl,” she called. She had an accent that made it hard for Chandra to understand her. “We heard you walking here, unasked and unsummoned.”</p><p></p><p> “You have my nephew,” Chandra said. “Darnell. I have the Sight, Grandma said so. I want Darnell back. He’s not yours. You can have your stinky old changeling back.”</p><p></p><p> At that, the boy hissed and took a step towards Chandra. The woman gripped his shoulder and he pulled up short, tense as a dog straining on a leash. “I do not have your Darnell,” she said. “Your changeling is my child. I would not have stolen your kin, for as you see, I have children of my own and have no need to be thieving from mortals. T’was one of the unseelie who took your babe, and stole my child as well, to put in his place.”</p><p></p><p> Chandra knew that word from one of the books. Unseelie, the evil fairies. Not that any of the fairy people were nice, but unseelie were downright mean, like the older boys who went out on Devil’s Night and set cats on fire. She felt a shiver coming on and bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t much like the boy with the pointy ears and she wasn’t going to be a sissy where he could see.</p><p></p><p> The fairy woman had let her robe fall over one arm and was pulling something out from under it. “Niall, help me,” she said to the boy sharply. He colored and helped her. Between them they held a great glass ball. The woman breathed on it, lightly, and nodded. She motioned with her head that Chandra should come look. Suspiciously, the girl approached. There was something moving in the glass ball. She reached up for her backpack, and then saw that it was only a picture, nothing that could hurt her. </p><p></p><p> The changeling looked up out of the glass. [3] She didn’t know whether it really saw them or not. The last time Chandra had seen it, she thought the changeling was an ugly little monster. Now she felt kind of sorry for it. It looked unhappy and lonely, like a baby looking for its mama really would. Niall looked really sad, just like a big brother who missed his new baby brother would, if he were a person. Chandra was embarrassed that she had called the changeling stinky, but figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to apologize and get Niall mad again.</p><p></p><p> The image snuffed out. The fairy woman sorrowfully tucked the ball back into a fold of her robe. Chandra looked for a bulge or a pocket but didn’t see either one. The fairy woman’s eyes met hers. Chandra understood. The fairy lady wasn’t strong enough to go and make the unseelie get her baby back. Fairies had rules about that kind of thing. Chandra, being a mortal, had her own rules. She would go and take care of it.</p><p></p><p> “Where do I find the unseelie?” she asked. “I’m lost.”</p><p></p><p> “That way,” said the fairy woman, pointing away over the hills. “It is a long journey. Be careful. Do you need food or water to keep up your strength?”</p><p></p><p> Chandra immediately started walking. “No, thank you,” she called back. She knew better than to take anything from strangers. Especially fairies. The books had been <em>very</em> clear on that part.</p><p></p><p> ---</p><p></p><p> She was very tired by the time her feet got her to the place where the unseelie lived. Her head ached and she didn’t have any aspirin. Chandra hadn’t known what to expect. The pictures of fairy houses in the books were always of pretty castles with tall, thin towers. This was more like what her daddy would have called a shotgun shack, small and ugly. Chandra wondered if maybe it was her Sight that made it look this way. Sometimes, the books explained, all the pretty things about fairies were just disguises, and underneath they were ugly. It made sense that an evil fairy would live in an ugly house.</p><p></p><p> Chandra let her backpack hang from one arm and knocked politely on the door. The palest white man Chandra had ever seen pulled it open while her hand was still in the air. He was dressed in a glittery suit like a fashion model or a rock star, tall and beautiful, with a wild mane of golden hair that fell to his shoulders. Chandra squinted at him and saw something else underneath. She couldn’t tell what, but she knew that the pretty part on the outside wasn’t real.</p><p></p><p> “I came to get my nephew Darnell back from you,” she said firmly. “The fairy lady told me that you stole him. He’s not yours and I’m taking him home.”</p><p></p><p> The unseelie stared in frank astonishment, then burst into laughter that sounded like glass breaking. “Do you now! I went to a great deal of trouble to get that baby. Not so easy these days to find a mortal with a little fairy blood, and the doors in the hollow hills are nearly gone now….Well, little mortal with your determined lip and your hair like sheep’s wool. What do you propose to pay me for your nephew? Yourself in his place?”</p><p></p><p> “No. I have a gift instead.”</p><p></p><p> “Aye, a gift,” the unseelie sneered as Chandra reached into her bag. “And what do you have that is worth a mortal baby, one that I worked so hard and clever to steal?”</p><p></p><p> “This,” said Chandra. Her hands came up clutching her daddy’s old snub-nosed .22, the only one from his gun collection small enough for her hands. “I read that fairies don’t like iron.” She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger.