Chapter 8 Help Has a Name
The thick fur under my fingertips reminds me of DaiSzek.
When I was nine, I fell through the plate of ice on the surface of the frozen lagoon. DaiSzek pulled me out and curled his gigantic body around me to keep the hypothermia at bay. That’s what these wolves remind me of. We did not ask them to keep us warm. They just are.
And now that I’m not chilled to the bone, I’ve been caressing the fur along their spines.
“We had a visitor,” Niklaus says quietly.
The breeze has died somewhere between the mountains, and now all that remains is a frozen, eerie quiet. The wolves sleep in a ring around us, but I can feel the change in Niklaus’s breath against my back.
I roll onto my back to see him. Niklaus is propped up on one elbow.
“Who?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t see them. But they left us something.”
Down by the opening of the cave is a leather backpack and a satchel canteen for water. Someone left us means for survival. Could it be Asena and members of the Stormsage Keep? Why wouldn’t they stay to help us get home? They’ve known Niklaus and I since we were born.
Carefully slipping out from the cocoon of warmth the wolves have given us, Niklaus gets dressed, and goes to inspect the contents of the backpack.
“Change into these.” He tosses me thick fur clothing and a pair of boots.
Hell yes. We’ll be able to get out of here. But will we be able to hike all the way back to the Red Oaks in the snow?
The wolves wake up one at a time as we tie our boots, buckle our pants, and fasten our coats. They sit up, blink slowly, and begin to leave the cave in a single-file line.
“Thank you,” I murmur as they leave, patting one on the head as it briefly rubs against my thigh.
The trek through the snow is long, exhausting, and lonely.
Niklaus refuses to acknowledge me in any way. Which normally I cherish. But this is an unusual time. We need to be a team whether I like it or not. Uncle Niles has been captured in Vexamen, and yet we’re back in Dementia. I can’t shake the disbelief in my bones that we’ve left him behind.
“I’m worried about Uncle Niles,” I finally say as we cross over into the Evergreen Dark Wood.
His steps falter, and he has to roll his shoulders before he continues walking.
“Me too.”
“I don’t understand how he was so violently treated in Aunt Ruth’s territory. She’d never allow that.”
The muscles in Niklaus’s jaw are working endlessly as he grinds his teeth.
“He’s okay though, right? Surely Aunt Ruth and Uncle Warrose would have gotten word about his capture?”
But it all feels so wrong. My optimistic thoughts are figments of imagination. Of wishful thinking.
“Did that look like the same place Aunt Ruth has ruled over to you?” he growls.
No.
Niklaus scans the dimming horizon, glaring at the sun lowering below the tree line. What are we supposed to do once it gets dark? In this forest, it turns pitch black. And neither of us knows our way around or how to get out.
“Maybe we can find Runa? Ask for a place to stay?” I offer.
He stops walking, sighs loudly, a show of how agitated he is by my effort to communicate.
Heat presses into my chest as my temper grows weary and inconsolable.
This idiot needs me. He said it himself.
Even though I know he’s wrong about that theory, I’m not going to correct him and devalue myself.
I’m the asset here, and he’s pretty much deadweight.
“Fine. I’ll go myself.” Before I can stomp off, Niklaus catches my wrist.
I react out of pettiness. The sickle strapped to my back is pointed at his genitalia so quickly, Niklaus only has time to lower his eyes at the blade to observe the almost-castration.
“Hand. Off.”
His iron jaw flexes, and though his stone expression does not change, I can feel the hateful seething behind his eyes.
“We camp here,” he says, glaring down at me.
I look up at him, too close to his chest, which expands his aroma of fresh citrus, white musk, and aquatic wood. I take a disgusted step back.
With my best condescending smirk, I say, “No more naked cuddling?”
That grimace could burn a hole through my skull.
While Niklaus sets up camp and fire, I manage to hunt a jackrabbit. When Aunt Marilynn taught us how to hunt growing up, I remember thinking “What situation am I ever going to need to know this for?”
We eat in silence.
Stare blankly at the fire in silence.
Co-exist in silence, barely.
Aside from the light of the fire illuminating our faces, the world around us is an empty pit. This forest leaves no room for sight. It’s just us and an eerie feeling in my chest growing hollow and uneasy.
“Your chewing is obnoxious,” he comments.
Oh, here we go.
I start smacking my lips.
“God,” he sighs.
“So crazy how my mouth annoys you so much,” I say, still chewing.
Niklaus relaxes, unbothered and uncaring.
“Would you rather be stuck out here with Mabel Rose?” I ask and instantly regret it. Why? Oh god, why would I give him the impression of jealousy? It wasn’t. Fuck, no, it wasn’t.
