didn’t go easy. He fought and wrestled with Death for nigh on three years.”
Thistle busied herself picking up stray pieces of paper where the woman had dropped them on the floor. She stacked them neatly on the coffee table for Mrs. Jennings’ son to sort through when he came tomorrow or the next day.
“And how old was your mother when she passed?” Thistle asked idly. She frowned at the congealed mass of the meal on the tray. Could she make the microwave work to reheat it?
“Mama only made it to ninety-two. Her heart gave out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You must have been heartbroken to lose her.” Thistle picked up the tray with the meal. What could she do to make it taste better?
“Turn on the TV, girl. It’s time for my game shows. I’m ninety-five, you know, and not as spry as I used to be.”
“Ninety-five? Is that all?” Thistle fished the TV remote out of a side pouch on Mrs. Jennings’ chair and handed the gadget to the feisty woman. It wouldn’t work if Thistle hit the power button.
“Just dump that awful mess in the garbage and make me an egg salad sandwich.” The old woman’s gaze riveted on the bright colors, spinning wheel, and applause on the television.
“You remind me of someone,” Mrs. Jennings said absently as Thistle made her way toward the kitchen.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I had an invisible playmate when I was a kid. I called her Thistle ’cause she had purple skin and barbed green wings, just like a thistle. Never had the heart to pull thistles out of my garden even though everyone told me they were weeds.”
Thistle stopped short. “Mavis. Your given name is Mavis, and you lived one block away toward the setting sun and two blocks on the uphill road. There’s a spindly stand of lilacs separating your yard from the neighbor’s across the back.”
“Those lilacs ain’t so spindly no more. They growed so big my son has to whack ’em back almost by half at the end of every summer. How’d you know that? You ain’t but twenty-five or so. Why, I’ll eat that god-awful mess of a lunch if you’re a day over twenty-six.”
Thistle plunked the tray back on the walker. “Actually, I’m twenty-seven. Or I will be at the Equinox,” she half lied.
Her chin trembled with sadness, and moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes.
Pixies could live forever if angry little girls didn’t put them in jars with wolf spiders, or cars squished them, or someone cut down their tribal territory.
Humans grew old and cranky like Mrs. Jennings. Any joy Thistle might find with Dick would be short. He’d never fly up to the top of the Patriarch Oak with her. They’d never be able to…
“Do you need anything else, Mrs. Jennings? I think the heat is getting to me. I have a headache. I need to go home now.” Home to Pixie before her heart broke so completely she’d never recover.
Dick whistled a jaunty little tune he almost remembered the words to. Something about chiming bells and little Pixies.
Pixies. Like Thistle.
He stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk between his car and a group of medical offices.
Thistle and that amazing kiss. For a few minutes this morning he felt like he’d been transported to heaven floating on a sparkling cloud of many wondrous colors.
A cloud of Pixie dust. If Thistle could shoot Pixie dust into a lock, then she was still a Pixie. She’d never be fully human.
He wavered over to a bench beside a tree that overhung the office building, shading it from the glare of a too bright, too hot sun.
“You look the same today as you did sixteen years ago when you kissed me the first time, Thistle. You haven’t aged a day. Do Pixies ever grow old and die?”
His bright daydreams of marrying Thistle, having children with her, growing old together, crumbled to dull, gray ashes.
Twenty-four
THISTLE WANDERED AIMLESSLY toward Dick and Dusty’s house. Somehow she didn’t have the heart or the will to return to the old house that held so many good memories.
Her tummy growled with hunger and her throat ached from thirst. And from crying.
Somehow, without knowing quite how, she found herself on the block behind Mabel’s house. A narrow footpath ran between two old houses, small ones. The space between the immaculate dwellings looked wider than normal and the path appeared well used. She followed it idly into a long strip of wild land that ran between the houses on Mabel’s street and the one at the beginning of the path.
She stepped onto the pounded dirt where thistles encroached. The jagged leaves left her alone, but a creeping blackberry vine snagged her leg. As she bent to gently untangle it, soft male voices reached her.
She froze in place.
“You did good, bringing down that cell phone tower,” Haywood Wheatland chuckled.
“That was awesome!” a younger voice replied. It cracked on the last syllable, climbing upward into a child’s range.
Young, just beginning to reach for manhood.
She crept forward, one small step in front of the other until the path opened up into a meadow dotted with goldenrod and Lamb’s Tail shrubs. Across the open space, beside the iron gate that led from Mabel’s backyard into the wild strip sat Haywood Wheatland on an overgrown park bench. Five youths leaned against the bench or stumps or sprawled on the ground in a semicircle around him.
“And here’s your reward for bringing down the eyesore of poisonous steel,” Haywood said. He held out his hand, revealing five brown lumps. The scent of chocolate rose from the warmth of his skin.
“Eeww! Looks like cat poop. I’m not going to eat that crap,” one of the boys said. He looked to be the largest of the group, taller by half a head and broader in the shoulder with just a hint of beard shadow on his chin and upper lip. His voice remained deep and secure.
“These are different chocolates. Special chocolates. Once you’ve tasted these, you won’t settle for what your mother puts into cookies,” Hay replied in a soothing voice. A bit of gold began to glow around his head. “These will take you on a wilder ride than when we went inside the computer and played your war games for real.” He smiled secretly.
“Cool, man!” a boy from the middle of the pack and the age group said, reaching eagerly for his treat.
“And when the chocolate and mushroom are fully into your mind, you and I will try something new. Maybe we’ll stop all the carnival rides at the same time, and make the Ferris wheel topple.”
“More awesome than the cell tower coming down right on top of all those bulldozers?” the leader asked.
Thistle gasped. She needed to stop this. She needed to warn Dusty.
Quickly, she turned to run away.
The pesky blackberry snaked out across the path and tripped her.
Her face met the ground. With an aching groan, she tried to get up, only to find herself trapped by more prickly vines and a rock bigger than her fist flying through the air directly toward her head.
Two hours later she staggered back to her bed, too dazed and sore to remember what she needed to do, or why.
“Do you see the curving pile of rotting lumber?” Dusty pointed to one of the biggest disappointments in her life.
