I can’t speak. I’ve swallowed glass. But a faint silver jingle twinkles through my silence, pauses, zigzags closer, bright and cheerful in the twilight. A bell.
Mog’s bell.
William tries to sit up, to look for its source, but he can’t get farther than leaning awkwardly on his elbows, pushing at the rocks with his feet. The sound bobs down the slope. I half expect the quirk of a tail to brush against my legs, but there’s nothing there—just the sound, weaving around us once, twice. Urging me toward the water.
“Skye,” William begs as I step around him and pick up the stick from where I left it among the rocks. “Don’t leave me here.”
I don’t answer. I’m steel. I can do this.
But then there’s another sound: a crunch, a rustle. All around us. Twigs snapping under uneven footsteps. Without thinking, I meet William’s eyes, and I know exactly what he’s remembering. The dead animals, torn open. Kevin’s mangled leg.
He throws himself back into trying to escape, thrashing, scrambling to get his knees under him, to find some leverage. The branches stir all around us, parting before bony faces, cloth-bound arms, misshapen bodies, feathered and spiked and moss-covered. A dozen of them, more. Fanged jaws gape open, claws flex.
I shrink back a few steps. The icy river soaks through my shoes. William strains after me, against the bite of the wire, away from the monsters hobbling slowly, carefully toward him.
“You can’t do this!” It’s a sob. “Help me!”
The monsters peer cautiously at me, sink one by one into a creaky bow. There are so many. I could never fight them off. A rock rolls under my foot, and I lurch backward again. One splashing step. Two. The bell weaves closer and then away again, pinging impatiently, waiting for me.
“You can’t just leave me here! You can’t! Skye! Skye!”
They’re closing around him now. He knocks one of them over with a flailing kick, yanks his knees up as a bony hand delicately pulls his shirt back to expose his pale stomach, jerks his head away from the caress of sharp, mismatched bone fingers. And I just watch. I’m cold and sick and very far away. This can’t happen. The price is too high. Any second now he’ll break through my makeshift bonds. Any second now he’ll scramble up the slope away from me, back to the real world.
But there’s no escaping them. I’ve made it so there’s no escape. They bend over him, and there’s just enough space between their bodies for me to see the point of an antler descending slowly, so slowly, toward his face. His breathless whimpers fracture into a scream.
It goes on and on, a scream like I’ve never heard, like Kevin must have screamed. It fills my head, rings into the sky. Do something, I tell myself. Come on. One way or another. You have to do something. Do it now.
And I plunge the branch I’m clutching, the key, into the water, and twist.
The world wheels around me, the sunset light slides from the horizon, stars bloom overhead. Vertigo sends me to my knees in the water, and I clutch the branch with both hands. It’s the only solid thing in the world. The rocks sink away beneath me into soft, sucking mud. William’s voice is swallowed up by a tide of delighted, speculative whispers that fill my ears and then ebb away to the very edge of hearing. Silence finally falls, and I sag dizzily in place, shaking, retching.
Nightmare. That’s what this has to be. I can’t have done that, oh God, please don’t let me have done that for real. But the truth burrows deep, past the depth of any roots. Inescapable as a hand pushing me underwater. It comes howling out of me as a wail, an ugly, animal sound that fills the whole world and changes nothing. I can’t help it. I can’t stop my awful, hacking sobs any more than I can stop breathing. It can’t have happened. It makes no sense. There should have been someone to save him.
Instead, there was me.
And here I am. Without him. Still breathing, in spite of everything.
Because I have to. I have to keep going. I have to find Deirdre.
When I can finally lift my head again, the sky is full of a cold, green light, shifting and trembling like a field of wheat in the wind, stars glinting through it. The creek that I’m kneeling in is a shining path out into the wilderness, the smooth, glassy water reflecting the lurid sky. The house, the road, the empty lot have been erased—the forest is all there is, stretching out before me. Fireflies wink through the tangle like stars, but all around me it’s utterly silent in a way these woods have never been. Except for the clumsy sloshing of my movement, the rasp of my breath. Except for the bell twinkling impatiently in the brush, farther down the creek, circling back to see if I’m following yet.
