Space Magic (25 page)

It was the skin of a frog, about two inches long. Complete with eyes, toes, and mouth. The frog’s stripes and spots were barely visible on the thin translucent surface.

Dora knew that frogs shed their skin, though she’d never seen one do it. But she also knew that they usually ate the skin after shedding it. And this skin didn’t seem to have an opening where the frog had taken it off. It was more like something had removed the frog and left the skin behind.

Dora got a nervous feeling and turned quickly around. But there was nothing behind her.

-o0o-

After work that night, Dora went back to the ditch. She brought her flashlight, but she didn’t turn it on—instead she waited at the edge of the parking lot until her eyes adjusted to the dark. Whatever was happening to her frogs, and whatever was the source of that strange greenish glow, it was a thing of the darkness, and if she blundered around with a flashlight she’d never see it.

Moving slowly, as silently as she could, she crept through the rustling reeds and squatted down at the water’s edge. The frogs shut up as soon as she came near, but after a long time they started in peeping again.

A three-quarter moon illuminated the scene with a cold fluorescent light. Dora’s knees started to hurt and the wet ground chilled her feet and her butt. But she remained still. Waiting. Watching.

A
plip
sound in the water to her left gave her a start, but it was just a frog jumping. She settled down and waited for her heart to stop pounding.

Then the frogs shut up again, though she hadn’t moved, and she thought she saw something off to her right. Slowly she turned her head. There was a pale, flickering, greenish glow, right at the water’s edge maybe three feet away. And at the center of it was something that made her heart contract into a hard cold lump.

It was a tiny human figure, maybe five inches high. Its arms and legs were long and thin, and it had translucent wings like a dragonfly’s. It crouched at the edge of the water, slowly raising one arm—getting ready to pounce on a frog, which floated stupidly just a few inches away from it.

Dora flicked on her flashlight to get a better look at the thing.

She wished she hadn’t.

Whatever it was, though it was shaped like a human being it had nothing else in common with Dora. Instead of skin or fur it was covered with something hard, glistening, and iridescent—black with purple-green highlights. Its limbs were skeletally thin, with harsh mechanical joints like an insect’s; its hands were as disturbingly inhuman as a mouse’s clawed feet. The raised hand held a three-inch spear, thin as a needle, with a wicked-looking barb on the end. On its head it wore a leaf, twisted into a cone.

But what really made the breath catch in Dora’s throat was its face—huge black eyes and a wide mouth bristling with curved, ragged teeth like fingernail trimmings.

The creature opened its mouth and screeched—a thin sound like two pieces of broken glass scraping together—then it flew into the air. The water riffled in the wind from its wings, which made a rattling hum like a big beetle. Dora kept the flashlight beam on it. It screeched again and flung the spear at her with vicious force.

Dora raised her left hand to ward off the tiny spear. It plunged into her palm with a terrible sharp sting, and stuck out the other side. Dora cried out in pain, but she didn’t take the light off the thing.

And there in the light of the moon and the flashlight, in plain sight, it vanished like a candle flame guttering out. One moment it was there, then it flickered and faded and then it wasn’t.

Dora darted the flashlight around, trying to tell herself that it had just moved out of the beam. But it wasn’t anywhere. It had disappeared. She had seen it go.

She realized she was holding her breath. She let it out with a shuddering rush.

All was silent.

-o0o-

Dora’s mouth was dry and she fought to control her breathing. In the warmth and light of her own bathroom it was possible to imagine that she had not just seen a tiny human figure fly and vanish. This spear thrust through her bleeding hand was just a thorn, she had stuck herself by accident, and she would break off the barb and pull it out and put a Band-Aid on it and then it would all be better.

But when she snapped the spear in half it melted away like a tiny flake of ice. She whimpered as she felt it evaporate from her injured hand.

Trembling, she washed her hands thoroughly with soap and water, put antibiotic ointment on the wound—it smelled like the hospital—and stuck a Band-Aid on each side of her hand.

Then she turned on every light in the house, and the TV, and the radio. And she closed all the curtains and huddled, shivering, in her bed.

