by Jeff Hirsch
A fiery orange glow seeped from Kevin’s room and spread along the walls. Glenn took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway, one palm flat against the rough-hewn wall as she stole down its length.
Glenn edged up to the side of the doorway and flattened herself to it.
She could hear faint whispers from inside the room. The muscles in Glenn’s neck went rigid as she leaned forward. In the middle of the room stood a girl a little older than Glenn with a sharp, angular jaw and dark hair. She was dressed in a long black cloak with a hood lying back across her shoulders.
The room was illuminated by a single flame that flickered, suspended, above her open palm.
Kevin, Opal, and Aamon stood perfectly still before her, their arms straight at their sides. Their eyes were lifeless. The girl in the cloak kept up the stream of whispering, and every so often Kevin or Opal would slowly nod their heads.
Glenn leaned back into the hallway. The flame hovering in her palm. The way the others were frozen. Affinity.
Opal had said that because of the bracelet she saw Kevin in her mind but not Glenn. This girl must have sensed the other three as she came through the forest, but to her Glenn was an empty space, a nothing. She had no idea Glenn was there.
Glenn slipped up to the front of the house, hunting for anything that might help her. The kitchen contained little more than some plates and cups and jars of herbs.
The moonlight coming in through the window struck a bit of
metal hanging from the mantel. A locket on a silver chain. What had Opal said about it? Something about that dark thing on the boat.
“It’s bound to the owner of that charm….”
Glenn glanced out the window. The yard was empty. The path
down to the water was clear. She thought for a moment, then snatched the charm off the mantel and took the iron poker from beside the fireplace. Crossing the kitchen, she forced back a gulp of air, then swung the poker as hard as she could at the collection of ceramic plates and glass jars sitting on the table. Glass shattered and plates went flying, smashing on the hardwood floors with a terrible crash. Glenn turned and sprinted out the door and down the stone lane.
It was brighter down by the water, the wide gash in the trees letting the moonlight and starlight pour in and reflect off the slowly moving river. Glenn stopped cold when she saw the boat and the awful thing that stood motionless in the back of it. Even in the low light she could see the undulating forms buried in its cloak.
Glenn held up the charm with a shaking hand, feeling foolish.
Would this even work? Would the bracelet cancel out the locket?
“Hey!” Glenn shouted. “You!”
The hooded thing turned slowly to face her. Glenn’s throat was full of rust. What was she supposed to tell it? What did she want it to do?
Footsteps clattered on the stone walkway behind her. Glenn
turned. The girl in the cloak was racing toward her. Without a word, she thrust her hand at Glenn and the bit of flame in her palm burst into a geyser of yellow-orange fire and roared through the air. Glenn wheeled backward, waiting to feel the flames tear into her, but nothing happened. When Glenn opened her eyes again she saw that the flames had split around her, like a flow of water striking a dam. In the place where the streams diverged, Glenn could just make out an inch-thick border between the flames and her body. The red jewel in the bracelet glowed brightly.
The girl pulled the fire back. First she stared at her own hands but then she fixed her eyes on the bracelet. Glenn saw her chance. She whipped around to the dark boatman and raised the locket over her head.
“Take her away!”
The creature didn’t make a sound as it leapt from the boat and into the air. It seemed to elongate as it came, its arms stretching into tattered, batlike wings with sharpened tree limbs for claws. Its hood split to reveal a misshapen beak. The girl stood her ground. Fire shot from her hands and tore through the creature, but its body was amorphous, shifting as it flew so that it would part and then re-form, unharmed. The girl tried to run but the creature was too fast. It overcame her and together they crashed into the forest. Her screams were high and awful … until they were strangled away to nothing.
Glenn forced herself up the path to the house at a run. She made it through the door just as Kevin and Opal appeared from the hallway.
“Glenn!” Kevin shouted, rushing toward her.
“I’m fine,” Glenn said, backing away from him. “What happened?
Who was that?”
