26. Chapter 25 #3
“I’m right here…right here…right here,” the woman’s voice echoed again behind her.
She turned around, and her heart seized. This wasn’t the forest near the school. It was the woods behind Briar’s house. And now she was at the edge of the same clearing with the ring of stones in the center.
Unlike in her memories, there was a door in the center of it.
A red door. Was it the same one her mother tried to warn her about?
Or was it some magical anomaly that pulled her in?
She swallowed roughly as she moved closer, her heart pounding like it was begging to escape.
It was inhumanly tall, as if it could fit a giant creature through it.
Or out of it. Leaves rustled behind her.
She twisted around, but nothing was there.
“Ezra?” she called out quietly.
“Ivy…” The voice was farther, yet echoing closer and closer.
She exhaled shakily before calling out again. “Where are you?”
“I’m right here,” the distorted voice said from behind her.
She whipped back around and screamed as she came face-to-face with Briar. Her eyes were wide and crazed, dirt caked her blonde hair, and the smile she wore was wider than humanly possible. Blood dripped from an open wound on her hand.
“Briar?”
“I’m right here,” Briar sneered. A stream of blood leaked from the corners of Briar’s eyes as a sharp, burning sensation bloomed in her hand. She cried out as Briar sliced open Ivy’s scar with the same pocket knife from that night. A drop of her blood fell on the stone next to her foot.
The creaking of wood sounded throughout the forest, and Ivy looked around wildly until she realized it was coming from behind Briar. The door was slowly opening, and pitch-black smoke curled out from the cracks.
“No,” she muttered. “No, no, no.”
“They. Shall. Rise,” Briar said over and over, cackling maniacally.
Ivy covered her ears, clenching her eyes shut, as she waited for whatever was on the other side of the door to be released. What had she done? What had Briar done? Was this even real?
“Ivy!” Ezra shouted. A soft, silk like rope pulled at her, like it wanted to rescue her from whatever nightmare she found herself in. Her eyes shot open, and she was back—the sun, the lake, the pines, and him.
Her breathing came rapidly as she readjusted, and she snapped her focus to her hand. No blood. No fresh cut. Just the same faint scar. “What the fuck?”
“What happened?” Ezra asked wildly, one of his hands cupping her cheek. “You fell, and you weren’t responding to me. It was like you were here, but you weren’t.”
“I…I don’t know,” she whimpered, her face wet with tears. “It was like I was trapped in a memory, except it was distorted, maybe.”
“Maybe?” He stood from the ground, lifting her gently with him.
“It was when I was fourteen, some time after I met Briar. I don’t remember much,” she mumbled. “Before I fell, I breathed in some sort of smoke.”
She bent back to the ground, using her sleeve to cover her face as she brushed the leaves around. Beneath them was a handful of small, exploded mushrooms.
“I have a small jar in my backpack. Can you grab it for me?”
A moment later, he handed her the jar. “Do you always have that with you?”
“Not always,” she said, twisting off the lid.
“It comes in handy if I come across a plant I want spliced. Or, in this case, something I need to study more.” Ivy carefully plucked one of the mushrooms from the ground, dropped it into the jar, and closed it tight.
“A lot of mushrooms have hallucinogenic properties, but I’m not entirely familiar with this particular species.
I’ll ask Professor Thorne if there’s anything special about it after class. ”
“I think we should stop here for the day,” he said, helping her up from the ground. “There’s the first warfare tournament of the year happening in their arena. We could grab some food, maybe a couple more hot coffees to keep us warm, and watch them beat each other up for the sake of sportsmanship?”
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t care for magic tournaments. Teams would face off, trying to best each other with spells, only for them to get bloodied and bruised. But it could be a good distraction from whatever the hell she just witnessed.
Ezra grabbed their bags, slinging his over his shoulder and carrying Ivy’s in his left hand. Before they moved out of the woods, he placed his right hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Okay was a loaded word for having a hallucination of her best friend bleeding from her eyes.
But what was worse was that it felt more like a memory.
One she has no recollection of. All she could remember was getting to the clearing in the forest, then riding their bikes back to Ivy’s house with some torn cloth wrapped around her hand.
How could everything in between be gone?
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, her words shaky. By the pursing of his lips, she could tell he didn’t believe her. She wouldn’t either because, despite years of being Briar’s friend, she never picked up Briar’s knack for lying.