Mr. Dewberry walked more slowly than usual, and his eyes were dulled as if he hadn’t slept all night. He pushed the cart between the tables, turned slowly, and walked back to the kitchen door. Just before entering, he turned, looked at Nachton, and nodded. Olivia saw this and wondered if he was confirming what she and Nachton feared or if he was just saying hello.
Mr. Gloome and Mr. Schafer passed out the trays. Everyone seemed even more on edge than the previous day. Some of the children ate only half of their meal. Olivia and Nachton barely ate at all.
* * * * *
After breakfast, Mr. Gloome and Mr. Schafer ordered the children to form a line to exit the dining hall. Mr. Gloome kept glancing over at Mr. Schafer and shouting his orders louder, as if to show that he was better at this job. Mr. Gloome and Mr. Schafer lead the children from the dining hall and into the main hall. On their way across the main hall they heard a faint voice coming from the stairs. Everyone turned in the direction of the voice to see Ms. Canterbry.
“Form a line, please, children,” she said quietly. She held the rail of the staircase, her clouded eyes staring straight ahead. The children gasped when they saw her. Her skin had become paper-thin and her veins were clearly visible all over her body. Her complexion had become tinged with blue and her breathing came in short bursts. She somehow had brought herself to the bottom stair before the children left the dining hall, but she seemed unable to go any farther.
“What are you doing out here, you hag?” hissed Mr. Gloome. “I thought I locked you up in your room! Back to the dining hall children! Now!” He shouted at them, but the children didn’t budge. He turned to Mr. Schafer, whose mouth was open in shock. “Markus. Go get Anne and Yuki. Now!”
Mr. Schafer stood motionless for a few moments, before replying, “Yes, sir. Right away.” He ran from the hall, not taking his eyes off Ms. Canterbry.
The other nannies obviously had heard the commotion, because they were already on their way to the scene. Ms. Cooper, a short, chubby woman who helped the children with personal hygiene and other such matters, was panting heavily as she hurried to the stairs. When she caught sight of Ms. Canterbry, she stopped and screamed, placing her hand over her mouth. Ms. Kobayashi followed close behind her. She was very thin and had long, shining black hair and dark eyes. She threw her arms around Ms. Cooper when she realized what was happening.
“This is no time for hugging, you idiots!” Mr. Gloome shouted. “Get this miserable filth out of my orphanage!”
Ms. Cooper eyed Mr. Gloome with such hatred that he seemed a bit frightened. Then she turned to Ms. Canterbry and slowly walked up to her.
“Come now, children. We mustn’t be late for class. Much learning to do.” Ms. Canterbry’s voice was soft and distant. She hadn’t budged since the children had arrived. She continued to stare absently ahead.
“Okay, now, Dr. Canterbry,” said Ms. Cooper tenderly, “we’re going to take you back to your room. If you’ll just give me your h–” She reached up to take Ms. Canterbry’s hand, but upon the slightest touch, Ms. Canterbry’s skin broke and began to bleed. Ms. Cooper gasped and pulled her hand back, looking over to Mr. Gloome for advice.
“This is an outrage!” he screamed. “She will be the biggest stain that we’ve ever had to clean from this miserable place! Yuki, get these kids up to their rooms immediately!”
Ms. Kobayashi halfheartedly tried to corral the stunned children into one line as she began to sob. The children seemed confused about what to do. Some of them gasped for breath while others covered their faces, trying not to show the forbidden emotions. However, Olivia and Nachton both cried freely as they watched Ms. Canterbry slowly die in front of them. They weren’t ashamed to show their grief. Olivia held Nachton’s hand. Although she didn’t exactly know why, she knew that it provided a very miniscule amount of comfort for both of them.
Ms. Kobayashi ordered the children to move as quickly as possible up the stairs to their rooms. They did as they were ordered, each having to pass by Ms. Canterbry. When Olivia and Nachton had to pass, Olivia took a moment to quietly whisper, “I’m sorry, Ms. Canterbry,” before bursting into tears again.
