As one they spin. There are so many eyes staring at me. I suck in my breath as my stomach wobbles.
“They are your people now,” he says, running a finger along the line of his jaw.
My people. My pixies. My responsibility. The wobble in my stomach becomes a full-fledged knot of fear.
I reach out and touch a tombstone. JOSEPH THOMPSON. 1971–1990. So much death here and everywhere. I do not want to put up a tombstone for Nick or Astley or anyone else I love or am responsible for.
Astley takes my hand in his and leaps to the top of a flattened tombstone that resembles a giant granite box. He pulls me up with him. The pixies move through the snow, closer and closer to us. He gives me a look that’s meant to be reassuring, but it’s hard to be reassured when you’re surrounded by pixies, even if they are supposed to be your pixies and therefore on the side of good. A cloud crosses the moon, but there is still enough light for me to see the faces staring up at me. Almost against my will, I grip his hand a little harder.
He stands taller. He seems regal, terribly regal, and I must look so puny and pathetic next to him. But I am not puny and pathetic. I was a princess and now I am supposed to be a warrior, even if I am wearing pink bunny pajama bottoms.
“Pixies of the Stars,” he announces. His voice is warm and loud across the graveyard. “Pixies of the Birch. I present to you your queen.”
One by one they bow.
I stand there for a second, and then I can’t help it. I start shaking. I start shaking because it’s absurd, like some weird circus of the dark. Their movements are too solid, too regal, too everything, really. How can I be one of them? How can I be their queen? I bend over and hold my stomach over the craziness of it all. The pixies’ breaths draw in. Astley stiffens beside me and drops my hand, and I know I need to get it together. It’s like being stuck in a dream where you’re in class stark naked, and you are aware that you’re stark naked but you can’t figure out how to get out of the dream. Everything is in slow motion.
“I’m sorry.” I raise up one hand. “I’m so sorry.”
I straighten up, biting my lip for a second. The snow tumbles down and I brave myself up enough to say what I’m thinking: “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I just …”
I hop off the grave and rush toward the exit, race through the gates. I’m not one of them. I’m just … not. Somebody could catch me in a second, I’m sure. Somebody could stop me, but nobody does. So I run and run and run.
I am walking on the Bangor road for about ten minutes before Astley catches up with me. He lands in front of me the moment a pickup truck trundles by. He manages to only half fall and recovers quickly before putting his hands on his hips. The wind blows his hair in blond waves around his head. He pulls a hat out of his pocket and hands it to me before going back into the same belligerent posture.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
That’s not what I expected. “You looked mad,” I say.
“I am not mad, Zara.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I am concerned.”
Concerned. “That you made the wrong choice? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Astley, but I’m not meant to be a pixie. I’m not meant to be a queen. It’s too much.”
His nose crinkles up and he looks up at the sky like he’s searching for some kind of help dealing with me. Finally he says, “You are meant to be my queen.”
“How can you know that? And don’t say, ‘I just know.’ My mom always says that. I hate that.”
His face softens. “I forget how young you are sometimes.”
“You aren’t much older than me.”
“Well, being king ages you.”
When I look at him, I can tell that it has. All that responsibility and I’m supposed to be strong enough to share in it now.
“How?” My voice is so soft I wonder if he can hear it. I make it a little louder. “Have bad things happened to you? Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”
He stiffens and then smiles a soft, sad smile. “I do not—not yet—but thank you, and I am much better now that you are my queen. Thank you for being my queen, Zara.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say, don’t know the words to get him to explain the sadness in his eyes. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“It will be okay,” he says, putting my arm through his as we walk. It feels nice and comfortable, solid and warm. “It is easy to be overwhelmed.”
