Leave No Trace, page 11
“Great. Fine. Whatever.” Stef’s teeth are chattering. “Not my fight.”
Gillie shakes her head, raining grass. “ ’Twill be in time.” She cocks her head. “Shh. A noise comes, methinks—”
Stef waves her off. “Whatever. Not interested. Look, I’m going back to bed. I’m gonna pretend none of this happened.” She doubts that’s possible, but with time and denial anything can seem like a bad dream.
“Stef, please—” Lexi tries shushing her, but she won’t be quieted. Gillie has gone hyperalert, glaring at the rise they recently all climbed over.
She points at Lexi. “You wanna keep being a boy, be my guest. You wanna believe in fairies, you go ahead. Your secrets are safe. But I am done.” She’s shivering, in part from cold and in part from an odd excitement that threads through her terror. She turns to the rise and sees a strange metallic glint.
“Stef,” says Lexi, leaping after her. “Wait—”
Just then, a concussive thump punches through the trees—and all three of them are knocked to the ground by an unseen force.
The War Comes Home
Stef’s gullet heaves and she vomits bile and partially digested potatoes into the dirt, blinking away tears. “What the—” She gasps, discovering Lexi is also down on her knees, wiping at her mouth. The sour stench of upended dinner wafts Stef’s way, layered with a burning, crackling scent.
At first she thinks Gillie is gone; the space the creature occupied between herself and Lexi is empty, but a second later she sees the sìthean curled into a ball on the leafy ground, shuddering silently. Her ever-shifting skin has frozen into a single color, a mix of red clay and golden yellow, and as Stef watches the grass and mud and wood clothing that she has worn first crumbles into chunks, then disintegrates into dust around her reddish-brown body. The hat of grass goes last, and a tangle of dark curled hair tumbles out.
Lexi stumbles over, covering Gillie’s nakedness with her coat. The stand of birches behind them flickers and dims until it is as dark and featureless as every other tree in the forest. Remembering her headlamp, Stef reaches to switch it on, but it’s dead. She presses the side of her repaired watch and the light it gives off is brighter than she ever saw before; it illuminates almost as broadly as the stand once did. Now she can see Lexi’s face and the burning light in her eyes that might be fear, might be anger. Or both.
The whole experience takes seconds.
Brush along the rise crashes open and Tony pushes through, grappling with the PEP gun he brought back from the war, its wide barrel glowing with heat. “Goddamnit,” he growls, toggling a switch on the side. His voice is high, excited, quavering. “Fucking thing’s stuck.” The latch slips into place and he takes aim at Gillie. “Get the fuck away from it, Jim. Lemme finish this.”
Lexi snarls at him, hugging Gillie closer.
Stef has never seen Tony like this, so amped up and … well, soldiery that he can’t even see that Jim is not really Jim anymore. Her mind’s awhirl again, but the anger and fear she’d been feeling toward Gillie a moment ago have shifted. Now it’s aimed at Tony. She can’t just let him shoot Gillie like an injured animal. That doesn’t even take a second to think about.
With a shout, Stef launches herself at Tony, grabbing at his gun hand. She wants to knock him aside with her shoulder, but his body is a concrete wall, and she bounces off him, tumbling to the forest floor again. A thin, magenta plasma beam shoots from the PEP and severs a thick branch a few feet away. The wood thumps to the ground, leaving behind a scent of campfire.
“Crazy bitch,” Tony barks. “Do you two have any idea what’s going on here? Or are you as stupid as you look?”
He crouches by Lexi, who has stretched her body across Gillie’s. “This is not a person,” he tells her. “This is a thing. It might be cute and it might have neat tricks, but this is the end of the world if you let it live. Trust me. I saw it on the battlefield.”
“Leave,” growls Lexi. “Now.”
“Not on your life. These things are like rats. Gotta keep ’em contained. Jesus, so far as I know we don’t have ’em in North America yet. This might be the first one. And if they start taking over here like they did overseas, it’ll be all-out war.”
Lexi’s voice is thick, her cheeks wet with tears. “I don’t care.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll care when we’re the ones with the blockade. They have no place here. This is not your friend.”
“That’s what she said about you.”
He stands, ignoring her. Takes aim. “For the last time. Get the fuck out of the way.”
She’s shaking hard, but holds fast. “Shoot me first if you gotta, but I am going nowhere.”
Tony narrows his eyes. “How’s your Daddy gonna feel when he finds out you’re hiding a ‘sickness’ vector, kid? Think he’s gonna figure you got ‘sick,’ too?”
Lexi shrinks into herself, keeping tight against Gillie, who has begun to shiver.
Stef watches them from the ground, torn. In her heart she can’t truly believe that Gillie is dangerous. But what does she know? Until a few minutes ago she thought fairies were as real as the Easter Bunny. Does this mean angels exist? What about goblins? And giants? And Yeti? And what is Tony saying—they’re all coming here?
See the pieces, Gillie told her. Make ’em complete.
Her brain isn’t working right now. Words are eluding her. What she does know is that putting together that watch satisfied like nothing else—nothing except writing a song, or really good sex. It was something her body did instinctively and she trusted. If that’s what folks like Gillie offer, what could be the harm?
“But it’s not a sickness,” she says at last, standing up and brushing off her sleeves. “That’s a lie.”
Tony chuckles. Lowers his weapon a hair. “Smart girl. You’ve always been smarter than the rest.” He shakes his head. “Of course it’s not a sickness. That’s for the tinfoil-hat brigade. Folks who still think planes spread chemtrails or vaccines warp your brain. But a little propaganada about a ‘virus’ in the air no paper mask can keep out of your body? That goes a long way. ’Cause these things”—he toes Gillie—“are a disease. They’re freaks and they’re taking over our world. Uninvited, unwanted. They change us. I saw what happened to England when they were too nice about it. ‘Oh, they’re part of our traditions! Our folklore!’ Well, ’scuse me, Mr. Bangers and Mash, if Paul Bunyan shows up, you bet I’ll be in the first platoon to bring him down. We ain’t gonna let that happen here.” He lifts the barrel again. “Now, for the really last time, move off, kid.”
Stef’s mind clears. The whirl is gone. She understands him—at least, she thinks she does. And like a car at last getting into gear, she can think again. “Hold a sec.” She stands, brushing leaves from her legs, struggling to keep her voice reasonable. Pressing the side of her watch to illuminate Gillie’s face, she turns to Tony. “What you said—she’s, I mean, it’s—the only one in the U.S. we know of?”
“I said North America.”
She waves that away, folding her arms over her chest, and regards Gillie coolly. “Well,” she says. “If that’s so, isn’t it worth more alive than dead?”
Tony blinks at her just as the watch light goes out. They are again covered in shadows. “Interesting,” he says.
“I mean, they’ll want to talk to her. Interview her. Maybe a little, you know … .” She makes scissor motions with her fingers. “Know thy enemy and all that.”
Lexi makes a soft, pained noise from the ground.
Tony waves dismissively. “They’ve taken ’em alive before. Nothing new to know.”
“Except,” she presses, making it up as she goes, “like you say, first one here. New scientists. American scientists. Better minds. Fresh meat.”
Tony runs a hand through his close-cropped hair. Gives her a considered look. “Hmph,” he says at last. “Could be. But we got shit to do here first.”
Of course, thinks Stef. World might be coming to an end but T.J. has priority. “Sure,” she says. “But after that. After he gets what he wants …”
“What the hell,” he says. “I can always shoot it later if it makes trouble.”
Stef nods. “Sure.” Her voice is strangled. “Sure.”
Tony returns to Gillie on the ground. “I know you can understand me,” he addresses her, though her eyes are closed and she continues to shiver under Lexi’s coat. “So here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna let you live. But you’re comin’ back to camp with us, and tomorrow we get out of here. ’Less, of course, you care to reacquaint me with your queen?”
Reacquaint? thinks Stef. Queen? Queen of … the fairies?
Gillie’s eyes fly open. She shakes her head, closes them again.
