A History of Glitter and Blood

  Tier and Scrap make eye contact across the room.

  Maybe she notices, maybe she doesn’t.

  “How are you?” Tier says, very softly.

  Scrap nods a little.

  “He’s doing great,” Beckan says, brightly, squirming out of Piccolo’s arms. “He healed right up. Fever’s gone and everything! He never gets sick. It was a fluke, yeah, Scrap?”

  “Yeah.”

  Yeah, Piccolo mouths to her. She bites her lip.

  “I like your house,” Rig says, and Beckan scurries off to give her a tour while Piccolo greets Josha like an old friend.

  They all sit around the table, Beckan between Rig and Piccolo, Josha on Piccolo’s right, where he can best fawn over the big silver buttons on his military coat. “A hand-me-down of my dad’s,” Piccolo says. “Pretty much the only good thing he’s given me.”

  “Mine left me some buckle-shaped scars on my back and a dry sense of humor,” Josha says.

  “Mine left most of that kid,” Tier says, pointing at Scrap, who rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue in his cheek and finally sits down, next to Tier.

  Beckan runs off to get her father.

  When she gets back, everyone is focused on Scrap’s arm, or where his arm would be. Rig touches a space a few inches under his ripped shoulder, like she thinks the arm might be invisible. Scrap gives her a small smile.

  “Can I see it?” Piccolo says, and Scrap offers the stump of his arm as best he can, and Piccolo gives it a quick look before he shakes his head. “Disgusting,” he says. “It’s fucking sick.”

  “Oh,” Rig says when he curses, not like she disapproves, not even like she’s surprised, but like it is dawning on her that this is what this is. This is how we are going to talk about this.

  Scrap pulls back.

  Beckan isn’t sure she’s ever, ever seen him embarrassed before.

  “No,” Piccolo says. “No, I didn’t mean you. I’m sorry. I mean . . . what happened to you. This is the kind of shit that war does,” Piccolo says.

  “Exactly,” Josha says. “Exactly.”

  Scrap says, “Gnomes always ate fairies. The war didn’t cause that.”

  “The war was the reason Cricket was anywhere near Crate,” Piccolo says, as if Scrap needs this explained and he is the one to do it. No one mentions that Scrap and Cricket tricked for a year before the war started. That all it took was one dirty comment spat at Cricket while he was grocery shopping to make them realize it would be a pretty easy way to afford to eat like kings and sleep in late, which were the kinds of job perks they liked at that point.

  “I really admire that you can be calm about it,” Piccolo says to Scrap. “It’s really incredible. I don’t know how I could move on if something like that happened to me.”

  “We’re fairies. We’re used to having pieces missing.”

  Piccolo says, “It must be such a hard thing, this immortality of yours. Especially now, seeing that it . . . that’s not a guarantee that you’re going to live forever. It just means you won’t die from natural causes.”

  “We always knew that,” Scrap says.

  “We won’t die at all,” Beckan says. “Just be lost.” She peeks at her father and wonders about the rest of him, stuck in a dead gnome’s stomach.

  “You know a lot about fairies,” Scrap says.

  Piccolo is still smiling. “My mom used to tell me stories about a few fairies she met one time. I always thought you guys sounded amazing.”

  “Josha likes you guys, too!” Beckan says. “That’s why he wanted to be in your army.”

  “What’s the state of the gnome army, anyway?” Piccolo says, his tone changed, no longer light.

  “Gnomes need leaders,” Rig says quietly. “It’s just . . . how we are. We like to be led.”

  “So now that the king’s dead, they’re not gonna be trying anything again?”

  “I can’t imagine so, no.”

  Tier and Scrap are looking at each other again, like they know something the others don’t, and Beckan does not like this.

  What kind of secret could the two possibly share? (Fuck, Beckan, I’m so sorry.)

  “But truly,” Piccolo says to Scrap. “That you’re able to deal with losing that arm. It’s incredible.”

  “It’s killing him,” Josha says. “He’s just trying not to hurt Tier’s feelings.”

