Chapter One

The roads were always coated in snow at some point at that time of year. People not familiar with the neighborhood would charge onto it, not knowing about the thin sheet of ice underneath and fall flat on their backs�"usually with an embarrassed chuckle and a glance around to see if anyone was around to notice. Edward wasn’t an exception. For that half second in the air after leaping from the front seat of his parents’ old jeep, arms spread like wings, he felt like he was soaring. The bottom of his tiny red souvenir jacket that branded his back with “DAKOTA” in bright blue letters lifted and he pictured it flapping behind him like the ribbon of a kite.  He expected to land on his feet with his hands on his hips like a superhero, excited to be the first of his family to step on the pavement of his new house. His eyes widened in that split second of realization when it clicked in his head that the ground was slipping out from under him and his heels went forward, sending him onto his behind on the ice.

“Hey, champ,” his exhausted father called to him from the other side of the car. The skinny, beetle-like man came around the other side of the car with small steps as to not fall himself. He grabbed the kid’s hands between his first three fingers and helped him back on his feet with a strong tug. Edward was amazed by how strong his father was. The kid’s face was red, so his father knelt down and held his open palm against Edward’s cheek for warmth with the first smile he’d had for a while. “You have to be careful, kiddo. We don’t live in Dakota anymore.”

 “There’s too much snow, Daddy.” Edward whimpered, rubbing the growing ache on his lower back. It had been a warm day in autumn when he boarded the plane in Dakota. His father had warned him about how haphazard the weather would be in Hillborough, but he had treated it like trivia to be tossed away. He wished he had listened instead of staring at the huge winding river he saw coming into the city. He called it the Hillborough snake and had expressed his concern that it would eat him, but his father calmed him down by telling him they’d never go near it and the snake was too scared of the tall buildings to come into the city.

“You wanted to have a snowball fight a few hours ago,” his father laughed, looking around and feeling happy for his son the snow seemed perfect for that.

Edward gave his father a wide grimace. “It’s too cold. I want to go inside.”

 His father smiled. “Come on, then.”

Edward’s mother came out of the other side of car’s back end holding a cardboard box full of their valuables from the old house. She was silent as she usually was, standing by the car and staring around at the snow with distaste between her teeth. The house was at the crook of a neighborhood of practically identical buildings which didn’t help with first impressions. In the photos that her husband showed her, the new house looked bigger and had a tree in the front yard. That tree had been cut down.

Edward’s father started going up to the walkway of the new house with his son in hand, shuffling across the ice with tiny waddles so that only the tips of his heels ever left the ground. Walking up to them from the front of the house right next door was another couple�"a man and woman in their early thirties�"holding hands with a little girl.  The woman was heavy-set with short red-dyed hair and the man was bearded and lean, both wearing traditional-looking, dressy clothing like they had walked out of a textbook. Their daughter�"about the same age as Edward, six or seven�"was picking at the shoulder straps of the uncomfortable white dress that she had picked out herself, too proud of her appearance to tell her parents how itchy it was. The man was holding a porcelain food dish covered in tin foil. The two stopped at the edge of the pavement in front of their house and waited for Edward and his father to make it across the driveway.

“Hello there,” Edward’s father said with a ready handshake, even though Edward shyly kept his eyes on the ground. “It’s nice to meet you both. I’m Dillon, and my wife back there is Angelou. We’re at eight-nine-five Avery, right?”

“Yep,” grinned the other man. His voice was deep and had a sort of drawling European accent that turned most of his vowels into u’s. “I’m Adair, and this is my wife, Emilia. We’re your new neighbors. Welcome to Hillborough.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Emilia said in the same accent, leaning against her husband with a nod.

Edward’s father smiled. “Oh, that’s so sweet of you both. Who’s this little girl?”

Adair looked down at his daughter and nudged the back of her head with his hand, cueing her to look up. “This is our daughter, Fay.”

Edward’s hand got a little tug as well. “Looks like you’ve got a new friend, Edward,” Dillon said. “Say hello.”

Meekly, Edward looked across to Fay and waved hello, which was reciprocated with a wide, elfin smirk. Frankly, he just wanted to get inside the house but was too polite to say anything. His father always told him to be polite but that didn’t mean his face wasn’t going numb. Fay was only wearing her skirt, but she had already grown used to the weather. Something about her slight superiority made Fay stand up straighter and Edward slouch down more.

“We made some pies.” Emilia said, bringing the conversation back upwards. “We were thinking that you could come to our place, eat, and then we’ll help you move all your stuff in after.”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you,” Dillon nodded. “But we don’t want to be any trouble.”

“Not at all, we were just making lunch.” Adair said. “Come on inside. You can leave your boxes at the doorway.”

Dillon looked back at his wife, who was taking boxes out of the trunk. He went back to her and told her everything, and she agreed with a quick nod before going back to the boxes. She pretended to be doing inventory, but Dillon knew that she just wasn’t a person who enjoyed talking to others and would use an excuse to get out of it. She would be after them shortly once everyone had cleared out.

Fay and her parents went back towards their house and opened the door. Edward looked back to his father, and a nod in his direction told him to follow them.

