Chapter Twenty-Two – I Can Hear Him Knocking…

 

The week that followed was one of the worst I’ve ever had. Suddenly I had a boyfriend and he was older than I was. My mother would have had a fit. No, really, a screaming, knockdown, dragged out, utter hissy fit. I think my parents had been secretly glad that I hadn’t gone through the whole boyfriend thing at age fifteen or even sixteen or heck, even seventeen. I had the group dates which hadn’t counted. I had held hands with Steve Cooper in the fifth grade and he had called me his girlfriend. That had meant that we traded iPods for three days before he’d moved on to Hope Adame, who had been, up until that time, my best friend. I had played spin the bottle with a group of thirteen year olds in Deanna Dodrill’s basement and gotten kissed twice. Both of which had been closemouthed, tentative lip smacks.

Did I know what to do with a boyfriend?

Did I know what to do as the firefly pixie protector?

Did I know what to do to tell Gideon, the fifteen year old leader of our odd group that danger was coming but I couldn’t tell him how or why or when?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and most definitely NO!

Bad week. Horrible, wretched, awful week. Total yuckzilla.

The group was variously curious, angry, amused, and concerned about my disappearance. I gave Gideon and the steering committee my explanations first. I told them the abbreviated version and naturally Ethan was Major General Skepticism in charge of the Eastern Fronts of Incredulity, Disbelief, and Cynicism. I demonstrated the singing to the pixies, which pointedly got all their attention. (I felt like the Wondrous Glenda performing with the Amazing Prancing Poodles of Pennsylvania.) I really didn’t need to convince Gideon, Leander, Sinclair, and Calida, which should have satisfied me.

They spoke about punishing me for disobeying the ‘do not go into the forest alone’ rule and Ethan was all for giving it to me with both guns. The others voted on it and decided I hadn’t disobeyed the rule intentionally. (Firefly pixies apparently counted as ‘people.’)

Here was the big trouble. Some of the larger group didn’t have manifested abilities. I believed, as did Gideon, that they had them just the same. Some, like Ethan, didn’t believe that their little extra was anything special. It was just something they did. So believing that others in the group were more than extra special came hard to them, even when the ability was patently verified. To a select few it was nearly impossible.

La La Land was still alive and well in the camp in the Redwoods. Honestly, a few of these people were still having issues with oh, five billion or so people vanishing overnight. I thought that maybe it was because they weren’t facing it every day in the form of millions of empty houses and businesses, wrecked cars and airplanes, and a lack of everything that was once normal. They were alone in the woods, in a campground formerly for troubled city kids, not looking at the big picture. They were still thinking of the change as something like the EMP burst theory I had initially come up with. Most of them hadn’t seen new animals or if they had they had turned their heads quickly away before reality could sink in. (“What was that?” “I don’t know, but it had horns, was purple, and sang from The Mikado, turn away quick.”)

They knew the world had changed, but they didn’t have to think about it in the Redwoods. So they didn’t. They put blinders on and tried to act normal. Good or bad, that was the case.

Thus, they didn’t believe me and they weren’t happy with me either.

Gideon told me, “They’ll accept it soon enough.”

And I had nodded. Why was it so important for me to have them accept it? I don’t know, but I wanted them to do it. It would have been easier not to have to go with the popular vote. Everyone wanted to debate every decision.

And I didn’t know what I wanted.

While I was pondering what I wanted, life went on. We did chores. I got cleared by Sinclair to go for heavy lifting stuff. Zach continued to court me to my eternal bemusement and to Kara’s unveiled amusement. I talked with the pixies on a regular basis and tried to pry more information out of them.

And six more people came to the camp. One on one day. Three the day after. Two more the day after that. They came from all directions. The majority had been headed south for the winter. The group of three was from Canada. They’d been on Interstate 5 until they’d hit Redding and seen Gideon’s billboard. In all, they’d been looking for people they’d known before the change. A typical reaction and one that we’d all shared.