  Scrap says, “Josha, would you shut up?”

  “Bite me.”

  Tier looks up.

  Josha growls.

  “Tea,” Beckan says, jumping up. “I’m making tea. Do you guys like tea?”

  Tier says, “Yeah, we do.”

  “Piccolo?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s good. You’ll love it.”

  Beckan gets up to put the kettle on, and they’re quiet for a minute at the table. Tier plays with Rig’s fingers, and Josha keeps admiring Piccolo’s jacket. Scrap sits perfectly still and somehow seems a hundred times calmer than the rest, and Beckan looks at him and thinks maybe it’s because he just does not care.

  You’re always cold.

  “It was my dad,” Tier says, eventually. “Who ripped off Scrap’s arm.”

  Piccolo nods, slowly.

  “Tier’s a good guy,” Scrap says.

  Beckan says, “He is,” and Josha gives the smallest grunt of agreement, and Tier smiles at Josha with everything in him.

  “Oh, God, of course,” Piccolo says. The others look at each other in confusion, but Piccolo just scoots his chair farther into the table, leans more toward Tier. “Of course. Trust me, if I took after my father, I’d be ripping arms out too.”

  Tier watches him. He isn’t smiling anymore, but his eyes still are.

  “It really can skip a generation,” Piccolo says. “Hopefully more.”

  “What can skip?” Rig says.

  “War,” he says. “Someone just has to make it happen.”

  They all are quiet. They look at each other.

  And together, they start making a flag.

  “The gnomes think the tightropers are planning something,” Tier says, marker in one hand, teacup in the other.

  “Tier,” Scrap says. He looks up from Tier’s history book, which he’s been devouring instead of drawing. “Don’t.”

  Tier takes a deep breath. “They don’t know anything, really. But there’s talking . . . there’s always talking. Everyone’s suspicious, no one’s happy.”

  Piccolo nods. “I figured. I have no way of knowing what the tightropers are up to. They hide everything when I’m anywhere close.”

  “Why?” Rig says.

  Scrap says quietly, to Tier, underneath everything, “We should talk later.”

  “Okay,” Tier says. No one else notices.

  Piccolo says to Rig, “Because . . . back at our last city, I had a . . . a someone. In my life. Who wasn’t a tightroper.”

  “A fairy?” Beckan says.

  “No, I’ve never been to a fairy city before. A fire-breather. We’re nomads, y’know, we travel around, dropping in over other cities. We’re so charming.” He ruffles the hair on the back of his head. “Anyway, they broke us up, but . . . they weren’t happy about that. Called me a blood traitor. These fucking bloodlines. That’s how all of this crap gets started.”

  Tier says, “But some of it’s good. Racial strengths—we have the teeth and talons, the fairies live forever, that stuff isn’t worthless.”

  “It’s not at all worthless. That’s the problem. It’s powerful. It’s hideous scary shitty powerful. What’s really important right now is that we’re a united front. The group of us.”

  “A pack,” Scrap says, softly.

  Beckan lights up.

  “Yeah,” Piccolo says. “Yeah, totally like that.”

  “The thing is that I tend to screw up packs,” Scrap says.

  They talk and draw late into the night, Scrap fraying at the edges. He starts out calmly distant from the crafts and plans, but after a few h
ours he is restless, even twitchy, jumping up every few minutes to check that the stove is off or that the window in his bedroom wasn’t left open. “Scrap,” Beckan says. “Calm down?”

  Eventually he opens up Tier’s book and puts it on the table.

  “Look at this,” he says. His voice is scratchy. “Someone else please look at this. It’s killing me.”

  “You were here first,” Scrap says. “We pushed you underground. We’re ruling you.”

  Beckan says, “No. No. They eat us. I’m sorry, Tier, but you eat us.”

  “I know.” Tier puts his hand on Scrap’s. “Hey. It’s just one book. It’s one truth. It’s ancient history, anyway.”

