"Better Than Snail Mail"

 

When I was a kid, there were plenty of times when I wanted to send someone mail but couldn't get to the post office in time or was a few cents short of the money I needed to buy stamps. In those cases, I made a trip to see Mr. Aves.

I still remember the time I made a card for my grandmother when she lost her job. Allowance Day was two days away; I was a sucker for tater tots and so had gone back and paid for seconds at lunch at the school cafeteria; in short, I was a handful of pennies away from what being I called "broke," and so I went to ask if Mr. Aves could help. I was only expecting a robin or a sparrow. But he took my pennies and from the bunch plucked one that had all the shine of the morning on it. "Well, now, here we have something special," he told me. "For this, we can do for your grandma something very nice." From his cages he brought out a kestrel, young and razor-thin and spectacular, and gave the bird my card to deliver to my grandmother. 

More than anyone, I think Mr. Aves understood the magic of getting a letter in the mail.

"The Faerie Mosh"

 

He was tall, lanky even, with two spindly legs that carried him behind her like exclamation points at the end of her name. The faerie queen liked this boy very much. She tucked her hair behind her ear, letting the multiple piercings catch the moonlight, and took him by the hand to lead him toward the cluster of erratically grown mushrooms beneath the oak tree.

"Just to be clear," she told the boy, "this is what they call 'being pixie-led.' You're being pixie led right now."

"You know, I think I knew that," he told her with a shrug and a smile. He stopped at the edge of the mushroom cluster and poked at one toadstool with the toe of his plaid canvas shoe. "Why did I think that faeries dance in, like, a circle of mushrooms or something?" He suddenly moved his foot back. "Should I not touch that?"

The faerie queen laughed and wove her fingers into the spaces between his. "Relax," she told him, "we're much less formal than you think. Circles are fun, but we can dance just fine without them." She thought of how he had looked at the club, jumping and bouncing to the music on those skinny legs that had shouted to her from across the room. His hair was a crown of red-tipped spikes that had held its shape despite his frenzy. She couldn't wait to see what kind of mess she could make of it.

"A Fresh Start"

 

[For brownie lore and background information, click here.]

The brownie slumped down the night-swamped street, the doll's clothes that had been left neatly folded for him in his corner of the old house now tucked under his arm like a bundle of rags. He was cold, and he had already started to despair.

When he glanced up at one point during his walk, he did so intending to ask the heavens for some form of deliverance from his current plight. He did not expect to see a sign already waiting for him.

"'Garage Sale,'" the brownie read aloud. He mumbled the address to himself several times over, until it stuck in his mouth like taffy. There would be a large house there, one that had been emptied of some of its stuff and was ready to be cleaned, one with space that a brownie could fill nicely. He smiled then, took his sorghum-bristle broom out from the bundle on his back, and began twirling it as he resumed his walk. It was a broom well made for sweeping, which made it a fine accessory for a fresh start.

"The Bag Lady"

 

I saw her every day, wearing the same dirt-faded clothes but carrying a different bag each time. On some days the bag was made of linen or some other cloth; on others, plastic, and it obviously had been found alongside the rest of the scraps she carried.

She collected what people in the neighborhood threw out or abandoned. I saw her pick up someone's potential once, right off the curb. It looked like an orange rind. Another time she tried to pick up an old woman's true love from where the woman had dumped him. The bag lady had had trouble fitting him into her sack, for a while.

I went to her once with a cheese sandwich in hand, in case she was hungry. She smiled a refined smile, the kind offered by old ladies who like to work in gardens, and told me thank you, but she was doing quite well with what she had.

"Do you have a place to stay?" I asked her tentatively.

"Oh, I've made a very nice home for myself," she said. "Would you like to see it?" I hesitated before even trying to give her an answer, but it didn't matter: she placed her hand on my shoulder and pushed me into the bag anyway.

"The Cage"

 

After the city fell, Graciele led most of her prisoners into ditches that she and the men had dug by the river, below the level that the water usually reached during the summer floods. There was one prisoner that she kept, though, a girl of maybe twelve who gave her name as Nerri. Nerri she placed in a cage that she made from bones and dry branches, everything dead she could find.