I won’t think any more about what I’ve left behind. I can’t think about it. There was a price, and I paid it.
Out there, that’s where I have to go. It’s a road. And at its end is Deirdre.
Under my hand, the prickly branch I held has grown smooth, heavy, warm—a polished hilt. When I pull it from the water, it catches the shimmering light as if it’s part of the creek. A sword. Not the blunt wooden one I’ve always carried, but a true sword, liquid and sharp. It hurts to look at.
I stagger to my feet, making ripples shatter the perfect reflection of the shivering sky, and mop my face with my sleeve. Then I hold the sword out before me and splash forward, along the creek. Into the woods.
Twenty-Seven
It’s November in the real world. In November, the creek is barely more than a trickle. Here, in what feels like the first green flush of summer, it quickly climbs past my knees, drags at my thighs, threatening to unbalance me. I wade on slowly, pulling my feet loose with every step, holding the sword up—but to one side. I don’t trust myself not to trip.
I’ve buried terrible things before. I’m practically an expert at turning my back on things I don’t want to think about. But William…there’s no way not to think about William. No matter how sternly, how desperately I tell myself to leave it behind, memory stalks after me, a kaleidoscope of pleas and screams and his hands in my hair. It keeps catching up, forcing me to stagger to a nauseated halt, leaving me doubled over, leaking awful, useless noises.
Every time, I force myself to keep walking. Remind myself why I had to do it. Why I’m here.
Deirdre. I have to be close. I have to.
Around me, the woods are waking, stirring, unseen watchers tracking my progress. When I stop to squint into the darkness, everything is quiet in a gleeful way that feels like a hand pressed over a mouth to hold in laughter. Every now and again I think I catch the flap of wings from the corner of my eye, something alighting in the branches, bigger than any crow. Sometimes I think I see antlers, the hollows of skulls. But in the trembling green darkness, nothing is certain, everything bleeds together into shadow. My splashing passage covers a chorus of tiny movements. Whispers. The only sound I’m certain of is the bell, drawing me on through the trees.
The water creeps higher, over my hips, over the banks, until there’s no more floor to the forest. The trees are a band of tangled darkness uniting rippling light above and below. I push my way through an endless curtain of whispering cattails to emerge into an open, ghostly place—a swath of shimmering water punctuated by silver-gray trunks. All dead. They’ve been whittled down to tall spikes almost bare of branches, a battalion of pale spears reaching up into the belly of the sky.
The water is up to my breasts now, my armpits, lapping at Deirdre’s golden necklace. I stumble to a halt and jerk away from the touch of long, clinging strings of roots underwater. If I go any farther, I’ll have to swim.
I turn around and around, holding the sword out before me, sending waves rippling through the wide, black pool. The muddy bottom pulls at my feet, threatening to suck me down even farther. Was this just some sort of trap, in the end? Have they lured me here for nothing? Where is she?
“Deirdre.” It comes out weepy, a plea. I raise my voice. “Deirdre!”
The w
ord lands like a stone, sending ripples through the shivering light in the sky. The greenish radiance divides itself into a million silent, pulsing filaments. Lightning—no, floating hair, floating high as the clouds. I glimpse a thin crescent moon behind it in a two-horned crown, its points vanishingly sharp. The bare silver trunks of the trees become long pale limbs stepping out of the woods. The dark sky is a swath of robe hanging from mountains of shoulders. Some sort of giant stands towering over me, too huge to comprehend, stretching across half the sky.
I shrink back behind the sword and hold it up in an absurd attempt at self-defense, my face pressed into my sodden sleeve, a beetle not wanting to be crushed. Every breath a sob. If this is a monster I have to fight, then I’ve already lost. I can’t do it.
