by V F Sharp
“He questioned us individually, just to make sure all of our stories added up. He asked me about Arrows and how we played it. He wanted to know about the powder and where it came from. I answered all his questions. You should have seen his face when I explained that the big flashing light in the forest sky came from Fin winning the game.”
“Well, that’s great and all, but what does any of that have to do with me?”
“That’s what I’m getting to. He asked what you whispered in my ear. He said it was crucial that I tell him. He seemed more interested in that than anything else. So, I told him. I said you couldn’t tell me why, but that you knew he wasn’t behind the magic in the forest.”
“What did he say?”
“I won’t lie. His whole demeanor changed entirely. He looked happy and even a little surprised. He had the biggest grin, and then he released us!”
Ezstasia felt a lump in her throat, even as she tried to smile. Now she felt like a fool and was completely embarrassed, once again, for misjudging him.
She stood up to hide her blushing face from her sister and walked to the silver platter on the floor to turn it upright. She began picking up the broken teacup pieces and scones and put them on the tray.
“He wants us to come to dinner,” said Lanzzie. “He specifically asked me to come get you.”
Ezstasia couldn’t help but grin as she picked up the tray and turned around to face her sister.
“Then I suppose we shouldn’t keep him waiting,” she said, still smirking. She placed the tray back on the table, feeling sheepish for throwing it in the first place. Then something dawned on her.
“Oh wait, I’m a horrible sister,” she added. “All this talk about the prince and I didn’t ask about you. You were pretty traumatized, Lanz. Are you okay?”
Lanzzie looked at her with a soft smile, apparently trying to keep a brave face.
“I’m not sure any of us will ever be okay after all this. But the prince reassured me that he’s on our side and is determined to get to the bottom of all this.”
“I hope that means he’s finally willing to hear about all your forest encounters,” said Ezstasia. “After all, it may give him more knowledge about what’s out there.”
“Not only is he willing, our stories will be his entertainment for the evening. He wants to hear all of them, especially mine, since… well, you know, the voice and all. Aren’t I the lucky one to have been singled out in that stupid forest?”
“I won’t lie, that’s weird that it only picked you to speak to. Maybe it spoke to me when I was knocked out and I just didn’t hear it.”
She grinned at the morbid thought and Lanzzie laughed.
“Seriously though,” said Ezstasia, “I feel awful not knowing what happened to my own sister out there.”
“Well, it’s a story I prefer to tell just once, so you can hear it with everyone else. And I’m starved, so let’s go before I start eating those soggy scones.”
* * * *
Ezstasia arrived at the dining room with Lanzzie just as Fin showed up. They were the first to arrive.
“The others are on their way,” said Fin. “Where’s the prince?”
Ezstasia shrugged just as she heard running footsteps and an ear-piercing scream from behind her. It was one of the housekeepers.
“Guards!” she yelled, her face red with panic. “Guards!”
The two guards responded quickly and came running in.
“Quick!” she said, holding her chest. “Outside! It’s horrible.”
The guards ran to the hall and the woman followed them, nearly tripping over her own feet.
Ezstasia took one look at Lanzzie and Fin and they jumped up and followed.
By the time they got outside, the guards were already pushing their way through the gathering crowd. Screams were permeating the air. A few village women were running away with their children in tow, while others rushed toward the commotion. Ezstasia felt her heart pound as she struggled to get through the crowd to see what was going on.
Several guards physically picked people up to move them aside, making themselves a path. Ezstasia made her way through the same route, with Lanzzie and Fin right behind her. One mother was trying to cover her children’s eyes. In the chaos, a man’s elbow jabbed Ezstasia right in the mouth.
“Are you okay?” said Lanzzie in a panic. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, dabbing her lip with the back of her hand.
Fin whacked the guy in the back of the head as he disappeared into the crowd. It was so chaotic that the man didn’t even seem to notice.
