by Mary McCoy
Real had nothing to do with anything she’d spent the past decade and a half of her life caring about. Nobody was going to pay her to daydream, and it wasn’t like she could write a college admissions essay about the difference between a merrow and a selkie, or why Perseus was cooler than Hercules.
The girl with beads in her hair knew you could want and hope and wish all you wanted, and it wouldn’t make a difference, but when she saw the prophecy written on the ceiling of Cabin 3, something in her heart had opened up and whispered, Please.
“There’s supposed to be a cave down the trail to the left,” she said, and the rest of the girls from Cabin 3 fell in behind her. “Maybe that’s the beast’s lair.”
It was nearly dark when they found the cave, set twenty yards back from the trail at the edge of a clearing. The earth around it was dusty and pounded hard, and a ridge of craggy boulders rose up on either side.
“What do we do next?” asked the girl with the upturned nose. “Should we just go in?”
“It looks dangerous,” said the sticklike goth girl.
“It probably is,” said the girl in the orange hoodie.
“Maybe we should come back in the morning,” said the girl with thousands of freckles.
“We’re already here,” said the girl with beads in her hair, turning on a flashlight.
The five of them huddled up, whispering over their plan and how they would approach the cave and who would keep a lookout. The girl with beads in her hair stuck her hand into the center of the circle and one by one, four more hands settled on top of it.
“On the count of three,” she said.
“Let’s do it,” said the girl with thousands of freckles.
They counted, they mustered their courage, and they broke out of the huddle to find a tiny young woman in cargo shorts and athletic sandals sitting on a boulder by the cave with her knees gathered up to her chest, squinting at them in the dusk.
“What are you doing out here by yourselves?” she asked. “Where’s your counselor?”
The girl in the orange hoodie rested a hand on the hatchet she kept hooked to her belt loop and stared back at her.
“Do we know you?”
“My name’s Robin,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I work here. Counselor-in-training, remember? I checked you into your cabin three hours ago, not that any of you noticed me then.”
The young woman gave them a pointed look as she slid down from the rock and dusted off her backside. The girl in the orange hoodie let go of the hatchet, and her hand fell to her side.
“Where did you get those hatchets? You’re not supposed to have weapons here.” Robin’s brow furrowed.
A Note from the Narrator: It was curious. She’d checked all their bags for contraband a few hours before and hadn’t noticed any of these hatchets and Swiss army knives then. Of all the cabins, this bunch of straight arrows seemed the least likely to break the rules.
“It’s not a weapon,” said the girl in the orange hoodie. “I mean, not unless there’s an emergency it’s not.”
“It’s camp,” added the girl with thousands of freckles. “Who comes to camp without a hatchet or a Swiss army knife?”
The other girls nodded in agreement, and Robin sighed.
“Where’s your counselor?” Robin asked again. “Aren’t you supposed to be playing Capture the Flag or making friendship bracelets or something?”
The sticklike goth girl unhunched her shoulders and rose to her full and considerable height.
“We’re on a quest,” she said.
Robin came over to them and walked up and down the line they’d fallen into, and after inspecting them all, she stifled a burst of laughter behind her hand before regarding them with an apologetic smile.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but aren’t you girls a little old for that?”
The girl with beads in her hair felt her cheeks burn as she realized how they must have looked to the counselor-in-training. Of course the poem they’d found written on their cabin ceiling wasn’t a call to adventure. Of course there was no beast, no lair, no quest, no magic. It was probably a joke. There were probably a bunch of people hiding in the bushes pointing and laughing their heads off, and filming the whole thing so they could put it on YouTube.
They were freaks who believed in monsters and talking animals. They were idiots who found a goofy poem and actually thought it was real. They were losers who should have grown out of things like this by now.
None of them looked up. They stood there, hands dangling uselessly by their sides, ears burning with shame.
That was when the beast sprang from the mouth of the cave and pounced on top of the sticklike goth girl.
It had the body of a spider and the head of a snake, and it hissed as it picked up the sticklike goth girl with its hairy front legs and began to wind her up in a sickly green web.
