Tom shrugged. “Like I said — suit yourself.”
He leaned over and latched the briefcase shut on his share of the money. He glanced over at Sean, who was stuffing his cash into his backpack. Tom leaned past him, reached inside.
“Hey!” Sean said. “What the fuck?”
His hand closed around the handle of the hunting knife, and he pulled it free of its sheath, out of the bag.
“I’m borrowing this, too,” Tom said, holding it up. “That all right?”
For a second, just a second, Sean looked genuinely startled. Then that lazy, lizard smile snapped back into place. “Suit yourself,” he said.
When he and Isaiah were just a few miles down the road, Isaiah was staring into the mirror of his sun visor. “He’s coming,” he said. “He’s following us.”
Tom shot a glance at his own mirror, but whatever Isaiah was seeing, it wasn’t happening yet.
“He knows something’s wrong,” Isaiah said. “He’s stealing a car. He’s coming after us.”
“Sean is?”
Isaiah didn’t answer.
Tom’s foot pressed down a little harder on the accelerator.
They should be okay until morning. Nothing went wrong.
Both Sean and Danny saw the money, felt it in their hands. The illusion, the glamour, should last until morning. Then they’d know — their cold hard cash turned to phonebook pages and Bible scraps, like fairy gold turning to straw in the morning light. Follow the coin.
They should have a headstart. No way of knowing how far ahead Isaiah was seeing, though. He drove faster.
The briefcase was at Isaiah’s feet. It seem like such a small, ridiculous amount of money, now, too little to nearly die over, much too little to lose seven years with Isaiah over.
He reached the edge of the woods, where they’d parked before.
“How far behind us?” he asked. “When does Sean get here?”
Isaiah looked at him blankly. He was too far gone, too Fae-lost, to understand the question. Beautiful golden boy, burning fever-bright, like an angel falling.
He drove right off the road, knowing the car wasn’t made for it, praying the trees were far enough apart. Isaiah laughed and grabbed hold of the dashboard like a safety bar in a carnival ride.
He took the car as far as it would go and abandoned it, engine still running. Sean’s knife tucked into his belt and the briefcase in one hand and Isaiah’s hand in the other, he ran, branches whipping his face until he reached the clearing.
He dropped the case and tried to catch his breath.
“I see you,” Isaiah said. “I see you and Sean and Danny coming to get me. Is that what happened? Was that today?”
“Isaiah. I’m so sorry. This is going to hurt.”
“What is?”
“Hey. Hey, look. See the coin? Watch.”
He flipped his silver dollar back and forth across the knuckles of his left hand, his right reaching for the knife.
“Keep watching, Isaiah,” he said. “It’s magic.”
And he drove the knife into Isaiah’s stomach. The coin fell and he let it go, forgotten.
He grabbed hold of Isaiah’s shoulder. “You’re not dying,” he whispered. “You’re not dying. I have to bleed it out of you, everything you ate, before I take you back there. You won’t die, I won’t let you.”
“I — it doesn’t even hurt,” Isaiah said, watching the moonlight smoke spill out and pool at his feet.
“I told you, it’s fucking magic, okay?”
The music was swelling around them. They could both hear it. The steps of the dance calling out.
He could do this. He could. Cold iron knife in one hand, to claim back Isaiah’s St. Christopher medal. Handcuffs — he looped them through the briefcase handle, chained his left wrist to Isaiah’s right. Yes.
Maybe in seven years, Sean would still be waiting for them. Maybe. Maybe he’d be dead by then. Maybe the world would change so much in seven years, none of this would matter.
None of it mattered now, except the dance, and Isaiah’s hand in his.
“Ready?” he asked him.
Isaiah nodded.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. Stared into the circle as the circle stared into him.
“Ready,” he whispered. “Steady. Go.”
And they were gone.
LOST BOY
And with that, Matthew turned his back and ran. Into the woods.
He ran far and fast, and he might have just imagined the voice he heard calling after him. By the time he reached the deep and sunless heart of the forest, he couldn’t remember, as he lay on the forest floor, whether anyone had been chasing him, couldn’t remember why he’d been running at all, except that his aching, pulled-tight legs told him that it was good to run, it was good, and with a moment’s rest they would be ready to run again. But his heart told him there was no more need to run, nowhere left to run to.
I’m never going back, he thought over and over again, I’m never going back, the thought automatic, as simple a consequence of his flight as his pounding heart and his never-full lungs. Never going back.
His eyes started to focus, at last, in the deep gloaming; soft fingers of sunlight brushing aside branches and leaves, the merest cracks in a canopy of the greenest black. He knew this place, after all, or he thought he did; he took it all in with wide eyes for the first time and remembered it all.
The only sounds here were lazy, ponderous, gentle sounds. A bee hung low in the warm afternoon haze, and he watched it unafraid, listened to the dull electric razor sound of its wings cutting the air. Birds sang sweet and unseen, and a hundred eyes watched him from the dark.
He had never seen trees like this before, trunks thick enough for hide and seek and leaves broader than his hand, but he was still sure he knew the place. He felt years younger and free to really play at last, and he wanted to climb every tree and turn over every rock. This was, at last, The Woods, just like in every fairytale. He knew this place, whether he’d been here before or not. Every boy did.
