Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles (12 page)

“When?” Dick asked as he trailed kisses along her neck, pushing aside her sloppy sweatshirt to reveal her shoulder and part of her breast. “When can we get married?” His hands reached beneath her sweatshirt to cup her breasts.

“Um. Soon.”

“How soon? Like tonight?” His wonderfully sensitive hands made it hard for her to think.

She was human now. She had to think; had to look beyond this moment of pleasure. A moment of ecstasy.

What was it the actress had said in the movie she’d watched last night with Juliet? The one about a king from times long ago pursuing a woman named Anne while still married to another woman, Katherine. Something about keeping a man dangling; increasing his expectations. Anne would never become queen if she allowed Henry—that was the king’s name—into her bed too soon.

“We’ll have a proper wedding first,” she said, suppressing a giggle of delight. She pointedly took a step away from him, though she felt instantly chilled.

Dick raised his eyebrows. She’d come to recognize the expression as one of disbelief, as well as a question. “I thought Pixies didn’t indulge in large rituals for anyone but kings and queens?”

“Some Pixies hold out for a formal mating flight.” She knew that Rosie had. Good thing, too, as Hay turned out to have mixed loyalties as well as bloodlines. “I’m human now. My only role model is your sister. Her wedding is her mating flight. If she waits for sex with Chase until the wedding, I wait until our wedding.”

“Okay.” He drew out the word into many parts. “How soon can we get married?”

“How long does it take?”

“If you want a big ceremony in a church with lots of guests and a big party afterward…”

“Like Dusty is planning.”

“Like our mother is planning for Dusty. Then it takes months to get the proper dress and wedding cake and stuff. If you don’t care about such things, it will take two weeks in Oregon, three days in Washington, or we can drive to Idaho and have no wait at all.”

“Let’s go for the two weeks. I’d like a special dress, but not the big party. It’s not like I know a lot of people.”

“Two weeks,” he said sadly. “I guess I can wait that long. But no longer. I had a bad scare today. I don’t want to waste any of the short life I’ve been given.”

“Tell me about it.” Thistle kicked the door shut, well aware of the audience in the yard beyond, though after dark all the Pixies should be curled up in their nests fast asleep. Then she looped her arm through Dick’s and led him into Mabel’s parlor. A tiny room compared to the one in Juliet’s home. But it was tidy, with comfortable furniture, built-in bookcases on either side of the hearth, and polished bare wood floors. A few colorful braided rugs offered a little protection from chill drafts to bare feet. She hadn’t wanted to disturb the cozy neatness of the room with the decorations she’d dragged out of the attic this afternoon.

She liked the welcome feel of this home. Juliet’s house could be sterile at times, especially since she came home from England. Funny, Thistle didn’t remember the house feeling that way when Dick and Dusty were children. But since they’d grown up… Juliet didn’t like that much at all and her house reflected her mood.

“The strangest thing about today was the testimony I overheard after the accident,” Dick said, taking a seat on the sofa and pulling Thistle down so close to him she might as well sit in his lap.

Hmmm, not a bad idea. But that could lead to deeper intimacies. She settled for stroking his face and hand with a comforting touch.

“What about the testimony?” She tried out the new word, testing each syllable until it sounded right on her tongue.

“Three separate people claimed an enraged Pixie flew right at their windshield, causing them to swerve to avoid hitting him.”

Thistle’s breath caught in her throat. “What color was it?” she choked out. Her blood felt as if it froze in her veins.

“Yellow with crimson splotches.”

“The same Pixie I saw fighting with Chicory this morning. He’s carrying the war over to humans. Did you hear that?” Thistle asked, suddenly alert to anything out of place.

“It’s just the wind coming up.”

“I thought I heard the back door open.”

“I didn’t hear anything like that.” He took her face in both his hands and kissed her again. The world fell away and she knew only his touch.

Chicory smashed into the glass of the basement window. His shoulder cracked and his wing crumpled. The glass remained unmoved, opaque in its disdain of his puny efforts.

The sun had set. Chill crept out of the cement walls engulfing him in strength-robbing lethargy.

He had to get out. Quickly, before underground robbed him of life as well as strength.

Pixies died underground.

Desperate, he bounced around looking for something, anything that would give him an escape. He investigated stacks of boxes, covered racks of old clothes. Hmmm, he could curl up in that moth-eaten fur coat for warmth if he had to. The bicycle with the flat tire had too much iron to be useful. So did the broken washing machine. Mabel had a new one now, up on the enclosed back porch, with a matching dryer. But Mabel never threw anything away that might be useful someday. Maybe he could use the set of wooden barbeque skewers to dig his way out.

Nope. Dirt was part of underground. No dirt visible anyway. Just this horrible cement providing a scant barrier between him and the all-consuming Earth.

What had the nephew said last time he left a message on
Mabel’s telephone? Something about cracks in the foundation.

“Foundation,” he muttered. “I’m a Pixie. How am I supposed to know what a foundation is?” Foundation. Fountain. He knew what a fountain was. He often played in the sparkling spray pouring out of Memorial Fountain downtown, at the center of traffic. Cars coming from six different directions (or was it seven? He couldn’t remember) had to go around it. He’d had great fun splashing water into open windows or on windshields.

Alder had thrown Thistle into Memorial Fountain last summer when he cursed her with human proportions and robbed her of her wings and clothes.

