Chapter 21
DAVID
I woke shaking and sputtering. It was cold and the ground seemed to be punching me in the back. My stomach heaved and I rolled over to let out whatever was coming up. I should’ve just stayed where I was. The ground crashed into my face when I tried to bend over. I waited a moment, then convinced my head to turn to the side so I could breathe. A pair of feet stopped in their tracks and turned toward me. I vomited up more bile. The feet moved around a square of tangled vines and stopped next to my face. I groaned at the thought of movement.
“Wake up. Get back on the mat,” said a voice that I assumed belonged with the feet.
The mat. The tangled vines. Right. That’s what the voice meant. Getting there would require moving. I wasn’t feeling up for that. I groaned again.
“David?” came another voice. I hoped this one wouldn’t ask me to move. “David, honey, we have to go. Can you get onto the mat?”
I tried to shake my head, but I don’t think it worked. Maybe staying still will give them the message.
“Let’s move him.” Victory! I liked the second voice.
“No. He will get himself there.” What? Not a fan of the first voice.
“He’s barely conscious! Let’s just move him!” I inwardly cheered for the second voice.
The first voice gave no reply. I felt a few drops of water fall on my head. Was that courtesy of the first voice? Trying to drown me again?
“How is this helping, Cearo?” asked the second voice exasperatedly. “We shouldn’t linger. Let’s go.”
I felt the drops slide down my head to my neck. They felt rather nice. They shouldn’t have, given recent events. But they did. Like they were hugging me now instead of smothering me.
“He can do it,” whispered the first voice, now named Cearo.
Cearo. Cearo is a fairy. But not a fairy trying to kill me. Other fairies are trying to kill me. We are in their world. And we are trying to get out of it. I remembered everything all at once. We needed to move.
I twitched a couple of times before my muscles started listening to me. I brought my arms under me, hands on the ground, and heaved myself up. I crawled on my hands and knees to the square of vines. I collapsed on top of it, tired but triumphant. I didn’t look up in time to see if Cearo also looked triumphant. I imagined she did though.
She commenced dragging me along the ground. I didn’t have the energy to complain about the discomfort. I drifted in and out of consciousness, and the only indication of time passing was the growing darkness.
I was shaken awake some indeterminable amount of time later. The night was black around me. The bright, blue eyes staring at me startled me, and I jerked back for a second. Then Cearo’s hand came down on my arm, and I calmed.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked.
I didn’t feel sick anymore, so I nodded, then realized she might not be able to see it clearly. “Yes,” I said, my voice coming out rough and scratchy.
“A wisp’s trance can leave you feeling unwell for quite a while.”
I didn’t know what exactly she was talking about but I said, “I’m fine.”
She probably didn’t believe me, but she moved on. “We need to get you into the hide-out.”
“Okay. Show me where.” I sat up slowly, hoping my stomach would stay steady once I moved into an upright position. I looked around for an entrance but saw nothing but a small, shallow bog surrounded by more forest. I could hardly see anything by the tiny amount of moonlight coming through the trees and mist. That was going to make climbing a tree difficult.
“You may not like it,” Cearo said.
I looked at her, not understanding. Her eyes moved toward the bog and then back to me. My eyebrows raised as I got it. The entrance was in the bog. Wonderful.
There was some rustling nearby and a sharp intake of breath. “We’re ready to go,” came Mom’s voice.
“We will help you after Eric. Stay right here and do not pass out again,” Cearo told me as she got up.
There was some more rustling and a few awkward sounding steps as they shuffled over to the bog. Was it just the darkness making them question each step or was one of them injured? The sharp breath I heard earlier suggested the latter. I hoped it wasn’t bad. There was splashing, then their dark mass dropped into the water. It was as if there was suddenly a vertical drop at that precise location, just like the one in the swamp that I fell into. Now I knew why Cearo said I may not like it. I’d have to relive nearly drowning. This was turning out to be a spectacularly awful day.
I dropped back onto my elbows to wait for Cearo. It didn’t take long. She and Mom both reached out for solid land and pulled themselves up out of the hole. They came over to me and each grabbed an arm. We walked into the bog, faster than Eric because I didn’t actually need as much help as they thought I did. I froze when we neared the spot where I thought the hole was.
