Fairy Thief (22 page)

“
Little winged child, you don’t understand. This soul thing…. It makes you tired in a weird way; I’m so tired right now, I feel like I might not exist soon….”

Tai pouted. “Orji, your demise due to exhaustion doesn’t happen
that
quickly…pshtt – what a lightweight!”

“
Come on, we’ll take you to Her. She said she’d love to meet both of you!” Wo clapped his hands with glee, and when neither Saffron nor Orji made any sign of going, he begged for their compliance with his eyes. He looked so positively pathetic that Saffron felt bad, and stood to follow him.

Orji jumped to his feet and said, “Hold on a minute, miss, you forgot this.”

She turned in time to watch a petrified lei fly at her face. She squealed with disgust and side-stepped the thing a split-second before it made contact. It dropped with a dull thud to the floor.

“
Oh, Saffron…. I’ve been out there — every single person in this realm wears these. If we come upon any townspeople and you’re not wearing this, you’ll raise suspicions. We don’t know how they’d retaliate…. I’ve snuck around the outskirts of town. Not
one single person
was without their cow-plop jewelry — it’s probably the law.” Orji’s jaw was set and his stance was solid. He waited for Saffron to pick up the lei and lower it over her head.

Wo and Tai waited impatiently at the mouth of the cave, jittering from foot to foot, but said nothing.

Please,” Orji said gently, “I would not be wearing this right now if I were playing a trick on you. I’m dead serious; they’re all wearing these out there.” He pointed out the cave entrance and stared at her with big, serious, ink-pool eyes.

Saffron shook her head. She rubbed her temples, and took a deep breath. She stared down at the lei. She let out the breath in one long stream, reached for the lei, swiped it off the dusty floor of the cave, and dropped it over her shoulders.

“
There,” said Orji, “was that so hard?” He had a sly smile on his lips.

Saffron pushed past him and stalked to the opening of the cave. Orji quickly took two steps back and blocked her path at the last second, still smiling. “How old are you?”

Saffron lowered her eyebrows and spat, “Nineteen.”

“
Really.”

Saffron looked at the ground. Orji looked silly with sparkly eyes. Rough man like that with sparkly eyes. Silly.

He reached to touch her hair.

Saffron looked up and slapped his hand down. “I’m twenty-two.”

Orji guffawed. “I don’t think so honey; you talk more like a fifteen-year-old.”

Blood made hot with indignation rushed through Saffron’s body and bloomed on her cheeks.

Orji smiled wider.

“
Well, Pepere, how old are you?”

Orji lowered his head and looked at her mischievously from under his brows, which he raised and lowered in quick succession like a letch. “I’m either twenty-five, twenty-nine, or thirty-two.”

Saffron gasped in disgust, shoved him out of the way, and blundered forward.

Orji stood perfectly still, and watched her as she and her swishy hips hurried away. He rubbed at his mouth as if to wipe away his stupid grin. His face hardened swiftly and surely, like stone.

A quick glance at their surroundings told Saffron that this realm was much like the Earthrealm. However, she noticed right away, there were no birds – she heard no chirps or peeps – just the croaking of a million frogs. They were hopping everywhere. Saffron, Orji, Tai, and Wo scaled down the short mountainside and made their way through a field of wildflowers, neon frogs, mud-colored frogs, white frogs, black frogs, black-and-white frogs. With wide, glassy eyes, the frogs watched the four pass. The leaves on the trees were oddly shaped, and were more blue than green, all sheltered beneath the lime-green sky.

“
How far are we going?” Saffron huffed and puffed and waved irritably as tiny frogs with wings bumped about her ears.

“
Saffron,” Wo replied with a little frown, “you don’t have to get all worn out and huff and puff like that — that’s another one of your physical memories — don’t let it hold us back. Concentrate. Stop breathing hard. Pick up your pace — there is no time for your physical bindings. Do yourself a favor — don’t think of yourself as human for now.” Wo kept walking.

He didn’t see how Saffron stopped dead in her tracks, how her eyes misted with tears, how her shoulders sank. “But I am human!”
She swiped at her eyes. “And what does it matter, Wo? You guys are going to get winded sometimes, get physically exhausted — just like when you were carrying Orji. So, why can’t I get winded, too?”

Tai made a ‘gerrrrff’noise, that meant, ‘I’m going to throttle you.’ “You don’t
have to
get physically tired. Are you going to just let it happen anyway, and hold us all up? This is
your
quest…you’re being a brat!”

Orji’s jaw moved back and forth behind the skin of his cheek. He lowered his head and looked like a bull seeing red. He stopped beside Saffron and looked at her with a question in his glance. “C’mon, Saffron. Huff and puff, hold your breath — I don’t care. Let’s get going. We’ll meet Miss Wonderful, then head back. I need my beauty sleep so I can move on to another realm.”

Saffron’s eyes flashed. She watched Orji stalk through the grass. He used his large fingers to pull his hair back from his forehead, but some of it bounced back the second his hand came down. He was in the same predicament as she — wasn’t he? Then why had a light sweat started on his brow? Maybe he would claim he imagined this on purpose — sweating was such a studly thing to do. He wasn’t breathing heavily, though. Why was he so good at being a ghost? She shuddered. Why did she think about this so much? Why did it bother her? It was only temporary — this ghost life. She would find Markis, get her human body, and be done with it. Why did she contemplate this existence when it was temporary? She wasn’t aging, so it really was no big deal.
Buck up, baby.
Saffron took a deep breath, stood up straight, and held her chin in the air. She wouldn’t let these insensitive morons annoy her. She spun away from Orji, and stomped quickly through the rest of the field, down to a stream where the twins waited impatiently.

