The Wilds (Reign and Ruin 1)

by Jules Hedger

  "She had accepted it, Cirrus. She was still and it could have been over by now and the Festival would have recommenced."

  "Maggie is not to be touched." Cirrus ordered.

  "Take the necklace! Take it and win! But leave her here for me."

  "That is not an option."

  The two men stared at each other, twin pillars of defiance. Tyler's fingers twitched and Cirrus curled his arms tighter around my shoulders.

  "I see," Tyler said quietly. "We both have uses for her, don't we?"

  Tyler made a motion towards his men. They started to move around the table, but stopped short. Cirrus suddenly had the scalpel knife in his hand.

  "Come on, Maggie," Cirrus said, his eyes never leaving Tyler's face. "We can leave now."

  "You must be a desperate man. It's not in your nature to threaten a man with a knife. What does Maggie have that you would kill for?" His voice curled quietly into the tense air. Cirrus didn't answer. "A way out, perhaps?" Tyler bent grotesquely to look around Cirrus at me. I winced and crept back to the edge of the table. "You were to be my way out, Maggie. But as you can see we have a certain competition."

  "There's no competition, Tyler. Do you think she wants to be made into a doll?" Cirrus asked harshly.

  "Do you think she wants to share her life with you?" Tyler spat back. Cirrus lurched back in shock and my stomach flipped. "Oh yes, everyone knows. Everyone in the Wilds, anyway. And you've only confirmed all the whispers by descending from on high to grace us with your presence." Tyler grinned and the fabric flapped in the wind above his head. "What a horrible fate for a young girl to have a sick man such as you seeking solace in her mind and bodyfor the rest of her life."

  "You think I'm sick?!" Cirrus sputtered.

  I was scared to move for fear of calling more attention to myself. Instead, I was surreptitiously scanning for a way out. There was no doubt in my mind that whoever won, I would not be in a good position. Cirrus's grip was no longer protective; it was possessive. Come on, Maggie. Come on and think. Get out of here. Something needed to happen.

  It was then that I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the coal man. The same coal man who had dragged me onto the train, watched me through the window and slipped the knife into my jacket pocket. He was standing amongst the townspeople. And his eyes flickered to the table.

  I followed his gaze to the large bag of cotton sitting on the edge. An idea jumped into my mind and, like many ideas fashioned in desperate times, it was a bad one. But it was the only one I had.

  "Fine," I said, my eyes darting back from the bag of cotton to Tyler. I tried to look coy, but what does a 22 year-old girl know about being coy? Being coy in college was acting proud if you managed to shoot more than one ping pong ball into a plastic beer cup. This was much harder.

  "What?" gasped Cirrus. He watched in disbelief as I hoisted myself onto the table. Tyler's face lit up in a bright smile and he rubbed his hands together.

  "Do you see now, Cirrus? Lucky Creek holds promises for Maggie that you never could!" Tyler snatched back the knife and Cirrus let him, eyes still staring at me in dazed shock.

  Tyler turned around to face him and the townsfolk, all of whom were standing in stillness. The coal man's eyes met mine. Behind my back, I took a firm hold of the bag.

  Time to take this sick fuck down, I thought. Ok, that's a lie. What I probably thought was, Gahhhhhhhhhhhh! Tyler was still talking. The bastard really loved the sound of his own voice.

  "It's funny, isn't it, how the creation takes what is of his creator? And by her own choice, too! You've made a name for yourself here, Cirrus. Cheer up, you won! All hail the new King!" I came to my knees on the table behind Tyler and raised the bag over my head. Not one of the townspeople blinked an eye.

  "And after I change the world, your name will be even more infamous for creating a visionary like me!" Cirrus's eyes widened, but Tyler didn't notice his alarm as the bag came down with as much force as I could muster atop his head.

  The cotton wasn't nearly hard enough to hurt Tyler. In fact, it was rather like the pillow fights in sleepovers. Not that I knew that – I never had sleepovers. Besides, Mom always said that pillow fights were dangerous, and a waste of goose feathers. But although I had never had friends over or fought with pillows, I knew how to get enough velocity in a moving object to knock a person over. And I put as much force into this swing as I possibly could.