6
Some evangelical groups are claiming that the events in Bedford, Maine—the site of all those missing boys and the site of the school bus attack—are a sign of an upcoming apocalypse. Some teens have even made T-shirts saying BEDFORD, MAINE: THE END OF THE WORLD STARTS HERE. —CARL FLECK REPORT ON FNN NIGHTLY WORLD NEWS
There are certain signs that your town is totally messed up:
1. Snow that lasts forever.
2. Evil pixies torturing and/or maiming people.
3. You are a regular nightly segment on cable news networks.
4. FBI agents patrol the streets.
5. Half the school population has to stay home because
their parents are too freaked to let them out of the house.
Issie, Devyn, Cassidy, and I have discussed this all day, hunkered down in the Maine Grind, our town’s one coffee shop. While we were there, Cassidy figured out the old anagram A BAA EBBED FLY TIGHT VIGOR TROLLS, which we found in one of my dad’s old Lovecraft books. It means, GET TO VALHALLA BY BIFORST BRIDGE. The BiForst Bridge is mentioned on a lot of the Web sites Devyn found. It’s a rainbow bridge, which we thought had to be too hokey to be real, but I guess not.
“So we have to find a rainbow we can step on?” Issie asked, only half kidding. “Do we have to find a leprechaun too?”
As the sun sets, we head out to patrol, minus Cassidy, who has a French test tomorrow. Pixies are stronger at night. Their senses and powers heighten, and they usually use the cover of darkness to attack. Ever since Frank came to town and my father ran away, they’ve been attacking a lot, to gain strength and control. They themselves are out of control.
We park the car in the back lot of a big-box store. Issie turns around and says, “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”
I unbuckle my seat belt and lean forward. “Nick?”
“No, not Nick. The pixie king who killed him. Frank.” She shudders saying his name.
“I am.”
But we do not find him or any bad pixies tonight, and when we finally get home, Betty acts like some specially trained government interrogator. Issie sends me a text saying she is grounded because of all the violence and abductions. She has to go home right after school every day now. Her mother flipped, I guess.
That is sooo horrible, I text.
*SOB*, she responds. She is carrying round a pizza cutter 4 protection she’s so freaked. She wants me to carry a steak knife.
At least Betty doesn’t try to ground me. I basically spend the night finishing my ridiculously awful homework and worrying about what would happen if Astley was gone, since I don’t really feel like I’m destined to be some ruling pixie queen. Eventually I give up and write Urgent Action letters about the abuse of priests in Myanmar. Then I surf the Net looking for clues about Astley’s mom or Valhalla, pretty much anything. I fail again and again.
There’s a picture of Nick and me taped to my mirror. We got it at a picture-taking machine at the movie place in Bangor. We’re both sticking out our tongues. He’s pretending to lick me. It’s all I can do to not get all drama queen and kiss it and murmur that I’m trying to get him back, that I refuse to give up.
I don’t see Astley until Monday, when he shows up at the door of my Spanish class and nods at me. Even through the glass, I can tell that he’s pale and almost sweating. He’s holding a piece of gauze to his head. My heart bumps around in my chest, worried and scared all at once.
Paul hits my chair and whispers, “Do you know him?”
“Yeah,” I whisper back.
/> “It looks like he’s been in a fight.”
I raise my hand for the Spanish teacher. “May I go to the restroom, please?”
She raises one dark eyebrow. “¿En español?”
You’d think with all the craziness around here that teachers would give us a little slack, but no. It’s like they think by being hardasses they are helping us somehow. In freaking Spanish. Grrr. If pixies were attacking, would she expect me to yell “Run!” in Spanish?
“¿Puedo utilizar el baño, por favor?” I ask.
She nods yes, and I scoot my chair back and fly out the door.
“Whew. She must have to go. Maybe she’s pregnant,” Brittney says like she’s a character in some mean-girl movie.
“¿En español?”
I shut the door gently behind me before I can hear Brittney’s response. If she can say that in Spanish, she has way more brain cells than I do.
“In Norwegian that would be ‘Hun må dra. Kanskje er hun gravid.’ ” Astley attempts to smile.
