Road Trip

Waking up disagreed with me so I resisted the process, clinging to the dream of throwing a stick for Dasher to fetch as we walked together through the Redwoods, a game I generally tired of before he did.

Finally, I blinked myself awake to a reality that no longer held the Dachshund who had accompanied me on so many adventures. I knew my faithful companion still existed somewhere beyond the reach of even my deeper sense that tuned me in to so many things that full-blooded humans seldom perceived. Perhaps I had visited him in my dream or he had visited me.

I listened to the rain pummelling car windows and roof, then finally levered myself up on one elbow on the flattened driving seat. The large red-and-yellow sectioned beachball on the passenger seat be disconcerted me before I saw through the mundane appearance.

About the size of the ball, the tightly rolled-up fluffy cerise and amber caterpillar expanded with each breath and contracted again, deep in slumber. Though I wanted to stroke the soft fur, I knew better than to disturb a napping pixie, especially one that I had only met yesterday.

I manoeuvred the lever that raised my seat upright, then let myself out of the car, my home on wheels, and locked the door. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if a curious human child wanted to play with that beachball. Not that I sensed any around in the early morning, but best to be careful.

This rest stop had no spiders in residence, only an unpleasant odour I tried to ignore while emptying my bladder. The flat metal mirror had a slash which bisected the image of my face. Not a good omen, but after I washed my hands, I drew a symbol of erasure over the line that, though it didn’t affect the mirror, made me feel better in myself.

Returning through the drizzle to my car, I was treated to the sight of the cerise and amber caterpillar untangling and expanding until the furry creature took up most of the passenger seat. Then, in an eyeblink, the pixie sat there in her capacious gold and red patterned poncho, the red Mohawk the only vestige hinting at the caterpillar shape of her hibernation. I wondered if she ever metamorphosed into a butterfly but didn’t know her well enough to ask such a personal question.

“Food,” she suggested in a voice that could have passed as human as I let myself into the car.

“Good idea,” I replied as I buckled my seatbelt. I didn’t prompt her to use hers. She would survive a car crash better than me and walk away unscathed.

When I started the ignition, her slim hand reached to turn on the radio but shifted the dial rapidly from Country and Western to a classical station playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra”.

If I had to continue this road trip without Dasher in the back seat, at least I had an interesting hitchhiker.

“Woof,” the pixie said, but made no other comment. 

Since I felt at ease with her, I did not expend any effort to guard my thoughts. She was welcome to explore my internal chaos if she wanted. Conversation was not my forte so early in the day, so I didn’t mind the silence while I drove.

“There,” she told me a moment before I saw the sign advertising the roadside café apparently known as Home Sweet Home. The hand painted sign was ornamented with a tortoise and a hare.

I slowed the car and pulled into the parking lot, careful to avoid disturbing an ambling tortoise.

To my surprise, when the pixie got out, she picked up the turtle which waggled its limbs before withdrawing them inside the tawny and green shell. I held the café door open and watched as she carried the little beast over to the counter and set him down. “Your pet has gone walkabout again,” she told xx waitress emerging from the kitchen. Had she eaten here before or only deduced that the animal liked to go walkabout? I didn’t ask as pixies didn’t like a lot of questions.

By the time that we were both enjoying pancakes with maple syrup and washing them down with hot mugs of cocoa and melting marshmallows, the tortoise was enjoying his own salad buffet inside a shallow cardboard box further along the counter.

A turtle companion would definitely slow my pace which might be a good thing, but I didn’t want to acquire one. Besides, the pixie had predicted a cat just after I gave her a lift. Charcoal came to mind, of course, so I wondered if I might attract another black cat into my life.

“They attract you,” the pixie corrected as she poured some maple syrup from the small jug directly onto her palm and bent her head to lick as delicately as a feline might.

I wanted to brush my fingers over her red Mohawk, thinking of the furry caterpillar, but restrained myself. Grief always made me want to drown myself in the next entity that I met but getting too closely involved with a pixie was not wise.

Her intense green eyes met my gaze, a melodic trill of amused laughter tickling my brain in the quiet café. When the waitress came over to see if we wanted anything else, the pixie requested a slice of pecan pie and two plates. I smiled because she had chosen my favourite.

She divided the pie to reserve two-thirds for herself, but I didn’t mind. I knew she needed the sustenance more than I did while occupying the human world. Unlike me, of course, the pixie could dip back into the realm of her birth easily as often as she liked. I was prepared for her to vanish and reappear at intervals or possibly to just leave without saying goodbye.

 Grateful for her presence, I asked when she had licked her plate clean, “Do you need anything else here?”

