Robots vs. Fairies(79)
Wild and wide as it is, Durango is chock-full of such creatures—shifters and harpies and sirens and chupacabras. Normal folk don’t even see ’em, not until they’ve killed one by shooting it—or stabbing, the magic ain’t picky—in the heart. Then their eyes are opened to a whole new world of monsters, some good and some bad, just like men. They might find out their local grocer is a dwarf with glittering stone eyes, say, or that the whores at the saloon have fangs and drain a man in a different sort of way than he remembers the next morning. These four fellers are something new, though, something dangerous she hasn’t seen before.
Then again, there’s some as would consider her dangerous. She’s not only a shifter, but the Shadow, a legendary critter among the local tribes who’s dedicated to delivering justice to the much abused. The Shadow is hard to kill, and other magical things can’t tell that she’s got magic too. They just assume she’s a dumb ol’ human, which puts her at a big advantage. The Shadow’s destiny is an ornery thing that leads Nettie around to kill what needs to die, even when she’s got much better things to do. Like now, for instance.
But first, she’s got to figure out what these fellers are up to. Now, men normally build a fire by sending the most squirrelly tenderfoot to gather dry twigs and hopefully some brittle branches and maybe a stump or two. But these men are pulling chairs out of nowhere, because chasing a naked man across the desert just ain’t peculiar enough for the likes of them.
The first man reaches into nothing and pulls out a stool, looks to be made by hand and smoothed with years of use. He plunks it down in the dirt and sits, legs spread, hands on his knees like he’s bellying up to an invisible bar. He’s a rough feller in cowpoke duds with the face of the town tomcat, but still there’s a dandified air in the way he’s tied his cravat. Something about him is familiar, and Nettie wonders if she’s seen him on a Wanted poster. As he’s the one who tossed the noose and made the forest spring up in a desert, Nettie takes him for the leader.
The second man probes the air with white-gloved hands, doctor hands. He withdraws a raspberry-colored drawing room chair, plush and high-backed with an embroidered pillow. When he sits, he flips out his coattails, just so, and adjusts his little doctor glasses over his little doctor nose. His hair is parted, looks still wet from the comb, and he crosses one neat leg over the other.
The third man has the looks of a trapper as pieced together for a stage play; he’s too clean and whole to be the real deal. The chair he pulls out of nowhere is made of antlers all stuck together, with a glossy bearskin tossed overtop. He’s the only one with a beard, and it’s a thick, wavy thing that weaves into his long hair, black as his eyes. His clothes are layers of worn doeskin and homespun, and his grin flashes like a wolf’s bite in moonlight.
The fourth and final man is the squirrelly one who should be collecting firewood. He’s still got the raw cheeks and bones of boyhood about him, like his elbows and knees haven’t quite figured out where to settle down. His hair is just this side of red, and the chair he pulls out of thin air is a kitchen chair carved of shining wood. He slaps it down to complete the circle and slumps to his elbows to stare at the empty space where there should be a fire, were they men who made any sense.
But they’re not men. As they take off their hats, they reveal long, pointed ears that poke straight up through their glossy hair.
“Go on, then, Tom,” the third man mutters.
The young one leans forward, digging his hands into the dirt and pulling up flames with his bare fingers. There’s a great flash in the falling night, and he sits back, dusting his hands off, a bonfire crackles merrily as if he’d been carefully building it for an hour. There’s even a shiny coffeepot perking at the edge of the flames. Nettie has seen ghost fire before, but this ain’t it. She can feel the heat against her chest from where she hides in the bushes.
She looks down and sneers. Her chest is still there, poking out just enough to tell the world she’s not the man she wishes she was. When she travels as a human and as a man, she carries a muslin cloth to bind up her bitty bosoms and hide her secret. She looks enough like a lanky boy to play the part. But here, out in the middle of nowhere, freshly out of her feathers, she’s naked and shy. As soon as the men start arguing over what to do with their prey, she sneaks around toward their horses to borrow some clothes from their packs. Seeing as how they can pull any damn thing out of thin air, they shouldn’t mind the loss of a shirt for as long as it takes her to figure out who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy and kill what needs killing.
Nettie Lonesome, you see, is also a Durango Ranger, charged with keeping the good people of Durango Territory safe from the monsters that lurk in plain sight. So not only does the Shadow need to know why the possum’s headed for a noose, but the Durango Ranger is charged with protecting the innocent. It’s a heavy burden, sure enough, and she’d rather be anywhere else but here. She hasn’t seen her Ranger captain or crew in weeks, maybe months, but she can still feel the weight of her badge, pushing her to doing what’s right.
The men are muddying up the night with their arguing as the possum clings to the highest branch of the tree, and Nettie feels a rush of comfort when she smells their horses. She misses her friends, but she misses horses, too. As she quietly approaches, giving them time to smell her in return, she feels her stomach somersaulting and knows that, like their riders, these horses are not what they seem. Two of ’em are unicorns, brushed whiter than most and with their horns, tails, and balls intact. One horse, a dapple gray with a mean eye, has wings folded down by her sides like a goose, dirty and rustling. The last mount looks like a horse, an eagle, and a lion spent a confusing night at a whorehouse, but it’s watching her like it can see through to her hateful heart. All the beasts are kitted up in fancy gear, dripping with ribbons and gold chains. Nettie didn’t much fancy any of their riders before now, but her feelings firmly point to nope. She has no love for a feller who can’t let his horse rest without a saddle, now and again.