Chapter 40 I Remember
I REMEMBER
ALICE
We’re walking through the woods, like we always do when we want to adventure. Today we don’t have any destination, we’re letting the Wandering Woods decide where to take us.
Jessa and Harley whisper to each other up front, leading the way, meanwhile Ori walks beside me. He doesn’t whisper in my ear.
I kind of wish he would.
A blur of motion smears my periphery. My head whips to the side, brows furrowing at the empty spaces between the trees.
“Huh,” I sigh.
“What?” Ori asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
A little later, it happens again. My feet stop short, and I squint into the trees. I swear, a boy was—there!
“Hey!” I shout, but he dashes behind a tree trunk.
“Alice?” Ori calls my name, stopped a few paces ahead of me. “Are you coming?”
Again, the boy darts in the distance. I catch a glimpse of a peacock blue T-shirt, warm, earthy brown hair, and tan skin.
“Hey!” I yell again, this time stepping off the marked path.
“Alice, what are you doing?” Harley calls out. But my friend’s concern is lost to the breeze as I weave through the thick brush.
“You shouldn’t stray from the path!” Ori yells. “Do you remember the last time—ugh!”
My tights catch on a thorny rosebush. I pull the fabric free—it rips—but I don’t care. I sprint after the boy, shouting, “Hey! Stop!”
If there’s another human here, that means a portal might be nearby.
“I’ll go after her. You guys stay here.”
I run, jumping over rocks and roots and fallen trees like they’re hurdles. The boy is fast, though. He laughs as if to tease me. It’s a joyous sound.
“Alice! Slow down!” Ori shouts.
But there’s something drawing me to the mystery boy. I have to know why he’s here. Why he’s running. Why he won’t turn around and look at me.
Branches scrape over my arms as I push through the thicket; I’m on the boy’s Converse-clad heels, and Ori is on mine. I can hear him huffing his frustration as he tries to keep up. Ori’s strong but he’s a slow runner.
We break through a slit in the trees and stumble into the Meadow—the one with the mean flowers. I haven’t been back since the day I landed in Arcadia; we’ve tried, but the Woods never lets us wander here.
“Will you stop running!” I shout at the boy, panting, with my hands on my knees. “Who are you?”
“Wanna play tag?” He giggles, hopping in place.
“Alice! You can’t run off!” Ori calls, stomping into the field.
The boy glances over my shoulder, lips popping over a muttered ‘ope’. “He looks scary.”
I wave a hand in the air. “That’s just his face.”
A squinty smile spreads the boy’s cheeks wide, and his oddly familiar brown eyes glitter beneath thick lashes. He dashes to me, one finger outstretched to poke my arm. “You’re it. Give me a ten-second head start.”
The boy turns and breaks into a sprint towards the big tree. But he doesn’t run around it, he races straight through it.
“What the heck?” I whisper. I catch my breath enough to start after him, but Ori grabs my hand.
“Alice, stop,” he pants. “Do you know how unsafe that is? You could have gotten hurt!”
I wave him off, tugging my hand from his, making for the big tree. “You always save me, it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine!”
I reach the large trunk and stick my hand out. My fingers pass through the bark.
I yank them to my chest and examine them. Completely normal.
I flex them. Completely functional.
“Is that a portal?” Ori asks, voice small, lacking all its usual confidence.
I press forward, following the directions of my beating heart. “I’ll be right back.”
“What? No, you can’t—”
I step through the tree and into the sunset laden Meadowbrook Park. It’s deserted, the lonely swings creaking in the jungle gym.
The wind howls, and I wrap my arms around my middle to brace against the breeze. Something hits my shin, wrapping around it, and I glance down to find a torn paper from the community bulletin board they have by the parking lot.
It’s a flyer for a back-to-school sale at the local bookstore.
I blink, confused.
There’s no way.
