“Pixie.” The icy giant gasps out the word. “Zara of the willow, the stars, the White.”
My name. He knows my name. I look to Nick, who has rushed to the frosty giant’s side and is sniffing at the ax, at his wound. Nick makes a soft whining noise into the still-burning air. I move forward, finally no longer frozen. The giant is sprawled across the snow. His beard is icy in some places, singed in others.
“We’ll get you help,” I say, grabbing his hand. It is like touching frozen metal. My skin adheres to it almost. His eyes are ice, dying and unfeeling. His muscles limp. We both know it’s too late for help. Plus, what kind of help could I even get? An ambulance? For a giant man of frost?
I maneuver myself so I can lift his head up off the ground a little bit, but the blood just rushes out more. Which is a good thing, I think, because taking a long time to die a painful death could never be right.
“How do you know my name?” I blurt.
He doesn’t answer that.
“What can I do?” I beg him. “Tell me how to help you.”
His breath shallows. Beyond us, the fire giant’s body hisses in the snow. This one’s mouth moves and each word seems a tremendous exertion of will, of effort. “Loki will escape the cavern. You will die. Must. Stop.”
I will die? Me specifically?
“Loki?” I search for answers in the empty eyes. “The Norse god, Loki?”
His nod is just the tiniest of movements. His voice is so quiet I have to lean closer and cock my ear to hear him. “Ragnarok will come. Here to warn the king … He must not …”
“Must not what? What?” My voice begs, pleads, is a cry into the night, but it doesn’t matter. His head falls into my lap. His body stills. There will be no more answers from him; not tonight, not ever.
“Thank you,” I whisper. My hands move to close his eyes. For a moment it is as if all his power, his cold will, echoes through me. The shock of it leaves me still. Frozen.
Then it is gone.
I don’t know what to do. Do I leave him here? What about the other one? Nick whines and paws the ground. I wipe my hand in the snow to try to get off the blood and then flip open my cell phone. No signal. Of course. I make an executive decision.
“We’ll go back. We’ll get help to move the bodies, then bury them. They’ll be okay here for a minute, right?” I ask Nick.
He pants, which I’m going to decide means yes.
I gently take the giant’s head out of my lap and place it on the ground. I kiss his cheek. “Good passage.”
It is all I can think to say. The snow behind me sizzles from the smoldering branch next to the other giant’s body. Something is off here. As I turn to look, the giant himself suddenly bursts into flames. Nick yelps and scrambles backward, paws sliding on the earth. Then, just as quickly as it started, the fire is gone and the giant is gone with it. All that’s left is a black smudge on the ground. When I turn back to look at the frosty giant, he’s gone too. There’s just a pile of snow. I reach through it, feel for him, but there’s only vapor.
“This. Is. So. Weird,” I mumble. “This is Twilight Zone weird, freaky sci-fi weird. I’m not hallucinating, am I?”
Nick rolls his wolf eyes, which is pretty impressive, albeit annoying.
“Nice,” I say. “Very supportive of you. Thanks.”
He barks a short retort.
“You are so lucky I don’t understand wolf,” I tell him.
It takes us about twenty minutes to get back to the parking lot between Bedford High School and the softball field. Nick stays in wolf form the entire way so I can’t bounce ideas off of him about whether or not we were hallucinating or if we really just saw giants. I can’t ask him why I rarely see him in human form since he came back despite the fact that we’re living in the same house. Seeing him at school hardly counts since he avoids me and doesn’t even come to lunch. In this form, I can’t ask him one freaking thing, which is probably why he’s like this—all wolf and quiet.
When we get to my car he just turns around. He doesn’t even give a nice bark or anything like a dog in a Disney movie would. Then again, he’s not a dog and this is not Disney. Disney pixies are decidedly different. Nick just takes off into the woods without looking back.
“Yeah,” I mutter, “nice seeing you too. You want to go get some pizza, ’cause I’m sick of spaghetti? Maybe thank me for bringing you back to the world of the living? Yeah … awesome.”