She lifted the fork from my empty plate, set it down on hers and licked xx my plate too before drinking the last of her cocoa. Finally, she said, “Choose a turtle.”

For one mad moment, I thought I was going to end up with a tortoise companion not the feline she had foretold, but then she pointed toward the collection of tortoises and hares which occupied a small bookcase set xx near the cash register.

I walked over to inspect. Carved from wood, knitted or crocheted, each looked handmade which I always preferred. I picked up a wooden one, felt the grooves in the turtle shell and brought it close to study the features. 

When I offered it to her on my palm, she nodded.

“Rabbit too?” I asked.

The pixie shook her head, setting the red Mohawk into a pleasing motion.

I swallowed and paid cash for our breakfasts and the wooden turtle which I handed to her.

The pixie walked over to the tortoise which had a lettuce leaf in his mouth and rested the palm of her right hand above his shell for a few heartbeats.

I felt rather than saw the surge of magic and recognised a protection charm. Personally, I would have built a low fence to keep him safe. Perhaps they tried that and found it only frustrated him to have a boundary set on his roaming. I could imagine him trapped in a corner, too stubborn to turn back, his little legs scrabbling for purchase.

Bright sunshine waited for us outside as if the night rain had scrubbed the sky to a more vivid blue. I let the pixie into my car where she deposited the carved turtle in the little tray between the footwells.

I didn’t ask about it. She would either reveal her intentions in due course or not.

I reversed out of the parking space and returned us to the road, continuing north.

The pixie twiddled the radio again, bringing John Denver’s “Country Roads” up for us.

I might have sung along with Dasher as I liked this song a lot, but I merely listened.

Inhaling the pixie’s earthy fragrance, I considered what it might be like to have a friend to travel with in addition to a bird or animal companion. Relationships were tricky for me. I didn’t really get along consistently with humans while mixing with the fey was always problematic.

I pressed my lips together, remembering I was sat next to a mind reader.

The pixie’s laughter trilled, this time fully audible, a shower of delicate notes that gave the brief illusion of rainbow bubbles drifting through the car before they popped.

This xx soothed me so much that words I didn’t intend fell from my lips. “So do you ever turn into a butterfly?”

I braced myself to pull over and stop the car in case she retaliated for my impertinence, but she tolerated my question with a humming that I took to be mild amusement. 

“Sometimes,” she told me, “when a storm is brewing, I like to ride the winds.”

Storm clouds loomed behind the amber butterfly, wings outlined with green and highlighted with swirling patterns of cerise, graceful red antennae above.

“That is me,” the pixie said, sounding pleased that I had received the image. 

I brought the car back from the verge, understanding now why the Mohawk was red rather than cerise.

As the road unfolded before us, we seldom spoke, but I felt more comfortable with her. She flashed me a smile when we stopped to fill the tank.

However, when I walked back to the car after paying, a blur of amber and cerise rushed toward me, dwindling until a small caterpillar quivered on the palm of my hand.

Though her restless panic chilled me, I continued to act as if I had merely been counting the coins I received as change, so I stuffed my hand into the big pocket of my lavender corduroy jacket and trusted she would be safe there.

I stretched then, looking around as if reluctant to continue a long journey, yawning and then scratching my neck just above where a small, silver dagger was sheathed under my clothing.

The smoky, dark, human-sized abyss situated next to a car parked crookedly made me wish I was one hundred percent fey. My usual concealment spell held firm xx as the creature assumed the shape of a man that repelled me almost as much as the blackhole did.

Dry mouthed, I got in my car, started the engine and headed out as if in no rush whatsoever.

Once we were a mile away, I put the pedal to the metal and headed north as if pursued, though keeping within the speed limit to avoid the complications of being stopped.

I kept going until the radio spontaneously turned on. Roger Whittaker singing “Gentle on My Mind” soothed my jangled nerves so I could breathe again. 

Keeping an eye out for somewhere to pull off the road, I found myself attracted by a half-circle of motel rooms with pink doors and window frames around a parking lot. An anatomically interesting flamingo ornamented the sign that proclaimed this to be Haven’s Rest, with a smaller sign attached below that said: Vacancies.

Though I usually slept in my car, I wanted a room for the night that I could ward and somewhere the pixie could recover from her fright.

“Just you?” the middle-aged woman with frazzled blonde hair asked as I provided her with an alias that I had never used before and paid for one night.

“Just me,” I confirmed, though keenly aware of the caterpillar in my pocket.

“We do charge extra if you entertain,” she informed me with the air of someone who had been lied to before.