“I see. Fine. Then tomorrow, we’ll be getting out of here. And if you make trouble, I will use this thing to cut your limbs off one at a time. Ain’t enough magic in the world to make that not hurt. Not that you have any ability to do magic right now, do ya?”
“You’re the worst person I ever knew,” says Lexi in a low, determined voice.
He snatches her face, stares into her eyes. “Plasma works on people, too,” he hisses, and pushes her to one side. Standing, he waves the gun. “Get it up.”
Lexi helps Gillie to her feet, the sìthean allowing herself to be manipulated like a marionette as Lexi wraps her scarf around her waist, then zips the coat around her. Gillie refuses to let go of Lexi’s hand, and when she opens her eyes this time, she keeps her dark gaze trained on the ground. Lexi leans to her, whispering, and Gillie nods.
“What’re you going to tell T.J.? Samuel?” asks Stef as they scramble down the rise.
Moonlight streaks across his face as Tony glances over his shoulder at his prisoner, then back to the trees. “Seems like we found some lost hiker. With amnesia.” He laughs.
A keening, anguished wail cuts through the night from the Ghillie Dhu, and it tears at Stef’s heart.
Changing the Rules
No sleeping for me tonight. I can close my eyes but they don’t stay shut ’cause there’s too many bees in my head.
Nae. Aye. Wean.
I’d give anything to hear Gillie speak right now. She’s here and holding my hand and where we touch it’s all sweaty but she’s not letting go, hasn’t let go since I helped her up. We’re lying down in the tent next to Daddy’s and he’s still making buzzy saw noises. I don’t think he even woke up the whole time we were gone.
Gillie’s not sleeping either. I don’t know if she does sleep. She’s not a person, but I don’t xactly know if she’s even a sìthean now either. When Tony showed up and waved his special gun she lost everything about her that was magic and prolly so did Stef and me but our magic was little so we just got sick in the dirt while Gillie got knocked down.
I thought about trying my abracadabra like a test when Tony was walking us back to the tents, but didn’t want him to know about me just in case it worked. Still I think it’s gone or at least broken, and it makes me feel empty inside. Like I lost one of my senses. If that’s true for me, Gillie must be 100 times more sad-scared.
“No talking,” Tony growled at me and Stef on the way back to the tents, giving us little pushes in the back. He watched Stef zip her tent closed, then tiptoed with me and Gillie to my tent. “If you two aren’t in here in the morning when I check, I’m telling your father everything.” He stared hard at me. “We clear?”
For a minute part of me decided I didn’t care. That we’d sneak out and go back to the birch trees and disappear into The Green Place. But I looked at Gillie and realized prolly even she couldn’t go to The Green Place right now, so I yessed him. He zipped us in and I saw his shadow hunker down at the firepit. He kicked up the flames and I xpected he’d be there til sunup.
Before all that happened, when it was just me and Stef and Gillie, boy did she talk a lot. I never heard Gillie—or Gil—talk so much. I’m always a little afraid of her and what she can do. Gil maybe less. But whoever he or she is when she visits me, she’s always the best thing about living here and I never wanted to do anything that might make her stop inviting me to visit. I still hope I’ll get to go to The Green Place sometime, even for a little.
’Tis a place that makes most mad, if they stay long, Gil told me once. Time measures different.
I wonder what Stef’s watch might do in The Green Place now that she fixed it. Then I wonder if Gillie’s ever going to get to go back herself. What if she’s like this forever? Can you live if you’re an ex-sìthean?
There are no books in the cabin about magic. Or about the Ghillie Dhu. Or about what it means if you grow up in a forest and the first person who asks you any good questions asks the ones that make her think you’re stupid or strange. Stef sees me like I don’t fit in. I’ve been here too long. I mean, I think fairies are real.
Xcept they are.
