Lands of the Green Fairy

PART ONE: THE WHITE PRINCESS

The car picked her up right outside her Manhattan loft, as storm clouds gathered above the city, thunder’s distant rumble sounding like a clarion call for something awesome waiting to be born. The driver was a non-descript young man in a business suit, a corporate drone, gray-faced and absent, easily replaced by any other similar cog in the machinery. It was appropriate that the car was a uniform metallic silver as well, interior design by executive decision, made to haul worker bees in reasonable discomfort while getting decent gas mileage.

But not good enough to prevent the gas companies from rolling in their trillions, Isabella knew. The thought, like so much else in her life recently, brought nothing but a resigned and empty melancholy, a sort of despairing resignation to the pointlessness of the world she knew. We are born, we grow old, we die. Birth, school, first crush, first date, first fuck, first heartbreak, college, first job, struggle with the other rats as they race toward the inevitable, marriage, maybe divorce, maybe kids, maybe wealth enough to be comfortable but maybe not, middle age, regrets, missed opportunities, second thoughts, old age, infirmity, illness, .

__Why bother?

The first time was six months ago. She’s standing on a platform with a hundred other dull and dreamless commuters, when she sees the train coming, the lights like lasers, flares of onrushing power, and there’s this sudden compulsion, this need to take three small steps, right onto the tracks and into oblivion. It was the most terrifying moment of her life to date, not that twenty-one could be considered much of a life yet. An invisible speck in cosmic terms, Isabella knew. Nothing the universe would miss, really.

She had no history of suicidal ideas or actions. Aside from her parents’ amicable divorce, and a short stay in art school, she had no stress or hardship to speak of. Her job, working as a secretary in the corporate accounts department of Kuroi Ame Kaisha, wasn’t challenging or difficult. It was the largest of several Japanese multinationals, a mega-company so big she wasn’t really sure exactly what it did. The business of this company is business, she thought, remembering the line from some commercial.

At the time, she’d written the urge off as fatigue, idle fantasy gestating in a mind bored into sedation. But then, a month later, it had happened again, this time on a balcony at the local Sheraton. The urge to climb over the railing, to fall, to end her own life, and it was stronger. She’d gone to a company doctor the next day, company insurance paying the tab. The doctor had listened patiently, then told her it was seasonal depression, and prescribed her some mood eveners. And she’d taken them religiously, and the urges stopped, and Isabella sank into a fuzzy pleasant haze.

And then, yesterday morning, when she’d come to work, there was a package waiting for her, a small express envelope, sealed with red tape and addressed to Ms. Royce. No return address, no sign of who’d dropped it on her desk. And no routing number, either, meaning it had been hand-delivered by someone who wanted it to appear to be a normal every-day event. Inside, a gold-embossed card, and a strange looking key, silver plated, long and thin. The key had slots in it for some unknown reason; the invitation had directions.

Ms. Royce-

You don’t need pills, you need awareness. The world is more than you believe. If you wish to receive a life-changing opportunity, please be outside your apartment promptly at nine in the morning. Bring the key; further instructions will be given to you by our driver at the appropriate time.

If you accept, this will be the last time in your life you have to follow anyone else’s directions.

An Interested Party

And nothing else. She’d argued with herself all night, trying to see where the scam was, what the message might be for. She wasn’t stupid or gullible; she’d grown up the only daughter of a police officer, so she knew about evil in the world. The directions told her to get into a vehicle with a stranger, with no reasons given. There was no safety net, nothing to prevent someone from taking advantage of her. Nothing to prevent someone from and torturing her to , and no way out if it was some form of horrible sick game.

She made sure to skip her pills in the morning, and she was out front early. The car had rolled up precisely at nine, and now here she was, rolling along through the city, her mood shifting wildly between bored acceptance and self-critical disbelief at her own risky behavior. She traced her fingers over the ridges and grooves in the key, wondering what it was for. It was too delicate and fragile to be used in any lock she’d ever seen, and it had a strange bend in the center that seemed designed to hold something.

Isabella shook herself into action as the car slowed and pulled over in front of a large brownstone by the park. The driver turned to her, face neutral, bland.

“Inside the glove compartment is a key to the downstairs dressing room. Go inside, and dress in what you find.”

She bristled at the orders. “Before I agree to do anything, tell me what the Hell is going on.”

The man shrugged. “No.” He pointed to the glove compartment, and then put his hands on the steering wheel and turned to watch the road. “My orders were to bring you here and tell you that. If you choose not to go, then I am to take you home and make sure you’re settled.”

“You don’t know anything about this?”

He didn’t look at her, just stared at the street. She had a sudden image of him as a gargoyle, standing watch from some high balcony, waiting for a victim. “I know everything about this,” he sighed. “I’m just not going to tell you anything. Go or stay, the choice is yours.”