The girl in the orange hoodie unhooked her hatchet from her belt and raised it, letting out a battle cry that rang through the night air and sounded braver than she felt. Heartened by her boldness, the rest of Cabin 3 exchanged glances and nods, and charged the beast.
None of the girls saw which way Robin went when she fled. One minute she was there, taunting them for believing in the quest, and the next she was gone, but there was no time to pursue the counselor-in-training. They had to save their friend.
They jumped on top of the beast and began hacking at its legs with their hatchets and Swiss army knives. The beast yowled and dropped the sticklike goth girl, who rolled toward the cave, still bound up in webs. It reared up and shook the girls from its back, flinging them to the ground. Before the girl with the upturned nose could regain her footing, the beast shot her with a mass of sticky web that pinned her to a sheer rock wall next to the cave entrance.
Though two of their number were now immobilized, the three remaining girls continued to fight the beast. The girl with thousands of freckles struck a devastating blow to the underside of the beast’s reptilian neck, which unleashed a geyser of black, oily blood, while the others managed to remove two of its legs. The beast swung its remaining limbs wildly about, reeling from pain and rage. One hit the girl in the orange hoodie in the gut and sent her flying into the mouth of the cave, where she landed with a sickening thud. The girl with thousands of freckles raised her knife high and brought it down in a killing blow, but before she struck, the beast curved its snake head around and sank its teeth into her calf. The girl with thousands of freckles screamed and fell back, clutching at her leg and writhing in pain.
Only the girl with beads in her hair was left to finish the fight. She wielded her hatchet and gritted her teeth, inching away from the cave while the beast hissed and struck at the ground before her. Wounded though it was, it was still more than a match for her.
The girl with beads in her hair despaired. Behind the beast, her friends lay wounded or trapped. She wanted to hold her ground, but found herself retreating step by step across the pony trail as the beast snapped at her. She took another step back and bumped into a fallen log at the side of the trail. She lost her balance and fell backwards over the log, landing on her shoulder with a grunt before rolling onto her back.
As she went down, the beast rose up on its hind legs and drew back its head to strike. The girl with beads in her hair braced herself, but held her eyes open and lifted her blade in the hopes of landing one more blow before the beast sank its fangs into her and ended it all.
But just when it should have happened, it didn’t.
A pack of wild girls, their faces streaked with ash and blood and tears, tore down the trail on horseback. One had pigtails and wore overall shorts. One had a blood-soaked strip of cloth wrapped around her head, curly red hair sticking out from under it. One of them whimpered over and over again, “I want to go home. I want to go home.” There were five of them in all, and they rode in such a fervor that not even the sight of the beast looming before them on the path slowed their pace. In fact, they seemed not to see it a
t all. They charged straight down the middle of the path, trampling the beast. Its back snapped beneath the hooves of their steeds; its legs gave out and splayed across the path.
They never even slowed their pace as they laid waste to the beast, and before the girl with beads in her hair could begin to make sense of what she’d seen, the girls from Cabin 2 were gone.
The beast lay on the trail, twitching and hissing. The girl with beads in her hair struggled to her feet, raised her hatchet, and lopped off its head.
Then she collapsed onto the dry, packed earth feeling like she might like to curl up on the trail next to the carcass and rest, just for a few minutes. Just to catch her breath. Just to wipe the tears from her eyes. The girl with beads in her hair had never killed anything before.
It was a cry from the girl with thousands of freckles that lifted her off the ground and sent her running back toward the cave. Gray-faced and shivering, the girl with thousands of freckles had rolled up the leg of her jeans to reveal an angry red wound where the beast’s fangs had punctured her skin. The girl with beads in her hair knelt down next to her, trying to hide the worry in her eyes. There was nothing in their first aid kits for a bite like that, nothing they could do for the girl with thousands of freckles, except hope that the venom would not travel too quickly through her veins.
But the girl with thousands of freckles didn’t care about that, not then. She tried to shout out, but her words were too slurred from the venom. Finally, and with great effort, she raised her arm and pointed toward the mouth of the cave.
When the girl with beads in her hair turned around, she saw the girl in the orange hoodie emerging from the cave, dragging behind her a large wooden cask that had been waterlogged and sun-baked so many times it had turned almost to driftwood.