“I totally respect that,” I replied and gave her my most endearing gaze.

That earned me a tired smile as she turned to grab the only key hanging on the rack behind her. So no blackhole threat would be checking in after us. After xx I repositioned the car outside Room Eight as instructed which was located in the middle of the half circle, I watched in the rearview mirror as she added a NO sign next to Vacancies, which cheered me further.

I gathered up Dasher’s blanket and got my big backpack out of the trunk as we would probably want some food before morning. I felt better when I locked the door of Room Eight, switched on the bedside lamp with the flared pale lampshade and closed the blue curtains. 

I immediately warded the door, the window, all of the electrical sockets as well as the extractor fan, faucets and shower head, barring every possible entryway, however small. 

 Finally, I reached carefully into my pocket and frowned when I could not feel any evidence of a fluffy caterpillar. 

I brought out the smooth silk container that I always kept in that pocket.

The pale blue case streaked with sandy brown was lumpier than normal and partly open. I set it down on the bed and waited for developments.

A deep relief flowed over me when I saw the tiny amber and cerise caterpillar head emerge through the opening. In a soft voice, I reassured, “This place is as safe as I can make it.”

The caterpillar began to enlarge slowly but steadily and shifted, to my surprise, into the shape of an amber teddy bear with cerise markings. The living green eyes focused on me.

I repeated my words to make sure the message got across.

Gradually, the eyes lost some of their lustre and blinked shut, the teddy bear mouth gaping open as the pixie breathed, shallow at first then slower, deeper breaths. Not as gusty as a Dachshund, more like the slight noise a cat would usually make, though Charcoal had sometimes snored as loud as a human.

I grabbed Dasher’s blanket and made a little nest for the creature, leaving a gap so she could peer out and orient herself as soon as she woke. I decided to leave the bedside lamp on without acknowledging that this was partly for my own comfort. Good to be able to detect the presence of an intruder visually on first awakening.

I wondered at her choice of children’s toys for camouflage, the beach ball earlier and now the teddy bear. Every pixie had their individual preference. I recalled one who always assumed the form of a cat, a style capable of infinite variations. 

I hoped no human child had ever tampered with a dormant pixie in toy-shape for their sake. If I knew her much better, I might ask why she chose toys, but I didn’t think we would be sharing the road trip long enough to get that well acquainted.

Then I investigated the silk pouch. I found a scrap of moon-white silk protecting an inky turquoise gem, as expected, then the cardboard-swaddled stub of an orange candle, and the curl of a downy white swan feather. 

However, the scorpion’s tail, most prized of all, had not only broken into several pieces but bleached off-white as if made of bone. I turned the pouch inside out to find all the bits and put them on the bedside chest of drawers, too tired to figure out whether the fragments might be useful for anything. I restored gem, candle, and feather to the pouch and pocketed it.

In my mind’s eye, I saw the caterpillar twined tightly around the scorpion’s tail, extracting the power, maybe chewing on the stinger which was missing entirely. I didn’t begrudge her the loss, though this was not how I expected the artifact I had obtained with great effort to end up.

As I liberated and then ate some nondescript rations from my pack, I remembered the maple syrup on the pancakes and doubted I had anything sweet that would tempt a pixie. However, she might not need food after absorbing all that scorpion magic. And why had she needed to do so?

I thought back to the lighthouse where she had joined me and wondered whether the black abyss was hunting the pixie or merely a random coincidence crossing our temporarily joined path. 

We needed to talk this through, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. Exhaustion weighed on me now that I had eaten, but I tested the wards, more careful than I might have been alone.

I rolled up my lavender corduroy jacket to create a soft barricade between the sleeping teddy bear and the edge of the bed, wanting to keep her safe physically as well before I allowed myself to lie down and settle for sleep.

On the verge of a smooth transition to dreaming, I heard the teddy bear’s breath catch. My deeper sense engaged to detect anything amiss, I looked around the ever so ordinary motel room. Peace and safety permeated the space.

I rolled on to my side and gazed at the teddy bear in the light from the bedside lamp. My tired mind drifted back to childhood when I had snuggled a very similar creature. I supposed most children had some soft toy to comfort them through the night.

All Through the Night. I could almost hear my mother’s voice singing her own version of the old lullaby and, yes, that same little gasp that the teddy bear had made. The puzzle pieces of memory came together just before the curtain of sleep eclipsed the resulting picture.

This pixie and I had first met a long time ago. And she doubtless protected me when I was a child. Now it was my turn to shelter her. That’s why she sought me out. Only fair. My mother would have approved.