“Does that mean we can stop walking backward now?” Rexi asked wryly and stood up, brushing at the grass stain on her trousers’ behind.
Apparently it did, because the leprechaun hurried straight toward the rainbow, only stopping a few feet away. The rainbow didn’t move. Either blarney boy had really trapped it with a ring of lucky charms, or ozmosis had taken its toll again and was keeping the rainbow from running away. At this point, one seemed just as likely as the next.
Kato’s face darkened with worry. “What interest do the wee folk have with this rainbow?” Did he suspect the leprechaun of being an agent of Griz?
“Do na be daft. The wee folk have claim to every rainbow. But this pot o’ gold is mine. And you canna have it.” That said, the little man ran around us in a circle, moving faster than my eyes could track.
“Look, you’ve—” I went to walk toward him but found that I couldn’t. The clover in the ground had risen up and entangled my feet, tying them to the earth. My friends were snared as well, but their bindings moved well past their feet. The clover and vines dragged them to the ground and coiled around their bodies, even covering their mouths. All of them were making angry, muffled cries.
I didn’t take it for granted that the clover couldn’t reach above my shoes, and not for the first time, I blessed Verte’s good taste in enchanted footwear. My mouth was free, and by Grimm, I would use it. “Wait…please. You don’t want to go near that rainbow.” I put every ounce of sincerity I had into my voice, pleading that he would listen to me. If the leprechaun was telling the truth and not working for Griz, then he was about to make a lethal mistake. I couldn’t let that happen.
The little orange-and-green man was intrigued by my plea—and probably by the fact that his fae bindings weren’t working. He scooted a little closer, making sure to stay out of arm’s length from me. “And why wouldn’t I be wantin’ to do that?” he asked.
“Because there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” I said, pointing through his white panty hose–covered legs to the point where the colored arch met the grass.
He leaned forward, bending down to where I lay on the ground. “If there be no gold, what be there?” His eyes squinted as if he were really listening and considering the possibility.
Um, I had no idea what to tell him, so I stuck with the truth. “A special spring. But you can’t see it because it’s invisible.” This was my chance to convince him, and it sounded bad to me, so I know it must have sounded even crazier to him.
He flopped his hands dismissively at me and straightened again. “Now you’re just blowin’ a bunch of blarney. Next, you’ll be tellin’ me there be silver-winged unicorns and the spring’s really a fountain of youth.” He turned away from me and headed back toward the rainbow.
“I’m telling the truth,” I pleaded. Tears of frustration welled up in my eyes. He wasn’t going to stop, and there was nothing I could do. What would Mom say? She could make anyone listen and obey. “That’s not a normal rainbow. It’s going to kill you if you touch it. Please.” My voice hitched with a sob.
It was enough to give him pause, but only just. The others were still wriggling in their viney cocoons. He looked at them and then me, a puzzled look obscuring his face. Still, it wasn’t enough. He sidestepped slowly, inching under the rainbow.
I called again for him to stop. I prayed that the magical mishaps had already struck the rainbow, making it harmless. But when his hand crossed under the arch of the rainbow, I saw that it hadn’t.
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to watch him die.
“You never know what you’re gonna find when you look under those covers—Grandma or the wolf.”
—Little Red, excerpt from Tales from the Hood
33
Frozen in Time
In the past few hours, my emotions had been all over the map—from the heights of hope, to the lows of loss. And of course, the highs made bottoming out that much rougher.
So I lay there and cried. When my throat was so raw that it hurt to breathe, I let the sound stop but kept my mouth frozen in a silent scream. Why hadn’t he listened? I didn’t even know his name, so I only had his face to add to the growing list of things that would haunt my waking moments—to say nothing of the sleeping ones.
Someone wrapped their arms around my body and gathered me into their lap like a small child. I finally opened my eyes and looked into Kato’s. He held me in his arms, smoothing my flaming hair, murmuring things in a language I didn’t understand. My heart recognized them as tender reassurances, but my head rejected them as lies.