Four were men. Two were women. Their ages ranged from sixteen (Yea!) to fifty-seven. All were healthy. Two even bought into the whole psychic ability thing. One of them had a hobby of finding things that went missing. Another one said she liked to grow things. I mean, hint, hint, she liked to grow things. (She said she had a whole pile of ribbons from her county fair and most were for biggest vegetables. Btw, she emphatically denied using Miracle-Gro and I tended to believe her.)

But it was man number five who bugged me. He was with the emphatic gardener. Her name was Blair and she was forty years old. She’d lost a family in Idaho. She hadn’t been exactly sure why she’d come west, but she’d thought she’d see if her elderly mother was okay in Burns, Oregon. Apparently, the town had become part of a great lake that went for about a hundred miles in all directions. Blair thought that it covered almost all the way to the Idaho/Oregon border and it had things in it that sang and looked like small manatees. (Except she called them mermaids, and I was the only one who really perked up at that.) In any case, Blair hadn’t found Burns, Oregon or her elderly mother for that matter or anyone else. And she had circumvented the lake and went over the same ground I had covered. She’d crossed the mountains via Bend, Sisters, and the Santiam Pass. (It gave me goose bumps to think that she had been walking in my path.) She hadn’t seen the unicorns or the three toed thing but she’d headed south on Interstate 5 before she’d gotten to the reservoir where Fernie and her babies swam and played. But she had seen the broken windows in the restaurants and stores I had entered and it had given her hope. Eventually, she’d met up with Tate in Grants Pass, Oregon.

Tate’s hair was brown, a medium brown that seemed kind of dull. His eyes were green, a deep green that really bothered me. In his mid-twenties, he was about the same height as Zach and had a good build. He was pretty well tanned and his face reminded me of things I didn’t want to think about.

He wasn’t burned black. He didn’t have blonde hair. He didn’t have searing blue eyes that stared with a bizarre concentration. He didn’t have a limp or a bad hand. He was whole and he looked at me oddly. That was what I didn’t like. That and the fact that he reminded me of the burned man.

These were the little things that bothered me. Troubling, my inner voices, the ones the pixies told me to listen to, weren’t really saying anything to me. However, one day the pixies came to me in the evening while I was with Zach on the Bluff Trail.

As was usual I was huffing and puffing up the steep part of the trail while Zach was walking along as if he was meandering down a level country lane. The green light spilled over the trees and surrounded us like a great, emerald cloud.

Zach laughed as they tickled his face and buzzed his ears.

I had to stop to catch my breath. Spring was leading the pack and she trilled to me happily, “Sing to the sisters, Soophee! Sing! Sing! Sing!”

“They’re in a good mood,” Zach said sardonically.

“You should try their dream world walk,” I panted. “Then we’ll see about it. They want me to sing.” I huffed and braced my arms on my knees.

“So, I gathered. It’s only a little farther,” he said and took my arm. “Come on, girls,” he said to the pixies. “You can push on her behind to help.”

“Hey,” I protested. Climbing hills was never going to be my forte. I was working with Tomas and the stick fighting, however. Three times out of five I could hold the stick properly and actually make contact with some part of the dummy. That actually wasn’t saying much. Once I had hit Tomas’s thigh instead of the dummy and the rest of the class started staying further back when I was up for practice. (It made me question if the ninja fighting, girl warrior role was really in my immediate future. I should have watched more of those Bruce Lee/Sonny Chiba movies when my uncle had. Or maybe Buffy the Vampire Slayer?)

Zach sang a little for the pixies as we went up the rest of the hill. His tenor was good for the oldies and the oldies were what he sang, cheerfully substituting words when he obviously couldn’t remember the songs. He was singing, ‘Great Balls of Fire,’ as we crested the bluff and I collapsed on the bench seat in a heap of highly pinked flesh.

