Chapter 30
PANDORA’S DIARY
Pixies flitting around: Charmingly
Brownies doing pratfalls: Naughtily
Gnomes marching: Furrily
Leo being a prick: One hundred percently
When Leo and I played pick-up-sticks for the first time, I’d upended the tube of multicolored sticks all over the floor, and he’d cringed at the chaos.
Releasing magical creatures in the world—ha! Releasing magical creatures! Into the world! I can’t even write that without laughing. Ahem. Releasing pixies and brownies must’ve felt to Leo like four hundred tubes of pick-up-sticks scattered all over the library.
For a long time, I’d thought that Leo didn’t like mess and mayhem. I must’ve been sixteen or seventeen before I’d realized the truth. He hadn’t been annoyed by the riot of colorful sticks on the floor, he’d been worried that I’d step on a pointy end and stab my pudgy, bare, six-year-old foot.
Which, in his defense, was exactly what I’d done.
He was protective. In a slightly controlling way, true, but I’d been too fearless as a kid.
Leo had once stopped me from leaping out of a tree using an umbrella as parachute, and he’d started double-checking my lifejacket after the third time I jumped overboard while the boat was moving.
Our parents told him it was his job to keep me from accidentally, y’know, dying.
They’d been joking, mostly, but he’d taken the warnings to heart.
What can I say, he’d been a very sweet little boy.
So I tried not to judge him when, after a few more pixies swooped through the open window, Leo slammed it closed. I knew he liked to control things. It was one of the reasons I liked sex with him so much. But there was no controlling this kind of magic.
Pixies and brownies and gnomes were back in the world, and I’d been the one to release them.
I’d go down in faerie-kin history with the baddest of bad-ass gifts.
Ha! And to think, I hadn’t even wanted a gift.
For the first time, I thought I’d been wrong about that: without my gift, I would have missed all this wonder.
I wasn’t going to let Leo put a damper on my happiness, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel for him. So I stepped into his arms and said, “It’s going to be all right, Leo, I promise.”
“We released creatures into the world, Pan.”
“It’s going to be better than all right. We’ll need to adapt, of course. There’s going to be a period of adjustment. Obviously. But things will settle down.”
“They’d settle down faster if we just return the creatures into the book.”
“How?”
“Um…” He exhaled. “I don’t know. But we need to try. This is madness.”
“Leo, listen.” I squeezed his bicep. “Baby. You can’t refuse to play pick-up-sticks forever just because someone steps on a sharp edge once.”
A glimmer of a smile appeared in his eyes. “So what do you do?”
“You wear slippers.”
“I don’t mean about pick-up-sticks, Pan!”
“You, you wear metaphorical slippers! And you enjoy the game.”
“Look at them! They’re everywhere, they’re—” He did a double-take, peering across the room. “What is that brownie doing at the drinking fountain?”
A hairy brownie was squatting above the nozzle. I looked quickly away and said, “Ick— hygiene?”
“This is—” Leo paused when the bobolink-looking pixie landed on his shoulder again. “What are you doing!?”
The pixie gestured, like, “Have you seen all this nonsense? It’s exhausting.” The little guy heaved a heavy sigh and wearily leaned against Leo’s neck.
“Why aren’t you frolicking?” I asked the pixie.
“Why am I not frolicking?” Leo demanded, his eyes outraged. “Why am I not frolicking?”
“Good question!” Shrig strolled closer, followed by a pack of brownies. “Why not frolic? Why not caper, romp, and even, dare I say, gambol?”
“What are you doing?” Leo asked.
“The little dudes want to surf,” Shrig told us. “I’m taking them to the beach. You’re welcome to join us.”
Leo ran his fingers through his hair, sending the male pixie flitting away in annoyance. “That is a terrible idea. What if someone gets hurt?”
“Nobody’s going to get hurt,” I told him.
“I hope not.”
“What can we do?” I asked. “They’re already spreading across the island. For all we know, a hundred more of them hatched in town.”
“Hatched?” Deja asked, walking closer with her arms out in front of her like a zombie, so pixies could land on her and then take flight again.
“Fine!” Leo said. “We don’t even know how to get them back in the manuscript.”
“Do we wish to?” Shrig asked. “That seems a precipitous decision.”
“Only Leo wants to,” I told him.
Deja snorted like a charging bull. “You want to shove magic back into that musty old manuscript?”
“You said it smelled like hyssop and fatalii pepper!” Leo cried.