Ezstasia shook the pain off and pushed forward. She was finally able to see what everyone had been staring at.
In the center of the crowd, a teenage boy lay on a wooden board. His two friends, a redheaded boy and a blond-haired boy, wiped tears from their eyes as they observed. Ezstasia moved closer and got a better look at the injured boy’s face. She was horrified.
The boy’s eyes were wide open and his pupils were completely white. His shirt was torn open and his skin was a translucent gray, with black veins running down the right side of his face and down his chest and right arm. His left side had veins that were raised and spread through his skin like roots.
Lanzzie pushed Ezstasia aside and ran toward the boy.
“Fin, help me!” she yelled. “He needs help.”
“He’s dead,” said one of the guards.
“He’s not dead!” she said. “Trust me.”
The guard put his hand on her shoulder. “He’s dead, miss. We need you to move away.”
“Let her tend to him!” said a male voice from behind them. The crowd began to part to make way for the man.
It was Prince Alazar.
The guards nodded and stepped aside, and Lanzzie knelt beside the boy.
“Can you help him?” said his redheaded friend.
“You have to fight this!” said Lanzzie to the injured teen. “Listen to me,” she pleaded. “Think about the most beautiful memory you’ve ever had. I know you can hear me! Go to that place in your mind and stay there.”
Fin was about to grab the teen’s wrist to check his pulse, but Lanzzie slapped his hand away.
“Fight it!” she yelled at the teen. “If I survived it, so can you!”
“We were only playing,” said the other boy, in tears. “He asked us if we dared him to go into the forest at night. We didn’t think anything bad would really happen.”
In desperation, Lanzzie placed her hands on the injured teen’s shoulders and began to shake him.
“Can you hear me?” she said to him. But seconds after she touched him, the black veins started to climb up her fingers and hands, too. Ezstasia grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away, but her own hands began to turn gray.
She jumped back, horrified, but as soon as she let go, her hands went back to normal. Lanzzie had pulled away from the boy too, and her hands and fingers immediately returned to normal as well.
“Can’t you see that he’s dead?” said a villager from the crowd.
“Does anyone have a mirror or a piece of glass?” said Fin.
A woman handed him a small mirror.
Ezstasia watched as Fin held the mirror to the boy’s mouth without touching him.
Fin looked downhearted as he sighed.
“He’s dead. He isn’t breathing.”
A gray-haired, frail man, who Ezstasia quickly determined was the village doctor, rushed forward after being summoned by a woman in the crowd. He confirmed the boy’s death. The people were overwhelmed with grief. Ezstasia heard devastated sobs from every direction.
Prince Alazar stood tall and addressed the crowd.
“I need all of your attention,” he said. A guard sounded a loud horn to get everyone to quiet down.
“Please remind all your friends, neighbors, children, and family members,” said the prince, “of the decree that has already been put into place regarding the forest. Everyone must be aware of the serio
usness of this. Make sure it’s known, that until further notice, the forest shall be off limits to all villagers, lords, and ladies.”
He looked around to make sure everyone was listening. The crowd was silent.
“It shall henceforth be posted throughout Vynterra that anyone trespassing on or near the forest grounds shall be imprisoned for a period of no less than sixty days. My knights will guard the forest perimeter, and, mark my words, we will explore every avenue to find out what has befallen this boy and ravaged our forest. For now, this boy’s body shall be burned at sea in the morning with a proper ceremony in his honor. May I ask his family to step forward?”
The prince waited as everyone looked around.
“My lord,” said the redheaded boy. “We know his family. We can alert them.”
A guard approached the prince.
“With all due respect, sire, the burning of the body should not wait.”
The prince was quiet for a moment as he gazed down at the boy’s pale gray skin and raised black veins.
“Leave it to his family to decide,” said the prince. “It’s a bit of a journey to the sea. If they prefer to do it this evening, accommodate them in whatever means necessary. For now, see to it that the body is properly wrapped. And by all means, don’t touch the skin directly.” He looked at the two teens. “I will ask you to lead my knights to the boy’s parents. My men will do the rest.”
