by Walsh, Sara
Stunned, I held my breath. I knew it was the place. Truly, I did. Or was my mind just playing tricks? I wanted it to be this house—a picture-perfect cabin lodged between the forest and the mountains, home to a Freeman of Welkin’s Valley.
This was the house where I’d been born.
SIXTEEN
Can I go in?” I asked.
Sol squeezed my hand. A couple of hours ago I would have done anything to have him touch me again. Now I was so numb I could hardly feel him there.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Look around while we get the place ready for tonight.”
It sounded simple, but like so many things in life, when it came down to it, it was harder than it looked.
Sol watched my first tentative steps. After my meltdown earlier, I was determined to appear strong. I dropped my pack on the porch, then opened the door and stepped inside.
I entered into a kitchen with a range, wood burning, I guessed. Did they have oil or gas? And a table, like the table where I’d sat with Pete and Jay a thousand times. Pots on a dresser. Dust covered every surface, but other than that, it was untouched by time or nature. There were two other doors: one to the left, one to the right. A narrow staircase stood in the corner.
I inhaled deeply, thinking maybe I’d catch a whiff of something familiar. You know, like animals who can tell their kin by scent. All I smelled was damp, musty wood. But had I really expected anything more? I’d been born here, never lived here. Any notion that I knew this place was plain old crazy.
The floor creaked beneath me as I crossed the kitchen. Through the door to the left was a larger room with a stone hearth and chairs upholstered in fur and hide. It was like a stage set for a show with the lights dimmed and with actors waiting in the wings. Or it was a museum. Bromasta Rheinhold’s museum. My dad.
“It’ll wear off.”
I’d been so enthralled I hadn’t noticed Sol enter. He’d rolled up his sleeves, lean muscle visible in his folded arms.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“You said, ‘This is too weird,’” Sol replied, his expression soft. “I said, ‘It’ll wear off.’”
So I was talking to myself without realizing it. Not a good sign.
He smiled warmly, the gesture so open it left me aching for him to hold me again. “For what it’s worth,” he said. “I think you’re handling all of this really well.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t expand on his comment, but drew a deep breath and turned to the table, almost as if to hide his face. “We’re going to move this outside so there’s room for the horses. Can you check upstairs? Especially the windows.”
“Of course,” I replied, grateful for the task. “It’ll give me something to do.”
The staircase loomed. I grasped the rail and headed up, imagining footsteps overhead. I’d always believed that a building could absorb its history, just as when I had sat in the empty gym at school and could almost hear the shouts and screams of a thousand games played there. Might some memory of my father stalk the upper floors of the house, his spirit embedded in the timber beams?
Off the upstairs hallway, I found a bedroom. A rug lay on the floor, blue with a white flower woven in the center. On a shelf sat a corn doll, about the size of my hand, with long yellow hair and a scarlet dress. It was the same as a doll I’d made at a craft camp years ago in Des Moines. I didn’t know where that doll had gone. I’d thought it had gotten lost in the clutter at Grandma’s, then tossed out with all the other junk after she’d died. I stared at its painted face, suddenly convinced that this had been my room.
I had been a baby when Grandma had taken me. There was no way I could have remembered this place. And even if the room had once belonged to me, it didn’t now. It belonged to this house.
Mind adrift between the two worlds, I stepped up to the window and peered out from between the woolen drapes. The kitchen table stood in the yard. Delane had found buckets for the horses from somewhere and the water inside them glistened. But it was Sol I watched.
He made for the barn, head down, on a mission. Willie had nailed it about Sol. He was 100 percent, sugar-coated, eye candy. But I was starting to think he was much more than that. He’d been so warm and kind when I’d sobbed on his shoulder, and then again, downstairs. He was literally a world away from the aloof newcomer he’d been at school. That Sol had been the one to tell me about my dad felt strangely intimate.
I sighed.
“Just check the windows, Mia. Get a grip.”
The next room was identical to the first. I rattled the window. It was secure. Feeling more confident, a little more like myself, I flung open the next door. I screamed.
