Wayfaring Girls

  By E. L. Chen

  27 March 2006

  “Damn it,” Phil said, fiddling with the knobs of the stereo. “Ever since we crossed the border I can’t get any stations.”

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” Joyce snapped.

  Phil swore and flicked off the radio. Great, Joyce thought. Now we’ll have to talk to each other. Something that seemed so easy in front of their marriage counselor, but when alone one might as well ask for the moon on a string. She cranked down the window, welcoming the deafening blast of air. The wind was as hot and dry as the shimmering desert surrounding the highway.

  “You sure we’re on the right road?” she said.

  Phil rolled his eyes. “I know exactly where we’re going.”

  Do you? Do you really?

  He said, mockingly, “East of the sun and west of the moon, right?”

  Joyce said nothing.

  * * *

  She kisses the small pink forehead, tugs at the perfect little toes. “Good night, honey,” she says. The baby burbles happily. She turns out the light.

  Silence, as quick and sharp as a knife.

  An icy draft lifts the hairs on her arms, caresses the open neck of her robe. A scent like rotting rose petals chokes her nostrils.

  “Aisling? Aisling, honey?”

  She creeps toward the crib, joints stiff with terror, trying to remember what the nurses had told her about SIDS.

  The baby cries. She nearly weeps with relief.

  The baby cries again—a sickly, colicky cry, not Aisling’s healthy gurgle.

  * * *

  “Where’s the next hotel?” Phil asked as dusk fell like a curtain over the horizon. Since they had crossed the border there had been nothing but pavement and sand stretching as far as they could see. Joyce couldn’t remember when they had last passed another car.

  “I don’t know.” She shivered. Without the sun to keep it at bay, the cold crawled up her bare arms, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.

  Phil sneered. “Lonely Planet doesn’t make guides to Faerie?”

  She hugged herself and said, “I told you, I don’t know what we’ll find here.” Except Aisling. “There. That looks like something.”

  A building squatted on the jaundiced desert ahead. As they approached, Joyce saw that it was a motel. Phil pulled off the highway and into the empty parking lot.

  They staggered out of the car. The gritty air scraped Joyce’s throat. The tinny jingle of door chimes danced on a breeze and an iron-haired woman emerged from the motel office. She wiped her hands on her apron. A keyring hung at her waist.

  “Jesus, what a hag,” Phil muttered. “You can talk to her. I’ll unload the trunk.”

  The old woman spat on the ground and called out, “You want room, yes?” Her accent was vaguely European.

  “Yes,” Joyce said, striding toward her. “Um… do you take American dollars?” She had emptied her safety deposit box before they’d left, but she didn’t want to part with her grandmother’s jewelry unless she had to.

  The old woman’s mouth stretched over crooked yellow teeth. “Who does not?” she said, cackling.

  She named a price. Joyce rummaged in her purse and pulled out her wallet and a photo of Aisling. “I’m looking for my daughter,” she said, showing the picture to the woman. “Have you seen her?”

  The old woman nodded. “Yes. I see her. Two, three weeks ago. In wood, she is.”

  “Wood?”

  “In wood, all journeys start. In the morning,” the old woman added, waving Joyce’s frown away. She tugged a long, skinny black key from the keyring. Joyce scoffed at the sudden notion that it had been fashioned from human bones and teeth.

  “Room 12,” the woman said. “Wake-up call, eight-thirty.”

  Joyce and Phil lugged their suitcases and cooler up the chipped concrete steps to the second-floor landing. Joyce opened the door to their room and switched on the light. Pink-framed seascapes hung above the two double beds. A stack of white towels and plastic-wrapped disposable cups sat on a long, low dresser. A flesh-colored rotary telephone perched on the nightstand. Joyce was certain that if she opened the nightstand drawer, she would find a Gideon Bible.

  “No TV, no AC…” Phil hefted his suitcase onto the closest bed.

  “I think it’s charming,” Joyce said, slapping her bags onto the other bed. The temperature was comfortable and he had never watched much television anyhow. He was just trying to make her sorry that she had dragged him on this road trip. Especially when she had leveraged his guilt about Nikki to coax him to come.

