Chapter 7
DAVID
I started running toward Mom, intending to put myself between her and our attackers, but she pushed me back and ran for Eric. She grabbed him just before the blue-eyed man could and practically threw him toward me. Blue-eyes grabbed her instead and she tried to shake him off by punching him with her free arm. His grip slipped for a second, long enough for her to get free but not away.
The red-eyed men were coming closer and trying to form a complete circle around us but there was still an opening in the direction we had come from. As I was deciding whether to run or go to help Mom, the weirdest stuff started happening. The ground rolled. It was like a wave, only with solid earth rather than water. It seemed to emanate from Mom and move out in a circle from her. It somehow skipped Eric and me, but all the men were knocked down. She turned to us, running, motioning for us to do the same. I was so confused, I barely registered her green eyes glowing just like Boden’s.
“Run now, ask later,” she yelled, yanking us with her.
Behind us, I heard Boden curse and order the men to get up and go after us. “She’s fae! Don’t let her get away, you idiots!” he shouted. The ground moved again, but this time it created a large hill right in front of us. Mom moved her arm as if pushing it down and it flattened. The ground shook again, but no more hills were created.
And then suddenly, a hill seemed like an easy matter to deal with as a fire roared to life in front of us. It quickly grew up and out, creating a wall that blocked us from moving forward. When we turned to the right, the flames cut in that direction, blocking us again. The same thing happened on the left. We were forced to turn and face our pursuers, who were closing in once more. Mom looked back at the fire and appeared to concentrate intensely. Dirt started flying at the fire but it didn’t smother enough to make even a small opening. The fire was too large and too powerful.
The heat was unbearable. I felt like my skin was going to melt off. Smoke was stinging my lungs. There had to be a way out. I tried stepping closer to the wall of flame anytime it seemed to die down a bit, but it was wishful thinking. It never weakened. And we ran out of time.
The men had reached us and Boden stepped forward. He had his eyes set on Mom. I stepped in front of her and Eric did the same. This didn’t seem to intimidate him much though because he glanced at us and grinned before settling his gaze back on Mom.
“What kind of fairy are you, helping humans?” he said with both condescension and genuine curiosity layering his voice.
“Let us go. These ones are mine. What I do with them is none of your business,” Mom responded, sounding more confident than I think she was.
“I’m afraid it is my business. You see, I was assigned to this gate. You were not authorized to use it. I will give you this; it is impressive that you got through to the human world without alerting me.” Human world. Yeah, he specifically said human world. As opposed to what? And earlier he called Mom a fairy. This didn’t seem like a joke, but I didn’t know what else it could be. A nightmare maybe? Maybe I was still asleep and my subconscious was coming up with all this as a way to explain Mom’s bizarre behavior. I prayed I was dreaming, but pinching myself didn’t work. Boden just kept on going with his nonsense. “However, you did violate our laws, and so I must bring you back for your sentence. Furthermore, I got these humans here by order of the king, thus they are the property of the king. Now,” he said as he motioned over the man carrying the chains, “are you going to make this easy or difficult?”
Before any of us could answer, the red-eyed men lunged for us. I tried shaking mine off. I thought it’d be easy since they were as small as Boden, but of course that too was wishful thinking. His grasp on my arm burned as hot as the ovens at the bakery and I knew I’d have a new scar to add to my collection. I heard Eric gasp as well. I wanted to kill these bastards for hurting my little brother.
“Please stop,” Mom pleaded with them. She reached for Eric, but her captor held tight.
“I already explained it. I’m not going to change my mind,” Boden replied in a bored voice. “Besides, I’m sure this is nothing compared to the royal treatment.” His sarcastic tone made it clear that we were not in for anything glamorous. Having already chained Eric and Mom, they forced a third set of cuffs on my wrists. They were heavy and rough.
The sky opened up out of nowhere, raining heavily for a few moments and putting out the fire that had blazed around us. That was very convenient timing. I had to start making a little sense of this situation. I tried to imagine explaining this to Sid. So there was this little dude who talked us into walking through a…a what? A rip in the space-time continuum? Oh God, this sounded ridiculous already. Then he and his bros with super creepy eyes started chasing us. They can make the ground move and start gigantic fires out of nowhere and make it rain when they’re done with the fire. Oh, and I guess my mom can do some of this stuff too. Yeah, that sounded totally sane.
