Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale (6 page)

“And now, if I were you, I’d get out there and do what I had to do—trust your instincts. You won’t be alone.”

“Right,” I said. The whole scene was surreal. I’d been incredibly happy, tense, confused, sad—over the past 24 hours, everything in my boring backwoods life had changed, and I’d have been relieved to learn at that point that I was truly losing my mind, because at least that would have meant that the world wasn’t completely different than what I’d thought all my life.

I started to take the skates off and put my old ones back on.

“Don’t,” the Coach said. “Those are indoor/outdoor wheels. You can wear those everywhere.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to mess up my special skates,” I said. Before I could get both skates all the way off, the Coach took my old ones and threw them through the window of the skate rental room. He pointed at the new skates. “Those are your skates now, Deb. Wear those.”

There was no point in arguing, but I still felt guilty wearing them out on the street. As I pushed open the exit door, the Coach shrugged.

“Special skates,” he said. “Tougher than they look.” He grinned, and I saw the tusks again, for a fleeting moment.

I rolled out of the rink—straight into a black cloud. Smoke billowed from the windows of Coach’s van. The tinted fishbowl windows held dollops of flame, side-panel airbrushed mermaids warping brown and black in the heat.

“My van!” Coach screamed. He ran to the passenger side and threw open the door. He fumbled with the glove compartment, the flames lighting his snazzy London Fog jacket.

“Coach, let it go!” I said. “Get out before you get hurt!”

“You get out, Deb!” he said. “Out of town!” He grabbed something from the dash of the van and jumped back out, patting the flames out with his bare hands. “I’ve told you too much already,” he repeated. “This is a warning—now go! Go, Deb, and don’t look back.”

Chapter 5.5

Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight

Harlow

So much for the old guy’s mansa. What was left of it amounted to the size of a small camping tent, but even that much was engulfed in flame.

Coach leaned into it desperately, rooting for something inside.
Probably some favorite talisman.
There was the girl, with him. But was she a girl? Her scent hit me in patches—there’d be nothing but a trace, then it would hit me, like a prairie caught on fire. The sooty odor of the mansa on fire hung all around me, and through it, I tried to shake her out. She looked fully human, but she smelled familiar, like a long-lost friend.

Whatever she was, Coach’s glamour worked on her. She appeared to be seeing a burning passenger van, although since Coach had glamoured over top of other spells, there were also flickers of his wooden gypsy cabin spiraling up through the smoke, as well. I wondered how she was interpreting that.

I stood on a hilltop overlooking the parking lot. There were no sirens blaring, and though the smoke was thick, I began to wonder if anyone could see it at all, except for us magical folk. If that was the case, then McJagger himself might be responsible. Dave surely was privy to all the same sort of spells and bewitcheries that his father had, but he wasn’t likely to think outside the box while his dad was still around to do it for him. Why be a hardworking king when he could skate by as a lazy prince? But did Jag have the time to be cleaning up Dave’s messes?

Speaking of skating, the girl took off. These were not the same skates I’d seen her in before—and they had a sort of glow about them, so that when she strode over the asphalt street, she seemed to be skating on smooth glass. She looked over her shoulder at Coach, who was gesturing for her to go.

He cocked his head in my direction and I knew he had either seen or smelled me.

“Don’t look back, Roller Deb!” he yelled.

Roller Deb.

He spoke to her like she was a human, but why would a periphery troll like Coach give a pair of enchanted skates to a mortal? Certainly the price he’d pay for stirring up trouble like that was not going to end with the burning of his mansa.

Coach was lucky. Although some trolls find power within their mansa and seek to build bigger and bigger homes, the Coach was never into that sort of power trip. Like me, his home was temporary in nature, movable, and he was free. Someone like Dave or Jag—they may command armies, but they’re tied down to their lairs in a way that the Coach and I would never be.

I approached him across the parking lot, as the girl strode away on her new skates. Coach smiled as he watched her go, then dropped his glamour completely to turn and embrace me.

“The time has come, Harlow. And here you are, to bring in the new era.”

“You’ve been breathing in too many fumes from this fire, Old Man,” I said. “Is there faeth burning in there or something?”

He laughed, but he put his arm around my shoulders and guided me inside the rink—a tricky feat, considering I was at least two feet taller than him.

“At least they didn’t burn the whole place,” he said.

“Yet,” I answered.

The Coach walked behind the bar of the snack counter, opened up the ice maker, and pulled out two Little Kings. The tiny bottles were smaller than either of our pinky fingers, but it was a good laugh, so I thanked him and tossed mine down the hatch, bottle and all.

“McJagger’s not coming anywhere near this rink, or this town again, if everything goes the way Zelda sees it,” Coach said.