"Set me free," Nerri said one day, grinning at Graciele through low grey eyes as angular as two flints.

"You'd try to kill me if I set you free," was Graciele's simple answer.

"I'll try to kill you if you keep me here." Nerri continued to grin. "As far as I see it, you're already dead."

Graciele regarded Nerri with a tilt of her head; her skin caught the white-hard glimmer of the late spring sun. "I don't think you're fully aware of the accuracy of what you've said," Graciele told her. With two fingers as thin as icicles, Graciele pinched the skin covering her own chin. The pale white skin lifted to reveal pale white bone, and teeth fixed in a jaw that moved with Graciele's laughter. Nerri's eyes dulled.

"I have a secret for you, you green little girl," Graciele whispered, adjusting her skin and coming to stand next to the bars of branches and bone. "You're not the only one trapped in a cage." She thought of the day the curse had landed on her head, and her soul, barely ripe with the onset of adolescence, became bound to the skeleton she now animated and covered in a costume of flesh. She reached inside. "And just like you, I'd like to be free," she said.

She pulled Nerri close and met her with a kiss to the cheek.

"Children Made of Stone"

 

Lars knew as soon as he saw his new neighbor step onto her front porch and close the door behind her that she was coming over to introduce herself, which is to say that she was coming over to complain about his kids. There was a certain stiffness of posture and weakness of smile that preceded questions like Do they run around like that all the time? and Lars had learned to spot it well. What he hadn't learned was how to make someone believe that his children would turn to stone if ever they stopped moving.

"Daddy, I'm hungry!" Bianca called as she and James ran around the ash tree in the corner. Lars shook himself free of his thoughts and reached down to the table for one of the sandwiches he had brought outside for lunch. He thought about telling her to run over and pick it up, but then, even as he was watching their neighbor cross her lawn toward them, he decided otherwise and instead jogged toward the ash tree, sandwich in hand, to join the kids in their game of circles. It was the least he could do for the children he would never be able to hold.

"Moving and Shaking"

 

The sign read "No Beverages," and Caroline knew she wouldn't be able to make it to the car and back before the interview. She poured the last of her coffee onto the lawn and then flung the cup into the can nearby. Instantly the ground began to shake. "Coffee," came a voice as deep as clay, "oh, my God, finally." And so began the morning.

"The Oddities Market"

 

She had heard that a lot of people-watching took place at the oddities market. Only when she stopped to look at the merchandise, and the merchandise turned to look back, did she understand what that meant.

"Oh, the Places You Won't Go"

Got a bag almost ready for C2E2! An 'Infamous' bag, no less!

Alex knew what she risked by running in the store, and she saw the look the old man in the "World History" section gave her, but she couldn't afford to be late. She turned so quickly down the hallway where the bathrooms were that she was running with her body at an angle. Only when she came to the spot between the door marked "Women" and the door marked "Men" did she stop. She stood in front of a third door, which appeared only once every month, tapped a precise and musical rhythm on its surface, and entered when it opened. Inside, next to a swirling, pulsing purple vortex, the gate agent sat behind his table.

Alex approached the table and emptied the contents of her backpack. Dried flowers, a picture of her house, a letter opener, a set of keys that worked with no lock that she could find, and one of her little brother's baby teeth came out of the main pouch. A towel, a bottle of water, a pair of socks, and a change of underwear came from the front. The gate agent almost looked amused, though it was difficult for Alex to tell for certain, as he appeared to be have been carved from onyx.

"I brought everything I need," Alex said to him. "Please let me through before it closes."

Was the gate agent still amused, Alex wondered, or had he turned sad? "I'm sorry," he told her, "but this isn't what I need to see. I can't admit you at this time. Please collect your belongings and move to the side."

Alex couldn't speak, even though her mouth was open. The gate agent tipped his head toward the stuff cluttering his table, and Alex, bewildered, swept it back into her bag with a huff. As she stepped away, she saw the old man from "World History" enter the room, an enormous hardcover in his hands.