I can’t help teasing him. “Which? Asking to go to the bathroom or dissing me because I’m pregnant.”
“You are with child?” His eyes open wide, all mock terrified.
“No! Shut up. You know I’m not.” I punch him in the arm and then lead him into the stairwell, shutting the door behind us. “Okay. Seriously, Astley, what happened to you? Why is your head bleeding?”
The long light tube hanging slightly from the drop ceiling begins to flicker. It makes a tiny hissing noise that human ears wouldn’t be able to hear. The light will fizzle out completely soon if the janitor doesn’t fix it.
“Sometimes,” Astley says, his voice a sad, tired stretch into the air, “I get a little tired of being Mr. Perfect, you know?”
A vein in his temple pulses so hard I can see it. He leans against the wall.
“And that’s what made your head bleed?” I lift the gauze away from his face to check out the wound. He doesn’t pay any attention. Doesn’t even flinch.
He continues talking. “Do you know how hard it is to be king? To always have to try to be good, to be perfect? Do you have any idea how hard it is to help you go after your stupid idiot of a were, all the time thinking you should just be satisfied with me, because that is how it is supposed to—”
“Astley, I— ‘Stupid idiot’ is not—”
He raises a hand up to silence me and I press my lips hard together, because what can I say, really? What can I say that won’t hurt him more than he already hurts? I may not have anything to do with the cut on his head, but he hurts inside because of me. He’s even being mean about Nick because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Do not say that.” His voice cracks and his eyes flash with embarrassment. His arms cross in front of his chest and he looks down at the floor—Astley never looks down—and scuffs a shoe across the linoleum. The light fizzles again. The hum of it breaking gets a couple decibels louder.
I grab his face in my hands. Stubble grazes my palms. “But I am so sorry. I am sorry you hurt and that you think you have to be perfect, and I’m sorry I freaked out at the cemetery … I’ll try harder.”
I close my eyes.
“I know you will.” He makes a muffled noise and I open my eyes again. His eyes burn blue, cold like a winter sky when it isn’t snowing. They seem endless. “I have no doubts about you, Zara.”
Swallowing hard, I steady myself and recover. “Are you going to tell me what happened to your forehead?”
“I had a fight.”
“With who?”
“Amelie.”
“Amelie! That’s ridiculous. She would never fight with you.”
“She would and she did.”
Stepping back from him, I ask, “Why?”
He grasps my wrist. The radiator pops to life. The bell is going to ring soon.
“I want you to come with me,” he says, abruptly changing the topic.
“Where? I have to go back to Spanish before the bell rings.” I think I have maybe three minutes left.
“Iceland.”
“Iceland?” My voice squeaks. I try to maintain my composure. “You want to go to Iceland? In the winter? In the middle of all this pixie craziness? We can’t do that. We have to keep people safe. We can’t just up and leave and go to freaking Iceland.”
He sighs. “You sound like Amelie. Only she never says the word ‘freaking.’ ”
His voice is so heartbroken that my anger and shock sort of dissipate. His fingers still hold my wrist, surrounding it with his.
“You feel like none of us have faith in you anymore, is that it?” I guess. “Like you’re losing control?”
“Exactly.” He puts a hand on my back, then gently steers me toward the door leading to the hall heading to class, away from him.
I stop walking, think about how behind with my work I already am, how I haven’t had an Amnesty meeting in ages, how I’ve already missed so many indoor track practices … But I half turn to face him and say, “I have faith in you, Astley, and I’ll go with you to Iceland. When do we go?”
“Would you like to know why?”
I bite my lip and wait for the reason. A tiny spark of hope expands in my heart as he smiles.
“I have a lead,” he says. He lifts his hands up when he says it, all excited. “Vander found some evidence that points to the BiForst Bridge being in Iceland.”
I digest that, then ask, “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Asgard is where it is located, and we have a tip that the way to get there involves a geyser in Iceland. It is an amazing lead.” He bounces on the tips of his toes and his smile reaches his eyes. “We are one step closer, Zara. I told you we would find your wolf.”