A floor to ceiling, wall to wall mass of gray cobweb crawling with huge, brown spiny legs confronted me. I say legs—I didn’t hang around long enough to take in much of anything else. I bolted out, slamming the door behind me. Chills coursed my spine. I slapped my hair, shivered and shook, as I tried to shed the creep factor from my skin.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs and Delane darted into the passage. “We heard a scream, a bang!” he gasped.
I pointed at the closed door. “There,” I squeaked. “They’re in there.”
Delane stalked to my side, his brow low, ready to fight. “What is it?” he whispered, his body tense.
“It’s about twenty huffing great big spiders!”
Delane paused, his eyebrows raised. “Mia!”
“What do you mean ‘Mia’?” I grabbed his arm. “Delane, there are twenty huffing great big spiders in there!” Clearly Delane misunderstood the seriousness of the situation.
“How big?” he asked.
“What do you mean how big?”
“Well,” he made a gap between his hands about the size of a dinner plate, “this big? Or, this big?” He widened the gap to the size of a garbage can lid.
“The first!” I squealed. “You get spiders that other size?”
“Some,” he replied, seemingly not the least bit disturbed. “Don’t you?”
“Not anywhere you’ll ever catch me.”
Before I could save him from certain doom, Delane opened the door. Legs scurried to all corners, forcing an encore of the Mia Stone: Elastic Limbs extravaganza. Several of the foul fiends held their ground. Motionless, they eyeballed me with legs outstretched. At least ten inches across, each spider had a scarlet slash along its hairy, brown back.
“Stripe-back nest,” said Delane. “Impressive.”
Not a description I’d use. “Are they poisonous?”
“Nah. Just ugly.” He closed the door. “They’re actually handy to have around. Stripe-backs eat scroachers—nasty little critters that chew their way through anything.”
“Can you get rid of them?” I asked. With one eye on the door, my mind contemplated an overnight stay in an already populated house.
“Tricky,” said Delane. “I had one in my bedroom when I was young. You could hear it in the walls. Thing is, they’re too fast to catch. This one demolished a chair in, like—”
“I meant the stripe-backs!”
“Oh,” he laughed. “Sure, you can get rid of them. Just pick them up and throw them out.”
Like that was ever going to happen. I tried to free myself from what Willie would call, “A State of Revoltitude.” I shook out my limbs and cried, “Blahhhgrhllahaa.”
“You’re having a good day,” commented Delane.
That earned him thump on the arm. “I feel like I’m on a twisted student-exchange program.”
I don’t think he knew what I meant. He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. His grin faded. “Mia, just so you know, I always voted ‘aye’ on telling you about Bromasta.”
The stripe-backs momentarily forgotten, I nodded. “I know,” I said. “Sol’s the secret keeper.”
“He has a lot on his mind,” said Delane. “But Solandun’s no liar, Mia. He’s worried about you. This place isn’t like where
you’re from.”
Talk about understatement. “No,” I said. “We don’t go around knocking each other’s blocks off, if that’s what you mean. Well, not most of the time.”
A little twinkle, like Pete’s when a good mood struck him, entered Delane’s blue eyes. “Do you miss it?”
“Sort of,” I said. As soon as I said it, I thought of the cafeteria at Crownsville High, my bedroom at home, and Rusty vacationing over at Reggie West’s Motor Repair and Salvage. I sighed. “Delane, I just want to stay alive long enough to find Jay.”
“Then you should help with some last-minute preparations.” He playfully slapped me on the back, no doubt revenge for my well-placed thump. “Want to try some magic?”
* * *
To me, magic meant wicked old witches and abracadabra. But that wasn’t how they did things in Brakaland.
I balanced an orb on my palm and gazed at the purple grain inside. Delane and I stood just off the porch. Sol perched on the railing, watching us with one eye and the valley slopes with the other.
“Ready?” asked Delane. He looked as excited as when Jay came home with a new game. “Just squash it.”