As I sat there recovering, he sat next to me and casually took my hand in his. We had progressed to hand holding. We had kissed exactly twice and he was holding back. (Two long kissing sessions that was positively volcanic in nature.) That was okay. I was a little shaky on the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing. We didn’t have iPods anymore and I didn’t think Zach was going to go for spin-the-bottle. What was next? Promise rings? An invite to the prom? Oh, did I feel dumb? Short answer: Yes.

But something else occurred to me. I sang to Spring, “Have you seen the new humans, Spring?”

She buzzed close to my face and said disappointedly, “No more singing, Soophee?” Hint. Hint. Hint. Hint.

I grimaced. “Yes, I’ll sing for the sisters, Spring.”

Her miniature wings fluttering madly, she clapped her tiny appendages with glee. I couldn’t help wonder why it was that her hands didn’t stick together when she did that. “But have you seen the new humans?” I insisted.

“Oh, them,” Spring said, sourly. “They’re not very interesting, are they? We’ve never heard them sing. They just stare at the other humans as if they might, oh, disappear. Very boring.”

“Oh, give them a chance,” I said to her. “They might surprise you. But, there’s nothing wrong with any of them, is there?” No news was good news, right? If a psycho had come into the camp, wouldn’t the pixies be screaming at me? Yes, I think they would.

“What are you saying?” Zach murmured in my ear, closer than I realized and it surprised me.

“I’m asking about the new people in the camp,” I muttered.

“What about them?” Zach persisted.

Oh, bad me. I still had a little doubt about Zach. I didn’t have an ounce of evidence against the new guy, Tate. He just gave me a bad feeling. A creepy crawly sensation that made me step back whenever he came within ten yards of me. I didn’t want to ignore it but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it either. I surely didn’t want to tell Zach and sound like a big idiot.

“Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile talks about the new humans,” Spring sang to me as she flew past, leisurely turning on her back and flying upside-down. Others were doing loops and expert flying techniques that would have awed the Blue Angels.

“Little-Man who?” I immediately sang to her. Then I said to Zach, “Someone else has been talking to the pixies. Talking, you know?”

“Oh,” he said, rubbing my hand tenderly. “Lots of people really like the girls. They’re like mascots. Except smarter, and cuter, and really great to have on your side in a battle. And to tell you when something is up.” His lips quirked. “Especially to wake you up when a certain girl has gone running off to do something stupid.”

Thanks, Zach. Please shut up. Then I really didn’t want to tell him bupkis.

“The short human with the curly hair and the eyes the same color as Sak,” Spring answered me on her backswing. “Will Soophee sing now?”

“Getting information out of the pixies is like knocking your head on a brick wall,” I said irately.

“Is there anything to worry about?” Zach asked with a smile at me. His brilliant smile made his perfect features even more perfect. He was happy for the moment. Not sullen, brooding, or all Edward Rochester like. Once I heard Lulu call Zach, ‘Broodylicious,’ and although I was irritated with her, I had to admit she was right. Lately, he’d been almost lighthearted. Like many of the people at the camp, he was moving past his shock and grief over the change. And maybe he was happy with me, too?

“No, I guess not,” I said. So I sang-sang to the pixies. It was the usual old favorites. Christmas tunes. Show tunes. Oldies. And a few kid’s songs. The pixies loved the singing from the humans. I assumed it was because humans could reach higher and lower pitches and carrying a tune amused the pixies to no end. I would have asked them but I was afraid of the long winded, gratuitous answer I was going to get.

By the time the Big Mamas had gone past the bluff and were well on their way to the ocean, I was done. The sun had gone down and my voice was giving out. Fortunately, the pixies gave in gracefully.

The group began to move down the hill in a flow of glittering, glowing effervescence. Spring lingered by me and sang, “Is Soophee’s inner voice speaking to her?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “Are the sisters’ inner voices speaking to them?”

Spring’s head tilted in mid-air. She did a somersault that made my hand twitch outward to prevent her from falling but she caught herself in a faultless movement that was as well coordinated as a circus aerialist.

“I hate when they do that,” I muttered.

Zach chuckled. “She probably didn’t think about it. She just did it. Is that the one you call Spring?”