I launch myself into his arms squeeing. He laughs and swings me around in a circle, my feet lightly bumping the walls. The bell rings. I need to get back to class to get my books. I need to go home and get my passport. I need to tell Issie and Dev and Betty, although she will probably flip. But all I can do right now is hug Astley and say the same thing over and over again: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!”
It’s not till lunch that I get the chance to tell Dev, Issie, and Cassidy.
“Okay, okay! This is totally exciting,” Issie says. We’re sitting in the library instead of eating lunch, googling “Valhalla” and “Iceland” and “geyser.” “But what if he just wants to whisk you away out of the country for a romantic rendezvous?”
“It’s not like that.” I rock back in my chair and stamp my feet on the floor. This is so awesome. “He doesn’t like me that way.”
She just points a finger at me, which in Issie speak means, “I am so totally right, you idiot, but I am too nice to argue with you.”
I really don’t think she is. Right, I mean—I know she’s nice. She even promises to bring a note to my track coach for me and collect all my schoolwork. Again. And Cassidy volunteers to run the Amnesty meeting that is supposed to be tomorrow. I have the best friends. Ever.
Even Devyn is excited. He points to the computer screen. “Look at this! There are links to Valhalla and Iceland. How amazing is that? I’m so embarrassed we never found it.”
Is jumps up, stands behind Dev, and kisses the top of his head. “You can’t be perfect all the time, Mr. Man. It’s okay.”
He scrolls down the page. His eyes are lit up because he’s so pumped. Cassidy yanks in her breath and points at a picture of a giant wolf. “What’s that?”
“Fenrir,” Devyn says. “It’s part of the mythology. He’s chained by the gods, but when he gets free, it’s supposed to portend the coming of the apocalypse, basically, an all-out war between good and evil.”
“Lovely,” Cassidy says. “Can you scroll down more so I don’t have to look at it?”
Farther down we see a picture of the BiForst rainbow bridge.
“Much better.” Cassidy sighs and stretches her hands out to me to grab. “Can you believe you’re going to get Nick?”
“I ca
n,” I say, smiling. “I really can.”
At home I gather up my suitcase and passport, and then I call Betty at work. She does not react well. She’s all, “You are trusting him!” Enough said.
The Bangor airport is small, with only two main gates plus an extra one off to one side for international passengers. Because its runway is so long and because of where Maine is located, this is where planes land if they are having trouble (drunk passengers biting flight attendants, engine issues) before or after they head across the Atlantic. It’s also where U.S. military planes land to gas up on their way to Afghanistan or Kuwait or wherever the country is fighting. There are troops here right now, lounging around in camouflage, talking on cell phones to people at home. In the gift shop, one soldier is telling a younger one to buy lighters. “It’s like gold over there,” he says. The younger soldier snatches up about twenty of them, thanking him. It’s heartbreaking, really, how young some of them are. We’re at war too, I guess, and I guess we’re young, but I don’t actually feel young as Astley and I make it through airport screening, smile at the TSA agents, and then hunker down in vinyl chairs right across from the gate agents’ desk.
I stare up at the giant number 2 at our gate. An airplane rolls down the runway toward Gate 1. A few people mill about. I breathe in the smell of people and metal and forced air. “I can’t believe we’re in an airport,” I say.
Astley runs a hand through his thick hair and pulls his laptop out of his dark leather backpack. “Most other pixies can’t fly on planes, you know. They can’t handle the iron.”
“Why don’t you share the magic iron pills then? Wouldn’t that be a good thing to do?”
He rubs the skin behind his ear and explains, “It gives our people an advantage.”
Our people. He calls them “our people,” but to me, my people are in Bedford, fighting, being threatened. The guilt drives me against the dark blue vinyl seat. I tuck my legs up under me, push my thumbs against the top of my eyes.