Sweet Clematis Read online

  Sasha shook his head playfully. “You are.”

  “I am fairy,” Clematis responded loftily over the hum of his wings. “We like to be happy.” He kept his attention on Sasha’s radiant glow. “And you made me very happy,” he added, unable to tell if Sasha would prefer him to be coy.

  Sasha’s chubby cheeks started to tinge with pink, which said he might, but he continued to smile and didn’t attempt to flirt in return. “Someone is understandably pleased with himself,” he said. “Did you tell Mr. Harbaugh?”

  Clematis sighed heavily and wrinkled his nose. “Now I’m frowning. You’ve made me frown. You’ll have to make it up to me.”

  “Pfft,” Sasha echoed him. “I’m sure you have more than enough people ready to do that. And he isn’t that bad… sometimes.”

  Clematis perked up. “How do you know I have more than enough people? What makes you say that?”

  Sasha raised both his eyebrows, looking briefly like a stunned and embarrassed baby bear. His cheeks flushed even darker. But then he snorted in amusement. “Well, one, you’re a fairy, and people tell me they are beautiful. And two, you act like beautiful people do. Confident. Flirty. So I assume you have admirers lined up. Did you really need a blind guy to tell you you’re beautiful?”

  Clematis curled his toes inside his tennis shoes. He clenched his fists and then forced his hands to open. “I should go,” he said abruptly. “I have to show this to Mr. Harbaugh.” He grabbed his paperwork before hurrying away.

  “Clematis?” Sasha asked after him, moving his head as if trying to listen for him. “Clematis?”

  Clematis could apologize later for leaving so rudely, although Sasha would probably blame it on fairy thoughtlessness and forget about it. Conversations with Sasha never went how they should, which was Clematis’s fault. He should ask about Sasha’s classes and when they would start. That was better. He shouldn’t flirt, no matter how shiny Sasha was. Sasha couldn’t see, which meant Clematis had nothing to interest him.

  And perhaps it was wiser to avoid the shiny ones for now.

  Clematis glanced over his shoulder at the thought, though no one was near except the other part-time office workers.

  Clematis’s desk was in the corner, away from most of the others but near a window—a special concession from his old boss. A small bromeliad in a tiny red vase occupied one edge. Origami animals lined the other side, with a computer monitor and a dozen sticky notes taking up the rest of the space. But today, Clematis bypassed his desk in order to go over and knock on the door to the inner office. He opened the door only after he was gruffly instructed to come in. He’d learned his lesson about knocking with this particular human.

  Their new younger, conservative boss raised his head when Clematis walked in, then swept a look over him that said he was surprised to find him dressed, as if one day Clematis was going to forget the rules and walk in naked.

  Fairies thought nudity was natural. Humans didn’t, especially around children. It wasn’t that hard to remember most of the time. Especially when it involved his paycheck.

  Clematis smiled anyway as he held up the paperwork and the keys to the institute car he’d driven. “I took the test today!”

  “From your tone, I take it you passed?” Mr. Harbaugh pulled down his glasses to peer over the frame at the papers from the DMV. He had eyes of piercing blue, and pale freckled skin that seemed perpetually pink in his cheeks. He furrowed his brow as he read the paperwork, then shook his head. “Amazing,” he said under his breath. It did not sound nearly as warm as it would have if Sasha had said it. He flicked his gaze over Clematis again, almost as if looking for something. If he found it, he didn’t like it.

  It was difficult for Clematis to keep his smile under a look like that, but he tried. The pink spread from Mr. Harbaugh’s cheeks to his neck. His slight frown deepened to a scowl.

  “I’ll send the appropriate form to your desk when your permanent license arrives. Make sure to get copies for when you lose it and to give that key to Collette.” Mr. Harbaugh focused determinedly on the tablet in front of him. “Day’s over in an hour, anyway. You might as well go home. Most of the others have.”

