Published by A.W. Hartoin
Copyright © A.W. Hartoin, 2012
Edited by Alan Rinzler
Cover art and design by Matt Campbell
Font by Karri Klawiter
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Also By A.W. Hartoin
Young Adult fantasy
Flare-up (An Away From Whipplethorn Short)
A Fairy's Guide To Disaster (Away From Whipplethorn Book One)
Fierce Creatures (Away From Whipplethorn Book Two)
A Monster’s Paradise (Away From Whipplethorn Book Three)
A Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four)
Mercy Watts Mysteries
Novels
A Good Man Gone (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book One)
Diver Down (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Two)
Double Black Diamond (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Three)
Drop Dead Red (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Four)
Short stories
Coke with a Twist
Touch and Go
Nowhere Fast
Dry Spell
Paranormal
It Started with a Whisper (Sons of Witches)
For Madeline
Your imagination was my inspiration.
PROLOGUE
I’M NO Tinkerbell. I don’t take orders from Lost Boys and Captain Hook could never catch me. I am a wood fairy though, complete with luminescent wings. Don’t go thinking fairy equals weak, or timid. Because if I was any of that I could never have found my parents, my home, my future after the humans took them away from me.
I think my mom doubts aspects of my story, even though I have the scars to prove it. I wish I could tell you what happened face to face, but being a half a centimeter tall has its disadvantages. Humans have a blind spot when it comes to fairies, no matter our size, and I’m the first Whipplethorn fairy to be seen in six generations. It was an isolated incident and I had to want it very badly to make it happen. Whether or not you see me, I want you to know that fairies exist all around you and in places you wouldn’t expect. My family lives in a fireplace mantel, for instance. It’s one of those big Victorian jobs, mahogany and weighing about two hundred pounds. Our home is inside the left leg of the mantel beside the firebox. Bet you never thought to look there.
Chances are we won’t ever meet, and you probably wouldn’t notice me even if we did, so I found a solution (I always do). I’ll write you a book and I won’t leave anything out, not even the stuff I didn’t tell my mother.
Still, I hope you do see me someday. There’s nothing like being seen, especially when your life depends on it.
CHAPTER 1
WHIPPLETHORN Manor was my world and I never expected to leave it. I wasn’t curious about the places and creatures beyond our borders. No one told me tales of spriggans, trow, or humans. If they had, I’d have been better prepared. But no one offered answers to questions I never thought to ask. Instead, I was wrapped up in my little life in a crumbling mansion and content to be so, if only my mother would let me have my way.
“Matilda.” Mom stuck her head through my door, her long black hair swooping down and brushing the floor. “Come down to the kitchen. We need to talk.”
I flopped back on my bed and studied my ceiling’s wood grain. Talking was never good. Talking meant Mom was about to change her mind. She’d make it sound like it was for my own good and she was doing me a favor. I was great at getting out of stuff but lousy at getting my own way. I managed to avoid unwanted activities with a series of excuses and fake injuries like overwhelming homework, or blinding headaches. I had a fake limp that was pretty useful. It came on suddenly and lasted for two weeks. Getting what I wanted was much more difficult. Limps didn’t help with that. Mom caught on to the limp thing and used it against me. That’s how she blocked my last babysitting job. She said if a person with a limp couldn’t possibly clean bathrooms, they couldn’t babysit either. The limp wasn’t the real reason I didn’t get to babysit though. That was just the excuse. It was my ears’ fault. I had snail pox when I was two and the fever cost me a good deal of my hearing. It wasn’t a big deal to me. I could hear what I needed to hear.
Since the snail pox, Mom and Dad worried about me like crazy while at the same time saying I was just the same as all the other girls my age. Except the other girls were all babysitting and I wasn’t.
The thought made me feel rebellious, but it wasn’t a good idea to make Mom wait too long, so I heaved myself off my bed and went down the hall toward the kitchen, my long purple and green wings limp on my back and sweeping the floor with my every step. Mom was in the kitchen, but she could hear a gnat’s wing beat and that was on a bad day. The sound of my wings on the floor drove her crazy. She hated dusty wings and said it was a sign of dusty mind. Whatever that meant. If she wouldn’t let me babysit again, I could at least annoy her.