I nodded at him and waited for Spring’s answer.

“The sisters’ inner voices always speak to us,” she said mysteriously. “There is much to which to listen.” Then she buzzed off, headed after the rest of the horde, going in the direction of the midnight pool.

“I hope an owl eats her,” I said bitterly. “She just can’t answer a question. They have the oddest way of avoiding answering what they don’t want to answer.”

“Sounds like you,” Zach said dryly.

I glanced at him and set my jaw. “What do you want an answer to?” Then I could have bitten my lip. Hadn’t I just thrown down a gauntlet? Why, yes, I believed I had. Feeling frisky, wasn’t I?

Zach sat straight up and his gaze settled on me, something intent glittering in his eyes. “Did they change you into a pixie? Those days that you were gone?”

“Yes, and no,” I said ironically, savoring the moment. “I don’t know for sure. It was me in your hand. You were upset with Gideon for calling off the search. Ethan suggested that I had run off. You really wanted to keep looking for me.” I was about to add that he had begged Spring and I to help him but I didn’t want to demean him. “But I don’t think I was ever really a pixie.”

“Yes, no, maybe,” he said. “Queen of Not Really Answering Questions. Your majesty, I approve of your artful technique of the expressive dodge.”

“If I’m the Queen of Not Really Answering Questions, then you’re the Prince of Sarcasm and the Duke of Disdain,” I said with a tight smile.

Zach relaxed and touched my hand again. “You were asleep in the cave, but you were a pixie at the same time?”

“That’s my closest explanation,” I said solemnly. “I’m not trying to dodge that one, Zach. I don’t really know. You could ask the pixies but they really have some doozies for answers. I was a pixie, but I was always still me.”

Zach separated my fingers with his fingers and examined them carefully. “You’re insecure with me, aren’t you?”

Danger. Danger. Danger, Sophie Moore! I sighed and I nodded.

“You haven’t had a boyfriend before?” he asked softly.

“No,” I said shortly.

He nodded. “Dates?”

“A few,” I disclosed slowly. I hadn’t even gotten to kiss my last pseudo boyfriend. I was afraid of what an older boy was going to ask of me. I was afraid of what he wasn’t going to ask me. I was afraid of everything. Rejection. Not being rejected. I was a mess. I couldn’t admit it to myself, much less someone like Zach.

“I see,” he said.

“Someone like you,” I said immediately, and bit off the rest. I was going to say that someone like him, someone so darned perfect and handsome, couldn’t possible understand the insecurities of others. But deep down inside I knew that wasn’t true. Zach had a few of his own insecurities; I just couldn’t put a name to them yet.

“Someone like me, what?” he asked softly, but it wasn’t the nice kind of softly that it had been before.

“Can you understand how fragile life is now?” I said instead of answering.

“More than you know,” he said promptly.

That made me blink. It implied something about him and his secrets. He had never said what had happened to him directly after the change, and I had never asked. I had assumed it was as painful an experience as my own had been, indeed as much as anyone’s had been. Was it possible that it had been worse than others? God help him if it had been.

“What do you want from me?” I asked him.

Zach smiled sadly. “You’ll have to figure that out all by yourself, Sophie. No help there. And I don’t think the pixies will know, either.”

I wasn’t angry with him. I wasn’t anything but confused. Black and white answers would be nice but I was only getting gray ones from everyone. But then there was something that wasn’t so gray.

Jumping to my feet, I spun toward the trail. My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was too awful to contemplate.

“It’s Elan. Something’s horribly wrong,” I sputtered and I began to run. Zach gasped behind me and a moment later I could feel him running behind me. “We might have time to stop it!” I yelled over my shoulder.

I don’t know how I managed to get down the trail without breaking my neck. Once Zach caught my arm before I tripped and he managed to put me upright with his natural gracefulness that I so envied. By the time we reached the camp, we could hear the screaming, and I wanted to cover my ears so I wouldn’t hear it anymore.