  “Oh?” Clematis thought about glancing around to the people still at their desks, but finally nodded and backed up. Mr. Harbaugh stared down at his tablet as if Clematis was the last thing on his mind.

  Clematis shut the door softly and spent a few moments carefully folding up his temporary license. He didn’t think his hands were shaking, but if they were, it was better to keep it to himself. The institute employed several part-timers to handle office grunt work and various duties around the school. Mostly older human women, who talked about grandchildren and TV cop shows and knitting. Clematis didn’t know anything about those first two things, and they never seemed to believe him when he said he could knit. Not even when he’d made gifts for them one Christmas. Many fairies and elves were fond of knitting. The neighboring town of Los Cerros had several shops known for their fairy-knit creations.

  Clematis folded his license even further into a teeny-tiny square and shoved it as far down into his pants pocket as it would go. Then he lowered his head and made his way back through the labyrinth of desks.

  Sasha paused as if he heard his wings, even with whatever he was transcribing, but Clematis did not stop until he was back out in the hall.

  Collette glanced over when he put the key in front of her. She even frowned slightly, an almost unprecedented show of interest. Clematis’s phone buzzed in his back pocket, saving him from having to muster up another smile that felt like what he imagined a lie would feel like.

  Fine. Don’t tell me how your test went. Stephanie’s message was sharp and concerned at the same time, a lot like Stephanie herself.

  Clematis swallowed the lump in his throat. Passed. He stopped by the doors to type his answer. Thanks again for teaching me.

  Good boy, Stephanie answered. Clematis felt his wings stir with the first bit of lightness since he’d left Sasha’s desk.

  Collette cleared her throat.

  Clematis quickly put his phone away. “Got an early day,” he told her, although he didn’t think she cared. Her colors were blue and gray. Clematis had never cared much for blue.

  His only consolation was that Collette was like this with everyone. If she hadn’t been so blue, he might have tried to talk to her more.

  She widened her eyes, which was a funny sort of thing to do, but then went back to whatever she had been doing. A crossword, most likely.

  “Hey, Mr. Mati!” A shout from the other end of the hallway made Collette raise her head again.

  Clematis looked beyond her and grinned. He waved broadly.

  Grant, a frail boy with tan skin and glasses, had learned to speak because his parents would not learn sign language. He’d attended the institute for years but still called Clematis by the name he’d used when he was having difficulty with his vocalizations. It was one of the few times Clematis had ever been a Mister to anyone.

  “What are you doing here?” Clematis signed at him, beaming again for the wide smile on Grant’s face. “Studying already?”

  “Science club!” Grant signed back enthusiastically, then made a face. “I’m late.”

  “Humans only take you seriously when you are punctual,” Clematis replied. Grant was human but seemed to like it when Clematis included him in comments like that one. “And dressed,” Clematis added, before shooing him on. “Go! Don’t be late!”

  Grant made another sour face at him, but the skip in his step meant he enjoyed science club and looked forward to going. Which made sense. They did blow up things a lot, and humans loved explosions.

  Collette’s eyebrows were up as she returned to her crossword or cryptogram or whatever it was today. Clematis released a deep breath as Grant dashed out of sight, then pushed open the doors and walked outside.

  The sun was still shining. He tipped his face up to it, and for a moment, the world was yellow and red and warm
. He spread his wings and turned his hands to feel the warmth on his palms.

  Then someone honked in the distance, and the guard at the kiosk coughed loudly, so Clematis floated down the steps to land on the sidewalk.

  His apartment was several blocks west, a tiny place he got to keep because his landlady preferred a fairy to a college student. She said fairies occasionally forgot the date the rent was due, but at least they didn’t destroy things.

  Mrs. Galarza also had two white Pomeranians that Clematis sometimes watched for her. They always barked through her window at him when he first came into view, then wagged their tails and pressed their noses to the glass when he got closer. They were nice to come home to, especially after bad days.

