Flannie whines and Bonbon slips from Clarey’s vest pocket to hover beside me, frowning at the rising pitch of his screams.
“Clarey.” I stop his hands where they’ve started yanking at the mask again. “You’re not alone, okay? Just … watch.” I swallow hard, then catch the zipper’s tab on my forehead. It’s something I’ve been afraid to try, but if what I suspect is true, it may help soften the blow for him. My twiggy gloves pinch tight, tips curling like a tree’s offshoots as I tug the metal teeth open. I wince, feeling the air sear my raw, wet flesh.
Clarey’s astonished expression confirms my fear: underneath the hardware is an open wound, oozing with blood. Which means the same is true for the other two zippers on my face. I seal it closed again and shiver against a wave of nausea.
Emotions blink across Clarey’s carved features, ones I’ve already faced myself: disbelief, revulsion, then finally, horror.
“We’ll fix this. I swear. Once we find Uncle, we’ll get back through the portal before it’s gone, and everything will be real again … we will be normal again. I’m sure of it.” I hope I sound more convincing than I feel; my dad’s watch keeps ticking away, as though to mock me.
“Right-o. Right.” Clarey takes a few gulps, then leans forward and braces his hands on his thighs to calm himself. “Until then, you’re a walking piece of luggage, and my head is a jack-o’-lantern.”
The moment he quips the sarcastic words, the orange latex pales and he presses his spine against the wall. Then he’s sliding to the ground and holding his knees to his chest as he shudders with laughter. At first, I’m shocked by how well he’s taking the news. So much better than I expected.
Then it hits me he’s not laughing. He claws at the buttons on his vest, opening and closing his thick latex lips like a fish gasping for water. He’s having trouble breathing.
Sweat beads on his forehead. “My … heart …” He rolls from the wall, flat on his back, still gripping his chest.
I drop to my knees and peel off the gloves. I’ve never witnessed a panic attack; he’s held himself together remarkably well since he’s been back. Now I understand why he feels so vulnerable while having one.
I’ve done research to try to be prepared. I know the symptoms: it can feel like his heart is stopping; there’s sweating, shortness of breath, chills, and so many more. What I don’t know is how to help, because everyone’s different. Why haven’t I ever asked him?
Am I supposed to touch him? Will that make it worse?
“Clarey, tell me what to do,” I say, plucking at the frayed holes in my jeans to keep from reaching out, from doing the wrong thing. “What do I do?”
Bonbon flutters around us, its tiny whiskers quivering in concern. Flannie’s the only one who’s proactive. She pads up to him and lays her body over his, front paws rested atop his hands where they clutch his sternum, bellies aligned. Next, she tucks her cold, wet nose in the groove of his collarbone and whimpers a soothing tone.
I wait, tense and nervous. We need to be finding Uncle, getting out of here before we’re locked inside. Each missed minute stretches out too long, like taffy folding over us and expanding—a sticky discomfort that makes my jaws clench and my teeth ache.
At last, Clarey comes back to himself, nuzzling Flannie’s ears and praising her. What she’s trained to do … what she remembered without hesitation … it was amazing and beautiful. And most importantly, effective.
I sigh with relief. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help.”
Clarey shakes his head. “You … didn’t know how to.”
“So, is that what you need? To be hugged?” I’m determined to learn, in case it ever happens when Flannie’s not with us.
He sits up, shuffling Flannie’s ears affectionately as she wags her tail.
“I don’t always want to be touched. She has a way of knowing when I do; animals’ intuition or whatever. But her nose, the coldness … it always helps. My therapist used to have me hold an ice pack against my chest. Keeps me from falling into bad memories. Keeps me in the here and now, you know?”
“Okay. Something cold.” I pause, trying to cover my awkward ineptitude. “So all those times I used to pound you with snowballs, I was actually doing you a favor?”
He laughs. It triggers a wonderful moment of acceptance between us—and a calm that’s unfortunately too short lived. Because it’s then I notice Clarey tense up while looking over my shoulder at the eldritch creatures that were ignoring us earlier.
I turn to face them. Drawn by either our emotional outbursts or Bonbon’s agitated hovering, they’ve stopped on the street and sidewalks. They stare our way, grumbling among themselves. The flocks in the sky drift down like falling ash, settling on the gnarled wooden shoulders and metallic antlers of the tallest faeries, the dryads. There they perch—vultures gathering among stark winter trees in anticipation of a feeding. A collective sound begins to emanate from the masses, a chittering hum that evolves to something loud and unwieldy, eerily similar to the giggles of hyenas—yet synthesized and robotic.
Lowering my fingers, I curl them in invitation to Clarey. “Can you get up?”
