Chapter II: Deathly News

AS THE WINTERY CHILL flew through Tallahassee, Novus started ringing a hollow-sounding bell. Rushing through the side entrance of the church, Wren found her way to the front pew and sat next to a tan man of Korean descent, Ha-Ru “Ray” Kim. While staring at the closed casket in front of them, Wren took hold of Ray’s hand to calm her nerves, and he gave her a light squeeze.

“I was worried you’d be late,” Ray whispered.

“Never,” Wren said. “Where’s Esme?”

Ray shrugged. “I bet she’s hiding somewhere—”

“No,” Wren said, cutting him off. “She was swinging by the bookstore…” She paused. “She probably got caught up with something. I mean, she left home before me, and I had time to tackle a rebel.”

Ray stared at Wren’s foolish grin. She was proud of helping Jackson.

“Wait—what?” Ray asked. “Oh, never mind. It’s about to start.” He tried to take his hand out of her hold. “Wren, let go.”

Wren released Ray’s hand reluctantly, not wanting him to leave her alone during their best friend’s funeral. She stared into his dark brown eyes as he stood up. Then, she batted her eyes away from him and peered down at her hands covered in black lace.

“I feel so bad for them,” an old woman whispered to another woman a few rows back, causing Wren to turn around. “Those four were inseparable.”

The other woman said, “I saw Esme not too long ago. She’s picketing with the kids that live in the bookstore. One of the orphans was attacked earlier this morning.”

The old woman widened her eyes. “Are you serious?”

Wren stared briefly at the two older women, who continued their gossip. “That’s why Esme isn’t here,” she whispered to herself.

Wren smiled at a small huddle of kids standing in the back, scared of mixing with the humans. One of the goblin girls waved at her, but then quickly hid behind a tall troll after Wren waved back. The tiny goblin peered around the protective-looking troll while giggling. They were the orphaned fae children the priest housed, mostly goblins and a few trolls.

Like goblins’ golden skin, trolls also had unusual flesh. Trolls often varied from light blue to dark blue, and even had purple hues. While goblins stood between three and four feet tall, trolls stood between five and six feet. And while goblins had pointed ears, trolls’ ears were floppy.

“Why are you hiding, Samara?” another goblin asked the shy girl, who was full of giggles. “It’s just Wren.”

“The Spirit could start fire,” Samara said with hopeful eyes. “Wren blew up her yard last week… She really is the Spirit.”

An older goblin boy who did not believe that Wren was the reincarnation of the Spirit said, “No, she isn’t. Wren is just odd. The Spirit is in India. Even the Council thinks so.”

“Isis thinks it’s Wren,” Samara said quickly, glaring up at the older boy. “Are you disagreeing with Isis?”

Samara peeped around the tall troll and continued to smile at Wren. As if a cloud of invisible bees manifested before her, Samara ran away from the nave and toward the orphanage to hide. Wren held back a laugh as a few other orphans followed Samara away from the service.

Wren did not want to be laughing at Simon’s funeral.

“Are you okay?” Ray asked Wren, staring down at her.

Brushing his hands over his black suit to smooth out any wrinkles, he began to worry. He was preparing to meet the priest at the podium to give the eulogy for their deceased friend, but he noticed Wren’s distraction and grew hesitant. Observing her glossy eyes, he asked, “You’re not having a panic attack, are you?”

Wren shook her head, pursing her lips. Ray saw her suppression of a smile and grew annoyed. He looked back at the kids, who were making faces. He sighed and narrowed his eyes at Wren, disappointed in her demeanor.

“Really?” Ray muttered under his breath. “This is not the time to be joking around. Esme isn’t here, and you’re not acting properly. This is a fucked way to honor Simon.”

Wren heard him and composed herself, but as soon as he walked up to meet Father Bernie at the podium, she looked back at the kids. She needed joy amidst such sorrow.

“Is your sister really from Moonlight Hills?” a short, plump man loudly asked a few benches back, trying to get Wren’s attention. He was holding a small notepad and pen. “Hey!”

Wren eyed the man she did not know, then looked around at the people who were seated in the pews. She recognized half of them as members of the church and friends of Simon’s, but the other half were reporters and strangers. The funeral was crammed, and half were only there for the popularity of how Simon had died. Growing irritated, Wren glowered at the short reporter and flicked him off.

