In theory, I should have been relieved for Grammy to pick me up, and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be. But as I waited in the living room and saw our battered old car pull up, I found myself clenching my fists around the straps of my backpack, hugging it against my chest.
The others were saying some kind of pleasantries I wasn’t following—Mara, bless her, was carrying the conversation for both of us—and I did my best to appear shy and tired and not sullen. She gave me a reassuring squeeze as I got up and began disentangling from the family.
We all exchanged the usual farewells—thanks so much for having me, come again sometimes soon, a friend of Mara’s is always welcome—and walked out as Grammy got out of the car. More politeness—hope it wasn’t too much trouble, your grandson was a pleasure to have—that washed over me, like fog in its tangible unreality.
Mara shook hands with me as I left, said goodbye, and added in a lower whisper: “Good luck.”
I nodded, and managed a more sincere smile than the one I’d been using all morning.
As I got into the car, I was distressingly aware of the dirty clothes scrunched inside my backpack, the smudges and smears on my coat, and the missing shoe I was trying to cover for by keeping my pant legs rolled down all the way to the ground. Still, it was a long shot to imagine that Grammy wouldn’t notice it by the time we got home. My best hope was that she would be tired from last night, maybe too tired, and wouldn’t be paying attention to so small a detail.
In the meantime, my frozen toes curled against the ridges of the car’s gravel-speckled floor mat.
Even before we’d finished pulling out of the driveway, I could tell Grammy was looking me over from the corner of her eye. Curling my toes tighter against the floor until they ached, I sat still, with as clear an appearance of calm as I could manage.
“Did you have a good time?” She asked conversationally—but I could hear the undercurrent of a more pointed question.
“Yeah, it was nice,” I said noncommittally. I flashed a subdued grin. “But we stayed up later than we meant to—Mara was showing me some movies—so I’m pretty tired this morning.” As if on cue, I felt a yawn coming on. I maybe exaggerated it more than I needed to, but well, I was tired. “How did stuff go for you last night?”
I chanced a look at her as she focused on driving around the mountain’s curves. She hid it well, but she was bone-weary. Her pose was stiffer and more held-up than it normally was, and there were faint shadows under her (slightly) bleary eyes.
“The job went well enough,” she said once we’d passed the worst of the curves. “There were a few trails to follow.”
But she hadn’t found the most important one, had she? There was a sudden tightness in my chest, like I was half-way up a cliff and shouldn’t look down. “Was there anything… interesting out and about?”
That was a neutral enough question, I hoped.
She glanced at me, anyway. “Nothing I doubt you’d be interested in. Wouldn’t want to give you nightmares.”
I clenched my bag closer to my chest. The tone she used was close enough to cheery that I knew she’d been trying to make a joke. But it didn’t strike me as funny, digging under my skin and adding an ache to the agitation already swirling there. Not knowing how to answer, I didn’t.
We drove in silence.
“I think Llewellyn was out last night, too,” Grammy said, finally, after both of us had sat longer in the quiet than either of us wanted to.
“Oh.” Another pinprick of inexplicable upset. “How were things for him?”
“Haven’t heard yet, but I did get an all-clear from him, so he’s at least alive.”
That was supposed to be comforting, of course. In the Warden line of work, coming back each night wasn’t a guarantee. But all it did was remind me that I had almost died last night, and that just because Llewellyn was alive didn’t mean that he was okay.
I slid further down into my seat, as if trying to curl up underneath my backpack. “Well, that’s good.” I could hear my own voice fall short of the casual agreeableness I had intended, grating against the silence in a way that echoed in my ears.
Grammy didn’t reply, just looked at me out of the corner of her eye again. I turned to face out the window, feeling my throat ache like I’d been sucking in too much winter air.
I wanted to be home, in my room, where maybe I could go to sleep. If Grammy let me, if I didn’t have training or homework. To hell with that, I thought, harsher than I ever would have dared say aloud, and suddenly I was afraid, because I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth if I opened it. But it wasn’t like I was mad at Grammy. If I was mad at anyone, I was mad at Kalgyrad. Except that didn’t seem right, either. I was just… mad. And tired. And afraid.
“So you guys watched some movies, then?” Grammy said. She was fishing again.
“Yeah.”
“Which ones?”
The movie night seemed like it had taken place several months ago instead of just a few hours. “Um, I can’t really remember their names.” Which was true. That had been less of an important detail than the contents of the movies.
“What were they about?”
I hated this, somehow. I wanted to snap, to tell her to stop asking me these perfectly normal questions. I didn’t want to talk. Was I mad at Grammy?