He fits one hand to mine and holds Flannie’s thick scruff with the other. Trembling, he stands. “This is bad,” he says, his voice steady, considering what just transpired. “You know what happens to pumpkins when the pranksters come out.” He cringes at the maniacal laughter. “They get smashed.”
“Go!” I shout.
Before we can dart around the corner and duck into the bakery, two trolls rush into our path, chomping broken-glass teeth and penning us in the alley. Behind them, more creatures advance from every direction. There’s nowhere left to run.
Then I remember: they’re not just creatures. They’re my creatures. I tamp down the knots in my stomach, reminding myself that I dreamed up everything here; sketched these things to life with pencils, ink, and markers. Gave them breath. Surely there’s some way for me to control them.
I hold up one bared hand, relying on the power it can wield. “Stay back!” When they keep moving, I squat and flatten my palm where cement meets asphalt, to light the world up beneath their feet and throw them off our scent.
“What are you do-ing?” Clarey sing-songs the question nervously as nothing happens. The fey keep inching toward us, heads cocked and teeth gnashing.
“I was trying for a magical distraction.” I peel my hand off the concrete. All that’s left is a rainbow handprint, like a slap of neon graffiti. The effect isn’t widespread as it was with the sands of the beach. All I’ve managed to do is apply a bit of color.
I just can’t figure out the rules here.
The eerie cackles grow louder as the creatures overtake the far side of the street. My pulse skyrockets. In just a few more steps, the first line will be crossing the sidewalk to our alley.
“I hate to rain on your parade, Gandalf”—Clarey grips my elbow and forces me to stand—“but your wizardry isn’t working.”
“I can see that, genius.” I crinkle my nose; even the familiar tug of my piercing doesn’t comfort me now.
Behind us, Flannie growls. The trolls latch onto her fur, holding her in place as she twists and turns, trying to snap at them.
“Scram, you ghouls!” Clarey shouts.
I use my bare hands to jerk one loose. Knocked off balance, it rolls onto the ground in front of me and screeches as if in torment. Within moments it’s transformed by my touch like Bonbon: crinkly aluminum hide reshaping to colorful bony platelets. The scales shimmer red, orange, and blue, as bright as a school of rainbow fish leaping from the water and catching sunlight along their fins. The flesh-and-blood troll scrambles to stand just as its biomechanical counterpart totters toward it. There’s something unsettling and sad in the way they look at each other, perfect reflections, yet not. It’s too much like how I feel when I look in a mirror and see Lark.
The rusted, metallic version beats its chest—a gorilla challenging an interloper. The altered one displays white, sharp teeth. Bonbon drops down, attempting to mediate, only to get waved off like a bothersome bee before the cyborg troll catches its transformed comrade around the neck. The duo tumbles to the ground and wrestles, blocking any chance for us to make a break for the bakery door.
In the same instant, the hyena cackles surrounding us shift to something much more terrifying: utter silence. A feral glint blinks through each oncoming creature’s eyes—fragmented electrical sparks that home in on the altered troll and Bonbon. I can’t decide if they want to capture them, eat them, or punish me for changing them. Whatever the case, Clarey and I are stuck in the middle and it can’t bode well to be in their path as they march forward in sync—like a gruesome parade.
I glance at the sky, catching the orb through sheets of smoke. It feels for a moment as if it’s looking right back at me; and then, an idea lights up my brain.
“A parade … so all we need is rain,” I say, drawing inspiration from Clarey’s earlier mockery. I cast a sidelong glance in his direction as we tighten our flanks with Flannie secured between us. “Time to use your magic, Merlin.”
“What are you talking about?” Clarey backs another step toward the dead end behind us, and I follow—toe to heel, toe to heel.
“I’m not the only one who has power here.” I point at my zippers, reminding him how his creations have become as real as my own. It must mean his imagination works like mine. “You don’t just create masks and costumes. You create music. Use your harmonica.”
He frowns. “These aren’t field mice. They won’t fall for the Pied Piper bit.”
“You’re right. That’s why you’re going to make it rain. Metal and water don’t mix. Now, get your harmonica.”
Dragging the small instrument out from under his shirt, he holds it up by its string. He looks beyond rattled as mere feet away, our fey assailants start across the sidewalk. Shimmery metal tusks, teeth, and fangs snap in rhythm to the click and whir of gears alongside clomping hooves and clacking claws. The winged creatures flap their appendages, still perched on the dryads, but threatening to take flight any minute. The tattoo along my shoulder thrashes wildly, as though the inky lark is desperate to escape my skin’s chains and join them.
Flannie growls low at the approaching masses, and Clarey stands there, watching the harmonica swing in midair, bewildered. “Any requests?”
“Play the song by that Bud guy. That blues guitarist. Play his song about rain.”