The children were almost to their rooms when the entire orphanage rang with a scream. They all hurried back to the balcony and looked down to see what had happened.
Ms. Canterbry’s leg finally had given up its struggle to support her old body. She had fallen, and as she did, her skin had torn. Blood seeped from the cracks and formed a dark pool beneath her crumpled body. Everyone stood in horrified silence. Olivia turned her head away quickly and threw her arms around Nachton, a feeling of nausea forming rapidly in her stomach as the image of Ms. Canterbry’s body burned itself onto her mind.
“Anne. Yuki. Get over there and clean that mess up immediately!” Mr. Gloome yelled, his face red with anger. “I can’t believe this fool would come down here and die all over my floor!” He started to turn and walk toward his office, when Ms. Cooper’s voice caught his attention.
“Gloome! You sick, heartless imbecile,” Ms. Cooper hissed. She paused for a moment, her rage causing her to shake. She took a few deep breaths as she stared at Mr. Gloome with unforgiving eyes. “I have slaved under you for too long. How a despicable worm such as yourself was rewarded with your position is beyond my understanding.” Her voice quavered. Despite his attempts to maintain his composure, Mr. Gloome looked like a child being scolded.
“Anne–”
“Shut up! You will hear me this time!” She took a threatening step toward him. “We are all doomed here... including you. Dr. Canterbry spent nearly her entire life trying to bring a little peace back to this cursed world. And in her final moments you treat her like she is the scum beneath your feet.” Her voice broke, and tears ran down her reddened cheeks. “I will clean this up. Alone if I must. But you will come nowhere near her. You can just crawl back into your little hole, your little safehouse, and protect your precious vaccines—the ones you’ve been keeping from us!” She stopped, still glaring at Mr. Gloome, her breathing heavy and labored.
“Get...out,” Mr. Gloome said, trying his best to maintain eye contact and not look down at the floor. “Leave...my orphanage...now!”
Ms. Cooper began to laugh, despite her tears. Her face was sopping wet, and her nose had started to run, but she didn’t seem to care. She laughed harder and harder, almost maniacally, until after a few moments, she stopped.
“With pleasure, you fool,” she said darkly. She walked down the hallway to the entrance and deactivated the lock system to open the doors. Everyone watched in disbelief. Mr. Gloome’s mouth hung open. The doors hissed as they slid open, and a small crack appeared between them, just big enough for Ms. Cooper to slip through. She turned back toward Mr. Gloome, curtsied, and stepped out of the orphanage.
After the doors had shut tight once again, Mr. Gloome managed to pull his gaze from the entrance and stared at the floor, stunned.
“Mr. Gloome,” Ms. Kobayashi said, trembling, “the Hackers…She will die out th–”
“That is not my problem,” Mr. Gloome replied, pointing a finger at Ms. Kobayashi as he slowly looked up at her.
“But–” Ms. Kobayashi protested in shock.
“Shut up!” Mr. Gloome shouted. “Children. Rooms. Now.”
Ms. Kobayashi took one last look at the orphanage’s entrance as if hoping to see Ms. Cooper slip back through the doors. A long moment passed and the orphanage was silent. No one knew quite how he or she should react to what had taken place that morning. Ms. Kobayashi turned to Ms. Canterbry’s broken body lying in a puddle of blood. She then looked up at the children and motioned for them to go to their rooms before bending down to start cleaning the mess.
The children slowly moved toward their rooms in a stupor. Olivia walked Nachton, who was now so weak that he could barely stand on his own, to his door. After she helped him inside, she went to her own room and collapsed onto her bed, sobbing.
Chapter Three
A Curi
ous Creature
Olivia was standing in a forest. The ground beneath her was green and covered with beautiful flowers and tall grass. Ivy climbed the enormous, ancient trees that surrounded her. She tried to peer further into the distance, but couldn’t make out anything. Everything was dark.
