Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles (4 page)

A lot of memories from four generations of Carricks were invested in this back porch. He couldn’t remember if the Queen Anne style monstrosity had been built when his great-great-grandmother was alive or if it came later. He did remember kissing Sandy Langford here when they were fifteen. Sandy didn’t quite live up to Thistle as a kisser, but she came mighty close. He remembered being sent into the garden to cut long-stemmed flowers: roses, dahlias, and carnations—Mom insisted on calling them gilly flowers as was popular in Shakespearean times—and then placing them into buckets of water in this sink. Later his Mom would take them inside and arrange them into vases (with the soft British a) for a party.

Mom hadn’t entertained at all since she and Dad came home from Stratford-upon-Avon six weeks ago. As much as he hated her formal dinners and elegant tea parties, he almost wished she’d gather her friends in the parlor once more.

Anything to turn her mind away from her latest obsession. His sister Dusty’s wedding. Not even the town All Hallows Eve celebration and resulting overdecorating distracted her from her exuberant wedding plans. She’d even forgotten to quote her much-beloved Bard every other sentence.

He shook his head, spraying water like a dog. “Hey, Mom, what’s for breakfast?” he asked as he stepped onto the black-and-white tiles of the kitchen floor. Then he stopped short, flushing with embarrassment.

“Desdemona Carrick, if you continue to eat like that, you won’t be able to fit into your wedding gown,” Mom said, hands on hips, staring down at her only daughter. “I’m paying a great deal of money to have a custom design made for you.”

Dusty sat at the long farm table that filled most of the big
old kitchen. She hung her head over a plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns with a huge cup of coffee clutched in her hand. She never drank coffee until she got engaged to Dick’s best friend Chase Norton. Now she drank it black and strong enough to etch a spoon, just like Chase did.

“Mom, she has an appetite for the first time since she was nine,” Dick intervened. “Let her eat. She’s too skinny as it is.” Dick moved to stand between his mother and his sister.

“You don’t need to protect me, Dick,” Dusty said quietly.

Dick turned around and looked her in the eye, raising an eyebrow in question.

Mom wailed, quoting from
The Merchant of Venice
.

“
The Merchant of Venice
, Shylock, act two,” Dusty sighed.

Mom no longer tested her children with quotes from the Bard, but she still spouted his immortal prose whenever she could. Apropos of the situation or not.

“If I’m too fat for the wedding gown Mom chose, then I’ll just have to find a different one that fits better. Which I’ll pay for myself.” A smile tugged at the corner of Dusty’s mouth, but her eyes looked wounded.

“Desdemona!” Mom screeched. “I don’t believe my daughter would ever be so impolite. And as for you, Benedict…”

“Get over it, Mom. Your little girl grew up this summer. She’s going to get married and move out in December. You won’t be able to pick at her and keep her in swaddling clothes much longer.”

“I’m right here, Dick. Please don’t speak about me as if I weren’t,” Dusty said.

“Sorry, Sis.”

“Well, you two can finish this argument without me,” Dusty said firmly. “I’m going to work. Do you need Thistle today, Mom? I could use her help down at the museum. We’re still marking the paths for the haunted maze through The Ten Acre Wood. We need to make sure they vary a bit from last year—make it more interesting.” Dusty carried her plate and cup to the sink and rinsed them. Almost half her breakfast went down the garbage disposal.

“Thistle is working in the garden today,” Mom replied on a pout. “Your friend is a true genius with flowers. The roses have never bloomed so well so late in the year. If anyone can get a winning, truly purple bloom for next year’s Rose Festival that will best Mabel Gardiner’s entry, it’ll be Thistle Down. She and I have considered hiring her out to some of the neighbors who have problems with their roses. If you two would stop protecting her from reality, I could keep her in well-paid work most of the year.”

Take your own advice, Mom, and let go of Dusty
, Dick thought.

Right on cue, Thistle limped in from the back porch. She kicked off her damp sneakers at the door (required of all of them by Mom since the days of Dusty’s protective isolation during chemo for childhood leukemia) and slumped into the nearest chair. She propped an elbow on the table and rested her forehead on her palm. The other hand she cradled limply against her chest.

Dick’s pulse sped at the way her sweatshirt outlined her firm breasts when she pressed her hand so tightly between them.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, kneeling beside her. One hand smoothed her long dark hair, so dark it almost had natural purple highlights, away from her face, noting a deep scratch on the slightly pointed tip of her ear. He looked for signs of other injury. Truly he did. Just because caressing her felt so good….

Dick knew how to look for injury. He’d survived two years of medical school and came out with a Masters in biochemistry. He also kept up his Emergency Medical Technician license.

“Have you finished collecting rose pollen for the hybrid experiment?” Mom asked.

Dick looked at his sister, wondering why she wasn’t helping him take care of her friend. Dusty continued standing at the sink, head down, saying nothing. He knew her thoughts. She could only deal with one crisis at a time. That’s how the entire family had gotten through Dusty’s cancer. At the moment, Mom triggered all her instincts to run and hide in the basement of her museum. Her eyes focused on the tiny diamond ring on her left hand, as if that symbol of her love for Chase and their coming wedding was a lifeline to sanity.

Even after the local doctors had said she had beaten the cancer and could resume a normal life, Mom had continued the habit of overprotection, homeschooling, preservative-free eating, and isolation from any germ that might dare enter the home.

Dick was as guilty as their mother. His bone marrow had helped cure Dusty. He had a responsibility to take care of her.

But Thistle needed him more than Dusty right now.