He remembered the second time he’d been to Disneyland — how many years ago, now? The first time he’d been in a stroller, and no-one had thought he’d remember it, but he did — he knew the second he was on Main Street that Tomorrowland was this way, Frontierland that way.
His heart remembered, just as his heart told him now that the ravine was just a short run to his right, that just a little ahead was the tallest tree he could climb, and the deepest lake off to his left, a good long walk away, and some distance beyond that, the caves.
He made for the ravine first, stood staring down in wide-eyed breathless delight at the river deep below.
He sat down at the edge, kicking his small feet and some rocks over the side, could faintly hear a distant splash when the rocks hit. There was sky here, sky without a single plane or powerline, and he lay back in the tall grass and stared up at it, blinking against the brightness.
On sudden impulse, he emptied his pockets. He had a simple black plastic comb, and he wouldn’t be needing that anymore — over the edge it went. No more haircuts here. His hair could grow long and he could tie sticks and feathers into it if he wanted to.
He pulled out the wallet next, and threw away the receipts he never knew what to do with — he let the wind have them, and the wind carried its new toys away. After a moment, he tossed the money over the side. He had a few dollars saved up, enough for some trading cards and maybe a Slurpee, but there was nowhere to buy anything here, so it didn’t matter.
He hesitated again before taking apart the wallet, and if it had been real leather he might have saved it for something. He had made it at a summer camp in a well-traveled wood, a woods with well-marked tracks and cabins, a woods entirely unlike this one. The wallet was threaded together with a cord made of some dumb plastic, and so over the side it went.
The only thing he kept was the pocket knife, the one his father had given him. It led to one of his parents’ famous arguments, s
ince his mother was sure he’d cut off a finger or worse with the single folding blade hidden in its bone handle. But his father had held fast and said that a boy needed to have a good knife, and that this was, in fact, the very knife he had carried as a young man. Matthew carried it everywhere now, especially when he was out in the backyard playing at being a hunter or an explorer, so he was sure he’d need it here.
He laid his head back down in the long grass. He was still very tired from all the running he’d done, and even though it was still just afternoon, he was already thinking about sleep.
He was wondering if it might rain, and whether he could remember how it said to build a lean-to in those Boy Scout books his Mom had bought for him at a garage sale, and whether he felt like trying to go all the way to the caves and whether wild animals might already be living in them, when the events of the day all got to be too much for him and sleep finally came for him, carried his thoughts away like useless scraps of paper in the wind.
The next day, no breakfast, and a couple of wasted hours proving to himself that he did not, in fact, remember how to build a lean-to. All he had to show for the attempt was a pile of useless leafy branches, some frustrated tears that burned in his eyes like shampoo, and a heartfelt wish for some rope, or even the stupid plastic cord he’d thrown away.
There was no use wishing, though, he decided, because then he might as well wish he had a real tent, or worse yet, wish he was inside, and there was no point in that.
Instead, he made his way down to the bottom of the ravine, and skipped stones across the river.
He found, using fifty stones to keep track, that he could easily remember the names of all fifty states, and he knew the capitols of a lot of them. He knew his times tables all the way up to twelves, and he knew when they’d signed the Declaration of Independence and when John Glenn landed on the moon.
But he was keenly aware that he didn’t know how to tell if nuts were good to eat, or what berries will make you sick, or what mushrooms were poisonous, and he slowly began to wonder why not one person had ever taught him anything useful.
He knew how to clean a fish, at least, with his little pocketknife, if he had any way to catch one. He could even make do with some string and a safety-pin, if he had some string and a safety-pin.
He had to take his mind off being hungry, and off the knowledge that it was only going to get worse. He climbed back up out of the ravine — harder and more frustrating than coming down had been — and went for a run again. His body burned and ached for it, but he felt much better. He found Tallest Tree and its easy branches, and went all the way to the top, so high it was like flying, and the world all below him was woods, the horizon a curving treeline. Not a road or building anywhere in sight to ruin it; endless playground, all for him.
It seemed a miracle at the time, up in the sky, but as he fitfully slept that night under the shelter of Tallest Tree’s branches, his stomach was empty and his heart emptier. He hadn’t figured out what to eat or where to sleep, but the worst failure of all was that he’d come here alone. What good was an endless playground with no-one to play with?
He slept shallow and stirred and did not dream, and a hundred eyes watched; and a single pair of eyes that moved alone watched and thought and considered.
Matthew spent most of the third day distracting himself. Worse, he knew he was distracting himself — he knew he had no plan here, no goals, and that if he wasn’t careful, he’d soon be very frightened. It was hard to stop thinking about food, and when that got too bad he would distract himself with water; with a clear, cool drink from a lake or stream, and it tasted good and sweet and sharp and not like any water he’d ever had before. It soothed his nerves and froze his tongue and empty guts back into silence.
The rest of the day he invented little contests for himself, like how fast could he run between two tall trees, or how many nearly flat rocks could he stack before they fell over.
