“Do you have a pain?” Astley asks me. His voice is right at my ear, worried, deeper than normal.
“I think my feet smell. My feet never smell except when I go on airplanes. Why is that?”
His hand goes against my forehead. “Are you ill? You are not making sense.”
I open my eyes, look at him. He’s worried and scruffy looking under the fluorescent airport terminal lights. “I’m fine,” I respond.
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Okay … I’m feeling super excited but kind of guilty about leaving,” I admit, rubbing at my forehead.
“Zara, I could travel myself. Are you sure you want to come?”
In front of me a little girl in white leggings with major visible panty lines and dark brown boots twirls around in a circle as her baseball-hat-wearing dad talks to the ticket agent. She pulls on her hair.
“Yep.” I watch the girl tug on her long brown hair, studying the strands as if she can’t believe they belong to her head. “Tell me when we’ll hear from your pixie friend again?”
“He said he would call me again once we arrived.”
The little girl crouches down, balancing on the tips of her feet. She manages this a moment before giving up and plopping on the carpet, dingy alternating squares of bluish gray.
“I’m so nervous,” I announce.
All of a sudden, for no reason at all, the little girl’s face scrunches up and she starts crying sad toddler cries, just giving in to the sorrow. Her voice is deep and pained. Her dad doesn’t even turn around. My stepdad would have scooped me up in his arms. My pixie father? Who knows …
“Sometimes I almost wonder if humans are worth saving,” Astley murmurs.
“Pixies are just as bad,” I say.
“True. Do not listen to me. I am just tired.”
I swallow hard. “Do you think we have the capacity for good?”
“Pixies or living creatures in general?”
“Both.”
“I have to believe that.”
“Why?”
Before he can answer, the gate attendant leans toward the microphone and says, “We are now boarding Priority Pass passengers for Flight 5781 to Iceland. Again, only Priority Pass passengers.”
“That is us.” Astley stretches his arms over his head.
“Really?” I’ve never flown first class before, and as much as I think this is materialistic of me, I am kind of psyched.
“Really. We are royalty after all.” Astley rolls his eyes before I can get all upset. He stands up, offering me his hand, which is solid and clean. I take it and we stand there for a minute, just staring at each other, and then he slowly lets go of my hand. One finger, then another. “I shall tell you why I believe this on the plane, and perhaps it will help you feel more comfortable about your own change, all right?”
I nod. “All right.”
Stretching and gathering my carry-on, I watch the people mill about. The flight attendant has dandruff. Flakes fall as she scratches her hair. The little girl stops crying, her dad never seeming to notice. A woman with super-huge noise-reduction headphones reads a Glamour magazine. A man in a tie wearing a wedding band holds a John Grisham novel in one hand. They are all so innocent, so unaware that they are sitting here with pixies. They have no idea that the entire world could change if we fail. And I am glad that they don’t, since sometimes not knowing is so much safer, so much saner.
The woman puts down her magazine. I lean forward and ask, “Are you done with that? Would you mind if I read it on the plane?”
For a second she looks shocked, but then she says, “Of course not. It’s good and mindless.”
“That is exactly what I need,” I say, taking it from the seat. “Thank you.”
Astley and I sit next to each other. After we’re buckled, I start to pull the armrest down, but he stops me. “There’s a lot of metal in that.”
“But we took the pills.”
“It would be better to leave it up.” His voice holds an apology in it. It’s not an order; it’s a suggestion, so I nudge the armrest back up between the seats with my elbow.
“Better?”
“Much.” He smiles and hands me a little white airplane pillow and a deep blue blanket. “Thank you.”
People keep boarding, pushing their carry-ons in front of them or pulling them behind. A woman cradles a baby close to her body. A man expels some gas. Astley looks at me and presses his lips together, trying not to laugh. I cover my nose and mouth with my hand.
“There are a lot of people in a plane,” I whisper, “and a lot of smells.”
