Clemency Pogue Page 5

  She looked around at Hobololi. Crickets were beginning to sing in the lush woods. Sinclair’s house stood behind them like a monument.

  “Okay then,” said Clemency, “back to Russia.” She lifted Chaphesmeeso by the ears.

  Chapter 14

  SIBERIA WAS DARK and white. The shower of dirt from Chaphesmeeso’s tunnel finished pattering to the ground, and an eerie snow-muffled silence settled in the air.

  The white expanse stretched out perfectly smooth to the trees, drifts in great mounds rising like giants hiding under their sheets. The snow glowed, reflecting the light from the clear nighttime sky, the moon oddly absent, and every individual of the millions of stars a distinct pinprick through the darkness.

  Clemency rubbed a little soil out of her eye and looked at the small cottage they had visited earlier. The snow had covered their tracks to and fro, the home squatted glowing and warm against a blank white canvas.

  Chaphesmeeso pulled a few small stickystones from his hat and dropped them to disappear beneath the snow. He grinned and took a deep breath, enjoying the cold night air. He smacked his hands against his taught gourdish belly.

  Clemency sighed, the fog of her breath momentarily covering her view of the cottage.

  “Let’s try again,” she said with a heavy exhale, unsure of herself. She trudged toward the cottage, her progress heavy and slow through the shin-deep snow.

  She knocked on the door as she eased it open and stepped into the warmth. The grandmother had been tending to the fireplace, and stood at the knock.

  She made a slight noise in the back of her throat, somehow indicating that she had hoped for the return of the girl and her hobgoblin. The grandmother drew in her lips with a worried expression, nodded welcome, and gestured toward the bed.

  From the doorway Clemency could see that the child had gotten worse. The third of her head around her ear was the angry pink color. Clemency knew that kind of discomfort, the way you imagined the sore spot like a rotten bit on a tomato, the way you could feel your pulse in it.

  Wet footsteps on the wooden floor traced from the door to the child’s bedside, following Clem and Chaphesmeeso.

  The grandmother returned to her seat by the door. She had complete faith in her visitors’ healing powers.

  Clemency bent close and looked in the ear. A little more wing showed, as if the child’s head was making slow progress at pushing its guests out. If only she could see the fairy’s hands, she could reanimate her. The Fairy of Noninvasive Surgery could solve this in a moment, she was sure.

  Clemency stood straight and looked at Chaphesmeeso. She caught him looking down at the child with concern, and he was briefly embarrassed. There was nothing to say between them. Clemency could not help this child and they both knew it.

  Clemency looked at the grandmother, and then down at her shoes. The last of the snow had melted off the cuffs of her burlap pants, leaving small wet marks on the floor.

  The foghorn again sounded in her head: Hoooope Lesssssssssss.

  She looked at Chaphesmeeso.

  “The fairy could solve this, couldn’t she? She could do it easy,” she said.

  “Suretainly. If she wasn’t so busy decomposing.”

  Clemency had grown accustomed to his sarcasm and let it pass.

  Clemency thought for a while. “If I brought the Fairy of Frequent and Painful Pointless Antagonism back to life by mistake, would she be able to find me all the way over here in Siberia?”

  “Oh, yeah. She has the same brand of nether-knowledge as myself. She would probably be here in about two minutes.”

  “Oh, dear.” Clemency examined her shoes again. And then the metal of Chaphesmeeso’s shoes. A thought struck her. “What are fairy wands made of?” she asked.

  “Same junk as my hat,” said Chaphesmeeso.

  “Hmm.” Clemency began to form a determination. “Well then. I’m gonna bring this fairy back to life the same way I killed it. Here’s mud in your eye.”

  She cleared her throat and rubbed her hands together in nervous anticipation. She took a deep breath and clapped her hands: “I do believe in fairies. I do.”

  Underneath Utah, a very confused Tooth Fairy woke up floating in everything else Salt Lake City deemed flushable and thought, How am I going to get this off my wings?

  Clemency clapped her hands again, “I do believe in fairies, I do.”

