A Cup of Normal (22 page)
Authors: Devon Monk
Tags: #Fantasy, #fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author), #General
One more second, she thought to herself, and tried to convey to Troy. One more second and it will be done.
“I love you, Troy,” she whispered.
A beach ball thumped into her leg.
Sadie jerked and dislodged George’s hand.
Troy relaxed in her arms as a spark of life deep within him woke and bloomed.
Sadie did not let go of him, even as his bones broke and folded against her, even as his muscles bled again from injuries he had long avoided.
Troy whimpered, a dying puppy sound.
“Okay, now, Troy,” she said. “I’m going to help you walk out to the ocean. The pain won’t be so bad there.”
She helped him walk, he still backward in her arms.
George, she knew, would not follow. The temptation to snatch away his soul, an impulse only avoided once, and by her interference, would soon come over him. For now, the bucket would satisfy his hunger. Soon that would not be enough.
But Sadie had promised Troy a moment with his daughter.
The water swirled cold around her boots. Out in the rolling stack of waves, she saw a sea-lion’s head poke up, then dip under again. Sunlight glinted emerald-sharp off the waves.
Sadie stopped and kissed Troy on his bloody temple. “I love you. So much, that I will give you this.”
Sadie stepped back, turned her back, walked up the beach to where George stood. His hand was clenched, the knuckles white around the bucket’s handle. His expression was cunning and hungry on a face she had seen hold great kindness.
“He’s still standing, Sadie,” George said, low, and loving, but unable to hide the pleasure.
Sadie stopped next to George, and put her right hand on the bucket, over his bony knuckles. She faced the living, the land, the Douglas fir, telephone lines and blank-windowed hotels that framed reflections of sky and cloud. She stared at the road, a black smooth stretch that led away from the beach, away from the ocean, away from herself. She understood why Troy had wanted to leave, to walk among the living, even if only once.
She also understood why he could not.
“I can’t watch, George. Just tell me if he smiles.”
“She hasn’t seen him yet,” George said. Tight words. Hungry.
“She will.”
“Ah. Yes. Soon.”
“Tell me,” Sadie whispered.
“She’s running. Chasing her ball. She’s in the waves. Splashing. The ball is rolling away from her fingers. She is looking up, out.”
“Yes,” she said in exhale.
“He’s there for her, Sadie. She can see him.”
“And?”
“She’s running again.”
Sadie nodded, and watched a flight of crows lift and caw, strangled and strident, into the sky. “She ran away?”
“No, Sadie. She’s running to him. Watch him, Sadie. Watch our son.”
Sadie kept her hand on the bucket handle and turned in toward George so that she stood half behind his right arm, and twisted to look at the ocean. She did not want to let George hold the bucket alone.
Katie had indeed run out into the water. Her yellow ball bobbed farther out than she could reach, was almost as far gone as the sea lion had been.
Troy stood — still stood — though every brush of the wind, every shift of the sand caused him to sway, to totter.
He was bloody. Broken. One arm hung uselessly at his side. But his eyes burned with a determined light. He held his good arm out for her. She ran to him. Ran deeper into the surf, the water sucking at her short legs.
Nothing in the world mattered but the man before her. Children her age often forget the world is a dangerous place.
“Quickly, George,” Sadie said, though she knew she didn’t have to.
At the moment Katie reached Troy’s side, when her fingers pressed and caught at his wet denim pants leg, when Troy looked down at her, Sadie said, “Good-bye.”
George lifted his fingers, and the ocean pulled out, faster and farther, as if low tide had come too soon.
Troy and Katie embraced on the damp sand, the clicking popping sound of tiny creatures beneath the sand louder than the wave pulling away.
Troy smiled.
George’s fingers dipped down.
The wave powered in like a clap of thunder, crashing against black stones, faster than a shark, churning with the rotted green stink of kelp and sea grass, jelly fish, crab and stones.
Troy teetered as the wave hit him on the back of the thighs, then he was down, broken arm flailing a loose circle behind his head, body swallowed in the surf.
A yellow beach ball rode the wave merrily up to shore. But there was no child left to chase it.
The wave licked up to where Sadie and George stood, foam fizzing atop the water that had gone brown and heavy with sand. As one, they lifted the bucket a bit higher, and watched the water run up the beach past them.
When the wave withdrew, taking with it sandals, plastic shovels and a lawn chair, George cleared his throat.
“Good day for fishing.”
Sadie nodded, her gaze on the sky, the horizon, and the deep, cold sea. “They all are. For you.”
She patted his arm to take the sting out of her words. “I think I want to walk awhile.”
“Want me to take the bucket?” George asked.
“No.” Sadie shifted her hold on the handle, and George slipped his fingers out from beneath hers. The bucket was even heavier than this morning, heavier than the world. Within it, tiny fish swam.
