by Tina Chan
Stevey hunched over an empty whiskey bottle. His eyes wandered aimlessly all over the place. Kristi approached him with trepidation. She had no idea how she had arrived back at Stevey’s shack in the woods. For some reason, she was all by herself.
“Who is it?” Stevey grunted.
“It’s me, Kristi.”
“Stevey doesn’t want to see Kristi.”
“I have some questions for you.”
Stevey threw the whiskey bottle at her head. He had a startlingly good aim and arm; he would’ve nailed her if she hadn’t been on her guard.
“Why did you throw the bottle at me?”
“Stevey doesn’t want to see you. Go away,” Stevey replied with a hint of whining in his voice.
Something vicious inside Kristi erupted and she marched over to Stevey and roughly shook him by the shoulders.
“Answer my questions or else,” she snarled.
Stevey cowered in fear and tried to writhe out of her grip, bringing Kristi back to her senses. What came over me? Kristi wondered. She dropped her hands and took a step back. Stevey ran away from her and hid behind a tree.
“Stevey, I’m sorry,” she called out. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Please come out.”
Stevey didn’t emerge from behind the huge elm tree. “Stevey doesn’t like the questions you ask,” he said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask you.”
“Kristi gives Stevey bad memories,” Stevey stuttered from behind the tree.
An uncomfortable silence blossomed in the air. The silence grew and strangled the space like a weed. It was Stevey who timidly broke it.
“Stevey has something to show you.” His voice was steady now, something that Kristi wasn’t expecting considering he had been trembling with fear just minutes ago.
“Okay. What do you want to show me?”
“Come here. Stevey has a secret to show you.”
Her sixth sense tugged at her gut, warning her to run away from this place as fast as possible. On the other hand, Kristi was curious about what Stevey wanted to show her. She squashed her fears down deep inside and walked over to Stevey.
His back was turned to her when she inched over to him.
“What is it that you wanted to show me?” Kristi asked.
Stevey spun around and lunged at her. His eyes glowed red and razor-sharp claws erupted from his fingers. Kristi ducked to the right and felt the air hiss where Stevey attempted to swipe at her.
“What are you?” she gasped.
Stevey let loose a string of cackles and swiped his claws at her shoulders again. She dodged half a second too late and his ragged nails raked down her left shoulder. Blood welled out from the three gashes. At the sight of her blood, Stevey seemed to be hyped into a feverous state.
“Help!” Kristi yelled into the emptiness.
“No one can hear you,” Stevey grinned a malevolent grin.
He tackled her to the ground. His breath stunk of stale liquor. Flames danced in his eyes.
“Die,” he growled into Kristi’s ear and lazily dragged a single talon across her throat.
She screamed.
Thud!
Kristi bolted upright in bed, banging her head against the headboard. She checked herself for any injuries and then threw a glance at the clock on the bed stand.
“That was just a nightmare,” she reassured herself.
She patted the bed to make sure it was solid and not an illusion while her heart hammered uncontrollably against her chest. There was no point in trying to fall back asleep; she was too disturbed by the nightmare, so she decided to make some French toast for breakfast. Kristi snatched some clothes and tiptoed into the bathroom. Once she had tidied up, she flicked on the kitchen lights and got to work.
Let’s see, she thought, I need milk, eggs, bread and butter. She hummed the theme song of The Phantom of the Opera while gathering all the ingredients and started whisking the milk and eggs together. Then she heated up the pan and greased it with a stick of butter. When she dipped the bread into the egg-milk mixture, she accidently knocked over the bowl of pretzels that had been sitting on the counter, leftover from the night before.
“I’ll clean that up after I make this piece of French toast,” she said to herself.
The pan sizzled and hissed as breakfast cooked on the stove. After she was satisfied that particular piece of French toast was done, she flipped it onto a plate and turned around to clean up the pretzels.
The pretzels were already swept from the floor. She stopped humming and frowned.
Then Kristi looked up and saw Troop observing her from the far side of the kitchen. She knew at once that it was he who had cleaned up the spilt pretzels.
“Thanks,” she said curtly and returned to making breakfast.
“I see you still haven’t forgiven me.”
Kristi dropped another piece of bread into the egg-milk mixture, watching it soak up the liquid. “You best better believe that.”
“Why up so early?” Troop asked. “From what Jaiden told me last night, you’re not a morning person.”
“That is none of your business,” she said, feeling displeased that Jaiden was talking to Troop about her when she wasn’t around.