I touch the wall by my right. It’s plastic and it seems plain beige at first glance, but there are actually tiny little swirling circles on it. I wonder if I would have noticed that if I were still human. I wonder if everything is like that: if things just seem shallow and pale, but then if you stare closer, you can see the hidden aspects. Astley leans back in his chair, stretches his legs underneath the seat in front of him. His hair is darkish blond, but if you look closely there are red strands mixed in. They flash in the sun, the shades running from copper to strawberry blond. Looking away, I run my finger along the ridge by the oblong window. Some airport workers in orange vests and jumpsuits drive food trucks and scurry around. I wonder what they look like beneath their surfaces, what sort of lives they lead, if they have swirling circles in them as well.
Once everyone boards, the flight attendant checks that the cabin is ready for departure. She demonstrates how to buckle a seat belt (I can’t believe people don’t know how to do that), shows how our seat cushions are floatation devices, and explains how to use the oxygen masks if there is a sudden drop in cabin pressure. As she talks, Astley grows paler and paler. We taxi down the runway and he just keeps swallowing way more than a normal person would.
“Are you okay?”
“I am afraid of flying,” he admits, fidgeting in his seat. He keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs like a little antsy kid.
“Um, you do know you fly all the time.”
“But that is without the airplane.”
“Oh, flying on a plane is a totally normal fear. That’s called aerophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia, or pteromechanophobia.”
He laughs. “What is one supposed to do when faced with aerophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia, or pteromechanophobia?”
“Do not mock my excessive knowledge of phobias,” I kid and punch him in the arm. “I always think it’s good to name your fear, face it head-on, and you’re doing that. I mean, you’re in a plane—that’s facing your fear.”
His lips press together. I can literally see the tension running off him, like blasts of orange swirls. After a moment he says, “That does not make me feel better.”
“Give me your hand,” I say as we start taxiing, building up speed. He doesn’t ask why. He just gives it to me. It’s large and sweaty and clammy. I slide my fingers between his, clamp my other hand over it, and squeeze tightly. “Sometimes, when you are scared, it just helps knowing that someone else is here.”
The plane tilts upward as the nose pokes toward the sky and the front wheels leave the ground.
“You are right,” he says, his voice deep and serious. “It does.”
It isn’t until we’re safely cruising at the highest altitude that he stops shaking. I pretend like I haven’t noticed a thing and resist the urge to wipe the sweat off my hands when he finally lets go.
Once the flight attendant has poured us both some cranapple juice and given us our packets of cookies, Astley clears his throat and starts to tell me the story. I know right away that it’s the story he mentioned at the airport because his already formal voice gets even more regulated, more regal somehow.
“When I was twelve years of age, my father died. Someday, perhaps, you will tell me how your father died, if you like,” he begins. I guess until he says it like this I’ve never realized that we both have fathers who died. “But for now I will tell you my story.”
They’d taken a cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, across the Atlantic to Spain, which seems romantic to me. Astley had been excited about the trip, about being able to hang out with his father for a while, without his mother.
“She was not …” He stumbles to find the right words, which is something he rarely does. “She was not like she is now. She loved my father deeply. She loved him more than anything else, more than clocks or jewels or me or herself.”
The trip had gone well. Neither became seasick. Nobody got on anyone’s nerves. Then they arrived in Spain and made their way overland to Madrid.
“We were in a train station. It was incredibly crowded. The earth seemed to shake. I was excited because I thought that was just the train coming closer. However, it was much more than that. My father cursed and took me by the arm, just above the elbow.” He touched his elbow as if remembering. His voice grew softer. “When I looked at him I realized that something was horribly wrong.
“The rumbling grew louder and it brought the smell of fire, burning bodies.
“Only a few moments before it reached us, people started screaming, running madly away from the tunnel and back up toward the stairs,” he said.
I remember seeing something about this on CNN. There were bombings, a terrorist attack. Almost two hundred people died.
“We were stuck in this massive wave of humanity. The heat coming from the tunnel was immense, and then came the cloud of fire. ‘Cloud’ is not the correct word truly. It was a massive rolling beast.”
