A History of Glitter and Blood (13 page)

“What?”

“I probably sound crazy. I sound crazy. I just . . . I would really love to get a group of us together, and it will work so much better if we have a gnome too. Me, you guys, a gnome.”

“Like a study group?”

He laughs. “You're thinking book club, I'm guessing.”

“Shut up.”

He keeps laughing lightly and gives his head a shake. “An antiwar group.”

“The war is over. Shit. Shit.” She looks through the ropes. “That's Josha down there. He sees us. I should go.”

Piccolo glances down, but then looks immediately back to her. “Beckan, listen. This isn't peace. The gnomes are still scared to go aboveground, the tightropers are opening up shops like this isn't your city anymore, you're afraid to be seen with me. There can't be real peace during an occupation. We need to integrate, all of us. That's why we need a group. Being peaceful on your own, being quietly antiwar, it doesn't work.” He ties another rope to her wrist to help her down. “Just think it over? I'm really not asking anything. Just to get to sit down with all of you together, meet your gnome friend, maybe? See if we can get a few gnomes together who want peace?”

“Maybe,” she says, but she doesn't see any reason why not.

“Us young ones . . . we're the ones who can change things. We're not jaded and horrible and willing to accept that this will keep going and going. We feel things.”

Yes.

Yes, Beckan feels things.

And right now she feels that Piccolo is a little beautiful.

He rips something off his jacket and hands it to her. “Here. It's our flag. Get a gnome flag too. And a fairy flag.”

“There is no fairy flag.”

“We'll make one! Perfect. Now our group has a mission.” He smiles. “And then we'll make a joined flag. Combining features from all of them, stuff like that. It'll be a great way to bring us together at the beginning. Plus crafts are fun. Plus,” he says, again, more quietly. “I wouldn't hate spending more time with you.”

She says, “That's not the only mission I want to do.”

“Yeah?”

She clings to the rope with both hands and says, “I want to find Cricket.”

“Then we will.”

Josha is still standing there when they drop down from the ropes, arms crossed. But he doesn't seem angry. He seems playful.

“So who's this?” he says.

“Piccolo.” He offers his hand, and they shake. Josha is trying to be polite, but Beckan can see him sneaking glances at Piccolo. The last time he saw a tightroper was probably when they were laughing at him when he tried to join their army.

“What are you doing out?” she says.

“Scrap wanted me to come find you. He has a headache and he's all freaking out, worried because you said you'd be home.”

“Oh. Shit.”

He looks surprised. He expects her to be more formal in front of strangers. And now he's realizing that she knows Piccolo fairly well if she's cursing in front of him.

“So you made a friend, I see,” he says.

“He knew Cricket.”

“We're going to find him,” Piccolo says. “We'll get something organized. Search parties. I'm going to work on it.”

“Wow,” Josha says, quietly.

“He was lovely,” Piccolo says. “He had vision.”

Josha breathes out. “He totally had vision.”

She mills around while the two of them exchange small talk. They work in some more compliments of Cricket and some gentle ribs at Beckan's gnome-nose or lack of climbing skills.

“Do you want to come by to the cottage?” Beckan says. “Grab a drink or something? Better than talking on the streets.”

Josha hesitates, and Beckan is confused; she thought they were getting along wonderfully, but he says, “It's just Scrap. I think he . . . will want to talk to us alone about this. It's not about you, it's just, you know. Business.”

Piccolo nods.

Josha says, “Hanging out with tightropers . . . you know, it . . . didn't do Cricket any favors.”

Piccolo looks down and swallows and says, “I'm so sorry.”

Josha is quiet for a long time, and Beckan waits, wringing her hands, knowing that the next thing Josha says will be very important.

“I believe you,” Josha says, softly, like he's a little surprised.

No one had ever been louder than Josha. And then she met Cricket.

They used the word
loud
, but it wasn't volume that came from Cricket, it was magnitude. Words fell out of his mouth like it hurt to keep them contained, and he constantly laughed and touched and stole your clothes and tried them on in front of you and determined they looked much better on him than on you. He would tell anybody everything.

Stupid boy.

It was a fucking
war
.

Josha is very quiet on the walk back to the cottage.

“Sorry if I scared you,” Beckan says.

Josha startles and looks up. “What?”

She gives up. He isn't with her. He hasn't been in so long.

Scrap is in the kitchen, throwing dirty plates into the sink and scrubbing them with his whole arm. Nobody used to do dishes, since they all knew they were the first thing he headed for when he sleepwalked. They'd wake up to a spotless kitchen.

But he hasn't sleepwalked in weeks, and the dishes are piling up, and nobody knows what to say about it.

“How's your head?” Josha says.

“It's fine,” Scrap snaps, shoving the dishrag back and forth across the counter. “I don't have a headache.” The little wince he gives when he turns to look at Beckan isn't very convincing. “Where were you?”

“Whoa.”

“You've been gone
all
day. Tier hadn't seen you, Josha hadn't, who the fuck else was I supposed to ask, your father?
Where were you?
”

“Maybe I'll tell you if you calm down.” She takes the towel from him and shoves him toward a chair. “Will you sit down? You're still all hot.”

He balls his hand into a fist and pushes it into his forehead.

This morning, everything was fine. They were fine.

This is why it's easier not to give a shit. To just be high above it all.

“Did something happen today?” she says.

“What?”

“In the mines? You were all calm earlier—”

“Where were you?”

She says, “Scrap, come on. I was up on the ropes. I made friends with a tightroper boy. That one you caught a glimpse of last time. He knows you. You've met him.”

