Thistle Down

Twenty-seven

CHASE SLAMMED OUT THE BACK DOOR of Dick and Dusty’s house. He hurt all over. He’d been awake too long. The need to take down a dangerous corrupter of children burned inside him. He needed to hold Dusty in his arms and let her cry out her fears before he could reassure her.

Damn, but he thought Dusty would return his affection for longer than ten minutes once he fixed the stupid music box for her. Didn’t she know how hard it was for him to accept help from Pixies? They fit into tiny places and bent broken parts back into shape when his fat fingers just made things worse.

“Okay, Dusty. Time to stop being polite and hash this out,” he muttered.

Where would she go? The museum basement, of course.

A tiny blue Pixie sat on the yew hedge that lined the fence. He shook his head and pursed his lips.

“This hurt is older and more primitive than her work at the museum. She’s gone to The Ten Acre Wood,” Chicory told him.

“You sure about that, buddy?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I tagged her all the way over there. Do you know how far that is? I’m exhausted. No mere human is worth that much effort.”

“Dusty is.”

“Then go after her. If you truly love her. Stay here and dither if you don’t.”

“You’re a pest.”

“Yeah, but a wise one.” Chicory bounced up and dove deep into the yew where Chase couldn’t grab him. “Fix this before you take down that half blood, Haywood Wheatland. We’ll all be grateful to you when you do.” He flew back toward Mabel’s house and a well earned rest.

Chase turned his steps toward The Ten Acre Wood. Not that far away, about three blocks, in human terms. Maybe that was a couple of miles to a Pixie. He didn’t know. Didn’t really care.

He just had to set things straight with Dusty. See where they really stood; see if there was any chance at all.

With each step he found himself stomping harder until he hit the gravel patch at the end of Center Street. Tiny rocks rolled out from under his feet and he just kept marching through the drainage ditch onto the game trail that looked too overgrown for the end of summer when kids had been in and out of here every day for three months.

Two steps farther and he stopped in confusion. The place was dim, too quiet, almost sad. Birds and bugs and Pixies should be buzzing about gathering pollen, capturing the morning dew before it evaporated. Nothing moved. He couldn’t even hear the traffic down along the river road.

Sword ferns that bent over the trail drooped. The Oregon grape leaves had lost luster, their clusters of green berries, tiny, hard, and bitter. And sparse. The foxgloves that should stand nearly six feet tall around the edges of the woods had gone to seed long before they reached any taller than his waist.

Something was terribly wrong with The Ten Acre Wood. Like it had lost all of its magic. Its will to survive.

He wanted to say it had been cursed by Faery fire. Preposterous. Or was it?

He crept forward, careful to avoid making any noise. Some of the dullness lightened in the air as he approached the dried-up pond at the center. He expected a lot of mud with a trickle of a stream meandering toward the waterfall at the cliff edge and the path toward the river. He found hard-baked mud with dandelions and coarse grasses shouldering their way through cracks in the solid barrier. No water at all. No deer tracks. Not even raccoon paw prints.

Aghast, he stopped and stared at the withered landscape. The Patriarch Oak seemed to have retreated behind more scrub hardwoods and weeds. Its leaves sagged beneath the weight of dirt. Very little green peaked through the muddy covering.

A quiet snuffle alerted him to someone else standing nearby.

Dusty stared at the same barren depression he did. She stood beneath a limp vine maple to his left.

“Dusty?”

“It’s ruined. Even before the first chain saw fires up, it’s ruined!”

“I know. There’s a sadness here. A vulnerability.” He edged closer to her, needing reassurance that life continued despite the sere landscape.

“The woods know what awaits them,” she whispered.

“We can fix this. We have to.” He gestured to encompass the entire wood and themselves. “Can we fix what’s between us, Dusty?”

“I don’t know.” She snuffled again.

“Why did you run?”

“It seemed the right thing to do.”

“How?”

“You accused Haywood of being behind the plot to destroy The Ten Acre Wood. I was starting to like him. He was the first man I chose to date. It was my decision, not my mother’s or Dick’s. Just me.”

“He seems like a logical suspect. Thistle had some information she shared after you left.”

“But… but he kissed me. It was magic. I can’t be that bad a judge of character. I know I can’t!”

Anger sent heat to Chase’s head and heart. “When and where have you given yourself the opportunity to learn enough about people in general to judge a man’s character?”

He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. He got as far as reaching for her.

“What about you, Chase Norton? I thought I knew you. I thought I could trust you.”

“I fixed your damn music box!”

“Then you go manufacturing evidence against a man who says he loves me. A man who makes my heart lighter and my toes tingle.”

“I didn’t manufacture anything. I found evidence that links him to this operation. Thistle watched him give bad mushrooms disguised in chocolate to a bunch of kids, encouraging them to blow up the cell tower and start fires with illegal fireworks. They talked about tipping over the Ferris wheel at the carnival.”

“You drew conclusions on bits and pieces of evidence because you can’t stand that I like him. Thistle doesn’t like him. She hasn’t… she…”

Too angry to speak, he clenched her tight against him and ground his mouth into hers.

She pounded his chest with her fists. Three blows came sharp and fierce and frightened.

He loosened his grip and softened his kiss, tasting, savoring the tenderness of her inexperience. If this was the only time in his life he got to hold her this close, he needed to make the most of it.

Then her fingers spread and clutched his shirt. She rose on tiptoe to come closer.

His blood sang. The world fell away.

And still they kissed, explored, cherished this moment out of time. Nothing existed but the two of them.

They pressed closer. He needed to merge with her body, mind, and soul, become one being, one thought, one life.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take advantage of her innocence and inexperience. With a monumental effort, he contented himself with exploring her mouth, her eyes, her neck, with his kisses.

Slowly they relaxed and drew apart.

Chase’s hands shook and his knees knocked together.

“What just happened?” he whispered into her hair, too afraid of shattering into a million pieces if he let her go.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Dusty, I…”

“This is too much! Too soon.” She wrenched away from him and ran, thrashing through the woods. “I don’t know who to trust. Who to love.”

“Dusty!”

The only reply was the sound of a sapling thwapping against a bigger tree as she thrust it aside in her headlong flight.