</p><p></p><p> There was a boom louder than any thunderstorm Chandra had ever heard. She was afraid the whole house had blown up around her. She coughed from the smoke and opened her eyes. </p><p></p><p> She had hit the unseelie square in the chest. He had spun around and fallen face-down on the filthy wooden floor. Chandra stood still, afraid to fire the gun again but more afraid that the unseelie was still alive. The gold ebbed from his hair and he looked like he was shriveling. Chandra realized that it was his magic fading because he was dead, that this plain-looking white man was the way the unseelie really looked. His blood swirled out from under his chest, more of it than Chandra had ever seen, even in a movie, and lit up with the dead fairy’s magic as it spread across the floor. [4] She watched, amazed, until it flowed away and vanished as it if had never been.</p><p></p><p> She stepped over the dead unseelie and began to explore the house. It really was small, just as she had thought. There wasn’t much, just cobwebs and dirt and old boxes, mostly. She found the cellar door and pulled it open. Red light pulsed up the stairs. Holding the gun out like she had seen police officers do on the street, Chandra walked down the stairs, afraid of what the unseelie might have left to guard Darnell.</p><p></p><p> There was no guard. The root cellar was tiny and cramped. Hanging from the ceiling was a warm, glowing red ball, like a fire on a cold winter night. Little ripples went around the surface. [5] Chandra dropped the gun in her backpack and wiped her hands on her pants, leaving black sweaty smears that she knew would get her extra chores once she got home. She reached into the red ball and felt smooth, soft baby under her hands. Chandra pulled out Darnell, the real Darnell, her nephew who nobody but Imani had ever really seen before.</p><p></p><p> As soon as the cold air hit him, Darnell started to cry. Chandra guessed the unseelie had made the ball to keep the baby warm. She took off her jacket and wrapped him up in it. She tried to tie the sleeves around her neck, like a sling, but it didn’t work. She decided to just be cold and carry him, even if he was pretty heavy for just being a baby.</p><p></p><p> Darnell fell asleep as she walked with him in her arms. When they got to the top of a high hill, Chandra carefully laid him down in the grass, holding her breath to see if he’d wake up. He stirred a little but stayed asleep. She opened her backpack, took out the .22, and threw it as far as she could, turning away so she didn’t see it land. Humming, she picked up Darnell and walked off, letting her feet and her gift take her to where the fairy lady would be. When her daddy asked her where his gun was, she could honestly tell him she had no idea at all.</p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p> [1] commune.jpg</p><p></p><p> [2] heat.jpg</p><p></p><p> [3] hold.jpg</p><p></p><p> [4] rapture.jpg</p><p></p><p> [5] float.jpg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mythago, post: 1526280, member: 3019"] [b]mythago vs. Zhaneel[/b] [size=3][color=Yellow]Sighting[/color][/size] Chandra’s nephew Darnell came into the house when he was exactly two weeks old, three days after his mother tried to kill him by leaving him in a garbage can. The grown-ups hushed when they thought Chandra was near enough to listen, but she was the quietest little girl when she wanted to be. She heard them shake their heads over poor crazy Imani, leaving that pretty little baby out with the trash and wasn’t it just lucky that the newspaper man made his rounds a little early that morning and heard Darnell crying. Imani was in the psychiatric ward up in Northville and her baby was home with Chandra’s parents until the state got everything sorted out. Chandra was figuring out what to do herself. She didn’t understand why the grown-ups couldn’t see that Darnell wasn’t her big sister’s baby, didn’t look anything [i]like[/i] a baby. When she tried to tell her mama she got slapped for her sassiness. She hung around the fringes of the living room when the visiting aunts and cousins and assorted relations fussed over little Darnell, waiting for somebody to see, the way she saw, that pretty little Darnell had pointed ears and fur around his face and big moon eyes, but nobody did. Eventually she got fed up and went over to Grandma Woodard’s house. Grandma always listened, even when she said things that would have gotten her spanked at home for telling lies. Grandma wasn’t too strong these days, so Chandra had to wait until Grandma woke up from her nap. Then she explained how there was something wrong with Darnell and none of the grownups saw it, and how maybe Imani knew it too and so maybe it wasn’t really her fault that she’d tried to kill the baby. Grandma nodded along, and sat so quiet that Chandra was afraid she’d fallen asleep again. When she finally talked it surprised Chandra so bad she almost spilled her jelly glass full of milk. “Honey, did your mama ever tell you much about the white side of the family?” “No, ma’am,” Chandra said. “I tried to ask her once because Orell at school asked me if my granddaddy was white, because he’s darker than me, and Mama got all mad. [i]Was[/i] he