As she gazed around, more of the forest came into view, but she could only focus on that which she was looking directly at; everything else was blurry. Am I dreaming? she thought to herself. She picked a direction and started walking, but she couldn’t lift her leg. She felt her muscles working as though she was walking, but her legs remained motionless.
Suddenly a deep, hoarse voice startled her from behind. “Hello, little human.”
Olivia spun around to see what appeared to be a man’s face smiling at her and hanging upside down from a tree. She gasped and tried to take a step back, but her legs wouldn’t budge. It took her a moment to understand what it was that had just spoken to her. The face was that of a man, but the creature wasn’t human; it appeared to be a goat. Where its eyes should have been were black sockets. Olivia opened her mouth to scream; she strained and felt the sound form in her throat, but it wouldn’t leave her mouth.
“Calm down,” the creature said calmly in the same raspy voice. It sounded as if it was speaking through ancient and dusty pipes rather than vocal cords. “Is my human impersonation off again? I am truly sorry, young one. It seems that I have been trying for ages to get that one right.” It shook its head as if it had done something wrong before suddenly dropping from the tree limb. Instead of hitting the ground, however, it vanished into a cloud of black fog.
Olivia looked around, frightened. The creature suddenly reappeared next to her. She noticed that its head and face matched its goat body. Its tail and beard consisted of the same black fog that it had just transformed into, but the rest of the goat’s body was covered in what looked like pitch-black fur. It paced slowly around Olivia, who was shaking in fear by this point. She tried once more to speak.
“P–please…don’t hurt me,” she said.
The goat stopped and turned its head sideways, as if confused. When it opened its mouth to speak, Olivia noticed that it still slightly resembled a human’s mouth.
“Hurt?” it asked, shocked. “I am in the right place, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know who—what you are or where we are,” Olivia said shakily. “But you’re scaring me, and I want to leave.”
“Oh, but you must know, my child,” said the goat. “This is your dream, after all.” It laughed a low, wheezy laugh and began circling Olivia again. She stared at the goat, still frightened and confused.
If this is a dream, then why does it seem so real? she thought to herself. Every dream she had ever had before was just a collection of odd scenes that had nothing to do with one another. But this dream was different. She felt herself breathing and was aware that she was thinking and fully conscious. Except for not being able to run when she tried to, which seemed very much dreamlike now that she thought about it, everything else appeared to be real, including the disturbing figure walking around her.
The goat creature suddenly stopped, looked up at her with its black-socket eyes, and smiled. “Be at ease, my child,” it said calmly. “I am not here to harm you in any way. I am only here to make sure.”
“Make sure of what? What are you?” asked Olivia.
“One question at a time,” the goat creature said and then smiled, all the while still circling Olivia. “I believe I will answer your second question first. Of course, if that is okay with you?” It looked up at Olivia, waiting for her approval.
“Uh, sure,” she said.
“I…” it began to say before leaping into the air and transforming into black fog and then into a large black rabbit and landing on a tree limb. It hung upside-down from the limb by its back feet, smiled at Olivia, opened its humanlike mouth, and continued, “am a somnivate.”
“A what?” asked Olivia, even more confused. The smile on the rabbit’s face faded.
“It’s a pity, really,” it said in a sad, distant voice, crossing its arms. “But it’s not hard to believe, I suppose, what with your realm the way it is these days and everything. How about this…does pooka ring a bell?”
“What are you talking about?” Olivia asked. She was becoming more and more befuddled the more the creature spoke.
“Nothing, child,” it said, shaking its head and smiling again. It dropped from the limb and hopped over to Olivia. It was a large rabbit compared to the ones Olivia had seen in Mr. Dewberry’s encyclopedias at the orphanage. “Anyway, I am a somnivate. A shapeshifter. A sailor of dreams. A guide, if you will. I am incredibly curious, and I am here to make sure of something. My name is Ink.”
Olivia froze. She hadn’t noticed before that the goat creature had resembled the scribbled drawing in her father’s journal. If she had any doubt before that the drawing and the creature were related, she had none now after hearing its name. She had to figure out why this creature was in her dream and why her father had seen it as well.