“Abbe Daniel,” Opal said. “The Magistra’s handmaiden. She
isn’t alone, either. Soldiers are approaching now. I can have my woods slow them down but you have to leave. Take the boat.” Opal turned to Kevin. “I have supplies gathered in the back. Aamon will help you.”
Kevin ran back into the hallway. When Glenn went to follow, Opal took her by the wrist.
“There’s still time,” Opal whispered. “Your mother is powerful but slow to rouse. She’ll leave things to servants like Abbe and Garen Tom as long as she can, but if she wakes, it will be too late. Don’t destroy the bracelet. Use it.”
Opal drew Glenn closer. The red glow of the bracelet spread across the lines of her face.
“You can’t trust Aamon Marta,” she said in a hush. “When tens of thousands struggled for their freedom from the Magisterium, he led the armies that cut them down. Men, women, and children were slaughtered like animals. And when it looked like they might prevail, Aamon brought the blight of your mother upon us. If you think that sort of evil is something that can be walked away from, then you’re a fool.
He is an instrument of the Magistra and always has been.”
“Glenn.”
She turned with a start. Aamon filled the hallway behind them, his massive body looming in the dark.
It was him, Glenn thought. That thing in the woods the night my mother left. Why hadn’t he said anything? Why did he keep it from me?
Glenn remembered being warm and safe, lying in that dark water with her mother at her side and the great sky above them. But that was balanced with the sting of ten abandoned years. It was balanced by madness and death. It was too much. Her world had tumbled again and again and she was just now righting herself. Whatever Aamon had done, whatever he had kept from her, he was the only one offering a way home.
Glenn yanked her wrist out of Opal’s grasp. “I told you,” she said.
“This isn’t my world.”
She ran to join Aamon and Kevin by the front door. Aamon knelt in front of them, drawing them aside with his big hands.
“You’re apprentice smiths,” Aamon said. “You’ve been
indentured to Kalle Bromden in Bethany. You’re on your way there now.”
“What about you?” Kevin asked.
“We happened to be heading in the same direction, that’s all. You do not know anything about me. Not even my name. We’ll take Opal’s boat through the night, then get out and follow the path to a town called Armstrong — it’s the first town along the river. We’ll take a wagon east from there. If anything happens to me along the way, if we get separated, just keep going. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Get to Bethany and ask for Kalle Bromden. I’ll find you. Do you understand?”
Glenn and Kevin both said they did.
“Good. It’s time, then. Come.”
Aamon took a pack from beside him and ducked out the door
with Glenn on his heels. When Glenn came down the hill Aamon was already leaning over the boat, loading in the pack and waving her forward. Glenn suddenly realized that Kevin wasn’t behind her. She held up her hand to Aamon and went back up the path to the house.
She found him standing with Opal at the front door, her body mostly hidden by his. They were whispering to each other in a way that seemed heated, as if they were arguing.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, his voice rising. “She’s …”
Glenn crept closer, partially concealed by the trees. Opal lea
ned into Kevin and spoke too quietly for Glenn to hear. Kevin nodded, calmer now, and Opal handed him something that Glenn couldn’t see.
Kevin stared at it a moment, then tucked it into his coat.
“Yes,” Kevin said, his voice grave as he backed away from her.
“I will. I promise.”
Kevin left her and started down the lane, buttoning his coat to his neck. He stopped short when he saw Glenn standing there.
“What were you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Kevin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Kevin disappeared down the path. Opal stood eerily still in the light of the half-closed door. A slant of moonlight cut across her face, making her wrinkled features stark and hard, like cracked marble.
Glenn turned and ran down to the river. By the time she got there, Aamon had stowed everything in the boat, and Kevin was sitting in its narrow bow.
“Quickly,” Aamon said as he waved her forward. Then he looked over her shoulder and shouted, “Glenn!”
Two of Garen Tom’s soldiers burst out of the trees beside the house. One was racing toward her with a sword drawn while the other dropped to his knee, pulling a bowstring taut. Glenn ran. An arrow cut through the air inches from her shoulder.