“Hold your breath and I am going to pull you into a chamber where the water will drain out,” Cearo said. “This hole is only about twenty feet deep and the chamber is attached. You will not be underwater long.”
I breathed in and out once to calm myself then took one more deep breath in. Sensing I was ready, they pulled me forward one more step and together we went under.
We dropped straight down about six feet before we started floating back up. I tried to tread water to keep myself down, but this hole was thin and barely fit the three of us. It was probably another place that Cearo had built assuming she’d never have to take anyone else here. She grabbed into the soft earth next to her and used it to propel herself down. She took my arm to pull me down with her, but I was able to do it myself.
Only halfway to the bottom, she stopped and put her hands to the wall. A circle of earth gave way and she quickly waved Mom and me through. As soon as she had followed us in, she put her hands to the inside wall and the earth mended itself, cutting off the flow of water into this chamber. The water that had made it in drained away into the grates on the floor. When it was done, Cearo moved to the opposite wall and created another doorway.
It opened to a large, nearly bare room. Candles sat in holders hung on the walls every six inches or so. All of them burned, creating a soft glow to light up the whole room. Eric sat propped against the left wall, covered in a fur blanket. In the far right corner there was a pile of extra furs, and between that and Eric there was a fireplace set into the wall. Mom went to start the fire, and shivering like crazy, I grabbed a fur. I plopped down next to Eric and wrapped myself up.
Eric and I looked at each other and at the same time asked, “So what happened?” We paused to see who would continue. I couldn’t hold back long though because I wanted to know if he was hurt, as I suspected, and how badly. “Tell me what happened to you,” I said, my eyes inspecting him for injury. It must’ve been hidden by the blanket because what I could see only pointed to general tiredness.
“Sprained my ankle on the way here, but it’ll be fine. What’s not fine is I nearly drowned trying to save your stupid butt. What the hell were you doing?” Eric demanded.
He looked at me like I was insane. Now that I thought about it, I surely was. Why the hell did I chase after that damn light? I almost got myself killed, and now I find out I almost got Eric killed too. I vaguely remember the voices behind me as I was running and the shape that blocked out the light from above as I was pulled underwater. That must have been Eric jumping in after me.
Not really knowing how to explain the feeling I had when I chased the little man and his light, I just said, “I don’t know…. I just had to catch it….” I knew that wasn’t even approaching adequate, but it was all I had.
“It was trying to kill you,” Mom chimed in. She had taken up the spot on the other side of Eric. She seemed sullen, her whole face pointed down, and I realized she hadn’t spoken since I’d woken by the bog. I watched her. She threw an angry glare at Cearo. What had happened with them? “You two need to learn fast that you can’t tr
ust any of the creatures here. They can make you feel things. It’s all part of how they trap you.”
“Is everything trying to kill us?!” Eric snapped, pissed that this whole world seemed to be against us.
“Yes.” Cearo spoke quietly, but the power behind it silenced the room. She sat opposite the rest of us and stared at Mom disdainfully, unimpressed by her glare. Then she looked to Eric and continued, “Of course everything is trying to kill you. You are their natural prey and it is why your kind forced them here.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, like we should’ve expected to be hunted and be totally okay with it.
Eric and Mom weren’t having any of it. “Then maybe it’s a good thing they’re all trapped here,” Eric thew back. “They’re all evil!”
Mom remarked, “You may not understand what it is to love someone, Cearo, but I will protect my boys. Neither of them are going to die here.” Mom’s voice was vicious and clearly meant to cut Cearo deeply. I was shocked that she’d say something like that.
Cearo didn’t even twitch. Her face remained blank. The only reaction that I could sense at all was that her pause was just a moment too long. I wondered if anyone else had picked up on it. Looking only to Eric, she said, “They are not evil. They only want their favorite food.” She chose not to respond to Mom. If you didn’t hear the extra moment in her pause, then her lack of response would come off as arrogant, as if she was above the implied accusations. But I heard the moment. Mom’s arrow had hit its mark.
Mom continued to stare down Cearo, seeming unsure if she had won or not. Cearo had turned her head down and pulled out her book, already scribbling away. Eric looked like he wanted to keep the argument going, but I put my hand on his arm and gave a small shake of my head, knowing that it’d be pointless. Cearo’s mind had already left it behind.
Mom finally turned her attention to Eric and me and told us to get some sleep.