Ezstasia saw the boys nod. She held Lanzzie’s hand and stood next to Fin. Three knights came to collect the boys.
The whole village seemed to go silent for a moment, until one person began humming a beautiful hymn that Ezstasia didn’t recognize. Within minutes, everyone in the crowd was harmonizing with the sad, yet mesmerizing melody.
Ezstasia saw Meldon, Randin, and Zander come up beside her, but none of them said a word. They must’ve been watching from the back of the crowd. She looked over to the right and saw Ithron with his arm around Jezreel.
She glanced behind her and spotted Pallu with his newfound love. With all that had been happening over the last few days, she was grateful that her friends were all safe and well. She grieved for this poor boy whom she never knew, and for his parents, who would soon experience indescribable anguish.
The prince approached, elegant in his decorated uniform.
“We’ll have to leave the boy to my guards,” he said, looking at Ezstasia, her sister and her friends. “I’m afraid what we have to discuss can’t wait any longer. This may be only the beginning.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ezstasia felt her stomach flutter as she sat at the long, wooden dining table next to Lanzzie, observing the prince’s reactions to each of their stories. The prince seemed especially shocked when Ithron had recited his horrifying near-death experience, and again at Zander’s tale of the giant, wooden spider. He also seemed intrigued by Meldon’s tale of the forest changing before his very eyes.
Finally, it was Lanzzie and Fin’s turn to recount their experience. Ezstasia saw Lanzzie nudge Fin, indicating that he should go first.
“Well, at first, the forest looked like any other forest to me,” said Fin. “But to Lanzzie, she kept seeing things appear and disappear. We realized pretty quickly that we each saw the forest very differently.”
“It wasn’t that quickly,” said Lanzzie. “It took me a while to convince you.”
“That’s because you saw a giant bush with bright orange flowers, and I was looking at the very same bush that looked half dead with nothing but spiky gray branches. Not a trace of orange, or even a single flower. At first, I thought you were losing your mind. You could hardly blame me for thinking that.”
“Go on,” said the prince.
“We kept calling out for Ezstasia when we noticed the same blue fog in the distance that everyone else talked about. They were like warrior spirits or something, swaying back and forth and randomly disappearing and reappearing. It was strange. Then Lanzzie started talking about these huge jungle vines. I didn’t see them, so I did a little experiment. I picked a random dead tree—there were plenty of those—and I asked her to describe it. Wouldn’t you know, she started describing fancy flowers and colorful leaves. All I saw was a dead tree!”
“Knowing you two,” said Zander, “you were probably acting like a bickering married couple out there.”
“You have no idea,” said Fin. “She even threatened to leave me so she could search alone. But anyway, what I saw next put an end to any bickering pretty quickly.”
“What did you see?” said the prince.
“At first, it looked like Lanzzie and I were heading into an area with trees covered in black leaves, which I thought was odd enough. They were swaying back and forth, although there wasn’t any wind. Then the trees started to sway harder. Before I could even say anything, black leaves started falling to the ground, hundreds, thousands of them all at once in some kind of coordinated way. It was bizarre.”
The prince looked at Lanzzie. “Did you see the black leaves too?”
“No,” she said. “I saw beautiful, green trees, with the occasional butterfly or insect fluttering around. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t see what Fin described. No swaying trees. No black leaves. I didn’t even see a single leaf fall.”
“But you both saw the blue spirits in the distance, just like your other friends?”
“We did,” said Lanzzie, “though dancing angels is a better description.”
“Warriors, not angels,” said Fin. “And they were swaying, not dancing.”
“Please continue,” said the prince, motioning to Fin. “You were talking about the black leaves falling.”
