Free with a Sno Cone

by Jared Oliver Adams

Illustrated by Thana Meejinda

School buses stop frequently at Grandpappy’s Mining Emporium, because it is the only place for Gemstones! Prospectin’!! and Good Vittles!!! near the caves. 

The humans, of course, do not call the caves by their true name. Instead, like a child who rides her first moth and declares it theirs with neither pact nor pledge, Philip Byerly simply named the caves after himself as if generations of the Spiraldown Fae hadn’t called them home. 

Giselda Helecticia Mata’loine knows all about Philip Byerly. She taught herself to read human runes from the pamphlets by the register. 

“Susan,” reads Giselda’s nametag, the letters bracketed by little pickaxes. It’s an insidious magick, the nametag, because while the iron anklet binds her inside this clumsy human form and keeps her from leaving the store, the nametag binds her mind. 

She has begun to think of herself as Susan sometimes. 

“Hello schoolchildren,” she says as a fresh busload arrives. “My name is Susan. Please let me know if I may assist you in your commerce.”

They look at her strangely, perhaps because they sense her true nature, but she always smiles back sincerely. Their presence is like the phosphorescent moss of the Dead Deep, telling you that, yes, life indeed exists even there. 

And it isn’t the children’s fault that Grandpappy is a fairy-slaving bastard. 

Today, a group of boys laughs malodorously at an overweight child wearing a belt pouch. Twelve years old? Fourteen? It’s hard to tell with humans.

“What’s in his fanny pack, you think? His balls?” 

The overweight child’s nametag reads “Tye (they/them),” which means the boys should not be saying “his,” but Giselda thinks they know this by the way the word slashes cruelly through the air, slicing off bloody chunks from Tye’s aura. 

But then, humans can’t see auras, can they? So maybe they don’t know. Is that possible?  

Tye doesn’t respond except to bow their head so their black bowl of hair protects them like a warrior’s helm. 

Giselda cannot watch the massacre. “Break your own geodes!” she proclaims in her flat human voice. “Guaranteed to have crystals inside!” 

The vicious boys glance her way. 

Their lips are colored green, purple, and blue. 

“Free with the purchase of a Sno Cone!” adds Giselda. It is a trade Grandpappy encourages. Sno Cones are cheap, and geodes are even cheaper. She imbues them with crystals herself by weaving essence into the rocks he dumps at her feet every night. Pure profit, as Grandpappy likes to say.    

One of the boys, “Rahid” by his nametag, gives Tye a shove before leading the others over to Giselda’s scarred counter and the bin of rocks beside it. 

“Perhaps you desire to be first, Master Rahid,” says Giselda, gesturing to the bin. But, of course, Rahid is already helping himself. Predictably, he chooses the largest rock. Also predictably, he tries to bash it on the side of the bin like cracking an egg. 

Giselda holds out her fat-fingered human hands. Susan’s hands, she reminds herself. Not mine. 

“If I may,” she says, and he slams it into her palm. 

She sends a swirl of darkness into the rock and places it on the counter as she hands him the pick and mallet. 

The group of boys is positively bloodthirsty at the sight of the mallet, but behind them, Tye is wandering the rest of the store, scrutinizing the shelves. No interest in the T-shirts or personalized keychains, it seems. But the dreamcatchers draw the child’s attention. 

Meanwhile, Rahid is pounding his geode with glee. One strike, two, three (always three) to break the filament of magic. The geode splits apart.

The darkness inside coalesces the instant it touches air, forming legs, eyes, tiny hairs. The tarantula darts up Rahid’s arm immediately. 

To be fair, there are also crystals inside. 

Giselda is no liar. 

Rahid jumps away, spins, knocks over the stand of sunglasses and magnets, screaming. Ah, his screams are sweet. Giselda’s mouth wants to smile, but she fights her own lips and paints on a face of concern instead. 

The tarantula is inside Rahid’s shirt now.

He’s rushing for the door, ripping off his shirt, knocking more things off shelves. A commemorative shot glass shatters. A display of beef jerky crashes to the floor and he slips over the pile of glossy plastic wrapping. 

Giselda is losing the battle with her lips.

Rahid’s buddies help him up, and then they are gone, out the door that Giselda will never leave. 

But the spider has. And since its essence is tied to the being who freed it, Rahid will not find it easy to shake. That’s a little bit of herself that has escaped, she supposes, with some satisfaction. 

“How much is this?” asks Tye, who is right next to her.

Giselda flinches and quickly schools her face.

Tye is holding up her best dreamcatcher. Grandpappy has forced her to make them with feathers, because he says people expect feathers, but Giselda grew up making them differently, and she always sneaks one of hers into the display after Grandpappy leaves. In this one, root filaments form an intricate web around a ruby quartz crystal, and the ring in which the web is anchored is covered in dull green moss she scraped from a windowsill. Three strands hang from the ring, a different crystal on each. 

The ruby will recharge a shredded aura, and the crystals will leech away the three types of poison: physical, spiritual, and mental.  

Tye has chosen well. 

“Free with a Sno Cone,” says Giselda, even though Grandpappy has declared the barter for dreamcatchers is thirty-five human dollars. Does it not say Deals! Deals! Deals! right above the barrels of polished gemstones in the corner? Giselda considers the sign a binding statement.   

“I haven’t had a Sno Cone,” says Tye, cocking their head.

“Ever?” asks Giselda. 

Tye laughs. “I can’t take this for free. Will you accept a trade?” 

Giselda’s soul springs to life at the word “trade,” but she quickly squelches her excitement. Trades were what got her into this miserable situation in the first place, Grandpappy offering to show her the mysteries of the world above in exchange for placing herself in human form to better blend in. The anklet had been stitched inside the cuff of the jeans he’d offered her. 

“What barter do you propose?” Giselda asks Tye. 

Tye reaches into their fanny pack, which on closer inspection bears the sigil of some place called The Florida Everglades. They pull out a hand-sized dragon head, perfectly preserved. No, not quite a dragon. This has a flatter snout. Its open mouth has fewer teeth. 

“Did you dispatch this beast yourself?” asks Giselda breathlessly. 

“I traded for it in a store very similar to this one,” says Tye, and they hand it over for her inspection, as is proper. It thrums with power the moment her fingers touch it. A small “oh” escapes her lips. 

A grin spreads across Tye’s face. “It is an alligator. But I have given it a special hunger.”

Giselda’s head spins as she asks her question through Susan’s voice. “What does it eat?” 

“Iron,” says Tye, eyes flicking downward as if they can see her anklet through the counter. 

“Who are you?” Giselda says dizzily. “What are you?” Their aura looks human.

Tye touches their nametag. “Just a kid, far as I know. A human kid who’s spent too much time alone in the woods following ant trails, and copying birdcalls, and sleeping in oaken crooks.”

“But how did you–?” 

Tye shrugs. “Things . . . sing to me. And if I sing back, sometimes I can convince them to be something else.”

“No, I mean how did you know I needed this?”

“Because this dreamcatcher has a sad lullaby,” Tye says, chewing their lip. “And because when you said your name was Susan, the same song threaded through your words.”    

“And you happened to have this in your pouch?” 

“You never know when you might need to cut through a bear trap.” 

“I accept this trade,” says Giselda, and Tye nods in return.

“Let it be so,” says Tye. “Item for item. Power for power. Pact and pledge.” 

“Pact and pledge,” she recites back.  

“I’ve gotta go,” says Tye. “Need to catch my bus. Don’t forget to feed it.” 

Tye leaves through the door, the whoosh of hot air pluming inward in their wake. 

Giselda is left standing behind the counter holding the alligator head. Its marble eyes shine over its lacquered scales. 

Are her hands shaking for fear that she has once again made a horrifying trade, or is it simply the waves of power shedding off the item? 

She lowers it to her ankle.  

Its jaws snap shut, cutting through the anklet as if it were made of spider silk, but leaving her skin unharmed. 

Freedom crashes around her like a rockfall, the alkaline spray of it intoxicating. 

She shifts from her human form right away, shrinking to her proper size, Susan’s uniform falling away like a snakeskin. She floats above the counter naked, her light casting shadows everywhere in the store. 

Out the window, the bus is beginning to move away. 

She still has time to catch Tye if she goes now. 

As for the alligator head, it is Grandpappy’s. She was simply his agent in the trade. 

But not any longer. 

She leaves the alligator head on the floor for him to find, the remnants of the anklet in its mouth and the clothes in a pile beside them. 

Susan’s nametag is still pinned to the crumpled shirt.