Fairytale
an excerpt

Two alleys over, she found what she was looking for – or rather, who she was looking for. A trail of smoke trailing back towards the club announced the presence of an older woman perched on a pile of rubbish. She had been tall once, but now she was hunched over, wrapped in a patched blanket. Her skin retained a faint bluish tone, and her hair was as black as ever. Below the waist, her body dissolved into the smoke that had revealed her presence – she had no legs. Cheshire tossed a loaf of bread at her, and a hand shot out to grab it. The woman looked up and gave a sweet, slightly cracked smile. Cheshire couldn’t help smiling back, for all her eccentricities, she liked Haravel. And she couldn’t complain about the womans eccentricities, anyway, as she was indirectly responsible for a good portion of them.

Haravel cocked her head to one side, looking for all the world like an oversized, blue sparrow, and began to speak in a soft, matter of fact way.

“Oh, look. Look, look, look. It’s a pretty little Silvertree girl… silver … so pretty, pretty, pretty silver, all shiny and shimmery, but it goes all black, silver does, black, black, black as night, blacker than night. Never black around here, not at night, not at all. So many pretty pretty shiny lights, blocking the night, but they’re pretty too, all so pretty. Pretty … her hair’s pretty, the Silvertree girl, but not silver, oh no, white, white hair for the Silvertree girls, white for them and black for me, white and black, black and white. White like glitter, ahhh yes, glitter. Its white, too, you know. Hmmm…. Does the silver white girl have some shiny white glitter for lil’ old me? My sister has gone again, gone, gone, gone away, but she’ll come back again to see me if I’ve got the Fairytale, and we’ll play together again, and she will throw shiny, shiny, shiny lights at the silly mortals again. Silly silly mortals, needing gold for everything…. gold isn’t as shiny as silver, no, no, not at all, but the silly mortals need it and I have some today… I’ll give the Silver girl gold for the powder, I will, gold for the silver girl…” She nodded wisely, and looked at Cheshire, her bright eyes expectant, and one skinny arm offering a gold coin. Cheshire bit back the desire to laugh – it was almost impossible to take Haravel seriously – and took the coin, replacing it with a small sack from her belt.

Haravel gave a happy little gasp, and instantly opened the bag, pulling out a pinch of white powder that shimmered where it caught a faint beam of light. She tilted her head up towards the sky, and sprinkled the powder directly on each eyeball, holding her eyelids open until the chemicals in it reacted and dissolved into the capillaries behind her eyes. She blinked a couple times, and then looked around, her face screwed up in an expression of deep concentration. Cheshire turned to go as Haravel gave a soft trill and rose, babbling again to a sister only she could see. She left Haravel to her happiness, lost in the past, and walked out of the alleys back into the bright sunlight. As she moved towards a ladder on the outside of the club, a boy tapped her shoulder. Cheshire recognized him, but only vaguely, he was a new Runner, and his family lived in a different area of the Clan House than she did, so she rarely saw him. It appeared the feeling was mutual, she got the feeling somebody else had pointed her out to him.

“Cheshire, right?” At her nod, the boy spoke hurriedly. “Magpie got a message from that businessman on the Rim – says he’s getting all impatient. You’re to go directly there, and she says I’m to go to Selia for you. You got her sack of glitter, right?” Cheshire handed over another sack, and the boy tucked it away with a bubbly grin. This was probably one of his first missions alone; he was nearly jumping out of his boots.

“You know how to get to Selias’, right?” His face fell, just a bit, giving her all the answer she needed. “Here, you go up this ladder, and go five streets east, to the house with the garden on the roof. Turn north there, two more streets over, and that’s Lark Street. Selia runs a jewelry store, Diamond in the Rough, I think its called. If you get lost, ask. Anyone you meet will probably know the way there.” She considered warning him about the Lightdancer boys, but she figured they’d probably left by now anyway, and she didn’t want this slip of a boy running off to challenge them, as he probably would. She resisted the additional impulse to ruffle his hair; it wouldn’t do to completely ruin his sense of importance. She settled for a smile and a small nod, and was off again.