The troll who stood in front of the goblins released a roaring laugh. As if that was what those who cared about the deceased needed, a few attendees started barking for the reporters to leave.

Ray panicked at what was happening and looked nervously over at the Holo-disc, which was a narrow pedestal with a holographic version of a nineteenth-century television with communication capabilities. Simon’s grandparents were hovering above the pedestal, sitting on their couch near the front pew. Their fair skin looked pale pink, as the old Holo-disc needed maintenance. They had decided not to attend the funeral in person, for they feared the city’s civil strife.

Father Bernie observed the loud crowd and said, “To all the reporters, I must ask you to leave.”

“We have a right to be here,” a woman with a recorder in her lap protested. “This is a church and a public funeral.”

The woman held up her flyer, inviting all of Tallahassee to attend the service.

Father Bernie nodded and said, “I was hoping the people of the city would attend, but not in the form of the press. Please, I must ask that you excuse yourselves.”

Most reporters left politely, but the short reporter who had asked about Wren’s sister, Esme, would not budge. A few attendees grabbed the man’s arm and dragged him to the door to leave. “You can’t do this! I’m filing a complaint at city hall!”

“File it,” a detective hissed down at the extremely short man. “And make sure to add the name Connell B. Hayes of the Old Precinct as one of the people who kicked you out. Don’t forget to mention how you were being disrespectful.”

The short reporter looked up at the detective looming over him. Connell’s dark brown cheeks were flushed from anger, and the reporter’s own strawberry cheeks were fluffing in brewing frustration.

Everyone knew the officers of the Old Precinct were not to be taken lightly. It was the closest precinct to the state’s downtown capitol, and it had been built to honor a police chief named Fredrick S. Old, who had died protecting protestors at a peace rally. And while the entire Tallahassee Police Department took the rights of fae seriously, the Old Precinct took it a step further, trying to live up to Old’s ways.

“And me,” a petite woman with bronze skin and Arabic roots said, waving at the short reporter from her seat near the front. “Your mayor.” The mayor glared at the reporters with chestnut eyes and stood up. “My apologies, Wren, but I think it’s best I leave with them.” The mayor looked down at Wren, fixing her raven-black hair. “Give your aunt my regards.”

“I will, Mayor Adams.” Wren nodded.

“Stop calling me that,” Mayor Adams told her. “Our families have been friends for generations. Call me Zara.”

“In public, I will never.” Wren smiled up at Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams walked away after patting Wren on the shoulder and helped escort the reporters outside. The short reporter looked embarrassed when he was shoved through the door. “We should not vote in another Adams,” he mumbled about the mayor.

When he was in the doorway and holding onto the doorway’s edge, the reporter’s eyes lit up. “Ah, I see Esme across the street!” he shouted and looked back at Wren. “I can ask your sister myself!”

“I dare you.” Wren stood up, her eyes turning an icy blue as tiny flames of smoke exited her pores.

The reporter stopped taunting her, and his cheery face disappeared. “Freaks!” he shouted. “You don’t even look like an Acosta! I bet you’re adopted like Esme, Wren Sparrow! Bet you’re fae! They should overturn your rights!”

“I’m my parents’ daughter,” Wren said, seething angrily. “And an Acosta.”

“Come on,” Connell said, pushing the short man through the door. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“I think the rebels have the right idea about y’all!” the boorish reporter shouted outside. He glared across the street at the church’s bookstore, where he spotted Esme, who was writing something on a picket sign. Two goblins were standing near Esme, laughing as they read what she wrote.

Connell shoved the reporter into the back seat of his car. “Maybe I should join their rebellion!” the reporter shouted from inside the cruiser.

As he pounded his chubby fists on the window, Esme held up her sign with the new words Be Quiet! Your Voice Is So Horrible Sounding! Please? scribbled on it, which only angered the reporter more.

The two goblins who laughed on both sides of Esme pointed at the man, who was screaming from inside the detective’s car. Esme’s minty eyes watched the car drive away. She shivered from the cold and wrapped her arms around her long coat, which framed her white dress. She had planned to wear her new outfit to Simon’s funeral, as it was customary to wear white to funerals among the nymphs, but her plans changed when she saw one of the goblins being harassed earlier that morning.

Esme yawned and rubbed her arms from the breeze. Her skin was almost the color of onyx, and goosebumps covered every inch. Her long black hair flew in the wind, and the sun highlighted her natural streaks of blue and green.

