24. Chapter Twenty-four
Linorra left Syndeth perched on the lowest bough of an ironwood tree at the edge of the forest, looking out upon Queen Mortier’s dark castle. The witch’s directions had been true, and she found the secret entrance to the dungeon without incident, then crept down as quickly and silently as she could, nearly slipping on the wet stairs. There were no torches to light the black walkway or cells. She held the glowing sword out in front of her as a light, gripping it tightly. Her hands shook with fright.
When I was a kid, we lived in Eureka, California, close to the Sequoia Park Zoo. It was an older neighborhood with beautiful mature redwood trees and small, well-maintained homes. Back then, it was still safe. I used to walk to and from school every day by myself.
One day, when I was nine, I walked home behind a group of three girls, all a couple of years older than me. I didn’t want to join their group. Being alone was so much easier back then. I just trailed at a safe distance, pretending not to see them.
One of the girls turned around to stare at me, then giggled at the other two girls. There was something about my pink Powerpuff Girls shirt that they thought was funny. After a minute, that same girl turned around, looked at me again, then stopped to wait. The other two girls followed suit.
Ugh. They’re going to say something mean and I’m going to cry again.
“Lina!” the girl called. She knew my name somehow, but I didn’t know hers. She was taller than the other two girls and had short, mousy brown hair. She wasn’t particularly pretty. I mean, she wasn’t ugly, but both of her friends were definitely prettier than her, and I’m thinking that didn’t sit well.
“I like your shirt,” she said. The other two girls smirked. I’m not always great with social cues, but even I knew she was making fun of me.
“Thanks,” I said, then sped up and passed the girls.
As I passed, Mousehead said, “And your backpack!” Then they all tittered. My backpack was purple and had Xena: Warrior Princess on it. Okay, maybe the shirt was a little babyish, but my backpack was badass. I turned around and gave her a look like she was crazy.
“Thanks,” I said again, obviously sarcastic this time.
“No,” said Mousehead. “I really like it. Can I see it?”
“I can’t. I gotta get home,” I said, then sped up to a jog. This was turning into a bad situation.
“Don’t be a baby. Just let me see it,” she called after me. She jogged to catch up to me and grabbed the loop on my bag, forcing me to a sudden stop and pulling me onto the ground. One of the other girls came up behind her, helping her rip the bag off me. I sat on the ground staring up at them in disbelief.
“Give it back!” I yelled. Then I remembered that my art project was in there. It was a little clay bowl I’d shaped and painted with a pink heart on the bottom. It was nothing special, but I’d planned to give it to my mom. I cried, of course. After all, I am the girl who cries and falls down.
“Why are you crying, little baby?” Mousehead taunted. “It’s not like I hurt you.”
“Give me my backpack, you stupid mouse head!” I yelled. It wasn’t the smartest idea, I’ll admit, but I was a pissed-off nine-year-old. I had no sense of diplomacy back then. Or ever.
Mousehead glared like she was about to kick me, but I heard a car coming down the road. She looked up, standing back from me. “You want it back?” she asked. “Go get it.”
Then, just as the car drove by, she threw the bag into the road under the tires. The car screeched to a halt just after its front tire crunched over the bag. I screamed, tears running down my face, but there was nothing to be done.
It wasn’t until then that I heard my mom’s shar-pei, Molly, barking furiously from the back seat and noticed that it was my dad’s car. A surge of vengeful hope filled me. Mousehead would get it now. My dad looked over at us calmly, then got out of his car and ambled over. I still sat on the ground, crying. He knew exactly what had happened, he told me later, but he pretended to be confused.
“What is going on?” he asked in his adorable accent. “Someone attacked me and Molly with a purple missile.”
Mousehead pointed at me while the other two girls just kept their heads down. It seemed to me that their expressions of guilt should have been obvious to anyone.
“I see,” he said. “Well, let’s see what we can do.” He walked over to the car and bent down to retrieve the backpack from behind the right front tire. My dad pulled the bag out and brushed it off. It was dirty, but it seemed okay.
