In the bright blue twilight, the common yard looked less shabby. The planters of wildflowers hadn’t yet succumbed to the heat and lent patches of colour to the circle of lawn at the centre of the court.
As they did every evening, children tumbled and lay in the grass, some engaging in a sneaky war of blowing dandelion fluff at each other. They confined their play to a third of the space while the rest of the lawn was occupied by a motley assortment of chairs and stools from each trailer, all facing an aluminium TV tray that was serving as a podium. Nerves rose up in Emily’s throat. Wasn’t it weird to do this right out in the open, in front of the kids? Her natural panic at possible embarrassment was stayed by remembering that every occupant of the court was from the Sidhe. The court itself was well-screened by trees from the road and any neighbours.
As for the children, all but one were under the age of seven, and that one barely nine. Emily tried to remember being seven and decided that the things that grown-ups do in the background, unless they promised to be fun, were pretty low priority. She spotted the eldest, Abby, bossing Julian and Mike as they sorted piles of toys.
She’d been lonely growing up as the only kid in a neighbourhood of adults. When new children finally began appearing, Emily had theoretically been interested only in babies and was generally disappointed in their qualifications as playmates. When they got to the toddling stage the kids started to get interesting, but the age difference was far too much of a gap to make them engaging. She’d fallen into the role of watcher easily. As she grew older it became a good way to make herself forget that she couldn’t connect with people her age at school. With ice in her stomach, Emily remembered that everything had been manipulated so that would be exactly how she’d feel.
Watching the kids push and chatter, she was jealous of them. They’d always be close, neighbourhood friends of the same age stuck together until at least the start of high school. Emily wondered if a baby boom timed exactly to catch her attention but gain her no friends had been purposeful. Gross.
Something hit her squarely in the eye, terminating her train of thought.
“Oh, c’mon!” Pressing her palm to the offended eye, Emily groped about with the other hand for the missile. Finding it by her foot, she brought it up to her other working but tear-filled eye. It was the grinning head of a fashion doll, hair shorn to a sportier, more aerodynamic length.
A small hand rested on her knee. “Oh man, oh are you okay?” Emily slowly stopped pressing at her eye and tried to blink. Kingston, one of the older kids, stood before her, looking incredibly guilty. “We were using the digger truck as a catapult, like when you told us about knights? And, and we did not aim.”
“I’m going to hope you didn’t aim for my eye, man.” Blinking was working better now, allowing Emily to more or less fix a stern gaze on the culprit and the audience of hushed children watching them. “Catapults were designed to lob heavy stuff way hard to knock down walls. You’ve got to pay attention to where you’re launching things. I’ll be okay now, but what if it was one of the littler kids who got hit? That could do some definite damage.” Emily gave the group a moment to imagine various eye horrors before she stood, hefting the doll head in her hand. “Let’s see this war machine you’ve built.”
Mike and Abby had supervised the catapult design, using an inspired mix of scrunchies, rulers, and masking tape to create tension on the bucket of the sturdy little excavator toy. Emily was impressed: the entire thing was made non-destructively and clearly designed to be taken apart easily and leave the adults none the wiser.
“You guys did a good job here.” Emily squatted next to the catapult and picked up a die-cast car from the pile of ammo. “Maybe let’s figure out something not so hard to throw with it, though.”
“That’s why we were using the heads!” Kingston, still worried about possible consequences, shifted from foot to foot, his already sun-bleached curls bobbing anxiously.
“ABBY PICKED THE AMMO,” Mike blurted, fat baby hands covering his mouth as soon as the words were out.
Julian scoffed and attempted to cross his arms. “Yeah, but you helped get it, Mikey.”
“You did too!” Mike’s voice hit a pitch Emily recognised as incoming tears and she hustled to soothe the situation.
“Folks, hold up.” The older children all looked at her, some eyes welling, some defiant. The two youngest were paying absolutely no intention, chatting in the half talk-half babble of toddlers while they tore up grass with grave seriousness. Emily smiled and took a moment to look each kid in the eyes. “You guys are not getting in trouble. My eye is fine now. We learn from mistakes. What we need to do now is think of soft things to test the catapult with. Softer than a doll head.”
Dawn clapped her hands and ran off to her trailer. Halfway there, she turned and ran back to the group, shouted “STUFFIES!” and took off again.
“Okay, that’s a good idea.” Emily laughed and glanced at Abby, who had a head’s height on everyone and stood like an adult, arms crossed.
“Abby, you designed a good catapult.”
“I know. Mike also helped. But I did most of it.” She tossed an impeccable red braid over her shoulder. Her cheeks flushed slightly under freckles. “I’m sorry about your eye.”
“That’s okay.” Emily touched where she’d been hit. “It’s not even sore anymore. But you’re the oldest, you’re the captain, so you have to think about things a little more before doing them.”
“Like picking softer ammo.”
“Exactly.” On cue, Hannah trotted up, arms filled with some of her smaller stuffed animals. She dumped them triumphantly in the middle of the group. Emily turned the catapult to aim away from the centre of the common yard. “Okay folks,” she said as she loaded a bright red deer into the bucket and pulled back, “how far you think he’ll go?”
This post is part of The Audacity Gambit – Serialised. Learn more about when the book was first published here, see the archive and overall content warnings here, and find more of my writing here. I’m over on both Comradery and Patreon, if you feel like supporting my creative endeavours. If you’d like to subscribe to this story, here’s a handy email box for you: