Rowan Wood Legends Read online

  My mouth went dry. “Why shouldn’t she have cared about her?”

  Seconds ticked by. I could hear them clicking on the clock Mom had nailed to the wall. She’d so enjoyed spending time with the dead that she often lost track of time. Cadavers soothed her. I’d never understood. I mean, yes, they were quiet, but they were also empty, malodorous shells. Instinctively, I sniffed the air. The scent of damp earth mingled with that of cold embers.

  Either Holly’s flesh had absorbed the smoky aroma of her bedroom’s fireplace, or her own fire was almost out.

  “Why shouldn’t she have cared about her?” I repeated.

  Kajika fixed me with his reddened eyes. “You know why.”

  “Because they were enemies?” I stayed quiet for a while. So did he. “What does that make me, Kajika? What the hell does that make me?”

  He closed his eyes and took a raspy breath. “Please, Catori, I do not want us to argue about this. Not again. You are different. You are not like them.”

  “But I’m also not like you.”

  “Maybe one day you will be.”

  I turned back toward Holly. I didn’t want to fight about my nature. Not next to Holly. Even though she was no longer alive, she deserved respect. The dead deserved the respect of the living.

  “Catori—”

  “Are you a hundred percent sure Gwenelda didn’t kill her?” I asked, asserting as much control over my vocal cords as humanly possible.

  “Look at her! She has a rash all over her arms and head. Only gassen causes a rash like this one.” He was breathing hard. “Ace was at the house. I saw him when I arrived. He flew away before I could interrogate him, but I saw him. If anyone killed her, it was him, Catori.”

  I shook, with anger and with panic. Had I been right? Had Ace asphyxiated Holly with his dust? I had my back to the hunter, yet I felt him take a step toward me. And then I felt him place his palms on my shoulders.

  “I know I said I would work with the faerie,” he spoke softly, “but I do not think I can trust him. I do not think we can trust him.”

  Ace had been working with Gregor. He might not have liked the wariff—the faerie governor—but he nonetheless did his bidding. Apparently, being the prince of Neverra didn’t make you superior to the reigning wariff. At least, that’s what Lily had explained.

  I let my lids slide shut over my tired eyes, and then I let his words sit. They distressed my already wavering heart. “Or she died a natural death,” I said with little conviction.

  Kajika spun me toward him. “I don’t want you to think me insensitive, but I am more worried about Gwenelda than about anyone else at this moment. Will you help me find her, Catori?”

  After a long while, I nodded. “That’s what friends are for, after all.”

  Kajika’s lips curved into a sad smile. He wanted me as more than a friend, but I wasn’t ready for that. The last man I kissed had been a faerie. He’d also been engaged. I didn’t want to regret the next kiss I shared.

  “Where have you already looked?” I asked.

  “In the woods. She left many trails in many directions, as though she were being chased.”

  The memory of a hiker, who’d been brought to the morgue to establish cause of death years before—he’d been mauled by a bear—crept into my mind. “Were there paw prints?”

  He arched a brow. “No other prints than her own. I believe faeries were chasing her.”

  The image of a predatory bear faded, replaced by blazing golwinim—the faerie guards who could transform into fireflies. They’d already attacked Gwenelda once. They’d killed her, but Cruz had called her soul back after ridding her body of their venomous dust. He’d brought her back to life. I’d been so thankful, so awestruck then. Little had I known that by asking him to save the huntress, I’d struck a bargain. And faeries—as I quickly found out—always collected on their bargains.

  Did I owe Ace for bringing back my car? Was that why he’d recovered it? I raked my hand through my long hair. “If they haven’t gotten to her, she’ll come find you, Kajika. Who else would she run to?”

  “But what if they’ve…what if they captured her? What if they already killed her?” He lowered his eyes to the shiny floor.

  “I have something faeries want,” I said flatly.

  His eyes sprang up to mine.

  “I can read Holly’s book.”

  “Holly’s book?”

  “Remember when Aylen mentioned seeing your face in a book? Holly wrote a book with faerie and hunter legends. The Wytchen Tree. That’s what Cruz wanted in Boston. He sent Stella to steal it from my house when we were driving back.”

