Selfish Elf Wish (7 page)

In the kitchen, we find my mom, my older brother Grove, and my little sisters, Poppy and Persimmon. Grove sits on a stool in the corner, noodling on his guitar while the girls plunge their arms deep into a mixing bowl full of thick dough. Mom chops something at the side counter. Cinnamon and nutmeg permeate the warm, moist air. Usually, I love when my mom bakes, especially for special occasions like the Harvest Festival, but now I’m worried. “What are you making?” I poke my finger in the bowl.

Mom turns around and smiles, radiating her familiar blond-haired, green-eyed charm. “Hello, my little fawns.” She opens her arms to us and we both accept a hug. She’s wearing her blue tunic, so soft and worn that it feels like a blanket against my cheek. Her amulets click together as she embraces us. “How was your day?”

“We went to the co-op to buy apples,” Poppy tells us, proudly, before Briar or I can speak.

“For bumblings,” Persimmon adds.

Mom laughs and wipes flour off Percy’s nose. “Dumplings.”

Persimmon nods. “Daddy likes bumplings.”

“But Mom,” I whine. “Erdlers don’t eat apple dumplings for Thanksgiving!” I march over to the refrigerator and pull down the list of traditional erdler foods that I printed off of Wikipedia. I turn to page two. “Right here it says they eat pumpkin pie or pecan pie.”

“But I don’t know how to make those,” Mom says.

I shake the papers at her. “I printed recipes for you.”

“Not everyone has to follow your directions,” Grove says.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask, hoping at least he’ll understand what I’m saying.

“He’s at a meeting with his agent,” Mom says, then she cocks her head to the left and looks at me for a moment. “Zephyr, honey, tomorrow will be fine. Your friends will bring the traditional erdler food, and we’ll share our food with them. That’s what Thanksgiving is about.”

“And we’ll look like big freaks,” I mutter as I toss the papers aside.

Briar swipes a bright green apple off the counter, then tosses one to me. “Are these apples any good?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” says Mom.

“There was cow’s milk in a purple carton with a picture of a cow on it,” Poppy tells us. “And I tried a banana. Have you ever had Pirate’s Booty?”

My sisters are still amazed that you can buy food at a store. I’m still amazed that my mom joined the Park Slope Food Coop. When we first moved here, she hated going out among the erdlers. Although, after going to the co-op with her, I realize that we probably aren’t the weirdest family in Brooklyn. All kinds of strange people shop there.

“Where’s Grandma?” I ask, crunching into the apple that is surprisingly good—something I never thought I’d say about erdler food other than pizza.

Mom bites her lip then turns back to her cutting board. “Outside.”

“You want some help?” Briar asks her.

“You girls can roll out the dough and start cutting circles,” Mom says.

“In a minute,” I say, heading for the back door. “I want to say hi to Grandma first.”

 

Sometimes I swear my grandma Fawna is the only person in this house who really understands me. For example, she’s the only one who studied the sheets I printed with the Thanksgiving traditions.

I find her in the garden, bent over the round wooden picnic table where she’s made a small pile of dried twigs and leaves. She’s mumbling as she adds more from a leather satchel tied around her waist. If we were still in Alverland, Briar and I would start our spell-casting apprenticeships soon. That’s when we study with one of our grandparents. I’m not sure how my other cousins in Alverland are coping with my grandma gone, but Fawna says there’s plenty of magic to go around, so she’s not worried.

Even though everyone in our family still dresses in Alverland clothes every day (except Briar and me when we go to school), Grandma Fawna kicks it seriously old school. Her pine-green tunic nearly sweeps the ground it’s so long, and she wears dozens of amulets around her neck, plus bands up her left arm. When I was little, I loved sitting on her lap, counting the amulets then the bands, taking in every detail of the feathers, claws, tufts of fur, and smooth rocks. She’d catalog their uses: speed, grace, cunning, stealth. Then we’d look at her tiny bags of moss, herbs, leaves, and dried berries, and she’d tell us each one’s healing properties. Elf children aren’t expected to memorize all of those things until we’re sixteen, but growing up with it makes it easier when the time comes.

