Chapter 7 Does Not Belong
“If we’re in Vexamen…`then why the fuck is that here?”
Niklaus and I hide behind the side of a great red archway. An entry to a carnival of fire dancers, smoking pits, cages, and animals on display. There are stained stages and racks of weapons. People walk in crowds through the layout, pointing, eating, and laughing.
My stomach drops to my feet.
This can’t be…
“No…” I gasp, turning to Niklaus. “Aunt Ruth and Uncle Warrose outlawed this decades ago. There’s no way this is…”
“The Meat Carnivals,” Niklaus finishes.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
Niklaus looks just as horrified as I feel.
We learned about The Meat Carnivals growing up.
When we were seven, Niklaus got so mad, he threw his textbook across the room.
Uncle Niles had to pick him up and explain how our aunt and uncle banned it from that country for good. No more animals would suffer.
Yet here we are.
I let my eyes wander a moment longer. Furry corpses. Severed animal parts. Fire. Fire. Fire. And the noises, oh god, the noises!
“Niklaus,” I gasp, throwing my hand over my mouth. “What the fuck!”
“When we woke up here, I thought they drugged us, put us on a ship, and brought us to Vexamen. That we must have been out for days,” Niklaus says, zoning out in thought.
“That’s what happened, yeah.”
“No. It’s not.” He looks at me with large blue eyes. Alarmed and sickened. “The blood on us hasn’t dried yet. It’s still fresh. And the Vexamen Breed soldiers were knocked out with us. They were just as shocked to be here as we were.”
I touch my wet, bloody face. He’s right. Our blood would have been dried on us by now. And everyone was unconscious.
“Then how did we get here?” I ask.
Niklaus shakes his head, having a thought that disturbed him too much. “We need to find Aunt Ruth and Uncle Warrose now.”
I’m yanked backward by my hair. Sharp, stabbing pain splinters across my scalp, and I yelp. “Hey!”
Niklaus is grabbed from behind, knocking the sword out of his hands.
“Demechnef vizezes!” a man yells behind me.
It’s the mob of soldiers. Too many of them.
People in the carnival turn their heads.
Animals bustle in their cages. And even though I’m too sore to fight, I remember my mother telling me the story of when she was stuck in a drainpipe in Vexamen.
That if she didn’t keep fighting, she would have starved and died down there.
I throw my head back, feeling a crack as those arms release me. Niklaus does something similar, maneuvering his way out of their hold. But they come at us too quickly, swords and sickles, whips and blades.
Two against dozens.
We back away in a panicked shuffle. My heart rattles inside my chest. I can’t catch my breath. This is it. This is it. This is it.
But that familiar, agonizing hook slices back into my core.
A stabbing puncture. And that world of black fog and starry night appears behind us, full of glittering pinholes of white light, and cosmic powder.
Without any warning, a charcoal animal dives from its opening, dragging a trail of onyx smoke as it soars through the air.
A small, shiny wolf made of dust and stars and the night sky.
Go now! I hear it speak to me in a small, inhuman voice.
The small shadow wolf attacks the soldiers, giving us enough time to…
“What the hell is that?!” Niklaus shouts. But the call of that tunnel, that astronomical mist is having me heave in torment. It blasts up my spine. A lightheadedness sways through my brain cells. Instinctually, I latch on to Niklaus’s arm, and the sparkling black sky swallows us whole.
Bile spills from my mouth, leaving the taste of cognac to burn the back of my throat.
And…everything feels wrong.
I’m profoundly out of place, delirious, confused, and in shock.
A tremor runs through my systems, prickling my skin, jolting me awake. I reach up to my face, rubbing away the fog, and it stings. My face is pressed against the sharp ground, going numb and lighting up each individual nerve.
What just happened?
Cold. So cold.
Sleep is ripped from me as I stare at the endless sea of white on the ground and blasting in my throbbing face like a dust bowl through the hazy air.
Snow.
I shiver like a wet dog. Every muscle in my body begins to shudder at the sudden drop in temperature.
Glorious evergreen trees line the skies overhead. White capped mountains cascade in the horizon. I spit the rest of the bile out, using my arms to rise from the biting snow.
“We must have been drugged,” I mutter to myself.
This has to be a drug-induced trip. What else could it be? We’re clearly hallucinating. But then, why does it feel so real?
As I stand, still wearing my terribly uncomfortable red high heels, I see Niklaus already standing, staring off into the storm of snow with an unreadable expression.