white?” Grandma chuckled. “No, sweetie. But your great-great granddaddy was. Most people have some white back in their family from the slave days. Your mama’s people, the Baileys, one of their ancestors was Irish and that’s where they got the last name. That’s where you and Imani got the Sight from. Lot of magic back in Ireland in the old days, see.” “I see, Grandma,” Chandra said politely, though she didn’t see at all. Ireland? What did this have to do with her strange nephew and her crazy sister? “Chandra, you ever get in trouble for telling your mama and daddy things that they thought you made up? Like seeing things that weren’t there, or talking to people you couldn’t see?” “One time, at the zoo…” Chandra hesitated. “We were on a field trip last year when I was in Mister Carlyle’s class, and we went to see the new Arctic part of the zoo—“ [i]The [/i][i]Arctic[/i][i] Ring of Life sounded kind of silly to Chandra, because she knew from the Lion King that it was supposed to be the [/i]circle[i] of life. And it was cold and she had left her new fall jacket on the school bus and Mr. Carlyle wouldn’t let her go back and get it. So she was glum and dragged her feet past the penguins and the harbor seals. Her field-trip buddy left her behind just when they got to the polar bears, the whole class going to watch the zookeepers throw the bears some fish, and Chandra stood there waiting for the group to come around and find her. Some bald guy started yelling to his friends in Spanish and pounded on the glass, trying to get the polar bear to swim over, and then it did, and it looked at Chandra and burbled, [/i]“Tell that man to come on the other side of the wall, little girl, and you’ll see something better than watching us snap up fish.”[1] She felt stupid again telling Grandma, sure that she would laugh like her classmates had laughed, or that she’d get in trouble like she did from Mr. Carlyle. But Grandma just nodded as if Chandra had said something right. “Not just the Sight, then, honey, if animals talk to you. What about Darnell, though? He say something to you? Or you see something strange that nobody else could see?” Chandra nodded eagerly. “Yes! I tried to tell mama that Darnell didn’t look like a baby and she—“ “That’s because he’s not,” Grandma said quietly. “Least, the baby they have at home now isn’t Darnell. It’s a changeling. Fairy folk steal babies and leave their own behind, to cause mischief. They make little spells so nobody sees, but you got the Sight, so you look right through that. And I bet your sister has a little of it, too, enough that she went crazy when she looked for her baby and saw a hairy little man looking out of the crib.” Chanda waited while Grandma, tired from such a long talk, drank her tea. When Grandma leaned back on her big sofa and started to snore, Chandra shook her awake even though she knew it was very rude. “Grandma, how do I get Darnell back? The real Darnell.” “You have to go to the fairies for that,” said Grandma. “How you get there, honey, I have no idea. Go down to the library, look in the books. Maybe they help you. Don’t try and tell your mama, though.” ----- Chandra felt bad about skipping school, but she didn’t see any way around it. Her textbooks were at home, stuffed under the bed, and her backpack bumped uncomfortably with all the strange things she’d put in it. She felt even worse about taking change out of her daddy’s dime and nickel jar for the bus fare down to Belle Isle Plaza, and scared of all the adults who gave her suspicious looks, a ten-year-old riding a bus downtown all by herself. She didn’t really know where she was going anyway. Chandra had been riding buses around the city all day long, trying to figure out the right place to go to get to Tir Nan Nog, the place the books said was where the fairies lived. A city didn’t seem a good place, but the buses didn’t go out into the country. She got off at the plaza and was relieved to see that there were other children still playing so late in the day. It was still a hot, sticky summer day. The city had spent a lot of money fixing up the old waterfront, trying to get rich white people from the suburbs to move back in. Not too many did, but at least the junkies kept out of the park when the sun was up, and the fountains were mostly working and spraying up water. The little kids were playing a jumping game, shouting and hopping through the water in circles, moving widdershins— Chandra stopped, puzzled, shook her head. Widdershins? One of the words from the books, but she didn’t know what it meant until just right now. Her stomach was starting to feel funny. She dug in her pockets for another Fig Newton but came up with a handful of nickels. She wandered across the plaza. The little kids paid her no mind and kept up their chanting. [2] [i]"Blue bells, cockle shells, easy ivy o-ver Jump from the tree and fall in the clo-ver[/i][i] Mama went to market to buy some meat[/i][i] Baby in the cradle was fast a-sleep—"[/i] Her stomach knotted and she knew it wasn’t just from missing dinner. There was something about the plaza, something only she could see, or maybe the little kids felt it enough to move in a circle. She walked to the middle of the fountain square, stepping around the scampering children. Her toe stubbed on something hard. She looked