  In jolly old England, a Fire Fairy found that a certain child who had wanted a pony with a sidecar for her birthday had been given, instead, a frog. To the frog, a living fairy looked much more appetizing than a dead one.

  “I do believe in fairies. I do.”

  A certain fairy would need all of his instincts and wisdom to get out of Sinclair’s lower intestine. He managed it disguised as a tapeworm and was immediately instrumental in Sinclair’s life. It was the Fairy of Instinct and Wisdom who led Sinclair’s mother to her son, trapped in the sofa he had chewed and peed upon, for Chester, the dog, was inclined to leave him in there.

  Clemency took another deep breath. “I do believe in fairies. I do.”

  At the bottom of a deep rocky gorge, far below moss-covered trees older than the dirt they grew in, a tiny hand emerged from a bubbling creek and pulled a very angry fairy onto a rock. She shook the water from her wings. Vengeance, vengeance, she thought as she jumped into the air, her wings buzzing her toward Siberia.

  “Do the math, Clemency, your nemesis fairy is on her way,” said Chaphesmeeso in a hush. Clemency looked at him a moment and her breath faltered. But she would not be deterred, “I do believe in fairies. I do.”

  The child twitched with an itch deep inside her head. The fairy stumbled out of her ear, tumbling in midair until her wings found equilibrium. She shook her tiny head, wiped a slight residue off her wand and flicked it with disgust onto the bed.

  The grandmother was smiling; this was the kind of magic she expected.

  The Fairy of Noninvasive Surgery gave Clem one curt professional nod. It was a neutral gesture, balanced between I detest being killed and Thank you for giving me life.

  The fairy turned her attention back to the ear and plunged down into it.

  Chaphesmeeso leaned in for a better look, and Clemency did the same. They could see nothing but the darkness of ear.

  The child drew in a sharp breath, exhaled it in a whimper, and then fell silent as the snow. She barely drew in any air at all for several seconds; her eyes tightened shut.

  Chaphesmeeso squinted and leaned in closer. The dark hole of the child’s ear was impenetrable.

  Then a glimmer. And the fairy fluttered out backward, her head and arms still in the hole. She planted her feet on the rim of skin-covered cartilage on either side and pulled mightily.

  She heaved upward, and Clem and Chaphesmeeso could see she had stuck the wand into the pea and was pulling on it like a handle. They could see the green-gray mass of the pea, straining against the sides of the child’s ear.

  Polp! The sound was small and utterly insignificant as the pea crossed some fleshy threshold and popped effortlessly out of the child’s ear. The pea hopped off the fairy’s wand, carried by the momentum of her pulling, and flew in an arc over the child’s head, bouncing once on the mattress and falling to the floor.

  I will not invite you to examine the last thing you ate by going into a detailed description of how the pea looked, but you can trust that a day and a night in a child’s ear does nothing for a legume’s appearance.

  Chaphesmeeso strode forward and stomped on the pea, squishing it utterly.

  “That little pea won’t be hurting anybody else,” he said.

  The grandmother was standing, and clasping her hands before her, a grateful grin stretching over her face. Clemency and Chaphesmeeso stepped to the side, so that she could see her grandchild.

  The grandmother strode across the room and sat gently on the edge of the bed and hugged the child without lifting her. She said something softly in Russian, over and again.

  Ch
aphesmeeso leaned toward Clemency. “You have maybe a minute and a half before your nemesis arrives.”

  Chapter 15

  CLEMENCY’S FIRST THOUGHT was to get far away from the child and her grandmother. She had caused them enough pain already. She walked quickly to the desk from which she had earlier retrieved the magnifying glass, and after brief rummaging, found it. She stuck the magnifying glass into one of the ample back pockets she had sewn on her pants, and crossed to the door, Chaphesmeeso on her heels.

  The Fairy of Noninvasive Surgery was waiting by the front door, and she flurried out into the cold night as soon as Clemency opened it. The fairy disappeared skyward among the stars.

  Clemency stepped out from under the eaves of the cottage and scanned the horizon. Chaphesmeeso shut the door behind him, the warmth vanishing like fogged breath, and stepped out next to Clemency.

  Clemency turned to the hobgoblin. “I need a stickystone. A big one.”