I open the door to the truck, sighing, even though sighing is cliché. I sigh because there is nothing else to do. I sigh because sighing about Nick is all I have left in me right now. Just that. A sigh.
I start the engine right away because if some evil pixie is going to sneak attack me it’s best to be able to drive away super-fast. But when I let my brain relax for a second it’s not evil pixies I think about or even Nick. It’s what just happened in the woods—the fight.
Images of the ax wound in the ice giant’s neck and the fire giant erupting into flames flash into my brain, searing themselves there, and I shudder as I grab my phone and text our friend Devyn because Devyn is brainy and research oriented and occasionally a bird. It’s too late to call.
Giants? One icy. One fire. Signs of Ragnarok?
In Norse mythology, Ragnarok is this ancient prophesized end of the gods and of humans, which a year ago I would have rolled my eyes at but now … now … Well, I’ve met Odin and Thor and been to Valhalla. It’s hard to really roll my eyes at anything.
Air starts blasting in through the heaters. I hold my breath. Something is watching me again. I can feel it, a nasty darkness that shouldn’t be there. The tiny hairs on my arms stand up and brush against the fabric of my shirt. I don’t have to move my sleeve to know that I have goose bumps.
“Astley?” My voice whispers into the truck. It’s pretty pathetic that when I get creeped out I automatically hope that Astley’s close by, or Amelie, his kick-butt second in command.
“Betty?” Maybe my grandmother is nearby, stalking, protecting? Maybe she’s found me while I’ve been looking for her.
She doesn’t answer. Nothing answers, which is a good thing. Bad pixies aren’t known for being silent.
Resisting the urge to just give in to nerves and play damsel in distress, I don’t call Astley for backup, don’t call Issie for moral support. I focus instead on my own power. I’m a pixie queen. I’m powerful now. I have to remember that.
I haul in a big breath and put the truck in reverse. That’s when the smell comes again, hard and true, a rotting smell like dead mice in a hot attic—only magnified about twenty times. Gagging, I put my gloved hand over my mouth and pull out of the parking space, then put it in forward so I can get out of the lot. Then I think better of it and brake. If there’s something dead in my grandmother’s truck, I’d like to get the darn thing out before we get home.
“Why me?” I mutter. Sure I’m a warrior and all that, but I’m not so good at actually looking for dead things, especially in my truck. Just as I’m unbuckling the seat belt and twisting around to check behind the seats, my phone beeps. I shriek because I’m so on edge. My in-box icon flashes that there is one new text from Devyn.
I keep holding my breath while I read it.
It’s just two words: Why? and Yes.
I don’t answer right then. I just can’t. Closing my eyes, I lean my head back against the headrest and pray. The smell is gone again, the feeling vanished with it. My flesh has lost its goose bumps, but the worry about us and the future makes my skin terribly cold. I reach over, turn the heat up past eighty, and head home.
When I get there I finally text back, We need to talk about Loki. I send it to all of our crew.
The moment I step out of the truck, I notice the wolf tracks that head up the porch steps. Nick is already back. As I slam the car door shut, he steps out of the house, a bag slung over his shoulder, looking human—sad and human.
“What are you doing?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
He steps closer, one step, another. It’s like it’s all happening in slow motion. The snow swirls around us, tiny specks of fluff stick to his hair, his cheeks. His voice is hoarse and tired. “Zara …”
All he says is my name, but it rips me apart anyway because he fills my name with pain and regret.
I step toward him, raise my hands, cover his lips. An ache of sorrow threatens to take over me, rising up from my stomach. “Don’t say anything.”
He can’t. He can’t say anything because I can’t hear anything bad, anything …
“You feel so different,” he murmurs. His lips move beneath my fingers, forming syllables of hurt. “You don’t feel like Zara anymore.”
My fingers drop from his lips. My fingers did nothing to stop him from saying it. My changing did nothing to stop me from losing him. I lift my hand again to touch his face, to say goodbye, but a muscle in his cheek twitches and instead my hand just hangs in the air, not sure where to go.
“You said you would love me, that you would always love me, no matter what,” I say, reminding him of right before he died. “Do you remember that?”