I shrugged my shoulders. “One of them was a kind of musical, about a guy who tries to scam some people into thinking he’s going to help them save their town or something.”
“Doesn’t sound very nice.”
“Well, he actually does it in the end. He fell in love with the town researcher,” I added, as if that would convince her that actually it had been a great movie. That plot point had been less interesting to me, personally, but Grammy had been in love once so that might make her feel better about it.
“Ah, I see.”
I wasn’t sure if she did, but at least she wasn’t asking me any more questions.
The rest of the ride passed in a blur of grey and brown. We’d probably be due for some more snow soon, but right now the woods were just dried up, standing stiffly in naked columns by the road. Without any more questions, I was able to settle into myself and shut off as I stared out the window, but it didn’t bring any helpful relief. I stewed in the growing simmer of some kind of unnamed resentment-smothered fear—maybe at almost dying, at the shadow creature, at Kalgyrad, at Grammy, at Llewellyn, at myself, at Mara, at the cold and unfeeling sky, at something. Maybe everything.
I didn’t know what Grammy was thinking, and I wasn’t looking at her.
The heater coughed and sputtered its way apathetically towards warmth.
Under the wan sky of early afternoon, we finally pulled up outside of our house, its peeling paint and impression of lopsidedness emphasized in winter’s unflattering light. Grammy stopped the car under the shed-like roof that passed as our garage, but didn’t turn it off.
“Rhys,” she said quietly, but with the unyieldingness of a crowbar, “are you telling me the truth?”
I tightened my hands reflexively around my backpack straps, again digging my toes into the hard rubber of the car’s mat. “What do you mean?” I asked, forcing myself to look at her, afraid of what she’d think if I stayed too hunched away, out of sight.
“Allow me to be frank,” she said, startling me further. “You are more unsettled than tired. Something’s upset you. Now, look me in the eye and tell me: did something happen last night? Are you hurt?”
I swallowed, aware that my eyes were wider than they needed to be, like a cornered rodent’s.
“Let me put it another way,” she said, firm, brows knitting further over eyes sunken in tiredness, “if you’re having trouble talking: is there anyone I should be concerned about? Did Mara’s family really treat you alright?”
Then I realized what she meant, and the stew inside me bubbled up with one odd emotion after another. I could almost feel the heartburn of it in my throat. Was I relieved? She was looking out for me, and I was thankful, in a way—but wasn’t this too little, too late? And this was the wrong thing to be concerned about. Truths I couldn’t tell her choked inside of me.
“Oh. No, no, no, that’s all fine,” I said. “Everyone was very nice to me. No complaints there.” And it was true, so my sincerity didn’t sound forced.
“Where are your complaints, then?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” I insisted. “I’m fine. I’m just tired.”
She sat there, looking at me with her old eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong, Rhys. I know you’re hiding something.”
I looked away. “No I’m not,” I said, my voice snappish and unconvincing in my own ears. “And if I was, it wouldn’t be anything you had to worry about.”
Grammy snorted. “It’s my job to worry about you, Rhys. Always has been.”
“Well, I’m glad I can give you something to do,” I said waspishly. The air felt hot now, like I was going to suffocate.
“Rhys,” she chided.
“I’m going inside and taking a nap,” I said, pushing the door open and breathing in the piercing cold, slicing through the warmth.
“Rhys. Where is your other shoe?”
“I lost it,” I said. The cracked concrete felt like a slab of ice under my toes.
“How did you lose it?” She said, fixing me with a steely look.
“I don’t know,” I said, more petulantly than I would have liked, mind blanking of the story I’d tried to prepare this morning. “I just did.”
“Where?”
“I lost it,” I snapped, “so I don’t know where it is. It doesn’t matter.”
I slammed the car door behind me, for a brief second not caring that doing so was against the rules. Curling deeper into my coat, I stalked off towards the house. My heart was thumping a little too hard, tears were thickening in the back of my throat. I clenched my teeth and shoved my fists into my coat pockets.
I should never have agreed to go out past the lainlines.
I should never have made that deal with Kalgyrad.
“Rhys Powell Vordur.” Grammy’s voice cut like winter wind against my back.
I stopped.
I heard the car door close almost gently behind her, and sensed more than actually heard her soft tread coming towards me.
“Sorry for slamming the door,” I muttered, and, still not meeting her eyes, opened the front door for her.
“Is that all?”
She wanted me to apologize for lying, she wanted me to tell her the truth. But I couldn’t. “That’s all,” I said, and shouldered my way inside.
