Chapter Eighty-Four. Rory
Rory
It was hours until the tracks were cleared away, until the train chugged into Rory’s station. And more still of walking through the snow-choked road by moonlight, what should have been a forty-minute amble growing nightmarishly long, snowmelt soaking into his jeans, his socks, his gloves.
With each hour that slipped away, his sense of unease grew, swelling into a frantic kind of dread.
Memories of his last days here circled in his head, unfurling in ways he hadn’t let them in the last four months.
He could feel Daye’s skin giving way against his hands, too soft.
Could smell the crushed stems and scattered pollen of the field he’d chased Daye through.
Could see the way Daye’s eyes rounded just before she ran, full of emotions he didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to name.
By the time he pressed open the gate of the house, it was four thirty in the morning and Rory could barely draw a full breath.
“Daye,” he called, snow falling from his coat, dissolving into the green, green grass. “Daye, are you there?”
The air smelled sweet and temperate, an oasis amid the kingdom of snow Rory had just crossed. Somehow, it only made him more afraid.
Then, from the back garden, a sound like twigs scratching against stone, or fingernails groping for purchase in the ground. A sound he had heard a thousand times in his dreams. The sound of a body, half crumbled, clinging to life.
No, Rory thought. This is a dream. This isn’t real. I’m still on the train. Or maybe I’m still in Aranrhod, the semester still not done.
But the sound of scrabbling was growing closer, and Rory’s hands were shaking, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.
And then a creature hobbled toward him. Unfinished limbs dragged against the path around the house with a soft screech, scales tapering into creased flower petals, half dried.
Rory watched in horror, paralyzed. It took him a moment to recognize it as one of his experiments, one that should have long ago crumbled into dust. If not for the spring, Rory realized.
If not for the myriad small adjustments he had tried in his attempts to keep Daye alive.
In the predawn twilight, there was a horror to its unfinished limbs that Rory had never felt under the soft glow of the lantern inside the shed. A horror that made the dread inside him ratchet up.
“Daye,” Rory called again, his voice shrill in the soft shushing of the night. “Daye, where are you?”
The creature startled and skittered away into the shadows. It was worse with it out of sight. The silence pressed around Rory, a suffocating weight on his lungs. He couldn’t stand still any longer.
In the back garden, there was nothing but skeletal branches and more creatures hobbling and scrabbling away from him, like a nightmare Rory couldn’t wake from.
The shed’s door was thrown open. A small bunny huddled beside it, soft and familiar.
Only, when Rory stepped closer, he saw that its ears tapered into fronds, its short brown fur was patched with creased rose petals. A shudder worked its way through him. Another construct, another nightmarish amalgamation that should have been long gone.
Instinctively, he moved toward the rabbit construct, trying to herd it back into the shed.
But before Rory could reach it, air whistled above him, and then pain was lancing through his scalp.
Rory covered his head, his fingers brushing against something that might have been feathers and might have been leaves.
It gave way a little under his fingers, coating his palms with leaf dust. When Rory lowered his arms, neither the rabbit construct nor the creature that had attacked him was anywhere in sight.
A single black feather fluttered to the ground, filaments giving way to brittle pine needles.
In the window of the shed, his reflection raised a hand to his head, feeling along his hairline. Rory’s fingers came away wet.
Fear was choking him now, making his breath come in short gasps. He braced his hands on his knees, trying to make his lungs work. Trying to clear his head enough to think—
There were deep footprints in the soft mud before him, ones that he hadn’t created. Daye-sized.
In the graying dawn light, Rory saw more footprints.
They led into the forest, and from there to a small clearing.
There were feathers everywhere, littering the ground and floating through the air, tossed by the soft spring breeze.
Wax pooled on a tree stump at its center and trailed down the bark.
An empty box of matches rested next to mussed spring flowers, their petals bent and creased from being braided, but not worn enough to warrant replacement. And beside it—
Daye’s dress, crumpled on the ground.
Rory dropped his bag and started to run.