“Sorry,” says a familiar voice above me, and a hand closes on my arm, featherlight. A human hand, though it’s luminous as the sky, lit from within.
“Sorry,” Deirdre repeats. She’s crouched over me, balanced on her bare toes on the water like its surface is as steady as any floor. “I forgot. Is this better? It’s just me.”
Her hair streams white over her shoulders, over her knees, glowing against the soft dark of some sort of fabric draped around her; it blurs into the water, into the night, its edges indistinguishable. The moon still lingers behind her head, as if it’s been pinned there. It’s hard to meet her eyes; they’ve turned silver, the color of the creek at nightfall. When I’m not looking right at her, the shape of her bones strobes to the surface, outlines flashing in and out of sight like fish underwater.
“Are you dead?” I whisper, and she bursts into peals of laughter. They ring out over the water, into the woods.
“Are you?” She giggles, snorting, and splashes me with one hand. “Come on. Ask a better question.”
It must be a trick. It must be another test, another game, an image of her they’ve stolen and set loose to trap me. But it’s so her. She rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, biting her knuckles, her face alight with something she can’t wait to tell me. I keep the sword up, but I’m blinking through helpless tears. It has to be her. My beautiful, impossible sister.
“Deirdre,” I croak. “You have to come home.”
She rolls her eyes, makes a tsk of impatience.
“No, no,” she says. “You’re supposed to ask me. Go on. You know you want to.”
“Ask what?” She just grins at me. “Deirdre, please, you have no idea what I’ve been through to find you!”
“But I do,” she says, and her smile widens. “You were amazing. You were better than in any of our games. I knew you’d come.”
The conversation is shifting under me, giving way like the mud beneath my feet.
“Seriously,” I plead, “please, let’s just go. They’ll let us go now, they have to. They’d better.”
“Who?” Deirdre says, glancing over her shoulder. “You mean them?”
When I follow her gaze, the pale skulls of the monsters’ faces gleam against the night behind her. They’re shambling over the water without sinking. I stagger back a step, choking on rage and panic, before hurling myself at them, sword held high to beat them back from her—but Deirdre sighs and puts up a hand, and suddenly I’m blundering into a driftwood barrier, a long, gray trunk that wasn’t there before, blocking my path, walling them off.
She giggles at my bewilderment, and the sound changes in the air, makes the reeds shiver and whisper. Her mouth moves, but it’s their voices that speak, that flutter in the air to touch my face, making me start back in revulsion.
Relax, Queen of Swords, relax, don’t you get it?
“This is a trick!” I cry, leveling the sword. “Where’s my sister? You promised!”
“Oh, Skye,” she sighs in her own voice again, “seriously. Think about it for a second.” Her smile flickers back to life. “Sharpen up.”
I stare at her.
“That was you,” I whisper. She claps her hands, a delighted squeal escaping her. “That was you? That whole time?”
“Isn’t it amazing?” She beams at me, splashes her hands in the water, like she can’t contain herself. “Isn’t it fantastic?”
I stagger back in the water, almost drop the sword. The world is unraveling around me, crashing in on me piece by piece, and William’s horrified denials echo in my head. No. No, no, no.
“What did you do?”
“I made myself a kingdom,” she says simply, ignoring the whimper in my voice. “A new one. Somewhere I could start over. And now you can too!”
“But Deirdre, they—you made me—”
“Made you?” Deirdre blinks. “I didn’t make you do anything.”
“You did!” It’s a wail, desperate and childish, and I don’t care. I could scream. It’s not true. It’s not real. “You made me! You made me—”
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” she says, like it should be obvious. “I thought they’d have to drag you in here kicking and screaming.” She studies me, smiling. “This was way more fun.”
“But I left him.” The words fall like stones. Real and irreversible. “I left William back there—with those—those things—”
“You totally did,” Deirdre says. The smile turns misty. “I knew you still loved me.”
