Happy birthday to me!
Chapter Nine
"I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more, is none." - Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII
"Jeeze, lady, could you have sprung it on her any less bluntly?" The voice came from the corner of the patio where I could have sworn only a potted fern stood before. Now, a teenage girl sat on the edge of the fern. She looked to be about sixteen, with combat boots, dirty jeans, and a black pull over sweat shirt that had seen better days. Her hair was short and spiky, and had been colored bright pink.
I was slightly gratified to see that Maisie seemed to be just as startled by the girl's abrupt appearance as I was. Of course, I was still several leagues ahead in the shock olympics, considering what I had just been told. Was I really some reincarnation of one of those old women that measure and cut the string of life? If I was, it would take the nightmares I had about those ladies after seeing Disney's version of Hercules to entire new levels of irony.
"You are not to disturb us, creature." Maisie all but growled from beside me. I had the feeling she was pretty close to using her old point and kill routine. "Begone, and remember your place. Your domain is the ground. It's foolish for you to stray so far from it." She indicated the skyline around us.
At the sliding glass door, Micky appeared silently. In his right hand he held the same gun that I'd seen him with earlier. At least I assumed it was the same gun. But for all I knew, he had an entire arsenal tucked under his bed. He stood with the weapon as though to back up his mother's threat. Which, at this point, was kind of like the chihuahua that backs up the threat of the doberman. Lots of enthusiasm, not much point. His appearance did serve to remind me that I still didn't know who this Darryll was that he had mentioned.
The newcomer glanced sidelong toward the tall man in the doorway before turning her attention back to the obviously irritated Maisie. She raised her hands to her chest in mock surprise. "My domain is the ground? Well, **** on a shingle. I guess I better get back down there, huh?" She looked at me then, eyes sparkling mischiviously. "Hey you. You wanna see something cool?"
"Uhhh." That was as far as I got before the girl was running straight at me. Maisie raised her hand and shouted. Micky reacted quickly enough to pull his gun into line, but held his fire as his target passed his mother. Which should have made me feel better about being able to beat the woman if he was worried about hurting her. But at the moment I was still stuck back on the last couple h's of my uhhh. These people were executing Matrix precision ballet maneuvers and I sounded like I was learning the vowels. This was not a fair fight.
The pink haired bullet crashed into me a second later and I felt her arms tighten around my waist. Then there was a brief but sharp pain in my side as we smacked off the railing before tipping over it. I heard Maisie scream once more and there was a brief sensation of weightlessness before everything began to plummet. I believe my stomach fell so fast it arrived several minutes ahead of time and established a base camp.
The next few seconds were filled with screaming, cursing, and even begging. "Ohhh **** yes! Hell yeah! Oh god please let me do this again! Whoooooo!" Yeah, that was the girl. I was too shocked to do anything except make a strangled and inarticulate cry.
We plummetted toward the ground. My scream rose to match my insane and suicidal companion's, for completely different reasons. I heard her shout. "Now you're getting into it!" I would have strangled her if my hands weren't busy frantically trying to sign 'Save Me' in case God was deaf. You never knew.
Abruptly, a wave of vertigo swept over me as we fell. I cringed and closed my eyes as my stomach rolled, and then we weren't falling any more. It was sudden, and should have been jarring, but somehow wasn't. All of that momentum had simply vanished.
Convinced that I was hallucinating, or had somehow died painlessly, I slowly opened my eyes. Cautiously, I peeked around. I was standing on grass, next to a tree. A couple of guys were flying a kite a little ways off, and there were a few joggers making their way along the path nearby. I was back in the park, several miles away from the hotel.
Before I could do more than let out a choke sob of relief as I grabbed onto the tree before my weak and shaking knees could dump me to the ground, the pink haired girl appeared once more. She popped up from the side, clapping me on the shoulder. "Hell yeah! That's an exit. Am I right? That was sweet. Did you see the look on those idiot's faces? ****, I wish I had a camera."
Still breathing hard, I raised my gaze to hers and, with some effort, managed to speak. "Who are you?" There were a few other things I wanted to ask, such as how we were still alive, but my brain was too busy trying to convince itself that we weren't dead to send the question to my mouth.