“Then I’ll see you tonight, Sadie.”
“At the stream’s edge,” Sadie agreed.
She turned north, and trudged along the beach, the water from her fish bucket slopping at first, and then steady with the sway of her steps.
Night feathered across the sky, damping the last fire — orange and pink from the sun. Stars pricked like chips of broken agates thrown up to the heavens.
Sadie stood on the edge of the little river, the warm, living sounds of cars and laughter, of people coming and going, reaching out from the small coastal town.
The honey and hickory smell of barbeque chicken lingered in the rare, windless night, and beneath that, the charcoal snap of smokey bonfires.
Someone was burning marshmallows and melting chocolate.
George stepped beside her, looking as she did past the pools of light from the hotel lamps at the houses, the windows and living beyond.
“Did you think it would last?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“He was a good son,” George said, “I think you did well for him, Sadie.”
Sadie said nothing. A rowdy high school fighting song rose from a nearby bonfire and behind her, the ocean breathed in and out, lending a damp cool blanket to the night. She didn’t think she had done much good for anyone today.
“Have you emptied the bucket?”
The bucket. Sadie glanced at George. He was tall, and gray-haired, his smile warm and kind. The man she had loved, had always loved, from the day they both stepped hand-in-hand off the cliff to fall to the sands below.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
George nodded. “It’s time to let them go, Sadie.”
She bent and lifted the bucket, heavy, and so thick with the tiny flickering fish, that she knew if she waited any longer, they would have jumped out of the water themselves. It was hard, but she was used to this part of the job too, and wrestled the bucket over to the edge of the glassy stream without George’s help.
She tipped the bucket on its side and the water whooshed into the river, filling with the wild, undulation of a hundred thousand fish, swimming to the embrace of the deep, cold sea. But two fish, one larger, one smaller, struggled against the stream, fighting upriver, to the land, to the living. They held their ground for a moment, and then were swept away, side-by-side to the sea.
An editor was looking for an ogre and pixie story with the theme of “Fantasy Gone Wrong.” Having never written about an ogre or pixie, I immediately volunteered. This story is a light take on cultural expectations, rules, and how we define our happiness. Did I mention there are ogres and pixies in it?
MOONLIGHTING
Thimble Jack crept out of the broom closet
and surveyed the tidy stone kitchen. Watery beams of moonlight flowed through the windows and pooled in the sink, giving Thimble plenty of light to work by. Pixies were creatures of the night, and did their best work when the sun had gone to the soft side of dreaming. He put his hands on his naked hips and strolled around the kitchen looking for dirt. Floors nicely swept, stove turned off for the night, and a small bowl of water left out for him. Everything perfectly in place, everything perfectly clean. Thimble frowned. The mistress of the house was a compulsive housekeeper. He hadn’t had any real work to do for months.
Thimble stretched his dragonfly wings and flitted into the tidy living room, dining room and small den. All clean. Thimble scowled. He’d been replaced by vacuum cleaners, spray bottles and scrubbing bubbles! With nothing to clean and no one to punish for being lazy, he was doomed to a life of tedium, with nothing but a bowl of water for his trouble. He was going to go crazy as an ogre.
Wait! The child slept upstairs in the nursery. Surely there would be a misplaced toy, an unstacked book. Thimble felt the heat of wicked hope warm his pixie bones. If he were lucky, he might even have time to tie the child’s hair in knots for not picking up her toys. Joy!
Fast as snow melt beneath a unicorn hoof, Thimble danced up the stairs, his bare feet making the sound of distant bells.
He didn’t bother looking in the parent’s bedroom — the woman didn’t even allow a wrinkle in a raisin. But the little girl’s room would be gold.
He shoved at the door and walked into the nursery. A single open window at the far side of the room poured silver moonlight across the floor, bookcase, toy chest and bed.
Thimble pulled at his ears in frustration. Nothing was out of place. Not good. Not good. He flitted to the girl’s bed, his wings clicking softly. Maybe she had smuggled a cookie under the covers, forgotten to brush her hair, wash her face — something naughty, anything at all.
He landed on the freshly laundered linens and strode up to inspect her face.
“Dolly!” she screeched.
Thimble jumped and quick-footed it backward. He tripped over her pile of extra pillows.
“Go to sleep,” he whispered. It had been decades since he’d been spotted by a human and even longer than that since any creature had spoken to him. He was getting slow, losing his edge. This too-clean house was dulling his pixie reflexes. He pushed up to his feet and gathered a fist full of magic, ready to send her sleeping if he had to.
The little girl frowned and pulled her dolly out from beneath her covers. She looked at the doll, looked at him and held the doll out for him. “Dolly,” she said again.
Thimble shuddered. It was one of those stiff, plastic, yellow-haired, painted-faced things. They gave him the creeps.