“Is there any chance that you’ll forgive me? I really don’t want to be traveling with someone who’s going to be giving me the death-eye every five minutes for the next few weeks.” Troop ran his fingers through his hair.
Kristi pretended to think about his question with exaggerated gestures then said, “Let’s see…No.”
The smell of burning French toast brought her attention back to making breakfast. She flipped the burnt piece into the trash and started on the next slice.
Troop said no more and just watched. Kristi pretended she didn’t feel bothered by his presence. Her pretending didn’t last long.
“That’s kind of creepy,” she commented a few minutes later.
“What?”
“You just standing there and watching.” Kristi picked up the dirty whisks, bowls and the pan she had used to make breakfast and rinsed them off. “Don’t you have something better to do?”
“Not really.”
A bleary-eyed Chelsa stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes and giving the impression that she had just woken up. She stopped walking and looked from Kristi to Troop then from Troop back to Kristi.
“Were you two actually having a conversation?”
“Surprisingly, yes,” Troop said.
At the same time Kristi said, “Only something resembling a conversation.”
“We need new ID cards,” Kristi said.
They were packing up their belongings and preparing to leave the Rex Hotel. She was going to miss this plush lodging.
“Already thought of that,” Chelsa replied. “I ordered new cards for you and Jaiden last night. They should have already arrived. We’ll pick them up when we head out.”
They hoisted up their backpacks and took the elevator down to the lobby. Chelsa spoke with the receptionist and returned clutching a slim package. After making sure there weren’t any prying eyes around, Chelsa discreetly handed Jaiden and Kristi their new ID cards.
Kristi’s card name was still Kelly Harrison, but the girl’s picture resembled her this time. They shared the same red-brown hair color, at any rate.
“Let’s go get the droid-horses,” Jaiden said.
The stable, like the rest of the hotel, was grand and extravagant. The stable walls were made out of marble bricks and livery dressed stable-hands patrolled the grounds. They entered through the stable doors, which could’ve fit twenty horses abreast with no problem. Rows upon rows of droid-horses peered at them over their stall doors.
Kristi scanned the horses until she found the one she was looking for. White fur gleaming and intelligent eyes gazing back at her stood Flurry. A little bubble of happiness rose inside her. Tiffany had kept her word and tracked down Flurry.
“I missed you so much.”
Flurry’s warm, chocolate-brown eyes appraised Kristi as if to say, “And I you.”
Tiffany was even nice enough to purchase quality tack for Flurry.
“Troop, you can ride Mist,” said Jaiden. “Mist is the gray droid-horse beside the appaloosa.”
Kristi felt bad for Mist for having to be ridden by a jerk. Troop seemed like the type of person who yanked on the reins too hard or dug his heels into the horse too sharply. She finished tacking up Flurry and waited for Jaiden, Troop and Chelsa to meet her outside.
Oppidum, the town that Finn should be in, was roughly four hundred miles from Charleston if they took Route 56. However, they couldn’t take Route 56 due to landslides. They had to detour around the stretch of Route 56 buried underneath tons of earth and rock. As a result, traveling on South Lane—which added a good fifty miles—was the fastest route to Oppidum.
Jaiden and Chelsa rode in the front, side by side. Troop and Kristi trailed behind them, an awkward wall of silence between them.
Kristi concealed her astonishment; Troop was actually a good rider. He had a gentle but firm hand—not that it would’ve mattered since Mist was a droid and didn’t have feelings. Nevertheless, Kristi always acted as if droid-horses were real horses.
Despite the fact that three days had passed by uneventfully, there was still tangible tension taut between Troop and Kristi. Not that Troop didn’t attempt to relieve some of the tension. Several times. All in vain.
“How did Chelsa get a hold of a real leopard?” Troop asked.
Another attempt to stir up some conversation.
“A friend gave it to her.”
The only travelers they ever saw on the road were merchants with their truckloads of goods, and they always traveled in groups of five or more. Bandit activity was skyrocketing and most people chose to travel by train or plane rather than risk their lives; taking the roads was becoming riskier every day.
So far, their luck had held and they hadn’t encountered any more bandits. Still, that didn’t mean they allowed their guard to drop.
The sun started to sink below the horizon. Within an hour, it would be dark.
“We should stop soon,” Kristi said, projecting her voice loud enough for Chelsa and Jaiden to hear.
“Let’s set the camp at the next patch of clearing we find,” replied Chelsa.