His lower lip sucks in toward his teeth for a second. His voice is broken and weak. “I remember, Zara, but—”
My heart collapses in on itself. “But what?”
“You aren’t you anymore. The Zara I loved—the human Zara—is gone.”
I whirl away because honestly I can’t stand to look at him, can’t stand to have him look at me, look at my face crumpling or my eyes getting mad—so mad. My hands shake as I cover my face and give in, just for a second, I give in to the sorrow; let it take me down into some place that’s dark and desperate. I’m so familiar with that place from when Nick died, when my dad died, when Mrs. Nix died, when I lost my humanity. I know it so well and I know that if you stay there too long, it is so very hard to get free. The sorrow never wants to let you go.
I can’t let that happen again. I don’t have time to let that happen again, so I battle my way out before I get stuck there forever.
“I am still me, Nick.” I groan. “Even Devyn admits that now. I am a different species, but I’m the same person—my soul—the Zara part of me is the same. Only my body is different.” I pull at my skin, which is kind of dramatic. “That’s all that’s changed.”
He takes a step toward me and then stops himself. “No. No, that’s not quite true.”
I force myself to stand still, to not go to him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s more than that, Zara.” He looks at the sky like he’s searching for help from the stars. “You smell different. Not as bad as the other pixies, for some reason, but not like you.”
I actually laugh—a short sputter of a laugh, bitter and hard. “So you don’t love me anymore because I smell different? That’s not shallow or anything, right? What? Like if I buy some new nice-smelling body lotion from Sephora, we’ll be all good again?”
“Zara, don’t be ridiculous.” He coughs, almost a bark. “It isn’t shallow. We read about this, remember? Pixies don’t have souls.”
“I have a soul.” I cross my arms over my chest. My foot taps on the ground the same way my mother’s does when she’s beyond mad.
The wind gusts, smashes against us. A wind like this used to just about knock me over, but now that I’m a pixie I can withstand it. I brace myself until the worst of it passes, just staring up at Nick. I say it again because it’s important. “I have a soul, Nick.”
This is ridiculous, ridiculous and awful. I am standing in the cold, telling my supposed boyfriend that I have a soul when he’s the one who came back from the dead. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on me.
Tears spring into his eyes, eyes that refuse to look down and meet my own. Instead he stares ahead into the snow.
“I have to go,” he says.
“You’re just giving up on us?” My voice squeaks. I hate it for squeaking, for the weakness there, and then I can’t hold in my emotions any longer. “I changed for you. I changed because I had to save you. I changed because I loved you—and you don’t even think I have a soul.” My voice breaks. “You don’t even love me anymore.”
“Zara …” His face softens a tiny bit. “I never said I didn’t love you anymore.”
Something frees up inside my chest. “You didn’t?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s just—Agh!”
Instead of finishing his sentence, he sticks his hands in his hair and actually pulls at it for a second. It stands up in crazy bunches. If things were normal I would reach over and smooth it back down.
He does what Issie calls the Captain Kirk move. He grabs me by the shoulders—not too hard, but like he’s trying to make sure I’m paying attention—which is what Kirk did on all those old Star Trek episodes from the 1960s or something. I don’t care whose patented move it is. I just like the fact that his hands are touching my arms, that his face has lowered toward mine, that he’s making eye contact, finally. Talking to me, finally.
“Zara.” His voice is deep, impassioned, and slower than normal. “You need to understand that you are not the same. It’s not just your smell. You kill things. You kill. You are … entwined … with that king now.”
“Astley?” I think of how there are two branches that represent our souls and how they really are entwined. Could Nick somehow know that? Just instinctively maybe?
He nods. “Devyn told me how he pretty much magically appeared when you were shot in that bar. He knew you were in danger. You and I? We never had that link. Not like that.”
“It’s just because he’s my king,” I start to explain.
“Exactly!”
I step away, pivot, stop, force myself to turn back at him, to really look at him. He’s so tall and strong looking. His tan boots plant his feet firmly on the ground, but he’s not confident about us anymore. My best friend, Issie, may be goofy but she is good when it comes to human psychology, and she was right—he is jealous.