“Yes, yes. Lovely. Go to sleep now.”
“All gone.” The girl tugged the pink ruffled dress and shoes off the doll, wadded them up in her sweaty fist and shoved them at him. “You.”
Clothes! The one thing pixies longed for above all others. But these weren’t the clothes he’d spent three hundred years dreaming about: a nice set of trousers, soft jacket and maybe a jaunty hat. This was a cheap, sparkly dress and strappy purple heels. He refused to take them. He would not wear them. He wouldn’t be caught dead looking like a fairy tarted up on a twenty year bender.
But there were rules about clothes. Pixie rules. Rules Thimble could not break. One: take the clothes. Two: put them on. Three: dance and taunt. Four: leave the house forever.
The girl made a grab for him, which he lithely side stepped. She stuck out her lower lip and glared. “You!” She dumped the clothes at his feet.
By the wands, she was not going to back down. Maybe it was time to knock the little whelp out. Thimble drew back a palm full of magic.
“Mommy, Mommy!” the girl yelled.
Thimble heard a deep click as the light turned on in the parent’s bedroom. This would be bad — very bad. If he used his magic to put her to sleep, he wouldn’t have time to turn invisible before her parents arrived. But if he went invisible instead, he would be breaking rule number one: take the clothes.
“Hush, now, hush,” Thimble said. “See? I have the dress.” He picked it up and reluctantly wiggled into it. The dress was a sleeveless number and had a stiff, scratchy skirt that itched his nether regions. The shoes were no better — they pinched and rubbed and made his ankles feel like they were made out of marbles. He took a couple steps and had to throw out his arms and wings to keep from falling flat.
The little girl clapped her hands and smiled.
Having clothes was horrible. But they
were
clothes, and they were
his
clothes. He laughed and pointed at the girl — as good a taunt as he could manage without falling off the high heels and breaking his neck.
He hated these clothes! He loved these clothes! He wanted to hide under a hill so no one could see him! He wanted to dance with joy! The clash of emotions that filled him was staggering. But no matter what he wanted, the only thing he could do was follow rule number four: leave the house. Forever. No more cleaning. No more teasing. No more of anything that Thimble loved. He definitely hated these clothes.
Thimble took to the air. The dress had an opening in the back that his wings fit through, which was good. He didn’t think he’d make it very far on heels alone.
“Wait,” the little girl said.
But Thimble could not wait. Just as the girl’s mother opened the door, he dove into moonlight and flew out the window. The little girl cried, but he did not look back.
A knot of sorrow settled in Thimble’s chest as he flew over the land. Being out of the house seemed as strange to him as going to work in the cottage had three hundred years ago. He felt uprooted, alone, and the dress was riding up his rear.
He took a deep breath. He had made a new life for himself three hundred years ago, he could do so again. All he needed was a new house to clean. That thought brought a smile to his lips. Surely, not all humans were as fastidious as his last mistress. There had to be humans who still left acorns on their window sills and bowls of milk by the door, inviting pixies into the house. And he knew how to find out: check the pixie stick.
Thimble flew to the magic lands of his childhood and straight into the forest where the pixie stick stood. He angled down and landed neatly next to the stick. The magic stick rang with a sweet constant bell tone, and a shaft of moonlight always found a way through the tree branches to illuminate the oldest pixie artifact. Here, every wish in the world could be heard, sorted, and distributed to the creature who could best grant them. Magical notes would cling to the stick until a pixie pulled it off. But there was not a single note on the stick. That couldn’t be right. Thimble put his hands behind his back and took a couple steps. His heels sunk in the moss. He lurched and fell.
He hated shoes! He pulled the shoes off and rubbed at his blistered feet, trying to think of a rule that didn’t include shoes. Ah, yes. Shoes weren’t clothing, they were accessories. He was sure of it. And the rules did not state that pixies must accessorize their new clothes. Thimble threw both shoes into the surrounding brush, and grinned when the plastic hit mud.
Now he could find that new house. He stood, brushed off his dress, and walked around the pixie stick again. Empty. Not a wish or a hope or a request visible. No wonder it was so quiet here. There were no wishes left. With nothing to clean, and no one to tease, he would be crazy as an ogre.
Thimble scowled and kicked the stick. The stick rang like a gong and a single scrap of paper fluttered down and landed in front of Thimble’s feet.
Thimble laughed. Thimble danced a quick jig, which wasn’t easy in a skirt. Thimble picked up the paper and read the address. He had a wish, a house, a home!
The address wasn’t hard to find. Even though it had been three hundred years since Thimble lived in the places of magic, he still knew his way around. Sure the trees had grown, fallen, and grown again, and mountains had studded their feet with new human towns. He had grown up here, and would know his way as well today as in another three hundred years.
