Firelight

Alina had always believed in magic. How could she not? It was always around her. Firefly fairies with glowing dresses, sharp-toothed nixies weaving eel crowns, she saw them everywhere. They avoided her, but they were always there, unafraid of being seen and succeeding in their own, magical way. Pedestrians ignored them, bikers passed them on the roads. Shakespeare made them into dreams.

They all ignored her, their worlds separate, despite breathing the same air and dancing in the same grassy meadows. According to her friends, she was imaginative. According to Alina, they weren’t imaginative enough.

It was her sole solace, living in the orphanage, where she dreamed of her happy ending, rewarded for her patience and determination. How often had she looked out that window, watching the bright night sky, waiting for a star to fall from the heavens? Wishing for something new, something beautiful, something that would prove that she belonged somewhere, made her special?

Because Alina wanted to be special. Desperately. It was what kept her up at night, wishing she had something useful, that would make people look at her twice and wonder who she was. She wasn’t incredibly beautiful, or incredibly well-spoken. She was just Alina, the girl who saw magic and called wolf.

But now, she wished she hadn’t wished so hard, hadn’t always hoped for some grand adventure to lead her somewhere. Because anything worth telling tales about was trouble, and trouble was staring her right in the eye.

This time, it was a man bleeding out on the forest floor.

She had been walking home from her job at a bookstore when she heard him. Something like a whisper, but more urgent than that. Scared, tired. It had been enough for Alina to deviate from her normal path home, to satisfy her own curiosity. Even though she knew it was bad.

It could have been fake like she was sure all the rest of her encounters had been. Fairies, dancing in a circle of wildflowers. Laughter, splitting into thousands of tiny pieces of light, gaining wings, and flying away like dandelion seeds. Or maybe they had all been real. At this point, Alina didn’t know.

What she did know was that she had walked into a forest to find a dying man. He was a fairy, of course, his ears pointed and his eyes sharp and bright. There was an unearthly beauty to him, too, his face a little too carefully molded to be entirely pleasing. And as odd as it was, his hair was singed, blackened on the edges instead of bronze like the rest of his hair.

He smiled at her, and his teeth were sharp and white like sharks. “So you came to save me after all.” He struggled to his feet, lurching dangerously to one side before righting himself. “Did you miss me?”

“You’re injured.” Alina took his arm, and he immediately leaned onto her, too comfortable for strangers. “Can you walk? I have a first aid kit at home-or we can go to the hospital.”

The man waved her off. “No, no hospital. I’ll be fine. I just need to get back.” He paused. “With you, preferably.”

“If you say so.” Alina started walking, and the man followed, his body feverish and hot. She didn’t know him. That, she was sure of. If she had met and talked to a fairy, she would have remembered. They were elusive, fast to hide, and slow to come out.

Alina probably looked like a lot of people to him. A sister, a mother, a lover. Even a trained medical professional. But all she was was a bookstore employee who saw a little too much for her own good. Alina didn’t have the heart to correct him.

“You know, I did a lot of thinking, waiting for you,” He said, “For example, I don’t think I’ve ever apologized.”

“I’m sure.” She hummed. “You should focus on walking.” The man was leaning on her, more and more, until she was bearing his entire weight. Alina wasn’t sure how much longer he would be conscious. He was fading, loudly, but fading.

“Oh, but I can’t! Delilah, I wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ It was all that was on my mind!” His words were jumbled, rushing in and out before anything could finish. Like a river with a dam, it skipped over the space right next to the blockage in choppy waves, before tumbling past its rocks and fish. He paused for just a moment, long enough for Alina to hear his unsteady heartbeat, beat wrong. “You won’t leave again, won’t you?”

Alina swallowed. “No. No, I won’t as long as you don’t, either.” The lie felt thick and bitter on her tongue, but she had no other choice. What would happen to him, if she told him he was lying to himself? That Delilah, whoever she was, had gone and was probably never coming back? It was better if she lied. “What-what happened?”

The man hummed, too lost in his own addled mind to respond immediately. “I don’t think they like me very much.”

“Who?” Alina asked as her house came into view. A small, tiny worry wondered if she would be next. She shook the thought from her head. She had more immediate problems.

“Oh, just someone or other. I don’t know to be frank.” The man laughed, his voice a little bitter, a little sad. “And to be even more frank, I don’t think I can bring myself to care enough about them at all.”

They approached the door, white and wooden with glass panes. Alina searched for her keys in her pants, pulling them out with a jingle. Unlocking the door, they entered the kitchen.

