by Reilyn Hardy
He still wasn’t moving.
“Don’t do this to me!” I slammed my fist hard against the center of his chest. I did it again and again until my blows started to weaken. My arms fell to my sides and just when I was about to give up, he coughed. Water spilled from his mouth.
He was alive.
I fell back into the lake beside him with a splash. Breathing heavily, I could relax now.
The cool water was soothing. I didn’t want to leave it. I didn’t want to move another muscle for as long as I lived. I missed home, I missed Weylan. But there was no way I was going back into the Ashen Hills.
I looked up to the stormy sky and rain continued to fall on my face. Still, I heard nothing. There was silence that swallowed me but in that moment, I didn’t mind it.
The ground wasn’t shaking anymore, so the silence was nice.
My ears began to ring after a while. I was finally getting my hearing back. I stuck my finger in my ear to try to shake out the excess water that had found its way in.
“I can’t believe you — risked your life for me,” Jace mumbled, still mostly submerged in the water. I didn’t look at him and I didn’t get up. I was still staring up at the sky, now that the rain had stopped. There were still storm clouds above, and darkness was creeping on us, but it was nothing like what we had just dealt with in the Ashen Hills. It wasn’t frightening or intimidating. It was calming while dusk approached.
“You would have done the same for me,” I said finally.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. My hand moved through the wet mud of the shore and I managed to find my dagger laying beside me. I wrapped my hand around the handle and clutched onto it tightly. Though I was sure the worm wasn’t going to come back, I was on edge now. Better to be safe than sorry.
“Do you think it’s going to die?” Jace asked.
“I hope not. I don’t want to kill anything.”
I just wanted to save my friend.
The curse filled my mind. Did it apply to creatures too? Had I just chosen my own path of destruction? The strength to kill and the courage to resist. A murderous rage had taken over when it had been me against the Witchfen Worm, and I could already tell that my choice was going to haunt me. There was reoccurring silence that came between us and I wanted to talk, but I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say anyway.
“Do you think I’m going to die?” He asked then.
I told him no.
He was not going to die.
* * * * *
Once night had fallen, I forced myself to get up from the water. I turned around and not far from where I was standing, with water up to my knees, was Edgewick. I could see lampposts lighting the streets.
We made it.
I tucked the dagger into my satchel and helped Jace get to his feet. I draped the length of his arm over the back of my shoulders so he could lean most of his weight on me. I was smaller than him, skinnier anyway, but I could manage.
We slowly trudged toward the town. I was tired and my body ached in places I didn’t know it could, but Jace could barely walk.
Though I had to use most of my remaining strength to hold him up, we were getting out of there, one way or another. One thing I knew for certain — I was not going to spend the night beside that hole in the mountain.
It wasn’t that I feared it would come back. My fear was that I wouldn’t have the energy to fight again if it did, and we’d both lose.
CHAPTER EIGHT
blood on the floor
Something was wrong with Edgewick, and I felt it the moment we stepped foot into town. It was unusually quiet from where we stood and I was preparing myself mentally to deal with unfriendly people the way they were in Nevressea. I assumed that Edgewick wasn’t going to be open to newcomers either, but I couldn’t find anyone.
Jace was getting heavier as we moved from door to door — or I could just be getting tired. Maybe both. We were still drenched from the lake and everything seemed to be increasing in weight. I knocked on doors, hoping that someone would take pity on us and let us in, but no one seemed to be home. Not at any house we went to. There was no movement behind windowpanes, but the streetlights were on and yet the town seemed completely deserted.
I broke the glass window on one of the front doors and stuck my hand through it to grab the knob and opened it from the inside. The door swung in and we stepped into the eerily quiet house.
“Hello?” I yelled and waited for a response but none came. Beside where we stood, I ran my hand along the wall to feel for a light switch and flipped it on. I half expected it not to work but to my surprise, it did. The house quickly illuminated from the fluorescents and I tried to help Jace up the stairs.
The home was two levels and made of stone. It was a solid structure that was neatly decorated, with pictures hanging on the walls; most likely of the people who lived there. They looked like a nice family.
Sorry for breaking into your house.
I helped Jace into one of the beds and ran back down the steps to find him something to eat. The kitchen was easy to find since it opened from the living room. I noticed pots on the stove, and dishes lain out on the counter, which I found a little strange.
“Hello?” I said as I turned in a circle. “Is anyone home?”
Still, there was no response.
I opened the pot and took a peek inside.
One smelled like beef stew while the other had sautéed vegetables in the covered frying pan. There were a few trails of ants on the counter so I looked at the knobs on the stove and figured out how to turn it on. We cooked food over a fire so I didn’t know how to use this — but when I was younger I had seen it done a few times before by David.
Amelia usually started fires in the kitchen. I hoped I wouldn’t follow in her footsteps. I pushed in the knob and twisted it before putting my hand near the coil. I could feel heat almost immediately. It began to turn a bright, glowing red and I turned it down a little before stirring its contents.