Here’s a true thing: I knew from the start reading trees wasn’t normal. And I knew Daddy would be mad if he found out. But I still didn’t think it was sickness. Sickness is rashes and fevers and falling over dead. Reading trees or putting broken things together isn’t sick. It doesn’t hurt. It’s like breathing. I can stop breathing for five minutes and twenty-three seconds—Jim timed me once at the big lake. It was my Guinness World Record, he said. He could only go for three minutes and forty-two seconds. We counted with Mississippis.
So it didn’t feel like being sick. Daddy might be wrong about that. Tony said something about tinfoil hats that made me think he might be. Xcept Daddy’s hat never has tinfoil on it. Even when he’s fulla shit, though, I never thought Daddy was wrong before. But if he’s wrong about this maybe he’s wrong about other things.
The bees in my head are pretty loud. I hear Jim telling me Daddy was always fulla. And Jim didn’t laugh about it like I did.
Jim ran away. I know this. He always wanted to go and so he went and it just so happened he left when he and Daddy went out hunting together for the first time.
My mind is bouncing all over, trying not to think about the only thing that really matters. The thing being the sìthean that’s holding my hand so tight it’s gone all tingly.
“Gillie.” I turn and whisper. “I’ll fix this. I’ll do whatever I have to.”
At last, she turns to me. I can’t see her face so good since it’s dark dark in here but her hand in mine goes softer, just a bit. “Aye,” she whispers. “Ye will try.”
Jim never liked the woods. Not like me. Definitely not like Daddy.
Almost from the start he was stinky about it. Did everything he could think to get Daddy mad and yelling. First he stopped doing chores, then he stopped talking. When he was fourteen he started roaming. Daddy called him an adolescent brat and Jim yelled right back that he’d been kidnapped. Then he stopped talking for a while, until not talking was too hard and then he only talked to me, mostly. He always kept wandering, though.
Where d’you go? I’d ask him.
Far and wee, he’d quote this poem we both liked. Far and wee.
But that answer didn’t tell me anything. And he kept going out on his own.
So Daddy brought out the strop. He let me hold it and it was like a belt but wider and thicker. Shirk out here and you die, Daddy told Jim, his last warning before he took it to Jim’s backside. Everybody eats so everybody works.
After that first belting Jim didn’t roam. He just left. He went bye-bye for whole afternoons, then overnight. Always came back scratched up and thirsty and hungry and sleeping while he stood up and had to take Daddy’s angry words right in the face. His clothes would be dirty and yanked all over and his hair would stand up in places. But before he got fed or could take a drink or a sleep he got the strop. Every time.
I hid in the loft until he was ready to come up there and I was the one who put the burning red medicine on his cuts and welts. Stay here, I said. Who can I talk to if you’re gone?
I didn’t know Gil then.
I’m doing this for us, he insisted. You’re too little to get it.
Thing was, he didn’t know where he was going. He could only carry so much food and then he’d get out there and not find anything and have to turn around. He said every time he made back for the cabin his gut twisted ’cause he knew he had another whupping coming. Told me he had to get back to the real world.
I don’t think anybody’s sick, he said. Not like he tells us.
What if you’re wrong?
Then he stopped wandering and going bye-bye. Not because of the whupping though, I don’t think. He just ran out of directions to try. Told me we were in a cage. A great big one and we can’t see the bars, but we’re trapped all the same. Like animals.
Turns out Jim didn’t really give up. He was just waiting for the right time.
I don’t sleep but I’m not totally awake all night. I drift off and then I come back when a thought knocks in my head and then I’m awake again. I keep thinking about Jim and how it was like when there were two of us.
But I have to pee. Bad. I can’t stay in here anymore. I turn to Gillie. “I’m just going out for a second,” I tell her. “Okay? I’m not leaving.”
Her hand slips from mine and now my palm feels cold and empty. “Go,” she says and it’s like a sound deep from inside a cave.
I put my boots and coat back on—I gave Gillie some of my xtra clothes, which were Jim clothes once—and slow slow unzip the tent. Stick my head out and take a breath of the almost-morning. Sky’s a deep dark blue, no stars. Air’s heavy, wet. Storm could be coming.
“Look who doesn’t know how to listen to rules,” says a deep rumbly voice from the firepit.
