“You’re not going to say hello?” He frowned. “That’s a shame. The real world has ruined your manners too.”
I began repeatedly running my fingernail up and down the bumps in the whitewash, up and down, up and down…
“I’m glad you decided to move on with life,” he noted, glancing around at the silhouetted barns. “It was getting quite dull, watching you at that school, wallowing in self-pity and never getting farther than the town border. This isn’t much, but at least it’s a change in scenery. As an added bonus, your host family was very easily convinced that I was a surveyor.”
Up and down, up and down, up and down.
“Stop shaking,” he sighed in irritation, slowly coming closer. “It’s not like I can hurt you anymore, and it’s really quite annoying.”
“You—you—can’t?” I squeaked, heart thudding in my chest, hoping that Julia would come and interrupt.
“No.” He sighed, suddenly seeming really quite weary. “It’s not that it’s impossible, but too many people would notice, and since everything went mad with Boundary, I’m not exactly favoured.”
“People?”
“Yes. People.” His eyes darkened. Then, like a flipped switch, the darkness vanished behind his new, odd, normality. “But done is done. I hadn’t been expecting to back you to begin with, but—”
“Penny,” I whispered, the name coming out choked as it caught in my throat. The memories were emerging from my subconscious, and I had to fight to hold them back. Memories of the trials, set to ensure only the strongest among us would escape Boundary and enter the real world. Penny had been the only one among us to figure out how to Rip, and combined with all the advantages that gave her, we’d assumed she was the obvious winner.
“Actually, no,” he corrected with a twisted smile. “Penny was exactly the one I was trying to stop, given that she’s the only one who could’ve freed the others from the outside. I needed to back whoever had the best chance of stopping her—Avery, I’d been assuming.”
“Stop!” I shouted, panicking.
She’s the only one who could’ve freed the others from the outside.
I hated this. I hated what my mistake had cost them.
“Don’t be pathetic,” he snapped, that characteristic temper flaring so that I almost found myself psyching up for punishment. “What, you’ve really tried to forget? You really don’t want to remember?”
I bit my lip, blinking so that I wouldn’t cry.
“I remember the torturing,” I whispered to the ground, my fingernails digging into my hand. “I remember nearly choking to death in the fire. I remember burying Beatrix, I remember visions making my friends scream, and remember that moment when I realized I’d never see Fred again. It’s killing me.”
What was I doing? Something clicked inside me. To whom did I think I was talking? I had nearly forgotten, in my panic, what this man had done. I flicked a nervous glance as the parked car in the distance, and another at him, before gathering my courage and bolting as fast as I could towards the animal barns, where I knew I would find the others. Andrew had come outside, and I could usually find the older men tinkering around there.
“Evelyn! Damn it, this is important!” he shouted, angry now, but I was beyond reason.
I slipped and fell, adding more mud to my already stained clothing. My heart in my mouth, I jumped back up again and kept running as if my life depended on it; there was a good chance that it did.
“Andrew!” I screamed, skidding around the corner and searching for somebody, anybody. “Charlie, Pat, Gregory!”
I dug my heels into the ground and stopped. Harriet was standing right in front of me. Her face was blank again, but her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. I didn’t know what she was doing, or how she got outside so fast, but I had never been more pleased to see another human being.
“Harriet, you have to help me,” I begged, my head whipping around manically to try to see if Madon was following me. “Please! The surveyor, he’s actually—”
“They’re in the hayloft,” she told me in that weird, distant tone.
I didn’t wait for more details.
I followed her line of sight to the wooden, slightly rotten-looking building located parallel to the dairy barn.
Running without a corset was actually quite easy, and I found myself pounding on the shabby doors in what seemed like a matter of seconds. I was surprised that Madon hadn’t caught up already, but it was probably a good sign that he wasn’t willing to be seen around this area, with people. The doors opened easily, and I stumbled inside. The barn smelled of animals like the rest of the farm, the hayloft was filled to the brim with the dry bales, all stacked on the floor and upon higher ledges. A few pigeons cooed from the rafters, and I nearly ran back out again. Birds, like most everything else, scared me.
Stepping through the sea of hay, I steeled myself to try to make out shapes in what little light was filtering through the cracks in the roof.
“Hello?” I called softly, suddenly feeling very uneasy.
They’re in the hayloft.
I horrible feeling crept up inside me at the word ‘they’. Although she could have meant her siblings, intuition told me otherwise. What if Julia and Andrew were wrong? What if Harriet had tuned in to something no one else could see? And if that was the case, I was possibly trapped in a barn with a force more sinister than the one I was hiding from.
The barn became very quiet.
My mind was spinning. I had come to the farm to enter normal life, but if the past few hours were anything to go by, I wasn’t in the right place. There was something haunting the farm that no one but Harriet could see, and whether it was harmless or malevolent, it was too early to tell. I was confronted with ridiculously easy tasks that never turned out well, and now the nightmare of my childhood was back to torment me. I could feel the protective wall I had built around my emotions all those months ago start to crumble. Everything that I had refused to address for one year was rushing at me all at once in one huge tidal wave of emotion.