“We’re in the North Sapphrine Forest,” I say quietly. “We must have been drugged.”
Niklaus keeps his eyes forward. “I’m the only Blackforth family member who has never heard the prophecy of the seven forests. My mother would never tell me why…”
Has he lost it? How is this relevant right now?
“You did this to us, didn’t you?” He rotates toward me, anger turning the whites of his eyes a light shade of pink. “You are just like your parents. You brought us here!”
I take a step back and nearly trip. “Me?!”
Does he have a brain injury from the fight?
“Yes, Spitfire! Look where the fuck we are! Look who your goddammed parents are!”
I choke out a furious laugh. “I’m nothing like my parents! I’m not an experiment! I’m normal. This wasn’t my doing!”
There was a time, yes, where I wished I could be just like them.
I wished I was special too. Maybe then I could talk to my father for the first time.
Maybe then I could be a part of history too.
But now? Hell no. I want to get as far away from our fucked-up family as possible.
I want to build my own name, my own life.
Niklaus crunches through the snow to get a better look at me, glaring through the curtain of falling snow. “Have fun freezing to death out here in your short, slutty dress. I’m not staying with your defective brain another moment.”
Something inside me withers before it lights on fire.
“Good! Leave! Enjoy your unmarked grave, coward!”
And he’s gone. Abandoning me in this winter storm.
I know we have never gotten along, that we’ve always disliked each other greatly…
but I am in a short dress. My legs are exposed.
This thick cloak will only do so much to keep me warm.
I will freeze to death out here without him.
I never thought his hate for me was so pronounced that he actually wished me dead.
I stumble across the snow to find a cave, too stubborn to die before he does out here. All I need is to make a fire. If I can do that, maybe I can hunt. Get fur to keep warm, give myself a fighting chance to hike back to the city.
A few leagues away, I see it. A dark hole where a cave would exist. I pick up sticks and a couple logs of wood along the way. I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it.
The arctic chill in the air is paralyzing, drying out my skin, and causing my muscles to atrophy. The forest screams with eerie winds and rustling branches. And my view of the white landscape all blends together. I tuck deeper into my red cloak.
Krimson, where are you? I need help.
It feels like half an hour before I see that cave growing larger in the distance. If I can just start a fire…
There’s a whooshing sound that zings through the air. Something slices into the top of my ear. I screech, throwing myself into the snow as ruby drops splatter across the ice. An arrow lands a few feet away from me.
“Fuck!” I whip my head around to see two of those same Vexamen soldiers who tried to grab us before. Did they come here with us when we…traveled again?
“Whex eiz Demechnef!”
They throw two more objects in my direction. Metal balls that expand, casting a net in the air before sticking into the ground on either side of me.
Shit!
No amount of scrambling helps, I’m hogtied down, unable to wiggle out of the net they’ve closed me in. And the two soldiers are sprinting through the heavy snow, holding up a sickle in my direction.
“Hey! Wait a second! I”
A fountain of blood bursts from the neck of the soldier to the right as his head isn’t quite cut off, but close enough.
The next is speared from behind. The shiny tip of a sword glides through his chest, coated in a thick layer of dark blood.
As it slides back out, the soldier drops with a gaping red mouth.
Niklaus stands behind them, wiping off his sword.
Well, hell, I would rather have died.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, pissed and panting.
I shake my head. He ran to come find me. Through the snow.
His large deep-sea eyes trail over my tied-up body, then land on a spot at the side of my head. “Your ear is bleeding.”
My momentary shock wears off. “So, freezing to death is acceptable for me, but being butchered by Vexamen soldiers isn’t?”
“You’re fucking ungrateful.” He uses the tip of his sword to cut me loose. “But my saving your pathetic ass was entirely selfish. I don’t know how you moved us across a great distance like this…but you may be our only way home.”
He doesn’t offer to help me to my feet. I wouldn’t have taken his hand if he did.
“I didn’t do anything,” I huff, dusting the snow off my cloak. “You don’t need me to get home. Just hike back to the city from here and try not to freeze or getting eaten by wild animals.”
“I don’t know if moving us to a different location is all you’ve done. What if you shifted us to a new reality? Or a…”
“A what?”
His piercing gaze meets mine. “A different time.”
I laugh in his stupid fucking face. Cruelly. Coldly. Mockingly.
He raises an eyebrow. “I see you’re still just as unimaginative and dense as when you were a child. Pity.”
My smile falls.