Wisp of a Thing

18

Curnen leaped off him, and he jumped to his feet. Bliss stood at the edge of the clearing.

Curnen crouched on the grass nearby, clutching the dress against her. Her limbs trembled as she tensed to either flee or attack. She growled.

“She’s making you see what you want to see,” Bliss continued. “We can all do that, to one extent or another. Look at her now.”

He did. Now Curnen was the same girl he’d seen in his room, with long limbs, strange toes, and too-big eyes. In her gaze, he saw only animal wariness.

“The common term is ‘glamour,’” Bliss said.

Rob got to his feet and moved away so he could keep an eye on both women. “Glamour,” he repeated. “Like fairies use?”

“Rob, please, catch a clue here. Remember what I told you before? We were here long before the Europeans, even before the so-called Native Americans. How do you think that can be true?”

“So you’re saying you two are fairies?”

With an impatient sigh, she nodded.

He remembered the dancing teenage girl. “That’s what I saw back at the fire. A fairy.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what all the Tufa are?”

She wanted to slap him. How many ways did he need to hear it? “Yes.” And there it was: the secret known only to the night wind and her riders, spoken plainly in inadequate human words to a man she’d known three whole days. Mandalay and the other First Daughters would be so proud of her.

“But… you drive trucks, and work, and—”

“Yes, I drive a truck, and go to work, and watch TV and worry about the economy and terrorism. We don’t live in a storybook, you know. We live in the world, just like you. We’re just not… of it.”

Curnen, back in her dress, slipped under his arm and pressed possessively against him. He was too startled by all this new information to resist. She reached for his face and tried to turn it down so she could kiss him.

“Curnen!” Bliss scolded. “Stop that. Not now!”

Curnen glared at Bliss and bared her teeth. She released Rob and moved toward her sister, but Bliss wasn’t intimidated. “Don’t mess with me, Curnen. Now, get out of here.”

Curnen stopped, threw back her head, and howled. It was the same sound Rob had heard that first night outside his room, and again at Doyle’s trailer. This close, it gave him goose bumps.

“Oh, stop it,” Bliss said. She fingered the fabric of the dress. “Whose garbage did you raid to get this, huh?”

Curnen slithered away—no other word described the quick, sinuous motion—and vanished into the darkness.

In the silence, Rob realized he heard nothing except insects and animals—no music, or traffic, or even airplanes overhead. No songs from the barn dance. Could he and Curnen have really run that far? Finally he asked, “So she got that dress from someone’s trash?”

“Yes. She’s mostly like a wild animal. She digs things up, buries things, thinks only in immediate sensation.”

“Because she’s inbred?”

Bliss’s eyes flashed with anger. “No. She’s my baby sister, I helped raise her and she was as normal as anyone once, she just—”

Then suddenly Bliss began to sob. She turned away and leaned against the nearest tree. Just like Rob at the picnic, things she’d kept under tight control burst out with no warning, all the pain and misery and loneliness.

Rob went to her, and she fell into his arms. He felt her tears against his still-bare chest, and she let him hold her up as her legs collapsed. “I’m sorry,” she said between cries, “I’m so sorry. I’m normally tougher than this, I just—”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Rob said. “Cry as long as you need to. You were there for me, I’m here for you.” He looked around the clearing for a sign of Curnen, but the other girl was gone. Above him, several of the kitelike objects flitted across the face of the full moon. The brief glimpse told him nothing, although he swore they had human legs and arms as well as big blurry wings.

Bliss was a dead weight now, her arms around his neck. He lowered her slowly to the ground and knelt beside her, trying to gently disentangle her. “Shh, it’s okay,” he said, stroking her hair. It was soft and deliciously smooth beneath his hand.

“It’s not okay!” she said fiercely, wrenching free to glare at him. “That was once a beautiful girl, with a voice like an angel! Now look at her!”

“Why do you let her live like this?” he asked. “What happened to her?”

“She lives like this because she has to,” Bliss said, wiping furiously at her eyes. “She’s the victim of someone’s hatred, the worst kind of curse.”

“Who?”

Bliss started to answer, but caught herself.

“Rockhouse?” he asked. “She’s got six fingers like he does. Is that who did it?”

She said nothing.

He sprawled back on the grass, wet against his spine, and gazed up at the stars. “Christ on a stick, Bliss. I don’t know what to believe here. You tell me you’re fairies, and that your sister’s cursed. You say I’m not a Tufa, but because someone smacked me in the head, I can see things only a Tufa can see. None of this makes any sense, you know.”

He turned to look at her. She gazed up at the moon, her back to him. Fireflies lazily swarmed around her, as if their light might provide consolation. Her shoulders shook with sobs, but she made no sound.

He got to his feet, stood behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I know you’re upset, and I’m not helping. Why don’t you just take me back to the motel and we’ll call it a night.”

She turned and looked up at him. “No. I need to sing you a song.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s our story, and you deserve to know it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do.” Curnen has claimed you, she wanted to say. If the curse is broken, she’ll be yours. If not, you’ll go down with her now and you don’t even know it. But she only repeated, “Yes, I do.”

She took his hands in hers, closed her eyes, and began:

She hummed a stanza of the melody before she resumed singing. As if she’d somehow conjured it, the treetops above them began to sway in the breeze. He shivered.

She looked into his face. Her dark hair fell away from her ivory shoulders. She held his gaze as she sang:

They stood quietly facing each other, holding hands. Another verse from that day at the post office went through his mind: Young women they’ll sing / Like birds in the bushes. It was almost as if the song had been a warning about the Overbay sisters.

She looked into his eyes. “So what do you think?”

He searched for the right word. “I’m… enchanted.”

She smiled, leaned closer, and softly, gently kissed him. It went on for a long time. It inspired no sexual passion, just a tenderness that drained away all anger and worry.

Curnen howled far in the distance. Coyotes joined in from all around, a chorus of loneliness counterpointing the lovers’ connection.

“Don’t worry, sister-girl,” she said to the night. “He’s still yours.”

“What do you mean by that?” he said, but a yawn cut him off.