A hand roughly grabbed my shoulder
“Pull yourself together,” Madon snarled, and my cries caught in my throat and I choked on them. “God, why did it have to be you, out of all of them? You got the prize, the future they were willing to die for, and all you can do is cry like a baby. Pathetic.”
“You don’t understand!” I shouted, past caring anymore. “I can’t…”
“No, you’re right,” he replied coolly, disgusted. “I don’t. But understand this—death is a chance you’ll have to take, because if you don’t listen to what I have to tell you, you’re as good as dead anyway.”
“There’s something behind me,” I sniffed, remembering Harriet’s words. Paranoia was starting to set in.
He hesitated, and even in the growing darkness I could see the flicker of uncertainty cross his face. Then it was gone, and he retorted, “Be that as it may, what you can’t see can’t hurt you. For your own good, focus on what I have to tell you. Please.”
Please?
He was pleading with me. Madon Farrington, murderer, overlord, supernatural menace, was pleading with me.
“Why?” I asked, my stomach dropping. “Why are you only talking to me now?”
“Do you remember D?”
D. How could I ever forget? Penny, favoured as she was, had started receiving letters from someone who appeared to be outside the Boundary, identifying themselves only as ‘D’. At first the letters contained only words of encouragement. This encouragement became instructions on how to beat the trials, but as soon as Penny refused to sacrifice us in order to win, D became…well, violent.
“Of course,” I whispered.
“We’re not exactly friends anymore,” he remarked dryly. “They weren’t happy you got out instead of Penny, and if I hadn’t interfered to make sure they wouldn’t notice your progress, you wouldn’t be here. They’re coming for you, Evelyn.”
I still had that overwhelming feelin
g that something was right behind me. Without meaning to, I began to move to the side.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped, staying still as I backed up toward the door. “I couldn’t care less about who you are, and I personally don’t care much for your dismal attitude anyway. I came here because we need each other. Don’t forget that I’m the reason you got out in the first place, and I—”
“What, you helped me escape?” I shouted, mortified to find tears pouring down my face. I was scared beyond reason, partly because of him, and partly because of the memories that had been stirred up. “When will you realize that I didn’t want to ever leave?”
“When will you realize that what you wanted never mattered! Nothing mattered to me, except that Penny stayed where she wouldn’t cause harm! I lost everything for that goal!”
I fell silent, reeling under the fury in his voice. I didn’t want to relive these details, but something inside me longed to know the truth behind what had happened all that time ago. All my life, I still didn’t know exactly what Boundary was, or why we had been trapped there.
“Why?” I whispered, my previous courage evaporating. “I’m sixteen now, nearly seventeen, and I feel as though I know less than I did when I was a child. My past makes no sense, and whenever I try to recall it…I don’t know whether it’s just nostalgia, or guilt. Guilt that I’m trying to forget my friends, when they might be trapped, and then there’s Fred…”
Fred, the boy I loved, who lost his chance at freedom trying to save me. Fred, who convinced me to keep trying, even when the others had discounted me. I still doubted whether it was the right choice to leave him.
He waited impatiently for me to stop sobbing, pacing back and forth in the loose hay. “We have about two minutes before Julia Pearson snaps back into reality and starts to look for us. I can’t explain now. I’ll stay here as long as I can, but after that, you must promise me to stay away from them if they approach you.”
“I don’t even know who—”
“Their names are Demitra and Deio. You’ll know them when you see them.” He turned to leave and then added, “One more thing. It’s clear you’re not in the right mind-set to trust me now, but when you change your mind, use the Others to call me.”
“Wait, the Others? What?” I was stunned.
“Tell Mrs Pearson I’ll be back for Christmas.” He sounded like the surveyor he was supposed to be, now. “Hopefully you’ll be back to your senses by then.”
With that, he left the barn. No Ripping now. No vanishing, no magic. Here, he was just as human as I was.
A few moments later, Julia came running in.
“There you are! Do you know what’s going on?”
I shook my head numbly. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Chapter Six
As soon as I saw him, I knew I was dreaming. Fred. The fact that I managed to keep my head was also a clue as to the fantasy of the dream. He was sitting on the front steps of the manor, dressed in Victorianera clothing, which was refreshingly familiar. He glanced up as I approached, offering me a warm smile.
“Fred!” I sobbed, throwing my arms around him in a hug and joining him on the steps. It was then I realized that I was wearing what had been my favourite lavender gown, with my hair long once again.
“Shhh, it’s all right,” he soothed, holding me tightly. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“You can say that again,” I half laughed, half cried. “Oh, Fred, I’ve missed you.”
“Have you, though?” He pulled away, studying my face. “You’ve tried to forget me. You haven’t done anything to try to bring me back. They nearly gave up on you, Evelyn.”
“I’m scared,” I admitted, wiping my eyes and shifting around to take in the grounds. A heavy fog had obscured most of it from view, but I knew what was there; the rhododendron bushes at the manor’s foot, the rolling lawns where we had played our games, the sunken graveyard, the eerie woods, which I had always disliked, nearly as much as Penny had loved them. As each image crept into my mind, the fog thinned, revealing more and more of the estate.
