Chapter 4 #2
The scream comes again, sharp, terrified. I cut left, deeper into the woods.
As I round an outcrop of boulders, I stop dead.
About thirty yards in front of me is the angry mob again, but they aren’t coming after me. I’ve come up behind them. They’ve got someone corralled against a massive tree, ropes and chains and way too many sharp implements for anything good. My stomach drops before I even see who it is.
I’m trying to make out what’s happening when I catch a flash of red hair.
My stomach drops.
No, it has to be a coincidence. Just as the thought crosses my mind, two of the mob crouch down to tie ropes around the person’s ankles, and I get a full look at their face.
It’s me.
At least, I think it’s me. She’s wearing something I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
Some kind of medieval peasant getup that looks like someone who’d never heard of a zipper assembled it.
But the face. The hair. The jaw set at that angle that means she’s about three seconds from doing something reckless.
Right at that moment, she rears back and spits directly in the face of the nearest mob member.
Yep. That’s me.
I can’t hear what she’s saying from this distance, but I can see the fire in her eyes and the insults she’s hurling at them like it’s an Olympic sport. She’s giving them absolute hell, and for a second I just watch with something close to pride.
Then one of them picks up a torch, and the pride turns to ice. They hold the torch close enough to her face that all shadows surrounding her are erased by the fire.
Damn it. I have to help her. I don’t know what the rules are about interfering with past versions of yourself. On TV, it always messes up the future timeline, but I’m not about to stand here and watch these assholes murder me.
I look up. There are branches overhead, thick ones, stretching from the trees behind me almost all the way to the one she’s strapped to. Close enough.
I use a vine to pull myself up into the canopy and start creeping across. Do not fall. Do not fall. I chant it over and over in my head. The last thing I need is to give these people two of me to deal with.
I make it to the other side without incident and lower myself down the back of the massive tree, pressing my spine against the bark. Now that I’m here, I realize I haven’t actually thought about what to do next.
Think, Elle.
Just as I am about to round the tree, vine magic on full display, a voice pops into my head and I have to slap a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.
"She with fire in her hair shall save us all."
“Who said that?” I whisper, spinning around.
"I did, silly child. My name is Gerald."
My eyes grow wide. “Gerald? As in Gerald, the tree that saved my ass in battle?”
"I do not know of which battle you speak. But I know you are important for the future. It has been foretold. You must save her."
“But I don’t know how!”
The bark behind me shifts with a low groan. An archway opens in the trunk, an actual doorway leading straight into the center of the tree.
"Enter," Gerald says. "And all shall be made clear."
I step inside. It’s a massive hollow room, big enough to stand in, but dark and empty. No furniture. No instructions. Just wood. Shadow.
“Now what, genius? I know you and Peeble are friends, but you’re going to have to give me a little more than this.”
That’s when my pocket catches fire.
Not literally, but close enough. Something is burning hot against my thigh, searing through the fabric. I reach into my pocket and my fingers close around the vial from the Sage. It’s scalding, pulsing with heat that radiates up my arm.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter. “‘You’ll know what to do when the time comes." Cryptic bullshit.
But it clicks. The vial. The first version of me. The Sage gave me this for a reason, and apparently the reason is now.
I need to give this to her.
"I shall open a hole just large enough," Gerald says. "Though you must hurry. They are preparing to burn her."
“Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”
I step forward and the smallest opening appears in the bark, just big enough to fit my arm through. On the other side, I see red hair immediately.
“Psst. Hey, you.”
She shrieks. “Who’s there?”
“Shh!” I hiss. “I don’t have time to explain, but I need you to turn your head and drink what I give you. It’s the only way to save you.”
She freezes. “What will happen to me if I do?”
I growl under my breath. “Look, I don’t know, but I do know you’re about to become a burnt Rice Krispy treat if you don’t. So pick, drink or fry.”
I can see her chewing on her bottom lip. Ugh, is that what I look like when I do that? Note to self: break that habit.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
She turns her head just enough that it looks like she’s flinching away from her captors, and I hold the vial to her lips. She drinks all of it, then immediately says, “Now what?”
I wait. Nothing happens.
