Chapter Fourteen #2
Josie lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows. “Is that what you’ve been doing? Researching what families do by watching Miss Nekesa’s DVD collection?”
Maddy huffed. “It’s not like we have families of our own.”
“You no have a family, Miss Maddy?” Amos asked.
“Well, I do,” Maddy said curtly after a surprised pause. She examined Amos as though he were an exotic-looking insect. “We aren’t…close.”
Amos’s little forehead wrinkled. “We can share, Miss Maddy. Me and my mom will play on this part of the snow, and you can have the rest of the snow to look at.”
When Maddy objected, Pax laid a warning hand on her shoulder. “That is kind of you to share the snow, Mr. Amos. That sounds like something a hero would do on those DVDs with those normal humans.”
Josie ducked her mouth behind her scarf but the wrinkles beneath her eyes betrayed a smile. Did he sound ridiculous?
He certainly felt ridiculous. Would Amos understand what Pax was trying to communicate? When did human children develop a sense for subterfuge?
“Why play with the snow in the first place?” Maddy turned to Pax and set her hands on her hips. “What is the point if it makes a mess?”
“Play is how children learn.” Josie crouched to Amos’s eye level and retied his scarf.
Maddy and Pax exchanged glances. Neither of them had children, so on the one hand, what did they know? On the other hand, Pax couldn’t recall a single moment of play during school at the orphanage.
“When kids use their imagination, they exercise their creativity.” Josie looked over at them, eyes soft with what could have been either amusement or sympathy. “When they play with other people, they learn to problem solve and navigate social situations.”
Pax scratched his head while he digested this.
“It’s easier to learn a lesson if you’re having fun while you learn it,” Josie pointed out.
The door to the building burst open and Joey came running out. He wore an enormous blue puffy coat and giant snow boots that had the effect of making his legs look thin as pencils.
“Hi. Hi, guys. Hi, can I do what you’re doing?” he asked, coming up on the other side of Pax and hopping from one foot to another.
“Do you have a snow day off from school, too?” Amos asked.
“Uhhhh, yes?” Joey said.
“We gonna build a snow fort,” the child announced, then waddled back over to a heap of snow. “You wanna help?”
“Oh,” said Josie, “ummm…” She sidled over to Pax and lowered her voice. “What if Joey gets hungry?”
Hungry?
Why would Josie worry about Joey being hungry, unless…
Ah. Another instance of a magical being having been smeared by this world’s entertainment industry. She must think zombies’ appetites were indiscriminate.
“It would be rude for Joey to bite a friend,” Pax whispered back.
“Also, we’re vegans,” Joey announced. “I bet you didn’t know that. My whole family are vegans now. We’ve never felt so good. Did you know veganism is proven to improve cardio health?”
“I have heard that,” Josie acknowledged in a normal voice, cheeks flushing. “I’m sorry, Joey, I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“That’s okay.” Joey waved away her apology, bouncing on the tips of his toes. “Maddy told us you know everything now and it’s new to you. New is scary. It’s okay to make mistakes when you’re scared.”
“That’s generous of you,” she said.
Joey beamed. “Did you want to know more about veganism? I can tell you all sorts of important facts. For example—”
Pax and Maddy both turned on Joey with murder in their eyes and she held up a hand, palm outward, to forestall their irritation.
“I’ll bet you have lots to say about it, but maybe you can help Amos first?” she asked.
“Yup, yup. I love to help.” Joey bounced over to where Amos was sitting and eating a fistful of snow.
“I’m sorry about the snow, Maddy,” Josie said.
With a sharp sigh, Maddy waved her hand to flip Josie’s apology away.
“If this is something normal humans do, there’s nothing to apologize for, I suppose.
” She turned on her heel and headed back to the building only to come to an abrupt stop as the door opened one more time and all twelve faery princess ran, flipped, cartwheeled, and jumped out the front doors of the building.
“O-U-T-S-I-D-E! We’re coming outside to slide and having snow much fun, uh-huh un-huh!” The faeries cheered en masse, dressed in blinding sparkly outfits of gold parkas with white earmuffs, gloves, scarfs, and boots—all covered in rhinestones.
Joey moved behind Amos as the group surged toward them, shouting and kicking up the snow. Princess Naliti waved to Maddy, then hurried over to where Josie and Pax stood.
“They wanted to come out here and practice stunts in the snow. I told them they couldn’t use any magic while Amos was around, and they promised not to.”
“I will—” Pax stopped abruptly when the front doors opened again and out came the Fate siblings, Past, Present, and Future.
They wore their usual sweatsuits but had donned color-coordinated knitted headbands in deference to the snow.
Behind them, holding on to a carved cane, was their cousin, Gbadu.