It smelled even better heated.
I filled two bowls with food and piled everything onto the first tray I could find, including two glasses of water, before quickly heading back up the stairs.
Jace was still on the bed, but he was now halfway beneath the sheets with his wet clothes in a pile on the floor.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked. I wondered if he was in pain, he must’ve been, but I knew he wouldn’t say so even if he was. Witchfen Worm mucus makes their victims basically digest within their casing. I hoped that since he was out of it the effects might subside, or at least take longer.
He didn’t answer my question.
“I smell something dead —” he said and inhaled deeply. He was struggling but trying not to show it so I didn’t say anything about it. “That’s not me, is it?”
“No, you’re not dead and you’re not dying,” I said and put the tray down on the night table beside the bed. He looked awful, his skin was practically hanging off of his body. Maybe his muscles were deteriorating beneath it.
“I brought you something to eat.”
I picked up one of the bowls and made an attempt to hand it to him.
“Eat,” I said, but he wouldn’t take it from me.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat,” I said again. “You need to eat something.”
“I feel like I’m going to — I’m going to —”
He leaned over the side of the bed and I stepped back. Jace threw up right onto his pile of wet clothes. It was the same translucent mucus he was covered in.
I started to gag so I looked away from it.
Still, I hoped it was a good sign. It was coming out of his body, that couldn’t be a bad thing, could it? I hoped not.
“Okay —” I put the bowl back down on the tray, averting my eyes from him and the pile on the ground. “You can eat something later. Will you at least drink water?”
He fell back against the pillow and shook his head.
“Can you get rid o
f that smell?”
“Your vomit?”
“No — whatever’s dead. Please get rid of it.”
“I don’t smell anything.”
“Please, Mae.”
I looked back down at his wet clothes. I tried to wrap it up so I didn’t touch the puke, and I threw it into a closet in the hallway. I shut the door and searched the house. Smelling the air, I still had no idea what he was talking about, but my sense of smell was incomparable to his.
I opened each door on the top floor, but I couldn’t find anything that was dead or dying. I went back down the stairs and turned the stove off in the kitchen.
Suddenly I heard something coming from outside. I backed out of the kitchen and into the dining room where I tripped.
I landed on my tailbone and shifted to the side. I tried to get up, but then I froze. I was staring face to face with two of the coldest eyes I had ever seen. I quickly backed up and I hit another dead body. Blood coated my hands as I crawled around the floor trying to get up, trying to get away from them. My mind went blank.
I couldn’t think straight.
I put my hand to my face in attempt to keep myself from smelling it. I couldn’t get the glassy eyes out of my mind. The entire family was laying dead in the dining room.
They were slaughtered.
I back up against the wall, the back of my hand still pressing against my nose. I was so distracted by what I was staring at that I completely forgot about the noise I heard until I heard it again. The front door creaked open, and the glass from the window scattered along the wooden floor. I got up to peek around the side of the doorway just in time to see something walk up the stairs. I pressed my back against the wall again and inhaled deeply.
It was going for Jace.
I dug into my bag for my dagger and removed the strap from around my neck. I pressed the soggy material against the wall and got to my feet, gripping the dagger tightly in my hand. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I couldn’t sit here and do nothing.
I crept up the stairs, trying to make the least amount of noise possible but when I got to the top, the first thing I noticed was that Jace’s door was now closed. I went for the knob, but then I heard talking coming from the other side.
I pressed my ear to the wood instead.
“You look like someone from a long time ago,” I heard him say. “But that’s impossible. Are you an angel?” He sounded weaker.
“Far from it,” someone replied. Her voice was soft, the voice of fragility.
There was a pause.
“Are you going to kill me?” He asked.
She didn’t respond. I didn’t hear anything at all.
I shoved the door open and something jumped through the window, shattering the glass. When I reached it, I didn’t see anything but the empty streets below, lit by flickering lampposts.
I turned back to look at Jace and he was breathing heavily now. He was starting to sweat even though the night was cool. I stepped closer, it wasn’t sweat.
His pores were pushing the toxins out of his body.
“You’re — healing? But how?” I didn’t mean for it to come out as a question but I didn’t understand how it was possible — did whoever come through here do this to him?
“I think I saw an angel,” he mumbled.
“I think you’re delusional.”
Mucus secreted from his cheeks and forehead, his chest and his arms. All of the toxins that his body absorbed from the Witchfen Worm were coming back out.
“That’s gross,” I said, and he wiped his face with the bed sheet. “But aren’t you a lucky dog.” I grinned a little.
“Hilarious.”
There was a real grin on my face now.
Relief overcame me and it drowned out everything else. He wasn’t going to die and in this moment, nothing else really mattered.
“I think I’d rather take my chances with the lightning next time,” he said, his breathing was still heavy.
“I’m sure if you could change already, you would’ve torn that Witchfen apart.”