They weren’t alone. They smiled from ear to ear, and frantically waved Saffron over, as they pointed to ‘the friend’ and patted her rump. Their friend had been taking a leisurely slurp from a rushing stream, and as Saffron approached the three with her mouth hanging open, ‘Miss Wonderful’ lifted her head from the water. She stared indifferently at Saffron with large, brown eyes, and proceeded to chew her cud.

“
You must be kidding.” Saffron tripped on a granite-hard tree root, looking awkward as she caught herself and put her hands on her hips at the same time. “Really, what exactly is this? I mean, you want to get it on with a cow – really?” Then she muttered, “Effen fairies.”

Tai stared at Saffron with murder in his eyes. Orji snorted and looked away. He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“
Why did Orji and I have to come down here? We need sleep, remember? We don’t want to exhaust ourselves and vanish because of your damn cow!”

Suddenly, the cow turned and bullet-stared Saffron in the eye.

Saffron tipped her head sideways, ever so slightly, her hands dropped from her hips. Her jaw unhinged so she looked like a Neanderthal.

The cow pawed the earth and snorted.

The hairs on the back of Saffron’s neck stood on end — was this cow going to
chase
her? The cow had stopped chewing, stopped swishing her tail, and was
staring
Saffron
down
— as if she understood Saffron’s insult!

Saffron straightened up again and narrowed her eyes — she wasn’t going to let some otherworld cow bully her. She had already been through too much to be bullied by a heifer. Her lip came up in a sneer.

Miss Wonderful charged.

Saffron squealed and ran for the blue-leaved trees. She grabbed at a forked branch, ran her feet up the trunk of the tree, flung a leg over each side of the branch, then pulled herself up with her stomach muscles and did a sit-up to reach the branches above her.

Meanwhile, Miss Wonderful had her cloven hoofs on the tree trunk, and was snapping at Saffron with large, square, yellow teeth.

“
Call her off!” Saffron screamed.

Tai and Wo still stood by the edge of the stream — they hadn’t moved an inch. Orji stood by them, and took in the entire scene with naked wonder.

“
NOW!”

“
Saffron, she’s not our dog. She does what She wants — She follows Her own will.” Tai crossed his arms over his chest.

Wo, who usually cut Saffron some slack — at least more than Tai — spoke very rigidly. “You are so lucky She agreed to meet us out here, away from her subjects, because you probably would have gotten us chased out of this realm!”

“
What is
going on here!
”

Wo spoke so quietly that Saffron almost didn’t hear him. “It’s obvious isn’t it? We’re in love. Against all odds, we’ve found our soul mate.” His eyes
were
love-filled — they darkened with sorrow when he looked back at Saffron. “And all you can do is make fun of us. Thanks a lot.”

Saffron gasped in horror. “Well, how the hell do you fall in love with a cow? This is ludicrous! What — you took one look at her sexy, jutting, rump bones and went undone?”

Tai hawked a loogie in Saffron’s general direction. “You know what your problem is, Saffron? You just can’t let it go, can you.... You can’t stop being a crass human for one minute!”

Orji cleared his throat. “Now, now – I didn’t nominate Saffron to represent our race. Watch yourselves now….”

Saffron sniffed and looked down at Orji. “You’re human?”

Orji smiled. “You need me to prove it?”

Saffron scowled and looked back at Tai. “What are you babbling about? I
am
human!”

“
OBVIOUSLY!” Tai stalked towards the tree where Saffron had, by now, climbed as high as she could go.

“
All right, hens, this has gone on long enough. Tai, Wo — Saffron is insensitive….”

“
What do you mean
I’m
insensitive…!”

“…
.and maybe if she could shut up for five minutes….” Orji shot a look at Saffron.

She huffed and closed her mouth.

“…
.then, you could explain to both of us what it is that’s going on here.” He held his hand out to Wo, encouraging him to speak.

Wo waited a few more seconds to make sure Saffron was really shutting up, then spoke. “When we met Her, in this very same spot, it was just like a fairytale. We were the poor, young woodsmen going about our business in the forest, when we happened upon a beautiful princess drinking from a stream.”

The cow had come away from Saffron’s tree, had plodded over to Wo, and was now gently nudging him. “Hey,” he whispered with a smile, as he lovingly stroked her warm, chocolate fur. “Even before we looked into her eyes, when we first saw her bent over the water, we got this little thrill that fluttered through us — you know — like this electric zing…. And, all we knew at that moment was that we had to stop what we were doing —we had to go to her, we had to meet her, we had to be near her.

“
Then She looked at us. First one, then the other, and smiled at us.”

Tai nodded with a faraway look in his eyes.

“
She s
miled
at you?” Saffron gave a hiccuping laugh. She felt very near the edge again. She had the urge to start howling. She didn’t know if it would do any good, but she just wanted to start screaming and never stop.

“
Enough!” Orji warned, and pointed at her without looking at her.

“
When She looked at me, I started to feel woozy. I lost all sense of time and direction and balance. I just floated there, in empty space. No, not empty — She
was
the space…. I was surrounded by Her, touched and soothed by Her.” He lay his head on the cow’s back and sighed. She lowered long, thick eyelashes over her big, brown eyes.

Tai laid his head on her other side and breathed softly, evenly. Frogs jumped past their feet, heading into the stream for the evening.

Saffron sat silently on her bough and contemplated the issue. This was no joke. They really loved this cow. She felt an inkling of jealousy, and realized she had really, finally, lost her mind. But she couldn’t get past the expressions on their faces — serenity, peace, and ecstasy.