I wanted to—I really wanted to—but it was like holding a pin to a balloon and not knowing when you’d hear the BANG.
“I thought magic was banned.”
“That was way before,” Delane replied, waving the thought away. “Besides, this is basic stuff. We use whatever we can get our hands on these days.”
I focused on the orb. “Won’t I get cut?”
“Mia, I promise. Just crush it, and then throw it.”
Okay. I could do this. “One. Two . . .”
I held my breath, crushed the orb between my palms, and made a tossing motion, but there was nothing to toss. As soon as I’d applied pressure, the orb in my hand vanished and heat entered my palms. A flash of silver, like fairy dust, sparkled in front of my eyes. I checked my hand to find no blood and no orb.
“Told you it was easy,” said Delane. He pointed up. A ball of purple light was suspended above us. “Now watch.”
Purple rays radiated from the ball of light like spokes on a wagon wheel. They stretched rigidly in every direction, ten feet in length, an amethyst star twinkling in the air.
“I did that,” I said, and feeling rather proud of myself, I grinned at Sol. “That’s my spell.”
Sol laughed and flashed me a glimpse of an orb in his hand. “Watch this.”
He jumped from the railing, crushed his orb, and tossed it about twenty feet from mine. As if drawn by magnetism, the rays from Sol’s spell joined with the spokes from mine until an intricate lattice hung above our heads, glistening purple in what was left of day’s light.
“It’s a repeller,” said Delane, taking more orbs from his pack. “We’ll connect them around the house.”
“And the demons can’t get through?”
“Not a chance.”
That was more like it. “Then let me do another.”
“But space them apart,” Delane warned. “We don’t have that many. So aim well.”
The purple lattice grew. Heat radiated from its shimmering threads. Like a pretty version of the stripe-back nest, the entire house was soon cocooned in a web of purple light.
“We can pass through it,” said Delane, and demonstrated by slicing a hand through the beams. “But not demons. Repellers do dreadful things to their blood.”
“Good,” I replied. Anything to exact revenge on a shadow imp. As I rummaged through the pack for more amethyst orbs, my hand chanced on a yellow sphere that was slightly larger in size. “What’s this one do?” I asked, making a grab for it.
Sol leapt to my side. “Careful,” he said. He grasped my wrist before I could touch the orb. “These make a big bang. Blow us to the stars, and we won’t have to worry about demons.”
I didn’t get chance to apologize. A scream echoed through the valley.
Except for the spell of protection around us, it was almost dark. From what we could see, the trees stood silent and still. All that moved was the crimson mist.
“Just in time,” said Sol.
Delane bounded over. He grabbed the bag off the ground. “Who’s hungry? We’ve got Snickers.”
Now I really had heard it all. “Snickers?”
“Tiamet brings them over,” he continued. He entered the house, leading us to the den. “For Rip. He loves them.”
The state of Rip’s teeth finally made sense. “Pure sugary goodness. You know, we have lots of tasty treats on the Other Side.”
“But Snickers have to be the best.”
The repellers cast a purple glow into the den. The demons were out there—I was certain of that—but there was no way they could get inside.
Sol lit a fire in the hearth as Delane and I brought blankets and rugs from around the house and prepared for a night on the floor. Sol’s fire soon warmed the den.
After eating our nutritious supper, Delane wandered to the window.
“Maybe the demons won’t find us here,” I said, though we’d created a huge purple beacon.
“No chance of that,” replied Delane. He motioned for me to join him.
Blackness hung heavy outside, an ominous curtain shrouding whatever lurked in the void. Through a gap in the lattice, something lurched by the barrier, larger than a shadow imp or visage demon.
“That looked like a tallon demon,” said Delane. “Very nasty.”
I sensed Sol come up behind me. His chest brushed my back as he too peered outside.
The demons had increased in number, but I saw only Sol’s reflection in the murky glass. Every time he breathed I felt his chest move against me. I was no squirt, but I always forgot how tall he was until he was right beside me. Did he have the faintest idea how I felt when I was around him?