The fire taken care of, they started dragging us toward the forest. Eric and I walked in stunned silence, while Mom’s was more defeated. Eric and I both kept glancing at her like she would explain that this was some elaborate hoax, but she wouldn’t meet our eyes. She looked like she might cry. Part of me felt bad about that, but a bigger part of me wanted to know what was going on. So far, all I had come up with was that these people could control things they shouldn’t be able to control, based on their eye color? But that was ridiculous. No one really has superpowers. Magic isn’t real. There had to be some normal explanation for all these impossible things. I wondered if I’d get the chance to ask.
The forest was just as creepy on the inside as the outside. Hardly any moonlight made it through the trees. The whole place seemed to be made of shadows. There were noises too. I’d never been afraid of wildlife before, but I nearly jumped every time I heard something skittering around here. For all I knew, the animals in this forest had superpowers too.
I guess Boden was used to it because he started questioning Mom. “So tell me, how did you get through the gate?” He waited for her to answer, but she just kept staring at the ground. “Alright, why are you protecting humans? You know that is very offensive to our kind.” She didn’t answer this question either. I wondered what he meant by it being offensive to help us. Why would helping anybody be offensive? “You are not much of a conversationalist. I don’t remember ever seeing you around. Is it because you rarely speak?”
“Maybe she’s UnSeelie,” one of the others chimed in. This made them chuckle.
“Well, that would add an interesting twist. Are you UnSeelie?” Boden continued. Mom clearly wasn’t going to be answering anything, so I stopped listening. His strange questions just confused me more.
I started thinking about escape plans instead. My restraints were tight around my wrists, so there was no getting them off. The cuffs were connected by about a foot of chain though, so I could still move my arms for the most part. I looked around, but I couldn’t see much in the dark. Since I was in the back, I was hoping to escape notice while I found something I could use as a weapon. I didn’t know what though. If I could get a large rock, I could probably lob it at one of them hard enough to knock him out, but that would still leave four more. I highly doubted I’d be able to break a sizeable branch off without anyone hearing. Those were the only things around, though. If only I had a superpower. If I could make fire like them, I’d just incinerate them all. Desperate, I tested it, but nothing.
I looked up, begging God, or maybe it was only the inanimate sky up there, for some way out of this. Just as I started to bring my head back down, something moved in the corner of my eye. For some reason, I didn’t think it was an animal. I looked to everyone else to see whether they noticed it. They hadn’t, but I felt like I was being watched. I slowly turned back toward whatever I had seen. I expected to see nothing. Either I was imagining it or it would hide from me. But that was not what I got.
Moving silently through the trees was a girl. She had yellow ey
es as bright as the sun and hair as dark as the night sky during a new moon. Her skin was pale and should’ve stood out against the darkness, but she seemed to be shrouded in shadows. She blended in with the trees perfectly. If it weren’t for the eyes, you’d never notice her up there.
I was so startled, I really did jump that time. My chains rattled and one of the men looked back at me, smirking. “Afraid of monsters, human?” he taunted. “You should be.” When he turned back around, Mom finally looked at me. Her expression asked if I was okay and I nodded my head toward the girl. Mom looked, but I could tell she saw nothing. When she was focused on me again, I just shook my head. She mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ before her gaze fell back to the ground.
I turned back to the trees, wondering where the girl had gone. She immediately stepped out from behind a trunk, onto a branch again. She put a finger to her lips telling me to be quiet. This time I was. I’d seen her before…where? I dug through my mind. An image came to me. She looked just like the fairy from the cake Mom had made right before the trip. The only difference was this girl didn’t have wings. She moved through the trees as if she could fly though. Maybe the wings were metaphorical. But I was getting ahead of myself. Mom hadn’t seen her a minute ago, let alone when she had been making that cake.
I mouthed ‘who are you?’ but she didn’t answer. She was just staring at me. Occasionally, her eyes would flick to the others for a moment, but it always came back to me. I wondered if I had some embarrassing wardrobe malfunction going on. I almost checked to see if my zipper was down but then chided myself for being stupid. Some beautiful girl stares at me and I suddenly forget the life and death situation at hand. Stupid. This time I mouthed ‘help us,’ but I still got no reply.
She followed us for a long time. I kept glancing at her periodically to see if she was still there. She always was, although she never said a word. She somehow managed to avoid being seen by everyone else, which was quite a feat. Whenever someone glanced back, she’d hide. I caught her jumping over the path or zooming ahead a few times, but she moved in such utter silence that no one else noticed her.
We trudged through the forest for so long that my feet had passed aching and were now just numb. I could see the sky graying through the trees, announcing the sun was on its way. Up ahead, I saw what looked like a break in the trees and I thought maybe we’d finally reached our destination. I was both relieved and terrified of what that would mean for us.
