'Nuala, can we just have, like, a cease-fire? I mean, you can go back to calling me an ass and trying to lure me to my death tomorrow and I'll go back to treating you like a psychotic bitch and researching ways to exorcize you in the morning, but seriously, can we just have a cease-fire for tonight? 'Cause, seriously, trying to think about this is making my head hurt, and--can we just go somewhere and get some food or something? Is there even someplace that has food at this time of night?'
Her face was unreadable. 'I just keep thinking that at some point, I'm going to stop being surprised by how stupidly ballsy you are. Were you ever afraid of me?'
I said, truthfully, 'You scare the shit out of me.'
She started to laugh then, crazy, real laughing, like I was the funniest thing in the world. When she laughed like that, it made her either the scariest girl or the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, and I couldn't decide if the feeling inside me was because
I wanted to make her do it again or because I wanted to run away.
I was sitting in a movie theater at 4:13 in the morning, with a faerie muse who had vaguely psychic vampire tendencies, watching The Sixth Sense.
At this point in my life I'd had some pretty freaky, surreal experiences already, such as (1) watching my best friend move things with her mind, (2) being dragged from my wrecked car by a soulless faerie assassin, and (3) feeling the inexorable pull of the king of the dead's nightly song. And really, sitting with Nuala and watching a crazy little boy tell Bruce Willis that he saw dead people should've been included amongst them. But it felt almost normal.
Okay, so maybe Nuala had gone a little overboard with the butter on the popcorn, but hell, I didn't know how to really use one of those movie theater popcorn machines either. And was there really such a thing as too much butter on popcorn?
'Look,' Nuala ordered. She wasn't eating the popcorn. It occurred to me that maybe she didn't eat food, period. I knew humans weren't supposed to eat faerie food because it would trap them in Faerie. Did it work the same way for faeries and human food? Nuala swatted my arm to get my attention.
'Look, see? Every time something supernatural is about to happen, the director gives you a clue. The red. See the red there?'
I didn't bother to comment on the irony of Nuala pointing that out to me. 'Yeah.' I'd been sitting in the seat so long that my butt was going to sleep. I shifted, propping my feet up on the seat in front of me. Nuala's eyes were still fastened on the screen in front of us; the light of the movie flickered across her face. Her pupils dilated and contracted with every change of light. So much like a human while still being three thousand miles away from being one.
'How many movies have you seen?' I asked. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in the movie, just that I'd seen the ending, like, fourteen times, and I was more interested in why Nuala was sitting in a movie theater and why, of all the movies in the world that she'd wanted to watch, she'd picked this one.
She slouched down in the seat beside me. 'Thousands, I guess. I don't know. Before I figured it out, I thought I would be a director.'
I was a little tired; it took me a moment to figure out what she meant. I didn't have time to comment before Nuala gave me a withering look and said, 'You can't really get to be a director in sixteen years, you know? And like, what's the point?'
It seemed like a stupid question to me. 'The same point as anyone else wanting to be a director. You really want to be a director? Like, movies?'
'Yeah, like movies. All of those lives played out, with music in the background. It's like living a thousand lives without ever leaving yours.' Nuala smiled lazily at the movie screen. 'I even thought of the name I'd use: 'Izzy Leopard.''
I started to laugh.
Nuala slapped me, raising goose bumps. 'Shut up!'
I covered my face with an arm and kept laughing. 'God, woman, how'd you come up with that name? It sounds like a drunk guy asking if someone's got leprosy.'
Nuala slapped my arm again. 'Shut up. It's distinctive. People would remember it. You know, they'd be, 'Oh, Izzy Leopard did this film.' 'Oh yeah?' 'She's brilliant.''
'And a leper.'
Nuala's expression was fierce. 'I could kill you.'
'Oh, if I had a dime for every time someone's told me that. Oh, if I had a dime for every time you've told me that.'
She took the popcorn bucket from me and set it on the seat on the other side of her. 'I can't believe I gave you popcorn. I should make you drink popcorn butter for mocking my director name.'
I grinned at her. 'Truly, a fate worse than death.' I thought of what she'd said, about living one thousand lives without leaving her own. Living one thousand human lives. It seemed like an important distinction. 'But, you know, sixteen years is a long time. You could've been a director.'
Nuala turned in her seat to face me, eyebrows pulled down very low over her eyes, and spoke to be heard over the suspenseful music of the final scene. 'Seriously, you are special ed, aren't you? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.'
People who made excuses always pissed me off. 'What, because it's not enough time? You could've at least tried.
Sixteen years is enough time to try.'
She hissed through her teeth and shook her head. 'You are stupid, piper! Don't you remember what happened with the piano? Well, I can't write any words, either. If I had to create anything new while I was directing, it--it just-- wouldn't happen.'
'Difficult. But not crushing,' I observed.
Her eyes didn't so much narrow as tighten around the edges.
'Okay then. What happens when I change appearances between movies?'
I grinned at her crookedly. 'Madonna did that her whole career.'
Nuala raised her hands and fisted them, as if imagining them around my neck. 'Yeah. Whatever. Okay, how about this? I'm like all faeries. I have to go wherever the strongest cloverhand takes us. So what happens if the cloverhand decides to move across country just as I've gotten settled? Don't you get it? I can't have a normal life at all, much less think about doing something like having a real career. It's not about trying or not trying.'
I got the subtext: just human enough to be miserable as a faerie and just faerie enough to ruin everything good about being human. But I just said, 'You lost me at the cloverhand bit.'
Nuala waved a hand at the movie screen without looking at it.
It went dark, instantly throwing us into utter black. After a few seconds, my eyes started to adjust to the light of the dim runner lights along the aisles, but still, all I could see was
Nuala's giant blue eyes in front of me. Even without any other facial features visible, I could see the disbelieving expression in them.
'Your girlfriend-who-isn't? It only took me two seconds to figure it out. How can you know all about the faeries and all about her and not know what a cloverhand is?'
At the mention of Dee, a weight clenched in my stomach. I didn't want to be there anymore, sitting in a sticky movie theater seat. I wanted to be standing, pacing, moving. I wanted to be punching my fist through a wall.
Nuala's eyes dropped to my hands as if she imagined them punching through a wall, too. 'The last queen was a cloverhand. She's dead. So now your fake girlfriend is here, and she's the strongest cloverhand. So we're here too.'
'Stop calling her that.'
Her eyes made a grinning shape as she willfully misunderstood me. 'It's just what it's called. Someone who attracts the faeries.
We have to stay near them. Wherever they are is Faerie.'