The girl flashed an impish grin. "Often. And before we get into some kind of Abbott and Costello routine, that's my name. Often. " She raised her hand, quickly taking mine. "And you're Macbeth. Good to meet you. Put her there." Holding my hand in place, the girl slapped it and then turned her hand over for me to slap hers. After I awkwardly did so, she snapped her fingers and gave me a thumbs up. "Yeah, baby. We aced them."
By now my brain had convinced itself that we really weren't dead, and I managed to ask. "How?! What the hell was that?! What just happened?"
Laughing slightly, Often gestured. "Oh relax, we just did a little Tree Surfing." When I looked at her blankly, she withdrew a pack of gum from her pocket while explaining. "When I'm close enough to a plant, I can enter it and pop out again wherever I want. So I just pulled us through that palm tree in front of the hotel to here. I guess we could have entered through that fern again instead of jumping off the building, but where's the fun in that?" Unwrapping her gum, she popped the piece into her mouth before offering me the pack. "Blue raspberry?"
Numbly, I took the gum and stared at her. "But, how is that possible?" Okay yeah, my asking that was pretty dumb considering everything I've seen already. Strangely, seeing the impossible repeatedly does not make you immune to believing something is impossible.
Often's lip twitched in a slight smirk before she gestured with one arm. "How is anything you do possible? ****, girl, compared to you I'm Joe Average." Leaning back against the tree then, she continued. "But fine, I guess I could explain. I'm a nymph, a dryad specifically." At my look, she rolled her eyes. "Oh, what? You'll believe you and some old hag are two of the Fates, but a super powered tree hugger is too much?"
She had a point, and she had just sort of rescued me. Which reminded me. "I have to go back. If I don't go with them, my parents are dead."
"If you do go back, a lot more people are going to die, babe." Often shook her head and cracked her knuckles. "And that **** will kill whoever she wants to, whether you're there or not. If you went there, she'd tell you to do something really bad. When you refused, she'd threaten your parents again. At least this way she has to find you before she can threaten them. She won't kill them for no gain, Macbeth. She needs to hold them over you."
That made me consider. "Okay, I guess so. As long as she can't threaten me, she can't carry out the threat." There was some kind of backwards logic there, but it sounded good enough. Besides, the girl was right. Even if I was there, I wouldn't be able to stop Maisie from doing whatever she wanted to. And if she tried to make me do something terrible, I'd have to choose between doing that and letting my parents die. This at least delayed that choice and gave me a chance to come up with a third option.
"Exactly." Often pointed across the street. "Come on, let's grab some tacos. I'm gonna pass out from hunger in a minute." Whistling, the mythical dryad punk girl began to walk with baffling casualness. I have said many times that my life is strange to epic proportions. This day was tipping even that scale.
For lack of any better ideas, and an obvious curiosity, I followed my apparent ally. "So, I thought dryads were supposed to be spiritual and, like, dancing in the trees with satyrs."
Often shot me a scornful look over her shoulder. "And I thought human beings were running around in loin cloths making animal noises. Oh wait, that changed too." At the door into the Taco Bell, she paused and added. "Things evolve, babe. Not everyone is stuck in the history books."
Following her inside, I nodded slightly. The insanity of things that I was willing to accept was approaching some kind of critical mass. "Okay, but why did you bail me out of there? Not that I'm not grateful, but how'd you know I was even there?"
We made our way to the counter, and the girl remained silent on the subject while she ordered several platters worth of food. After slipping the old woman at the register a couple wrinkled bills, she picked up two of the trays and started toward a table in the back. "Grab that one and come on."
I took the other tray and followed her to the back. After we sat down, she grabbed a burrito and started to unwrap it. "Dig in, before it's all gone. So, you wanted to know how I knew where you were and why I pulled you out?" The girl took a large bite and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before answering. "I knew where you were because I've been looking for you. I saw that old bat and her psycho offspring pick you up at the park. I rescued you because, well, I don't feel like letting Satan's dirty old grandmother talk you into doing whatever she had planned."