“I don’t know! It was supposed to be some kind of fucking magic!”
She scoffs. “Your language is almost as bad as mine.”
I almost laugh. “If you only knew.”
“Oh, goddess,” she says, and her voice pitches higher. “They’ve started the fire. Hot—hot!”
"Get back, fledgling." Gerald’s voice is urgent in my head, and I scramble backward just as the other Elle screams. The hole in the bark seals shut.
No. No, no, no.
I killed myself. I gave her whatever that was. It didn’t work. Now she’s burning alive on the other side of this tree. I’m trapped in here—
A popping sound. Then shouting. The mob yelling, confused. Something is happening out there, but Gerald has sealed me in. I can’t see a damn thing.
“Gerald!” I pound on the wood. “Why did you close it? We can’t let her die!”
A small light appears in front of me. Faint, warm, hovering in the center of the hollow like a lazy firefly.
“Well, truly, I am touched that you care so much,” says a voice from the light. “But do you think you could have come up with a better method to save me? The whole drink-from-a-stranger-through-a-hole-in-a-tree thing was a bit unorthodox.”
I whip around. “Elle? Old Elle, is that you?”
The light drifts lower, and as my eyes adjust, I make out a shape. Small. Winged. Iridescent.
“Um, yeah. So I don’t think I’m Elle anymore.” The voice takes on a tone I am more than familiar with. “Oh my goddess, girl, look at this shell. I am flawless!”
I look over to see a beetle, a shimmering, iridescent beetle, in front of a small puddle of water, using it as a mirror. They tilt one way, then the other, admiring the way light catches their shell.
“I mean, I’m sad to lose my gorgeous locks,” they say, “but I must admit, I am stunning.”
I stare at them. My brain is doing that thing it does when too much information hits at once, buffering, like bad Wi-Fi.
“Oh my God,” I drawl. “I know where I am.”
Little mandibles clap together. “Hooray for the brilliant copy of me. Glad to see other versions do have a brain.”
“No, you don’t understand.” My knees buckle and I sit down hard on the wooden floor. “You were the first Elle. This is the first iteration. I’m the one who made you. You’re Peeble. Oh my God, I made Peeble. I need to sit down.”
They shriek. “You need to sit down? Excuse me, but you weren’t the one who just got turned into a talking beetle! I had legs! I had hair! I had—” they look down at themselves—“six legs now, apparently. Six! That’s four more than I started with!”
I wave them off. “It’s fine. Trust me, everything turns out great for you.”
“Oh, well, that’s wonderful to hear. I would hate to think someone who couldn’t even do a proper rescue extraction permanently altered my entire existence.” They buzz their wings in agitation. “Drink this mysterious liquid through a hole in a tree—really? That was the plan?”
I laugh, and the sound surprises me because it’s real. This, the bickering, the snark, the way they’re already giving me hell, this is familiar. This I can handle.
I spend the next few minutes explaining everything I can. The iterations. The timelines. How I ended up scattered across time and somehow landed here. How they, Peeble, become one of the most important people in every version of this story. They nod along, mandibles clicking.
“So, what I’m hearing,” they say when I finish, “is that I’m the hero.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m glad to have you back, Peeble.”
"Time is up." Gerald’s voice fills the hollow, and I can feel the temperature rising. "The fire has spread. You cannot exit the tree without experiencing death."
“Well, that’s just great, Gerald,” Peeble says, adapting to mental tree communication with the ease of someone who was born for it. “So why save me at all if you were just going to cook me anyway? I realize I’m a delectable snack, but I thought I’d have a little more time.”
I could swear the tree groans, but it might be from the fire eating at its bark. I notice the temperature rising as smoke starts to filter inside the room.
"I shall help you toward the next destination in your journey. You must find the dark-haired guardian."
Kaelren. Gerald knows we have to find Kaelren. But if I’ve landed in the first iteration, the very beginning, where the hell is he? Does he even exist yet? Is he—
I hear a cracking sound, then the wood splinters at my feet. The floor drops out from beneath us.
The last thing I hear before the dark swallows us whole is Peeble yelling, “I’ve been a beetle for five minutes and I’m already going to die!”
And then there’s nothing but the fall.