  Phil grunted and headed for the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower.”

  “Don’t drink the water,” she called after him.

  He emerged after Joyce had finished a makeshift dinner of bottled water and crackers. He took an apple out of the cooler and bit into it. The juices ran down his chin and into his graying chest hairs. The mattress groaned as he sat, his paunch swelling over the snug band of his boxer briefs.

  What could Nikki have possibly seen in him? Joyce’s eyes suddenly burned, because another woman had seen something magical in Phil to which she was blind. She retreated into the bathroom, intending to brush her teeth, but instead she stared in the mirror at the creases around her eyes and mouth.

  She didn’t know when it had happened. Perhaps it had been gradual, like Phil’s late nights at the office. Or perhaps it had been instantaneous, like Aisling’s disappearance. All she knew was that one day she’d woken up and discovered that the carefree girl she’d once been had been replaced by a middle-aged cliche.

  Laugh lines, people call them. Ha. She made a face, and the lines bunched and deepened.

  * * *

  “You’ll be sorry,” Aisling screams, her green eyes screwed up into wrinkled slits. “My real mother’s gonna show up one day.”

  “Oh, is she,” she says. “Well, then maybe she can buy you this doll. Because I’m sure as heck not going to get it for you today, young lady, if you keep up this behavior.”

  “My real mother’s a queen. A beautiful queen in a land far, far away. One day she’s gonna take me away, and then you’ll be sorry.”

  “Really,” she says. “We’ll see about that.”

  * * *

  They woke to a rumbling that blossomed from the motel’s very foundation. “Jesus,” Phil said, sitting up in bed. The plastic cups danced across the dresser; the seascapes rattled in their frames.

  Joyce flung back her covers—she had defiantly chosen to sleep in the other bed—and just as abruptly as it had started, the rumbling stopped. A plastic cup dropped to the floor. It cracked under her foot as she stumbled to the window. Phil grunted and returned to sleep, exhaustion overcoming curiosity.

  Joyce pulled back the curtains and squinted. The desert sand glowed with a milky blue light. She looked up at the moon. Only in stories was the moon as large and round as a wheel of cheese, and bright enough to illuminate the darkest night—and thus it was so, in Faerie.

  She shielded her eyes and scanned the horizon. A black, bristly ribbon like a mustache unfurled along the edge of the visible world, growing larger with every heartbeat until she could discern the tops of trees. It reminded her of the marching woods in Macbeth, until she glanced down and discovered that the woods weren’t moving—they were.

  Where there should have been pillars supporting the second-floor landing, two long, scaly legs protruded. A chicken’s legs, striding across the desert, kicking up sand and scrub in their wake, balancing the motel’s weight on their fat thighs.

  Joyce yanked the curtains closed and tumbled back into bed. She pulled the covers over her head to hide her shaking from Phil. You were prepared to do anything to find Aisling, she reminded herself as she fell into an uneasy sleep.

  * * *

  The shrill ring of the telephone roused them in the morning. Joyce fumbled for the receiver and assured the old woman that they were awake. Phil checked his watch and frowned. “Why is it still dark outside?” he said.

  Joyce knew; she had seen the black forest.

  The station wagon appeared to be sitting where they had parked it—only it sat on mulch instead of pavement. Phil stared at the car, and then up at the towering edge of the woods. The moon hung low and round, igniting the tips of the trees with blue light. Behind the motel, however, the sun burned in a cloudless cerulean sky.

  The motel office jingled open. “Always is night, in wood,” the old woman said. She pointed to an opening in the wall of trees. A glimmer of moon-touched gravel escaped the darkness. “Here. To your daughter, this road takes you.”

  “Thank you,” Joyce said. She held out their room key. The old woman shook her head.

  “Keep it. You will need,” she said. “You and I, we are same. Women bound to home. Others see types, not women.”

  “Thank you,” Joyce said again. She pocketed the key and returned to the car. Phil fidgeted in the driver’s seat, drumming on the wheel with his fingers. “Over there.” Joyce pointed at the unpaved road. Phil switched on the headlights and ignition. As he stepped on the gas, two massive chicken legs uprooted themselves from the ground behind them and the motel scampered away, back across the desert.

