Hiding in Plain Sight

Going nowhere, parked up, hands resting on the steering wheel, I listened to the rain dancing on the car roof. I watched bright droplets shimmer on the windscreen wiped dutifully away by the repetitive ker-thup of the wipers. Beyond, the lighthouse rose like a giant white chess bishop surrounded by cloudy sky and overlooking the crash of the waves along the pebbled beach. 

I broke the trance my mind was sinking toward, released the wheel, flicked the wipers to neutral and turned off the ignition. I stared at the dangling keychain, carefully chosen beads on their macrame braids providing a splash of pale blue, amber, and burnt red.

I paused, waiting to see if tears would come. They didn’t. Too soon, probably.

I glanced at the backseat where a ten-year-old Dachshund should be waking up because the car had stopped, looking pleased with the prospect of a walk. 

Companions never lived long enough, not even the blue and gold macaw I once adopted. 

I returned my gaze to the lighthouse, wanting the beacon to flash, but night was hours away. “Lightbringer,” I murmured, but closed my eyes and sent respect rather than try to form more words.

I told myself that due to the heavy rain, I wouldn’t exit the car to clamber into the backseat for an essential nap. But I knew it was because Dasher wouldn’t be there to curl up with.

I glared at the bamboo garden gloves on the passenger seat. I meant to leave them with the small shovel in the trunk. I didn’t need any reminders of digging the grave or how I’d lowered Dasher’s body, wrapped in my Grateful Dead t-shirt, sprinkled the last of the kibbles over him and a sachet of his favourite treats, then refilled the hole with earth. 

That particular t-shirt was like a second skin to me, so an appropriate sacrifice to wish Dasher safe travel into the beyond. My chest felt hollow as if I’d buried my heart.

I remembered puppy Dasher ambling toward me from the nest, his siblings too busy playing to notice my approach. From first eye contact, I knew he would be travelling with me as soon as he was old enough to leave his mother. Happy days, a sore contrast to this morning when he’d given up the ghost in a grove of ash trees as I stroked him and murmured blessings.

I wanted to start the car, leave the scenic spot and drive farther, as if I could escape this horrible absence. But that wouldn’t be wise. I would probably either drift off the road into catastrophe or run into a tree which couldn’t pull up its roots and dodge out of my way. 

I frowned at that remnant of the stories that mother used to tell us. Walking trees, indeed. Not generally part of my waking reality.

I felt like my mind was running on a hamster wheel. Needed to stop, to sleep, but how without Dasher?  

First things first. I wove symbols between my hands and loosed them, a simple cantrip to conceal the car. Without a fierce Dachshund to bark warning, I didn’t want some gormless idiot thinking that finding someone asleep in a car was an answer to their satanic prayers. In my current mood, doubtful that I would allow such an intruder to depart unharmed. 

Hiding in plain sight was child’s play. Very handy for hide and seek when I did have the chance to play with normal children, though I was careful to let others win. Sometimes. All part of blending in, one of the strategies I used to survive among humans being born of mixed blood. 

Unbuckling my seat belt resolutely, I sat upright to use the lever at the side which flattened the seatback. I looked over my shoulder out of habit to make sure Dasher wasn’t in the way, but of course, he wasn’t there. I arranged the brown and beige leopard print blanket over my jeans, touching one of the colourful hearts I’d crocheted to mend the bare patches. After checking I’d secured the lock-tabs on both doors, I lay down.

When I brought the blanket edge up toward my neck, I could smell Dasher. Only last night, he snoozed in my arms with no signs of illness. I swallowed hard, deciding I wouldn’t wash the blanket until such time as I acquired another companion. Since it was older than me, I didn’t like to clean it too often. Handwash only at this point, so it needed a bath to immerse properly and plenty of sun and wind for drying.

I sighed and closed my eyes, focusing on the sound of steady rain on the car roof. With my inner gaze, I watched a plump hamster hurrying inside a wheel, then gradually slowed the fluff ball’s progress down until I slipped into a sleep state.

***

When I opened my eyes, I the crash of thunder had awakened me. Without Dasher, I had nobody to check with whether the noise was following me out of some dream. The loss of him sat heavy on me, but less tiredness, so I sat up and reached for the lever to raise the seatback.

I saw the figure then, white and gold robes blurred by the rain which fell without touching him. He was looking at me like a cat might watch a goldfish swimming in a rounded bowl.