“Get down!” Aamon commanded as he pushed Glenn into the boat. “Both of you!”
Aamon charged up the hill as more of them poured out of the forest. A fat man swung an enormous ax, but Aamon dodged it at the last second and drove his immense fist into the man’s stomach. He doubled over, gasping, and Aamon brought both his hands together and smashed them into the back of the man’s head, dropping him to the ground.
An arrow sliced into the meat of Aamon’s arm, but it barely slowed him down. He tore the bow out of the terrified archer’s hand and snapped it like a twig. Another soldier managed a slash across Aamon’s back with his sword, before Aamon swept the blade out of his hand and then threw him to the ground. The man recoiled as Aamon fell on him, teeth bared and claws ready to tear at his throat, but for some reason Aamon didn’t strike.
Two others set on him while he paused. Both had heavy clubs and one of them managed a perfect swing to Aamon’s back that toppled him over onto his side. As soon as he was down, the others swarmed over him like a horde of ants.
Glenn dug her fingers underneath the bracelet and started to strip it off, her eyes on the soldiers. Opal said she could control it. Use it.
Glenn held her breath. It was a chance she had to take. It was either that or she, Kevin, and Aamon would all be dead.
There was a splash behind her. Glenn turned. Another soldier, a ratty-looking man with shaggy hair and pockmarked cheeks, was knee-deep in the water, racing toward them, a dagger in his hand.
Glenn pulled at the bracelet, but the soldier grabbed the side of the boat and yanked it toward him, knocking her to her knees. His blade gleamed. Kevin rushed to Glenn’s side, pulling her back just as something burst out of the water and the man disappeared, dragged under the surface. Glenn leapt forward and caught flashes of Aamon’s thick fur and the man’s leather armor in the churning water.
“Aamon!”
Glenn leaned out over the stern of the boat. There was a pause as she stared down into the murk, Kevin at her shoulder, and then the water exploded in a rush. A skeletal hand seized Glenn’s hair and a dagger flashed toward her throat. Before the blade could connect, the massive figure of Aamon Marta rose behind him, teeth bared, eyes the frenzied green of something radioactive. Aamon’s hands found the man’s pale throat, and Glenn watched, stunned, as his claws tore through flesh and veins and muscle. The soldier’s gray eyes went huge with pain and shock. Blood gushed up through Aamon’s fingers and spilled down the man’s chest and still he thrashed. Aamon’s huge arm flexed and there was a terrible snap. The soldier twitched once and went still. When it was clear he was dead, Aamon released his body and it slipped into the water.
The shouts of the men on the shore went distant, as if Glenn was hearing down the length of a long tunnel. The water rushed by, breaking over the wooden boat’s hull.
A buzzing numbness moved through her. She forced herself to breathe and then looked up. The snowy patch at Aamon’s throat was dark and matted with blood. His face was all brutal angles and sharp plains rimmed in razory teeth. Glenn searched his face for the soft familiarity of Gerard Manley Hopkins, but it was gone.
All that was left was a monster.
Aamon reached for the side of the boat and Glenn recoiled,
scrambling away from him in terror. He froze, one bloody hand suspended before him, when he saw the fear in Glenn’s eyes. In that second, the monster was wiped away and Hopkins was back. Instead of madness and violence, Glenn saw a deep sorrow, the look of someone lifted to great heights and then abandoned to gravity.
A chorus of voices rose behind Aamon. Steel gleamed in the
moonlight. The boat knocked into the current and they started to drift away. Glenn reached out her hand.
“Come on,” she said weakly. “Let’s go.”
21
More soldiers were cresting the hill. Aamon curled his hand around the edge of the boat and pushed it away.
“Go,” he said. “Don’t stop. Just keep going!”
“Aamon!” Glenn called, but he was already running for the shore.
The current bit into the boat’s hull and swept her and Kevin away. As they sped up, the boat fishtailed wildly until Kevin grabbed the pole off the bottom of the boat and dug it into the riverbed, steadying them and pushing them out of sight of the shore.