“Will they take away our rights?” one goblin asked, looking up at his older brother.

The three at the bookstore had heard the mad reporter shouting from within the church before being hauled away.

“What rights?” the older goblin muttered and leaned back on the wall of the bookstore.

“No,” Esme said, as she snapped her eyes back to the two goblins she was protecting.

Not long after the fae emerged, the United States had held a nationwide vote about granting the fae fundamental rights. It was revealed that the governments of the world had already known about the fae’s existence and kept it classified because they wanted both groups to live peacefully. Peace had become a priority after so many wars across the globe. Plus, humans and fae did not have a harmonious past.

After the vote proved inconsistent, the country made a radical decision: The federal government had officially proclaimed that they were creating new laws within the United States, and any form of assault inflicted on the fae would be seen as a hate crime. Learning from their past, the country knew how horrible humans could be.

As the laws were being created, Tallahassee entered an alliance with the fae who had traveled from a city called Moonlight Hills. And in 2203, three years after the fae left their hideouts, the first bill was officially declared. It read: The Fae Are Given All Rights As Human Citizens, And All Are Equal In The United States. It was a simple and purely ethical rule that most people agreed with for a variety of reasons.

The day the president had endorsed the new law was a day of celebration.

On the day the bill was passed, Tallahassee’s reigning mayor, Zara’s uncle, held a masquerade gala at Sparrow Manor. They were formalizing a peace treaty with Moonlight Hills. While the mayor and the Sparrows played host to the diplomats from Moonlight Hills and the governor of Florida, the two humanoid groups mingled. Reporters were at the party, recording the event live, and the nation watched the news on Holo-discs or looked up at the footage in the sky via U.S. Sky News—a global industry that brought national news to everyone by sending muted holographic footage down from satellites.

The party at the Sparrows’ was a sight that the country, and the world, had never seen. People from all over stared up at the sky in awe at the majestic jewels and gowns the fae wore. Since Sky News was restricted to a country by satellite borders, the rest of the world watched the news coverage above them using their own nation’s Sky News, or on Holo-discs.

The union of humans and fae had begun, and the future seemed bright.

While more than half of the United States was supportive of the alliance that took place in the South, people across the Southeast were enraged that Florida’s governor was a supporter of federal fae integration. Florida had a history of being separatist regarding civil rights ordeals, but within the past century, the state had strayed from its quasi-militant governorship.

And those who stood against the alliance completely lost their minds. The vile fanatics called themselves the anti-fae, as if originality escaped them. They had drifted toward Tallahassee and set up camp right outside of city limits. Eventually, they came together and formed an organization called the Human Coalition. However, as ethics became the trend, hate became the minority, so most people had little tolerance for the anti-fae. The number of political candidates who continued to choose goodness as their platform only grew, and Florida was not exempt from this. The mindset the nation had adopted was simple: “All humans are one.”

And the fae were being included in that philosophy.

Back inside the church, Ray pressed a button on the clicker he was holding, holographic pictures of Simon flickered on, and the lights dimmed. The service was beginning.

“Ignore them. Come sit down, Wren. It’s starting,” a woman with light brown skin and iron-curled brown hair named Ms. Beckman whispered next to where Wren was standing, prying her from her concentration on the closed door. Wren turned around and sat down next to Ms. Beckman, who was once Wren’s second-grade teacher.

Ms. Beckman’s grandson leaned around his grandmother and told Wren, “I don’t think you’re a freak.”

With the blend of his words and seeing the pictures of Simon, tears formed in Wren’s eyes. She could not reply to the boy and only nodded between muffled weeps.

Simon had once helped Wren conquer her sadness with his laughter, and he had eased her suffering with his very existence. Without the antidote of Simon, Wren did not know what to do—fear paralyzed her.

During the gala the Sparrows had hosted, Wren was only three years old. She had been playing with Esme, who was the same age as her, outside while the adults discussed the alliance.

But the party was interrupted by a horrendous slaughter. Masquerading as allies, a group of anti-fae had made their way into the party. Before anyone could see, twenty fanatics pulled out explosives and machine guns hidden under their coats and dresses. With over fifty fae and humans dead, the city of Moonlight Hills retracted their agreement.