Maybe if he looked for water where water shouldn’t be, he’d find a crack.

If he had the strength. If he could see.

“Can’t anyone turn on a light down here?”

Light? Mabel turned on lights when she came down here. Where was the switch? Not down here. Up there, ’cause she needed to see the stairs.

He flew to the staircase, ten rickety wooden steps destined to trip Mabel one of these days. He landed on his knees on the newel post at the bottom. His wings drooped in fatigue. His back ached from landing on the cement floor when Snapdragon dropped him through the open window. He had to cling to the wood for too many long heartbeats. At last he stood on shaking legs and gathered enough air to fly up three steps.

Which window? One of them had to be open for him to get dropped through. Chicory looked around at the shadows within shadows. He just barely picked out the outline of seven rectangular panes placed evenly around the basement. Each one was only inches from ground level.

“Oh, yeah. That brain-rattling thud I heard when I landed was Snapdragon slamming the window shut. How long was I asleep after that?” Hours and hours, judging by the darkness inside and out.

He gritted his teeth and crawled up to the next step. The air seemed a bit lighter up here, easier to breathe. Slowly he heaved himself up another step and then another before his
wings recovered enough strength to take him to the topmost one.

Definitely easier to breathe now. He was probably above ground level, but still trapped by dirt and cement.

A quick scan of the closed door and its surroundings showed him nothing but shadows. He felt around the wood. Blank.

Gradually the soft murmur of voices penetrated his panic.

Someone was in the house. Had Mabel come home from the hospital? Maybe the stray child Mabel and Chase were looking for had found the spare key inside a fake rock.

Nope. A male voice. And an adult female. But not Mabel. Who?

The voices came closer, grew louder. Ah, Thistle. Thistle had come to take care of the house until Mabel got better.

“Thistle, open the door!” he yelled through the keyhole as loudly as he could. Not very loud. Underground continued to leach strength from him. Or maybe the big bruise between his wings drained him.

He dropped down to the top step. Maybe if he yelled into the tiny gap between door and floor, they’d hear him.

“Thistle, help me!”

The voices stopped, replace by moans and slurpy kissing sounds.

“Great. I’m dying here and she gets all amorous. Must be Dick on the other end of that kiss.”

Chicory squished himself flatter to get more sound through the gap.

Gap?

He slapped his forehead, jostling his thoughts back into some kind of order. A tiny bit of light filled the gap now that Thistle and Dick were in the kitchen. Life returned to his wings.

Slowly, careful to fold his wings tight against his back, he wiggled and skootched and crawled beneath the door. He had to stop twice to catch his breath. He was above ground now, but it was night. Any respectable Pixie would be sleeping, tangled up with as many of his tribe as could fit
into the old birdhouse hanging from the corkscrew willow tree.

A birdhouse for gosh sakes. Exile from his own tribe, along with anyone else who displeased Rosie.

Rosie had robbed him of respectability. Her laziness and her enthrallment with Snapdragon—who used to be Hay—made her one of the worst queens in the entire history of Pixie. If Pixies bothered to remember their past while ignoring the future.

“Guess I’ll have to start my own tribe by gathering together all of the exiles and displaced Pixies,” he said as he popped through the gap and slid onto the linoleum floor.

Dick and Thistle continued their absorption in each other, ignoring the running water and half-filled coffee carafe, and everything else in the world except each other.

Chicory shook his head in disbelief as he crawled toward the nesting box Mabel kept in the dining room, an old wooden cigar box lined with moss and cottonwood fluff. She provided lots of little luxuries for her Pixies; never knew when they’d need shelter from a freak hailstorm or marauding cats.

With his wings wrapped around him, and his body curled into a tight ball, he slept quickly and deeply, grateful to be free and alive, but ever so lonely. Pixies weren’t meant to sleep or live alone.

Once he woke up to a strange sound, a door closing quietly, like someone didn’t want to disturb the household.

Probably Dick leaving and he didn’t want to wake Thistle. Wait. How far had the moon progressed in its journey across the night sky? Hadn’t Dick left some time ago?

Chicory was so tired he couldn’t remember what he’d heard and what he’d dreamed. He turned over and pulled more fluff around him for warmth. He slept deeply and dreamlessly.

“M
OM, ARE YOU HOME?” Dick called from the kitchen door. He kicked off his shoes, and slid into house slippers, all the while keeping a firm grip on Thistle’s hand. The grin on his face wouldn’t fade, no matter how much his face hurt.

Thistle’s smile matched his own.

“In here,” Mom called from the office off the kitchen. A couple of generations ago it had been the housekeeper’s room. Now the family had installed computers and filing cabinets for everything from volunteer lists to period recipes to scraps of fabric and wallpaper for costume design.

“Is Dusty home?” he asked, scanning the room for traces of his sister.

“She’s out with Chase,” Mom said with a distracted air, keeping her eyes focused on her eighteen-inch computer screen in the center of her antique oak rolltop desk. Dusty’s netbook was missing from the smaller writing desk in the far corner.

In other words, Dusty had not come home from work before meeting Chase. Where could they be? When Dick had last seen Chase, he’d been near to falling over with exhaustion after the accident and related paperwork.

“What do you need?” Mom still didn’t look up from her database. It looked like a list of volunteers with dates of enrollment, last duties, and skill sets.