Everything inside of me tightens up and I grab Astley’s hand again. He doesn’t seem to notice. “Couldn’t he fly?” I ask.
“No. He was one of the few kings who could not. He never taught me, which is probably part of the reason why I utterly fail at landing, but I digress.” He hauls in a huge breath as a starchy man in a suit unbuckles and heads to the restroom. “He saw what was coming and he grabbed me by the other arm; then he lifted me above his head and threw me. Instead of saving himself, he threw me, Zara. He threw me all the way up the stairs.”
His voice breaks with emotion, raw and jagged, an ache so huge and real that I cannot believe he is sharing it with me. I think about Nick and how he’s never trusted me enough to tell me about his parents.
“Is it hard to tell me this?” I ask.
“Quite.”
I wait. “Then why are you telling me? I don’t mean that meanly. I just—I just want to know why you are if it hurts you to do it, you know? I’m not making sense, am I?”
“You are. You usually make sense, Zara. Honestly. I am telling you because you are my queen and I count you as my friend and because you deserve to know.” He takes a sip of his cranapple juice. I wonder what I haven’t told Astley, what he should know about me, what I haven’t told Nick. Astley’s hand shakes and he finishes his story. He had landed on a sea of people, knocked his head a bit, and passed out. When he woke up, he was in a Spanish hospital; Bentley, their butler, was hovering over him, his mother had gone mad with grief, and his father was just gone.
“He saved me, Zara.”
I nod and grip his hand tighter. He squeezes back and then lets go. He uses that same hand to tuck my hair behind my ear as he says, “He saved me. He had an instant to choose my life or his and he chose mine to save. That’s how I know that pixies can be good. I have seen it with my own eyes. I know what my father was. He was good. And that’s what I want to be, what I want my people to be.”
I pull my lips in toward my mouth. Tears threaten. “You are,” I say, and I believe it without a doubt. “You are good, Astley.”
He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I hope so.”
Astley suddenly sits up all intense. “Do you smell that?”
“What?”
“Pixie. A powerful pixie.”
I focus. “Maybe. There’s that Dove soap smell. I just thought it was the restroom and you.”
“Lovely.” He unbuckles his seat belt. The flight attendant scoots right over. “Sir, I need you to sit down.”
He stares at her like she’s asked him to eat a truckful of Twinkies. His frustration slams into me like a fist. It’s not intentional. I just feel it.
“The captain has turned the seat belt sign back on,” she insists.
We hit some turbulence just as she says, “Sir, I must—”
“He has diarrhea!” I interrupt.
Astley gasps and his whole face and even the tips of his ears redden. I feel a little bad about it, but it’s so going to work and, seriously, it was the only thing I could think of.
“Oh!” She is at a loss for a second and staggers back a step as Astley rushes past her toward the bathroom. I don’t know how he’ll sneak out of there to check out the plane, but it was the best I could do on the spot. The flight attendant and I make eyes at each other.
“He’s horribly embarrassed about it,” I whisper. “He had bratwurst. Or maybe it was the baked beans. Either way you might want to get some deodorizing air spray.”
Ten minutes later Astley appears beside me again.
“Were you in the bathroom this whole time?” I ask, fiddling with my anklet.
He rolls his eyes and tells me he used a glamour to hide himself. He walked up and down the aisle but couldn’t locate the source of the smell.
“I don’t like that,” I say as he clicks the seat belt back in place.
He is still. His whole body is tense, as if waiting for an attack. After a moment he says, “Neither do I.”
“Did you recognize it? Who did it smell like?”
“Your father.”
7
I canNOT even tell you how creepy it is here. Seriously. I swear I hear people whispering my name every time we go outside, and sometimes it’s like there’s someone scratching on my window. I swear I am not crazy. It’s just Bedford, man. LOL.
—BLOG POST
“Everything looks like an IKEA store,” I say, grabbing Astley’s elbow as we walk through the airport in Iceland.