  “What do they want with a book about adsookins?”

  “The last time I looked at it, I saw a diagram, a sort of flat hologram. The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s the burial schematics. Where each one of you is buried...was buried. So my guess is, that’s what they’re after. To raise Negongwa to have the dust regulation annulled without having to awaken the others.”

  Kajika raised one of his dark eyebrows. “Because they still believe our leader will pardon their wrong-doings and allow them a limitless supply of dust? Pahans are lucky to even still have access to their dust. If it had been up to me, I would have asked the Great Spirit to remove it from their bodies.”

  “Could he?”

  “She. The Great Spirit is female.”

  “I didn’t mean the Great Spirit. I meant Negongwa…did he have that much power?”

  Kajika smirked. “He could converse directly with the Great Spirit, and She is all powerful.”

  I sucked in my lower lip, wondering if a man could truly possess as much power as a deity. Because that’s what the Great Spirit was to the Gottwas…a deity.

  “You are certain they cannot read the book?”

  I shook my head. “Ace told me when he came—”

  “Ace Wood came here?”

  I nodded.

  A vein throbbed at Kajika’s temple. “When?”

  “An hour or so ago.”

  “Why?”

  “He wanted to take Holly’s body. He said it would disintegrate once the fire went out in it.”

  Almost afraid my words would prompt the phenomenon, I whirled back toward Holly. She was still there, but her skin was now steel-gray, and her hair, which had been matted when she’d been wheeled into my house, had vanished. I threw caution to the wind—hoping her rash wasn’t contagious—and ran a finger over her scalp. It came back caked in leaden dust. A chill crawled up my spine as I stared at it. Was it skin or her missing hair?

  A wave of nausea crested through me. I ran to the sink in the corner and clutched its edges. Cool sweat moistened the nape of my neck as I leaned over the stainless steel basin. I dry-heaved several times before the nausea receded enough for me to turn on the tap. I washed and rewashed my hands with the pink antiseptic soap. And still they didn’t feel clean.

  “Do you have a bag, Catori?”

  “A bag?”

  “To carry her out of the house.”

  I was still staring into the sink, still feeling queasy. “You mean a body bag?”

  “Any bag large enough to fit her body will work.”

  As I imagined Kajika cramming Holly in one of Mom’s recyclable fabric totes, bile coated my tongue and palate.

  “Forget it. It is too late to move her.”

  “Too late?” I croaked.

  Keeping one hand on the sink, I turned back toward Holly. The top layer of her body was flaking away, as though inhabited by termites. I shuddered. No more nose, no more chin, no more breasts, no more toes. Another layer sloughed off. And then another. With vile fascination, I watched as Holly’s flesh turned to ashes, as the ashes blustered off her rounded form like dry sand sliding off the crenelated edges of a sandcastle. The erosion took minutes but felt longer, as though time had been suspended to slow down the passing of a life.

  When it was over, all that remained of Holly were dunes of silver sand.

/>   4

  The Silent Treatment

  “How am I going to explain this to my father?” I asked Kajika as he carried Holly’s ashes out into the starlit graveyard.

  Kajika had swept my relative inside the hand-painted cherry bowl. I’d been too shell-shocked to do much else than gawk and suggest using the wide-rimmed bowl. I didn’t want Holly to be packed into a supermarket tote. It didn’t seem right. Even though she was no longer there, the least I could do was honor her with a meaningful vessel.

  “Tell him we cremated her. That’s how you say it, right? Cremated?”

  “Yes. But we don’t do it inside our house. We don’t own an incinerator…”

  “Tell him I took the body with me. That it had been her dying wish not to linger after her spirit left her body.”

  I put my palm on his forearm once we stood in front of Ley’s headstone. “Here.” I’d always imagined Holly’s mother lay beneath the earth, but she had also been fae. Was there even a casket? She’d died back in the sixties, long before I was born, almost a decade before Mom was born.