In less than ten minutes, a small field overgrown with prairie grass came into view. It was the ideal place to spend the night. They had a clear view from all four sides of the camp so bandits couldn’t sneak up on them. Of course, that also meant they could be spotted from the road, but they would have enough time to mount the droid-horses and escape if the need came.
Kristi dismounted and allowed Flurry to charge her solar cells with what little sunlight was left in the day.
“Jaiden, want to come with me to find water for tonight’s instant noodle?” Chelsa asked.
He nodded and the two of them left in search of the stream they had passed earlier.
“Do you want to start the fire or put up the tent?” Troop asked Kristi.
“Don’t care.”
He started to gather sticks and stones to make a campfire, so Kristi unceremoniously dumped the tent out from its bag. She had never set up the tent by herself before; either Jaiden or Chelsa had always been beside her to help with the assembling. She now regretted not paying more attention to how to assemble the tent.
The jumbled mess of metal poles and fabric lay on the ground dauntingly.
“Here goes nothing,” Kristi mumbled.
She picked up the longest metal pole she could find and pushed it into a connecter. It locked in with a click. Maybe this isn’t so hard after all. Kristi attached the rest of the tent parts in no particular order.
She surveyed the tent she had put together. To be honest, it wasn’t so much a tent as it was a compilation of metal and fabric. So maybe the tent was harder to put together than I thought. With a groan, Kristi started to disassemble everything. Troop noticed her plight and made a move to take apart the “tent” without a word.
She checked the time. Fifteen minutes had passed and Jaiden and Chelsa still hadn’t returned. A sliver of worry embedded itself in her, but she decided to wait for another ten minutes before looking for them. All of the parts of the tent lay neatly on the ground, sorted into different piles.
“Thanks,” Kristi said to Troop when he began to put together the tent. “But I can do this myself.”
He ignored her and went right on constructing the tent skillfully. She snatched the pole he was sliding through the sleeve of a piece of fabric out of desperation. She wanted to prove she was perfectly capable of completing this task on her own,
“I don’t need or want your help with this. Anyways, aren’t you supposed to be making the fire?”
“I already did.”
A quick look to where Troop gestured towards showed a good-sized campfire blazing away with a pile of twigs and branches to fuel the fire as needed. Kristi watched the flames dance up and down, twisting and writhing. Even though she had seen many campfires ever since she started traveling with Chelsa, she was still mesmerized by the dance of the flames. When Kristi finally tore her gaze away from the fire, Troop was almost done with setting up the tent.
She was ticked off. “I already told you I don’t want help from a jerk.”
“Oh, really?” Troop pounded in the last peg anchoring the tent to the ground and arched an eyebrow. “It sure didn’t seem like it.”
“Don’t always believe what your eyes see.”
“Speak for yourself. You saw me do something I wouldn’t normally do and you decide to judge me by that one action,” he retorted.
“I don’t know how you do it, but everything you say just makes me dislike you even more.”
Troop looked like he was about to argue back, but chose not to do so at the last second. The sound of laughter reached Kristi’s ears. Two figures emerged from the shadows. It was Jaiden and Chelsa.
“Sorry it took so long,” Chelsa said, “but here’s the water.”
The sun had set completely now and the moon and stars hung in the night sky. It was a cloudless night and after dinner, Kristi chose to admire the stars awhile instead going to sleep. Nightmares seemed to be constantly plaguing her the past few nights. She almost always woke up with her heart rate sky-high and covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
Kristi rested on her back and observed the stars. The doused fire only had a few embers pulsing from beneath the ash; they would soon be extinguished when they ran out of fuel and oxygen.
She located the Big Dipper and the North Star, then traced out Orion and Pegasus with her eyes. Next, she located Cygnus, the swan. Cygnus was her favorite constellation, probably because she loved the myth of Cygnus.
A long time ago, two heavenly friends, Cygnus and Phaeton, challenged each other to a race around the world. The two friends ran too close to the sun, burned, and fell to the Earth. Phaeton was trapped underneath the roots of a tree at the bottom of a deep river. Knowing Phaeton would drown if he weren’t rescued soon, Cygnus pleaded with Zeus to help him save Phaeton. Zeus offered to transform Cygnus into a swan so that he could save Phaeton; however, if Cygnus was turned into a swan, he would lose his immortality. Cygnus agreed to this bargain and Zeus placed Cygnus the swan in the night sky as a reward for his selfless act.
Ever so slowly, Kristi’s eyelids began to droop from exhaustion and she pushed herself up to go inside the tent when something moved out of the corner of her eye.
