Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Pretty easy on the eyes, this one,” said the Erlking conversationally. “Is that why you’ve gone and changed your mind?”
“Changed my mind?” repeated David. It was hardly the most intelligent remark, but it was the best he could do as he tried desperately to come up with a plan.
Certainly the Erlking wasn’t going to let the two of them go without a fight—besides which, Meredith appeared to be in a kind of enchanted sleep.
If the Erlking refused to break the spell, perhaps Mrs. Jupiter could, but who knew whether she’d be willing to help them this time?
The Erlking shook his head in facetious sympathy. “First you turn him down, and now you want him back. His poor little heart can’t take it—and all the better for me.”
“I didn’t mean to,” said David, talking more to Meredith than to the Erlking. “I was trying to tell you something quite different, but neither of us ever can say a thing straight-out, can we?”
“You mortal men are such hopeless fools,” cackled the Erlking, and drank another long draught of despair, drawing a cry of pain from Meredith.
Fury surged up inside David. “You can’t do this. You can’t have him,” he said. “I won’t allow it.”
“Oh? You would challenge me for his hand?”
“No,” said David, standing up to his full height. “He’s his own person. But I challenge you in his place, since you’ve prevented him being able to do it himself.”
After a moment of apparent consideration, the Erlking shrugged. “I’ll tell you what. If you want to try sorting out his strange little brain cave, then by all means, have at it. I’ve had a peek in there and it’s an utter disaster.”
David didn’t follow. “In his…?”
The Erlking threw out an arm with a swish of his crimson cloak, and their surroundings shimmered and changed.
They stood now inside a long, twisting corridor, the walls tilted at sharp and unexpected angles, patterned in a dizzying combination of clashing swirls and stripes of black and white.
Much of their surface was taken up by mirrors, many of them shattered.
Splinters of silver glass stuck into the walls and littered the floor.
Over walls and glass both were scrawled words, some barely legible, others painfully clear.
Following the Erlking through the maze, David tried to take it all in, feeling rather as though he’d entered a horror-film fun house.
In the openings of connecting passageways, sinister shadows darted by, though David could not properly catch sight of them no matter how quickly he turned.
Every so often, a wind swept past, carrying whispers that he could not make out.
Upon closer inspection, the words on the walls appeared in a variety of different handwritings.
Meredith’s appeared frequently, and in some spots, David recognized his own (even if Meredith didn’t).
He leaned down to retrieve a sliver of glass from the chevron-striped floor. Its surface bore the words God, you’re useless.
That wasn’t true at all, but David remembered Florian saying it.
He remembered himself ignoring it in favor of continuing his own conversation with Genevieve and Bednarek.
You’re not, thought David, and I’m sorry.
The glass in his hand dissolved in a puff of silver glitter that dissipated into the air.
A bit farther on, David caught hold of a larger shard of glass and gave it a tug, dislodging it from the oddly soft and pliable wall.
It left behind a deep and jagged hole. The sight of the wound distressed him, and he placed a hand over it, as if he could somehow wipe it away.
To his surprise, the surface of the wall shifted beneath his palm, healing over—but not entirely.
There still remained a depression where the glass had been, a kind of scar.
The Erlking hadn’t slowed, and David hurried on, afraid to lose sight of him in the broken labyrinth; he did not like to imagine what might happen if he lost his way here.
He wondered whether the inside of his own mind looked anything like this, and suspected that it contained nowhere near as much shattered glass.
The shard he’d taken from the wall read, in a different handwriting, She thinks it’s her fault you turned out to be a queer.
But it isn’t, thought David. Phrasing aside, such a thing was nobody’s fault. It was nothing that required a casting of blame. It wasn’t even a problem. It simply was.
This time, the glass exploded into a small shower of rhinestones that sparkled at his feet for a moment before dissolving into the floor.
Okay, thought David, there might be something to this.
Before he could speculate any further, however, the hall of mirrors ended. He and the Erlking entered a large open chamber, similar in appearance to the space they’d just come through, save for the multitude of angular arched doorways leading to what he guessed must be more corridors.