“What are you here to make sure of?” Olivia asked.
“Well, I can’t really tell you that, because then you would know,” Ink said. He laughed and then jumped back up onto the tree limb. “Tell me, child, what are you?”
That’s an odd question, Olivia thought. It should be obvious that I’m a human, but perhaps he’s confused because of my eyes. “A human,” she replied.
“No, I mean, what are you really? What do you feel you are?” Ink had become the goat again. He was lying on his stomach along the tree limb, his head propped on one of his hooves.
“Well, I…” Olivia felt muddled, but she also felt that she needed to answer this question seriously. She had thought frequently about who and what she truly was and had always wondered what her true purpose was ever since Mr. Dewberry had given her the journal, but she had never been asked to explain. In all her years locked up in the orphanage, she never once thought about composing a decent answer to this question. Finally collecting her thoughts into words felt good. “I suppose that I’m a human, but one living a life without direction. I’m confused as to why I must exist in a world that I didn’t corrupt and destroy. But, life must go on, I suppose.”
Ink’s laugh came as a low and raspy wheeze. “Impressive for such a young one. I have no doubts that you spend much time in deep thought. Very good. Now tell me, if you could have anything, what would it be?”
Olivia couldn’t determine what point Ink was trying to make with these questions, but she decided to answer anyway, if only to see where he was going with this conversation.
“I suppose I would like to meet my parents and be with them forever. But even more than that, I want to see the world as it once was, with all the destruction and disease gone forever.”
“Ah, I see,” Ink said. “You have been raised inside that orphanage and have had to deal with some nasty people, yet you are still selfless and have a good heart.”
“Why are you asking me these questions?” asked Olivia. She wasn’t sure how long they had been talking; it had felt like a few minutes and forever at the same time.
“I am making sure,” Ink replied.
“Of what?” Olivia was on the verge of becoming angry. Nothing had been explained to her, and the conversation with Ink appeared to be going nowhere in particular.
“Patience, my child,” insisted Ink. “I see you have a strong curiosity but lack patience. But please, I have one more question. Why?”
“Why? That’s the question?” asked Olivia.
“Why, yes…that is the question,” said Ink.
“Why what?”
“No. Just, why?”
Olivia was completely confused now. What was Ink trying to do? How could she just answer a question like that? She looked down at the ground, trying to make sense of it all. After a moment, she decided that she couldn’t figure out any of it and had no answer to Ink’s question.
“I don’t kno
w,” said Olivia. She looked up, expecting to see Ink, but he wasn’t there. She could hear his raspy laugh all around her, and she turned and looked in every direction, but he was nowhere to be found. She looked back at the tree where he had been sitting and noticed its bark was arranged in the shape of a face that oddly resembled Mr. Dewberry’s. Then the bark of the tree began to crack and move as the face began crying and calling for help. The tree started to bleed from the gaps in its bark, as if it had contracted the DNA Flu. Then, without warning, the tree suddenly and violently shattered, a shower of blood and bark flying in all directions. Olivia cried out in fear and shielded her face with her father’s journal.
When she slowly lowered the journal from in front of her face, she saw that she was no longer standing in the forest. Instead, she was in the center of her room in the orphanage, wearing her uniform and clutching her father’s journal. She quickly opened the journal and flipped to the page that held her father’s drawing of Ink. It appeared as it always had, except now Olivia had begun to understand. Her father must have seen Ink in his dreams, too. She closed her eyes, trying to remember the dream, but a sudden knock at her door snapped her back to reality.
“Please get ready and exit your room within the next five minutes,” Ms. Kobayashi said. Olivia opened her eyes, startled. She could hear Ms. Kobayashi knocking on her neighbor’s door to give the same order. For a moment she wondered why Mr. Gloome hadn’t made his morning announcement, but then the events of the previous day came flooding back all at once. She walked to her bed and placed the journal under the mattress.
The Last Fairy Tale Page 3