“It had my present in it,” I said, then cried even harder.
“Oh, no!” he said, opening the bag to peek inside. I knew what he saw in there. It was crushed, like my little heart.
My dad eyed the girls one by one, then said, “Girls, go on home.” Mousehead smirked, knowing she had gotten away with her evil crime, and they continued down the street.
I stared after them incredulously, then up at my dad.
“Get in the car, Lina,” he said.
“No!” I snapped. “I don’t want to get in the car with you. They pushed me down and ruined my present, and you just let them go. You don’t even care about me!” The tears made trails down my dusty face. Molly whined from the back seat and scratched at the window.
He’s even worse than Mousehead, I thought.
My dad gazed down at me with compassion, then squatted next to me and rubbed my back. The sun gleamed off the top of his bald pate.
“Lina, you’re gonna learn that, while there is a time and a place for punishing evildoers, most of the time they hang themselves. That tall girl thought she got away with it, but did you see the other two girls?”
I shook my head.
“They looked mighty anxious. They weren’t smiling at all, especially that girl on the left. I think she was pretty upset. I think she might be wondering if it’s a good idea to be friends with a bully who pushes people down and gets her in trouble. If you wait, you might see that the tall girl gets exactly what’s coming to her and you didn’t need to lift a finger.”
I crossed my arms and pouted, refusing to get up. I wanted justice. I wanted Mousehead’s mousy head on a platter. With chips!
“Lina, a lot of times you have no choice but to fight, but there are always consequences to that route. When you can, it’s better to step away and let people suffer the consequences of their own bad choices. It gets you into less trouble and teaches them a lesson that fighting never could.”
He was right. That girl on the left, Emily, told her parents what happened, and they forbade her from being friends with Mousehead. Then the other girl, Jess, chose Emily over Mousehead, and she also abandoned her. Then, those two girls called her “Mousehead” in school, and the name stuck.
She had that name until I moved away a year later, and probably beyond. I actually felt kind of bad for her, though not really because she blamed me for the whole thing. Maybe he wasn’t entirely right about the lesson part.
The wave of exhaustion passed, and I opened my eyes again to see Axel’s corpse. In death, his eyes had fallen open just a crack, staring at nothing, his pupils huge and black. I looked away, not wanting to see the ugly result of my work. I had fallen asleep just long enough to dream about my first enemy, Mousehead, the one I’d destroyed with words and patience. That was the beginning, and now here I was at the inevitable progression of my corruption. My first kill.
I told myself that it wasn’t I who’d pulled the trigger, but I couldn’t escape the fact that I could have saved Axel and chose not to. He was dead because I wanted him that way. Period. Did he deserve it? Probably. He was a murderer himself, wasn’t he? He was a rapist and a sadist and a child killer. I couldn’t think of someone who deserved it more, yet it left me feeling empty, like I’d just lost a part of myself that I could never recover.
Aaron crouched behind me, still holding me up, waiting for me to finish mourning my lost innocence. The only light had come from the fire in the doorway, but it was out now. The rain had flooded into the entryway and put the torch out before it could do anything more than make a black circle on the wood floors. Lucky.
Aaron picked me all the way up and held me in his arms like a baby. His zombie opponents had landed a few good hits on him. He had a goose egg forming on his left temple. There were fingernail scratches on his forehead that trailed toward his right eye, but his eyes were clear and bright.
“I let him die,” I said, staring into his shadowed face.
“Yes,” he said, “but don’t take responsibility for it. He did that to himself. What you have to decide is if you can stomach it again because if we stay here and fight, this will not be the last death you witness. It will only get worse, and they won’t all be pure evil like Axel.”
I mulled that over for a moment. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. I was glad the man was dead. He was an evildoer, as my dad would say. But who was I to decide his fate?
“Put me down,” I murmured. “I can stand now.”
