“Is it hard to tell me this?” I ask.
“Quite.”
I wait. “Then why are you telling me? I don’t mean that meanly. I just-I just want to know why you are if it hurts you to do it, you know? I’m not making sense, am I?”
“You are. You usually make sense, Zara. Honestly. I am telling you because you are my queen and I count you as my friend and because you deserve to know.” He takes a sip of his cranapple juice. I wonder what I haven’t told Astley, what he should know about me, what I haven’t told Nick. Astley’s hand shakes and he finishes his story. He had landed on a sea of people, knocked his head a bit, and passed out. When he woke up, he was in a Spanish hospital; Bentley, their butler, was hovering over him, his mother had gone mad with grief, and his father was just gone.
“He saved me, Zara.”
I nod and grip his hand tighter. He squeezes back and then lets go. He uses that same hand to tuck my hair behind my ear as he says, “He saved me. He had an instant to choose my life or his and he chose mine to save. That’s how I know that pixies can be good. I have seen it with my own eyes. I know what my father was. He was good. And that’s what I want to be, what I want my people to be.”
I pull my lips in toward my mouth. Tears threaten. “You are,” I say, and I believe it without a doubt. “You are good, Astley.”
He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I hope so.”
Astley suddenly sits up all intense. “Do you smell that?”
“What?”
“Pixie. A powerful pixie.”
I focus. “Maybe. There’s that Dove soap smell. I just thought it was the restroom and you.”
“Lovely.” He unbuckles his seat belt. The flight attendant scoots right over. “Sir, I need you to sit down.”
He stares at her like she’s asked him to eat a truckful of Twinkies. His frustration slams into me like a fist. It’s not intentional. I just feel it.
“The captain has turned the seat belt sign back on,” she insists.
We hit some turbulence just as she says, “Sir, I must-”
“He has diarrhea!” I interrupt.
Astley gasps and his whole face and even the tips of his ears redden. I feel a little bad about it, but it’s so going to work and, seriously, it was the only thing I could think of.
“Oh!” She is at a loss for a second and staggers back a step as Astley rushes past her toward the bathroom. I don’t know how he’ll sneak out of there to check out the plane, but it was the best I could do on the spot. The flight attendant and I make eyes at each other.
“He’s horribly embarrassed about it,” I whisper. “He had bratwurst. Or maybe it was the baked beans. Either way you might want to get some deodorizing air spray.”
Ten minutes later Astley appears beside me again.
“Were you in the bathroom this whole time?” I ask, fiddling with my anklet.
He rolls his eyes and tells me he used a glamour to hide himself. He walked up and down the aisle but couldn’t locate the source of the smell.
“I don’t like that,” I say as he clicks the seat belt back in place.
He is still. His whole body is tense, as if waiting for an attack. After a moment he says, “Neither do I.”
“Did you recognize it? Who did it smell like?”
“Your father.”
I canNOT even
I canNOT even tell you how creepy it is here. Seriously. I swear I hear people whispering my name every time we go outside, and sometimes it’s like there’s someone scratching on my window. I swear I am not crazy. It’s just Bedford, man. LOL.
– BLOG POST
“Everything looks like an IKEA store,” I say, grabbing Astley’s elbow as we walk through the airport in Iceland.
He laughs and smiles. His happiness and purpose seem infectious, almost like the air is full of pink bubble gum, only not sticky.
“It has so many windows,” I say, looking out into the darkness where the airplanes taxi and the luggage trains roll around. “And look at the chairs. They’re all posh.”
“Keflavik is known for being an amazing airport.” He points at all the shops: Burberry, Calvin Klein, Gucci. “Would you like to buy anything? I know you are a bit lacking for stores in Bedford.”
“No, no… I’m good.” My feet almost feel like happy-dancing across the sleek light wood floor. “When do you think your pixie friend will contact us? What should we do while we wait?”
He reaches over and grabs my carry-on. “I do not know exactly when. He said he’d call sometime today, and he’s arranged for a car to take us to Reykjavik.”
“The capital?”
“You have been reading up,” he says as we get to baggage claim. He looks down at me like he’s all proud for a second. My whole body tingles in some strange, wild way and my heartbeat jumps to five hundred beats a minute. I almost think he’s going to kiss me, but he’d never do that. He only did it that once just to turn me. His lips part a little, but he just says, “You stay here; I shall get the bags.”
I packed heavy because I didn’t know what to bring on a rescue mission to a mythological land or to Iceland.
I check my clock. It’s ten a.m. and it’s still dark outside. The sun won’t rise for another ninety minutes, and then it’ll set four hours after that, which is totally wild. I thought Maine was bad, but this country is so close to the north pole that it’s even darker.
Astley returns with our bags. “You’re shuddering. Are you cold?”
I shrug and make to grab my suitcase, but he nods toward a man in a dark suit, who must be our driver. The man hurries over, bows at Astley, doesn’t actually say anything, and takes our stuff.
By the time we’re done with customs and the bags and getting settled in the car, the sun has started to rise. The sky is gray and overcast. Snow melds into the ground and there aren’t forests, just occasional clumps of big Christmas-type trees. It’s Maine cold. Squat buildings sprawl up out of the ground as if they sprouted there.
“It seems so unreal to be here,” I say to Astley. We’re sitting together in the back of the car. It’s all cushy even though it’s small. He looks healthy again. The cut on his face is gone. His color is good. “It’s like the world is suddenly shifted and this place couldn’t possibly be on it.”
“I know.” He crosses his legs.
I turn my cell phone on and stare at its blankness. “I don’t have a signal.”
“Did you have them turn it on so you can get calls internationally?” he asks.
Of course not. I didn’t know you had to. As we drive toward Reykjavik, I can’t even begin to count all the things I should have done but I didn’t. I begin to list them in my head and give up.
He smiles and settles back into his seat. “Excited?”
“Ridiculously.”
His smile gets even bigger. “It is nice to see you happy.”
“Well, thanks for making me happy,” I respond, adjusting my seat belt. There’s an awkward silence except for the rumbling of the car’s engine. We just stare out the windows, not touching each other, but I feel really close to him somehow anyway. Maybe it’s the bond between king and queen. Or maybe it’s because the car zooms closer to the city of Reykjavik, one mile, then another. We’re one mile closer to Nick.
Nobody calls Astley on our ride in. We get no tips. We get no advice. Nothing. I try to be patient and not disappointed as we check into the Hotel 1302, which is this boutique hotel that’s totally monochromatic, just whites and blacks and grays-stark elegance. The oak floors are actually heated and there’s funky art and sculptures everywhere. Astley and I have suites next to each other. An adjoining door attaches our rooms. When we say good-bye, I crash on the big white bed, stare at the black walls, and grab my phone. But there’s nobody to call, thanks to my failure to get an international calling plan. I haul myself off the bed and yank off my shoes before padding over to the bathroom, which doesn’t even have a wall separating it from the rest of the suite, which is just weird. Still, it’s just as starkly beautiful as everything else-a huge glass shower waits at the end of granite walls. Fluffy towels in white and black sit on black shelves, with a modern white sink above them. There’s even a white claw-foot tub, but it’s the shower that calls to me. And I listen.