In the middle of the room, at the center point of the floor’s spiraling stripes, there stood a twisted pedestal of opaque black glass. Atop it rested a massive glittering ruby, deep dark red and bigger than David could have held in both hands.
It was faceted into the shape of a heart.
Rather, it had been. Now it was cracked throughout into so many pieces he feared it would collapse into a heap at the slightest breeze, and impaled dead center with an enormous, wickedly sharp piece of mirror glass.
David swallowed hard and tried to ignore the sting that pricked at the corners of his eyes.
“I thought you said this was his brain.” That should be the least of his problems; he ought to know by now not to seek logical consistency in the Midnight Wood, not in a place where time ran backward and anything could happen.
The Erlking waved an unconcerned hand. “Brain, heart, he doesn’t know how to make the distinction.
” Then those unnerving pale eyes settled on David, and the Erlking’s mouth cracked into a sly smile.
“Now, here’s an idea. You’re a sporting sort of gentleman.
Supposing you and I make ourselves a little wager, eh? ”
David had a suspicion as to where this was heading, and he didn’t like it one bit. “What sort of wager?”
“I’ll give you one hour. You fix that”—one blackened claw pointed at the shattered ruby—“and he’s yours. And I’ll take my leave of the Midnight Wood for good. If you should fail—”
“Now look here,” David interrupted, his fury rising once more. “You can’t go betting with—with people as though they were so many poker chips.”
“Or sugar cubes?” suggested the Erlking.
It was a calculated strike. David could not help but recall the night of Sylvania Holland’s visit and Meredith’s sheer joy at his inconsequential winnings—at finding someone to join in the game—in spite of all David’s grumblings.
In that moment, he knew that no matter the stakes, no matter what the Erlking said next, he would do anything to get Meredith back.
“If you should fail,” the Erlking repeated, “then you and he both shall be forfeit to me.”
Taking a bet with those terms would be dangerous and foolhardy to the extreme, against all good sense.
“I accept,” said David without hesitation.
With a smirk, the Erlking went on, “Or perhaps better to say when you fail, because there’s no way you’ll ever manage it, not if I gave you all the time in the world. You’ve no hope of doing anything but making it worse, and my libations shall be all the sweeter!”
“You don’t know that.” David tried to quell the hopelessness rising up in him. “You don’t.”
“Are you joking?” The Erlking made a sweeping gesture. “Look around you! Nobody could fix this. He’s broken beyond repair, which suits my purposes just fine.” He reached out to caress the nearest wall, tracing along a zigzagging black stripe.
“Stop that,” said David sharply. “And you’re wrong. It’s not true.”
“Good luck,” said the Erlking, “not that it’ll help.” With a final cackle, he faded away.
One hour.
David hadn’t the least idea how to go about fixing anything. He’d made a few pieces of glass vanish, and he thought he understood how, but there were far, far too many for him to ever have any hope of clearing them away entirely.
He pulled another glass shard from the wall and smoothed over the gash it left behind. On it were the words You, on the other hand, are the most selfish person I have ever met.
The handwriting was his own.
“I’m sorry,” breathed David. “God, I’m sorry.”
This piece, too, disappeared in a puff of glittering smoke.
Selfish, selfish, selfish, echoed Meredith’s handwriting on a trio of tiny shards, as if he hadn’t been able to banish the words from his mind.
As if he believed it himself.
No, no, no, thought David, and the three fragments simultaneously vanished.
Eyes stinging, David continued his exploration of the room.
Some of the smallest bits of glass bore single words like freak and retard and faggot, but those, too, faded away the moment he thought a simple no at them.
He pulled out glass splinters that had penetrated deep into the wall, doing what he could to heal the resulting lacerations and dispel the cutting words.
One handwriting in particular appeared frequently, saying terrible, insidious things, and David knew exactly whose it was:
Take off those fucking daisies.
You’re a goddamn embarrassment.
Can you pretend to be normal for a few hours, or are you too fucking stupid to handle that, too?
I feel bad for your roommate—can’t you tell how ashamed he is to be seen with you?
“I’m not,” he said fiercely. “Meredith, I’m not, you’ve got to know that.”