  The forest parted and swallowed them whole.

  A glimpse of red caught Joyce’s eye. A young girl was skipping on the side of the road, adjusting the hood of her scarlet cloak. A few seconds later, amber eyes peered out of the shadows, large and hungry like a wolf’s. The beast bared its teeth at Joyce and then was lost in the statio n wagon’s rear lights.

  “Something out there?” Phil said, deploying the power locks.

  “No.” A beautiful child with ebony-black hair and white skin darted between the trees, sobbing. A grubby waif wearing a dress made of barrel slats, or perhaps of nettles—no, it’s a donkey’s skin, Joyce realized with revulsion—picked her way over fallen logs.

  As they drove, she saw other girls walking in the woods: some despondent, some determined, some richly dressed, some poorly dressed. And some, like Donkeyskin, barely dressed at all. But they all trudged in the same direction, searching for—

  No. Joyce remembered the fairy tales she’d read as a child. They don’t know what they’re going to find, or even what they’re looking for. All they have is hope and optimism and their own wits.

  She envied them.

  And then she saw a flash of ash-blonde hair.

  The girl stumbled over the brush in her jelly sandals and denim mini-skirt, a bulging backpack weighing down her shoulders. It was Joyce at age eighteen, searching for her first class on her first day of college.

  Joyce remembered that day: a blur of fear and breathlessness and anticipation. Was I ever that naïve? she thought with both disdain and wistfulness. She peeled herself from the window. Her eighteen-year-old self slipped away behind them, back into the past where she belonged.

  “I wanted to name her something sensible,” Phil suddenly said, as if he had mustered the courage to speak for hours. “Like Mary.” After his mother, that bitch. “But you had to insist on that weird hippie name.”

  “It’s Gaelic,” she said.

  “Whatever. If Aisling had a normal name, she’d fit in more at school, and she wouldn’t be so difficult—”

  “And so it’s my fault? You’re never home—”

  “It’s not my fault I’ve had to work late.”

  “Working late? You don’t have to call it that anymore.”

  His ears reddened. “I told you, it’s over between me and Nikki. It’s been over for a long time. Damn it, I’ve tried to make it up to you. How much longer are you going to punish me?”

  She turned away and gazed out the window again. There were no more wayfaring girls to be seen.

  Phil navigated a sharp curve in the road and slammed on the brakes. “Jesus,” he said.

  The road ended in the middle of a clearing, as if whoever had carved out the path through the woods had walked away one day and forgotten about it. Joyce stared at the expanse of brush and undergrowth. Tears scalded her eyes. It’s not fair. There should be something here. This can’t be the end.

  She opened the car door and stepped out. “Turn on the high beams,” she said. Phil flicked them on, and to her surprise he turned off the engine and stepped out as well.

  The beams illuminated a tall hedge at the other end of the clearing. Trees rose thickly on either side, forming a cul-de-sac. Joyce picked her way across scrubby weeds and birch saplings, unsettled by this pocket of new growth tucked in the heart of an ageless forest. Phil followed. “Must’ve been a fire here some time ago,” he said, kicking at a ragged tree stump surrounded by knee-high saplings.

  “It’s a wall,” Joyce said. Even with her head craned all the way back, she could not see what lay on the other side. She tugged at the tightly interwoven vines to test their strength—and gasped. What she had thought were narrow leaves were actually thorns.

  “Great, just great,” Phil said. “I knew this trip was a big mistake. We should just turn around and go home.”

  Joyce blotted her bleeding palms on the hips of her jeans. “So you’re going to give up on Aisling, like you’ve given up on our marriage?”

  “I have not given up on our marriage. If I had, would I be here?”

  “If you hadn’t given up, you wouldn’t have slept with Nikki.”

  Phil closed his eyes. “Not now, Joyce. Can we figure out how to get out of here first?”

  The car’s headlights suddenly dimmed, plunging them into semi-darkness. “Damn it,” said Phil, “don’t tell me that the battery’s dying—”

  They turned around and saw the dragon.