“This conversation isn’t over,” she said, with all the cold of the woods in her voice, slowly peeling off her own wilderness-stained coat. “But we both have matters to attend to. You, go to your room. Your Mithae lesson is in 15 minutes, and I have some cleaning up to do. After your lesson, I think you’ll find yourself with a few extra chores and training reps. We’ll talk this evening, and I expect to hear a better answer from you by then.”
I stood, frozen, single shoe half-way off, a statue of ice.
My Mithae lesson.
Right. It was already the weekend.
The flash-flood urge to cry choked off any response I could have thought of. Kalgyrad. Again. Another lesson, another day to feel stupid. And with him, after last night. I wanted to disappear, I wanted to choke him. This was his fault, and he was just going to waltz in here and pretend everything was fine? How on Earth was I going to look him in the eyes and pretend like he wasn’t scheming behind Grammy’s back and keeping a gag on me?
Placing my shoe slowly on the ground, in resistance to the impulse of throwing it down, I speed-walked to my room without removing my coat, and, as slowly as with the shoe, pushed the door closed. Closed doors were generally discouraged before bedtime, but I cared more about the privacy it gave me. Throwing my backpack across the room, I fell back against the wall, and slid down it to bury my face in my knees. My ankle twinged.
Being alone in my room was a relief, but the feeling of it seemed to radiate out from me swallowing everything, reminding me that I was alone in every other aspect, too. There was no one to who was going to pull me out of this mess—everyone was too far away, too helpless, or too unpredictable.
Exhaustion clouded around me.
I never wanted to leave this room again. I didn’t want to talk to Grammy and have her pry and poke and keep asking questions I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to tell her about last night, but I didn’t want to be forced into silence about it, either. I didn’t want last night to have happened.
Why had last night happened? It shouldn’t have happened. Mara and I shouldn’t have been so alone.
Why hadn’t anyone helped us?
Why were the Wardens out to help everyone but me? I had needed them last night. But all there had been was silence, and a dragon to sift through the pieces the monsters left of me. It didn’t matter that Grammy had been out in the woods, or Llewellyn, because it had done nothing. No one had heard me, not even my own family.
I gritted my teeth against the onslaught of tears that threatened to spill out, and pressed the heels of my palms harder against my eyes. I wasn’t a child anymore, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Grammy overhearing me, or having to go to my lesson with tear-stained cheeks as a full display of my weakness. I was too old for tears like this, and yeah last night had sucked, but that was just how life was sometimes, as I already knew. Why was I so bothered?
I almost died last night. I almost got Mara and I killed. With that thought, I was sucked away for a moment, back to the woods, hiding in leafless bushes and catching glimpses of mocking eyes and grinning teeth.
The sensation was so vivid, I felt like I could hear rustling across the room from me, though oddly enough it sounded more like cloth rustling than branches and leaves.
But the shadow creature had only ever interacted with the woods, not us or our clothes.
I jerked my head up, a sudden jolt of panic wiping away the threat of tears.
The rustling was real.
A stout, burly creature, roughly the length of a rolling pin, hopped with unexpected nimbleness to the floor—from my bed. It looked like a giant guinea-pig drawn by a lunatic. Its ears were long and pointed, almost like rabbit ears; spiny ridges rippled under its long fur; a stubby tail swished back and forth with its movement. Markings lined its face, markings that I realized with a shock of horror were extra sets of eyes, all blinking at me out of sync. The creature made a face at me like a grin, and despite its rodent-like front dentures, its mouth stretched back unnaturally to show off needle-sharp teeth.
Choking on a gasp that was half-shriek, I fell backwards—but I was already pressed against the wall. It didn’t react noticeably to my movement, but it still kept coming. Shaking, I si-goggled wildly along the wall, pushing myself with my feet, feeling around me as I went for some kind of defense. And of course this had to happen the very day I left my baseball bat with Mara. Instead, I was left the single wooden pencil that met my scrabbling, closely followed by my journal. But that hardly felt like a good spear-and-shield combination.
A desperate yell lodged in my throat. I wanted to scream for Grammy, but how would this thing react to noise?
I hurled the pencil at it like tiny, unbalanced javelin, and reached the end of the wall with a bang, slamming my shoulder into the bookshelf.
The creature hopped aside, easily avoiding the pencil, and kept on towards me, round dark eyes fixed on me inscrutably.
Reaching behind me for a book, I stopped with my hand on an old, crumbling paperback. Its teeth and claws would probably make short work of the book—so likely all I’d get out of the throw was one less book and a few extra milliseconds of time. I knew I had a dagger around here somewhere. If I could just—
“Now see here, kid, if you—”
An edition of The Black Arrow, older than I was, smacked into its head, the book’s barely-attached cover splitting away and drifting to the floor as I dived for my bedside table and fumbled open the drawer.