It was messy, strewn with the morning’s plates, miscellaneous trinkets and charms, cups full of pens and papers everywhere. Evening light filtered in through the many windows, and Alina wondered for the first time if anyone could see them.

She guided him to the living room, where she sat him down on the couch. Blood seeped into the leather, but that was the least of her concerns.

Alina returned to her kitchen, where she opened the cupboard and found her medical kit. It was fresh and unused, and she brought it over to the man, along with a wet towel. Opening the box with a click, she pulled out gauze and scissors. “I-I don’t know if your wound is going to be infected, or what, but I can try to bandage it for you.”

The man nodded, his head drifting to the side of the couch. “I trust you.” His eyes fluttered half-closed, and he sighed. “Are you going to undress me now? How scandalous.”

Alina winced at his words. She wasn’t who he thought she was. Even worse, she wasn’t trained in any actual first aid. Pressure on the wound. She thought, and a lot of hope.

Her hands trembled as she undid his vest, and his golden buttons and rolled up his white shirt to reveal his wound. He smelled like ash and flame. The man hissed between his teeth but remained quiet otherwise.

Stretching from his ribs to his side, it was a deep gash and started to bleed again when she removed his clothes. Alina grimaced and wiped his wound with a wet cloth. Her towel came back red, with flecks of gold. The blood of the fairies.

She unrolled the gauze, delicately laying it over his chest, before rolling it around his torso. It was sloppy, but it stemmed the bleeding somewhat. Now all there was left to do was hope that he hadn’t lost too much blood.

It was amazing how resilient he was. He had laid there, in the forest, for who knew how long, then walked all the way to her house, wounded no less.

“You’re going to be okay. I promise.” Alina said, and her second lie made her swallow bile. She didn’t know anything, anything at all. It was a terrible feeling, lying. If those were the last words she spoke before his death, she didn’t know if she would be able to forgive herself.

People lied all the time. This one was just a small white one, made only to please and placate. It was for his own good. Maybe it was because of her fairytales. Lying led to death, tortured over red hot coals and poked with burning sticks. Or maybe it was because feeling herself lie made it all feel more real.

Like the man on her couch may not live after all.

“Another thing that I thought of was a story.” The man said, and Alina nearly jumped out of her skin. “Because it’s hard to be content with reality such as this. Would you like to hear it?”

“Of course.” Alina put in as much sincerity as she could. Speaking meant he was alive, and as much as he probably needed sleep, Alina couldn’t bear to be alone with her thoughts.

“Well.” The man closed his eyes, breathing out a labored breath. “Once upon a time. There was a boy. He wasn’t hated, but he wasn’t exactly loved. He was just a boy, and everyone in his family reminded him of that.

“He would inherit the will, inherit the family home, but never anything, especially for him, you get the idea.” The man sighed, before continuing on. “And he became hungry. So hungry, in fact, that he would devour fields and fields of crops, and drink great big lakes, with all the fish still in it. His hunger was so great that sometimes, the family was worried it might swallow them whole. So they avoided him. They would leave him to eat spoonfuls of stars, suck the sky clean of blue.

“Until he finally ran out of food and devoured them too.”

Alina sat next to the man, pulling up a blanket and covering him with it. “Is there a moral to it?”

“It’s a story. You can apply whatever meaning you want to stories.” The man said softly.

Alina guessed that was true. Nothing ever needed a reason to exist, and she didn’t see a reason why it would ever need one. She just preferred when they did. It made her life easier, and gave her a star to follow. Those were the stories she read. With heroic knights of honor and villains who died to prove a point. His simply wasn’t a story she liked.

“Even ones you don’t like?” Alina asked, and the man gave her a slight shrug.

“Stories aren’t always something incredible. They’re words, meant to entertain. And if by chance, they mean something? That’s a miracle.” The man tilted his head onto the couch. “And I only made that story based on someone I know.”

Alina pursed her lips, studying him quietly. His eyes were still closed, peaceful and quiet. “That story-it wasn’t based on you-was it?” She asked, but she got no response.

The man’s chest rose and fell, and his breathing slowly evened. He was asleep.

She rose from the couch, her brow a bit furrowed. She thought of the news, detailing the terrible consequences of letting strangers into homes. She didn’t want to be a news story. Fame meant some type of tragedy, and what she wanted was a happy ending. She preferred fiction over reality, for many of the same reasons the man had said. “It wasn’t. Right?”

Alina got no response.