“Let me see your hand, Thistle,” Dick said gently, prying the clenched fingers away from her palm. He swallowed his gasp at the sight of a three-inch hawthorn spike stuck in the thick flesh below the thumb. A steady trickle of fresh blood flowed across her palm into his. There was more on her left earlobe, like a piercing gone bad.

“What did you do?” Mom asked, reaching for the first aid kit just inside the pantry door. “Or rather, where have you been, dear? We don’t have any hawthorn trees in our yard.”

Mom never called Dusty “dear.” She called her daughter “Baby” or her full name “Desdemona.”

“The closest hawthorn is in the corner of The Ten Acre Wood where it meets the end of the gravel road,” Dusty said. She moistened a paper towel and handed it to Dick. “Thistle, you swore you’d never go back there after the fire,” she added more quietly.

“I didn’t go there,” Thistle breathed. “I won’t. I can’t.” She fixed Dick with a pleading stare. “I must.” She mouthed the last phrase.

Dick knew in his heart she had to return. Pixie was in her blood, her heritage, her entire life until her exile last August. She’d never settle for staying human.

She’d never settle for him as her mate.

He’d never settle for less than Thistle as a mate. Even Sandy Langford, his first sexual partner, paled in comparison.

He started cleaning her wound, the only thing he knew how to do at the moment, wishing the mending process extended to his heart.

“Y
OU CAN GO BACK TO THE TEN ACRE wood any time you want,” Dick whispered to Thistle as he swabbed her wound clean with an alcohol prep pad.

His touch sent comforting vibrations all through Thistle. The alcohol didn’t burn her nose and she barely noticed when he pulled the long thorn out of her hand.

“I can’t go back unless I go back as a…” She looked cautiously at Juliet. Dick’s mother had moved on to rewashing the dishes Dusty had washed earlier. “Unless I go back as I truly am,” she admitted on a whisper. That opened a new ache in her heart.

She desperately needed to feel air beneath her wings, gather her tribe close as they curled up in a hollow log to hibernate for the winter, shed the cares and woes of humanity for a life lived in the moment, for the moment, and little else.

She needed to do all she could to stop the silly war among the tribes.

Dick lifted her chin with a gentle finger. “Don’t cry, Thistle. I know it hurts.”

She knew he meant her loss of Pixie rather than the puncture on her hand.

“But there are compensations. You can have me.”

They both gasped at the issue they’d been waltzing around since that hot August morning she’d landed buck naked in Memorial Fountain at the height of rush hour, grown to full human size, minus her wings, her lavender
skin, and purple hair. And most of her magic. If she’d felt alone and exiled then, she felt even more so now.

Except…

“Dick, I don’t know. There are things I must do that I can only do as…”

Dick looked over his shoulder at Juliet. “Let’s go upstairs to the bathroom. I want you to soak your hand in antiseptic,” he said for the benefit of his mother.

“Does she need to see a doctor?” Juliet asked, still fussing with things at the sink. “Not that Thistle can afford to see a doctor. We really need to find her a good job with benefits, or at least enough work so that she can afford to buy insurance. Without the good insurance your father has from the school district, Dusty’s cancer would have bankrupted us. You know if we could get your sister declared handicapped, she could stay on our insurance. The coverage the county gives her for the museum job isn’t worth the premiums.”

“Chase has good insurance through the police union.” Dick grabbed Thistle’s hand and dragged her up the back stairs before Juliet could deny that Dusty would ever actually go through with the wedding.

“She’s just like old Foxglove,” Thistle whispered on a giggle to Dick when they reached the upstairs hall. “Can’t believe any of the little ones could possibly grow up and not need her anymore.”

“That about sums it up.” Dick ducked into the bathroom, still holding Thistle’s hand.

She had to admit his touch made her feel all warm and cuddly, powerful enough to do anything she wanted to, yet very willing to melt into his arms and let him take away her worries and care.

He ran water into the sink and fished around beneath it for a bottle of something that smelled sharp and acidic. Not for a second did he let go of her hand.

Thistle wrinkled her nose. “Do I really need to soak in that? Wouldn’t a little honey and a bandage work just as well?”

“Maybe for a Pixie. Honey does have certain antibiotic
properties. So do some spiderwebs. But this I
know
will work for a human body.” Gently, Dick guided her wounded hand into the basin of water.

Thistle jerked it out again. “That’s hot. And it stings.”

“A little discomfort now will save a whole passel of trouble later.” He pushed her hand back into the water and held it down with both of his hands.

Thistle squirmed until the water cooled a bit.

“Dick, what did you mean back in the kitchen when you said… when you said that I could have you if I had to give up Pixie?” She inched closer to him. His sweaty body smelled healthy and alive—as well as little rank—but that was as natural as the stubble on his face, a shade darker than his tawny blond hair.

“Thistle, you have to know that I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen and you kissed me. My first kiss,” he said softly, turning his head away.

“I know.” With her free hand she turned his chin back to face her.

“And… and….” He looked away again.

She rose up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

“Don’t do that,” he ground out.

“Why?”

“Because it makes me… because I only want to kiss you more and once I start, I might not stop.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Thistle, I won’t pretend I haven’t had several partners, starting with Sandy Langford and moving on to Phelma Jo Nelson and… more than a few others before I realized you are the only woman I truly want. When you and I make love, we will make a commitment. Sex for me, now, is a commitment, not a game.” He gulped.

“I know.”

“Thistle, what if the spell breaks and you suddenly become a Pixie again? Will you choose to go back to The Ten Acre Wood and a near immortal and carefree life? Or will you choose me?”

Something deep inside Thistle broke. “Dick, I honestly don’t know which choice I’d make. I love you. I have since the first time you befriended me when you were five.”