Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Return from Outer Space
Before going to the ticket counter, I headed for the bathroom, afraid of what I would find in the mirror.
A quick glance told me I didn’t have any branches in my hair or anything too weird for airport security.
I sniffed my body carefully but didn’t smell anything offensive.
Taking a deep breath, I took a closer look at myself.
My eyes snagged on my cheeks, where twenty-nine years of hating the constellation of speckles came to a screeching halt when I noticed my completely smooth skin tone.
As a young girl, I hated them with a passion, especially through the teasing, but then I got used to them.
Through my twenties, they faded some to a dusting of spots over the tops of my cheeks and nose.
I had never been a great beauty, but they made my face interesting.
Not many girls with brown hair had them, and they were mine.
No more freckles, but no feathers either. No need to panic. Deep breath. I looked back in the mirror.
While he had gotten the gist of me right—a medium-height woman with brown hair and greyish-green eyes—there were subtle differences.
The longer I looked, the more changes I spotted.
I was taller than my original five foot six.
My skin was darker, the shade wrong, more olive than my original pasty white, the only other thing besides the freckles I had gotten from my dad.
My eyes were slightly more almond-shaped, the irises more vivid.
My hips and stomach were thinner, muscles I had never used before were now defined.
My arms were longer, my hair also longer and darker.
My mouth was closest to what it used to be, but even my nose was longer and thinner.
My breasts were about the same. Trust a man to get that right.
The bastard had remade me completely, in minor ways, but still. I pulled out my driver’s license and studied the picture. Would they let me buy a ticket or get through security? It wasn’t a great picture, and my options were limited.
The jaded ticket counter agent didn’t seem to notice. My credit card worked, and I made it through security after a few heart-pounding minutes. I had two hours to kill before my flight, so I sat down near an outlet, plugged in my laptop and my personal phone, and worried while they powered up.
Still plugged into the wall, I dialed Mindy.
“Freya?” she answered immediately, almost shouting.
“Oh my God, Mindy. It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Freya, is that you? Matthew told me you were dead. He’s already planned your memorial for next Friday.” She spoke quickly, excited and relieved at the same time.
“Wow. He sure moved fast.”
“I told you he was slimy. Are you okay?”
“Yes, definitely.”
She chuckled, tension leaving her voice. “God, I can’t wait to tell him you’re alive.”
“Listen, you can’t do that yet. There are some issues.”
She paused, then, “I’m listening.”
“I can’t really explain right now. But can you pick me up at National this afternoon?”
“Of course. Give me your flight info.”
I told her my number and ETA and promised to tell her everything in person. I just hoped she would believe me.
You know you have a good friend when they pick you up from the airport, and you look nothing like you used to less than a week ago, and they still treat you exactly the same.
She was certainly shocked, but not for a moment did she make me feel rejected.
Instead, she took a deep breath after looking me over and said, “Woo babe, have you got a story for me.” Then she hugged me, squeezing me for a long minute.
My shoulders dropped in relief. “Yeah. You wouldn’t have believed it until you saw me.”
She nodded, looking me up and down in awe. “Let’s get out of here. I have a big bottle of tequila at home, and it might not be enough.”
I climbed into her car in a daze, clutching my laptop bag to my chest. Now that I was about to reenter my real life, I began to count the ways everything could go wrong.
Every word Matthew had said to Cassandra rushed back to me, especially how I had ruined the pitch by not noticing the error sooner.
Then there was my barely recognizable face.
I sat there staring out the windshield until I realized we weren’t moving.
I looked over at Mindy.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, her forehead wrinkled in worry.
“Not really.”
“Tell me.”
“When we get to your condo, okay? I’m still processing everything. Then again, that might take a while. Wait, what’s going on at work?”
“Well, the presentation was a total fiasco.”
“Yeah, I figured. I found a big problem with our design on the flight out and worked through all the corrections but didn’t have time to send it to Matthew.” An evil smile took over my face.
Mindy laughed. Shaking her head, she turned the car on and backed out of her parking spot.
