Wisp of a Thing by Alex Bledsoe

Author:Alex Bledsoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

18

Curnen leaped off him, and he jumped to his feet. Bliss stood at the edge of the clearing.

Curnen crouched on the grass nearby, clutching the dress against her. Her limbs trembled as she tensed to either flee or attack. She growled.

“She’s making you see what you want to see,” Bliss continued. “We can all do that, to one extent or another. Look at her now.”

He did. Now Curnen was the same girl he’d seen in his room, with long limbs, strange toes, and too-big eyes. In her gaze, he saw only animal wariness.

“The common term is ‘glamour,’” Bliss said.

Rob got to his feet and moved away so he could keep an eye on both women. “Glamour,” he repeated. “Like fairies use?”

“Rob, please, catch a clue here. Remember what I told you before? We were here long before the Europeans, even before the so-called Native Americans. How do you think that can be true?”

“So you’re saying you two are fairies?”

With an impatient sigh, she nodded.

He remembered the dancing teenage girl. “That’s what I saw back at the fire. A fairy.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what all the Tufa are?”

She wanted to slap him. How many ways did he need to hear it? “Yes.” And there it was: the secret known only to the night wind and her riders, spoken plainly in inadequate human words to a man she’d known three whole days. Mandalay and the other First Daughters would be so proud of her.

“But … you drive trucks, and work, and—”

“Yes, I drive a truck, and go to work, and watch TV and worry about the economy and terrorism. We don’t live in a storybook, you know. We live in the world, just like you. We’re just not … of it.”

Curnen, back in her dress, slipped under his arm and pressed possessively against him. He was too startled by all this new information to resist. She reached for his face and tried to turn it down so she could kiss him.

“Curnen!” Bliss scolded. “Stop that. Not now!”

Curnen glared at Bliss and bared her teeth. She released Rob and moved toward her sister, but Bliss wasn’t intimidated. “Don’t mess with me, Curnen. Now, get out of here.”

Curnen stopped, threw back her head, and howled. It was the same sound Rob had heard that first night outside his room, and again at Doyle’s trailer. This close, it gave him goose bumps.

“Oh, stop it,” Bliss said. She fingered the fabric of the dress. “Whose garbage did you raid to get this, huh?”

Curnen slithered away—no other word described the quick, sinuous motion—and vanished into the darkness.

In the silence, Rob realized he heard nothing except insects and animals—no music, or traffic, or even airplanes overhead. No songs from the barn dance. Could he and Curnen have really run that far? Finally he asked, “So she got that dress from someone’s trash?”

“Yes. She’s mostly like a wild animal. She digs things up, buries things, thinks only in immediate sensation.”

“Because she’s inbred?”

Bliss’s eyes flashed with anger. “No. She’s my baby sister, I

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