It can’t be August again; it’s the end of November…
“Alice, my mom is going to flip out if we—” Ori stops short, barreling into my back as he runs through the tree. His voice is full of terrified awe when he speaks. “Where are we?”
“Home,” I whisper.
“Your home?” he squeaks.
“Yeah.”
My feet are stuck in place as the world tilts.
I’m home. I didn’t think I’d get to come home, based on what Memaw and the Queen had told me… Tears well in my eyes. I wipe them away with my sleeve.
“Let’s go back. We have to tell my parents. We have to—”
“Ori,” I say, turning to him. “I have to go get my parents.”
He looks stricken. “What?”
“Now that I’m home, I… I need to go make sure they’re okay.”
“But… I don’t want you to leave Arcadia,” he says.
“I don’t want to leave Arcadia,” I whisper, almost afraid to admit it. “I like it more than the city. School is annoying. And not everyone gets me. You guys get me.” My lips pinch. “But what if I never get to see them again, and I don’t get to say goodbye?”
“Oh.” Ori blinks. Once. Twice. “Yeah. Okay. We can go say bye to your parents. I just don’t know how long the portal will stay open for and—”
“Ori, I can’t show up to my Nana’s after being gone for months with some random boy,” I say. Then softer, “They’ll be worried and think you were lost with me. They’ll call the police. I’ve seen it on my mom’s TV shows. That’ll take forever.”
“I didn’t know about that,” he says, softly. He gazes out at the moonlit field. “Do you promise to be fast?
“So fast. Like lightning.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t come with you?” Ori asks. “You get lost so easily.”
“How about this.” I shove my pinky in his face. “We’ll make it a pinky promise.”
“A pinky promise?”
“They can’t be broken, duh,” I say. “Plus, best friends don’t leave each other hanging. I’ll run to my Nana’s, call them, say goodbye, and come right back. You should stay here and make sure the portal stays open. Or, if you’re scared, wait for me on the other side.”
“I’m not scared,” he huffs. “But if that’s what you want…
then fine. My mom says Heirs and their Champions need to compromise if they want to be good partners in the tourney.
So, I’ll go get Harley and Jessa and all three of us will wait for you in the Meadow.
They’re probably super worried right now. ”
Ori stares down at my little finger, hesitating.
I roll my eyes, grabbing his hand and linking our pinkies.
“I promise I’ll come back to you, Ori,” I say.
A spark shocks our hands, as if magic was able to reach through the portal and zap us with a confirmation of my vow.
“See? Unbreakable,” I say, turning away with a wink. “Be right back.”
The farther I get from the park, the stranger I feel. By the time I stomp up Nana’s porch, demanding she give me the landline so I can call my parents, I can’t quite remember what I’m supposed to be telling them in the first place.
They ask me how my day was, and when I think about it, all I can recount is a tale of new friends found at the park, how we played realm-hopper all day, and how a boy started a game of tag and then disappeared.
“Also, I need to learn how to sword fight,” I say, at the end of our conversation.
My dad’s chuckles fill the line. “Okay. We can enroll you in a fencing class.”
“No. I mean like fighting dragons with swords. So that when I’m older I can win a duel,” I say. I don’t fully understand why it’s important, but it is.
My parents laugh. They think I’m joking. I’m not.
“You’ve got such an imaginative mind, Ali,” my mom titters. “Why don’t we get you into an art class too?”
“Fine,” I mutter. “As long as I get to fight.”
My parents laugh again before hanging up.
I stare out the glass panes of my Nana’s sunroom, watching the day end. It’s pretty, streaks of yellow, pink, and orange blurred together, with navy blues of night waiting at the horizon for their moment to run across the sky.
It’s a normal sunset, but for some reason it all feels backwards.
The memory is mundane in comparison to what I had conjured in my mind to fill the blanks.
No epic battles. No threats.
Just one girl and one boy.
A pinky promise.
A meddlesome Wood that knew she had more to learn before she could stay.
And a great love waiting for her in the distance.