Chapter 11 Ariadne
Ariadne
Sascia stands frozen as Danny and the cohort shuffle around to make room for the newcomer. Compliments on costumes are exchanged, candy is handed out, commentary given on the latest parade float—Sascia barely hears half of it.
Not two feet away stands the princess of Itkalin, commander of the Queen’s army and lady of the Jagged Blade.
The person sent to deliver Sascia’s sentence for treason in the Battle of Feathers.
She remembers the hatred in the elf’s eyes that day, the slice of the scythe, the threat: You die tonight.
Gingerly, Sascia slips her phone from her pocket and sends a simple text to Danny: We need to leave. This girl is the elf prince.
The phone buzzes at Danny’s lap, but he’s too busy praising this part of the parade, where a team of Sailor Moons performs an intricate ribbon dance. Sascia bumps his elbow, motioning silently for him to check his phone.
An amused frown sits on his face as he texts back. She’s just a foreign student with a really big Halloween budget. Chill.
Taking advantage of a sudden ruckus of music and cheering, Sascia leans close to Danny’s ear and whispers, “I recognize her face. And her Darkprints.”
“If she’s the humanoid that vowed to kill you a week ago, why is she just chatting with us and applauding the paraders? Shouldn’t she be trying to assassinate you?”
“Out in the open?” Sascia counters. “She’s just biding her time, trying to trick me into a dark corner so she can finish her task. Or maybe she’s here as a spy to, I don’t know, infiltrate human society and find our weaknesses.”
Danny cranes his neck to look at the elf. “Sure looks like she’s on the right track.”
The girl has raised a Sour Patch gummy to eye level and is examining the tiny green candy as though it is the strangest thing she has ever seen.
To Sascia, that proves the girl is definitely not from this world, but at the same time calls into question the theory that she’s an undercover agent hell-bent on toppling humanity.
(James Bond would never spend this long chewing a piece of sour candy, would he?)
“Cuz,” Danny says. “Take a deep breath. You’re with us. You’re safe. Enjoy the parade. Chat with your friends. Take a page from the pretty girl’s book and eat some candy.”
He really doesn’t believe her. It’s nothing new; Sascia has learned to deal with this kind of dismissal.
To Danny—to everyone, really—she is the girl who spent nearly a decade imagining that a figure in black watched her from afar.
But Sascia is not a child drowning in a dark pond any longer.
She is not a middle schooler or a young teenager, collecting glimpses of a mysterious figure.
Now she is old enough to know artifice from reality, and this person before her, with her flower-strewn hair and onyx-sharp daggers, is very real and very dangerous.
Just like that, Sascia has made her decision.
Maneuvering her backpack to her front, she slips her nova-gun into the pocket of her jacket.
She positions herself in the center of the group, with a strategic view of everyone’s movements.
Danny might be convinced the elf is just a girl in an elaborate costume, but Sascia knows better.
She knows to be afraid.
“Want some?” Shivani opens a bag of assorted chocolate mini candy, offering it first to Sascia, who’s closest.
There’s a murderous elf just inches away! Sascia screams in her head. No, I don’t want candy! But she dons a polite smile and goes straight for a mini Twix, her favorite. “Thanks.”
The elf studies her golden and white wrapper, then reaches into the bag to pick an identical one. She mimics Sascia’s movements, tearing it open and plopping the chocolate bar into her mouth, then pauses midbite. Her face melts with pleasure. (A sweet tooth, this elf.)
“So,” Shivani asks the elf, “is this your first time at the parade?”
“It is. A friend mentioned I would enjoy it. She said that today the kind souls of the dead walk the streets to return home, and the living dress in costumes and light bonfires to ward off evil spirits.” The elf’s accent is elegant, lilting the vowels and softening the r’s.
She’s still looking at the empty wrapper, as though it is a relic of a lost god.
“I believe in neither kind souls nor evil spirits, but I do enjoy your people’s stories. ”
Your people, Sascia notes. The elf is careful with her words, committed to her charade.
“Are you a student here?” Andres asks.
The elf shakes her head. “Just a visitor.”
“And what do you think?” Danny says. “Of our glorious New York?”
A timid smile tugs at the girl’s lips. Her eyes tilt to the night sky above. “It is big and loud and so…open.”
Big and loud, Sascia can agree with, but open? It’s a weird word to describe New York, or any metropolitan city, to be honest. The buildings are too tall, the streets too narrow, the space overhead packed with streetlights and signs and ads.
“Are you students?” the elf asks cautiously, as though the question might offend.
The cohort nods, but it’s Danny who answers. “Yes, all of us. We actually study the Dark. That’s why we just had to tell you your costume is amazing. It’s so accurate.”
At that, he gives Sascia a very pointed glance.
“Why the Dark?” the girl asks. “Out of all the wonders of this world, why that one?”
“I love nature,” Danny says with a shrug, “even the dangerous kind.”
“Same,” says Shivani. “Discovering new creatures, and how we should treat them.”
“It’s all about genes to me,” Andres says. “Those that have never been mapped before.”
Tae speaks softly, “I like making tools. To handle the Dark.”
A giant float breaks the flow of conversation.
It is the usual pomp and circumstance: marching bands, dancing troupes, and stilt walkers in skeleton costumes saunter beneath an enormous puppet of a Darkdragon.
Sequined with hundreds of hanging beads in dark colors, the puppet is a reclaimed, whimsical iteration of a Darkbeast. A dozen puppeteers work in unison to coordinate its steps and the soundless roaring of its jaws.
The elf’s mouth opens, eyes alight with admiration.
Sascia’s fingers tighten around the nova-gun. Could she be wrong? The girl acts just like any other tourist awed by the funfair of New York. A casual stroller who went all out on Halloween, got complimented on her outfit by a group of friends, and decided to hang around a little longer.