I can’t stand still, the thought is cutting me open. I limp away from it, but it’s closing in on every side, teeth sinking into me like knives, already done, already decided. I had no choice. I had no choice. This can’t be true. This can’t be happening.
“He was nice to you!” I cry. “He never did anything to you. He shot his own father with an arrow because his friends were in danger! We thought you were in danger!”
“No,” she says crisply, “he told you himself. He thought he was in danger.” Her expression darkens. “He thought he could take you from me. Well, you showed him. And now we’re together again. Just us. You said you wanted to start over, didn’t you? Here’s your chance.”
“I was starting over! I was doing fine!”
“With them? With him?” Deirdre scowls. “Who did you think you were kidding? I know you. You’re the Queen of Swords. You’re the top of the food chain. Compared to you, they’re all rabbits. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Look at what you did to Tyler.”
“Don’t talk to me about Tyler! I was trying to protect you!”
“Come on, Skye. I already know, all right? I know the real secret. You do too.”
“I’m not talking about this! I already fucking confessed!”
“No, you didn’t,” Deirdre says. “Not the part that counts. Go ahead. I want to hear you say it. Why did you do it?”
I’m sinking. I’m sinking into time like it’s mud. I’ll never come up for air. I’ll be there forever, walking away from the stick in the river, following Deirdre over the footbridge. Her step was lighter, mine deliberate. It wasn’t rage that poured through me. It was something colder. I didn’t know yet what I was going to do, but it would be terrible. I’d make them remember me when they looked at my sister. I’d make them fear my name.
“I did it because I could,” I whisper. “Because I knew I could hurt him.”
Deirdre smiles, almost gently. “And?”
It wasn’t just that I wanted him to stop. I wanted to make him stop. I wanted the power to make him stop—that’s the word for the sharp hungry edge that filled me that day. That carried me down through the valley to crouch among the trees, that kept my hand on the back of his head, pushing him down, pushing him under, straddling his back as he bucked and thrashed. Unable to escape.
“I did it because I wanted to.” The words are ash in my mouth. “I wanted to hurt him. I was stronger than him. And—and it felt good.”
Deirdre’s smile widens, grows pointed, sharp-edged as the moon hovering behind her.
“There.” She sits back on her heels. “See? Yo
u don’t belong there any more than I do. Don’t you get it? That’s what I’m doing here. I’m making a place for us. A place where there aren’t any rules. Where we make the rules.”
“But that’s not what I wanted,” I cry. “That’s not what I paid for!”
“And what about me? What about what I paid for? Do you think this sort of thing comes for free?”
“Is that what happened to Mog?”
She withdraws at that, going dim, turns her face away. The shadows of her teeth flicker through her cheek.
“Everything has a price,” she says. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter.” She puts a hand to her shoulder, and for a moment a cloud of shadow gathers there, a long tail, a head butting into her fingers, making the bell ping. “We’re together now.”
“I paid my price to bring you home!”
“I can’t go home, Skye.”
“Why not? What’s out here?” I heft the sword, swing around in a circle, but there’s nothing but the far black line of the trees. “Come on out, whatever the fuck you are! We had a deal!”
“Skye. Come on. It’s just me.”
“Something tricked you! Something talked you into this! You didn’t do all this by yourself!”
“Nothing tricked me.” She looks away, her brow furrowed, as if she’s trying to remember something. Her bones shift and tremble under her skin. “We understood each other. Nobody else did. We both felt…betrayed. And angry. We had the same enemies. Together we could make…everything we wanted. For real. I gave them a way back.” Her lip curls in a flash of inhuman disdain. “A way to hurt the invaders. And…and a way for me to find you.”
“Who’s we?”
Deirdre sweeps a hand across the landscape. “The trees. The water. All of this.” She sighs at my uncomprehending stare. “It’s hard to explain. But I paid the price they asked for. There’s…no we anymore. No they. I’m the woods now. They’re me.”
“No. Bullshit. You’re my sister. You have to come with me.”
Here There Are Monsters Page 24