“Musty hyssop. This is the most magical thing that’s happened in centuries.” She raised her arm, bringing a pixie dressed in green closer to her face. “Vanilla, lovely! With notes of royal fern. And what’s your wreath? Is that lemongrass?”
The pixie pirouetted happily before flitting away.
Leo frowned after her. “I wonder if they know how to return to the manuscript.”
“Well, I wonder if they know how to invite even more friends,” Deja said.
She was teasing, but Leo went very still, then said, “Good point. We need to keep them away from the manuscript. There’s no telling what they’ll do. I’ll lock the room. Pan, you shoo them away from the library.”
“I’m not sure I have shooing powers, Leo,” I snapped, because he was really beginning to piss me off.
“You’re the only one who can interact with the manuscript! Just try, okay?”
“To get them out of the library?”
“And away from the manuscript. It’s an object of power. I can feel it from here. I’ll lock it in the room while you handle all this?”
“Fine,” I told him, just to get him out of my hair.
“I’ll handle the beach safety tips,” Shrig said, making a shaka sign at the brownies. “Come along, little dudes.”
The brownies attempted to mimic him, extending their pinkies and thumbs while shaking their hands, which resulted in three of them walking into a wall.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Deja yelled from the front doors. “We’re leaving! Everyone out. Last stop!”
Bellowing proved more effective than me trying to tap into my powers.
I was pretty certain I couldn’t control them anyway, at least not with my magic.
A few pixies swirled around me as we headed through the lobby.
They handed me a handful of pine needles, an inside-out empty silver chip bag, and a pair of sunglasses from lost and found.
“Why thank you,” I said, politely putting on the sunglasses. “Just what I’ve always wanted.”
Leo returned from upstairs, looking frazzled. He waved his arms at the remaining pixies, grumbling and saying “Go on, go on!” until he seemed satisfied we were alone. Then he did the same to me and Deja, before following us outside and locking the library door behind us.
He stood there for a moment, blinking into the sunlight. The bobolink-looking pixie dove headfirst into his front pocket and Leo reached to remove him.
“He’ll only come back,” I said.
He grunted and left the pixie in his pocket as he stared down the hill toward the village.
Dozens of pixies flitted around the chimneys and roofs, pausing to peer inside windows before zooming away.
Some played with the faerie-kin flags while others danced through the air, their luminescent wings catching the sunlight.
I thought I saw brownies, too, but my gaze snapped back to the pixies landing on the pizza paddle resting on Jamar’s shoulder.
He’d clearly come onto the street to see what was going on, and now pixies alighted upon his paddle, blew kisses, then shot away.
A few were playing with the spinning barbershop pole while others were darting from window to window, gleefully pointing at the goods inside and waving to shopkeepers who saw them.
And of course only faerie-kin saw them.
The normals paused on the sidewalks, gazing around in confusion, trying to figure out what the faerie-kin were looking at.
Leo started trotting down the hill, saying, “Birdwatching! Birdwatching and butterflies!”
“What are you talking about, you weirdo?” Deja asked, jogging after him.
“We need to tell the normals something!”
“Yeah, I guess—” she started. “Look at the T-shirt shop.”
As we ran closer, I saw what she meant. A pack of brownies was knocking souvenir knick-knacks off the counter while Trudy, the owner, shooed them away with a stuffed lobster.
“What’re those gnomes doing?” Deja asked as we reached the main street.
Farther inside Trudy’s tourist kitsch shop, gnomes with furry cat faces and red suspenders were constructing little tableaus with keychains and postcards and “Beane Isle” mugs.
“They’re cleaning up,” I said, brightly, before one of the brownies dropped a shot glass that shattered on the floor.
“If those little jerks broke my stuff…” Deja muttered, veering toward her shop.
I followed her. “They didn’t mean to!”
“This is a nightmare.” Leo watched a normal woman squinting toward a bunch of gnomes building a rock garden. “How are we going to explain this?”
A pack of brownies cartwheeled into the music store—a moment later, drums began to pound, and the owner, Carla, staggered out onto the sidewalk, shaking her head.
“The normals will make up their own explanations,” I said. “Like they always do.”
“Maybe,” Leo said.
The blond pixie poked his head out of Leo’s pocket and frowned at the drumming. With a gesture like a stage magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, he withdrew a daisy from inside Leo’s pocket, stuffed two petals in his ears, and went back to sleep.
Five pixies swooped down from above to take Deja’s hand—one finger each—and attempted to pull her toward her shop, where other pixies hovered, bright-eyed, noses pressed against the glass.
“This is madness,” Leo said.
“Beautiful madness.”