“Which one?”

“Piccolo.”

“Piccolo?” He sits up straight and stares at her. “You go make a new friend, and you choose the son of the major general?”

“No,” Beckan says. “No, he's not like that. He hates war. He hates the tightropers, for fuck's sake. He's their messboy.”

Josha says, “Listen to her, Scrap.”

“No. This is bullshit. Go hang out with Tier.”

“Are you kidding me?” She stares at him. “Don't get me wrong here, okay? I love Tier. But he's a gnome. You'd rather I be friends with a fairy-eating gnome—”

“Don't say that about Tier,” Scrap says, and she feels bad, she does, but Josha is over Scrap's shoulder, nodding, egging her on.

“—than a tightroper when they've never done shit to us . . . he bought my ring from Cricket, did you know that? He bought my ring. He's trying to start a peace movement. He wants to talk to you. To get to know you for real. To help us find Cricket. He's, I mean, he's a messboy, right? He has a broom. He can sweep the streets and everything, maybe find a little bit of Cricket.” She's fishing, obviously, and she knows it—they don't need a tightroper to show them how to push a broom—but Beckan knows the cards to play to shut Scrap up and plays them well.

Because he does still think about Cricket. He thinks about too much. He gets headaches.

And right now he doesn't say anything. Because Beckan knew Cricket and she knows how to use him. And she hates herself a little for it.

Beckan says, “Piccolo said he's met you. What did you think of him?”

He breathes out, long and slow.

“I thought he seemed nice,” he says, quietly. He adds, “But I've talked to him all of twice. I don't know the guy.”

“But he wants to know you. So maybe you could give him a chance before you freak completely out? I think you might actually like him if you took a second to stretch outside these weird prejudices you seem to have developed all of a sudden.”

Scrap looks like he's about to say something, but instead he deflates. “Yeah,” he says. “You're right.” He chews his cheek for a minute and says, “Sorry for yelling.”

“Did you have a bad day or something?”

He laughs, once. “Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.”

“Shit, honey. Did they hurt you?”

He shakes his head. “No. Everything's fine. Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Please?”

He shakes his head again.

She gives up. She's done enough today. She goes to her room and takes her father out of her nightstand, where she's had him locked for so long it makes guilt pool in her stomach. She holds the jar and feels like a girl in a book, and for once that doesn't make her happy. She's not a hero anymore. She's just helpless and written.

Scrap comes up
from the mines the next day with the news that Tier is looking for Beckan, so she resists the instinct to make herself pretty and goes down in her sweatshirt and sneakers, even though it's too hot to be that covered up. The point is that they're not whoring clothes.

“You have to stop hiring me,” she says, stripping off the sweatshirt as she enters his cave. But he isn't alone. There is Rig, beside him, one ankle crossed over the other.

She is big and brown, like she was carved right out of rock.

Beckan stuffs her sweatshirt in her tote bag. She is nervous in a way she hasn't been with Tier in a very long time.

“I'm sorry,” she says, to Rig. “If I'd known you were here, I wouldn't have come.”

“Beckan,” Tier says.

“No, come on, she doesn't want to see me.”

“I asked him to get you,” Rig says.

Beckan stops.

Rig says, “I wanted to talk to you.”

Tier leans over and gives Rig a miniscule kiss on the cheek before he scoots off the bed and out of his room. He doesn't touch Beckan.

Rig doesn't indicate if Beckan should sit next to her, so she doesn't. Rig stays still, and Beckan wanders the room like it's new to her, touching books on the shelves that she's read and ones that she's never noticed before, a picture Tier drew of his father, the picture of Rig.

“Beckan?” Rig says.

She snaps her head up.

“Are you afraid of me?”

She tries to find the words.

Rig says, “Please don't be.”

“What do you have to eat?”

“You're hungry?”

Beckan shakes her head, and Rig seems to understand.

She says, “There's . . . carnage from the war, still. Tightropers. Some of our own. It's better than what we got while we were . . . The tightropers, they don't eat meat. They don't have the stomachs for it.”

“And there aren't any fairies.”

“No. You'd know if we had one. You could tell from up above. The glitter cooks off and . . . it makes that yellow smoke.”

Her breath catches.

They do have a fairy.

They had one a few days ago.

She saw the smoke.

Rig is lying.

Beckan takes a step back.

Bad bad this is bad. Bad.

Where did they get a fairy?

They haven't found the smallest crumb of Cricket
.

Beckan forces herself to calm down. Tier wouldn't hurt her, she thinks. Tier wouldn't even hurt Scrap. He would never leave her somewhere unsafe. He loves her.

And maybe Rig knows that.

“You're scared of me,” Rig says. “I knew it. You're scared of me?” Beckan nods before she can stop herself.

“No, Beckan, don't be. I just . . . I wanted to talk to someone. About Tier, and . . . well. You know him. And there just aren't many girls around. There were nurses up there who spit at us and there were the gnome girls stolen with me, but we were locked separately, we never . . . I need to talk to a girl.”

“I know,” Beckan says. Because she does too. Every day she feels words inside her that she wants to tell a girl, that she wants to giggle to her old neighbor or the women at the grocery store. She wants someone she can say the word
empty
to without getting rolled eyes or blank stares or a Cricket-style speech about how she shouldn't let the demands of society and masculine influence trick her into thinking that she wants a baby. She wants someone she can just tell that she wants a fucking baby.

If she does. Sometimes she does. She should be allowed to want one.