“Astley being my king is not the same thing, Nick. It’s just—” I realize then that I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know if I’m telling the truth. I can’t imagine a world without Astley in it. He calms me down. He lets me be me without criticizing. “We are connected, yes. But everyone who is his subject is connected.”
“Do you realize what you just said? You just called yourself his subject. The Zara you once were would never be anyone’s subject. She would die before she’d be someone’s subject.”
I swallow. It’s true.
Nick’s hand touches my chin. “He has some sort of power over you, some sort of hold, doesn’t he?”
I break eye contact and whisper, “He’s my king. I couldn’t have saved you without him. He … he helped me.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” Nick bites his lip as I look at him again. “I hate that you did this for me, Zara, that you are one of them now.”
I shake my head. “Didn’t you see any pixies in Valhalla? Weren’t any of them good?”
“You know I don’t remember anything. Why do you even ask me?”
“It would be easier if you remembered,” I sputter. If he remembered he would know we went through this already, that we kissed, that … And where would that leave Astley? I don’t even know. I mutter, “So much easier.”
“Obviously.”
“Okay. Think of it this way. Some of the pixies had to be good if they were in Valhalla.” I push on, voice rising with each word. “I am one of those. Astley is one of those.”
Nick cringes when I say Astley’s name, which is beyond annoying but understandable. “How do you know he is, Zara? How do you actually know he hasn’t been manipulating you this entire time for his own reasons? How do you know?”
“I know because it has to be true,” I whisper.
“Because?” Nick urges.
“Because if it isn’t I don’t know how I’ll survive. I can’t survive if I don’t have a soul, Nick. I can’t survive if I don’t think
I’m essentially good. Flawed, obviously, but good.”
The sorrow threatens again. It’s not just sorrow. It’s despair and desperation and a host of other horrible emotions that make my skin shiver. Nick’s thumb brushes against my cheek.
“I’ve changed too, Zara. I’ve changed,” he says, and repeats it like he’s only just realizing it himself. I can see the fear in those dark brown eyes of his.
“How?” I ask.
He shakes his head, unlocks his MINI, and throws the bag in. The shovel leaning up against the porch falls over into the snow. “We can’t pretend to be a couple anymore. We’ve just—we’ve changed too much.”
“Nick?” His name is a plea that won’t stop. “You’re just leaving? You’re leaving me alone?”
“I have to get out of the house for a while, just a couple hours, maybe the night.” He actually snickers as he folds his long body into the small car. “You aren’t alone.”
“Yes, I am. Without you, I’m alone.”
He pushes the key fob into the ignition hole. “That is the weakest, least Zara White thing I think you’ve ever said.”
And then he shuts the door.
And then he backs around.
And then he drives away from the house, through the trees, and onto the main road.
And then he is gone.
Again.
I growl, an inhuman, angry growl. The snow muffles it. I give up, grab the shovel, and stake it into a snowbank. Just like me, it will have to wait there until someone wants it again.
WEEKLY REPORT: 12/14 TO 12/21
TROOP/UNIT: Troop J
ITEMS OF INTEREST TO LOCAL AGENCIES:
12/15: Trooper David Seacreast responded to a report of suspicious activity off Surry Road. Juvenile complainant reported hearing his name whispered in woods outside his home. When Trooper Seacreast responded he found no tracks but did hear laughter in the woods. Possible radio transmitter in trees as part of a prank? Investigation continues.
I drop into bed, dead tired. The house smells different without anybody else here. It doesn’t have that same alive smell, that same good toughness of bad cooking, burned spaghetti, tiger fur. A couple months ago, my mom sent me up here to Maine to live. I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where the world is much warmer and full of flowers, but when my dad—technically my stepdad—died I became pretty depressed and my mom sent me to live with his mom, Grandma Betty, who is a paramedic/EMT. Really my mom sent me here because she was worried that my biological pixie king father might track me down and try to kidnap me or something. She had seen him in Charleston. She thought I’d be safer with Betty because Betty is a weretiger. Weird, I know, but in the last couple months I’ve gotten pretty used to weird.