Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(78)
Author: Kim Harrison

Worried, he shifted closer, his hands tightening on hers. "Mattie, about that," he started, but she shook her head, and the dust falling from her took on a red tinge.

"No," she said firmly. "We’ve been over this. I won’t take that curse so I can have another twenty years of life. I’m going to step from the wheel happy when I reach the end, knowing all my children will survive my passing. No other pixy woman can say that. It’s a gift, Jenks, and I thank you for it."

Beautiful and smiling, she leaned forward to kiss him, but he would have none of it. Anger joining his frustration, he pulled away. Why won’t she even listen? Ever since he’d taken that curse to get lunker-size for a week, his flagging endurance had returned full force. It had fixed his mangled foot and erased the fairy steel scar that had pained him during thunderstorms. It was as if he was brand-new. And Mattie wasn’t.

"Mattie, please," he began, but as every other time, she smiled and shook her head.

"I love my life. I love you. And if you keep buzzing me about it, I’m going to put fairy scales in your nectar. Now tell me how you’re going to help the Vincet family."

He took a breath, and she raised her eyebrows, daring him.

Jenks’s shoulders slumped and his wings stilled to lie submissively against his back. Later. He’d convince her later. Pixies died only in the fall or winter. He had all summer.

"I need to destroy a statue," he said, seeing the clean wood around him and imagining the dirt walls Vincet was living between, then remembering the flower boxes he and Mattie had raised most of their children among. He was lucky, but the harder he worked, the luckier he got.

"Oh, good," she said distantly. "I know how you like to blow things up."

His mood eased, and he shifted her closer to feel her warmth. Pixies had known how to make explosives long before anyone else. All it took was a little time in the kitchen. And a hell of a lot of nitrogen, he thought. "By tonight," he added, bringing himself back to the present, "to help free a dryad."

"Really?" Eyeing him suspiciously, Matalina popped her half of the sweetball into her mouth. "I ‘ought ‘ay were cut ‘own in the great deforestation of the eighteen hundreds. ‘Ave they emigrated in from Europe?"

"I don’t know," he admitted. "But this one is trapped in a statue, existing on energy right off a ley line instead of sipping it filtered from a tree. He’s been slipping into Vincet’s children’s minds when they sleep, trying to get them to break his statue." He wasn’t going to tell her the dryad had accidentally killed one. It was too awful to think about.

Matalina stood, rising on a burst of energy to dust the ceiling. "A city-living dryad?" she murmured, cleaning wood that would lay unseen for months if Rachel continued her pattern and avoided her desk even after they vacated it. "Tink loves a duck, what will they think of next?"

Jenks reclined to see if he could see up her dress. "Blowing it up isn’t the problem. See, there’s this nymph," he said, smiling when he caught a glimpse of a slim thigh.

She looked down at him, her disbelief clear. Seeing where his eyes were, she twitched her skirt and shifted, eyes scrunched in delight even as she huffed in annoyance. "A nymph? I thought they were extinct."

"Maybe they’re just hiding," he said. "This one said something about waking up. She was having a hard time breathing through the pollution." Until she came after us.

Flitting to the opening in the desk, Matalina shook her rag with a crack. "Hmmm."

"She’s got this goddess . . . warrior vibe," he said when Matalina returned to the ceiling. "Mattie, the woman is scary. I think if I get the dryad free, the nymph will follow him and leave Vincet in peace."

Again Matalina made that same doubt-filled sound, not looking at him as she dusted.

"Freeing the dryad is the only way I can help Vincet," Jenks said, not knowing if Matalina was unsure about Sylvan or the nymph. "He’s only been on his own for a year, and he has three children and passel of newlings. He’s done so well."

Matalina turned at the almost jealous tone in his words, the pride and love in her expression obvious. "You were nine, love, when you found me," she said as she dropped to him, her wings a clear silver as they hummed. "Coming from the country with burrs in your hair and not even a scrap of red to call your own. Don’t compare yourself to Vincet."

He smiled, but still . . . "It took me two years to be able to provide enough for Jax and Jih to survive," he said, reaching up to take her hand and draw her to him.

His wife sat beside him, perched on the very edge of the couch with her hands holding his. "Times were harder. I’m proud of you, Jenks. None has done better. None."

Jenks scanned the nearly empty desk, the sounds of his children playing filtering in over the radio talking about the freak tornado that had hit the outskirts of Cincinnati last night. Not wanting to accept her words, he pulled her to sit on his lap, tugging her close and resting his chin on her shoulder and breathing in the clean smell of her hair. He could have done better. He could have given up the garden and gone to work for the I.S. years sooner. But he hadn’t known.

"You need to help this family," she said, interrupting his thoughts. "I don’t understand why you do some of the things you do, but this . . . This I understand."

"I can’t do it alone," he said, grimacing as he remembered Daryl controlling the wind, taking the very element he lived in and turning it against him.

"Wasn’t Bis a help?" she asked, sounding bewildered.

Jenks started, not realizing what his words had sounded like. "He was the perfect backup," he said, his words slow as he remembered almost being squished, and then Bis’s frantic flight in the streets. "He’s no fighter, but he yanked my butt out of the fire twice." Smiling, Jenks thought he couldn’t count how many times he’d done the same for Rachel. "I’d ask Rachel to help," he said, "but she won’t be home until tomorrow."

Still on his lap, Matalina reached for Jenks’s half of sweetball and put it in his mouth. "Then ask Ivy," she said as he shifted it around. "She’ll help you."

"Ivy?" he said, his voice muffled. "It’s my job, not hers."

Collapsing against him in irritation, Matalina huffed. "The vampire is always asking you to help her," she said severely. "I don’t begrudge it. It’s your job! But don’t be so slow-winged that you won’t ask for help in return. It would be more stupid than a fairy’s third birthday party for Vincet to lose a newling because you were too proud to ask Ivy to be a distraction."