  The bag of cotton struck Tyler on the side of his head and he was knocked sideways into the table. His face smacked against the hard wood and a resounding crack echoed across the clearing. I jumped quickly off the table to my feet as Tyler slumped on the ground, clutching his cheek and moaning.

  When he looked up, all power had vanished from his face and he seemed to be holding back tears. "Maggie, my darling . . ."

  He removed his hand and the bag of cotton fell from my fingers. Running from the bridge of his nose to the end of his cheek bone was a long crack, as if someone had dropped a vase on the floor. The crack started to spread along his face and down his neck until a piece fell off.

  A piece. Of his face. Fell off. Oh my holy hell.

  The piece clattered to the ground, merely a chunk of polished porcelain. I squealed and scurried even further backwards.

  "Maggie, you've broken me," Tyler said, his glass eyes glistening. The cracks branched off along his body until his arms and legs were spider-webbed with thin lines. His face continued to break away as Tyler gazed up at me and wept.

  I couldn't look away. I was stuck on Tyler as he fell apart, piece by piece. Soon he was just a pile of broken porcelain on the ground, like one of my broken pillowcase dolls. There was utter silence. Not even the wind moved.

  Suddenly, a screech resounded into the night, breaking the spell. Cirrus and I whirled around to see the citizens of Lucky Creek screaming as the seams of their worn clothes fell apart. The town square was filled with shrieks and howls as their dresses and shirts and then their patched skin fell to the ground in pieces. Wisps of cotton rose in the air like snow and danced around the agonized people, some still trying in vain to hold their stiches together.

  I couldn't take it anymore. The sadness and anger in the air was so thick I could hardly breathe. As Tyler's magic dissipated into the sky, I ran. I ran past Cirrus and through the clearing. I tried to run past the coal man, but he grabbed my arms to yank me back.

  He looked into my eyes and smiled.

  "Thank the Painter I lived long enough to see you," he whispered. He shoved a backpack into my hands. "Be strong. The Riders are coming."

  "What? What do you mean?" I shouted over the screams. He considered for a short moment and started to open his mouth when he suddenly gasped. And grunted. Confusion washed over his face and he swallowed, but when he opened his mouth again I saw red.

  Soft clumps of cotton floated lazily through the air as a current of blood ran slowly out one side of his mouth. Cirrus stepped out from behind the coal man and pushed the body to the ground, clutching the gory scalpel in his hands. He made a grab for my arm.

  I snapped out of my temporary haze and pushed off the lawn into a run. Cirrus screamed my name; I could hear it added to cacophony of noise behind me. I bounded past the crumbling townspeople, clutching the coal man's backpack, necklace bouncing against my chest, and climbed the hill towards Tyler's house. Some poor innocent's cotton trailed after me, caught in my hair and the lace of my gingham dress.

  Cirrus ran as fast as he could, clutching at the scalpel until his knuckles turned white, but he soon lost all sight in the storm of cotton. His knees buckles and he caught himself with a whoosh. I was lost, replaced with only swirling white and sudden silence. All the townspeople had been reduced to rags. He was alone.

  I dashed around the side of Tyler's house and through the garden, past the back gate and up into the fields that stood behind them, past piles of fallen farmers. I kept running even after the sturdy dirt ground melted into something softer.

  Putting one last
push through my aching legs, I hardly had enough sense to register that the grass and the trees were melting together and becoming blurry. The soft touch of cotton turned to grit and I was soon shielding my face from the harsh onslaught of . . . sand?

  The howls of the townspeople had morphed into the wind, screaming and swirling around me as my feet sunk into powdery sand. I tried to look forward and move forward, but the wind was pushing so hard against my body that it felt like pushing against a mountain.

  I collapsed on the ground and started to crawl, dragging the backpack after me. How the hell did I find my way here? I could barely lift my head against the gale.