  “But I don’t know which one is right. How the fuck am I supposed to write a book if I don’t know what the real truth is?” He’s even quieter now. “How am I supposed to . . . make any decisions? It’s not even a matter of choosing what side to be on, it’s . . . how do you even keep track of what the sides are when you can’t even get the whole story?”

  Scrap starts falling asleep at the table—maybe still worn out from being sick, Beckan thinks, because she can’t figure out any other reason for him to be so out of sorts—and they send him off to bed, but the rest of them stay up, drinking cups of tea. They make maps for where they will look for Cricket. Beckan assumes they’ll be sneaking around, like she and Scrap used to (why did they stop? Why did the end of the war make them stop?), but Piccolo says no, that being visible is part of the plan. Being visible lets them know that every member of a resistance is important and together.

  Piccolo says, “We need to stay safe, but we also need to send the message that we’re going to be doing that together. That we’re not going to let any kind of threat turn us into fairy versus gnome versus tightroper. Do you mind if I do those dishes? They’re driving me crazy.”

  Beckan and Josha look sadly at the sink. They nod a little.

  It was a running joke, the sink full of dishes, because it was one of the most blatant examples of the bizarre routines that made everything bearable. Whether they wolfed down sudden feasts of food or licked yesterday’s remnants off tea saucers, they always knew that they could throw their plates in the sink and let them pile high and disgusting, and when they woke up, they would be clean and put away. Because they had a sleepwalker, and their sleepwalker was as predictable by night as he was by day.

  He was so harmless. He’d get up from bed, do the dishes, and go back to sleep. Sometimes he would dance a little around the kitchen, humming. Beckan liked to catch him at that and lead him back to bed. She wouldn’t wake him up. She kept that a secret for a long time.

  Three hours later, they have given up on all things serious and are rolling around on the floor, playing cards, when Scrap comes in from the bedroom. He looks exhausted and nervous and confused.

  “Is he okay?” Tier says.

  “He’s sleepwalking,” Josha says. “He’s all right. He never leaves the house.”

  Rig watches him. “Does he do this a lot?”

  “No.” Beckan is watching him too. “No, not anymore.” She smiles. “It’s good. It’s . . . Scrap. He’s being like Scrap.”

  Scrap wanders over to the sink. They giggle and pretend they’re going to trip him. “What’s he going to do?” Josha says. “There are no dishes!”

  “Poor thing’s going to be confused,” Rig says.

  Scrap turns on the tap and reaches his hand out for the first dish. He grasps around in the dead space, opening and closing his fingers again and again.

  They keep laughing.

  And Scrap, fast asleep, leans over the empty sink and starts to cry.

  There is a rush to get to him, but Josha gets there first, and he puts a cautious hand on each of Scrap’s shoulders.

  “Okay, Scrap. Shh shh shh. You’re okay, buddy.”

  Tier holds Beckan back and whispers, “Let them.”

  For the first few weeks, Beckan and Tier did not talk.

  It was a business relationship. Beckan knew that going in, but she had still expected to get a certain thrill out of prostitution, and all she felt was sore and lonely. Scrap and Cricket lived dangerously, bouncing from gnome to gnome, not knowing who they would have and who would be cruel, but Beckan, stuck night after night with only Tier, had nothing to fear from the nervous, cautious boy who made sure she always had a pillow under her head, who sometimes sobbed another girl’s name at the end.

  Eventually they shared a few words, the occasional smile, maybe a kiss now and then, and with the promise of food at the end of the night the sex became fine, nothing special, but nothing that would keep her awake shaking and sweating and whimpering in pain and fear like it sometimes would the boys. She enjoyed it as much as she could and found other things to focus on. Usually, those things were the drawing of Rig and Tier’s massive bookshelf.

  “Do you read?” was the first real thing Tier ever said to her.

  She was pulling her pants back on. She looked up.

  And he looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You always drift over to them. I only wondered.”

  She bit down on her lip. Tier already probably thought she was stupid since she never talked. What would he think of her when he learned she couldn’t really read?

  “Fairies can read,” she said.

  “Some of my books are by fairies.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmmhmm. Look at the names.”

