Chapter 25 #2
Footsteps raced away from the door, soft laughter fading as Rissa ran from us and tears pricked the backs of my eyes.
Hendrix didn’t release me until I sagged in his hold, defeat weighing me down against the bedroll, all other thoughts or schemes of insanity long since fled.
In the trees beyond our hiding place, a song started up, the sweet call of children playing in the forest, their words lost in the lilting melody.
She was out there. I’d already come to realise that the only chance I had of finding her in this place was by venturing into the dark. The only hints I’d gotten of her came at night.
“Afraid of the dark, human?” the Dragon rumbled in the back of my mind.
Hendrix was eyeing me suspiciously, still waiting for my answer. I knew he was right. I knew I should have been doing all I could to put the Lost Children and Rissa out of my mind, but I couldn’t deny the ache in my heart which had risen at the sound of her voice calling my name.
“Okay,” I said, wanting to placate Hendrix, needing him to stop looking at me like that.
Someone started banging on the wall at the back of the building, first one fist, then another and another until there were so many children knocking on the walls that dust shivered from the beams overhead and the whole building trembled beneath them.
Hendrix pushed to his feet. “Be gone!” he bellowed.
There was a beat of silence, then laughter rang out all around us, the joyful, unfiltered laughter of children.
Hendrix yelled at them again, moving towards the back wall and thumping his fist against it in reply to their calls.
I had less than the blink of an eye to decide on what to do but something more than my sister was calling for me out there. It was as though the forest was singing my name, begging me to come out, promising me all the answers I sought and more if I were only brave enough to seek them.
And perhaps it was brave to scramble to my feet and wrench aside the sack of grain which was barring the door. Or perhaps it was utterly stupid.
“Ferris!” Hendrix roared in warning, but I’d already yanked the door wide and hurled myself through it.
I slammed the door at my back in some vain attempt to protect him from what was out here because I knew in my soul that it wasn’t meant for him. It was meant for me.
The Lost Children whooped and hollered out in the darkness of the trees, and I whirled around, finding their small and tear-stained faces peering back at me from all around the grain store, its roof and even the surrounding branches.
Their eyes glimmered with silvery light, something entirely unhuman about them as they watched me.
“Come, Ferris!” Rissa called, and I whipped back to face the forest once more, catching a glimpse of her white gown flitting away between the trees.
“Wait!” I cried as I took chase, the pounding of Hendrix’s feet right behind me as he threw the door wide and roared my name.
But I was already gone, running into the trees with reckless abandon, racing after my sister while root, branch and bramble all twisted out of my way to accommodate me before tangling at my back to halt him.
“Rissa!” I cried, pleading with her to wait, to turn back. But all I caught were glimpses of her white dress and auburn hair flicking between the trees far ahead of me.
I ran until my legs burned with fatigue, my breaths coming in sharp and jagged pants which seared their way into my lungs.
Hendrix cried out behind me and I stumbled, almost turning around for him.
But it was as though the magic of the forest had taken hold of my soul, lashing a cord to it and tugging me ever onward.
I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t turn back. I could only race to catch up to the girl who I had come here to find.
I yelled her name again, entire trees uprooting themselves and moving out of my way as I ran after her faster and faster until finally I spotted her standing entirely still in the heart of a moonlit glade.
Rissa looked just how she had when I’d last seen her at twelve years old, her silver eyes sparking with secrets, her freckle-spattered nose straight at the centre of her heart-shaped face.
But she’d grown too. She wasn’t small like the other Lost Children I’d spied between the trees but had aged in the last eight years.
I’d lost a girl and now a woman stood waiting for me in her place.
I launched myself at her, meaning to hurl my arms around her neck, but a massive serpent launched itself from the trees to my right before I could, its hard body built of stone with rivers of glinting minerals and metals running through it, its bright eyes keen with knowledge.
The snake wrapped itself around my middle and held me there while I still reached for my sister, my fingertips almost grazing her hand.
Rissa smiled at me and my heart broke for all the lost years which weighed between us.
I opened my mouth to speak, so dazzled by the sight of her that I could hardly spare a thought for the enormous spirit which had me caged in its grasp.
“How are you here?” I demanded.
“Later, sister,” she said. “There is something you must see first.”
My lips parted on a reply, a protest, I wasn’t even certain what, but she stepped aside before I could so much as utter a word.
Behind her was a towering horse chestnut tree, its roots a tangled web which extended into the clearing, trailing towards me where I scrambled in the hold of the Serpent.
Within the cage of those roots was a woman, one of the Cursed Ones I’d so often avoided.
Her hair was dark and shrouded her face, but she murmured something I had to strain to hear.
“Again and again and again,” she muttered. “Each time we fail and the clock is reset. Again and again and again…”
“Rissa, what is this?” I demanded, but before I could get any form of reply, the Cursed One looked up sharply, her violet eyes meeting with mine in a fierce demand.
“Make it stop,” she spat at me in a voice which was my own, with a mouth that mirrored mine. "End it on this cycle, Ferris. We’ve all suffered the failure too often.”
Her words barely registered with me at all because I wasn’t staring at some unknown Cursed One trapped forever and suffering in the grips of the forest. I was staring into my own face at a death which was mine and yet wasn’t. Because the Cursed One wasn’t an unknown human. She was me and I was her.
And my screams carried away into the night.