“That is eating away at you, isn’t it?”
“That my best friend was sucking the dick of the man who has been obsessed with hurting me my whole life? Yes. It’s eating away at me.”
He smirks, half amused, half disinterested as his eyes remain focused on a spot in the darkness beyond the fire. “And imagining your best friend riding me isn’t making you furious with jealousy?”
That image collapses onto my thoughts. The brunt force of it scorching my insides. But I relax the lines on my forehead, steady my breath, mute the feeling of betrayal boiling over.
“It makes me sad.” The muscles in my neck stiffen. I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed or disgusted at my sudden confession.
“What?”
“Yes.”
I continue digging a deeper hole for myself.
Niklaus shifts his attention to me slowly from the corner of his eye.
“Sad because I didn’t see it. Not you two fucking. But that I didn’t see how much she’s hated me all these years.”
He listens reluctantly.
“She’s your best friend.”
“I thought so too. But my mother killed her distant cousin, Belinda, in the asylum. Mabel Rose always attempted to convince me that fact meant nothing to her.”
He peers away in deep thought. “I didn’t know that.”
Doubtful. “I knew it had a part to play in being with you when she looked at me that night.”
“Maybe you’re reading into it.”
I shake my head. “I’m not.”
“She would have mentioned it to me…”
“Then maybe you got played too.”
He chuckles. “That would mean I had any feelings invested in her at all. I did not.”
“Look.” I exhale sharply, wanting to talk about anything else right now. “You don’t want to be around me. I don’t want to be around you. But we’re family. Our parents would want us to look out for each other right now.”
“We are not family, Sapphire.” His expression is carved from stone.
“I’m inclined to agree. Your parents are my family. Either way, my point remains.”
A windless cold glides between us, prickling the hairs on my arms. I hold my hands to the fire, wishing I was with Krimson tonight, sitting on the couch, reading new books he picked up for us.
“Do you remember that night when we were playing in the woods as kids? Krimson was home sick, and I tagged along with your friends? You told everyone the night dawpers were emerging from hibernation?”
“No.”
“You do.” My voice cracks. I refuse to look at him.
“You convinced the other kids to run home, screaming for their lives. But I knew I wasn’t as fast because you were all boys.
So I…I climbed a tree and waited there all night.
It was freezing, and I couldn’t stop shaking because every twig snapping in that dark forest made me think the night dawpers had found me. ”
“What is your point?”
“You could have come back.” The little girl in me is speaking now. “You could have helped me down from the tree and told me it was all a joke. But you just left me there.”
He’s staring at me now. “I did.”
The admission stings.
“I was eight fucking years old.”
“Yeah. And it worked.”
“Huh?”
“You stopped trusting me.”
“And that’s what you wanted?”
“It is.” No malice there. No satisfaction. Just a flat truth.
“Why?”
“Think about it,” he says evenly.
The fire pops sharply between us.
“No answers are coming to mind,” I say.
He draws in an inpatient breath. “I’ve had very upsetting thoughts about you since I was taken as a kid. Violent ones.” There’s a breath of silence that stretches unbearably long. “Toward you. You shouldn’t have been allowed to simply wander the woods at night with me. I wasn’t right in the head.”
The sound of rapid breathing that doesn’t belong to either of us, snags our attention. Our heads snap in the same direct straight ahead. We make eye contact briefly, then lower our food to the ground. The sound turns into something dragging across gravel and dirt, scratchy and quiet.
Niklaus grabs his sword slowly, communicating some silent message of attack with his eyes on me. With a shaky hand, I find my sickle, latching onto its handle as my heart drums against my breastbone. I don’t know if I have it in me for another fight.
“Rabbit good.”
We freeze. It isn’t words we heard with our ears but with our mind. An intrusive thought that doesn’t match my own. A sound that seems to come from all around us, sticking to the cool, dry air. A soft echo.
Niklaus furrows his brow at me, then mouths, “Did you hear that too?”
I nod.
“I hungry too,” the voice adds. It’s like that of a female child. Cute and high, innocent and pure even.
“What the fuck?” I mouth to Niklaus.
Is this a demon haunting these woods? I mean, we’ve heard stories growing up about how mystical beings used to live here a thousand years ago. But I’ve always thought it was bullshit.
The creature moves closer, taking steps in pure darkness toward us, sniffing the air and dirt obnoxiously.
I hold my sickle up with a shaky hand, straining my eyes to see past the black fog.
“Fuck this,” Niklaus growls, tossing a flaming branch in front of us.