Valiant mtof-2 Read online

  Dave shrugged, carried the box under one arm, and flipped open a book. He didn't read out loud, but his mouth moved as he scanned the page.

  They were quiet as they walked for a while and then Val pointed to the book in his hand. "What's it about?"

  "I don't know yet," Sketchy Dave said. He sounded annoyed. They walked for a while more in silence, his face buried in the book.

  "Look at that," Val pointed to a wooden chair with the seat gone.

  Dave regarded it critically. "Nah. We can't sell that. Unless you want it for yourself."

  "What would I do with it?" Val asked.

  Dave shrugged and turned to walk through a black gate into a mostly empty square, dumping the romance novel back into the box. Val stopped to read the plaque: Seward Park. Tall trees shadowed most of the deserted playground equipment sprawled over the space. The concrete was carpeted with yellow and brown leaves. They passed a dried-up fountain with stone seals that looked as if they might spurt water for kids to run through in the summertime. The statue of a wolf peeked out from a patch of brown grass.

  Sketchy Dave walked past all that without pausing and headed for a separate gated area that bordered one of the New York Public Library branches. Dave slid through a gap in the fence. Val followed, climbing into a miniature Japanese garden filled with small piles of smooth, black rocks in stacks of varying heights.

  "Wait here," he said.

  He pushed over one of the stone piles and lifted up a small, folded note. Moments later he was back out through the fence and unfolding it.

  "What does it say?" Val asked.

  With a grin, Dave held the paper out. It was blank.

  "Watch this," he said. Crumpling it into a ball, he threw it into the air. It flew out onto the path and downward, when it suddenly changed direction as though blown by a rebel wind. As Val watched in amazement, the paper ball rolled until it rested beneath the base of a slide.

  "How did you do that?" Val asked.

  Dave reached underneath the slide and ripped a tape-covered object free. "Just don't tell Luis, okay?"

  "Do you say that about everything?" Val looked at the object in Dave's hand. It was a beer bottle, corked with melted wax. Around the neck, a scrap of paper hung from a ragged piece of string. Inside, molasses-brown sand sifted with each tilt of the container, showing a purplish sheen. "What's the big deal?"

  "Look, if you don't believe Lolli, I'm not going to argue with you. She told you too much already. But just say that you did believe Lolli for a minute, and say you thought that Luis could see a whole world the rest of us can't, and say that he does some jobs for them."

  "Them?" Val couldn't decide if she thought this was a conspiracy to freak her out or not.

  Dave squatted down, and with a quick look at the sun's position in the sky, uncorked the bottle, causing the wax around the neck to crumble. He sifted a little of the contents into a tiny baggie like the one she'd seen Lolli pour her drug out of. He shoved the baggie into the front pocket of his jeans.

  "Come on, what is it?" Val asked, but her voice was hushed now.

  "I can honestly say I have no fucking clue," Sketchy Dave said. "Look. I have to go uptown and drop this off. You can come along with me, but you have to hang back when we get there."

  "Is that the stuff Lolli shot in her arm?" Val asked.

  Dave hesitated.

  "Look," Val said. "I can just ask Lolli."

  "You can't believe everything Lolli says."

  "What is that supposed to mean?" Val demanded.

  "Nothing." Dave shook his head and walked off. Val had no choice but to follow him. She wasn't even sure she could find her way back to the abandoned platform without him to guide her and she needed her bag to go anywhere else.

  They took the F to Thirty-fourth Street then switched to the B, taking that all the way to Ninety-sixth. Sketchy Dave held on to a horizontal metal bar and did pull-ups as the train thundered through the tunnels.

  Val looked out the train window, watching the small lights marking distance streak by, but after a while her eyes were drawn to the other passengers. A wiry black man with close-cropped hair swayed unconsciously to the music on his iPod, a load of manuscripts balanced in one arm. A girl seated next to him was carefully drawing a glove of inky swirls up her own hand. Leaning against the doors, a tall man in a striped gray suit clutched his briefcase and stared at Dave in horror. Each person seemed to have a destination, but Val was a piece of driftwood, spinning down a river, not even sure in what direction she was moving. But she knew how to make herself spin faster.

