Bare Snow Falling On Fairywood
Law had just hooked a three-foot waewaeli when her phone started to ring. She ignored it as she fought the twenty-pound fish. “Not now, not now, go to voice mail!” Only a half-dozen people had her phone number and at the moment, she didn’t want to talk to any of them. It stopped ringing for a minute, only to start again. And again. And again.
“Who the frigging hell?” She’d lost too many phones trying to cradle them on her shoulder and reel in a fish. She would need at least one hand free to answer the phone. Finally she locked the reel and jerked her phone out of her breast pocket.
“What?” she cried as her rod bent as the big fish fought the line.
“Who is this?” a female voice asked.
“Law!” she shouted. “Law Munroe.” At least that was the name she was using most recently. The joy of having a mother who had been married ten times meant that even close family friends weren’t sure what your real, real name was. “Who is this?”
“Oh, good. You’ll be a perfect match. Go to Fairywood and find snow.”
“What?” Law cried. “It’s in the middle of freaking June! Midsummer’s eve is in less than a week! There’s no snow!”
“Fairywood. F. A. I. R. Y. Wood. It’s next to Windgap. Just out of the Rocks—if there was still a bridge. Lots of urban prairie. You need to find snow. Collect snow up and get someplace safe. All hell is going to break loose regardless but let’s not give anyone a nice little goat, shall we?”
The connection went dead and her line snapped.
“Who? What? Hello?” She glared at her phone. Not only had she lost the fish but she lost her streamer fly, too. A Clouser deep minnow. She handmade her flies, so she wasn’t out money, just time. She needed one more fish before her ice chests were full and she could visit her customers. If she didn’t land another big fish, she’d have to short someone because she could only put off deliveries for so long.
“I thought there was some kind of rule against crazy people on Elfhome!” Grumble as she might, her experiences with her family confirmed it was only diagnosed crazy people who had been deported back to Earth. All the unknown crazies were free to terrorize their relatives and random people. At least with strangers, she could ignore the phone call. “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.”
She was standing knee-deep in Chartiers Creek in Carnegie. It was about six miles from where the stream met the Ohio River. She took another fly from her hat and tied it to her line. She’d dropped coolers alongside Campbells Run and Chartiers Creek every few hundred feet. Parking at the end of Glass Street before dawn, she’d walked back to Campbells Run. In the last hour, she’d worked her way down to where the smaller stream joined the larger one, slowly making her way back to her truck. She had her biggest coolers full of trout and crayfish from traps on other streams, but she enjoyed angling for the waewaeli. Summer was her favorite time to be a professional forager since she could devote much of her time to the sport of fishing. The dry hot months meant that the Chartiers was shallow enough to wade. She was too far upstream to worry about river sharks and jumpfish; they needed at least four feet of water to navigate a channel. The undergrowth lining the creek screened the ruins of the abandoned neighborhood. The play of water and singing birds masked out any distant noise of civilization. It was her and the fish, one on one, just the way she liked it.
Until her phone rang again. Same mystery number.
She sighed and answered, “What?”
“I forgot to tell you: look for the white door.”
“Not a red door and paint it black?”
“Oh God no, black would make everything worse. There won’t be time to paint it. Just take it with you when you leave.”
She knew it was useless to argue about the lack of snow in June. Crazy people didn’t listen to logic. Her parents had at least taught her that. “Okay, I’ll take the door with me when I find snow.”
“Good.” And the mystery Crazy Lady hung up again.
Law spotted a big shadow in the next deep pool. She played out line until she could feel the rod load, then cast.
The morning light was still fragile with dawn, the sun not fully climbed above the hills. It was amazing that anyone was awake enough to be calling her. The woman didn’t even seem to know whom she had reached. Had she just randomly punched numbers until someone actually picked up the phone?
She’d just landed the big waewaeli when the phone rang again. Same Crazy Lady. Law sighed and answered. “Yes?”
“You only have a few hours to save her. You have to go today.”
“Her? Her who?”
“Snow! They’re going to kill her if you don’t get her to safety.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ! Why didn’t you tell me that Snow was a person? That changes everything!”
“What did you think? It’s June!”
Lawry considered just dropping her phone into the water. No. She knew from experience that didn’t really help in the long run. “Who is going to kill her?”
“Do you blame the maker of the gun or the person that pulls the trigger?”
“The person who pulls the trigger.”
“Then you would be wrong.” And the woman hung up again.
Law waded downstream, replaying all the conversations over in her head. She’d leapt to the assumption that Snow was the name of a person but thinking back, the crazy lady hadn’t actually confirmed that. It could be a white dog or cat. And for “where” all she knew was Fairywood—wherever that was—and look for a white door. She had all the fish she needed for her customers and a little time before she needed to deliver them. She could see if she could find Snow.
“Brisbane! We’re leaving!” She whistled to fetch him back. Hopefully he hadn’t wandered too far from the truck, as the porcupine never moved faster than a waddle.
It took her five minutes just to find the bloody neighborhood on her map. Fairywood was a postage stamp of nothingness even before the first Startup, which was why she didn’t recognize the name. She only found it because of the mention of Windgap and the Rocks, meaning McKees Rocks. Windgap had fared no better than Fairywood after Pittsburgh shifted to Elfhome; it had lost three of its bridges in and out of the neighborhood. Far as she knew, both neighborhoods were now uninhabited. There were businesses in McKees Rocks with people clustered around them.
The bad news was it was in the wrong direction for her deliveries, but the good news was there were only a handful of streets officially part of Fairywood. It wouldn’t take her long to drive up and down them and see if any white doors popped out at her.
Brisbane came waddling out of the brush. Elfhome porcupines were twice the size of Earth ones and a rich red color. Nothing short of Black Willows and saurus tangled with them, not even pony-sized wargs and steel spinner spiders. As a result, they had one speed. Trying to get them to go faster usually resulted in a couple hundred quills to the face. A porcupine for a pet was the test of true friendship: love me, love my porcupine (and not as a main course for dinner).
“Come on, Brizzy, get your spiky butt into the truck!” She opened the passenger door so he could climb in. A carrot on the seat just out of his reach was incentive to do just that. “We have some kind of damsel to save.”
She wheeled the last cooler of waewaeli up into the back of her pickup with the help of the winch, strapped it down, and covered it with reflective cloth to help keep it cool. By the time she finished, Brisbane had climbed up into the cab and was chomping down his carrot, squealing with glee. Porcupines were noisy as well as slow and stubborn. She closed the passenger door and climbed in the other side.