down and there was a trap door, plain as could be, cut into the tile with a little pull-knob. Chandra pulled on the knob, expecting it to be locked, and nearly fell on her behind when it came open easily. She looked around to see if any of the bored parents were looking, but nobody paid her any mind. Reminding herself that Grandma told her it was okay to look for Darnell, she jumped through the doorway. She fell onto soft grass covering hard dirt. Rubbing her bruised rear, she stood up and looked around. It was night, but awfully bright out. Chandra looked up and saw that the light was coming from the stars. There were so many of them, more than she had ever seen in her life, and the sky between them was so dark it looked solid. They lit up the whole world like candles. Chandra stopped to take her jacket out of her backpack, because it was pretty cold out here on this grassy hill at night. She turned it inside out first, which felt funny, but the books said it kept fairies away. Next she got out the blue cardboard box of Morton’s salt and filled her jacket pockets. Mama would be mad when she had to do wash, but the books said that was good to protect you from fairy magic, too. The backpack was still heavy, so she wiggled it over both shoulders and kept walking. She thought about Darnell, not the changeling in Darnell’s Pack-and-Play wearing Darnell’s newborn Pampers, but the real Darnell she’d never seen, round and laughing like her sister’s boyfriend Jamal, with big brown eyes and lots of hair like Imani. She let her feet carry her up and down the hills as she thought, and it didn’t seem like long before she found the fairy lady. If it had been back home, Chandra would have been surprised that she didn’t see or hear the lady coming. But this was the fairy land, so she figured the rules were different. The woman was as thin as a bird, and pale, with cornsilk hair that rose and drifted around her face even though there didn’t seem to be a breeze. She was wrapped in a sky-blue cottony robe Chandra thought she looked a little bit like the statue of Mary at church. There was a boy with her, taller than Chandra but just as thin as the woman. His hair looked like Chandra’s would if her mama didn’t do it for her every day, wild and tangled. His ears were pointed, just like the changeling’s. Chandra was surprised to see that he wore Levi’s, tattered and faded the color of the woman’s robe. He moved himself between Chandra and the fairy lady and snarled at her. Chandra planted her feet and put her hands on her hips, and stared right back at him. The fairy lady put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Little girl,” she called. She had an accent that made it hard for Chandra to understand her. “We heard you walking here, unasked and unsummoned.” “You have my nephew,” Chandra said. “Darnell. I have the Sight, Grandma said so. I want Darnell back. He’s not yours. You can have your stinky old changeling back.” At that, the boy hissed and took a step towards Chandra. The woman gripped his shoulder and he pulled up short, tense as a dog straining on a leash. “I do not have your Darnell,” she said. “Your changeling is my child. I would not have stolen your kin, for as you see, I have children of my own and have no need to be thieving from mortals. T’was one of the unseelie who took your babe, and stole my child as well, to put in his place.” Chandra knew that word from one of the books. Unseelie, the evil fairies. Not that any of the fairy people were nice, but unseelie were downright mean, like the older boys who went out on Devil’s Night and set cats on fire. She felt a shiver coming on and bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t much like the boy with the pointy ears and she wasn’t going to be a sissy where he could see. The fairy woman had let her robe fall over one arm and was pulling something out from under it. “Niall, help me,” she said to the boy sharply. He colored and helped her. Between them they held a great glass ball. The woman breathed on it, lightly, and nodded. She motioned with her head that Chandra should come look. Suspiciously, the girl approached. There was something moving in the glass ball. She reached up for her backpack, and then saw that it was only a picture, nothing that could hurt her. The changeling looked up out of the glass. [3] She didn’t know whether it really saw them or not. The last time Chandra had seen it, she thought the changeling was an ugly little monster. Now she felt kind of sorry for it. It looked unhappy and lonely, like a baby looking for its mama really would. Niall looked really sad, just like a big brother who missed his new baby brother would, if he were a person. Chandra was embarrassed that she had called the changeling stinky, but figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to apologize and get Niall mad again. The image snuffed out. The fairy woman sorrowfully tucked the ball back into a fold of her robe. Chandra looked for a bulge or a pocket but didn’t see either one. The fairy woman’s eyes met hers. Chandra understood. The fairy lady wasn’t strong enough to go and make the unseelie get her baby back. Fairies had rules about that kind of thing. Chandra, being a mortal, had her own rules. She would go and take care of it. “Where do I find the unseelie?” she