  From the station, they walked a few blocks to the edge of Riverside Park, a sprawling patch of green that sloped down the highway to the water beyond. Across the street, town houses with park views had curling ironwork at the windows and doors. Intricately carved concrete blocks framed doorways and stair railings, forming fantastical dragons and lions and griffons that leered down at her in the reflected glow of street lamps. Val and Dave passed a fountain where a stone eagle with a cracked beak glowered over a murky green pool choked with leaves.

  "Just wait here," Sketchy Dave said.

  "Why?" Val asked. "What is the big deal? You already told me all kinds of shit you aren't supposed to."

  "I told you you're not supposed to be along."

  "Fine." Val relented and sat down on the edge of the fountain. "I'll be right here."

  "Good," Dave said and jogged across the street to a door without iron grillwork. He walked up the white steps, put down the box of romance novels, and pressed a buzzer near where someone had stenciled a mushroom with spray paint. Val glanced up at the sculpted gargoyles that flanked the roof of the building. As she was looking, one seemed to shudder, like a bird on a perch, stony feathers rustling and then settling. Val froze, staring at it, and after a moment, the gargoyle went still.

  Val jumped up and crossed the street, calling Dave's name. But as she got to the steps, the black door opened and a woman stepped into the doorway. She wore a long white slip. Her tangled, brown-and-green hair looked unwashed and the skin under her eyes was dark as a bruise. Hooves peeked out from under the hem of the slip where feet should have been.

  Val froze, and the skirt settled, covering them, leaving Val unsure of what she'd seen.

  Sketchy Dave turned his head and gave Val a fierce glare before he took out the beer bottle from his bag.

  "Come inside?" the hoofed woman asked, her voice rough, as though she'd been shouting. She didn't seem to notice that the seal had been broken.

  "Yeah," Sketchy Dave said.

  "Who's your friend?"

  "Val," Val said, trying not to gape. "I'm new. Dave's showing me the ropes."

  "She can wait out here," said Dave.

  "Do you think me so discourteous? The chill air will cut her to the bone." The woman held open the door and Val followed Dave inside, smirking. There was a marble-lined hall and a staircase railed with old, polished wood. The hooved woman led them through sparsely furnished rooms, past a fountain where silvery koi darted, their bodies so pale that the pink of their insides showed through their scales, past a music room holding only a double-strung lap harp on a table of marble, then into a parlor. She sat down on a cream-colored settee, the brocade fabric worn thin, and beckoned for them to join her. There was a low table near her and on it a glass, a teapot, and a tarnished spoon. The hooved woman used the spoon to measure out some of the amber sand into her cup, then filled it with hot water and drank deeply. She flinched once and when she looked up, her eyes shone with an eerie, glittering brightness.

  Val couldn't stop her gaze from straying to the woman's goat feet. There was something obscene about the glimpses of short, thick fur that covered her slender ankles, the sheen of the black horn, the two splayed toes.

  "Sometimes a remedy can seem another sort of sickness," the goat-footed woman said. "David, be sure to tell Ravus there's been another murder."

  Sketchy Dave sat down on the ebonized wood floor. "Murder
?"

  "Dunnie Berry died last night. Poor thing, she was just coming out of her tree—it's horrible how that iron gate fences her roots. It must have scorched her every time she crossed it. You delivered to her, no?"

  Sketchy Dave shifted uncomfortably. "Last week. Wednesday."

  "You might well be the last person to have seen her alive," the goat-footed woman said. "Be careful." She lifted her teacup, swigged down a bit more of the solution. "People are saying your master peddles poison."

  "He's not my master." Sketchy Dave stood up. "We've got to go."

  The goat-footed woman stood, too. "Of course. Come in the back and I'll get what I owe."