I wrap my arms around myself to keep warm in the chilly air, but Fawna doesn’t seem to notice the cold. She takes a short, smooth stick from a pocket of her tunic. I recognize the intricate designs my grandfather carved around the base. She closes her eyes, lifts her head, and mutters something as she points the stick at the table. The pile of twigs and leaves ignites, sending a puff of orange fire then a plume of purple smoke curling toward the sky.

“Grandma!” I rush toward her, waving the smoke away. “You can’t do that here,” I whisper harshly. “What if someone sees you?” I look all around at our neighbors’ windows surrounding us on every side, making sure there are no curious faces peering out.

Fawna continues watching the smoke as it rises for a moment, then she turns to me and blinks. “No one cares what a crazy old woman does in her garden.” She turns her attention to the ashes on the table. With her stick, she traces the design. “Look here,” she says to me. “What do you see?”

I can definitely see a symmetrical pattern with interlocking loops and maybe some kind of square in the center, but I don’t know what any of it means. I shake my head.

“Hmmm.” She looks troubled for a moment with her eyebrows flexed and her mouth in a tight, straight line.

“What’s it mean?” I ask.

She blows the ash away, scattering it across an empty azalea bush. There are no marks from the fire on the table. “Who knows?” she says with a shrug.

“You do.”

“Perhaps.” She smiles and puts her stick back in her pocket.

“You’re supposed to teach me these things.”

“Ah.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and brings her face close to mine to look deeply in my eyes. My heart slows and my stomach calms like the surface of a pond after the wind dies down. “You’re getting old enough now,” she says quietly. “Your apprenticeship should start soon. But we must start with something simpler than that.”

I look over my shoulder at the ash sprinkled across the snow-covered ground. “What were you trying to figure out?”

Fawna pauses and looks down at me. Then she lifts her head again. “I’m not sure yet,” she says. I follow her gaze. Night has nearly enveloped the sky, turning it charcoal gray with a few streaks of fading pink. “Something feels off to me.”

“Grandma,” I say, “can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, my dear.”

“Are dark elves real or did you make them up to scare us?”

Grandma sighs. “Aha, that’s the question of someone ready for her apprenticeship.”

“Well?” I ask, waiting for a real answer.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“Grandma!” I whine, because it’s always the same with her. Ask a question, get a question in return.

“I had a cousin,” she tells me. “Her name was Hyacinth. She is the daughter of my aunt Iris, my mother’s youngest sister.”

And if it’s not a question, you get a long story. “Is there never a straightforward answer?” I ask. “A yes or a no?”

She ignores me and continues. “Hyacinth left Alverland, you know. Married a man from a different clan. We were all heartbroken.”

“Where’d she go?” I ask.

Grandma shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but some people believe she turned dark.”

I lean closer to her. “What’s it mean, when someone turns dark?”

“What do you think it means?” she asks.

“Again with the questions!” I say, but this time I laugh.

“Consider this an apprenticeship question,” Grandma says, putting her arm around my shoulders. “Get back to me when you think you know. Now,” she leads me toward the back door, “let’s go help your mother.”

“She’s in there making apple dumplings for tomorrow, not pumpkin pie,” I complain.

Grandma leads me up the steps to the back door. “Ah, well, what can you do?”

“But Grandma ...”

She holds up her hand. “My dear, you can’t control everything.”

“But ...”

She pats my arm. “But what?”

I look in the kitchen window. My mom and the kids have formed an apple dumpling assembly line. “Couldn’t you cast a spell or something to turn our food into erdler food?”

Grandma shakes her head. “Good granite, my dear. That would be a waste of my magic when your mother’s food is so good.”

“So that would be dark magic,” I say, half kidding.

Grandma laughs. “It’d be a start. Now then,” she says as she opens the door, “tell me about your day. What was the twist so big it was going to blow your pipes?”

“Our minds, Grandma. It was going to blow our minds.” I laugh as we enter the warm cinnamony kitchen. “You’re not going to believe what happened at the auditions.”

“Or where we’re going tonight,” Briar adds, handing Grove a red flyer.

MUSIC PUMPS THROUGH
the speakers overhead and crashes to the red, yellow, and blue puddles of light on the dance floor. The crowd jumps in time to the rhythm of the drums and bass. I’m so sweaty I feel like I’m grooving under a waterfall. It may be 30 degrees and snowing outside, but inside this club, I’m wearing my tunic with no leggings and my boots (which was Briar’s idea), and everything’s sticking to my skin like it’s the middle of summer.

Timber reaches out to me. He’s down to his jeans and a white tank. Sweat slicks his hair off his forehead, and his gray-blue eyes sparkle under the roving lights. Watching him dance makes me feel something inside, like a flower blooming behind my belly button, and I want to move! I grab his hands and we jump, twirl, shake, and sing with the other hundred people who’ve showed up at Clay and Dawn’s Red Hook club.

Timber yells something to me, but the
boom-chick
rhythm of the music drowns out his words. I try to maneuver closer to him between the flailing arms, whipping hair, and gyrating hips of all the other people. Ari and Mercedes dance on one side of us. Briar and Kenji on the other. Kenji’s movements are sharp and jerky, but Briar flows like a wild river. I have to smile because dancing is her thing. It’s what makes her most happy in the world and she’s great at it. My brother Grove is somewhere in the crowd, too. I saw Chelsea and her gals earlier, but I lost track of them once the lights dimmed. I even caught a glimpse of Bella and Gunther when we first came in, but I’m hoping the wall of people around us will keep them at a distance, especially because, at this very moment, Timber is so close to me that I can see the beads of sweat on his upper lip.

When the song ends, the lights come up slowly and the DJ shouts, “How y’all doing tonight in Red Hook?” Everyone claps and yells. “I said, how y’all doing?” he repeats, and we yell and clap and stomp louder. “That’s more like it. Now, don’t go anywhere, stay right where you are and turn your attention to the stage because right here, right now, we’ve got a special performance by the belle of Brooklyn, Ms. Bella D’Artagnan!”

Music swells over the polite applause from the crowd as Bella struts onto the stage under a white spotlight. She’s wearing a short, black, see-through dress and a body-hugging lacy thing underneath that looks more like a bathing suit than clothes. She hits her opening mark center stage with legs wide, arms up, light and wind hitting her from behind so there appears to be a halo around her long, whipping hair. Warm air wafts out into the crowd and I smell camellias and roses and the faintest trace of sandalwood, which reminds me of something else. Home? My mother? Walking in the woods? I don’t know, but the smell is soothing and I almost relax into it as I gaze up at her from the dance floor. Her legs seem impossibly long covered in black fishnets as she changes from one pose to the next while the music builds. Then she begins to stomp to the rhythm in her spiky black heels.

I look at the crowd. Everyone stands still as if mesmerized, watching her dance to and sing some song about shaking your booty tonight that I’ve never heard. I would expect this kind of ogling from the guys, but most of the girls seem entranced by her every move, too. And even though I’d like her to fall off the stage, I can barely take my eyes off her, either. I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think she’s the one who’s magic.

Worst of all, Timber stares at her like he couldn’t look away if he wanted to. The more she sings and moves onstage, the more beguiled the crowd seems to become, and pretty soon people are dancing along with her, mouthing lyrics to songs I don’t know. I turn to see if Briar understands why everyone is so captivated, but then I realize that she’s not next to me anymore.

My stomach knots and suddenly I’m panicked. I can’t find Briar in the crowd, but since Bella’s show is going so well, I assume that Briar’s keeping her promise. I warned her before we left the house not to use magic to ruin Bella’s performance.
We can’t interfere
, I told her. She rolled her eyes at me.
Whatev, cuz
, she said. I squeezed her arm tightly.
Promise
, I demanded.
I promise
, she said.
Elf swear
, I said, and formed my first two fingers on each hand into a V. Then I crossed the Vs together in front of her mouth. She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes at me.
Do it,
I said,
or I’ll tell Mom you’re planning on casting a spell tonight and she’ll keep you home.
Briar shifted from one foot to the other but she relented.
I swear I won’t use magic to mess with Bella’s performance,
she said, and I caught the words in my hands.

I, for one, have had enough Bella for one day. Between songs, I tap Timber on the shoulder. At first he doesn’t react, so I poke him harder. He shakes himself, as if waking up from a daydream, and looks at me. “I’m thirsty,” I yell. He leans in close to hear me over the music. “I’m going to get a drink,” I shout into his ear. He pushes my hair behind my ear and leans down. “I’ll go with you,” he yells, making my ear ring.