“They told everyone your car broke down on the way to the meeting. They found your car but not your body. I guess they did the whole search and rescue thing.” She looked at me, eager for an answer.
“No. That part was a lie. They did find the rental car, but after the laptop was missing, they gave up on me, if they ever looked at all.”
She let out a sigh. “I should’ve gone out there. I know you don’t have any family, Freya, no one to make sure Cass and Matthew were telling the truth. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Listen, it’s a good thing you stayed away. You wouldn’t have found me. So I guess we lost the bid. Who got it?”
She told me the name of one of the other two competing firms. With some prompts from me, she filled me in on the office fallout.
My desk had been packed up, my work belongings still in the storage room.
They even called to cancel my rent, but luckily, my landlord demanded a death certificate before agreeing.
Something was still left standing in my life.
But what would Matthew think once he saw me?
I could call him and tell him I’d be out of town for a little while.
Maybe by the time I figured out my next move, he wouldn’t remember how different I used to look.
Unless they fired me first for screwing up the project.
Traffic wasn’t too bad, and by the time we got to her condo, I was beginning to lose some of the panic.
My brain worked on overdrive, trying to find a way to come back from this giant disaster.
It hadn’t been a week since I’d left, and yet my two realities refused to sync up.
As if I had left a part of myself back on the mountain.
We easily climbed the steps to her fourth-floor condo, which had always winded me before, back in my old body. Mindy offered me the use of her guest room until we figured out what to do next. But first, she needed to hear what had happened.
We ordered Chinese from my favorite place around the corner, poured ourselves large glasses of wine, and sat down in her dining room. She motioned to her own cheeks with a question on her face, “What happened?”
While she ate, I talked. I told her about the flight out, solving the problem, getting lost, and my car breaking down. I described the climb up the gravel driveway, the large stone wall, the gargoyles, and the broken-down gate. But when it came to describing Him, it wasn’t so easy.
“What do you mean, he was part of the mountain?” she asked, after my first failed attempt.
“I don’t know if he was actually granite or not.
I never had the courage to get close to him again when he was asleep, but it looked like a part of the mountain.
The boulder started to move, to change, and then two giant wings, and I mean huge, maybe twenty feet or more wide, unfurled, like some sort of demon come to life.
He was really big, like Andre the Giant-sized, at least ten feet tall, maybe more.
Huge head topped with horns.” I motioned with my hands so she could see the shape.
“His arms, legs, and torso were all carved muscle, just pure power, and his skin was dark, like charcoal.”
We both looked at the skin on my forearm, which wasn’t quite right, not exactly human skin. The color was mostly right, a little more naturally tan than what it had been originally, but my once flawed skin was impossibly smooth and perfect, all scars, little histories of my life, gone.
“Then what happened?” Mindy asked.
“He turned me into a crow.”
Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth dropped open. I gave her a minute to digest that nugget, watching her closely in case she decided to call the local psych ward and have me admitted. The warmth never left her eyes, and if she looked dubious, well, I could hardly blame her.
“I know it sounds crazy. It was absolutely unreal. I had no idea what was happening, except I had fallen into a fairy tale, the original Brothers Grimm kind, not the sanitary ones of today, but I had the weird feet and feathers to confirm it. I had to learn how to do everything, but once I did, the flying was amazing. Jesus, Mindy, just this morning I was flying. With my own wings.”
She shook her head, unable to say anything. But she wasn’t leaving or screaming.
“There were shitty things too, like an owl that kept trying to kill me.
And a Wolf. He pretended to be my friend, told me all kinds of things about the Monster that were lies.
But something was clearly wrong with him.
He tried to kill me. It was the Monster who saved me.
He killed the Wolf, right at the last moment.
“And then he turned me back. Okay, I realize I’m skipping a bunch of stuff here, since another ancient being just like him showed up for a night. They had a major discussion about the fate of the world. This is all insane, right? I lived it, yet it sounds crazy to say all this out loud.”