He laughs and smiles. His happiness and purpose seem infectious, almost like the air is full of pink bubble gum, only not sticky.
“It has so many windows,” I say, looking out into the darkness where the airplanes taxi and the luggage trains roll around. “And look at the chairs. They’re all posh.”
“Keflavik is known for being an amazing airport.” He points at all the shops: Burberry, Calvin Klein, Gucci. “Would you like to buy anything? I know you are a bit lacking for stores in Bedford.”
“No, no … I’m good.” My feet almost feel like happy-dancing across the sleek light wood floor. “When do you think your pixie friend will contact us? What should we do while we wait?”
He reaches over and grabs my carry-on. “I do not know exactly when. He said he’d call sometime today, and he’s arranged for a car to take us to Reykjavik.”
“The capital?”
“You have been reading up,” he says as we get to baggage claim. He looks down at me like he’s all proud for a second. My whole body tingles in some strange, wild way and my heartbeat jumps to five hundred beats a minute. I almost think he’s going to kiss me, but he’d never do that. He only did it that once just to turn me. His lips part a little, but he just says, “You stay here; I shall get the bags.”
I packed heavy because I didn’t know what to bring on a rescue mission to a mythological land or to Iceland.
I check my clock. It’s ten a.m. and it’s still dark outside. The sun won’t rise for another ninety minutes, and then it’ll set four hours after that, which is totally wild. I thought Maine was bad, but this country is so close to the north pole that it’s even darker.
Astley returns with our bags. “You’re shuddering. Are you cold?”
I shrug and make to grab my suitcase, but he nods toward a man in a dark suit, who must be our driver. The man hurries over, bows at Astley, doesn’t actually say anything, and takes our stuff.
By the time we’re done with customs and the bags and getting
settled in the car, the sun has started to rise. The sky is gray and overcast. Snow melds into the ground and there aren’t forests, just occasional clumps of big Christmas-type trees. It’s Maine cold. Squat buildings sprawl up out of the ground as if they sprouted there.
“It seems so unreal to be here,” I say to Astley. We’re sitting together in the back of the car. It’s all cushy even though it’s small. He looks healthy again. The cut on his face is gone. His color is good. “It’s like the world is suddenly shifted and this place couldn’t possibly be on it.”
“I know.” He crosses his legs.
I turn my cell phone on and stare at its blankness. “I don’t have a signal.”
“Did you have them turn it on so you can get calls internationally?” he asks.
Of course not. I didn’t know you had to. As we drive toward Reykjavik, I can’t even begin to count all the things I should have done but I didn’t. I begin to list them in my head and give up.
He smiles and settles back into his seat. “Excited?”
“Ridiculously.”
His smile gets even bigger. “It is nice to see you happy.”
“Well, thanks for making me happy,” I respond, adjusting my seat belt. There’s an awkward silence except for the rumbling of the car’s engine. We just stare out the windows, not touching each other, but I feel really close to him somehow anyway. Maybe it’s the bond between king and queen. Or maybe it’s because the car zooms closer to the city of Reykjavik, one mile, then another. We’re one mile closer to Nick.
Nobody calls Astley on our ride in. We get no tips. We get no advice. Nothing. I try to be patient and not disappointed as we check into the Hotel 1302, which is this boutique hotel that’s totally monochromatic, just whites and blacks and grays—stark elegance. The oak floors are actually heated and there’s funky art and sculptures everywhere. Astley and I have suites next to each other. An adjoining door attaches our rooms. When we say good-bye, I crash on the big white bed, stare at the black walls, and grab my phone. But there’s nobody to call, thanks to my failure to get an international calling plan. I haul myself off the bed and yank off my shoes before padding over to the bathroom, which doesn’t even have a wall separating it from the rest of the suite, which is just weird. Still, it’s just as starkly beautiful as everything else—a huge glass shower waits at the end of granite walls. Fluffy towels in white and black sit on black shelves, with a modern white sink above them. There’s even a white claw-foot tub, but it’s the shower that calls to me. And I listen.