  “That’ll take a little time,” Chaphesmeeso said. “We’re talking other hemisphere.”

  “Fine,” said Clemency, and began trudging out into the snow, away from the cottage. Chaphesmeeso followed. “How long will it take?”

  “Four minutes if I’m lucky. Which means four minutes.” The hobgoblin scratched at a leathery cheek.

  “Get to it.” Clemency continued through the snow, her breath trailing out behind her like steam from a locomotive.

  “Suretainly.” Chaphesmeeso stopped and watched Clem trudge off for a moment. “Burlap pants and brave. A good kid.”

  The hobgoblin nimbly bent at the waist until the point of his metal hat had pierced the snow and was touching the frozen earth below. Clemency glanced once briefly over her shoulder, and saw Chaphesmeeso kick his legs into the air. His hands became a digging blur, and he dropped into the earth as if swallowed.

  Clemency turned forward, her eyes set on the expanse of snow before her. Far in the distance she could see a line of pine trees, no more than a barbed black shape against the horizon.

  She looked back at the cottage; it was not so far off as she had hoped. Her progress through the snow was much slower than her usual spry pace. She leaned into her walking, hopping a little with each step to lessen the pull of the snow.

  She continued on until her lungs ached from the cold, dry air, and her eyes were blurry and tired. She stopped, panting, and looked back at the cottage. She was far enough. Hopefully the fairy would attack only her.

  Clemency stood in the middle of the snowy expanse and caught her breath, tried to calm herself. The stars above seemed even brighter than before—they stretched in glowing ribbons across a sky that graded deepest blue to an empty black.

  She scanned the horizon again. She saw movement in the orange square of the cottage window, and a moment later a rectangle of the same light widened from a line next to it. The door was opening, and the grandmother’s silhouette stepped into the rectangle of light.

  The old woman followed with her eyes the trail Clem had left in the snow out to where she stood alone. The grandmother squinted, and with some effort, focused on the little girl standing in the cold.

  The grandmother disappeared back into the cottage for a moment, then reappeared, now burdened with a great quilt that she held bunched in front of her. She started out toward Clemency, walking in her footprints.

  Clemency watched the old lady approaching through the cold night. Clem could picture the old woman being stung to death, little freckles of pain dotted across her kindly face.

  “Stop! Go back!” Clem shouted. Though her voice carried like crystal over the snowy silence, she was speaking in a tongue that did not fit the old woman’s ear. Clem shook her head dramatically, waved her arms, and motioned back toward the cottage.

  The grandmother stopped, still within a stone’s throw of her home, and watched. Clemency repeated her gesture, slowly, more elaborately. The old woman took a cautious step forward, and Clem shook her head in wide arcs. The grandmother stopped, took a step back. Clem nodded and made a grateful shooing motion. Confused, the old woman cocked her head. She was listening to something.

  Clemency held her breath and tried to listen. Very faintly, so soft it could be mistook for imagined, there was a buzz. In the snow-induced silence so definite that it almost made your ears ache, she could hear the buzz of the approaching fairy.

  “Oh. Oh, no.” Clemency shooed more drastically at the grandmother, but the old woman was listening intently to the buzzing.

  The buzz was growing louder and louder. A faint whir to it, an angry sound like hornets make and bumble bees do not.

  And then Clem could see it. A red star fell from the sky. The tiny red dot of the fairy’s wand was floating against the black strip of distant pines.

  The grandmother could see it too. She watched it race directly toward the girl who had helped her grandchild. The old woman turned and ran back into her cottage.

  Clem did not notice, her eyes fixed on the approaching red dot. She raised her hands uncertainly. She knew running would not work. She hoped she could fend off the fairy until Chaphesmeeso got back with the stickystone.

  The red dot still looked far away, when all of a sudden the fairy seemed to materialize right next to her, lit by the searing incandescent tip of her wand.

  Clemency let out a brief cry and swatted. The fairy rode the air currents that swept around the blow, effortlessly evading it, and then swooped forward and stung Clemency on the collarbone.

  Clemency jumped back and swung again, this time with two hands that converged on the fairy. She caught it between her palms with a great smack, and then another.