“How long are we here for?” I asked her.
“Until Eric can walk again,” she replied, barely glancing at me. She was pissed. I was pretty sure at least some of it was directed at me. I couldn’t blame her. I was pissed at me too. I still didn’t know what exactly happened to sprain Eric’s ankle, but it was probably my fault. The almost-drowning part definitely was.
With my metaphorical tail between my legs, I lay down and turned onto my side away from them. Eric nudged me a second later and gave me a look that said he didn’t blame me. But I did, so that hardly eased my guilt. Sleep eluded me despite his reassurance. I stared off into space, my mind going over everything that had happened today. I tried recovering some of the memories from the semiconscious state I was in during the journey. I wanted to gather clues as to what had happened between Mom and Cearo. It was useless though. Only blurred images of sky and treetops, the feel of water droplets sliding on my skin, and muffled voices came through.
By the time Mom and Eric were sound asleep, I had given up on remembering anything useful. Over their deep breathing, I could hear Cearo’s pencil scratching on the page. I crawled over and sat up at her side. She didn’t acknowledge me or pause her movements. She merely turned her book slightly so that I wouldn’t be able to see what she was working on.
“What do you do in there?” I whispered. “Write? Draw?”
I wasn’t expecting an answer, so I was surprised when she said, “Both.”
I nodded and we were comfortably silent for a minute. I shifted and managed to catch sight of the edge of a drawing of what looked like a village. “I think my Mom can draw. I know she can if you substitute frosting for a pencil.” I chuckled, picturing my Mom frosting a sketch pad. Cearo stopped for a second and looked at me, puzzled. “She frosted the cakes and stuff at home,” I explained. “She did really detailed designs. The last one she worked on was a scene with you in it.”
Cearo drew back to look at me, confused. “Why would she put me in her art?”
I shrugged. “I think she misses this world more than she admits.”
“That will change now,” she said, I thought rather solemnly. Mom had definitely gotten to her. I watched her as she resumed her drawing. She was making lots of tiny, precise marks. Her face moved closer to it with each one until her nose was nearly touching the page. Anytime she backed away from it, she looked sad, like she wished she could have kept going until she was inside the drawing instead.
“I’m sorry she said that to you.” She stopped again but wouldn’t look at me. “She didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, she did. They no longer trust me.”
Well…Eric had never trusted her, but I didn’t want to say that. Besides, I don’t think she cared a whole lot about Eric’s opinion. Or about him in general. Thinking about all that had happened, I realized the whole time she’d had a different attitude toward Eric than she had toward me. She was always showing concern for me, helping me, saving my ass, always leaving Eric for Mom to deal with. For whatever reason, Cearo was definitely biased. Maybe that was the root of the problem between her and Mom. Mom expected her to help both us humans and so far, she’d only really been helping me.
Finally, I told her, “Eric just doesn’t get you. And Mom…she trusts you…but I think for the wrong reasons.”
She watched me for a long time. I steadily held her gaze. Her yellow eyes held an emotion that I couldn’t name. It was sad and happy, regretful and wistful, and a thousand other things all at once. Then she whispered, “That is true,” before turning back to her drawing. She didn’t lift her pencil again though, just stared at the page, lost in thought.
I scooted forward so I could lie down. I was finally tired enough that I thought I could sleep. Before I did though, I asked, “Why haven’t you used that white stuff that healed my ankle on Eric?”
She came out of her head and focused on me again. “What?” she asked, surprised.
“I know you did something.” I didn’t actually know, since I hadn’t seen her do anything. But you’d think a bite from such a sadistic creature would’ve stayed open and ugly, like Mom’s had. She had to have healed it. “You let Mom use it too. Whatever magic that was, try it on Eric,” I said on a yawn.
“I do not have any more,” she whispered. “I used the last on you.”
“Then find some more. I’ll help you,” I promised her. She didn’t respond, probably trying to think of a way to tell me I couldn’t help because it was too dangerous. “It would go a long way with both of them in the trust department. Please,” I added. Hopefully that would convince her to try to get some at least, whether she lets me help or not. It was a great idea. It would solve their trust issues and we’d get out of here sooner. Happy with myself for coming up with the idea, I settled in to sleep.
“Alright,” I heard her breathe just before sleep took me.