Still, when he reached the house, he was confused. The place was right — set deep within a forest and tucked up against an imposing rock wall, with a small, spring-fed creek burbling by. But the house did not resemble any of the human houses he had ever seen. This place was made of trees torn out by their roots, packed with mud and clumps of moss and weeds.
Thimble looked at the address written in indelible magic on the note, then looked above the door. It was the right place. Someone inside that house had wished for help keeping the house. Thimble could do that.
He strode up to the door. There was no inviting acorn on the window sill, which was no surprise since there were no windows. But he couldn’t sense a bowl of water by the door, either. He brushed away his worry with a short laugh. He’d pinch the owner black and blue until he or she remembered to put the bowl of water out for him every night. He’d clean and tease and make mischief like no human had ever seen. His heart pounded beetle-quick with excitement, his palms sweated magic. His thighs itched, but that was from the dress. Yes, this was going to work out just fine.
Thimble straightened the straps of his dress. He gave his leg a good scratch, then knocked on the door.
The heavy footsteps of something big, much bigger than a human, so big, the ground shook and shale trickled like dry bones down the cliffside answered his knock. Maybe this was a bad idea.
The door groaned on rusted hinges and swung inward.
A brute of a creature filled the doorway, glowering out over the forest while scratching at his hairy armpit.
This thing was not human. This thing was something Thimble had lived his life avoiding, a dangerous, stupid, pixie-smashing creature. This thing was an ogre.
It was still night, and ogres were creatures of the day. This one yawned, showing rows of pixie-grinding teeth and a curved set of yellowed tusks. Thimble had just woken a sleeping ogre. He held very still. The ogre would never notice him unless he looked down.
The ogre looked down. “Here for the job?” The ogre’s voice rumbled like low thunder and sent more loose rocks tumbling off the cliff.
“I am a pixie,” Thimble said. “I will keep the house for you, so long as you leave a bowl of water out for me every night.”
The ogre scratched his other arm pit. “Aren’t you a little pink for a pixie?”
“Aren’t you a little talkative for an ogre?”
The ogre sneered, his thick lip curling back over lumpy teeth.
This was it, Thimble thought. He was going to be smashed into pixie paste and buried in a horrible pink frock.
But instead of smashing and bashing, the ogre grunted a couple times and stepped back into the house.
Thimble swallowed until his heart stopped kicking at his chest. He lifted his chin high and entered the ogre’s abode.
He had never seen such a mess in all his years! There was only one room to the house, but it looked like a garbage pit. Broken chairs, cracked dishes and unrecognizable mounds of things he could only guess at cluttered the misshapen room. The sink in the corner dripped, sending out a trail of mud that smelled like old cabbage across the floor. No living creature in its right mind would want to live here.
The only thing standing was a tattered curtain separating the main room from a cave-like sleeping hollow.
“What do you expect me to do with this?” Thimble asked.
The ogre waved a meaty hand toward the room. “You’re the pixie. Take care of it.” Then he lumbered into his cave and tugged the curtain into place.
Thimble was left alone with nothing but the broken tuba snores from the ogre. What was he going to do? There wasn’t any way he could clean this mess by morning. But the thought of going back to the empty pixie stick, or worse, to a meticulously kept home gave him chills. Better to have something impossible to do than nothing at all. He cracked his knuckles, hiked up his skirts and got to work.
The morning sun rose over the forest and sent bursts of light and bird song into the mud hut. Thimble yawned and wiped the filthy rag over the last stubborn spot on the wall. He couldn’t believe how much he’d gotten done. He’d repaired the table and chairs, mopped the floor that turned out to be stone, and fixed the sink. He’d washed the dishes, mended the ogres’ big smelly socks, and even dusted the two mammoth boots he had found under a pile of dry leaves and sticks.
Not bad for a night’s work. No, better than that — it was amazing for a night’s work. There wasn’t a pixie alive who could have done as much as well. The ogre was sure to be pleased. Thimble would get his water, and maybe after a nice day’s sleep, he would feel up to pinching the big beast for making such a mess in the first place.
Thimble’s smile turned into a yawn. Later. All he wanted now was sleep. He padded over to the cleanest, driest corner by the door, ready to bed down.
The ogre stirred, snorted, and pulled the ratty curtain aside. The ogre took one look at the room and rubbed his blood shot eyes. He took a second look at the room and roared.
“What have you done?” The ogre stomped across the clean room until he towered over Thimble.
Thimble was tired. Bone tired. His day had started with a three-year-old pushing him around and now this big brute had thought he could bully him. Well, Thimble Jack was not a pixie to be intimidated.
“I cleaned your house,” Thimble shouted over the ogre’s heavy breathing.
“I didn’t want you to clean it,” the ogre growled. “I wanted it to be worse!”
“Then why did you let a pixie in your house?”
“So you would mess things up.”