The Nixie’s Song (4 page)

His mind shied away from completing the thought.

Nicholas saw a pale body.

After scrambling down the stairs, he ran out the back door.
The lack of rain was a rippling, oppressive pressure in the air.
The streetlights weren’t on, but flashes of lightning turned the sky bright enough for Nick to see.
He ran as fast as he could toward the body before everything went black again.
Then he kept running through the dark, only to stop suddenly as he got close.
He choked on a scream.

A creature lay on its side—its green skin fading to white in places and dry as a leaf.
Its eyes were closed and it didn’t seem to have a nose—just two slits above a slash of a mouth.
Weird tendrils stuck up from the creature’s forehead, and brownish ribbons of grass covered its head like hair.

It wasn’t covered in purple glitter.

It didn’t have wings.

But Nicholas had a sinking feeling that it was going to turn out to be a faerie anyway.

He took a deep breath and pushed.

Laurie,” Nick said breathlessly, opening the door to his old bedroom.
She was lying on her stomach on the bed, with her clarinet in one hand and a book of music open in front of her.
The fan turned lazily overhead.
New posters were taped up on the walls.

“There’s something out there,” he told her, trying to keep his voice from trembling.
“One of your stupid monsters.”

“You didn’t knock.” She frowned.

Nick sputtered.
“It’s
my
room!
Just because
you’re in it doesn’t make it yours.
I don’t have to knock on the door to
my
room!”

“I’m telling your dad!” she yelled.

“Fine!” Nick banged his knuckles against the wall.
“Happy?
I knocked!”

“You just left me out there without saying anything.
I looked for you for
ever
.”

“Laurie!” he shouted.
“Shut up and listen!”

Her eyes went wide and her nostrils flared, but she pressed her lips flat.

“There’s a thing out there!” Nick could feel himself shaking as he pointed to the window.

Laurie got off the bed slowly and stuck her feet in her purple flip-flops.
“Okay.
Fine.
Show me.”

He pointed out the window toward the pale body.
Laurie shook her head even though she was so close to the glass that her forehead was pressed against it.

“It’s the whitish thing,” Nick said.

Laurie put her hand on her hip.
“There’s nothing there.”

“I’ll show you up close,” he said.

“You want me to go outside?
Now?”

Nick groaned in frustration.
“Please.”

He led her downstairs and through the grass to the creature, pulling her to a stop when they got close.
It didn’t seem as though it had moved.
He wondered if it was dead.
He wondered if they should donate it to a museum.
“See?” he said.

If they did donate it to a museum, the plaque would say that he’d found it.
Maybe they’d
name it after him.
Vargas’s whatever-it-was.

“Ha ha,” Laurie said, turning back to the house.
“Stop making fun of me.”

“What?” Nick asked.
“Can’t you see it?”

“Of course I can’t see it, jerk.
There’s nothing there.”

He opened his mouth and closed it again, too stunned to know what to say.
Then he realized she was going to leave him alone with the creature.
“Wait!” he called after her.
“Wait!
Laurie, I swear it’s real.
Look!
It’s right there and green and really creepy and I promise I’m not making this up.”

She turned around and looked at him for a long moment.
“I don’t understand.” She pushed her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose.
“You’re serious?
How can you see something I don’t?
You have the Sight?
That’s so not fair.”

“No kidding,” Nick said.

“You’re not the seventh son of a seventh son.
You don’t have red hair.
How did you get it?” She stopped.
“Did anyone spit in your eye recently?”

“That’s gross,” he said.
“No way.”

She narrowed her eyes, and Nick suddenly thought she was going to forget her rainbow-y happy crap and strangle him.

“Well,” he said.
“I did find one of those clovers you were looking for.”

“You found a
four-leaf clover
?”

He shrugged.
“You mean, that’s why I can see it?”

“Of course.” She put her hand on her hip.
“Give it here.
Four-leaf clovers let you see faeries, you idiot!”

He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and carefully pulled out and unfolded the paper where he’d kept the plant.
It was wilted at the edges but otherwise okay.
Laurie held
her breath as she carefully undid the string from around her neck and slid off her locket, thumbing it open.
Charlene’s picture was on one side and a bearded guy that Nick guessed was Laurie’s dad was on the other.
She put the clover over her mother’s head and closed the locket around it.

“Oh,”
she said softly, her voice full of surprised rapture as she squeezed the locket in her palm.
Nick’s vision faded to normal.
The night seemed darker, less vivid.
He told himself that he was relieved not to have to see the creature anymore before he realized he wouldn’t
know if it moved.
That sent a shiver of dread through him.

It creeped him out that the thing even
existed
.

Laurie bent down, eyes wide and shining.
“She’s a nixie, I think.
She must have left her pond and not been able to make it back.”

Nick thought of the dried husks of toads he sometimes saw on the newly paved roads.
“Is it dead?”

Laurie reached out and stroked just above the grass, like she was petting the thing, smoothing its hair.
Nick shuddered and took a step back.
Thunder boomed overhead, but more rain still refused to fall.

“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Her heart’s beating.”

“Good.
Fine.
If it’s alive, then let’s leave it,” Nick said, but he was afraid Laurie wasn’t going

to be persuaded to go back to the house that easily.
“Dinner’s probably going to be ready soon.
They’ll start looking for us.”

“Get a wheelbarrow.”

“Get a wheelbarrow,” Laurie told him.
“We have to put her back in the lake.”

“You’re not supposed to touch wild animals when they’re sick.
They could attack you.
They could be rabid.”

“She’s not a wild animal.
She’s a
faerie
.”

“Fine.” When he’d gone back to get Laurie, this was what he’d been hoping—that she’d tell him what this thing was and what they should do with it.
But walking across the construction site in the dark was far more frightening than it had been hours ago, when the only things he’d been afraid of were stepping on a water moccasin or banana spiders dropping on his face.

Now he wasn’t sure what to be afraid of.
He grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and
tugged it out of a pile of dirt.
As he was steering it back toward Laurie and the creature, his father opened the door to their house.

“Nicholas!” he yelled.
“What are you doing?
Leave that alone!”

Nick looked up.
He never got in trouble.
Never.
He hated Laurie.
She’d changed everything when she showed up.

“Get in here,” he said.
“Dinner’s been ready for half an hour.
We were calling you.
Where’s your stepsister?”

“I’ll go get her,” Nick said.

When the door closed, he took a deep breath and pushed the wheelbarrow as fast as he could.
He knew his father was disappointed in him.
Disappointed, which was much worse than mad.

“Laurie,” he said when he got to her.
“We have to go in.
Dad’s calling us for dinner.”

“This is important,” said Laurie.
“Please.
I can’t carry her by myself.”

Nick shook his head.
“We can sneak out after.”

“She could die,” Laurie said softly.

Nick thought of his mother, who did die.
He didn’t want to cause anything’s death.
Even this thing’s.

“Okay,” said Nick.
“But we have to be quick.”

“Grab her feet.” Laurie reached down and seemed to lift something.
Nick gritted his teeth and touched where he thought the nixie was.
Under his fingers, her skin was dry as paper.
When he looked down, he saw her with the same vivid, strange vision as when he had held the clover.
His heart beat so loudly he thought he could hear it.
He slid his hands up to her ankles and couldn’t help feeling her webbed feet.
He had to force himself not to drop them.