There were only two people who survived the massacre: Esme, the daughter of the McKnights, who were noble aristocrats from Moonlight Hills, and Wren, the daughter of the Sparrows, who were part of the Acosta dynasty—a family of old money whose ancestors from Spain had created the most successful winery in the world.

The attendees inside the church grew quiet as pictures of Simon continued to rotate in the air for everyone to see. Ray stood at the podium and was reading a page from The Hymnal 2224, the church’s modern book of hymns that had been altered to include fae songs.

While Ray was preparing his speech, Wren noticed a new notification on her phone about Isis. The tiny holographic headline read: The Mother Has Found Giant Fossils! We Repeat, The Mother Has Found Giant Fossils! 

As most people perceived Isis as an undead deity who loved exploring the solar system and were amazed by what she could do, Wren viewed her as family. Wren’s mind wandered, and she then remembered being comforted by Isis as she laughed in her mother’s terrified arms—a memory from an age no one should be able to remember.

*****

In the summer of 2200, Isis led the first group of fae to Tallahassee three months after Wren was born. The demigoddess had witnessed a prophecy that the spectral wanderer she had met in Egypt of the Old Kingdom had been reborn, and Isis swore that the child of the Sparrows was her reincarnation.

However, the highest of the fae courts would not hear it, despite the Spirit having been their ancestors’ guardian. The Council, formed from the five fae courts, insisted that no fae were to emerge from their hidden communities across the globe and ordered them not to follow Isis on her migration to Tallahassee. Humans were not tolerant of fae in the past, so they had to remain cautious.

Most of the fae followed the Council’s order, but not all listened. The closest fae city, Moonlight Hills, from the mysterious woods of North Georgia, was deaf to their own government’s order. And their diplomats followed Isis toward Tallahassee like it was summer vacation. The visitors from the woods wore bright clothes, and a few had unusually long ears. Some strangers were not even three inches tall and flew with glittery wings. 

Nymphs, elves, and fairies were the ones who first congregated in the front yard of Sparrow Manor, a house that was more than a house—a masterpiece of stone that had been designed by the Sparrows when they were newlyweds. With tall trees, expansive yards, gardens, and an iron fence, the estate was a mix of modern architecture and Gothic structures.

Mia Acosta, a woman with olive-toned skin, and Calvin Sparrow, who was almost as pale as a dove, were excited about the family they were planning. But when the fae rushed out of Isis’ portal, everything changed…

The Sparrows were standing on their front porch as Mia held their baby in her arms. “She’s not her!” Mia repeatedly yelled at the strangers invading their yard, wanting to believe her own lies.

However, Mia knew her words were untrue, for when she was pregnant with Wren, she had dreamed of bizarre things. She had turned her dreams into a series of children’s books that followed the space adventures of two beings named Lynn and Lock. Staring at the strangers, Mia realized the visions she had dreamed and the books she had written were not fiction, but her daughter’s fate.

And Wren was calling a hidden civilization out of hiding.

A tall woman wearing the jewels of the pharaohs walked up the porch steps to where the Sparrows stood. As if knowing who the strange woman was, the baby giggled. “If she is not her, then why does she recognize me?” the woman asked Mia in an archaic Egyptian accent.

The Egyptian woman then said to the child, “Hello, Wren. My name is Isis. We met long ago.” As Isis and Wren both laughed at the other in a shared joy, Mia moved her eyes over the people. Recognizing the picture book she had written, The Adventures of Lyn and Lock, being held in the arms of a tall man with pointed ears, she released a disturbed laugh. She placed her hands over her face and clawed at her cheeks.

Isis brought Mia and Wren into her arms, humming an ancient tune. As she hummed, Mia calmed down. And with her hums, rain poured from the sky.

It would have been easy to brush off the appearance of the elves and nymphs as cosplay, but how could one explain the chattering fairies sitting on the flowers?

The Sparrows then led the fae inside after they listened to Isis explain who they were. Afraid of what could befall the people who looked odd, the Sparrows quickly invited Tallahassee’s mayor over to speak to the ambassadors from Moonlight Hills.

Days later, Tallahassee was introduced to the three species of fae and Isis, and the reception was mostly positive.

The goblins and trolls wanted to see the child of the Sparrows, as they, too, believed in the legend of the Spirit, but the nymphs, elves, and fairies had beaten them to it. And since the fae had a caste system, goblins and trolls were forced to stay in their hideouts.

Well, at first…