Influence

Chapter 19

In her dream, the king of the Shadow Fairies had devised a way to trap Tam deep underground, with the goal of making her his queen. He stole a precious necklace from her and, unable to imagine letting that object go, she pursued him through the hollow of a tree, which lead her into a maze of underground chambers. He kept a step ahead of her; to him, it seemed this chase was only a game. Following the king was exactly what he wanted her to do but she felt driven to continue, nonetheless. As dreams went, she didn't question, or even notice, when her bejeweled necklace morphed into a calico cat. Jewelry or pet, this shadow king had stolen something she cared about, yet he expected her to return his cruelty with love.

After what seemed like a lifetime of spiraling downward, she found herself in the bottommost chamber of the Shadow Fairy realm. Instead of an ornately adorned throne room, it was cold and damp and filled with nondescript, stacked wooden crates. Her necklace-turned-cat sat inside one of the boxes, as cats are prone to do. Behind it stood the king, white teeth glittering in the lamplight. Drifting over to him felt effortless, as if he was tugging on her with an invisible tether. He held her gaze and she saw nothing but smugness in his colorless eyes. She was in his domain now, and it would take little effort on his part to charm her enough to keep her there forever. Ignoring her cat's mews, she approached him. The yearning within her to reach out, to place her hands in his, to waltz together to the discordant fiddle music echoing to her from the room's gloomy corners—it all began to wear away her resolve.

No, she thought. I will not be a folkloric victim. I will not give in.

A rock materialized in her hand, the physical manifestation of her determination. It was the size of a softball, but with sharp, jagged edges. The king's victorious expression never wavered, hubris preventing him from doubting his ability to control her even as she raised the rock and bashed his head in with it. Once, twice, three times.

The smile on his face remained, but now his too-white teeth were streaked with red. He wobbled and then collapsed. She wiped a bit of gore from the rock and placed it in the box, taking the cat in exchange. Tam left the king seizing on the dank ground, blood spouting from his forehead like a garden sprinkler. Her cat purred all the way home, and by the time they breached the Earth's surface, they each wore matching necklaces like the one Tam had first set out to reclaim.

The dream dissolved and sometime later, Tam woke to a million notifications, a pounding headache, and a vague desire to adopt a cat. Downing an Ibuprofen, she went into her app settings and turned off notifications for all social media. Checking her texts and voicemails, it seemed Paul hadn't returned her message, but someone else had contacted her repeatedly, each communication a variation on the theme, Shit, Tam, is it true?

That person was probably the only one in the world Tam could forgive for berating her with messages doubting her innocence: Emelina, Tam's sixteen-year-old sister and the sole person in her dysfunctional family currently speaking to her.

Tam texted her back. It's true my boss is dead if that's what you mean.

She waited for Emelina to text with, no I mean did you kill her, but then remembered she would be in school at this hour and the guardians of Em's group home restricted access to her phone until the evening.

She was at once relieved she didn't have to go through the exhausting act of explaining her situation and sad that she couldn't have a back-and-forth conversation that would break up the anxiety of her looping thoughts. That summed up the greater context of her relationship with Emelina, a push pull of sisterly bonding set against the guilt Tam felt for ruining Emelina's life.

Tam fluffed the pillows on the corner of her daybed and sat with her knees tucked under her chin, contemplating what to do to fill the time between now and whenever the cops decided to beat down her door. If she craned her neck, she could see beyond the neighboring building's beige façade to the top of a solitary palm tree, one of its fronds sticking almost straight up in the sky, like an arrow pointing towards Tam's only possible escape. Up, away, shot in a cannon into outer space.