“Hey now, hold it—”
Wrestling my dagger out of its sheath, I jumped to my feet and put my back towards the wall. Intimidation was a lost cause, what with my trembling hands, but maybe I could fend it off long enough to make it out of my room.
“What do you want and how did you get in here?” I snapped, voice cracking. “And no funny moves, or I’ll stab you and call for reinforcements.” An unidentified illdýr waiting for me in my room was bad enough without it talking, and that in a weird, high-pitched voice toned like an old-timey radio announcer.
All its eyes blinked at me again, and the creature sighed. It settled down on its paws—which half-disappeared into its waves of fur—and flared the ridges on its back for a brief moment, like it was stretching them. It might have been trying to make itself seem less threatening, but I didn’t buy that act for an instant.
“How’d I get in here? Why, I came in through the front door,” it said. “But I think you and your grandmother were distracted by your… conversation, so you may not have seen.”
My cheeks flushed—as if a murderous hamster hearing our argument was a mortal sin. “That doesn’t explain how you got in past the lainlines, and without us noticing.”
“One of the runes is broken,” it said. “I’d say it’s a new development, from the looks of it. Maintenance hasn’t caught up to it yet, and so there’s a gap there for those as have the eyes to see it. And as you can see, I have the eyes.” Again the blinking, but only along one side, like it was trying on an elaborate wink.
I swallowed. I knew there were some pretty frightful creatures out last night, but hearing that they’d broken one of the rewrites? Attacked our house directly? And while no one was home? Maybe it was a coincidence, but my skin crawled, and a seething suspicion of Kalgyrad’s involvement. Maybe that was why Grammy had cut our discussion short—she knew she needed to shore up our defenses.
“Beyond that little rune problem, I think we can just say that I’m rather good at getting into places, quiet-like.” The creature widened its mouth again, further putting its range of teeth on view.
“Are you… are you trying to smile?” I blurted.
The creature’s ears twitched, one of them spasming upright. “Trying?”
“You look like you want to bite me,” I found myself saying, as if I were apologizing to it.
It sniffed, small nose shuddering back and forth. “Well, how do you smile, if you’re so good at it?”
I gaped, taken aback, blanking on any expression of any kind. Pulling myself together, I swallowed, and twisted my mouth into something that probably looked more or less worse than the creature’s.
“You look like you’re sick, kid,” it replied with a huff of… laughter? “Seems as though we both need some practice. Now, listen here, kid, I don’t have much time. Talking takes a mighty effort for me, and I can’t sustain it for long before my voice goes away. So we’d best get down to brass tacks, so to speak.”
I nodded dully, as if I understood what was going on. “How long do you have?”
“Depends on how much I have to say,” it replied.
“How long until you can talk again, after your voice goes?” First thing to do when dealing with an unknown creature: learn its limits.
“A day or so, but again it depends on how much I’ve been saying, and the odd word here and there isn’t impossible. Now—”
“Why is it difficult? Is it like a vocal strain? A curse?”
The creature sighed, and if my brain wasn’t so upside down, it might have looked funny. “Look, kid, lets not waste time with trivialities. Speaking’s more like an ability that has to recharge—you see, talking isn’t natural for me or my kind, but we can sort of learn to trick the rules for a bit. It’s sort of timed, sort of dependent on the volume of words I get in. While we’re explaining things, I should mention that I’m a pikur, which I don’t think is something you’ve seen before. My name is Jask. Now, do we understand each other? Can we carry on?”
“My name’s Rhys,” I said automatically. He had said his name, so it was probably safe for me. If he’d said something like “I’m called Jask,” then it would have been suspicious. Well, most of this was already suspicious. I still hadn’t lowered my dagger.
“That’s a grand name,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “So here’s the deal: I’m passing through here for a bit, and if you give me a place to sleep, I can help keep the monsters away a little further than the lainlines. Are you following?”
“Are you asking, or telling me?” I replied.
“Both.”
“Why do you want to stay here?”
“Simple, really. You and your grandmother already know about strange creatures such as myself, so it’d be easier to take up here for a bit than try and convince some other, unbelieving stranger. And while I could do fine in the woods on my own, it is winter, and I like heaters when I can get them.”
“Well, fine. But how can you help with monsters?”
“I’m afraid that’s a trade secret, kid. Let’s just say that someone of my size has to have a few defense mechanisms, or else wind up somebody’s dinner. All you need to know is that I can add some strength to the lainlines, you can get some sleep, and if things go south too fast for me to do anything, I can at least warn you or your grandmother before it all goes too screwy. Now are you getting it?”
“I… I think so,” I said, not knowing how else to respond.
“Excellent! So, what do you think?”
