Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

One of the other jammers with the league back in Portland, Princess Leya-you-out, is a chupacabra. For her, standing on two legs is exactly as natural and comfortable as wandering around on four. She doesn’t change forms when she sleeps, because whichever form she’s in is her “real” one. Sam, like all fūri, works slightly differently. For him, humanity is an effort, a disguise he puts on, rather than a shape he shifts out of.

“Wow,” said Fern. Then, almost shyly, she said, “When we’re kids, sylphs don’t have a stable density. That’s why we don’t really live in big family groups anymore. Sometimes children float away, and that’s not safe, so we all have to take precautions.”

“What kind?” asked Sam.

“Um. Well, usually, people have babies and then give them to crèche workers to raise. We have, you know, a few of them left. Around the country. Big houses in the middle of nowhere, where kids can grow up until they’re old enough to know what density their body ought to be. Then you practice every day, until you can stay the same always.”

I frowned. “When do your parents come back for you?”

“Oh. They don’t. We’re all adopted.” Fern was suddenly very interested in her bacon. “Once you settle, a family that has a space for a kid will come and get you, and then you’re theirs. My family was really nice. They had dropped off a daughter about my age, so maybe I was even related to them.”

Sam’s frown joined mine. “How do you, you know,” he asked. “Not wind up sleeping with your brother by mistake?”

“People who aren’t good to sleep with smell wrong when you’re in estrus,” said Fern blithely. “Like you wouldn’t smell right, so I wouldn’t sleep with you, because you’re not the same species as me.”

“Huh,” said Sam, while I stuffed a bite of pancake into my mouth to stop myself from asking any more questions. This was fascinating to me, and that was the problem. If I let myself, I could turn this into an all-day biology lesson, and I couldn’t even write anything down. Until I made it home, back to my mice and my notebooks and the safety of the family compound, I had to view every space as compromised, all the time, and that meant never leaving a written record.

“I have to work today,” said Fern, and stood, saving me from myself. “They only closed Fairyland, and that’s going to channel extra traffic into all the rest of the Park.”

“Even though bad things happened?” asked Sam.

“Remember the carnival after I found the dead body?” I speared another piece of pancake. “People love a tragedy, as long as they feel like they’re seeing it from a safe distance. Ticket sales are probably up for the day.”

Complaints would be up, too. People who’d decided to come to Lowryland hoping for a glimpse of charred pavement or damaged landscaping would nonetheless be furious when they realized that a whole section of the Park was closed down. The managers would be working double time to soothe the shouters and the tantrum-throwers, leaving their poor underlings to handle the wolves. It was going to be a fun, fun day, and while I wouldn’t say that a day off was worth it, I was grateful not to need to go into the fray.

Not as an employee, anyway. I paused thoughtfully before I turned to Sam, grinned, and asked, “How’d you like to go to Lowryland?”





Fifteen




“There’s a place for everything, and everything has its place. It just so happens that this knife belongs in your spleen.”

–Enid Healy

The front gates of Lowryland

AS AN EMPLOYEE OF Lowryland, I got free access to the Park and its guest facilities when I wasn’t working. Better yet, I was allowed to bring people with me. Not every day, but twice a month, which was twice more than I’d been asking anyone to come up until now. I hadn’t even known that Cylia was in town, and without her, who was I going to invite? Nobody, that was who.

Nobody until now. Sam tilted his head back, features impeccably human, eyes shaded by a Monty Mule baseball cap that Fern had dug out of the front closet before running for the tram, and squinted at the fa?ade above the gates. It was an impressive piece of wrought iron filigree, rendered all the more eye-catching by the fact that its elegant whorls and delicate traceries actually etched out the faces of Lowry’s most famous cartoon characters.

“I never thought I’d get to see a Monty Mule head bigger than I am tall,” he said, in a hushed tone.

I shot him a sidelong glance. “Don’t tell me you’re a true believer.”

“What?” He shrugged broadly. “I grew up in a carnival caravan. Until I was old enough to actually do stuff, videos kept me from driving Grandma up the wall. I’ve seen everything Lowry’s ever done. Most of it twice.”

“Only twice?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m lying so I’ll still seem cool and macho and awesome, and like I’m not internally screaming about the idea of getting to meet Laura and Lizzie.”

“You won’t today.” The line inched forward, tourists digging their tickets out of their fanny packs while sneering locals flashed their annual passes like the ability to fork over way too much money for a piece of character-branded plastic somehow granted them a measure of moral superiority. Both groups were accompanied by overexcited, overstimulated children, the girls in puffy princess dresses, the boys waving plastic swords and bellowing at one another.

(Occasionally we’d get a girl with a sword—we got plenty of girls who looked at the swords with raw avarice in their eyes, like they’d never seen anything so beautiful before and never would, ever again—or a boy with a princess crown, but sadly, the parents were the ones paying, and the parents were often not in the mood to listen to what their kids wanted. If I ever had kids, they were all going to have dresses, and swords, and tiny siege engines, if that was what it took to make them happy.)

Sam looked at me, hurt. “Why not? Do you need kids to meet the princesses?”

The brief image of him bribing families to let him borrow their kids was as charming as it was likely to involve Park Security. I shook my head. “No, but Fairyland is closed, remember? They do their meet-and-greets in Fairyland.”

“So who’s that?” Sam pointed past the ticket takers and the lines. I looked.

There, in the front plaza, in front of the majestic Rainbow Fountain that ticked off the hours of Lowry’s dreamland, were two princesses in wine-dark jewel tones, surrounded by children squalling for their turn at a picture. I blinked, nonplussed.

“I guess they moved the girls for the day.” It made sense—Laura and Lizzie were two of Lowry’s most popular princesses, buoyed by their soft feminist message and striking color palette. They weren’t pastel, which made them popular with girls who’d been sold the message of “not being like other girls,” and their movie actually wasn’t awful, which meant they stayed popular with teenagers. Maybe I was biased, working in their section of the Park and all, but I should have realized that management would relocate the princesses rather than disappoint that many kids.

The line moved again. We reached the front, and I showed the ticket taker my cast ID, letting her run it through the scanner. When it brought up the record indicating that I was an active employee who hadn’t brought in any guests this period, she handed Sam a ticket to use if he needed to leave and come back again before waving us both into the Park, not even bothering to tell us to dream big—the standard greeting.

I didn’t mind, but this was Sam’s first time, and it bothered me a little, at least until I saw him making a beeline for the two actresses in their princess gear, a determined look on his face. I laughed and chased after him. No one needed to tell us to dream big. Sam was going to do it without any prompting.

It took half an hour to get through the queue around the princesses and snap a few pictures of Sam, using his phone to do the dirty deed. He looked almost bashful, sandwiched between the two girls with his hat shading his eyes and a shy grin on his face. When he was done, he came bounding back to me, snatching the phone out of my hand and checking the pictures like he couldn’t believe they were really there.

“Wow,” he said. “Oh, wow. Look at that. There I am.”