“Yes, after they fell, they flew up again and this time they formed a pattern. That’s when I realized that they weren’t leaves at all. They were bats and they headed right toward me! I got on my rabbit and started riding away as fast as I could, and I yelled for Lanzzie to do the same. We tried to outrun them and—”
“I wasn’t really outrunning anything,” said Lanzzie to the prince. “I didn’t even see one bat. I was just trying to keep up with Fin, to keep an eye on him, because he seemed to be hallucinating. And for my efforts, he pushed me off my rabbit.” She smiled at Fin.
“I was trying to save you,” he said. “I jumped off Zon, too. The little buggers flew up in the sky in a straight line and looked like they were going to dive-bomb us.”
“A good excuse,” she said, chuckling.
“Sorry, but who knew they were going to fly back up and circle us instead?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said.
Fin redirected his attention to the prince. “So anyway, they started circling around us like a tornado. All of a sudden, they shifted and began to gather right in front of me. They were forming a shape, similar to a large cloud.”
“Well, what was it?” said Randin, after Fin paused. As brave as Fin was, Ezstasia could tell that he was slightly struggling to talk about this.
“It became a thirty-foot crow. Massive and horrifying and something I’ll never be able to get out of my nightmares.”
“What do you mean it became a crow?” said Pallu.
“I mean the bats flew together and formed the shape of a crow,” said Fin. “Giant wings, big beak and all, with dark, crimson-red eyes. It even cawed and flapped its wings and moved its head like a crow. Except it was formed completely out of bats. It came toward me as if to swallow me whole, and I thought I was done for. I didn’t think I’d ever see my friends or family again. Instead, it felt like he flew right into my body. I saw black particles surrounding me and covering the sky. Everything around me became as dark as a moonless night. I couldn’t breathe. When my vision cleared, the crow was gone but I felt paralyzed. I could hear Lanzzie trying to talk to me, telling me to fight it, but it was like I was in a trance. The crow was taking over me.”
“That’s exactly how I felt,” said Ithron. “When the skeleton came after me.”
“Were you able to sp
eak?” said the prince to Fin.
“Not then, no.”
“I was trying to help him,” said Lanzzie, “but it was like he couldn’t hear me. I began to feel the ground moving right under my feet. At first, I thought I was imagining it, but then it shifted more strongly, the rocks, the trees, everything. That’s when Fin fell to the ground. I could see that he was beginning to turn pale, and his skin started turning gray. I kept focusing on him, telling him to fight it and to focus on a lovely memory. He looked almost like that dead boy.”
“Did you feel the ground shift, too?” said the prince to Fin.
“No, I couldn’t see or feel any of that. I only remember losing my strength and falling. I could hear her talking to me, but I couldn’t move. She kept talking about positive things like the cottages and my family and our friends and telling me to think about them. I don’t know if it was that or what, but I started to get some of my senses back.”
“I didn’t see that he was getting better at first,” said Lanzzie, “because the ground started shifting and rumbling again, and it was much worse this time. It was so loud, I thought an earthquake was happening right before me. Pieces of trees and branches, and the ground itself, started to break apart, and then parts of the ground in front of me began to rise and fall. It felt as if the ground was breathing. I couldn’t believe my eyes; the ground began to rise and form into something. With dust and dirt flying everywhere, it was hard to see what it was. Once the dirt particles settled, I saw it was a large head of an old woman. She was dead, partially skeletonized. The cracks in her skin were like the cracks in a desert and her scraggly hair was made up of dead trees and roots from the soil. Although her face was made up of elements from the ground, her eyes were black as night.”
Ezstasia saw tears begin to form on Lanzzie’s face. She put an arm around her and hugged her tightly.
Lanzzie took a deep breath and continued.
“That’s when she spoke to me. With her loud, thundering voice, she said: As pure as day, as dark as night, the chaos is released. And every time she moved, large chunks of her face would fall crashing to the ground, exposing more of her rotting skull underneath. One almost hit me and I fell hard onto my back trying to avoid it. It knocked the air out of me.”