  The fairy was annoyed. It lunged at Clem again, and Clem swung and missed. She stumbled back in the snow that was starting to work its way under the cuffs of her pants, and swatted again. She contacted with a downward blow that knocked the fairy out of the air.

  The fairy fell into the snow, the water crystals sizzling and evaporating against her wand.

  Where are you, hobgoblin? Clemency thought, taking rapid steps backward to gain a little more space and ready herself for the fairy’s next attack. She was shivering fiercely, the twin paint shakers of cold and fear clamped on her heart.

  Clemency saw a line in the snow tracing an arc around her. The line collapsed a moment before she felt a sting against her right shoulder blade. The fairy had tunneled through the snow and come up behind her.

  “Drat!” Clemency spun, and the fairy spun with her, another sting to the back, and another.

  Clemency threw herself onto her back in the snow and rolled over, scrambling to her knees. She looked down just as the fairy got to its feet. She pounded at the nasty imp with a balled fist.

  The fairy flitted into the air at an angle, and Clemency’s fist struck the cold hard ground. The fairy stung her forearm and lunged at her neck.

  Clemency dodged and rolled, stood and ran. She turned and swatted wildly, missing the fairy, but rotating her body enough that its searing wand missed its mark, hitting a button on her shirt.

  Clemency looked desperately about, searching for Chaphesmeeso. The horizon was empty, a sting at her elbow.

  “Drat!” Frustration and pain and anger. Clemency stumbled forward, running through the snow. She could not fight the fairy with her hands. It had not worked before and it would not work now. The snow dragged at her feet like a nightmare. Her only hope was the hobgoblin. It was not so great a hope.

  A sting burned the small of her back, another marked her calf. She tried to swat at it as she ran, and saw the tiny aggressor for a moment before her. The fairy’s wand cast a red glow in Clemency’s fogged breath. The fairy was grinning again like a barracuda.

  The hobgoblin was nowhere to be seen. Clemency could not have run much farther, and was not even given the chance. The ground dropped below her, a dip in the earth covered by a drift in the snow.

  Her knees buckled as her feet plunged down, and Clemency fell face forward in the dark white nonglow of cold, nighttime sno
w.

  She rolled onto her back, her face so cold that she no longer shuddered. So cold that the snow was not melting from it. The fairy hovered just beyond her reach, looking down on her with scorn and an utter lack of pity. The red tip of her wand glowed searing against the distant stars.

  Chapter 16

  CLEMENCY THOUGHT how strange it was that she was not cold, and was grateful that she would not die in a chill. Her legs, under her trusty burlap pants, were in fact still quite toasty.

  Bless these pants, she thought.

  The fairy hovered over Clem like a nose over savory pie, anticipating the moment before indulgence. But she had savored enough. Her wicked smile stretched back in anger, and the tip of her wand glowed hotter still, past red to the weird orange of an electric range. Past orange to a dull pink that seemed almost to dip into white. The fairy drew back for the charge.

  And then a sound like the war cry of Hollywood Indians carried across the snowy plain. A cry John Wayne could have let forth, leading the cavalry, if John Wayne had been an old Russian woman.

  The fairy jerked back and looked over her shoulder. Clem raised her head off the ground uncomfortably and looked toward the sound.

  The grandmother charged through the snow toward the evil little fairy, a broom raised over her head like a samurai’s sword. She charged in great wobbling steps, moving in unstoppable lumbering strides, each one threatening to tip her over like a drunken cow.

  Valkyries only wish they could make a sound like she made. It would have frightened banshees.

  The fairy turned to face her new adversary, but barely had time to raise her wand before the grandmother took a final leap, swinging as she landed in a toadlike squat. As her mighty feet thundered into the frozen earth, the straw of the broom snatched the fairy from the air and drove her into the snow. The old woman raised the broom and struck it into the snow again and again, as if trying to beat out a fire.

  Clemency struggled up into a sitting position, snow falling off her in clumps. She got to her feet, watching the old woman rage with the broom against the tiny evil imp. She seemed to be working out all of the anger and frustration from seventy years in a cold part of a mostly unfair world.