"Well, thanks for that." I quickly opened a taco and started to devour it. "And for this. You're like a fairy godsister or something. You could have warned me about that jump though."
She laughed. "And miss the look on your face? You totally thought you were about to splatter." Winking, the girl pried the lid off of the nachos. "It's cool though. I couldn't do the stuff you do."
Pausing as I unwrapped a second taco, I shook my head. "How do you know what I do? I mean, the last time I checked I didn't give any kind of interview or anything."
"Oh please." Often waved her hand with a cheese drenched chip. "Nymphs are the original gossip line. As soon as you started your hero schtic, the rumors and news were flying across the country. You've got a fan club. And well, more enemies than you know."
"Great." I leaned on my elbow. "Because the enemies I do know about aren't enough of a problem."
The girl munched her nachos for a moment before shrugging. "Like I said, you've got a fan club too. There's people who appreciate what you do. And some of us want to help. I heard you were in Miami and thought I'd look you up. Besides, as soon as I found out that old bint was around, I knew she was looking for you."
I watched in brief silence as Often pushed the now empty tray away and started in on the second. She was putting food away as fast as she could unwrap it. Slightly awed, I finished my second taco. "Well, I'm glad you were around. But I'm still not sure what I should do about all this." I hesitated, and then asked. "She was right then? I'm supposed to be this... Merai?"
After taking a long sip of her soda, Often corrected me. "Moirai. And yeah, as far as anyone knows anyway. Kind of a lot to take in, huh?"
"You're telling me." I started to eat a chalupa then while considering my next options. "I still need to do something before a bus gets blown up, and now there's Maisie and her spawn to deal with. Too bad life isn't like grammar. Then I could let two negatives cancel each other out and I'd be good to go."
Grinning at that, the other girl nodded quickly. "That'd be sweet. But, what was that about a bus?" She was quiet while I explained what I'd seen, then she flinched. "Damn, that's a bummer. But you've got that cop guy working on it? You gonna give him a little..." She moved in her seat a little with her arms up, a grinding motion. "... bump and hump to celebrate if you pull it off?"
I swear my face could not possibly have gone a deeper shade of red. "He's like twice my age, Often!" I hissed at her with a reflexive glance around. Yeah, I've got strange ideas of confidentiality. I can talk about dryads and seeing the future in plain view of anyone, but as soon as sex gets put on the table I've got to make sure we're alone.
The nymph's gentle laughter at my reaction was musical. "So? At least you know he's old enough to know what he's doing. Personally I don't usually go for anyone under a hundred. It's too much work to teach them what they're doing wrong."
"Wait." I siezed onto the slight change of subject like a life preserver. "Under a hundred? So you're not really a teenager."
The girl giggled once more. "I'm two hundred and ten. But I look pretty good for my age, huh?" She winked and flashed her quick smile. "Dryads live a long time. By human standards, I'm about your age." Stirring the straw through her soda briefly, she asked. "So really, what are you going to do right now?"
I leaned back in my seat to consider, and glanced up toward the register at the sound of someone arguing with the clerk up there. Then I froze and stared before pushing myself up. "I'm going to find a phone and call Tavelli."
Often was beside me then, clapping me on the back. "That's the spirit! You ride that mature stallion like..." She trailed off at my dirty look. "What?"
I nodded to the front. "See that?"
She followed my line of sight and shrugged. "Some crazy chick ****ing about her order. So?"
My feet were already carrying me to the door where I had seen a payphone. "That chick is a lot more crazy than you know. That's the woman that's going to blow up the bus. She's here."
Unfortunately, we never made it to the door. Before we were halfway there, a sudden gunshot rang out through the store. The sound made me jerk back, nearly crashing into my companion. At the front, our good old fashioned mortal crazy woman held a gun high the air. She was looking directly at both of us, even as one of the employees screamed. With a glint of obvious insanity, the boyfriend killer shouted. "All of you sit the hell down and shut up! I'm in charge now!"
I stood still and slowly glanced sideways toward my companion. She eyed me back and gave a slight shrug. "Well," She offered. "At least you found her."