But the big moth burst out of the Dark and flew right to her. Sascia hasn’t spotted it since it wove itself into the blooms in the girl’s hair.
“You didn’t answer,” the girl says to Sascia. “Why you chose the Dark.”
The two of them stand in silence, a small bubble of it, while the crowd chirps and shifts around them.
Sascia can feel the girl’s dark gaze on her; suddenly, the cat mask seems like a flimsy cover-up, the nova-gun a laughable weapon.
If the girl is indeed the elf, she can blast a force of Dark that would annihilate the entire block.
Which begs the question: Why doesn’t she?
Why is she looking at Sascia expectantly instead, as though her answer might be the most interesting thing she’s ever heard?
The truth tumbles out of Sascia unbidden—“I love it.”
“Why?”
Sascia’s cheeks grow scorching hot. The question is intimate, the kind you only ask a friend. “I don’t know. I find it interesting, I suppose, like my friends do.”
“You want to discover it? Map it out, like your friend said?”
“No.” The word comes out hard. But for Sascia, studying the Dark has never been about explaining its mysteries.
She merely wants to be part of it, in whatever way she can.
“Humans think our lives are straightforward. A paved road from birth to school to jobs to family to death. But the Dark lies beyond that road. A complicated maze of experiences we never thought we’d have.
I just want to walk through it. To explore instead of discover. ”
“Ah,” the girl says, slow and nasal. “An Ariadne in love with the Labyrinth itself.”
The comment startles Sascia into furious blinking.
The Greek myth of Ariadne, the princess of Crete who helped Theseus navigate the Minotaur’s perilous Labyrinth, sounds foreign on the elf’s lips.
Yet the metaphor is apt: a princess in love not with the hero, but with the unsolvable maze around her.
Sascia’s mouth hangs open, half a dozen questions squabbling for attention in her mind. “How do you know about Ariadne?”
“I told you. I like your stories.”
Never one for shyness (or hard logic, really), Sascia bursts out, “Have we met before?”
Dark eyes roam over Sascia’s half-masked face. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t lie,” Sascia hisses. “It was you in Times Square a week ago, wasn’t it?”
A frown wedges between the elf’s brows. “I have never been in this city before today.”
There’s no lie in her voice, no duplicity on her face: she doesn’t know what Sascia is talking about.
Sascia’s nose starts burning, a warning of tears to come.
She’s done it again, hasn’t she? Let her mind retreat to wild imaginings.
Her fingers ease off the nova-gun. Her stomach tightens with shame.
She looks at the ground, feeling the salty wetness sting the corners of her eyes.
A chorus of drums pulsates down the parade. As one, the spectators rush forward with claps and cheers.
The girl (just a girl) leans close to Sascia’s ear. Wisps of her hair caress Sascia’s skin. Her lips smell of chocolate and caramel, sweetness made flesh. She inhales, deeply, devouring Sascia’s scent—accidentally, her lips graze the lobe of Sascia’s ear.
“If we had met before,” the girl whispers, “rest assured, little Ariadne: I would not forget you.”
The air hitches in Sascia’s throat. Her pulse speeds, spurred by a tremor deep in her belly.
“But let me remedy my misstep. I am Nugau.” On the girl’s lips, the word sounds like the mating call of a French bird: Noo-GOH. “And you are…”
“Sascia,” she mumbles, a little breathlessly.
“Sascia,” the girl repeats. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
As she leans away, her gaze travels over Sascia—until it flickers to something at her ear. Sascia can suddenly sense the tiny legs there, the soft velvet wings.
Nugau breathes a hushed, reverent hiss. “Itka.”
Her hand reaches out, but Sascia is faster. She cups the moth and steps back, cradling it against her chest protectively.
Nugau’s face slackens into confusion. “Why do you have one of the itka? How did you find a god of Itkalin?”
The word echoes in Sascia’s head: Itkalin, Itkalin, Itkalin. She was right. It is her—the very princess of Itkalin.
“A what?” Danny mutters. He spins the wheels of his chair to face them.
(“What’s happening?” Crow’s voice chirps from the phone.)
“Miss, please, stand back,” Tae says, placing himself between the girl and Danny. His eyes are fixed on Nugau’s extended hand.
Shadows are whirling around her fingers, thick and liquid. She is wielding the Dark. It is one thing to expect it and another to see it happening before you—terror pumps through Sascia, and she fumbles around to drag her friends away.
Cheery dancing music blasts from the parade at their back. Enveloping them, the crowd hops and bops, oblivious to the elf princess standing among them.
Those violet eyes roam over Sascia one last time, uncertain and befuddled—then the world erupts in sparklers and fireworks. Light blossoms, draping a veil of orange and scarlet over the street.
Shadows deepen and elongate, black given essence around Nugau’s feet. Her body sinks into the gathering Dark, first her knees and thighs, then her torso and head. In seconds, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fast, she is gone.
All five of the cohort are breathing hard, huddled close together.
“What. The hell. Was that,” Andres stammers.
The metal shafts of the barrier dig into Sascia’s back. The touch is grounding, as is the press of Shivani’s body on one side, Tae’s on the other, Danny at her front. They all saw it. Nugau, princess of Itkalin, disappeared into the Dark.
A flutter of wings draws her attention to her cupped palms. Slow and tender, Sascia opens them. Her friends peer at the big moth, wearing identical expressions of bewilderment. Over their heads, Sascia meets Danny’s gaze. Gone is his worrying, gone is his teasing. Muscles flex at his locked jaw.
He answers her silent question with an equally silent nod.
Sascia turns back to the cohort. “I have something to tell you.”