  By some miracle of luck, or perhaps it was fate, my hands found a piece of wood stuck firmly in the ground. It was rough and splintered, but wrapping my entire body around it was the only way I could guarantee not blowing away. And so I did. The pack shielded my back and the wooden post my eyes from the thousands of oncoming pin pricks of grit rushing and swirling around me. For what felt like hours I sat clinging to my lifeline until the rushes of sand died down and I could open my eyes without being blinded.

  I must have opened them for a split second before my body gave up on me. The world was yellow and later I remembered the sand swirling into shapes I could recognize: the face of my uncle; a howling wolf; and a reaching hand. I don't remember much else of that moment except curling up beneath my wooden pillar and letting sleep sweep away the terror.

  Chapter 11

  In New York City, the sun had finally risen and people were already at work. The trash man had come and gone. A woman pulled up outside an apartment building, taking out the keys and turning to the man who sat beside her. She tickled his neck with her nails and leaned in for a kiss. The man chuckled and gave in, his mustache smudged with lipstick. The woman laughed and leaned on the horn with her elbow. She shot a look up at an upstairs window where she expected to see her daughter's head poke out to check her ride home.

  ***

  Dreams stalked through the gardens of Cirrus's manor while the man stalked the hallways. His feet traveled a worn path through the dark and empty rooms. Leaves crackled outside the window and Cirrus could hear the chirp of birds settling down to sleep.

  But he could not succumb to sleep this night, nor any night, until his salvation was found and he was rid forever of his nightmares. One more desperate fight against the dark to suffer through before the impending dawn, when rescue was sure to be found and he could rest.

  He pulled out his pocket watch and traced the pattern on the glass. His hands still remembered the feel of her weight on his arm. The way she leant into his body for support and protection. He fell against a wall and moaned his frustration.

  ***

  In yet another melding of time, the winds blew above me in painted swirls of poppy oranges and dandelion creams. The curls twisted in upon themselves until the two colors mixed and became a light gray that melded with the sky. Night had shifted into day and the sun blew its hot breath on my face as I rose from sleep. I sat up, my hands clutching the sand beneath me, and took my bearings. There was nothing but dunes and the burning sun.

  It was a moment before I remembered my flight, but when I did it the memories fell against me in furious, shocking succession.

  Needles, Cirrus, cotton, scalpel, blood, blood, blood, run, run, RUN!

  The town of Lucky Creek was no more. And I had found myself in a desert where the sand stretched out forever in front like a vast, golden sea. But I would have preferred the sea. The only time I had been to the seaside was when I was six years old and my father was still alive. My parents had spread a blanket out on the cool sand and let me stick my feet in the cold waves. I could remember the birds screeching above me and the air bubbles that broke the wet sand from the tide's journey of the sand crabs. My father ran with me in the waves and picked me up when an especially large one rolled in, making me scream when he dipped my toes in the cold water. I howled with laughter and splashed him and later that night, as he washed the sand out of my hair, he recited rhymes.

  There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.

  And when she was good, she was very, very good.

  And when she was bad, she was horrid.

  It might have been the only concrete memory of my father I could remember and I wasn't even sure if I hadn't made it up. But it was a memory and at least a happy one. And I should have been thankful for that. I had always loved the ocean.

  The desert was perhaps the farthest I could have gone from it. My feet were growing hot in the hard leather boots and there were no waves to cool them down in. And despite the faint yearning in my chest, whether legitimate feelings or the symbol's throbbing connection, my last clear vision was of bloody hands and desperation as I ran into the white storm. I could never go back to that. I was all alone, a lost girl in a lone desert with cotton in her hair.

  "I guess it doesn't really matter which way I walk," I thought out loud.

  "Not many people can walk far in any direction without something showing its ugly mug," a rough voice answered from above my head.

  I swung around and rolled backwards down my sand dune. I landed in a heap at the bottom, the backpack hooked around my wrist smacking me painfully on the back of the head.

  Untangling my limbs seemed to be a problem and anyone above could have closed the gap between us easily enough to strike. But when I finally jumped up, there was no fatal blow approaching. Instead, I gazed up the sand hill to see that the pole of wood I had clung to during the sand storm reached around ten feet high. And hanging near the middle, his feet not twelve inches from where my head had rested, was a bound man.

