“Okay,” I said finally, pulling away from the curb. “So you go to Thornking-Ash. What’s your name?”
“I didn’t say that,” she pointed out. She put her bare feet up on the dashboard; her clogs stayed down on the floor. “I only asked you to take me there.”
“How silly of me. Of course. What’s your name?”
The girl looked at my hands on the wheel, as if she might find the answer to the question in my handwriting. She screwed her face up thoughtfully. “Nuala. No—Elenora. No—Polly—no, wait. I liked Nuala the best. Yeah, let’s go with Nuala.”
She said it like it had a lot of O s in it: Noooooola. She was half-smiling in the smug sort of way that I liked better on my face.
“Are you sure you want to stick with that one?”
She studied her fingernails and bit at one. “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”
“Are you a woman?” I asked.
Nuala shot a dark look at me. “Haven’t you heard that it’s rude to ask?”
“Right. How thoughtless of me. So, have we met?”
Nuala waved a hand at me. “Shut up, would you? I’m trying to listen.” She adjusted her seat way back and stared at the ceiling a second before closing her eyes. I had this horrible idea that she wasn’t listening to the music on the radio, but to some faraway music that only she could hear. I kept driving, silent, but I kept an eye on her. The afternoon sunlight came in through the side of the car and highlighted a galaxy of freckles on her cheeks. The freckles seemed incongruous, somehow: Very innocent. Very human. Then she opened her eyes and said, “So you’re a piper.”
This didn’t have to be a supernatural observation. Anybody who’d been on the sidewalk when I played for Bill would’ve been able to hear. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine a subtext beneath her statement. “Yes. An awesome one.”
Nuala shrugged. “You’re all right.”
I glanced at her; she was smiling, in a very pointy way. “You’re just trying to make me angry.”
“I’m just saying I’ve heard better.” Nuala turned her face to me and the smile vanished. “I listened to your conversation, piper. They’ve got nothing for you here. Would you like to be better at what you do?”
The prick of danger increased to a stab. “That’s a stupid question. You already know the answer, or you wouldn’t have asked.”
“I could help you.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to choose my words. “How do you figure?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her sit up straight and then, a moment later, I felt her breath in my ear. “By whispering secrets into your ear that would change your life.”
I leaned my head away from her before the scent of her breath could capture me. My goose bumps had goose bumps. “And you’d do this selflessly, I’m sure.”
“You know, I’d get hardly anything out of it, in comparison. You wouldn’t even notice. You’d become the best piper to ever live.”
“Right.” All sorts of warning stories of deals with devils and the like were running through my head, and now I was definitely rethinking my decision to get into the car with her. “Well, I’m flattered. But no.” We were getting close to the school now. I wondered what she’d do when we got there. “I’m happy with my level of awesomeness. Happy enough to work my way up on my own, anyway. Unless you have, like, a free, no-obligation trial subscription that I can cancel after thirty days without owing anything or giving you a credit card number.”
She showed me her teeth in a kind of grimace or snarl. “It’s very rude to turn down help from someone like me. Self-involved jerks such as yourself rarely get such offers.”
I protested. “I was nice about turning you down, though. You have to admit that, at least.”
“You didn’t even think about it.”
“I did. Now, did you hear that pause there? Just a second ago? That was me, thinking about it again. And the answer’s still no.”
She growled and shoved her feet into her giant clogs. “Stop the car. I’ll get out here.”
“What about school?”
Nuala’s fingers were claws on the door handle. “Don’t push me, James Morgan. Let me out and I won’t pop your head off.”
There was a ferocity to her voice that made me believe her. I stopped the car by the side of the road, trees close in on either side. Nuala fumbled with the door handle and then snapped at me, “Locks, you idiot!”
The doors had auto-locked. I hit the unlock button and she pushed the door open. Turning back to me, she fixed her blue eyes on me again. Her voice was scornful. “I think you lack the capacity to learn what I could teach you, anyway. Smug bastard.”
She slammed the door and I hit the gas before she could change her mind. I glanced in the rearview mirror, but all I saw was a whirl of dry leaves spinning up from the road.
Nuala
The blanket of yellow dazzles,
A frenetic sea of autumn glowing
Flowers upon a dying world, gifts for a yearly wake
Hiding behind summer-warm days,
The frost-bit nights are growing
Long with promise of the vicious harvest we take.
—from Golden Tongue: The Poems of Steven Slaughter
For some reason, the memory of that afternoon, the first day anyone had ever told me “no,” stuck in my head with excruciating detail. I could remember everything about it for the rest of my life. The too-hot interior of James’ car and the way that the worn cloth seat felt downy against the palm of my hand. The leaves outside the car, brilliant in their gaudy colors: the red-brown of the oaks was the same red-brown of his hair. The thick feeling in the back of my throat—anger. Real anger. It had been forever since I’d been angry.
It had been forever since I hadn’t gotten something I wanted.
I sulked until the sun blazed red just above the trees and the students returned to the dorms in knots of two, threes, fours. There were several that walked alone, hands shoved in pockets or gripping backpack straps, eyes on the ground. They would’ve been easy marks; being away from their family and friends was hard and these little lonely souls had only their music for company. They glowed faintly to me, blues and aquamarines and watery greens, all the color of my eyes. Maybe if it hadn’t been so soon after the last one, I would’ve been tempted. But I still felt strong, alive, invincible.