Aaron set me on my feet and rubbed my back. I was still bone-tired and overwhelmed by a deep longing for home. I need to learn how to use this Teleportation fragment as soon as possible.
Spirit appeared in front of me. Well, that was super creepy. Are you aware that you just ripped up a person’s soul?
I gave Spirit a flat stare. A ghost is calling me creepy. I’ve hit a new low. Wait, Aaron can’t hear when you send thoughts to me, can he?
“They’re all thoughts, sort of,” she said aloud, “just projected differently, but no, thoughts go to one person. Words go to all.” Aaron glanced in Spirit’s direction, then squinted as if struggling to see something far away.
He’s starting to see me,Spirit thought to me, grinning. That will be fun.
I decided to change the subject. “Axel has a girl tied up in his house,” I said. “A kid. We have to save her.”
“Cobb took my brother too,” Ellis said, walking toward us. “Back over a bridge to Neesee. It doesn’t matter that Axel is dead, Cobb will do whatever he was told.”
Ellis picked up the umbrella and brought it over to us. He handed it to Aaron, who held it over me. His Protection reservoir had grown significantly since we met, and his wounds healed in front of my eyes.
“Thanks,” I said, leaning into Aaron.
Ellis was covered head to toe in mud, but he was full of life now, unlike when he’d arrived. I really had strengthened him. A little too hard, perhaps. I felt my cheeks heat up, and I looked away from him.
Then, my stupid brain processed what he’d said. I spun around. Cobb, the umbrella-toting not-quite-über-zombie, was gone, and so was Ward.
“Dammit!” I exclaimed. I spun around again, still not convinced, but I had to grab Aaron again to steady myself. “Axel must have sent them back while I was . . .” my voice trailed off. Best not to discuss what I had done to Ellis.
Aaron looked back toward the house, then gave the other überzombies a once-over. They were all still on the ground but were stirring. The skeletal man was trying to roll over. Man, that bony guy was persistent.
“Can you heal them like you did Ellis?” Aaron asked.
I nodded, giving Ellis a sideways glance. “You’ll have to hold them down,” I said.
“I can help,” Ellis said, grimacing. I wondered how many girls Axel had made him hold down. More than one, I’d bet.
“Okay,” I said.
One by one, I broke their Projection trances with Transformation, combined with Connection, Protection, and Conjuration. The skeletal man, Shane Smite, was the easiest to heal. He had no strength left in him. His older brother, Fitch Smite, the large man, was also easy to heal but much harder to hold down. I was as weak as a kitten, so had to rely on the men for that.
Shane and Fitch hadn’t eaten in almost three weeks. Once they were released from their trance, however, they were mostly concerned with saving their other brother, Cobb, who was still enthralled.
The other two men, Markinius and Falondeitric Eboros, were also brothers and the sons of one of Axel’s political enemies, Regalinius Eboros. They’d been kidnapped two days prior. They hadn’t eaten in that time, either, but were in much better shape. They appeared to be in their late teens, younger than I’d thought when they were a towering presence behind our earlier defensive position. They both had the same black hair and pale skin as the Smite brothers.
“Seleca could send someone to follow up at any time,” Aaron said. He glanced up at the sky, then into the distance. Snow covered the ground in a fine powder and cast a peculiar beauty over an otherwise gruesome tableau.
“She’ll send more than a handful the next time,” Ellis said.
“We need to feed these men and let them sleep,” I said, shivering again. “We can leave in the morning. Let’s go in. I’m fa-freezing.”
“I can stand guard,” Ellis said, hugging his own shoulders.
“We’ll rotate,” Aaron said. “Lina is right. You need to sleep first, Ellis.”
“I feel fine,” Ellis said. “Great, actually.” Ellis smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which darted to me for an instant, then looked away. He turned and headed for the house. Aaron watched him go, then narrowed his eyes at me.
I coughed. “I need to grab my pack,” I said, then turned and stumbled back toward the side of the house.