Chapter 10 Fairy Smut
Fairy Smut
In between heatedly dissecting the ugly developments of the meeting and bouts of silent moping, the Umbra cohort find themselves in the crowd gathering at Seventh Avenue to watch the Village Halloween Parade.
Sascia is in a cheap corner-store cat mask, propped on her forehead so she can munch on candy.
Already, she’s feeling worlds better—nothing quite as soothing as conciliatory chocolate.
By some intervention of fate, her friends have secured prime viewing real estate, just behind the metal safety barriers separating the public from the parade.
“It’s decided,” Danny says as he studies the other spectators. “People have lost all perspective.”
“Why?” Tae asks, brows knitted. He’s been the gloomiest of the lot, barely touching his Skittles, but he has never failed to jump to the bait of one of Danny’s outrageous statements.
“Look at the crowd around us,” Danny says. “There are at least five people here dressed in Darkhumanoid costumes.”
Andres shakes his head. “How did they even manage to put together a costume? Times Square was last week.”
“Darkmania has been the most profitable market in the last six years,” Tae quotes dutifully. “My uncle in Korea says he’s already had clients come in asking for skin treatments to mimic the ‘Darkhumanoid gray.’ ”
“Dear god,” Danny says with a side glance at Tae. The look drips with yearning—Sascia half expects his eyes to start pulsing hot-pink hearts like a cartoon. “Which costume’s the best, do you think?”
“Not fair,” Crow chirps; they have her on speakerphone. “I can’t see what you’re seeing.”
“Here, I’ll turn the camera on.” Andres points his phone to a woman in an all-leather outfit and a knee-length black wig. “I think that one’s the clear winner, right, Crow?”
“No, it’s definitely them,” Shivani says, nudging her head toward a couple in matching Renaissance fair costumes.
“I like that guy,” Danny says. His choice is a six-foot-tall man who has daubed his skin blue-gray and sewn black ribbons on his sleeves—when he moves, the fabric comes alive in a facsimile of the elf’s Dark-controlling powers. “Body paint? That’s dedication. What’s your pick, Tae?”
Tae does not look like he wants to be part of this discussion at all, eyes darting around the crowd as if it’s a wild jungle. “That one, I guess? Their Darkprints are the most accurate.”
Sascia drags her eyes to the person Tae picked. Their long hair is held away from their delicate face by black flower pins, their acrylic nails are carved like talons. Streaks of blue neon decorate their cheeks, in a pretty good imitation of Darkprint patterns.
Dang it. Even in a game he has no interest in, Tae still chose the clear winner.
“Sascia,” Danny calls out. “You’re the expert. Which one of us was closer?”
She nails him with a hard look. Does he even realize what he’s just said? “How am I the expert?”
“Well, you know…” He trails off, as though it only just dawned on him. “Never mind.”
“No, no,” Sascia says, pulling on a wicked grin. “Please explain. What makes me the expert?”
It’s his turn to narrow his eyes at her. The quirk of his lips seems to be saying: Oh, it’s going to be like that? She can see the gears of his mind working; something juicy is about to come out of his mouth. “Well, all the stuff you’ve read.”
“I read the same stuff the rest of the Umbra reads.”
Danny takes a long, smug sip of his drink, holding her gaze over his straw. It’s a look that can only mean trouble. He’s got the perfect clapback and is just taking his sweet time delivering it.
“Go ahead,” she says with a flourish of her hand.
“Well,” he says, all mischievous mirth, “I doubt Tae here spends his nights reading fairy smut until four in the morn—hey!”
He rubs his shoulder where Sascia’s smacked him, but he’s already laughing. Soon, the two of them are roughhousing and snickering at each other while the rest of the cohort tries to avoid stray blows.
“Shiv,” Andres says, leaning away from Sascia and Danny’s tangle of limbs. “What do gender scholars think of the Darkhumanoid? It had a purple Darkprint, but should we really be calling it a him?”
In seconds, Sascia has extricated herself from Danny and is waiting for Shivani’s reply, breath held.
She’s dying to talk about the elf, even in this roundabout way.
In a world where you can change your sex and presumably, for sapient creatures, your gender with a mere thought, is one instance of maleness enough to gender the elf as male?
Shivani perks up, always eager to talk about her work.
“Our research has shown that Darkprints are fully controlled by neurological commands, kind of how chameleons and octopi might change their bodies. So yes, we believe that the Darkhumanoid was what we consider male during the attack. But that does not necessarily mean they are always male or that in their world, such gender binaries even exist.”
Sascia notes the pronoun Shivani uses and asks, “You think of the elf as they?”
“While we’re in their presence, I believe we should call the elf as they’ve identified themself through their Darkprint,” she explains. “But now that they’re not here to show their identity with their marks—and until we’re told otherwise—I find it more appropriate to use a gender-neutral term.”
Sascia nods. Considering what scientists know about the fluidity of sex and gender in the Darkworld, the elf might identify interchangeably as he or she or they, or he/they and she/they and he/she, or something else entirely.
“I can’t believe there’s a sapient creature in the Dark,” Shivani says wistfully. “I have so many questions to ask them.”
A murmur of assent comes from the entire cohort, but its hopefulness is short-lived.