  Kajika started tipping the bowl, but before Holly could flutter out, I seized the ceramic vessel. He frowned. A soft, cool breeze blew around us. Silver motes swirled over the bowl, drifting like smoke from an extinguished wick.

  “I’d like to bury her. Could you get the shovel?” I asked. “I put it in the shed.”

  Kajika’s expression tightened at the idea of honoring a faerie with a burial. Nevertheless, he went to the shed to retrieve the shovel. He held it between two fingers, as though touching it were painful. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was insensitive to have sent him to fetch it. After all, he’d used it to bury his adoptive mother after Aylen and my father dug up her grave.

  Truth was, I didn’t trust him with Holly’s ashes.

  He handed me the shovel. I placed the cherry bowl on the thin crust of snow, took the shovel from him, and began digging. Although cold, the earth yielded beneath the blade. My shoulder blades ached by the time I managed a deep enough hole.

  “What was that funerary song Gwen sang for her mother? How does it go?” I asked Kajika before pouring her out.

  “It’s a hunter song.”

  “A hunter song? Or a Gottwa song?”

  He stared hard at me. “I will not sing it for Holly because she stopped being Gottwa when she chose to become a faerie.” His eyes basked in livid shadows. Where was the kindness, the gentleness he’d exhibited earlier in the tree house? Where was the compassion?

  “She spoke Gottwa. Collected the stories of your tribe. How could you show her such little mercy?”

  He flicked his gaze to mine. “Do not ask me to sing for a faerie. I cannot. I just cannot.”

  Kajika’s words wound my heart up as tight as the little ballerina in my music box. But unlike the ballerina, when he stopped speaking, my heart stayed painfully compressed.

  “You did not live through the Makudewa Geezhi. You do not get to judge me, Catori.”

  “I know I didn’t, but Holly didn’t either. She did not kill Ishtu. I am not asking you to sing for Lyoh Vega or Borgo Lief”—the two hateful faeries who’d slain Kajika’s mate—“I am asking you to sing for my grandmother’s cousin.”

  His eyes flashed to my face. “I’ll stay with you while you bury her, but I will not sing.”

  I bit my lower lip and dragged my gaze down to the bowl. The cherries swam in front of my eyes, clumped and stirring like red blood cells traveling through plasma. Even though his refusal made me sad, I respected it. As I tipped the bowl over the hole, my heart began to unwind in slow revolutions. I stared at the pile of gray ash, blinking back tears.

  “Goodbye, Holly,” I whispered. I was about to shovel the cold earth back on top of her when the ashes turned liquid, like molten silver. Particles shimmered as the stream flowed through the grooves of the upturned earth, finally sinking through it. “Did you see that?” I whispered to Kajika, throwing my head back to look at him.

  “I did.”

  He stared quietly at the veined earth. “Faeries are poisonous; so is their blood.”

  I frowned. “So I just poured poison over Ley’s grave?”

  “Did grass ever grow in this spot?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The cemetery was vibrant with color in the spring and summer so Ley’s ashes couldn’t have contaminated the entire grounds. Which meant Holly’s ashes wouldn’t either. Right?

  “I hope it does not taint your water.”

  I recoiled. “Maybe ashes don’t turn fluid each time. Maybe Holly’s were…special? What happened to Ace’s grandfather when your people killed him?”

  “I didn’t stand near enough to observe his transformation.”

  I stared at the ground, hoping I hadn’t done something foolish. At least not too foolish. It seemed that was the only way I did things these days. I should probably have handed Holly’s body to Ace.

  With shaky hands, I shoveled the dirt over the empty hole, hoping I hadn’t endangered the cemetery’s flora. I had a vision of desiccating bushes and yellowing grass, of cracked headstones and crumbling trees. I looked around to make sure the rowan trees still stood, leafless but strong, that the gravestones were smooth and upright, that the perennial bushes were still lush and glossy.

  Nothing had changed. Yet.

  Even though I urged him to get some sleep, Kajika stalked off into the forest in the opposite direction of Holly’s house. I imagined he would roam the night in search of Gwenelda. Should I have offered to go with him? I didn’t think I would’ve been very useful. I would probably have held him back or have gotten in the way.