She froze, unsure whether an animal or a person caused the movement. Then she heard something rustle among the tall prairie grass and scanned the surrounding area with the eyes of a hawk. She saw nothing
. After waiting for another ten minutes with no threat presenting itself, Kristi finally allowed herself to believe that she had imagined the sound and movement.
She quietly slipped into her sleeping bag and prepared for another bout of nightmares.
Teeth ripped into her arm. An animal was attacking Kristi. She was in a jungle and had been ambushed by a lion, which didn’t make sense since lions don’t live in jungles.
“This is just a dream,” she said.
The pain in her arm convinced her otherwise.
Huge moths swarmed around her, attracted to the blood spurting from her wound. They landed on Kristi’s arm and started licking her blood with fuzzy feelers. She squirmed, but the paw of the lion pinned her in place. Then, before her eyes, the moths started morphing into bats with golden eyes. They chittered and clicked.
“Wake up, Kristi!” she commanded herself.
She closed her eyes, counted to ten and reopened them. She was still in a jungle surrounded by a swarm of bloodthirsty bats and a lion.
A nearby plant reached out its tendrils towards her. The tendrils caressed her so lightly she didn’t even feel them until they suddenly tightened around her body. Kristi felt woozy from blood loss and her pathetic attempts to free herself from the vines were next to useless.
Other plants extended their roots and vines from overhead dropped and started to cocoon her. Soon, she became enveloped in a layer of plants. Each breath she took was a struggle and she had to fight for the shallowest gasp. She was suffocating.
Spots danced in her vision.
She was falling,
falling,
falling.
“Ah!” Kristi jolted awake.
She trembled all over and couldn’t stop the shivers that racked her body. That was one of the worst nightmares she’d had so far. She could usually wake herself up from a nightmare if she was aware of it, but for some reason, she hadn’t been able to do so this time.
“Are you alright?” Troop poked his head inside the tent. “I thought I heard you yell.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just a nightmare.”
Kristi let out an involuntary shudder and massaged her right arm, which was feeling sore. “Where are Jaiden and Chelsa?”
“They went to get more water. Hopefully it won’t take them as long as last time.”
Kristi yanked a brush through her tangled hair and tied it back into a ponytail. Then she swirled some liquid toothpaste around in her mouth, cringing at the artificially minty flavor and spat it out behind a shrub. Morning rituals taken care of, Kristi disassembled the tent, which was something she could do.
Taking the tent apart is a heck of a lot easier than putting it together, she thought.
They ate a hasty breakfast and were back in the saddle again. Jaiden instinctively steered his mount beside Chelsa and the two intertwined their hands between them; Kristi swallowed down a small lump in her throat. She couldn’t help but feel a bit cast aside from the original trio.
Ghost, as if sensing her distress, turned around from his perch behind Chelsa and gave Kristi a look that read, “What did you expect? Hot guy meets badass girl. It’s a recipe for romance.”
“Your hair is dark brown,” Troop said, breaking Kristi out of her thoughts.
“What did you just say?” She wasn’t sure if she heard Troop right.
Troop motioned towards her hair. “Your hair is dark brown, not chestnut.”
My hair must’ve started to grow out if my natural hair color is showing at the roots. “Yeah. I might have to re-dye it soon.”
“I like your hair dark brown. It matches your personality more.”
“You haven’t even known me for a week and you’re already judging my personality. And it’s up to me to decide whether I re-dye my hair or not.”
There must’ve been a bite to her tone because Troop pretended to shield himself from her verbal attack. “Whoa, no need to get all fired up.”
Kristi made an exasperated sound and moved Flurry into a slightly faster speed to get ahead of Troop. To her aggravation, Troop didn’t seem to get the message she wanted to get away from him because he followed close behind.
“Have you ever heard of personal space?” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Have you heard of being friendly?”
“Just leave me alone, will you?”
“You’re upset that Chelsa and Jaiden aren’t including you now that they’ve both been hit by Cupid’s arrows, aren’t you?”
“I’m upset because a certain twerp won’t leave me alone!” Kristi exclaimed a little too loudly.
Jaiden turned around and looked back at them. “Is everything alright? Kristi, I hope you’re not arguing with Troop again.”
“He’s the one that started the argument,” Kristi said under her breath, but Jaiden heard it anyways.
“Be nice,” he reprimanded her, then turned around once more to talk to Chelsa.
Don’t tell me what to do, Kristi bitterly thought to herself.
chapter twenty-seven
[ Kristi ]