  Joyce had always imagined dragons to possess a majestic beauty. This creature, however, was unlike any fantasy illustration she’d ever seen. Two small, milky, piggish eyes were embedded deep within the folds of its narrow head. A long, scrawny neck coiled atop a bloated body. Its greenish-black scales were filmy and tatty, like a shedding snakeskin.

  The dragon screeched with fury, revealing teeth as thick and blunt as an old elephant’s tusks.

  “Jesus,” Phil breathed. “Joyce, get back. Get back!”

  Joyce stepped backward. Thorns tangled in her hair.

  Phil veered to the right and dashed toward the trees. “Hey, over here!” he shouted, waving his arms.

  The dragon turned toward Phil. The station wagon’s headlights broke through from behind the beast’s body and struck the wall. The dragon reared its serpentine neck. “Watch out!” Joyce screamed. A curling tongue of fire lashed out. Phil dove into the forest’s undergrowth. Trees burst into flame.

  “Phil!” Sulfur seared Joyce’s throat.

  “I’m okay!” he yelled over the roar of fire and dragon. “Get back to the car. Go.”

  “I can’t leave you—”

  “Forget about me! Just go, get out of here while you can. I’ll hold off the—shit!”

  “Phil!” She heard the snap of twigs, and then the hiss of breath.

  “Go!” he rasped.

  Joyce sprinted to the car. Its high beams shone in her eyes. She dashed blindly for the driver’s side—and smacked into what felt like a crumbling concrete pillar.

  She stumbled backward and blinked, trying to clear her sight. The pillar was actually a stout, black, twisted tree that looked as if its leaves and branches had been singed off. A heart-shaped knothole sat at eye-level. Joyce put one hand on the tree and the other on her hip to steady herself—and she remembered the old woman’s room key in her jeans pocket, as black and bone-like as the deeply ridged tree bark.

  She took the key from her pocket, jammed it into the knothole, and twisted. The tree split in two halves. The inside was hollow, save for a plain gold box the size of a picnic cooler. The box was warm and throbbed gently beneath her palms, as if it were alive.

  “Damn it, get in the car!” Phil shouted. He was out in the open again, dashing back and forth in front of the vine-thick wall. The dragon shrieked, too slow and clumsy to follow him closely. It raised a claw and swatted at him as if he were a mosquito. Joyce heard the crunch and roll of a body on a forest floor.

  “Phil!” She wanted to run to him, but the dragon was already turning around, squinting at the car’s headlights. She hefted open the lid to the box. Inside, on a velvet cushion, something dark and wet and slimy pulsed.

  Joyce picked up the heart, dropped it to the gravel, and brought down her foot. The heart burst under her heel. The dragon shrieked once more, and dissolved into a falling curtain of ash.

  Joyce collapsed against the car, hugging herself. She didn’t feel glad or triumphant, only tired. “Phil?” she called out.

  Silence.

  She staggered into the clearing. Flame bathed the trees around her. “Phil?” she called again, her heart pounding in her ears.

  Phil crawled out from the charred brush, his hair rumpled and sooty. Blood oozed from scratches on his face and arms, and an ugly gash split the shins of his khakis.

  “Don’t move,” Joyce said. She dashed back to the car and dug out a towel and a bottle of water.

  To her surprise, Phil began to laugh when she started sponging away the blood and dirt. A deep, joyous laugh—not the bitter grunts to which Joyce had become accustomed.

  “I—I can’t believe I did that,” he said, tears washing away the soot on his cheeks. “I didn’t know that I could… that I was capable—”

  I didn’t know either. She and Phil had been on the same road all along, even though it felt like they had grown apart. She should have recognized the loss of confidence. The frustration. The boredom, and yet fear of change.

  “I was going to end it, you know,” he said, his face serious again. “Even if she hadn’t broken it off and transferred to the head office.”

  “I know,” Joyce said, although she knew he was lying. The man he’d been then had been too weak to end the affair, just as he’d been too weak to end their marriage before he’d started sleeping with Nikki.

 

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