asked. “I’m lost.” “That way,” said the fairy woman, pointing away over the hills. “It is a long journey. Be careful. Do you need food or water to keep up your strength?” Chandra immediately started walking. “No, thank you,” she called back. She knew better than to take anything from strangers. Especially fairies. The books had been [i]very[/i] clear on that part. --- She was very tired by the time her feet got her to the place where the unseelie lived. Her head ached and she didn’t have any aspirin. Chandra hadn’t known what to expect. The pictures of fairy houses in the books were always of pretty castles with tall, thin towers. This was more like what her daddy would have called a shotgun shack, small and ugly. Chandra wondered if maybe it was her Sight that made it look this way. Sometimes, the books explained, all the pretty things about fairies were just disguises, and underneath they were ugly. It made sense that an evil fairy would live in an ugly house. Chandra let her backpack hang from one arm and knocked politely on the door. The palest white man Chandra had ever seen pulled it open while her hand was still in the air. He was dressed in a glittery suit like a fashion model or a rock star, tall and beautiful, with a wild mane of golden hair that fell to his shoulders. Chandra squinted at him and saw something else underneath. She couldn’t tell what, but she knew that the pretty part on the outside wasn’t real. “I came to get my nephew Darnell back from you,” she said firmly. “The fairy lady told me that you stole him. He’s not yours and I’m taking him home.” The unseelie stared in frank astonishment, then burst into laughter that sounded like glass breaking. “Do you now! I went to a great deal of trouble to get that baby. Not so easy these days to find a mortal with a little fairy blood, and the doors in the hollow hills are nearly gone now….Well, little mortal with your determined lip and your hair like sheep’s wool. What do you propose to pay me for your nephew? Yourself in his place?” “No. I have a gift instead.” “Aye, a gift,” the unseelie sneered as Chandra reached into her bag. “And what do you have that is worth a mortal baby, one that I worked so hard and clever to steal?” “This,” said Chandra. Her hands came up clutching her daddy’s old snub-nosed .22, the only one from his gun collection small enough for her hands. “I read that fairies don’t like iron.” She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger. There was a boom louder than any thunderstorm Chandra had ever heard. She was afraid the whole house had blown up around her. She coughed from the smoke and opened her eyes. She had hit the unseelie square in the chest. He had spun around and fallen face-down on the filthy wooden floor. Chandra stood still, afraid to fire the gun again but more afraid that the unseelie was still alive. The gold ebbed from his hair and he looked like he was shriveling. Chandra realized that it was his magic fading because he was dead, that this plain-looking white man was the way the unseelie really looked. His blood swirled out from under his chest, more of it than Chandra had ever seen, even in a movie, and lit up with the dead fairy’s magic as it spread across the floor. [4] She watched, amazed, until it flowed away and vanished as it if had never been. She stepped over the dead unseelie and began to explore the house. It really was small, just as she had thought. There wasn’t much, just cobwebs and dirt and old boxes, mostly. She found the cellar door and pulled it open. Red light pulsed up the stairs. Holding the gun out like she had seen police officers do on the street, Chandra walked down the stairs, afraid of what the unseelie might have left to guard Darnell. There was no guard. The root cellar was tiny and cramped. Hanging from the ceiling was a warm, glowing red ball, like a fire on a cold winter night. Little ripples went around the surface. [5] Chandra dropped the gun in her backpack and wiped her hands on her pants, leaving black sweaty smears that she knew would get her extra chores once she got home. She reached into the red ball and felt smooth, soft baby under her hands. Chandra pulled out Darnell, the real Darnell, her nephew who nobody but Imani had ever really seen before. As soon as the cold air hit him, Darnell started to cry. Chandra guessed the unseelie had made the ball to keep the baby warm. She took off her jacket and wrapped him up in it. She tried to tie the sleeves around her neck, like a sling, but it didn’t work. She decided to just be cold and carry him, even if he was pretty heavy for just being a baby. Darnell fell asleep as she walked with him in her arms. When they got to the top of a high hill, Chandra carefully laid him down in the grass, holding her breath to see if he’d wake up. He stirred a little but stayed asleep. She opened her backpack, took out the .22, and threw it as far as she could, turning away so she didn’t see it land. Humming, she picked up Darnell and walked off, letting her feet and her gift take her to where the fairy lady would be. When her daddy asked her where his gun was, she could honestly tell him she had no idea at all. [1] commune.jpg [2] heat.jpg [3] hold.jpg [4] rapture.jpg [5] float.jpg [/QUOTE]
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