“Damn right,” he agreed without hesitation.
It took him a few days to gain his appetite back but once he did, he was back to his usual self and again I was stuck wondering where all of the food went and how he could possibly eat so much.
We kept the dining room door shut with towels stuffed underneath the bottom. If Jace could still smell it, I didn’t know. He didn’t complain again.
* * * * *
I hardly wanted to leave the shower every time I took one. We had running water in Newacre but hot water was new, along with the water pressure. I spent a lot of my time in the shower, just standing there letting the water sooth the aches and pains in my body.
I stayed in a room down the hall from Jace’s, but I mostly just stared at the ceiling whenever I was in there. I’d get restless and usually found myself outside of his door, sitting there, leaning against the wood.
I’d sit there to make sure he would be okay.
We had been in Edgewick for about a week now and he was getting better, but it wasn’t particularly easy for either of us. I was scared to sleep. The memory of the Witchfen Worm was plaguing me, stuck in my mind like a nightmare I couldn’t shake. I could still feel the burning sensation all over my body and most prominent in the hand I had stuck in first through the worm’s wound.
I tightened my fist.
The shrieks of it crying out in pain still rang in my ears.
I didn’t want to sleep.
When I had first stayed with Weylan, I had terrible nightmares which caused him many sleepless nights. I’d wake up with mittens covering my hands, and I would be covered in self-inflicted wounds I had scratched all over myself. I’d wake up with my throat hoarse from screaming for my brother, begging him to come back.
Jace was suffering; he was suffering enough for the both of us.
I heard him late at night. I heard him mumbling the same words he had told me, to run. I heard him thrashing on his bed. I heard him punch the wall over and over again and I felt the whole house shake from the impact.
In truth, I was the lucky one.
It didn’t try to eat me.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what those memories must have been like. I didn’t want to imagine. But every morning, he’d act like he was fine. He still smiled, he still laughed. I couldn’t ruin that with questions.
* * * * *
The knife slipped against the apple I was cutting and I accidentally nicked my thumb with the blade. I stuck my thumb in my mouth and sucked the blood from my cut before wiping it against my pants. There was an apple tree outside, and though Jace was happy for the discovery, he said they weren’t nearly as good as Mr. Jameson’s. Apparently they were a different kind of apple. I couldn’t tell the difference.
I grabbed another, from the bowl of fruit I had collected, and walked up the stairs while I gnawed on the core of my own.
“How much sleep are you getting?” Jace asked me as soon as I opened the door.
I leaned against the frame of the doorway. I knew there were dark circles around my eyes. When I saw myself in the mirror, it looked like Ferris had punched me in the face twice.
I ignored his question. I didn’t want to talk about me. I didn’t feel like I had the right to complain. My fears didn’t seem justified in comparison to his. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through or what he was feeling — what he was thinking. Just trying to imagine what kind of nightmares his own mind was plaguing him with sent canarywarts down my arms.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said and took a seat on the chair beside his bed.
I chucked the apple core out of the broken window and started cutting the new one in my hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I gave him a slice.
He still was in a lot worse shape than I was. It wasn’t that long ago that his own insides were melting. I didn’t want to know what that felt like. But he didn’t complain, he never complained
. He just blinked and pushed his long hair from his face and sat up. He took the apple slice from me.
“I’m alive,” he said and a smirk peeked at the corner of his lips. “And it wasn’t even you trying to kill me that time.”
That wasn’t funny.
I tried to admire his decision to make jokes, and his attitude about all of this was in fact admirable but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I did manage to force a small, lip-closed smile. He took the rest of the apple from me and bit right into it.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I said.
I leaned back in the chair and propped my feet up on the edge of the bed.
“Me too — I think I was hallucinating,” he told me in between bites.
“Yeah, you said you saw an angel. What’s up with that?” I asked. Curiosity overwhelmed me since it happened, but I could never find the right time to bring it up. Now that he sort of had, maybe he’d finally tell me.
He furrowed his brows and leaned back against the frame of his bed. His gaze avoided me and his eyes darted around the room like he was trying to remember.
“Well, it uh — it had to be a dream,” he insisted. That didn’t mean he was getting out of it.
“Do you believe that?” I asked, because I didn’t.
He shook his head.
“There was a woman,” he said finally, clutching the apple tighter. “Pastel blonde hair and skin paler than the moon. At first, she just watched me — and her green eyes… No, it was like she had Spring trapped in her eyes. The dark shades of the old forest with the bits of new life breaking free. Specks of gold scattered across them — rays of sunshine peeking through the trees that glistened on the dew. They were comforting, you know? The kind you want to look into before you die — and you’d welcome death because there’s no way something so beautiful could be bad.”
I had never heard him talk about anyone that way. Jace always said that he didn’t do emotions but to me it sounded like he was in love. Maybe this was why he said it — claimed it. Maybe this whole time, his heart already belonged to someone. His angel, and I think she saved his life.