“That… that I have to think about it,” I said warily. Three deals with illdýr was more than I ever wanted to make in a 24-hour period. “And it’s not my house, so I can’t just make that decision.”
Which was good. I could just tell Grammy about this Jask and avoid having to deal with the pikur thing at all. Grammy would know what to do. Grammy would fix it.
But will she? A little voice whispered in my head. She didn’t fix anything last night.
“Well, don’t wait too long,” Jask said. “On to my second point, probably the most important part of what we have to discuss, for both our sakes—”
There was a firm knock at my door, and Grammy’s voice calling my name. I stiffened further, a fiddle string wrenched tight.
“Yes?” I gulped out, louder than was comfortable, wondering how to explain who I was talking to.
But, for some reason, she didn’t ask about it. “Your Mithae lesson is in five minutes,” she said with measured sternness. “I’d like you out here and ready before our guest arrives.”
Which meant I should have been out there five minutes ago.
I looked from the door to Jask, and back again. His beady eyes stared blankly, but I could hear a faint huff of annoyance.
“Coming,” I called, finally lowering the dagger, half-expecting to be jumped in that instant and get my neck chewed off. But the pikur just sat there, watching me. I shoved the dagger into its sheath, and then into my pocket for good measure.
“Now, see here,” Jask began. “You have five minutes, right? We should really—”
“I should really get out there,” I countered, “before Grammy comes and drags me out herself. And I can’t really account for you right now, can I? So, we’re dealing with this later.”
I grabbed my notebooks and pens, fingers prickling as I grabbed the ones I’d been gifted by Kalgyrad. Gifted. But illdýr didn’t make gifts. Did they?
Jask hopped back onto his paws, startling me—I drew back, and edged around him, keeping out of reach. He looked pretty hefty, but I should be able to get a solid kick in if he made a dash at me.
“We don’t have time for later,” he insisted.
I slid out the door and pressed it closed before he could continue. A numb sort of panic settled in my gut, surging up from everything that I’d left aside to deal with Jask; I rested my forehead against my door, gazing vacant-eyed at the pressboard. I was not ready for the lesson, for seeing Kalgyrad, for dealing with Grammy—and now I had an illdýr, in my room, trying to make a deal with me. He had to have some angle, or be lying about something, and I had no idea what the thing’s capabilities were beyond stealth. But his unsettling number of eyes hinted that they would be worse than I feared.
Clamping my lips into a firm line, I headed to the dining room, and knew I was going to start crying at any second, the knowledge burning hot and horrid through my head. Grammy, at the kitchen table, looked up to acknowledge my presence, nodded, and turned back to whatever she was doing with the pile of papers in front of her. I only noted this with the corner of my eye—I was too busy fighting with myself and avoiding eye contact to even glance at her.
Just keep it calm, breathe in bit by bit, I thought. And stop being such an absolute crybaby. Choke it down. Before they see.
The cold light from outside the dining room pressed against me, the space blurring as tangled knots of feelings rose higher in my throat. The windows loomed large behind me. I set my notebooks down, book by book, pen by pen, as if by controlling my movement I could control my tears—which I couldn’t. Wedging my hands into fists until the nails dug into my palms, I looked up and around. Grammy’s hands and paper pile were visible, just beyond the doorway. Jask was still in my room, presumably—I hoped feverishly that he wouldn’t follow me or try to engage with Grammy right now. Kalgyrad hadn’t come knocking yet.
The windows loomed large behind me, radiating down at me.
They were large, with no screens, and were regularly upkept to avoid the frames sticking.
In front of me, as if in contrast, lay the suffocating weight of the house, the coming of both a dragon and my grandmother’s implacability, the stark threat of the unknown in my bedroom.
Maybe it was adrenaline, maybe it was fear, maybe it was exhaustion dimming my brain, but I could hear my heart-rate skyrocketing in a thin, all-encompassing echo.
I didn’t want this. Any of this. Any of them.
I wanted to be alone.
I wanted someone to help me.
I didn’t want to pretend to be okay with a monster.
The windows loomed large behind me, and I thought about how I’d taken my shoes off, but not my coat.
I knew what to do. I didn’t know what else to do. I knew this wouldn’t work.
And then there was no more thinking, no more room for it, my actions already fixed as though there was nothing I could do but get swept away. In an odd, desperate haze, hands shaking and fear clamped around my throat, I loosened the window latch without a sound, painstakingly raised the sash, sat on the windowsill, spun around, and lightly dropped onto the frost-covered flower beds.
From there, it was only the work of a moment to carefully lower the window back down, stoop into a crouch, and take off for the woods.
To be continued…
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