I looked back at the girl, wondering if she’d show herself once we reached open land. She was looking ahead, her expression one of resolution. Then she focused on me again, those eyes searing into me. Her lips just barely moved, and I heard faintly on a breeze, “I will come back for you.” Not sure whether what I’d heard was even real, I was crushed when she turned and ran through the trees, away from me.
I didn’t want her to go. She could’ve helped us escape. And for some reason, I had been comforted by her presence. She was familiar, not just from the cake, but somewhere in the back of my mind I felt like I knew her.
It was too late now. She was gone, and it didn’t look like we were getting out of here. We were close enough to the opening in the trees now that I could make out what was on the other side. Well, sort of. All I could see was a massive stone wall. It took up the entire field of view from within the forest.
When we finally made it out of the trees, I confirmed the unlikelihood of escape. Towering over us was an enormous wall surrounding a foreboding castle straight out of a Halloween story. I could just imagine the bats and the lightning that should go with it. It matched my first impression of the forest, so it was a good choice to build it here if they were going for scary. The forest came right up to the wall and would probably make those creepy scratching noises on a windy night.
We turned left and made our way along the wall. Soon we had passed the castle, and I could hear activity on the other side. It sounded like there was a small town right outside the castle. It sounded normal, just people having regular conversations, until I focused on what they were actually saying. I heard things like, “What do you think they’ll do to the new humans?” and “I hope there will be public torturing this time.” What?! Are all of these people insane?! My breathing sped up until I was hyperventilating. I had to make a conscious effort to get it back to normal. Passing out would not help me right now.
We turned at a corner of the wall and a door came into view. I glanced nervously at Mom and Eric to see how they were taking all of this. Mom was silently crying, head still down. Eric appeared as terrified as I was.
Before we got to the door, Eric stopped in his tracks. The man who’d been pulling us along turned to peer at him and tugged on the chains to try to get him moving again, but he wouldn’t budge. He was staring wide-eyed at the doorway like it the was the gateway to Hell. Maybe it was. They should add a sign. In a last ditch effort to escape, Eric swung his fists at the man and started sprinting into the forest. Mom and I hadn’t caught on to his plan though, so the chains pulled and almost knocked us over. We didn’t get very far. The other men quickly caught the chains again and dragged us back. The one who Eric had punched grabbed him by the neck and started choking him. Horrifying smoke rose from Eric’s neck as he attempted to scream.
“Knock it off,” Boden interjected. “We don’t get paid if they’re already dead.”
Eric dropped to the ground. His neck had ugly, hand-shaped welts on it. Mom and I hurried over to him, but there wasn’t anything we could do but pick him up and keep moving as they dragged us forward again.
Boden opened the door and we filed through. As we entered the tiny town, every head turned our way. From their conversations, I had expected their creepy smiles, but it was still unnerving. I took a page from Mom’s book and faced down. We walked down what I guessed was the main road. It probably could’ve been done in five minutes, but Boden set such a slow pace that it took more like twenty. Or maybe it just felt that way because the whole time the crowd lining the street grew, and everyone was staring at us with cruel smirks on their faces.
There was something wrong with all these people. Their delight in cruelty was weirder than the superpowers.
We made it to the castle and were led to a door in one of the towers. Boden said something about collecting his payment and handed us off to a pair of guards. “Oh, and this one,” he pointed to Mom, “she’s an earth fairy. How’s that for a surprise?” He laughed while the guards studied us, confused by Mom’s status.
“Why is she to be imprisoned? Is she UnSeelie?” one of the guards asked.
“Don’t know. She did try to help the humans escape. Worry not, I will inform the King of her treachery. Just make sure you deal with her appropriately.”
The guards nodded as Boden bounded off to the castle’s main entrance. They pushed us into the tower. It was dank and disgusting inside. The walls were slick with moisture from who-knows-what, cobwebs clung to the bars of the staircase railings, and the floor wasn’t even visible through the layer of grime.
“Up,” a guard commanded.
We ascended the staircase, prodded along by swords whenever our tired bodies gave out for a moment. Castle towers always look so cool in movies, but actually climbing one sucks. Maybe this was our torture, having to hike all night long with no breaks, then climb an endless staircase. Each time we hit a landing I prayed this was our stop, but each time we were steered up another daunting flight.
At the top, I saw the bats that I had predicted hanging on the rafters. We went through a door into a curving hallway with cells lining both sides. The guards shoved us into one and attached the ends of our chains to a side wall. They closed the cell with a clang and left without a word.
The three of us collapsed. We were all exhausted and terrified and confused. Actually, confused was could only describe Eric and me. We were finally alone, so I turned to Mom and asked, “So you’re not from England, are you?”