But now she knows why he looks familiar, and now she knows she can’t outshoot him.
Two apples appear in the man’s hands. “Cans? Pshaw. These’ll do.” With a hand to the possum man’s chest, the leader shoves him backward until he’s pressed against the tree, the same one from which the golden noose still dangles. The possum man is shivering in fear, eyes white all around.
“Please, Billy,” he mutters, but Billy just shoves one of the apples in the possum-man’s mouth and puts the other one on top of his head.
“What’s the rules?” Nettie asks.
“First one to hit their apple wins. I’ll mark it off.”
As he paces away from the tree, Nettie stares at the possum man and considers. She knows for sure now that these four fellers are fae. She’s heard the Captain talk about the strange folks who hate being called fairies, powerful, tricksy creatures who have big magic and love to talk you to death with their pretty lies. But if they like tricking, she figures they can be tricked back.
Thing is, Billy didn’t say, “First to shoot an apple.” He said hit.
Nettie snatches the apple off the possum man’s head before Billy can turn around, tosses it on the ground, picks up a rock, and smashes it to bits. The men in the chairs burst out laughing, and Billy spins around, gun aimed for an apple that’s no longer there.
“First to hit an apple,” Nettie says with a shrug. “Your words, not mine.”
“I— You—!” Billy splutters, his eyes burning as glittery sparks leap from his body like lightning.
“The boy got you fair and square,” the doc observes.
Billy inhales sharply and turns, his shoulders hunching as he doubles over. The fire throws his shadow against the tree and over the possum man, and the darkness unfolds to show clawed hands digging furrows through the leaves, great black antlers bursting from his head like a crown to rake the sky. When he turns back, his shadows folds back in, and he’s just a man again, trying to smile in the same way that spoiled children do when pretending they’re sorry for throwing tantrums.
“One to you, then, boy. Doc, you’re next.” Billy throws himself back onto his stool, but it somehow sprouts arms and a back and is now wide enough for him to lounge in, looking like he’s one step away from bashing in Nettie’s head with the apple-smeared rock.
The doc wiggles tight gloves off his fingers, his lips turned down like he finds this whole thing distasteful. “The violin,” he says. And then there’s one in his long, elegant hands.
He holds it to his chin and draws the bow over the strings, coaxing out a note so clear and filled with longing that Nettie has to struggle to keep from falling to her knees in tears. The bow dances, and his fingers fly, and Nettie can’t keep off her knees now, her fingers tearing at the ground like she’s digging up a dead child as the doc sways overhead. The music fills the night, chokes the stars, slips down Nettie’s dust-rimmed ears and into her soul, clutching it with stunning ferocity. He plays forever and a day, and then she blinks up at the full moon and curls her hands out of black earth that should just be sand. She’s pulled white roots from the ground, torn her nails ragged, but she can’t recall what it is that her fingers sought, nor why.
He holds out the violin, one fine eyebrow arched up.
“Your turn.”
Nettie stands, dizzy and shaken. This must be how the Rangers felt that time she killed a siren to stop the song that bewitched everyone but her. Like something special has been given to her, but it’s gone now, gone forever, and something even more special has been taken with it. Her fingers are black and bloody, her knees shaking. She takes the violin in her left hand, the bow in her right. She couldn’t be more goddamn confused if he’d handed her a kitten and an ax. The violin doesn’t quite fit under her chin, the neck impossibly smooth and slender in her rough hands. Carefully, so carefully, she draws the bow across the strings, and the resulting sound could break glass. The four men grimace. Doc’s mouth twitches.
Her hands drop, violin neck in one, bow in the other. She tosses the violin onto the black furrows she dug in the ground, stomps on it, and throws it in the fire. Then she snaps the bow over a knee and tosses it in, too.
“That’s what I think of your fine music,” she hisses.
“One to one,” the doc says.
When she looks in the fire, the violin is gone.
“Now you, Dirty Dave,” Billy says with a grin, nodding at the trapper.
The rough man heaves himself out of his throne like a horse getting up from a good roll in the dirt. He cracks his knuckles and neck. “Fighting,” he says. “Hand to hand. First man knocked out or pinned for ten seconds wins.”
Nettie shrugs like she has a choice. “Wrassling it is.”
Before he can outline any more rules or start counting down, she launches herself into his gut. They tumble into his chair, and the antlers shatter apart like falling matches. He’s twisting and grabbing, trying to get her into a certain position, but Nettie has always depended on fighting dirty. She snatches up a fallen antler and rams a tine into his crotch. He roars like a bear and takes a moment to cup his vittles, and Nettie looks around for something else to use against him while he’s tender. The first thing that comes to mind is the coffeepot in the fire. She picks it up, ignoring the burn on her palm, and dumps the boiling coffee over his head.
Much to her surprise, he screams and flails onto his back, crab-crawling away and lying there gasping like a fish on land. Without a second’s consideration, she throws herself on top of him, pinning him to the ground. He roars and grows and grows until he becomes a bear, a giant, shaggy grizzly, and then Nettie’s on her back in the dirt, pinned and crushed and staring at a mouth full of teeth. As the Doc counts to ten, she struggles in every which way she can, but the bear doesn’t budge from atop her.
And then he’s just a man again.
“That’s ten, darlin’,” he murmurs before hopping off with a grin and a lusty wink.
When she turns to look back at the rest of his posse, they’re leaning out of their chairs, mesmerized. The breeze she feels brings her back to the present, in which she’s revealed a woman’s parts hiding under the stolen cloak that shifted aside during the scuffle. Hot red shame creeps up her cheeks as she struggles to cover herself.
Billy licks his lips. “Tell me your name, girl.”
She doesn’t want to answer, but she can’t shut her mouth. “Nettie Lonesome.”
“What kind of witch are you?” Billy asks, half-amazed and half-enraged at being fooled.
She straightens the robe and reties it. “The kind that ain’t a witch. Why’d he cheat?”
The trapper is back in his unbroken antler chair as if none of it ever happened. No burns, no coffee stains. No sign of getting stabbed in the balls. No sign of recently being a bear.
“The point’s mine unless you can prove I cheated. But you’ve got secrets yourself, huh?”