The glowing mushrooms on the hallway walls lit the way as I slowly passed by. They grew in pots and cast a warm green light. Each cap was bigger than my fist and watering our fungus was my favorite chore. I stopped to say hello to my favorite, a frilly clump of Foxfire I named Barbara.
Mom walked out of the kitchen, her long silver and blue wings draped over her shoulders like a cape. “Are you coming?”
I dropped my hand and continued to the kitchen. I slipped past Mom and plopped down on my dad’s stool at the big acorn top table. Mom bustled around, eyeing me as she rearranged her hand-painted eggshell plates. I crossed my arms and waited. She could rearrange those plates all day. I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Finally, she stopped and put her hands on her hips, assuming her battle expression. It only showed up when she wanted to make me or my little sister, Iris, go to the dentist or eat a lima bean.
“There’s been a change of plans,” she said.
I slumped over. My long black hair fell in my face and pooled in my lap.
“Really,” I said. “I’m shocked.”
“You’re going to do Eunice a favor.”
I peeked at her through strands of hair, afraid she was pulling a fast one. “Babysitting?”
“Yes.”
I jumped up. “Really? You’ll really let me this time?”
“Yes, that is if you don’t have a headache or limp.”
I ignored her implications. “Who’s Eunice?”
“You know Eunice. Gerald’s mother. He’s in your sister’s class.”
I dropped back onto Dad’s stool with my mouth open. Gerald Whipplethorn? I wanted to babysit, but Gerald wasn’t worth it. The kid annoyed me like an itchy scab you couldn’t pick off. He was the worst. The absolute worst.
I suddenly remembered an essay I had to write, my eyesight started to go in my left eye and I gripped the stool in an effort to ward off what was sure to become a crippling case of vertigo.
“No way, Mom.” I wavered back and forth on the stool. “I don’t feel so good after all.”
“Stop that nonsense. You’ve been pestering me about babysitting for a year. Now’s your chance.”
“I can’t babysit for Gerald. He’s a nightmare.”
“Matilda Grace Whipplethorn, you
are babysitting for your sister and Gerald. He’s already upstairs. His mother needs a break.”
“Everybody needs a break from Gerald. I need a break and I haven’t seen him in a week.”
“You’re just nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I said.
“Well, there’s no reason to be. Babysitting is a pretty boring job. Nothing will happen.” She picked up a roll of parchment off the counter. “Why don’t you look over the list and see if you have any questions?”
The emergency procedures list. My mom’s collection of paranoid fantasies, including every awful thing that might happen if she left me in charge. I took Mom’s list off the counter and skimmed it. The thing was ridiculous. It insisted I be capable of handling such calamities as a rogue fly attack, snail pox, and spurting arterial blood. There hadn’t been a rogue fly attack in twenty years and I didn’t even want to know what arterial blood was, much less what to do about it. I wasn’t old enough anyway. Adult wood fairies could manipulate liquids, like making it rain in one spot instead of another, or staunch blood flow. My Grandma Vi could stop a cut from bleeding with just a look. As far as I could tell, my magic hadn’t come in yet. At least no magic I wanted anyone to know about.
“Well, any questions?”
“I never have any questions.”
I never would either. I was afraid Mom might actually answer and tell me how to pop snail pox pustules. That was information I didn’t want in my thirteen-year-old brain. But on the other hand, the list implied that a horrendous calamity might happen if Mom left me in charge. For once, it was in my interest to encourage the idea.
“Mom, I don’t think I’m ready for this. The stuff on the list is pretty serious. I’d freak out or something.”
“I told you nothing’s going to happen. You’re fine. Perfectly fine.”
She said I was fine, but she looked like she needed to breathe into a paper bag to keep from hyperventilating.
“If spurting arterial blood isn’t going to happen, why is it on the list?” I asked.
“The list is just a precaution.”
“I don’t care. I’m not doing it.”
Mom bent over and kissed me on the forehead, enveloping me in her wings. She smelled like violets and the scent soothed me as it always did since the time I had snail pox pustules.
Then she placed her forehead against mine. “It will be fine. You can handle him. You can handle anything.”
I looked into her dark brown eyes and found the usual worries. “You don’t really think so, do you, Mom?”
“I do too,” she said. “Plus, you have the list.”