  But he didn’t head home. He walked along the stone walls of the official entrance to the university, although the walls were for show and the campus actually had many entrances. The front gate was the one on the postcards and the brochures, though. Stone walls and a gate made people want to get in.

  David had talked about that once, long before he’d briefly thought sleeping with Clematis was a good idea.

  David was silly like that, and wonderful and smart and good at his core. He’d looked at those gates and been unhappy despite the whisky Stephanie had given him. “They aren’t meant to invite people in,” he’d told Clematis, his beautiful eyes filled with more sadness than anger. “They’re meant to remind you of the people they keep out. The people they kept out until they couldn’t anymore. People like me, and like you.” He smiled at that, as if for one moment he genuinely thought Clematis was worth something because Clematis sat in on a few classes.

  The humans who designed and paid for the stone walls and the iron gate would probably have lost their minds to see Clematis walk into their school as though he had a right to be there. He passed a statue of one of those humans and then lines of tables and small booths dedicated to different clubs and organizations and causes on campus. Someone was blowing bubbles, and he stopped to admire them—and a giggling human baby in his mother’s arms, and a chalk drawing on the pavement—before continuing on his way.

  This time he didn’t linger.

  Most of the students at the tables were indifferent or bored, but some were loud and angry and getting louder and angrier every day.

  Clematis stilled his wings as he walked. The late afternoon August sun was bright and hot but he was glad he had his shirt on from work, even though he usually was only grateful to be wearing clothing during the winter. He changed direction to stick to one side of the gauntlet of student groups, preferring any tables with rainbows or pink triangles on them, even if some LGBTQ humans said quite vocally that beings did not belong with them. Not too many said it, not these days, but Clematis could tell when someone thought it. Fear turned to disgust had a particular look, no matter what the colors.

  But he could deal with fear more than the sudden silence from the opposite side of the path when certain other humans saw him. The lack of sound made him flick a nervous look in that direction, and the moment he did, several of the humans hissed at him.

  Hissed. As though he was a monster from one of their movies.

  “Fairy!” someone yelled, a warning and a sneer at the same time.

  “Fairy sluts can come on campus as long as they don’t pretend to want to learn,” another one of them commented, wanting to be heard.

  Clematis turned his head to watch the ripple go through the mingling colors of the humans gathered around several separate tables. Each table had initials written on it or slogans that hadn’t changed much since Clematis had been too little to even have sparkle. Fairies spread disease. Trolls were a danger. Weres constituted a threat to delicate human femininity.

  They had pictures up too. Snapshots of tall, strong werewolf women next to cartoons of humans vomiting. One was labeled Boner Killer. A black-and-white photo of a fairy in a World War II Army uniform next to several male humans gazing at him adoringly was captioned with a big red Corruption! But the largest photo, the one that had gotten the humans like these so enraged and frightened was of the pretty bronze-gold dragon who had been attacked last year and had dared to defend himself.

  These humans called him dangerous and wanted him locked up. The news shows that the others insisted were not really news were full of commentators denouncing being violence and insisting the golden dragon should have peacefully resisted the humans who had been hunting him.

  Clematis studied the humans, who were no older than Sasha, amazed that they could parrot the same ideas humans had spouted decades ago and yet still gaze at him with shimmers of desire in their colors.

  Humans always looked like that. Always wanted. Fairies or weres or dragons, it didn’t matter. Humans wanted and resented those who made them want.

  Except for the shiny ones, of course. Their courage was part of what made them so beautiful.

  None of these humans had any shine or appeal, not even a hint of soft yellow or glimmering gold. But Clematis tipped his head back to consider each one of them in turn, imagined them fucking him, let his thoughts show in his eyes and his parted lips, and watched each of them stare and shimmer and burn.

  It did not take long for their want to darken. For them to startle and frown and grow self-conscious and look to the others to see if they had been noticed blushing at a fairy. A stupid, silly, slutty fairy.

  The colors around them, the wavering, flickering auras every creature on earth possessed except for fairies, were a mess of conflicting impulses and thoughts.