-o0o-

She shrieked when she felt a touch, but it was only Dad. Somehow she had fallen asleep. The clock said 12:53.

“Hey, tiger. What’s with the lights?”

Dora opened her mouth, then closed it again. Swallowed. “I... I had a bad dream. A really bad dream.”

Dad sat on the edge of the bed. “Must have been. You OK now?”

She wanted to hug him. “Yeah. Now that you’re back.”

“I’m back.” He looked like he wanted to hug her too. “Want to talk about it?”

“Huh?”

“The dream. Was it about Mom?”

“Uh... no. No. It was... it was bad.” A twinge ran through her.

“Hey, what happened to your hand?”

“I, uh, stuck myself making dinner. Don’t worry, I cleaned it off and I put on antibiotics.”

“That’s Daddy’s girl.” He yawned broadly. “’Scuse me. Sleepytime for Daddy.” She hated it when he talked like that, like she was just a little kid, but at the same time it was kind of comforting. “You gonna be OK?”

“I’ll be OK.”

But she didn’t get back to sleep until after three.

-o0o-

“May I help you?” The librarian had a salt-and-pepper beard and a button that said PERFORM A SUBVERSIVE ACT: READ.

“Um, I’m looking for some information on... um, fairies?” Suddenly she felt extremely stupid, but she pressed on. “I mean, you know, little people with wings. Only not Disney.”

“Fairy tales?”

“No. Non-fiction.”

“Hm.” The librarian tapped at his computer. “Let’s see what we can do for you...”

Dora left the library with a stack of eighteen books about folk tales, mythology, and Victorian England. There was much more to this whole fairy thing than she’d ever dreamed. She wasn’t the first to see one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, had even photographed them!

But once she got on the bus and began to read, she began to doubt herself again. Arthur Conan Doyle had been duped. The books on folk tales and myths were all about psychology or literature—none of them seemed to consider the idea that fairies might actually, literally, exist. The Victorian fairies were cute, frilly, Disney things, not at all like the frightening being she had met. And the one book of “Faery Magick” that seemed to take fairies seriously was full of meaningless woo-woo about “earth spirits” and “focused energy.”

She thought about taking a different tack—going back to the library tomorrow, researching insects and other small creatures. She knew that love-starved sailors had once thought that manatees—those huge cow-eyed sea mammals—were mermaids. Maybe what she had seen was really nothing more than a big bug. But the thought of asking the bearded librarian for more help was daunting, and she couldn’t really convince herself that any bug could have done what the creature—the fairy—had done.

The one thing she read that resonated with the experience she’d had was that the term
fairy
, or
fair folk
, was a euphemism—like when Mom called the President “our glorious leader.” It was a way of talking about them without revealing just how much you hated and feared them.

The really scary thing about that statement was what it implied: that you never knew when they might be listening. They could be anywhere. Even on a noisy smelly bus full of chattering adolescents. And like some invisible carcinogen, they might bide their time for years before deciding to strike.

Unconsciously, Dora clutched her backpack hard to her chest.

-o0o-

For the rest of that day Dora tried to forget all about the fairy, or whatever it was. She sorted the mail; she washed dishes; she even vacuumed, for the first time in months, and found the missing half of her favorite pair of green socks under the couch. But when the sun went down she made sure the door was locked and kept the lights on and the curtains shut tight.

She went to bed at ten. But at 10:57 she was still awake. Finally she could bear it no more. She kneeled on her pillow and peeked through the curtains over her headboard, peering across the parking lot.

At first she saw nothing unusual, but then as she sighed and started to let the curtain fall she thought she saw movement. Clutching the curtain, its rough weave harsh against her cheek, she blinked hard, then looked again.

Faint, bluish-greenish lights. Not just one. Dozens.

They were moving toward her.

“Oh shit,” she whispered, and pushed the curtains closed.

She clutched herself into a little ball with her back against the headboard of her bed as the sounds started. Faint but undeniable, tiny scratching scrabbling sounds that she felt as much as heard through the wall behind her back.

It’s mice
, she told herself over and over.
Mice mice mice.

But she knew it wasn’t mice. She knew it was malevolent little inhuman claw-hands, and faces with huge black emotionless eyes and mouths full of teeth.

