A far-off cry went out, a brief alarm that signaled us to make haste and rendezvous. We dropped our conversation and followed the sound. Ragno and Zanzara found her first, alone and crying in an empty glen. She had been wandering half the day, too confused and distraught to find her way home. The other pairs arrived within minutes to hear the news, and Béka sat down beside Onions and draped his arm around her shoulders. Kivi and Blomma were gone.
The three girls had seen the fog roll in and sped their way into town, reaching the lonesome outer streets as the worst weather fell. The streetlamps and storefront signs cast halos through the misted dark, serving as beacons for the faeries to navigate through the neighborhoods. Blomma told the other two not to worry about being seen by people in the houses. “We’re invisible in this fog,” she said, and perhaps her foolhardy confidence was their ruin. From the supermarket, they stole sugar, salt, flour, and a netted sack of oranges, then stashed the loot in an alley outside of the drugstore. Sneaking in through the back, they were surprised by all of the changes since their latest visit.
“Everything is different,” Onions told us. “The soda fountain is gone, the whole counter and all those round chairs that spin you around. And no more booths. No candy counter, and the big tubs of penny candy are gone, too. Instead, there’s more everything. Soap and shampoo, shoelaces, a whole wall of comic books and magazines. And there’s a whole row of things just for babies. Diapers made out of plastic that you throw away, and baby bottles and cans of milk. And hundreds of those tiny jars of food, all gooshed up, and on each one the same picture of the cutest baby in the world. Applesauce and pears and bananas. Spinach and green beans. Sweet potatoes that look like red mud. And smooshed turkey and chicken with rice. Kivi wanted to taste every one, and we were there for hours.”
I could picture the three of them, faces smeared with blueberries, bloated and sprawled in the aisle, dozens of empty jars strewn across the floor.
A car pulled up outside and stopped in front of the picture windows. The flashlight shone through the glass, slowly swept its beam along the interior, and when it neared, the girls leapt to their feet, slipped on the puddles of peas and carrots, and sent the jars spinning and clattering across the linoleum. The front door opened, and two policemen stepped inside. One of the men said to the other, “This is where he said they would be.” Onions shouted for them to run, but Kivi and Blomma did not move. They stood side by side in the middle of the baby food aisle, joined hands, and waited for the men to come and get them.
“I don’t know why,” Onions said. “It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. I circled around behind the men and could see Kivi and Blomma when the lights hit them right in the face. They looked as if they were waiting for it to happen. The policeman said, ‘He was right. There is someone here.’ And the other said, ‘Freeze.’ Kivi squeezed her eyes shut, and Blomma raised one hand to her forehead, but they didn’t look afraid at all. Like they were happy, almost.”
Onions wriggled through the door and escaped, not bothering with the stolen goods. Instinct set in, and she ran through the empty streets, heedless of all traffic, never looking back. The fog disoriented her, and she ran all the way through town to the other side. Once she had found a hiding place in a yellow barn, she waited nearly all day to return home, taking a route that skirted the streets. When Ragno and Zanzara found her, she was exhausted.
“Why did the man say that?” Béka asked her. “What did he mean, ‘This is where he said they would be’?”
“Somebody must have told the policemen where we were.” Onions shuddered. “Somebody who knows our ways.”
Béka took her by the hands and lifted her up from the ground. “Who else could it be?” He was looking straight at me, as if accusing me of a heinous crime.
“But I didn’t tell—”
“Not you, Aniday,” he spat out. “The one who took your place.”
“Chopin,” said Chavisory, and one or two laughed at the name before catching their emotions. We trudged home in silence, remembering our missing friends Kivi and Blomma. Each of us found a private way to grieve. We took their dolls out of the hole and buried them in a single grave. Smaolach and Luchóg spent two weeks building a cairn, while Chavisory and Speck divided our departed friends’ possessions among the nine of us left behind. Only Ragno and Zanzara remained stoic and impassive, accepting their share of clothing and shoes but saying next to nothing. Through that summer and into the fall, our conversations revolved around finding meaning in the girls’ surrender. Onions did her best to convince us that a betrayal had occurred, and Béka joined in, affirming the conspiracy, arguing that the humans were out to get us and that it was only a matter of time before Kivi and Blomma would fully confess. The men in the black suits would return, the army men, the police and their dogs, and they would hunt us down. Others among us took a more thoughtful view.