“Kevin! No! We have to turn back!”
Kevin ignored her, pushing the pole into the water and driving them down the dark river. Something inside Glenn screamed for her to get up, to stop him, but she saw Aamon’s bloody face and his bloody hands and she sat there, frozen and helpless as they slipped away.
Behind them were the sounds of clashing metal, then there was a terrible roar, followed by screams that went on and on.
Sometime later, Glenn took the pole from Kevin and pushed
them on through the night. To either side of them was a wall of ivy-choked forest nearly twenty feet high. In places it grew so thick that the trees joined over the run of the river and it was as if they were sailing through a black tunnel.
Once they left Aamon it was quiet except for the rush of the river and the sporadic crack of branches and crunching of leaves beyond the shore. Glenn and Kevin drew inward with every crash, refusing to acknowledge them, refusing to consider what might be responsible for them. It was as if they could make a castle out of their silence.
Glenn wondered if she would be able to feel what was hidden out in those woods if it weren’t for the bracelet. Could she muster up enough control to lift them both up and take them out of there? Would she know what had happened to Aamon?
Glenn jammed the pole into the water, relishing the pain that shot up her arms and pushed that sick guilt out of her mind. Aamon pushed them away, she told herself. Made them promise to keep going no matter what. They had no choice. After all, what could they have done to help him?
Glenn felt sure they had done the right thing, but if that was true, then why did she keep seeing Aamon’s face as the boat slipped away?
And why did his face always seem to fade into her father’s as she dug her heels into the ground and threw him into the arms of the drones?
Glenn poled them down the river as the cold night wore on and the first reaches of dawn, orange and yellow, lit up the water. Sunlight arrowed through the gaps in the woods, and the trees were trees again, winter gray trunks and thin branches. The sounds lost their menace as well. There was just the sluice of water against the boat’s wooden sides and the rhythmic chirp of frogs and insects. Overhead, the dark shapes of birds tumbled about in the sky.
Glenn collapsed into the stern, balancing the pole across the boat and letting the current carry them forward. Kevin was up fron
t, his back to her, leaning over the water. He looked so alien in his drab Magisterium clothes, a brown leather fleece-lined coat and thick rust-colored pants. If it hadn’t been for the wilted shock of green hair, she would have barely recognized him. He had said hardly a word the whole night.
Restless, Glenn opened the pack Aamon had thrown in the boat before they left. She hoped to find a map, but all that was there was an earthenware jug filled with water, some food, spare clothes, and a purse filled with odd bits of metal. Glenn pulled out the jug and took a long drink. The water was ice-cold and tasted metallic. She sat, turning it in her hands, staring at Kevin’s back as the current passed them by.
“You should have something to drink,” she said.
“Not thirsty,” Kevin said without moving.
“There’s food.”
Kevin adjusted his position at the bow but said nothing.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Glenn said.
Kevin turned to her, his dark eyes narrow. “Didn’t have a choice about what?”
“Aamon,” Glenn said, perplexed. “Those men were coming. He
pushed us away. You did the right thing.”
Kevin stared down at the murky water flowing by. “Yeah,” he said. Something dreamlike and distant in his voice sent a chill through Glenn. “You’re right. We had to.”
He turned away, his hand hovering up by his chest where he had tucked away whatever it was Opal had given him. His lips began to move low and fast as if he was whispering to himself. As if he was praying. Glenn shuddered at the thought of it, at the feel of that ghost within him.
Glenn wedged herself deeper into the stern and pulled her coat tight, watching him, amazed at the seed of fear that was unfurling inside her. Afraid of Kevin Kapoor? It should have been laughable, but there it was, undeniably real.
The day passed as they searched for a path neither of them ever saw. The sun arced above them and again began to fall.
“This is useless,” Kevin grumbled. “Aamon has been away ten years. Whatever road he was thinking of could be gone by now. We should just start walking.”