  Fairies couldn’t read thoughts, despite what some people believed. They couldn’t even really see truth, or at least, Clematis couldn’t. What they could see was a glow, colors or lights that humans were as blind to as Sasha. Colors unique to each person, shifting and changing with whatever that person was feeling, or thinking, or hated, or worried about. Conflicting desires were especially distracting, like seeing the sound of dozens of metal pots and pans falling to the floor.

  Cognitive dissonance, Stephanie had said once when Clematis had tried to explain it. Humans could not handle too many conflicting thoughts, especially very rigid humans. It made their colors unpleasant to look at. It also made the humans angry.

  Most humans did not do or say these things, but to a fairy’s eye, the silent ones glowed the same as those who spoke up.

  Clematis stayed on his side without breaking his stare, although his wings fluttered when several of the hateful humans moved from their tables as if they wanted to confront him.

  Then a funny, husky, strangely calm voice pulled his attention from them. “There you are.”

  Clematis’s fear slipped away as he turned to follow that voice. He shivered at his first glimpse of dark gold glitter, wings of orange and fiery pink, hair and eyes like Mars black.

  “Flor,” he said softly on an exhale.

  Chapter 2

  FLOR CROSSED his arms over his bare chest and looked away from Clematis to glare across the path at the humans, who had gone quiet once again. They were probably silent because behind Flor, and staring pointedly in the same direction as Flor, was Flor’s troll friend, Mishi.

  For several seconds, no one did anything, and then with a decided flutter that carried through his wings, Flor tossed his head and finally focused on Clematis. The summer sun reflected off the haze of bright ever-falling sparkle around Flor, so bright he shined like a human, like the David he loved so much. His hair was in his eyes until he impatiently tucked some of it behind his delicately pointed ears.

  “Do you like getting into trouble?” Flor demanded incredulously when Clematis didn’t speak. He took another moment to stare behind Clematis to the humans still watching them. Then he frowned when he saw the shirt and shoes Clematis was wearing, although even Flor wore pants or at least shorts in public most of the time. “I swear you think it’s my job to save you now.”

  “It is your job, sort of,” Clematis replied absently, then blinked to help his eyes adjust to Flor’s brillianc
e.

  Flor steamrolled on, ignoring Clematis, as usual. “The MCC is here to make beings on campus feel safer and more welcome. Not to chase after you every time you make eyes at the wrong human.” Flor stopped abruptly to give Clematis a confused look. “Shouldn’t you know better?” he asked, his wings momentarily still and his eyes growing darker and searching.

  Clematis turned his head. The band tied around Flor’s left bicep read MCC at the top and below that Campus Escort. The Magical Creatures Coalition had formed during the spring semester in response to angry humans like those across the path and some incidents on and around campus. Flor and Mishi and a few others would escort beings and the occasional frightened human around campus if someone asked for help. They also spent a lot of time near the front gate to remind beings that they were welcome behind these walls now.

  There weren’t a lot of beings attending classes despite that, but Flor seemed hopeful that would change.

  “Flor, are you blaming him for their attitude problems?” Mishi asked in disbelief, although she might have been teasing. Clematis didn’t know her well enough to say for sure.

  Either way, Flor just scoffed without taking his attention from Clematis. Recently Flor’s already sharp gaze had grown more intense. “No. But he’s a fairy, which means he can see intentions. Which is why I don’t understand why he would go after those—” Flor took a deep breath. “Forget it.” Flor was young, younger than Clematis by at least a decade, but sometimes he almost seemed to have wisdom beyond that.

  Clematis felt a tremor in his stomach, but then the moment was over.

  Flor sighed heavily. “Come on, then.” He rolled his wrist to beckon Clematis forward, making sure Clematis was sandwiched between him and Mishi as they walked to the grassy spot beneath a cherry tree where the MCC had a table—close enough to keep an eye on the hateful humans but not near enough to have to listen to them.