So close to my dreaming self, I snarled, fingers clawing the final symbol to activate a spell that I always kept prepared in case of need. Purple smoke tendrils erupted around him before I had time to regret attacking first when his arrival might not have been a threat.

He smiled and raised one eyebrow before vanishing.

The purple smoke, denied a target, attacked its own writhing form until nothing remained. Waste of a spell.

I considered his blurred face, tried to place him. The white and gold robes marked him as an interloper. Anyone local tended to wear clothes that avoided human attention. Doubtful that he was a blood relation, but I couldn’t rule that out. 

Maybe just passing through and attracted by my concealment spell. Sometimes I seriously wearied of living in between two worlds, belonging to neither.

I extended my deeper sense in every direction, trying to locate him in case he lingered. Just when I felt satisfied that he had well and truly taken himself elsewhere, a tap on the car window behind me made my heart race.

The pattern of red golden swirls I initially saw resolved themselves into the slender shape of what seemed a teenage girl with a bright red Mohawk wearing a capacious gold and red patterned poncho. She caught my eye, bestowed a smile and, in slow motion, thumbed a lift.

I sighed. I must have succumbed to the urge for sleep at some crossroads between realms. Fortunate that I hadn’t woken up surrounded by curious onlookers, at this rate.

Yawning, I leaned across the car to unlatch the lock-tab and push open the door. I was accustomed to adopting all manner of strays and, so far, had not been mistaken in my judgments of their intentions toward me.

She let herself in at this invitation. I’d only seen a blur of motion from the corner of my eye, but then I already recognised her as a pixie. Maybe she would bring me luck. Light knew I needed some, the way today had been going so far.

Her red Mohawk and colourful poncho remained bone dry despite the heavy rain.

I reached for the ignition before realising it was probably some distance to the next rest stop, so I’d best empty my bladder now. “Wait,” I said, “I’ll be back.” Although, as far as I knew, pixies never bothered to learn to drive, preferring to hitchhike, I took my car keys with me. Her broad smile revealed the sharpness of her pointed teeth before I hastened through the downpour. 

A spider’s web hung across the ventilation gap in a corner of the ceiling, but the spider didn’t speak to me, so I kept quiet. I usually was polite to any creature I met unless it had malicious intentions, but the wellspring of words that usually flowed so freely for me was temporarily blockaded by the loss of Dasher.

After washing my hands, I absently tried to check if my braid was coming loose. I’d forgotten I chopped it off to burn after the burial so I could use the ashes in a protection spell over the grave.

When I got back into the car, clothing damp, the pixie said some melodious words which translated inside my head as: Wherever you’re going, that’s my destination.

“Okay,” I agreed as I set the vehicle in motion, thinking Dasher would like her scent which already filled the car with an earthy fragrance.  

When her slim hand clicked the retro car radio on and twiddled the dial in search of some music, I felt glad I hadn’t left the keys in the ignition. The thought of a pixie driving away in my car didn’t bear considering, even without a captive Dachshund racing back and forth across the backseat and howling. He never liked being separated from me. I felt awful that he’d gone into death alone, though I did all I could to make his passage an easy one.

Dolly Parton wasn’t a choice I could’ve predicted, but I had no complaints. Better than a silent journey on my lonesome.

“Cat,” the pixie said without preamble in a voice that could have passed as human.

“What?” I asked, glancing at her then back at the road unrolling ahead of us.

A brief melodic line of speech answered me which, being half of the right blood, I understood to mean: Your next companion is a cat. 

Though I never liked it when anyone knew more about my past, present, or future than me, I thanked her for the information which narrowed down my search considerably. Losing Dash was worse than losing an arm or leg. He’d been more like an external portion of my brain, maybe the most intuitive part. All my life, I’d spoken more to furred, feathered, or scaled companions about my plans and intentions than to anyone walking on two legs.

When Dasher ignored me or pointedly looked away to study the horizon, I knew I was barking up the wrong tree in his opinion. If he engaged with me while I was talking or, even better, looked as if I was offering him a walk, I knew I was on the right track.

So, a new companion to be found, most likely a cat. The sooner the better and more urgent as time passed. I considered the arrival of the pixie. Mother often said that nothing happens by chance. 

I remembered her telling me more than once that I would be much safer in the human world than on the other side of the permeable and inconstant barrier between realms. My blood, though, often sang a siren song to me of what it would be like on the other side.