“Zelda?” I asked. Another godmother figure to me, the old fortune teller wasn’t particularly renowned for her dependability—not since she’d foreseen that my parents and their friends the Wheelers would overthrow Jag in the early 1990s. Jag had taken her at her word, and killed all four of the adults in my life, along with the baby girl—what was her name? I couldn’t remember. Sometimes I thought I had it, then poof.

The Coach seemed to see the wheels turning in my head, and when I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, he held up a palm to me.

“No, no, go ask Zelda yourself,” he said. “And don’t waste any time.”

“I’ll go right now,” I said. “But, I feel like I should be following that skater girl.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” the Coach said, laughing. “Well, take her with you, then. I’m sure Zelda’s dying to meet her. Get a move on, though. She’s got a twenty minute head-start, and considering how close she is to fledging out, not to mention she’s on enchanted skates—well, she’s gonna be a tough one to catch.”

“Fledging out?” I asked. I had no idea what he meant.

“Just go and get her, Harlow. You’ll figure it out, son. You always do.”

Chapter Six

How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?

Deb

Coach might not have wanted me to look back, but I was quickly running out of places I could look. There was no way I was going back to my Mom for help, and Derek lived too close to her to consider stopping by his house. Pretty sad that Derek was my most viable option for assistance at that point, but the fact was, I needed someone to talk to—someone to help me make a plan.

Even if I did have someone to talk to, how exactly was I supposed to find my sister? Pretty much all roads were pointing to Dave and his band of nasties, and I wasn’t in a hurry to face him. Prophecy or no lousy prophecy, I had no idea how to tackle the Midwest Crank Mafia all by myself.

I skated to the square downtown, and stopped for a Coke on the front steps of the old Endris Drugstore. Where I’m from, all sodas are “Cokes.” My favorite kind of Coke just happens to be Mr. Pibb.

I was considering whether or not to try skating into their tiny public restroom for a break, when the bright red Mustang from earlier pulled in. Laurence Yoder again.

He leaned his head out the window, revving the engine and laughing, before killing it. “C’mere,” he called.

“As if,” I said.

I was afraid of him, to be honest—bigger than me, dumber than all, he relied on brute strength to make his way in the world. I knew I didn’t have to answer him—I could have gone into Endris’s—but for some reason I felt compelled to take it there.

“Why’d you throw the beer cans at me, Yoder?”

“Why do you skate across town like a fag?” he countered, smirking at his own joke.

“Girls aren’t fags, idiot,” I said. “Dykes, maybe. But not fags.” I turned and climbed the stairs on my skates.

“Wait, wait,” Yoder said. “I’m sorry. That was shitty of me.” He lit a cigarette and leaned on the Mustang. “I actually think your skates are kind of cool.”

I stared at him sideways. “Yeah. Sure you do. Later, Yoder.”

He reached into the driver’s window and lay on the car horn.

“C’mon! Go for a ride!” he yelled.

I shook my head and went into the store. Even after all my adventures to date, I’ve never known anything as odd as a small-town teenage boy.

The cashier glared at me. “Tell your boyfriend to lay off the horn, would ya?” she said. I nodded, grateful that she hadn’t reacted to my skates. Sometimes, I swear to God, you’d think that no one over the age of 40 had had a day of fun in their whole lives.

Once I’d waited Yoder out, I took off from the drugstore and started skating toward school. I still didn’t know what to do or who to ask for help, but I knew that ideas never came easily to me standing still. I brainstormed my options—confront Dave head on? Stalk him?

The Mustang pulled up behind me, again. I skated faster, but Yoder’s horsepower won out. He pulled around me and onto the curb, killing the engine and nearly causing me to skate right into the car.

“I won’t take no for an answer, rollergirl,” he called from inside the dark sports coupe.

What would happen if I turned and skated away? He wasn’t giving up, whatever his motivation was. Should I scream bloody murder until help came? Would help come?

My frustration was only getting worse, and for no good reason at all, I got into the car.

“What the fuck do you want, Yoder?” I slammed the door and turned sideways in the bucket passenger seat, to face him.

He didn’t make eye contact, but steered the car back onto the road and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m supposed to take you to a party,” he said.

“You’re supposed to what?”

“I was told that if you didn’t make it to the party tonight at Graber’s farm…well, let’s put it this way—I don’t have any choice. I’m taking you and that’s that.”

Chapter 6.5

Hungry Like the Wolf

Harlow

Humans are suckers for drama. Trolls aren’t. That’s more of a fairy thing—they’re quite good at it.

When Coach told me to go and look for Deb, to help her, that wasn’t normal inter-troll behavior. I want to say trolls are more “laid-back” than that, but that doesn’t really work.

When a human is “laid-back,” they’re easygoing and cool. When a troll is lying on his back, he’s either dead, or playing dead and about to strike you in your soft spot with a mace. They’ve made a sport of it, actually. I don’t recommend it. Take up something the whole family can enjoy instead.
Ladies Home Journal
always has nice articles about tennis, for example.