“Do you think we’ll ever get the chance?
” Danny asks. “Considering the Chapter has bombarded every Darkhole with dozens of nova-bombs, likely destroying thousands of miles of Darkflora? Even the public is becoming violent—some of these hotheads are already arranging neighborhood patrols armed with military-grade nova-guns.”
“But who benefits from that?” Shivani asks, jaw set.
“Not us, and certainly not the Dark. Making ourselves their enemy is only going to get us all killed. We have to figure out what they want. What they can offer in return. There’s bound to be something that unites us—that would be the first step in interspecies collaboration.
” She brandishes her phone. “I just got an alert for a peace rally next Sunday. I, for one, am going.”
“What difference will a rally make? Our life’s work is being turned into nova-cannons and weaponized viruses and nova-light traps. Our mentor doesn’t have the power to stop them.” Tae’s whisper borders on a hiss. “It is so sad.”
“It’s not sad,” Sascia counters. Her whole body is wound tight with anger. “Sad is for sudden loss, for unavoidable death. This is intentional violence, discussed and decided on. What it is, is infuriating. Even after six years, their first instinct is to destroy.”
“Can you blame them?” Andres says coolly.
“We’re all still operating on a trauma response.
We never stopped. Every year, there’s a new and bigger threat: first the Shanghai Darkdragon, then the New York Darkgriffin, then the Rio Darkbasilisk, the Baltic Sea Darkkraken, every other major Darkhole in the world…
now this elf prince. We don’t know what they are, what they want.
All we know is they attacked humans in Times Square with a scythe. ”
Resting his elbows on the metal safety barrier, he lights a cigarette, rounding his lips to puff out a perfect circle.
To Sascia, Andres has always been a bit too cool for the Umbra; he’s got the skills, wits, and charm to be in whichever institution he chooses and he hates New York with a passion, so Sascia can’t fathom why he would have ended up at the Umbra.
“Look around you,” Andres goes on. “These people have dressed like an elf for Halloween, but they also carry a nova-gun somewhere in their costume that they wouldn’t hesitate to use.
The Chapter knows this, the government knows this.
The world can’t handle the terror and violence of another Dark Panic.
Don’t get me wrong—as a xenoscientist, the existence of sapient life in the Dark is thrilling.
But as a human living on this planet, I think that, ultimately, preparing for the worst is the only choice our world has. ”
Something bitter gathers in Sascia’s stomach.
If the world is eager to pull the trigger, then what is Sascia’s place in it, she who had the chance to shoot and didn’t?
She thinks of her father’s words: a beetle against glass.
Of Carr’s retort about being a clever girl: start acting like it.
Is this her place? A brainless bug that doesn’t know when to quit?
She has the sudden, all-consuming want to be someone. Someone worthy, someone important, someone with real power, even if that means she’s doomed to die at the hands of an elf prince from the Dark for a crime she didn’t commit.
In her pocket, a body presses into the grooves of her palm.
Soft wings tickle her skin. Sascia peers into her jacket. An oversized moth dithers its wings at her—the same one that appeared to her the night of the elf attack. How on earth did it find her again, here of all places?
Before she can blink, the moth shoots out of her palm. It buzzes between the costumed legs and shifting feet of the gathered crowd until it lands on the silken strands of a spectator’s head.
The girl has long black hair down to her waist, threaded with vines and flowers in neon colors.
Skintight leather covers her body, but wafts of the softest taffeta peek through at her high neckline and the cuffs of her long sleeves.
Three daggers are strapped to her thigh, their blades gleaming dark as onyx.
Her brows are lifted and her violet eyes are wide with wonder.
She stares around, as if she finds the noise and squalor of the parade a pure marvel.
On her high cheekbones, swirls and dots of bright cobalt mark her skin. From afar, the markings look like the crystalline angles of a snowflake.
Sascia’s breath hitches in her chest. She hisses a curt, “Danny.”
“What?” He follows her gaze to the girl. “Oh, yeah, that’s a top-notch elf costume. Look at that hair!” He twists in his wheelchair and dons his most charming smile; before she can wrangle his obliviousness to silence, he calls out, “Excuse me, miss!”
The girl locks eyes with them.
“I’m sorry,” Danny says, “is it Mx.? Sir?”
“Miss is fine,” the girl replies, with a hint of an accent. The current of the crowd shifts, pushing her into their little group, between Shivani and Andres.
“Me and my cousin here,” Danny says, “just wanted to tell you your costume is fantastic.”
Sascia barely has time to drag her cat mask down over her head before those violet eyes fall on her, landing on her mouth, peeking out beneath the plastic.
This close, Sascia can make out the details of the other girl’s face.
The Darkprints are the blue of a female, her features softer and younger, but Sascia remembers those eyes, those high cheekbones and full lips.
Two small blossoms hang from her locks, right over her neck.
Sascia’s chest is a stomping ground. Her breaths gallop in and out. Every instinct is screaming DANGER!, but her legs are rooted to the spot, her mind fuzzy with panic.
“Well, thank you,” the girl says to Danny, voice lilted with embarrassment.
Not girl, Sascia’s mind trills. Not human at all.
Elf.
Her elf.