Clarey has the audacity to look exasperated. Like I’m the most vexing thing he’s seen tonight. “You mean by Buddy Guy.”
“Really? We’re about to be faerie fodder, and you’re going to quiz me on a stupid name I can’t remember?”
“It’s Guy.”
“Yeah, that guy.”
Clarey groans. “Whatever. You want me to play ‘Feels Like Rain.’ ”
“Yes, that’s the one!” I growl.
“Okay, okay. I’ll try.”
I’m not sure what he means by try. He’s quizzed me with his accompaniment to that song uncountable times over the past couple of years. He never misses a note. He’s a master of the mouth organ.
Then I see him work his lips back and forth, and I understand. It’s something I hadn’t even considered, his needing to adjust to their meatier latex shape—like me trying to draw with gloves or swollen fingers.
“Play it for your mom, Clarey,” I whisper. We’re at the end of the alley, backs against the brick wall, with creatures stepping off the sidewalk in our direction.
Pressing the harmonica into place, he blows. The first effort is shrill and off-key; too airy to carry a tune, but it makes our attackers pause.
Taking advantage, Clarey readjusts his mouth along the harmonica’s holes and begins to learn how the metal fits his new lips. Within moments, his hands and fingers shimmy along the grooves, and he inhales and exhales to push the familiar strain through the brassy reeds—pitch perfect this time.
He taps a metal-toed shoe, becoming engrossed in the melody, just like he always does, just like I hoped he would. He stands at the end of the alley, eyes shut, head tilted to one side, cupping the harmonica in his hands lovingly. He releases his song into the sky, as if sending it up to his mother. The notes bend beneath his mastery, rhythmic and throbbing; they plunge and rise, mimicking the pattern of droplets pinging off rooftops, pelting velvety leaves, and skidding down umbrellas.
And that’s when it happens: each arpeggio and ambling octave becomes a tiny, fluttering thing, like transparent butterflies that disappear into the smoky haze overhead. There, the notes liquidize then fall back down, at first clear like water until they hit the ground and leave glowing, colorful smears behind.
The droplets hiss when they bombard Mystiquiel’s denizens, the polychromatic streams fizzing along their metal parts. The fey crowd backs away, wailing and frightened. Some shield their heads with paws, others spread wings or fan out feathery tails to form makeshift canopies, but it doesn’t stop them from getting wet. Several fall to the ground, left crippled by appendages and limbs that have rusted solid, and though I’m grateful they’re no longer a threat, I can’t help but feel sad for their sickly state.
Others, those that can still move, retreat, abandoning the chase to find cover in houses or shops around the corner on Eleventh Street, out of sight. At last, we’re alone, nothing in the air but smoke and drizzling rainbows; nothing on the street, sidewalks, or alley but the incapacitated fey, their eyes shut as if in some sort of enchanted slumber.
I let out a whoop and inhale the welcome splendor of petrichor, then tilt my head back so Clarey’s raindrops can skate along my lips and cheeks, soothing the zipper teeth where they sting my skin. Giddy with relief, I laugh. Clarey stops his serenade and joins me, catching my hands and spinning us around under the gentle downpour. Bonbon and its new troll friend splatter through the vibrant puddles building at the edges of the curbs, doing their own dance.
Flannie rears up, placing her front paws against my lower back and then Clarey’s as she bops alongside us. The wetness tastes sweet, like real rain, but tinged with the salty redolence of tears. Loss. That’s why Clarey always looks so happy when he plays; this music, born in the depths of his soul, carries his blues away, purges him of sadness—for a little while.
He and I slow our twirling, grinning at each other. The lines and curves of his mask curl endearingly. Breaking myself from his gaze, I crouch and cup some water in my hand to sip it. Clarey follows suit, smacking his lips as he notices the flavor.
“All we need now are some paper boats,” he says, observing the deeper pools filling the street edges and sidewalk cracks, referring to how we used to race them back when we were kids.
“Those times were the best.” The patter of rain lulls me into a momentary state of nostalgia.
“Remember that one summer, when we finally beat Griffin, Spence, and Tanner?” he asks. They were a trio of brothers who lived on our block. Me, Lark, and Clarey were always competing with them, be it computer games, mountain-biking contests, or school fundraisers. “You painted those wolf faces on our sailboat flags—with fangs that looked real enough to devour their scrubby little lunch-bag canoes.”
It surprises me that he remembers that detail. I chew my inner cheek in thought. “Yeah, but we won because of that rubber-band paddle Lark attached to their boughs.” After she wound and released them, our boats moved so fast they were like lupine water bugs skimming along the gutters.