  "Oh my God," I breathed. He was above me the entire time.

  The man was staring down at me boldly and his gaze followed me up the hill as I approached. He was wild and dirty. The linen trousers that he wore were torn down the sides of his calves, exposing corded muscle that was grazed with angry, red scrapes. I looked quickly away from his bare chest, where I could see the sun had blistered and burned around the contours of his pecs. His eyes were cunning, like a wolf appraising whether to eat the sheep alive or use its claws to skin it first.

  I stopped a few feet from the base of the pole and waited for someone to say something. Why are you stuck on a pole? seemed a really stupid question. But valid. Unfortunately, I had nothing else.

  He licked his dry lips quickly and cleared his throat. "Do you have any water?" he croaked. He shook the dark hair from his brow, sending some sand flying off to the right.

  "If I did, I wouldn't know how I would get it to you." The man chuckled tiredly, but it quickly turned into a cough. I think the lunacy of the situation hadn't struck me yet, that I was talking to a man tied to a pole in the middle of the desert. "What do you mean I can't go far without something appearing?" I asked.

  The man cleared his throat and squinted his eyes into the sun overhead.

  "This is the land of mirage, the Wilds. There is no control over what happens here, so dreams flit in and out, wrecking what havoc they can."

  The Wilds, the bit of the map Cirrus wouldn't talk about.

  "Are we still in Palet?" I asked.

  "The Wilds is outside the Middle Canvas but yeah, it's all a part of the same crazy. You are in uncharted territory now. The dream you ran from just spat you out like something poisoned, so I doubt there is any chance they would welcome you back." His eyes made a trail down my neck and settled on my chest where the dreamcatcher lay. "But I suspect you need to keep moving, anyway."

  "Who are you, then?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest self-consciously. "Are you a dream or a criminal?"

  "Both," he answered roughly. "A dream in so far as much as everyone is a dream around here. Even Cirrus is a dream, although he is loath to admit the world began that way. And I am a criminal, because I dared to say it to his face."

  "Cirrus put you up there?" He smiled grimly and nodded.

  "My dear
older brother has a flair for the dramatics. I am sure you noticed."

  Older brother?

  I cursed. The chances made me want to punch someone in the mouth. He seemed to be on the same, murderous page as I was. The man on the pole flexed his fingers against the ropes that circled his wrists and I could almost imagine them wrapping around Cirrus's neck. These brothers, that looked absolutely nothing alike, locked in heavy battle above the desert sand. The two angels with the fiery sword, just as my uncle had painted . . .

  "Cirrus's desperation is making him sloppy," he was saying. "From the way he talked you shouldn't have even found your way into the Wilds."

  "Well, this is just flipping fantastic. How the hell am I supposed to get out?" I asked.

  "Let me off this pole and I will accompany you into someplace safer; a tame dream with people on your side." The man leaned down as far as he could and spoke in a low voice. "Cirrus has helpers everywhere. People who long for a stricter, ruling hand. You do not want to fall into their hands."

  "How do I know I can trust you? You're related."

  "Only by my whore of a mother. And it's Lucan. My name is Lucan," he answered fiercely. "You can trust that after what he did to me, I will pull his stomach out through his bowels with my fist. You can trust that."

  Right. Okay. Psycho brother on the war path. I can work with that.

  I started pulling at the frayed knots that were tied around his ankles. They were crusted and hard from sand and age, but they soon gave way after much pulling. Sucking at my fingers, I looked up for a way to untie the ropes at the top of the pole. Lucan swung from his wrists, grunting and puffing as his feet scrambled at the splintered plank. I figured that the only way to get Lucan down was to push the pole over, but that might land him on his face. And he was already the angriest person I had ever met in my life; did I really want to stoke the flame with a mouthful of sand?

  "I might have to push you down to get the ropes up high. Is that alright?" I asked.

  "Fine, just do it," he said through gritted teeth. His arms were straining to keep from sliding down to the ground. Imagining the damage that would be done to his back with a ten-foot drop down the sides of a cracked wooden beam made me cringe.