The Elven King

Chapter 1: Sade

Chapter 1: Sade

Sade Hughes had wild curly hair, a classy hourglass figure and unfortunate taste in men. In high school, there’d been Leroy, the dropout; in college Stan, the biker and pool hustler; followed by Davie Chang, the MMA fighter who had wiped out Sade’s checking account to move to Thailand, learn Muy Thai, and screw Asian girls. But the worst, by far, was Michael. Michael, the fake art-dealer whose real business was drugs. Michael, who had decided that since he and Sade were dating he owned every part of her life. Michael, whose answer to the restraining order was to send two of his boys to snatch her out of a club. She’d only managed to get away because Bill, the bouncer, had seen what was happening and stepped in.

Michael was why Sade had packed her bags and driven nearly fifty miles to hide out in her Nana’s old house. With luck, she’d be able to live here for a few months until Michael was arrested or found another distraction, and then she’d be able to go back to her life. Such as it was.

Sade hadn’t set foot in Nana’s house since she was eight years old, and Nana had had her ‘breakdown.’ It was summer now -- a greener, cooler summer than around Sade’s apartment in West Philadelphia -- and as she pulled up into the driveway of the sprawling Quakertown farmhouse, the memories of the three childhood summers she’d spent here with her Nana and younger brother Charles came back with a vengeance.

As a child, Sade had considered her Nana to be a little odd. For one, she never threw anything away. The hallways of her house were crammed from floor to ceiling with stacks of yellowing newspapers, making the place dark and cramped as an anthill. Every night, Nana had left a saucer of milk out on the porch, even though Sade had never seen a cat around -- except for the one belonging to Mrs. Bishop, their neighbor, and Mrs. Bishop kept her Persian inside and had looked like she’d swallowed a lemon the one time Sade had asked if she could pet it.

Nana also collected weird things, like the horseshoes and rusted iron nails that she hung as clunky wind chimes from the beams of the porch. She had an entire room full of yellow-haired dolls whose iridescent gray-green eyes reminded Sade vaguely of fish scales.

And then there was the issue of the toadstool ring in the backyard.

“Leave that thing alone, Sade,” Nana had warned the first time she caught Sade and her brother playing near it. “Especially under a full moon.”

“Why?” Sade had asked.

“Little People,” Nana had said. There was the hint of a smile on her thin, chapped lips. “Some say they followed us from the old country.” That would be Nana’s ‘old country’— Nana being Sade’s father’s mother. Sade’s ‘old country’ was somewhere in Africa, her mama had explained, although technically Sade figured she could claim both ‘old countries’ as her own; after all, she was her father’s daughter, even if her father had cheated with ‘that woman.’ Not that Sade would have upset her mama by saying any of this aloud.

Sade had forced herself to focus on Nana’s rambling. The older woman said, “The Sidhe’s marks were here long before ours, though others named them differently.”

“What’s a ‘She?’” said Sade.

“Sidhe. Little people. Tricksters. They live on the other side of the veil, and if you’re lucky, you’ll never see one. But you look hot, child. Get yourself a Popsicle. And don’t mess with those mushrooms, okay?” And that was all Nana had to say on the subject.

Later that night, when Sade and her brother had gone to bed in the guest-room bunk beds they always slept in at Nana’s house, Sade had asked him: “What do you think of that ring of mushrooms in Nana’s yard?”