He saw her, of course, but in the light of the portal his raised eyebrow looked to Alex no longer dismissive, but mischievous. "Had to go shopping before I came here," he said. "I mean, whoever heard of traveling without a book?"

The old man winked at her and faced the gate agent, spreading his book open in his hands, leaving her to run, run, faster than a whisper, back into the store with the hope that, this time, she could go somewhere.

"Breaking the Rules"

I'll have to go back to get a better picture of this. But this is where a nearby creek continues into the rest of the town's drainage system. The cement walls at the entrance to the tunnel are covered with graffiti.

What makes me nervous isn't the idea that Leese has brought me down here only two days after we met; it isn't even the sound of the cans rattling against each other in her backpack. It's the sight of her littering. Two bags of chips and a package of trail mix have already been emptied into her stomach; the wrappers have fluttered to the ground like dead leaves; and I see them and wonder what kind of person I've cast my dice with. I bend and swing around her, holding on to the trees that line the creekside slope as if I'm looking for support up a mountain instead of picking up trash. When we get close, though, I feel those strange channels open up between us, and I remember why we were pulled toward each other, and what made us decide to try this.

"Aimee. Don't worry about those yet," she says, tapping my shoulder. "You should be eating something. I don't want you to get sick."

"I don't think I can eat." I tilt my head to try to see her watch. It's neon pink plastic, a fine accessory for someone trying to avoid being noticed. Again, I wonder. "How much longer until sunset?"

She brings her wrist close to her face. "Just a few minutes more."

"Stupid rules," I say.

Leese shrugs. "Some rules are better than others. Some are okay to break." I turn my body toward her, and it's like all of a sudden I've made a discovery, because she's kissing me, and it makes complete sense. It's as if I'm a scientist (oh my god did I really just think that how am I getting kissed) and I've just discovered some concept essential to how the world works, like photosynthesis. We're so bright that I imagine everybody on the planet is going to see us. I can't tell how much of this is something I feel because this is the first time I've been kissed.

"You really think there's a rule against us kissing?" I ask when we break away. "Or was that just your bad pick-up line?"

Leese smiles. "It's that I'm sure there's some rule against kissing next to a drainage pipe." She winks at me and reaches up for a nearby branch, which she grasps as if she's swinging from monkey bars as she begins to walk toward the tunnel. "Sunset," she says over her shoulder. "Start picking up the wrappers."

I stare at her. "Wait, all of that, and now you're going to leave me on garbage detail?"

"You're the decoy. If anyone comes looking. You're the concerned teenager doing her part for the environment." Leese has made it to the mouth of the runoff pipe and is pressing herself against the cement walls of its exterior, making sure she's hard to see from the road above, not that anyone has turned this way in a while. "Beats what I have to do," she says, taking a can of spray paint out of her bag.

It's a lazy Sunday evening, and most of the people who live in this subdivision are at home, preparing for dinner and contemplating the week ahead, except that I'm here, collecting junk from the undergrowth near the creek, and Leese is a few feet away, doing some graffiti work on an entrance to the town's sewer system. I try not to look at her, try to pretend she's not there, but it's hard. I keep catching sight of her twirling the cans, and I imagine her in the Old West with a pair of revolvers she keeps holstered on her hips.

"How's it going?" I ask after I pick up the last wrapper I see.

Two short blasts of air, and then I hear her laugh. "It's good," she says. "Quick."

I stuff the wrappers in my pocket and run to her across the low part of the slope, over twigs and shallow water. I arrive at her side and see adorning the cement the symbol we've spent the past two days studying. I take her hand.

"You ready?" Leese asks.

I give her hand a squeeze. "Probably not," I say, grabbing hold of a tree.

We recite the words we learned, the language scratching our throats as it climbs its way out of us. We each place a palm on the wet paint. A light appears in the drainage pipe as if from a door that just opened. Faster than anything, all the rules to explain the world that I thought I learned when Leese kissed me suddenly break and give way, just like the branches to which we've been clinging.