  Or have done something stupid again.

  Besides, I wasn’t sure what to think of Gwenelda. Yes, she’d saved my aunt and father earlier—she’d stopped them from reading the spell etched in the casket that brought hunters back to life—but I could tell from the sobs that rose out of her afterward that she’d hated every second of it. She would rather have resurrected her mother than saved my father. Could I blame her? What would I have done if it had been my mother?

  I returned the shovel to the shed, washed the cherry bowl with hot soapy water until the enameled bottom shone, and then crept up to my bedroom, wincing each time a step creaked. Neither Dad nor Aylen stirred though. I drew the drapes closed and ran myself a hot shower. How I wished I could soak in a scalding bath, but Aylen had the only room in the house with a bathtub. A shower would have to do. She was leaving in the afternoon. I could take a bath tomorrow. And every day after that.

  After a quick shower, I pulled on a purple T-shirt that said Ooh La La. I was not in an Ooh-La-La mood, but none of my other clothes were clean, and the suitcases I’d packed were still in my car. Unless they’d been stolen. Which was a very real possibility. Not craving more bad news, I decided to wait until the morning to look.

  I collapsed onto my bed, then tossed and turned, kicking off my too-warm covers, dragging them back over me. Restless, I unplugged my phone and scoured my list of contacts.

  My finger hovered over Ace’s name.

  Not tonight.

  I typed Thank you for finding my car and then powered off my phone.

  Until I knew if he’d poisoned Holly, I would distance myself from the faerie.

  Did his phone even work in Neverra?

  Had faeries set up cell towers in the baseetogan, or did they only receive calls when they were on Earth? Did they have a magical way of communicating? Back in Boston, a gold circle slashed by lines had lit up on their wrists. I remembered thinking it looked like the suns I would draw as a kid, the ones Mom would gush about and tack up to our fridge.

  When the circle appeared, the faeries said they were needed back in Neverra… Was that how they communicated? With magic?

  I had so many questions. Sometimes I wished magic would vanish from my life, that faeries would leave me alone. Sometimes, I wished I could freeze time to ask about their world, their magic system. Would they even tell me abo
ut it?

  As a toddler, I would ask my grandfather how many bricks he’d used to build our school cafeteria. He’d say ten thousand. I thought the number too round to be true, and I’d challenged him. We’d spent an entire summer day counting the bricks. It turned out the correct number was three thousand two hundred and twenty-six bricks.

  I wondered if faeries had Internet.

  I wondered if they had cemeteries.

  I wondered if they had farms.

  I wondered if they had hospitals.

  I must have wondered about a hundred different things that night. At some point, I stopped wondering and finally slept.

  5

  The Medical Examiner

  I awoke with the scariest hairdo. Sleeping on wet hair had not been a wise idea. My hair had more volume than a sixties’ movie star. I wet my hairbrush and smoothed my tresses down as best I could. Not only did I look like a drowned rat, but my eyes glowed like a rat’s too, bloodshot and beady. I squeezed eye drops into them then applied a touch of concealer to look fresher than I felt.

  I pattered down to the kitchen in my slippers and opened the fridge. I stood in front of it for a long time. Finally, I grabbed the carton of eggs, the milk, and the butter. The heavy door slammed so hard, the glass Tupperwares vibrated inside. I set everything down on the counter, grabbed the flour and baking powder from the pantry cupboard, and snagged a bowl from underneath the sink. I cracked the eggs and mixed them with the milk and dry ingredients until the batter thickened like churned cream.

  I thought about Holly, about how she’d decomposed in front of me mere hours before, and shivered. I whisked harder, pushing the memory far from my mind, but her gaunt face, her soft voice, her graying flesh were deeply embedded in my mind. Wrist shaking slightly, I ladled the mixture into the pan and watched it froth before flipping it over. The first pancake didn’t turn golden, so I nibbled on it while I cooked up the rest of the batter. By the time Aylen emerged from the guest room and Dad came downstairs, I’d laid out a platter filled with pancakes.