Then Mom darted out of the kitchen with just one glance over her shoulder. I caught a glimpse of a puckered brow, but I didn’t care. I’d always known I could do it, and soon Mom would know she didn’t have to worry about me. If I could watch after Gerald, I could do anything.
I rolled up the list and went to the kitchen window, a carved rose the size of a nickel. I pushed it out so that it was completely open and I could see all of Whipplethorn Manor’s formal dining room where our mantel was placed by humans a hundred fifty years before. My ancestors carved out their home in the left leg of the mantel, so they would have a good view of the humans’ whereabouts back when there were humans still living in Whipplethorn. Now I had a good view of nothing. The room was empty and had been for fifty years. An earthquake had cracked the foundation and the humans fled, leaving an extraordinary house to rot. This decision had always caused me to question the wisdom of humans. We wood fairies hadn’t abandoned Whipplethorn. We simply adapted to our new more isolated circumstances.
Mom flitted in front of my window, her lovely wings creating a canvas behind her and bathing me in a warm glow with their luminescence. She flew back towards me one last time, cupped my cheek and spoke in my ear, so I’d be sure to hear. “Don’t let that Gerald fly all over you. Have fun, darling.”
I didn’t have a chance to respond. Mom zipped away, across the dining room toward the enormous bank of windows. She stopped at a broken window pane and waved. A wide, joyful smile lit her face. I would keep that image of her safe within my heart in the days to come. Then she flew through the jagged hole. I watched as her silver streak crossed the overgrown lawn. She dodged a collapsed rose arbor, passed over the disintegrating iron fence that surrounded the mansion, and disappeared into the dense forest surrounding Whipplethorn. Mom was traveling at her top speed to catch up with the rest of the Whipplethorn fairies. Within minutes, she’d be miles away at the blueberry harvest.
I fanned myself with the list, trying to ignore its dire predictions. Especially the part about bandaging a head wound in three easy steps. That would be a lot less messy if I could staunch blood flow. But Grandma Vi had told me a million times that there was nothing to be done about it. Magic came when it came and one couldn’t choose the gift. I wished I could do something about it. I really did.
I turned around, still holding the list, and found Gerald staring at me from the kitchen doorway. He had his arms crossed and a fierce scowl marred his broad forehead under his light brown hair. He was wearing a grey suit with a navy blue bow tie. Leave it to Gerald to be overdressed for every occasion.
“Where’s my breakfast?” he bellowed. “Mother said you’d give me something good.”
I glanced down at the list, but there wasn’t anything on there about dealing with Gerald and there should’ve been. He wasn’t a vague possibility like explosive diarrhea. He was definite. My mother should’ve replaced rogue fly attack with obnoxious kid attack.
“Your mother probably already fed you.”
I turned my attention to a dozen red maple leaves dancing across the dining room’s wide-planked floors.
Gerald met my remark with silence, which wasn’t like Gerald. Of course it’s possible that I just didn’t hear him. When I looked up to see if I could catch a word or read his lips, all I caught was a glimpse of Gerald’s wings rounding the corner toward our storeroom. I tucked my hair behind my ears and stuffed the list of things that weren’t going to happen in the pocket of my blue jumper. Mom dyed it especially to match my eyes, but I think my eyes are more purple than blue.
I followed Gerald down the hall, sweeping my fingers over the book shelves adorning the wall. Three sad little books sat on the middle shelf and I couldn’t help frowning at them as I passed. It seemed so pathetic to build shelves for books we didn’t own. All the books in Whipplethorn wouldn’t be enough to fill the shelves my father built. He seemed to think that if he built shelves, books would find their way to them. I plucked the thickest tome off the end, an instruction on advanced woodworking. Maybe it could occupy Gerald for a bit. I pressed the book to my chest and arrived in the storeroom just in time to see him bite into our last bit of blueberry.
“Gerald, what are you doing? That’s our last one. You’re not even hungry. I know you’re not,” I said, slamming the book on a flour barrel.
Gerald stuck his tongue out at me and then licked the blueberry with a big slurp. I decided right then that his classmates were right. Gerald wasn’t a wood fairy. He was a stink fairy, just like everyone said.
