Copper Girl (5 page)

Micah… I shoved his image from my mind, for all the good it did. I wondered if he’d enchanted me, if that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I mean, I had gone to the Otherworld to tell him to leave me be, and ended up practically begging to wear his token. Yesterday, I hadn’t known what a token was. Today, one dangled against my breast like a supernatural calling card.

Of metal
… Micah had just known that I was of metal, as surely as if I’d hung a sign around my neck. I’m not ashamed to admit that, after a lifetime pretending to be nothing more than ordinary, it rattled me that he had keyed into my true nature almost instantly. I wondered if anyone else could divine my Elemental nature just by looking at me. No, probably not while I still dyed my copper hair a dark, earthy brown. Micah’s…astuteness had been just the result of a wardrobe malfunction.

Yeah. That had to be it.

Max had had copper hair too, and freckles, just like Sadie. Sadie hated her speckled nose, but I’ve been jealous of her freckles for as far back as I can remember; a face without freckles is like a sky without stars, as Meme Corbeau used to say. It was something Sadie shared with Max that I never would.
Then they took Max, and now Sadie’s freckles are all alone. It just isn’t fair
.

“Hey, baby.”

I looked up and saw Mom in the doorway. She was muddy from the garden, still wearing thick gloves, with her blond hair tucked under a hat; Mom’s skin, freckle-free and smooth and white as a porcelain doll, burned something fierce at the mere mention of the sun. Her blue eyes were tired and sad, as they’d been every day since Dad had gone. She hefted a basket, multicolored produce spilling over the sides. Food grown in the ground, as opposed to a hydroponic greenhouse, is a rare treat in the post-war world.

I set the frame back on the table and joined Mom in the hall. “Tomatoes?”

“Eggplant,” she replied. “I have zucchini, too.”

I followed her into the kitchen, which was full of granite counters and state of the art appliances, all thanks to the government’s magnanimous nature, and watched my mother bag up the assorted vegetables. When I was younger I couldn’t understand her rampant need for gardening, since she always grew ten times what we could eat. Now that I had worked at REES, I got it; the routine tasks completed by her hands allowed her mind time to roam.

“I know you didn’t come here for vegetables,” she said once the last bag was full. “What’s on your mind?”

Oh, so many things. “Do you ever think about Max?”

We weren’t supposed to say his name. Hell, we weren’t even supposed to have any pictures of him, either, but the goons had missed the one in the parlor. Usually, Mom scolded us for being careless, but today, she only sighed.

“Every day,” she murmured. “Every blessed day.”

After I left Mom and the creepy birds behind, I did some more aimless driving. I didn’t want to go back to my empty apartment, and I absolutely did not want to go into the office on my day off. Now
that
would be pathetic. Far, far more pathetic than mooning over an elf lord from the Otherworld, whose very presence in my life could mean imprisonment and/or death.

Yes. Wouldn’t want to be caught with a work ethic, now, would we?

Since I was already on the wealthier side of town, I parked my mechanical next to the Promenade and headed over to the open-air market. Great. Now, I was even
thinking
like Micah. There, in booths ranging from little more than mildewed cardboard held together with dental floss, to palatial tents of multicolored silk fit for a king, you could purchase anything, or anyone-a maid, a handyman, maybe even a bride- your heart desired. Well, as long as you had the money to burn or an item to trade.

For instance, you can obtain clothing (both elegant and utilitarian), government-approved (and unapproved) reading material, exotic pets, exotic foods, exotic pets made into exotic food… you name it, it is sold along the Promenade, though some wares only make appearances during that magical time between dusk and curfew. There’s even a booth selling cow’s milk so fresh the cow is tethered behind the counter. All can be had, and once the sun goes down, it usually is
.

It was a mostly legal market (except for the after-hours trades, not that I had
any
firsthand knowledge of such things), but savvy shopkeepers had ways of getting the Peacekeepers to overlook their varied indiscretions. A charred booth or puffy lip served to signify when someone had let their bill languish too long unpaid.

Despite the somewhat illegal nature of certain transactions, this market was a necessary evil of modern life, or rather, of what our lives had become. Since the Magic Wars had ended, there was a dearth of viable storefronts, being that every property with a smidgen of technology had been seized by Peacekeepers and slowly sold back to corporations, once those corporations had been proven to be magic-free. But the farmers and butchers still had crops and meat to bring to market, and the craftspeople had stoneware and cheeses and cloth to sell. So, since there was no place else for them to go, and the crops and goods couldn’t very well be left to rot on the vine (or crack in the kiln), the Promenade Market had sprung up amidst the unused office blocks. Really, compared to the concrete wasteland it had been before, it was an improvement.

Still, I hadn’t really started frequenting the Promenade until high school. My mom grew her vegetables, and we had an apple tree, so we’d never really wanted for fresh produce. Also, my family was one of the few left with money, both old and new, so we could have almost anything we wanted delivered to our doorstep. Not to mention that Mom was convinced that the market was run by evil imps just waiting to drag off unsuspecting children to their lairs.

Then tenth grade rolled around and Juliana and I had been faced with third period study hall, followed by lunch, then fourth period science. Since the study hall took place in an auditorium of hundreds of kids, attendance was never taken, and our science teacher was little more than an experiment in reanimating corpses, we’d felt the immediate and pressing need to take a break from campus.

As for lunch…that was an evil that must not be named.

I was chicken at first, since the government-implanted trackers in our arms would alert the Peacekeepers to our truancy, but Juliana helped me remove mine. (She’d taken her own out years before.) I also balked at her plan of leaving them in our lockers, since wouldn’t they notice that we hadn’t moved, at all, for more than three hours? Again, Juliana was confident, and explained that the Peacekeepers only looked for people being where they were not supposed to be. As long as our signals registered as being on school grounds, it was all good.