  "Don't eat or drink anything or you'll be more fucked than you already are," Dave whispered to Val as he followed the woman into another room, leaving his salvaged box of romance novels on the floor. Val scowled and walked over to a display case. Inside the glass door was a large, solid chunk of something like obsidian. Beside it were some other things, equally odd. A bit of bark, a broken stick, a sharp burr in the shape of a pinecone, each fold razor sharp.

  A few moments later, Sketchy Dave and the goat-footed woman returned. She was smiling. Val tried to stare at her without catching her eye. If someone had asked Val what she would do if she saw some supernatural creature, she wouldn't have figured she'd do nothing at all. She felt unable to be sure of what she was seeing, unable to decide if there really was a monster right in front of her. As they walked out of the apartment, Val could hear her blood thundering in her head to the speeding beat of her heart.

  "I told you to fucking stay over there," Sketchy Dave growled, gesturing across the street, toward the fountain.

  Val was too flustered to be angry. "I saw something—a statue—moving." She pointed upward, to the top of the building and the almost-night sky but she was incoherent. "And then I came over and… what is she?"

  "Fuck!" Dave punched the stone wall, his knuckles coming away raw and scraped. "Fuck! Fuck!" He walked away, head hunched as though he were leaning into a strong wind.

  Val caught up to him and grabbed him by the arm. "Tell me," she demanded, her grip tightening. He tried to jerk away from her, but he couldn't. She was stronger.

  He looked at her strangely, like he was reevaluating them both. "You didn't see anything. There was nothing to see."

  Val stared at him. "And what would Lolli say? A faerie, right? Except faeries don't fucking exist!"

  He started to laugh. She dropped his arm and shoved him hard. The box of novels fell, scattering paperbacks into the road.

  He looked down at them and then back at her. "Fucking bitch," he said and spat on the ground.

  All the rage and bewilderment of the last day boiled up in her. Her hands balled into fists. She wanted to hit something.

  Dave bent down to pick up the cardboard box and replaced the fallen books. "You're lucky you're a girl," he muttered.

  Chapter 4

  We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?

  —Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market"

  On the train ride back, Val sat in a plastic seat far from Dave, leaned her head back against a Plexiglas-covered map of the subway, and wondered how a person could have hooves. She'd seen shadows move on their own and bottles of brown sand that had something to do with make-believe gossip about murdered tree people from weird, Upper West Side ladies. What she did know was that she didn't want to be blind and dumb, the kind of girl that didn't notice that her mom and boyfriend were having sex until she saw it with her own eyes. She wanted to know the truth.

  When Val got close to the concrete park on Leonard Street she saw Luis sitting on a ledge, drinking something out of a blue glass bottle. A bird-boned girl with mismatched sneakers and a swollen belly sat beside him, trembling fingers holding a cigarette. As Val got closer, she could see sores on the new girl's ankles, leaking pus. The streets were nearly deserted, the only person close by a security guard across the street who walked out to the curb every now and then before she disappeared into the building.

  "Why are you still around?" Luis asked, glancing up at her. She was unnerved by the stare from his cloudy eye.

  "Just tell me where Lolli is and I won't be," said Val.

  Luis gestured with his chin to the grate in the ground as Dave walked up to them both.

  The girl dropped her cigarette and then reached for it, her fingers grazing the hot end without her seeming to notice as she fumbled to put it back in her mouth.

  "What did you do?" Luis asked Dave, his jaw tightening. "What happened?"

  Dave looked at the parked cars that lined the street. "It wasn't my fault."

  Luis closed his eyes. "You are such a fucking idiot."

  Dave said something else, but Val had already started walking toward the service entrance, the grate that she and Dave had slid out of that afternoon. She got down on her hands and knees, pulled up the unhinged end of the metal bars, and lowered herself onto the steps.

  "Lolli?" she called into the darkness.

  "Over here," came the drowsy reply.

  Val waded across the mattresses and blankets to where she'd slept the night before. Her backpack wasn't where she'd left it. She kicked aside some of the dirty clothes on the platform. Nothing. "Where's my bag?"

  "You trust a bunch of bums with your stuff, I guess you get what you get." Lolli laughed and held up the knapsack. "It's here. Chill."