“What are you going to do about it? Refer to your stupid list?” he asked. A wicked smile spread across his pale face and his wings fanned out. He always did that when he was being obnoxious. I assumed he was trying to make himself bigger, not that it did him any good. Gerald was small, even for an eight-year-old wood fairy.
I wanted to drag him through the storeroom by his vicious tongue and throw him out of the window, but since it was my first babysitting job I thought I’d better not. Instead, I took a breath and counted to three.
Gerald’s smile widened and he yelled, “Can you hear me?”
I took a step toward him and lowered my voice. “I heard you just fine. Get away from that blueberry and go play.”
Gerald’s wings spread a little wider. They operated like my wings, folding down like a moth’s against his body and spreadin
g open to resemble a butterfly’s, but they were much too small for his age and lacked a defined pattern. His blues and greys were dull and muddled even with the bit of sun coming in through the storeroom windows. No matter how much Gerald pretended, his wings just weren’t very impressive.
Gerald plunked down on a stool and crossed his arms. “You can’t make me.”
“I’m the babysitter. I can make you do anything.” Babysitting was starting to sound like more fun than Mom let on.
“You’re not really,” said Gerald. “Everyone knows I’m smarter. I should be babysitting for you.”
“Nobody would let you babysit, Stink Fairy.”
I marched across the dusty wood floor, grabbed Gerald’s arm and hauled him to his feet. Gerald jerked away from me and toppled backwards into my mom’s neatly stacked grains of wheat and barley. The grains fell down around him and one particularly large barley grain clunked him on the head.
“Ouch.” Gerald reached up to touch his ear. He smirked at me and held out his hand. A smear of crimson coated his palm.
“You shouldn’t have pulled away from me,” I said, thinking I was lucky he was still conscious. So much for the list being just a precaution. I’d only been watching Gerald for a few minutes and I already had my first head wound. I knew babysitting Gerald wouldn’t be as boring as Mom claimed. Gerald was a lot of things, but I’d never known him to be boring.
“You shouldn’t have grabbed me,” said Gerald. “I’m telling my mother.”
“Go ahead and tell her, Stink Fairy.” I waved for him to come over. “Come on. I’ve got to bandage that big head of yours.”
“You’re an idiot,” he said.
“I’m an idiot?”
I stomped towards him, spreading my wings out to their full span. My tips touched the ceiling and the bottoms trailed on the ground. The whole room became awash in my purple and green luminescence. I was about to reach for Gerald’s arm again to drag him to the kitchen for a bandage when he said, “Somebody’s running this way.”
It had to be Iris and it had to be bad, because Iris never ever ran. I turned in time to see my little sister bounce off the doorframe of the storeroom. She got to her feet and squeezed through the narrow storeroom door, panting and brushing the wrinkles out of her sparkly blue dress that matched her wings.
“Matilda, you’ll never believe what I saw,” Iris said.
Gerald brushed past me and stood in front of Iris with his arms crossed. “What did you see, big and stupid?”
Iris sucked in her lips. “I’m not stupid.”
“And you’re not that big either,” I said, even though Iris was way bigger than I had been at her age. She might turn out to be larger than our father, who was nearly as tall as the dime Mom propped up on the parlor wall for decoration. “You shouldn’t talk, Gerald. You’re not even a real Whipplethorn.”
“I am, too,” said Gerald.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You can tell by your wings. They don’t shine at all.”
“Yes, they do, idiot.”
“No, they don’t. Look how muddy and dull they are.” I pulled out one of his wings. “Real Whipplethorns have luminescent wings.”
“That doesn’t make you better,” said Gerald, pulling his wing away from me.
“It makes me a Whipplethorn.”
“Humans,” yelled Iris.
We turned to stare at her. She clapped her dimpled hands and grinned.
“I saw humans,” she said, her grin growing larger.
“Where?” Gerald and I said together.
“Right out in the great hall. You could hear them if you stopped fighting.”
I held my breath and listened. Maybe I heard something, deep tones from outside the mantel. I never would’ve noticed if Iris hadn’t pointed it out.
“Are they loud?” I asked.
Iris hesitated. “They’re not that loud.”
Gerald sneered at her. “Are you kidding? They’re humans. It’s like they’re bellowing out there.” Then Gerald’s face went another shade of pale. “They’re talking about tools.”