The rain slows to mist, and Clarey blots some wetness gliding down my cheek with the back of his hand. My skin responds with a tingle of pleasure. “Is that why you started dabbling in mechanics? A way to keep her with you? I’ve wanted to ask you so many times since I’ve been back. But you seemed touchy about it with your uncle. I mean, when I saw your graphic novels—amazeville. I couldn’t understand why you’d do anything but that. Making stories come alive in other people’s minds, it’s the closest thing to magic I’ve ever seen. Well, until now.”
Though he refers to our surroundings, I can’t stop admiring the colorful droplets clinging to his white curls, glistening like the fiber-optic wig he made back home.
“For most my life, I never felt like my stories were alive enough, if that makes sense?” I answer. “Then I lost the drive to sketch altogether when I lost myself.”
“I get it. That’s why you took over Lark’s inventions. Hoping to find yourself through her?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, feeling far too exposed. “But then, tonight … standing in this grayscale world and stamping rainbows with my fingertips, I finally realize that’s how I give my art life. Color.”
Clarey rubs some raindrops between his fingers while dropping his gaze to the harmonica strung from his neck. “You know, I never thought my music could do anything half as amazing as this, either.”
I glance at Flannie, who’s lapping up the water puddling at our feet. “Really? I never doubted it. There’s magic every time you play. And now I understand the why.”
“The why?” He furrows his eyebrows, then catches himself and touches them, as though just noticing how the hairs now poke through the latex. The orange mask begins to pale again.
I snag his hands and hold them in mine. “Why you like the blues, why you play the harmonica.” My smile reaches higher when I see him visibly relax.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s called a mouth organ. And if I wasn’t trapped inside this pumpkin-nightmare, I’d show you my mouth can do more than just play music.”
My pulse flutters at my jawline. I’m about to tell him I don’t care about what’s happening to his face. That he’s still Clarence Eugene Darden, and I’ve wanted to kiss him since the day I punched two guys in the mouth to defend him. Mask or no mask, I’d leap at the chance. But before I can feel guilty for betraying Lark, his gaze falls from mine and I sense an awkward chasm spanning between us. I waited too long, and he thinks I’m shutting him down again.
“So”—he buries his fingers in Flannie’s fur—“how did you know that rain would stop them? That’s not official Mystiquiel canon.”
“No.” I glance at my boots, feeling flushed at the way his eyes follow my lips when I talk now, like he’s holding on to every word. “I noticed on our walk over that there’s this weird corrosion on everything.” An unexpected pang jolts through me, too close to sympathy for my comfort, so I focus my attention on Clarey and avoid looking at the fallen faeries behind him. “Rust killed the kelpine on the beach, and is making the sea animals sick. Logically, it made sense. The ocean is rotting them faster than the ones living here.”
I pause and look at the orb overhead, almost an afterthought. “My gut told me if we made it rain, they’d have no recourse but to take cover. I’m an artist; my touch affects what already exists in different ways, but it doesn’t create something from nothing—not without paints, pens, or markers. So I figured we’d test your theory—about this place being as much your imagination as mine. Because you can make music out of thin air. Amazing music, that pulls others into the experience with you.”
His gaze drifts up to mine again, and this time, those beautiful blue and amber eyes don’t waver. “No one gets me like you do, Nix. I don’t think anyone ever has.”
Not even Lark? I stanch the unwelcome question, and opt to keep things light, to veer my mind off her. “Well, that’s just ’cause everyone else is stupid.”
He snorts, then grows somber. “When this is all over, we need to talk. Really talk. I’m tired of running away from what’s right in front of us. Aren’t you?”
His assertiveness makes my toes curl both in anticipation and apprehension. I’ve suspected all along that his patience would reach a breaking point, but am I ready to admit everything to him? The penance I owe Lark and why.
What about him? Is he finally willing to tell me what happened in Chicago? Because if I have to lay bare my most sacred fears and shame in order for us to move forward, it’s only fair he do the same.
“When this is all over,” I parrot back, then shift my gaze from his to the watch ticking on the duffel. It’s 8:40. Time is definitely passing slower here, but it’s still passing. Until we find Uncle and cross back to Astoria, we have to choose our moments wisely.
That in mind, I take the duffel and lead Clarey and Flannie around the corner, leaving our newly organic fey companions to their antics in the puddles.
“Is that your—?” Clarey asks, pointing toward the bakery.
I crane my neck to get a better view as a man steps inside the glass-paneled door. Although I can only see him from the back, he has the same dark hair, that same tall form and lanky gait. He’s wearing a white apron tied around his waist and neck, but is missing the most important component of his uniform, because I have it in my bag.
“Uncle Thatch!” Without waiting for Clarey and Flannie to catch up, I sprint toward the entrance despite my aching knee, digging the chef’s hat from my duffel bag. Now that we’ve finally found him, we’ve beat Perish and the Halloween curse. We can all make it safely home with hours to spare.