  Val unzipped her pack. All her stuff was inside, the razor still choked with her hair, the thirteen dollars still folded up in her wallet right beside her train ticket. Even her gum was still there. "Sorry," Val said and sat down.

  "Don't trust us?" Lolli grinned.

  "Look, I saw something and I don't know what it was and I'm done getting fucked with."

  Lolli sat up, hugging her legs to her chest, eyes wide and smile stretching even wider. "You saw one of them!"

  The image of the goat-footed woman moved uneasily behind Val's eyes. "I know what you're going to say, but I don't think it was a faerie."

  "So what do you think it was?"

  "I don't know. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me." Val sat down on an overturned wood tangelo box. It made a cracking sound, but supported her weight. "That doesn't make any sense."

  "Believe what you can handle believing."

  "But, I mean—faeries? Like 'clap if you believe in faeries'?"

  Lolli snorted. "You saw one. You tell me."

  "I did tell you. I told you I don't know what I saw. A woman with goat feet? You shooting something weird in your arm? Paper that dances around? Is that supposed to add up?"

  Lolli scowled.

  "How do you know it's real?" Val demanded.

  "The troll tunnel," Lolli said. "You won't be able to explain that away."

  "Troll?"

  "Luis made a deal with him. It was when Dave and their mom got shot. Their mother was dead when the ambulance came, but Dave was in the hospital for a while. Luis promised the troll he would serve him for a year if he saved Dave's life."

  "That's who Dave was doing the delivery for?" Val asked.

  "He took you on one of those?" Lolli blew out a breath that might have been a laugh. "Wow, he really is the worst spy in the world."

  "What is the big deal about telling me? Why does Luis care what I know? Like you said to Dave, no one is going to believe me."

  "Luis says none of us are supposed to know, not even Dave. They'd be mad, he says. But since he started doing deliveries for Ravus, some of the other faeries have him doing errands for them. Dave does some of the troll's jobs."

  "My friend Ruth used to make up things. She said she had a boyfriend named Zachary that lived in England. She showed me letters full of angsty poetry. Basically, the truth was that Ruth wrote herself letters, printed them out, and lied about it. I know all about liars," Val said. "It's not like I don't believe what you're saying, but what if Luis is lying to you?"

/>   "What if he is?" asked Lolli.

  Val felt a burst of anger, the worse because it was directionless. "Whatever. Where's the troll tunnel? We'll find out for ourselves."

  "I know the way," Lolli said. "I followed Luis to the entrance."

  "But you didn't go inside?" Val stood up.

  "No." Lolli stood, too, dusting off her skirt. "I didn't want to go alone and Dave wouldn't come with me."

  "What do you think a troll is?" Val asked as Lolli scrounged through the cloth and bags on the platform. Val thought of the story of the three goats, thought of the game WarCraft and the little green trolls that carried axes and said, "Wanna buy a cigar?" and "Say hello to my little friend" when you clicked on them enough times. None of that seemed real, but the world would certainly be cooler with something so unreal in it.

  "Got it," Lolli said, holding up a flashlight that gave off a dim and inconstant glow. "This isn't going to last."

  Val jumped off onto the track level. "We'll be quick."

  With a sigh, Lolli climbed down after her.

  As they walked through the subway tunnel, the failing flashlight washed the black walls amber, highlighting the soot and the miles of electrical cording that threaded through the tunnel. It was like moving through the veins of the city.

  They passed a live platform, where people waited for a train. Lolli waved to them as they stared, but Val reached down and picked up the discarded batteries of a dozen CD players. As they moved on, she tried each battery in turn, until she found two that strengthened the beam of the flashlight.

  Now it lit piles of garbage, catching the green reflection of rat eyes and the moving walls of roaches that throve in the heat and the dark. Val heard a thin whistle.

  "Train," Val yelled, pushing Lolli against the gap in the wall, a shallow crevice thick with grime. Dust gusted through the air a moment before the train barreled past on another track. Lolli cackled and pressed her face close to Val's.