Fay’s house was so much bigger than Edward’s old one was�"even bigger than it looked from outside. He had to stand in the doorway for a second, eyes wide and gawking around while Fay ran ahead of him. The house was a wide, tall space that opened to a brown-carpeted staircase heading up to the living room. As the three adults headed up with heavy shakes in the foundation with each step, Fay followed and Edward figured he should as well. Fay was the faster one who raced up the stairs, but the silence behind her made her stop to wait for him. Back at his old neighborhood in Dakota, most of the houses only had one story and Edward’s short legs didn’t expect this challenge. Not knowing how to help him, Fay just watched as he caught up, and the two entered the kitchen together.

All around the two, nativity sets and European tapestries were strewn around, including an extravagant tapestry of the Scottish coat of arms that nearly covered a whole wall. Paintings coated the place where there wasn’t bright green wallpaper. Fay heard her mother around a corner tinkering with the oven to heat up the pies but when she went to go check, her dad came in and knelt down in front of her. “Why don’t you show your new friend some of your toys?”

Fay nodded and darted over to her toy chest in the corner of the room while Edward hobbled after her. It was still too cold for him in the house, so his arms were wrapped around his body as tightly as he could, holding the edges of his jacket like a blanket. As he sat down next to the chest, legs crossed, his father had come to peek out of the kitchen at the children, smiling at the sight of his son playing with another kid. Edward didn’t have a lot of friends at his old house. Dillon took partial responsibility for that. Maybe he taught his son to value quiet reading too much.

“So her name’s Fay?” Dillon asked when he found Adair standing at the kitchen table. “That’s an unusual name where we come from.”

Adair chuckled, “It’s uncommon here too. We named her Fenella, but she didn’t like that name. She wanted to be called Fay because it’s the name of a character in a book she likes. So what brings you to Hillborough?”

“We just decided it was time for a change in scenery.” Dillon said, caught off-guard by a loud laugh from Fay in the other room. He shook his head with a little smile. “It’s nice that Edward has a friend to play with now. He didn’t play with too many other kids back in Dakota. Maybe if we stay long enough, those two can become best friends.”

Adair laughed as Emilia finished with the food and put a hand on her husband’s shoulder, “Yeah, maybe. Fay’s been homeschooled for the last couple of years. She’s kind of in that same boat.”

“We just weren’t ready for our little fairy to leave the nest,” Emilia added.

“So tell me about Hillborough,” Dillon said, hearing his own wife come in through the front door. He figured she would be in the bathroom or the like.

Adair’s lips moved as if to say something, but then froze to think for a few seconds. Emilia shook her head at him with a teasing smirk and said, “Well, it doesn’t look like it from here, but it’s a big, bright city farther down the highway. The whole thing is a big hill surrounded by the river. If you want, Adair and I can drive you downtown tomorrow and show you around. And I think what my husband means to say is that the city has a reputation for housing some gangs.”

“It’s alright though,” Adair said, apologetically, “We’ve never had any problem with them. We just stay out of that business.”

Dillon nodded. “I was a policeman back in Dakota. I was going to leave that behind when I came here, but perhaps I’ll pick it back up. So,” he said, taking a look around the house. “It’s a nice place you have here.”

“Thank you,” Emilia smiled. “We came here ourselves from Paisley over the pond just a few years ago. I suppose that should explain all of this.”

Across the room, Fay had dumped all of her toys out onto the floor and was presenting her favorites to her audience of one. She had so many stuffed animals that she could bury herself in them, along with a few odd toys like balls that changed colour in water and giant plastic jewelry. In Dakota, Edward only had a Rubik’s Cube whose solution was hopelessly lost the first time he scrambled it. He never got to like playing with toys since his father could never provide them, but he pretended to be interested in Fay’s presentation just to be polite like his father had taught him to. Fay went through each of her favorites with a wide grin on her face, reciting their names and the personalities that she had made up for them. As Edward sat, he tried to hide that his eyes were actually darting between her and the house. In his old neighborhood, everyone had black or dark brown hair and a darker complexion. He was tan with short chestnut hair. Fay’s hair was dark blond and long enough to rub against her back when she moved her head, and her skin was so much lighter than anyone’s Edward had seen. Her eyes seemed strange too�"they were light blue. Everyone in Edward’s old neighborhood either had black or mud-coloured eyes.

Fay noticed his eyes wandering around the room. She threw her blue stuffed elephant at him and said�"having adopted her parents’ accent�"“What’s your name?”

“Edward,” he shrugged, picking up the elephant that had bounced harmlessly off of him. He wasn’t too sure how to interact with her. He hadn’t had much practise talking to anyone his own age, let alone a girl. “What’s your name?”

Fay puffed her chest out proudly. “I’m Fay. That means fairy.”

Edward just met her with a confused stare. “You’re not a fairy.”

“Am too.” Fay said, wrinkling her nose. “What are you?”

“Huh?”

“What are you?” Fay asked again, leaning forward as much as she could on her toes.

He shrugged, “I don’t know.”

She stood straight again with a grin on her face, satisfied. “See? I know what I am. You wanna be a firefighter, Ed? Those are the people that put out fires.”

“Yeah.”

Fay stood up and pointed to the staircase with an eager finger. “There’s a house that’s on fire downstairs! Let’s go!”

Fay’s mother was just bringing out the casserole when she saw Fay running down the stairs with Edward behind her, trying his best to keep up.