Chapter 1 #2
When I first met him as a terrified ten-year-old in a cramped social worker’s office, I wouldn’t shut up about the fae creatures who’d killed my parents.
No one believed me. They pitied me, of course, but dismissed my ramblings as a fairy tale my brain created to shield me from the trauma of watching my parents’ slaughter.
The police questioned me several times, trying to get a composite sketch of what they thought was a human killer on the loose.
I was adamant about what I saw, describing the dryads in detail, down to the gray-green shade of lichen on their antlers, the rough bark of their horns.
Eventually, the investigators gave up on me, recommending I receive intensive therapy.
And when Javen and I were placed in the same foster home years later, he asked, “So, who really killed your parents? I know you don’t believe it was dryads.”
I couldn’t blame him. It’s not easy believing in something you can’t see with your own eyes—though I’m fairly certain he’s never actually seen a UAP or extraterrestrial before.
It didn’t take me long to change my story from My parents were killed by dryads to I don’t remember. Must’ve blocked it out.
To this day I still haven’t shown Javen the journal I scooped up from beside my dad’s stiffening body. I haven’t dared ask him to help decipher the pages and pages of cryptic notes my father transcribed about dryads and other fae.
Don’t drink the wine.
Mortal music enchants them.
Ironfae presence increasing in Sylveris. Deforestation? Expansion?
Teach Mads self-defense. Axe? Knife? Gun?
No. Those scribbled secrets stay with me alone, locked away with the rest of the shit I keep in that haunted attic of mine.
I bring the cider to my lips, gulping until it’s gone before tossing it into our recycling bin.
Javen opens another bottle, perhaps sensing my smothered exasperation. “Drink up, buttercup. It’s all going to work out. You’ll be in San Francisco before you know it.”
Forcing a false smile, I nod. “Yep.”
He flashes me a toothy grin. My heart twists as I realize this may be the last time I get to see it, at least for a while.
I know he’s just moving and not dying, but something about this feels like a death.
The cleaning out of our shared apartment.
All his colorful swaths of fabric and half-completed costume projects, his fairy lights and oversized plants that took up space in every window.
Bright rugs and glitter bomb shoes all packed away in this ugly pink moving truck.
Leaving behind a greige shell of a sad apartment I can’t even afford.
Pressing a kiss to the top of my head, Javen hops up and declares that he has to pee before hitting the road. My stomach grows heavy with dread.
No, I want to say. Please don’t leave me. Not yet. I can’t do this alone.
“I’ll watch the truck, make sure no one steals Tabitha.” I pat the black wig of a mannequin he bought from the owner of a retro clothing store that shut down early last year.
“Guard her with your life.” He makes to climb from the truck and pauses, reaching behind one of the boxes and unearthing my old ukelele. “Wait, don’t you want this?”
Shoulders shrugging up to my ears, I say, “I don’t play it much anymore. Plus, it will give you something to remember me by.”
My mom was the one who taught me music. It was the only thing we really bonded over. She was a skilled pianist and gave me lessons as soon as I was old enough to plink out the tune to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Before she was killed, she promised to teach me guitar after I got the hang of the ukelele first. The last song I ever learned from her was “Nature Boy” by Nat King Cole.
Javen places the instrument back in my arms. “Absolutely not. I have a million pictures to remember you by.” He does a twisting jump off the truck, pointing at me. “And quit acting like we’ll never see each other again. I will simply not allow it, Maddox Marie.”
The reminder of another Javenism—dubbing everyone’s middle name Marie—brings a lump to my throat.
“Go pee, Javen Marie.”
He jogs back into the apartment, leaving me alone again.
Pulling out my phone, I check for any missed calls and nearly choke when I see there’s a voicemail with a number that matches the one I’ve dialed every day for the past month. With shaking hands, I tap the button to play the message.
I know before the second word is uttered that the news isn’t good.
No, the man on the phone informs me, I am not eligible for Medicaid…because I turned twenty-six just three days ago. And twenty-six happens to be the cutoff for foster youth medical coverage. Almost young enough, but not quite.
The final placating words of the message are drowned out by the blood thundering in my ears.
All the anxiety that’s been slowly winding through my chest twists and tightens like a viper coiled around my heart and lungs.
Constricting. My breathing quickens and sweat turns my hands slick.
Hopelessness presses on my shoulders and claws down my back as my new reality circles like a ravenous vulture.
You almost made the cut, the man on the line said with an audacious chuckle.
Almost. What a horrible word. The very epitome of unsatisfying.
Like almost being at a job long enough to earn severance before they eliminate your position.
Almost reaching orgasm during sex. Almost getting the chance to move out of this town full of loggers’ offspring, has-beens, and wannabe dreamers.
Almost guessing the correct amount of insulin needed to cover a carb-loaded dinner.
I almost want to look up the name and address of the man who left this message, drive out to wherever the fuck he is, and smash him in the face with this ukelele.
Sliding from the moving truck, I pace to my Jeep and throw the instrument and photo album into the front seat, slamming the door instead of screaming.
I lean back against it, the cool metal seeping through the fabric of my shirt until my skin is chilled.
An unseasonably cold May wind strokes my cheeks with her cruel fingers.
Our apartment sits on the edge of Arborfell, redwood trees to the south and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Usually, I try to avoid looking directly into the forest, especially when the wind blows like today.
Undulating branches make the trees feel eerily alive, reaching toward me.
The tightness in my chest intensifies, and I swallow the bloody memories creeping up my throat in the form of bile.
A flicker of something in my peripheral vision—something with horns—draws my eye to the trunks of the trees, but when I shift my focus, nothing is there.
Fucking dryads.
They’re the root of everything terrible in my life.
The reason I lost my parents. The reason I was sent to cognitive behavioral therapy to help me cope with my “hallucinations.” My hands clench, eyes narrowing at the trees.
I could take the hunting knife I bought for not-hunting into the forest until I find a dryad to take my anger out on.
Could dig through one of my boxes for the old throwing axe I used to compete—and win—with.
Maybe one of those two-horned dryads would like a third.
“Hey,” comes Javen’s voice from behind me. “You okay?”
I turn to him with false brightness. “Yeah! I’m fine.”
Javen approaches with half a store-bought sheet cake—the one he got me for my twenty-sixth birthday—presenting it like a crown on a cushion.
The whipped white icing is outlined in big globs of purple flowers, and the words piped in elegant script are HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY DOX. Now it just says KING DAY.
“Don’t forget about this. The fridge is supposed to be all cleaned out by the end of the day, and as much as I’d love to eat cake while I cry to the Hamilton soundtrack, I should really pay attention to the road.”
I take the cake with trembling fingers. For once, it’s not because of a low blood sugar. “Cake for dinner it is. Every diabetic’s dream.” Except I sort of fucking hate sweet things. I associate them with medicine.