  She found the names of the authors and sounded them out to herself as quietly as she could. Most of the names did sound like fairies, but it wasn’t always easy to tell. Beckan always worried, irrationally, that the hard sounds in her name betrayed that she was half gnome, that it took Cricket’s litheness for a fairy to carry a name that sounded so fierce. Beckan was short, soft, solid. Names could be unfairly transparent, after all. She knew for sure that Scrap’s name betrayed he was just a bit of something.

  Tier went to the bed and shook glitter off the sheets. He spat a bit out of his mouth. “Do you know how much our women love . . . loved fairies?”

  Beckan touched her hair.

  “They’d do anything to have a fairy baby. They toss it aboveground and no one will ever care that the child is half gnome. They will call it a fairy and the thing will grow up to hate gnomes and live forever. Like you, correct?”

  “What?”

  “You. You’re half gnome.”

  “You judge your women for wanting to have fairy babies—maybe you should stop eating their kids.”

  “Do you know your mother’s name? Did your father ever tell you? He was a diplomat, yes?

  She liked the way he ended sentences. She liked that he sounded uncomfortable. It made her feel powerful.

  “My dad is a diplomat,” she said. “He’s in a jar.”

  “What was your mother’s name?”

  “I only know her first name. She’s dead now. That’s all my dad told me.”

  Tier was quiet for a minute. “You’re the last one,” he said. “The last half-gnome.”

  “I know. There will be more.”

  “There haven’t been. Not for sixteen years. You’re the last link between gnomes and fairies.” He laughed, once, to himself. Then he stopped. “What did you say her name was?”

  “Spark. Dad said Spark. She’s dead, right?”

  He closed his eyes and said, “Yes. I . . . yes.”

  He hurried to the bookshelf and started to read the spines, then he shook his head and said, “Take one. Take any of them.”

  “What?”

  “The books. Take whatever you want.” He forced a stack into her hands. “Take them. Take anything.”

  Beckan shakes free and is the one to lead Scrap back to bed. She knows not to wake him up, but her hand brushes his half arm accidentally and it jerks him awake.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Sorry.”

  “. . . Beckan?”

  “You were sleepwalking. Just bringing you back to bed. Don’t worry.”

  “A
m I crying?”

  “There weren’t any dirty dishes. It scared you. Josha hugged you. Let’s get you in bed, okay?”

  She eases him between the covers, but he stiffens a little and says, “Oh, Becks, I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine,” and gets under himself.

  He brings his knees up and tucks his chin on top. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Really embarrassing. I cry all the time lately.”

  “Not really. Not as much as me.”

  “No way.”

  “I cried this morning because I couldn’t find my hairbrush.”

  Scrap laughs a little. “It’s hard at night,” he says. “Everything’s harder at night. Your friends seem nice. But angry.”

  “You mean Piccolo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Josha’s angry too,” Beckan says. “It will be nice for him to have someone to be angry with. I don’t even know how to be angry for more than a minute anymore. It’s there and then it’s gone.”

  “I’m not even angry, just sad all the time.”

  “Me too. It’s harder at night.”

  “It’s so much harder at night.”

  Beckan squeezes his hand. “I have something for you. I think now might be the time.”

  Scrap looks up. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Hold on.” She runs down to the basement and grabs it from her welding bench. It’s not perfect, but neither is Scrap.

  She brings it to him. “See, see,” she says. “It’s an arm. I made it for you. It has straps to go to your shoulder.”

  Scrap stares at it, his eyes enormous. “Oh . . . Beckan . . .” he says, and she is concerned, and he says, “No, no, it’s a good oh. Fuck, Becks, I can’t believe you did this. I wondered how a hook was taking you this long.”

  She laughs and helps him attach it to his shoulder. “The fingers don’t move, of course. I’m not a genius. But you can move them with the other hand. If you wear a sleeve, it will just look like you have a metal hand, like the rest of your arm is still there, and that’s pretty cool, isn’t it? And if you wore a glove . . .”

  He plays with the fingers. “I can’t believe this.”