So, armed with a camping knife and a filched bottle of wine (which functioned to sterilize the instrument
and
anesthetize the patient), we cut my tracker out. Make no mistake, it had hurt like hell, and I had a mid-grade infection brewing for a few weeks afterward, but the feeling of freedom had been well worth it. That, and the real food we got to enjoy at the Market, instead of the slop we were used to getting for school lunches, made the lingering numbness all worthwhile.

Remembering those excursions with Juliana made me smile as I wandered amidst the nicer booths. Unlike in my younger days, when I had wanted everything but had to be careful what I brought home in order to keep both Mom and Sadie in the dark about my whereabouts, today I saw lots of interesting things but wanted nothing. I mean, my apartment was small, so I didn’t need any knickknacks or lamps or what have you, and my fridge was stocked, though I could always stuff the cupboards with more dry goods.

And now I was contemplating stocking up on pasta. More evidence of my exciting life.

I sighed and considered stopping by the wine sellers’ tent when I came across a jeweler. I’d never been much interested in jewelry, but something about her booth, maybe the way the sun glinted off the stones and polished metals, drew me in. Her wares were comprised of what seemed to be found objects, like skeleton keys and pebbles, and all were wrapped with wires and shiny beads. Almost without realizing it, I withdrew Micah’s token from my shirt and traced the edges of the oak leaf. It was a perfect, albeit tiny, replica, as was the warm amber acorn. I found myself wondering if they’d fallen from a miniature silver tree that grew in a silver wood.

I bet he made this
. Somehow, I could feel the residue of Micah’s magic, a signature that was uniquely him, and I understood that he’d manipulated the silver into the likeness of a leaf. Maybe it was my own magic recognizing his, or maybe it was just my strong attraction to him. Maybe I was just going crazy and reading too much into it.

“That’s a lovely pendant,” the jeweler complimented. She was a middle-aged woman, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. The silver streaks at her temples matched my token. “Did you make it yourself?”

“No. It was a gift.”

“Quite a fine gift.” I nodded; it was a fine gift, wasn’t it? And I had given Micah pennies in return. Beat-up, grungy old pennies.

“Do you also sell supplies?” I asked, suddenly.

“Of course,” she said, smiling ear to ear. Money had that effect on the merchants of the Market. “What were you looking for? I have silver chains, and charms, and—”

“Copper.” I took a deep breath, since the step I was about to take couldn’t be undone. “The metal needs to be copper.”

A short while and a small fortune later, I was the proud owner of a few hundred yards of copper wire in varying thicknesses and finishes, as well as a wide assortment of natural stone beads. Oh, and tools; lots and lots of tiny pliers and wrenches and snippy things with which to create my masterpiece. I’d gone straight to my car after leaving the jeweler’s booth and called Sadie.

“Hey,” was how she answered the phone. She sounded only mildly annoyed, so I figured there wasn’t an exam or paper due in the near future.

“I met a boy,” I said, in lieu of a proper greeting. “He gave me jewelry.”

“When did you meet him?”

“Yesterday.”

“Jewelry already?” Sadie whistled. “Must have been some night.”

“Yeah. It was.” I swore, not at Sadie, but at the dumbass who had cut me off. People seriously needed to learn how to merge.

“Are you driving?” Sadie accused. Before I could defend myself, she continued, “Listen, if you crack up that overpriced piece of metal Mom is gonna freak. Again. Call me later.”

With that, she hung up. I made a face at my phone and tossed it into the passenger seat, then carefully drove the few remaining blocks to my apartment. Not that I was being careful because of Sadie. Once I was inside my apartment, I dumped all the bits and baubles out on the kitchen counter.

Wow. That’s…that’s a lot of stuff
. I stared, dumbfounded, at the heap of metal and stone. I’d never made jewelry before, not even a friendship bracelet when I was a kid, and the sheer amount of what I’d purchased was overwhelming. Overwhelming, and ridiculous, and…and stupid.
If there was anything I was not, it was creative
. There was no way I could take these spools of wire and heaps of beads and turn them into anything other than wire and beads, no matter how many tools I bought.

This was a mistake. I’ll never make anything good enough for Micah
. Despondent, I grabbed the trash bin and moved to sweep the mess of it out of my sight when a bit of copper wire brushed against the back of my hand. Its coolness was strangely calming, almost centering. Intrigued, I traced the smooth edge of the wire, feeling the pull of the metal…
my
metal.

Trash bin forgotten, I set to work twisting and braiding and weaving until the metal strands became a wide cuff. It was amazingly intricate, not only due to the odd sizes of the wire, but also because of the stones I’d added to the overall design. In the center of the cuff, I placed a large piece of malachite and surrounded it with smaller bits of amber; the amber was to mirror the acorn Micah had given me, the malachite meant to pay homage to the green dell he lived in. And the copper…the copper was all me. I hoped Micah would like it.

He’ll love it
. I stood and stretched, achy and exhausted from the last few hours spent hunched over the counter. I wanted to show Micah the token immediately, but I still didn’t understand how to call him with my dreamself. Not to mention that it was close to midnight, which meant that curfew had been in effect for the past hour; once the government had decided that most magic was done close to the proverbial witching hour, they’d enacted a curfew and begun releasing unmanned drones to patrol the streets at night. All the curfew had managed to do was piss off the bar owners and patrons, and to my knowledge all the drones ever caught were a few drunks stumbling their way home. Still, our government wasn’t one to admit when it had done something wrong, so we kept our eleven o’clock curfew and got the added bonus of daytime drone patrols.

And, since I only knew of two places where the veil was thin, and since neither place was in my apartment building, this curfew meant no visiting the Otherworld on foot, either.