I pulled out the list and scanned the thing from top to bottom. Nothing. Humans weren’t on the list. And why would they be? It was like humans had forgotten Whipplethorn Manor existed at all. Of course, I’d seen humans before, but never in the house. Sometimes Dad would find some hiking on trails in the national park nearby, and we would go to look at them. If I was very good, Dad would let me fly right up to them and look up their nostrils. No Whipplethorn fairy had been seen in six generations and I wanted to be the one to break our cold streak. So I tried everything I could think of to get their attention, including pulling ear hairs and biting noses, but they never noticed tiny wood fairies. Dad said I had to want it very badly to make it happen. He’d never been able to do it. I couldn’t imagine wanting a human to see me any more than I already did.
Iris and I ran to the storeroom windows and leaned out. Three human men in faded overalls were walking around and pointing at things. Once I was in the window, I could just barely make out what they were saying.
“What do you think, Sal?” asked the tallest.
“Gold mine. It’s a flipping gold mine,” said Sal.
The third one pulled a notebook out of his pocket and began writing things down. “You got that right.”
My sister and I glanced at each other. “Do you think they’re moving in?” asked Iris.
“No.” I’d spent a lot of time imagining humans living in Whipplethorn. Three men with rough hands and pit stains didn’t match my fantasies at all.
“What are they doing here then?” Iris leaned over the window sill to get a closer look. “Do you think they could see me? Can I go out?”
I pulled Iris back. “Better not. Mom wouldn’t like it.”
She turned around with a petulant frown on her face. I was about to chastise her when I spotted Gerald backing out of the room.
“Don’t you want to see?” Iris asked him.
Gerald didn’t answer, but he stopped moving. His eyes darted from one of us to the other.
“Maybe he’s too smart to be interested in humans,” I said.
Gerald remained silent. A feat I’d never before experienced. Gerald always talked, whether anyone wanted to listen or not.
“What’s wrong with you?” I stepped closer to Gerald, eyeing him with interest.
Iris tapped my shoulder. “Look.”
We crowded into the window again. The three humans were standing in front of our mantel, rubbing their giant hands together and filling the mantel with their odd stink, a combination of sweat and pungent soap.
“May as well start here as anywhere,” said the tall one. “You got it, Sal.”
“You bet,” said Sal as he slapped a long, thin piece of metal in his palm.
Iris leaned forward again. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I felt my blood run cold. I’d read about that happening in books, but the description always seemed silly and melodramatic until it happened to me. It was like taking a bath in ice cold fear. Something was about to go terribly wrong.
The humans went to the sides of the mantel, out of our sight. There was a dull thump and the mantel shook. Iris’s eyes went wide and she reached for me. A cracking noise rang out and the mantel jerked forward, throwing us into the window frame. Iris slid onto the sill, her torso hanging over the edge. I dropped the list and grabbed Iris’s right wing, jerking her back in. There was another crack and the mantel twisted. Grains of wheat and barley flew everywhere, knocking us off our feet. Dad’s woodworking tools clattered onto the floor. Their sharp edges menaced us as we screamed and clung together. Another jerk. Iris and I were thrown against the outside wall again. Another body width and we would’ve fallen out the window.
I grabbed a wall bracket, securely bolted to the wall supporting Dad’s shelves. I held onto it with my right hand and looped my left arm around Iris’s waist. We lay there for a second on the wal
l that was now a floor and screamed while the dust floated down. Before it had a chance to settle, the mantel flipped upright and we were back on the real floor with me still clinging to the shelf. Then the mantel jerked again and we began to slide toward the door to the hall. Another’s screaming reached me through Iris’s hysteria.
I looked past Iris’s head and saw Gerald, bloody and bruised, sliding across the floor to the open doorway to the hall. The list fluttered past him, useless. Then my woodworking book glanced off his forehead, and his shriek went to a higher pitch. His fingernails gouged into the floor and his mouth was stretched open wider than I’d ever seen it.
“Matilda!” he screamed.
“Gerald!” I wanted to reach out to him, I really did, but I couldn’t let go of Iris and letting go of the shelf wasn’t an option either. We’d all fall. A sudden jerk of the mantel and I found myself dangling from the shelf with Iris’s arms tight around my neck. I looked down in time to see Gerald disappear through the doorway, still screaming my name.
CHAPTER 2