“See?” Fred squeezed my hand. “It’s still there. You’ve still got it.”
“I can’t.” I shook my head frantically. The fog crept back.
“Yes, you can. I always believed in you, Evelyn. The only thing holding you back is yourself. I’m not asking you to be fearless, no one can do that, but you do need to be strong. We’re all backing you. We’re still waiting for you.”
I picked myself up off the steps, letting the soft material of my gown ripple over my fingers. How I had missed this life.
“Madon came to the house where I’m staying,” I blurted. “Beatrix’s son. I still can’t believe that.”
Fred said nothing, waiting for me to continue letting go of all the things I so desperately needed to tell someone.
“He said that D whoever they are…are after me. It seemed they wanted Penny to win. It’s funny, imagine how much easier it would have been if everything had gone according to their plan?”
I trailed my finger over the rough bricks of the wall behind me, wanting to soak up as much of Boundary as I could, knowing that eventually I would have to wake up.
“Help me, Fred.” I bit my lip, pivoting around. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Stop hiding, for one thing. Madon had that right. Pretending we don’t exist isn’t going to get anyone anywhere. You’re a clever girl; you’ll figure things out. Don’t let people convince you otherwise.”
I gulped through the lump in my throat, and nodded.
“Is everyone else here?” I asked, peering around. “Can we go inside?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” He chuckled. “This is only a dream, after all.”
I flopped back down again, cool woody breeze blowing my ringlets across my eyes. I had missed feeling like this, feeling like myself. The other me, with my short hair and scandalous clothing, was just unnatural.
“Can’t I just stay here?” I asked desperately. “Does this have to be only a dream?”
“Does it matter?” Fred shrugged. “The facts still stand the same. We can’t stay here forever.”
I hesitated, and he pulled me into another hug, stroking my back as I buried my face into his shoulder.
“No more tears,” he whispered into my ear. “I’ll be seeing you again soon, all right?”
I sniffed, wiping my cheeks dry. “Do you really think I can do this?”
“Oh, Evelyn.” He smiled sadly, holding me at arm’s length. “I know you can. I never doubted you.”
We sat there for a long moment more, surrounded by the thick fog and moist air, until somewhere far away, I was shaken awake.
“Rise an’ shine,” Kitty screeched in my ear.
I lay for a minute, trying to bring back the dream, but it was gone. The message, however, was there. I had squandered too long feeling sorry for myself and building a wall against my memories. Now, I was going to break down that wall, brick by brick, even if that took me another hundred years. Perhaps there wasn’t anything I could do yet to free my friends, but I wasn’t going to keep hiding. Eventually, hopefully, the answer would find me.
“Mind tellin’ me what that was all about last night?” she asked, peering into the mirror in able to fluff her hair more efficiently. “Apparently Aunt Jule found you cryin’ in the hay barn.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I gritted my teeth, eyes straining against the bright morning light.
I never doubted you.
In return, I wouldn’t give him any reason to. Madon had said it himself; he couldn’t hurt me here. There was nothing to fear.
After a quick, cold bath to wash away the excess nostalgia, I pulled on my blouse and skirt, curled my hair, and went downstairs for breakfast again. Julia told me that I’d be helping Andrew and Kitty with the animals.
“You might want to put somethin’ else on.” Kitty observed my neat
outfit. I saw she was wearing baggy trousers tucked over her shirt, and a part of me died. I had worn dresses for my entire childhood, and getting me into a skirt had been difficult enough—this was madness.
“I’ll be fine,” I tried to argue.
“Really, Evelyn, she’s right,” Julia put in. “You’ll ruin that lovely skirt. I’ve got some upstairs you can borrow if you’d like.”
That was how I found myself wearing both wellies and trousers as I prepared for a day of mucking about in horse stalls.
“Nice boots.” Andrew winked, appearing in overalls and a sun-bleached shirt that set off the gold in his hair. “You look uncomfortable, though.”
“It isn’t decent!” I defended myself crossly, not in the best of moods. “Imagine if you had to embroider cushions in a dress, would you not feel terribly out of place?”
“Well, since you put it that way.” He laughed. “Don’t be too upset, though, the entire women’s land army is probably living in dungarees. Times are changing.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to,” I muttered, pulling on a jacket and trying to ignore Julia’s hidden smile behind my back as she scolded James for putting too much butter on his toast (“Don’t forget rationing!”).
Outside, the morning was grey and silent. The frosted tips of grass peaked up timidly underfoot, the bare tree branches seeming like black cracks in the void. A crow cawed, breaking the silence, and I realized Andrew was beside me, staring, but not at the scenery.
“You seem absolutely mesmerized.” He smiled when I jumped, but not in that half-mocking tone I had been used to.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” I shrugged, shifting on my feet. There had been something intense his eyes that I wasn’t quite comfortable with. “The school was in the middle of the city, and Boundary didn’t have any fields.”
“Boundary?” Andrew frowned, and I realized my mistake.
Kitty saved me from explanation by galumphing in on us, kerchief tied around her ears and singing an awful song.
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