Finally she had to
do
something. She jumped from her bed, turned on the bedside lamp and the radio and the overhead light and the desk lamp. Twisted the desk lamp to shine its seventy-five watts out the window. Flung open the curtains.

There was nothing there. Nothing but the reflection of a terrified sixteen-year old girl.

But in the morning she found hundreds of tiny scratches on the aluminum window frame. Right next to the latch.

-o0o-

“You look
terrible
, sweetie.”

Mom didn’t look too good herself, but Dora didn’t mention that. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Bad dreams.” She had sprayed bug repellent all around the window, and that seemed to slow them down some, but they still came every night.

“I’m sorry.” Mom reached out a hand. The hospital bracelet was loose on her thin wrist, and catheters were held in place with hospital tape that pulled at her pale skin. “C’mere, honey. Let me give you a hug.”

Dora took the hand, but she knew that any contact or pressure hurt terribly, aggravated the pain of the cancer that scraped at the insides of her bones and veins and arteries. She didn’t squeeze the hand, didn’t move any closer. “I’ll be OK, Mom. Don’t worry about me. You need your strength.”

“I do worry about you, you know. I can’t help it. It’s part of my job.” Mom tugged at Dora’s hand, urging her closer, but Dora stood her ground. She didn’t want to give her any pain, didn’t want to risk infecting her again with some simple little virus that could kill her. A glance passed between them—a brief complex moment of defiance and concern from Dora, of release and resignation from her mother—and the tugging stopped.

“I’ll be OK,” Dora repeated, though she wasn’t at all certain of that.

Mom gripped her hand tightly. “If there’s anything I can do, you just ask.”

-o0o-

Dora was sorting the mail again. Junk mail. Bill. Letter from Aunt Jacquie. Junk mail. Bill. Junk mail. What’s this?

It was junk mail, no doubt, with a bulk rate stamp and addressed TO OUR FRIENDS AT Dora’s address, but the colorful envelope caught her eye. It bore a cartoon of a grinning ladybug and the words DEVOURS UP TO 60 APHIDS A MINUTE! ONLY $24.95 PER PINT! FREE DELIVERY!

Dora smiled at the cartoon, and at the thought of buying bugs by the pint. She briefly imagined ordering a pint of them, setting them free in her drainage ditch. The cheery red-and-black insects would swirl around her like the little plastic flakes in a snow-globe, beneficial predators to eat aphids and other harmful pests.

Not that aphids were her problem.

But...

She set down the rest of the mail and sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the envelope in her hand.

What if...?

-o0o-

She attacked the library books again, with a new agenda. Reading between the lines. Searching for the deeper truths beneath the myths, the legends, the Disney versions. Looking for the manatees behind the mermaids.

There were many kinds of fae creatures, she learned, with different names in different cultures. Fairies. Pixies. Goblins. Leprechauns. Each had its habits and habitats, its preferences and weaknesses.

Its predators and prey?

The information was sketchy, contradictory, unreliable. But there were certain themes that cropped up over and over. Goblins were malicious. Pixies were self-centered and fickle. Fairies could be helpful or hurtful, and appeared at times of transition: birth, puberty, marriage...

And death.

No!

But there was another type of fae, called a hob—a guardian earth spirit, protector of the home, drawn to generous and caring people, and fond of a saucer of milk.

If she just put out a saucer of milk, the only thing she would attract was the neighbors’ cat. There had to be something more directed, more concrete.

Most of the spells in the book of Faery Magick were inapplicable, or vague, or unreasonable—where was she supposed to get garnets, or a dram of dragon’s blood? But here and there she found a paragraph or a sentence that made sense, a rhyme that resonated with something inside her, a list of ingredients that she could obtain. From these she cobbled together a ritual that felt right.

She couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t much to go on. But she had to do
something
.

-o0o-

Dora stood barefoot at the edge of the drainage ditch, wearing only a clean cotton nightshirt and carrying a shoebox. The cold mud squidged between her toes, and the light of the full moon rippled on the water.

This is the stupidest thing I have ever done
, she thought.