“What the hell is all this caterwauling?” Mx. Fate cried. “And is there liquor involved?”
“Who”—Josie tugged on the elbow of Pax’s coat—“who are those three? I can’t figure it out. Are they ghosts? Who is the older woman with them?”
“Let me introduce you to the Fates.” Pax led her over and introduced her to Past Fate, his sister, Present, and their sibling, Future Fate.
He then bowed slightly and introduced the fourth figure standing with them.
Gbadu, the Goddess of Fate, was a tiny Black woman bundled into a pine green snowsuit with purple faux-fur trim.
“Aunt Gbadu,” Pax used a traditional greeting from her world, where all people considered themselves related. “Welcome.”
Gbadu wore a pair of wraparound sunglasses stretching around her head. Seeing as she had sixteen eyes, he appreciated her forethought in covering them all.
“I was expecting a parade in my honor.” Gbadu sighed. “In the old days, there were parades whenever we left a Wayside. What do you call this? It’s the goddamned sorriest excuse for a parade I’ve ever seen, if that’s what it is. Why is everyone so cheerful?”
Present Fate shouted, “That’s the shittiest snow fort I’ve ever seen. Did that child not learn physics?”
Aunt Gbadu and the Fates moved as one down the sidewalk and toward poor Joey and Amos, who were watching openmouthed as three faery princesses did cartwheels around the foundation of their fort.
“I’m sorry your play was interrupted,” Pax said to Josie. “I fear now the guests know you’ve been told of their true nature, they will take too many liberties.”
“Well, you know what they say. The more, the merrier.”
To anyone else, Josie’s smile would be construed as wholesome. When she smiled at him, however, all Pax could see was an invitation to set his lips to hers.
It was a completely new form of torture, and he hated it almost as much as he enjoyed it.
“Paladins must not get a lot of time to play.”
Play?
His expression must have answered her question, because those wide, gray eyes of hers grew soft and she frowned in an expression of sympathy.
“At the orphanage where I was raised, we had a regimented schedule. There was no time set aside for play.”
He and his cohort were destined for the Army of Light.
There was much they had to learn and many skills to master before they were old enough to serve.
For the first time, however, watching Amos and Josie together, listening to the sounds of laughter and joy around them, Pax second-guessed that strict discipline.
Would he be a different man if he’d learned to play?
“What games did you play when you were a child?” he asked, curious now what the younger Pax might have thought about such activities.
Josie turned away from watching Cindy and a handful of her sisters building a slide in the snow.
“I remember one foster family had a toy oven with little dishes and wooden fruit,” she said. “I would play for hours, pretending to be a regular mom.”
Did that mean there were irregular moms?
A picture of a thin child in an ill-fitting dress standing at a blue plastic oven entered Pax’s head. The certainty Josie’s childhood had been difficult and lonely would explain part of the attraction he felt for her.
Often, those who had been wounded could find healing with someone who had been similarly hurt.
“I suppose your play stood you in good stead,” Pax said, silently praying he would find the right words. “Now you are an admirable mother.”
Her brows raised but her smile slipped, and his stomach contracted.
Was this the wrong thing to say?
“I don’t know about that,” Josie said, looking down. Thick, fluffy flakes of snow landed on her eyelashes, and the urge to sip them from her lids as they melted woke a tingle at the base of his spine.
Grateful they weren’t inside the halls of Number Five—who knows what might appear—he hurried to assure her.
“I have spent decades discerning the Light from the Dark. You have raised a child who practically glows with courage and kindness. This makes you admirable.”
“I…Thank you.” Josie’s head came up and stared at him as though he’d moved a mountain. “That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”
“I should think Amos’s grandparents say the same,” Pax said. “They must be grateful instead of growing up knowing loss, Amos is growing up knowing only love and acceptance.”
Josie shook her head quickly as if to dislodge something painful.
“I wish,” she said. “Maybe it’s because they are too close that they can’t see how great Amos is doing or how hard I try. All they see is what he’s missing out on and how little I can give him.”
This struck Pax as unfair, but what did he know about the inner workings of a family?
“I see how great Amos is doing,” he assured her. “I see how hard you try.”
Would she believe him?
The tiniest of tingles scratched the back of his neck and Pax turned away from Josie too quickly to register her reaction to his words.
He looked up and saw a figure standing in a sixth-floor window.
Pax moved his body between Josie and the sight line of whoever stood there.
Maddy would have told him if a sixth-floor resident had woken, so he could only hope Number Five was sending him a signal.
He racked his brain for a reason Number Five wanted to bring the sixth floor to his attention, but the sound of Amos and Joey calling for help distracted him.
Josie tugged at his elbow and Pax let himself be pulled away.
The unfettered joy of the moment before, however, was lost beneath a dull chill of foreboding.