He fell asleep that night in the middle of nowhere and nothing, no shelter sought or found. He’d just stopped, having decided while trying to find his way back to the road (and trying to remember what the road had look like) that he was, after all, Lost, a realization that surprised him — he hadn’t thought of himself as Lost when it hadn’t occurred to him that he had anywhere to be.
He’d given up, just lay down Lost on the ground, curled up cold on his side and gone to sleep.
He woke some immeasurable time later, a strange tickle in his throat and a dull light seeping through his eyelids, a smell filtering into his nose —
Smoke. Fire! He bolted awake, sudden and sure that the forest, the world, was on fire —
He sat, blinking in bleary confusion at the circle of stones that had been silently gathered, the small campfire that had been built while he slept.
Another small miracle — there, next to him, someone had left a small pile of nuts and berries, and some dried meat. His hand shot out for the food, and he hesitated for just a moment — who had left this here? Was this like taking candy from a stranger? Or, an older caution warned him, was it like eating the witch’s gingerbread house? These questions froze him for only a second before hunger trumped fear. He ate quickly, savagely, his stomach cramping gratefully around the food.
He stared into the flames, watched shapes appear and disappear, listened to the crackling of the dying branches. After a moment, he felt watched. He tried to look past the fire, into the dark. “Hello?” he said.
There was no answer. He stood up and started to walk around the fire when he heard, and felt more than saw, a sudden rush of motion, heard a distant branch snap and then a crash and rush of leaves. Matthew stared into the dark in the direction of the noise for the longest time. “Thank you,” he said softly, and then lay back down to sleep, warmed by more than just the fire.
The next few days went much the same, his unseen friend bringing food and making fires. Matthew began slowly to be able to feed himself, started to recognize the nuts and berries he’d been eating and gather his own. It wasn’t much to live on and he was still hungry all the time, but it wasn’t the hopeless hunger he’d had at first. He was running and playing more now, singing and laughing, knowing he wasn’t alone. He even went swimming a time or two, something his mother had taught him long ago he must never do without someone to watch him.
He finally heard a voice one day, close behind him, as it muttered two sharp dark words —
“Don’t move.”
He didn’t. Immediately trusting, he froze in mid-step. Only his helpless and curious eyes darted around, and they saw it — the snake edging ever closer, about to strike. He’d have stepped on it if he’d kept walking. He did not cry out.
The spearpoint flashed down, and split the snake in half. He turned to thank his rescuer, and all he saw was a fleeting shape, scarcely bigger than he was — an impression of wild hair and golden-brown eyes as they glanced back at him — and then gone, back into the trees.
It’s okay, Matthew wanted to say, you can come out — but he said nothing.
He puzzled over the brief glimpse all day, wondered whether the person he’d seen was even a boy or a girl.
A boy, he’d decided, by the time he slept again. Definitely a boy.
Matthew woke up in the middle of the night a few days later as the rain started to fall.
He ran for shelter of the nearest tree, but it did little good. Within a few minutes he was shivering and soaked to the skin. He thought forlornly about the shelter he’d never figured out how to build. He wondered again about the caves, and if they were safe — he dreaded sleeping bears and rockfalls.
But he couldn’t stay out in this — he could imagine his mother telling him he’d catch pneumonia and die — so he huddled under his already wet jacket and bolted for the caves.
When he got there, the entrance to the largest cave was filled with a soft, flickering light.
He approached slowly, carefully, quietly, until he stood at the entrance, looked in at the small
fire, and at the Boy.
The Boy looked up and watched him for a minute. Then he said, “Well — don’t just stand there.” He motioned to a place next to him at the fire.
Matthew came in and sat down.
The Boy was a couple of years older than Matthew. His skin was tan, dirty, a little rough. His dark hair fell in long, matted curls. There were feathers, bits of bone, and a rattlesnake rattle tied there. He was barefoot, and his clothing was rough and leather and handmade and was not held together with a plastic cord.
If the Boy minded Matthew’s staring, he didn’t show it. He just watched the fire and stirred its slumbering embers with a stick. Like the forest itself, the Boy was familiar. Matthew had had an imaginary friend once — or at least, he seemed to recall now he’d had one — who looked much like this. Just like this, except this Boy was solid and real.
He even looked a little like Matthew himself, if Matthew had been a bit older, a bit taller, a bit stronger — everything Matthew would like to be. Matthew liked him immediately.
“Hi,” Matthew said.
The Boy raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Hello,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t?”
“Nope.”
Matthew pondered that for a minute.
“Well,” he said finally, “my name is — ”
“I’m not interested,” the Boy said, and somehow, he didn’t sound mean or unfriendly saying it.
Matthew just sat there, not sure how else to start a conversation. The fire died down eventually, and the Boy let it. “You can go to sleep now, if you want,” the Boy told him.
“I can sleep here? It’s okay?”
The Boy shrugged. “Sure.”
Matthew curled up on the floor, not sure if he should say anything else, and after a while, he slept.
He woke some time later. The rain had stopped, and a huge full moon had risen — he’d never seen it so big. The Boy stood at the cave mouth silhouetted in moonlight, his spear raised and ready. Matthew felt safe and reassured, and nearly rolled over to go back to sleep, but got up instead and went to the boy’s side.
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