I didn’t feel that way around Delane. Delane was cute, cute enough to spin heads at Crownsville High. But butterflies didn’t migrate through my gut when I saw him as they did when I was with Sol.
I caught Delane looking at me, then Sol. And though the expression was barely perceptible, I was sure he frowned.
Another shriek rang from right outside the house and the look on Delane’s face lifted. He leaned in to the window. “Looks like we have more company,” he said. “Here they come.”
SEVENTEEN
Picture a crowd on TV. A riot or a protest. Picture surging bodies, snarls, pumping fists. That’s how they came—a mass of demons, all different breeds, all drawn by the spell and the scent of what hid behind it. One by one, they launched at the purple web. One by one the web threw them back.
“They’re looking for weaknesses,” said Sol.
“But we’re safe, right?” I asked.
“For as long as the spell holds.”
“And how long’s that?”
“Long enough.”
Only the demons closest to the magic web were visible. Several were winged, like gargantuan bats, and soared above the rabble, their ghastly faces tinged with purple light. They paid each other no heed. All they wanted was us.
“This can’t go on all night,” I said. “Surely, they’ll—”
A thud came from above. We all stared at the ceiling. Another thud. A wailing screech followed.
Sol dashed to the door. “There must be a gap. They’re on the roof!”
Delane snatched up the pack with the remaining spells and hurried after him. It was like the shadow imps in the forest all over again. “You’re not going out there,” I cried, trailing behind.
“Not me,” said Delane. He thrust the pack into Sol’s arms.
“But it’s crazy out there,” I said, trying to force Sol to look at me. He wouldn’t. “It’s suicide, Sol. I’m serious. Don’t do it.”
Another thud. And another. My heart just about hit the ceiling.
I grabbed Sol’s arm, tugged. Finally, he looked at me. “Sol, there were only a couple of them in the woods earlier. There’re a million out there now.”
&nb
sp; “And they’re trying to find a way in.” He took my hand and gently removed it from his arm. “Keep the door shut. Don’t come out, for any reason.”
He left the den, closing the door behind him.
I turned on Delane. “You’re just going to let him do this?” I asked. “Delane?”
The banging took on rhythm. Fists pounding on wood, shaking the rafters above us.
“Delane!”
This wasn’t right. If it had been Willie, Kieran, or Seth, I would have tied them to the ground before letting this insanity take them. Or we would have stood at each other’s side, fighting to the death as one. After everything we’d been through together, I couldn’t leave Sol out there alone. Determined to intervene, I snatched my sword from the hearth and headed for the door.
Delane was already a step ahead. He slammed his back against the door. “You’re staying here,” he said, a touch of Sol’s tone in his voice.
I brandished the sword like a baseball bat, ready to swing at anything that threatened Sol’s life. “Get out of my way.”
“Mia, he’ll make it.”
“Delane, nothing, not that tattoo, not some spell is going to stop that many demons! Now get out of my way.”
“And what do you plan to do?” he asked, his back still bracing the door. “Take them on like the shadow imp?”
As soon as he said it, I pulled back, stung—though, of course, he was right.
“Then show me what to do with this thing,” I begged. I pointed the sword, planted my feet, trying to make him see that we could help. “Delane, show me how to use it!”
Delane grabbed my wrists and placed my open hand around the fist that gripped the sword. “You hold it firm,” he said, and squeezed. His eyes narrowed. “And if anything comes through that door, you ram that blade through its gut so hard that it comes out the other side.”
My breath caught in the back of my throat. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. “And what about Sol?”
Delane shook his head. “Mia, there are things out there worse than shadow imps and visage demons. There are creatures with claws like razors that can slit your throat with a touch. Demons that spit poison into your eyes, blinding you before they tear you apart. You, me, we wouldn’t last a second out there, but Solandun carries the Lunestral. You don’t know its strength.” He squeezed my hands once more before releasing his grip. “He’ll make it.”