“Come give me a hand,” she called out, unaware that few of her cabinmates were in any shape to do so. “I think I found what we’re supposed to be looking for! And then set free the one imprisoned there!”
She pointed her headlamp toward the cask and began to inspect the latch that bolted its lid shut.
A Note from the Narrator: The cask was not sitting out in the open. It would not have been easy to find. When the beast had hurled the girl in the orange hoodie into the cave, she’d landed in the first chamber, then tumbled down an almost hidden gravel slope, coming to rest at the bottom of a small crevice. A person exploring the cave on foot, searching from chamber to chamber, would have missed it entirely. Fortunately, the crevice was not deep and its walls not terribly steep, and the girl in the orange hoodie fumbled in the darkness until she found a good foothold. But first she had found the cask. Immediately, she’d known that it didn’t belong there, and when she’d heaved it loose from the debris, she found it was light enough to drag up the slope by herself. Opening it, however, was proving to be more difficult.
Wounded bodies surrounded the cave. The sticklike goth girl lay near the mouth of the cave, still wrapped like a spindle in sticky green webs. Ten feet up, the girl with the upturned nose was pinned to a boulder, sawing at the beast’s webs with her Swiss army knife. The girl with thousands of freckles convulsed in the dirt while the girl with beads in her hair fished through the first aid kit for anything that might provide the slightest bit of relief.
And yet, all the girl in the orange hoodie could see was the cask and the problem of opening it. It had fixated her, and that should have been her first indication that whatever was inside was not going to be the end of their quest, but a complication to it.
The girl in the orange hoodie lifted her hatchet, preparing to break open the cask.
Only the girl with thousands of freckles understood what was about to happen. Through shivering lips, she whispered, “No,” but it was too quiet and too late to make a difference.
The girl in the orange hoodie swung her hatchet like a baseball bat, striking the latch and knocking loose a hundred years of rust.
The hinges groaned. Then the lid fell open. Then a cyclone of feathers and dust rose up from the cask and enveloped the girl in the orange hoodie.
At that moment, the girl with the upturned nose cut herself free from the webs that strapped her to the sheer rock face of the cave, and she dropped to the ground. As she fell, she cracked her leg on a jagged rock and landed with a bloodcurdling howl.
With all of her friends now in distress, the girl with beads in her hair froze, unsure where to intervene first, or whether she’d only make everything worse.
“Close the lid,” whispered the girl with thousands of freckles.
Of course.
The girl with beads in her hair leaped to her feet and circled around to the other side of the cave. The cyclone whistled around her, its winds shaking the trees and whipping beaded strands of hair against her cheeks like BB pellets. She could see nothing of the girl in the orange hoodie now, nor any of the other girls. She couldn’t get close enough to reach out and close the lid. Even if the winds hadn’t been holding her back, there was no way to do it without stepping into the center of that black, swirling vortex made up of who-knows-what.
The girl with beads in her hair bent down and picked up a large stone, then threw it as hard as she could at the lid of the cask. It was a tough shot in the dark, but she heard a thump followed by a creak as the lid fell shut. At once, the cloud of feathers and dust stopped spinning and drifted gently to the ground, and standing there in the center of it was the girl in the orange hoodie.
It was only the wind that had been holding her upright. As soon as it died and the feathers fell away, she toppled to the ground.
Renata, thought the girl with beads in her hair, for that was her friend’s name.
The girl with beads in her hair ran to her and knelt by her side. She stroked her hair and shouted her name over and over again. She slapped Renata’s cheeks and begged her to answer, but though the girl’s eyes were open, all the life had gone out of them.
This can’t be happening, thought the girl with beads in her hair as tears filled her eyes. She should have known. If she was willing to believe in beasts and lairs and things held prisoner in caves, she should have known that this was just as possible.
The girl with beads in her hair cursed herself for ever wishing that the quest was real, then buried her face in her hands and sobbed. She did not notice the unusually clumsy raven that hopped from the lid of the cask onto the ground, until it stumbled over to her and pecked her on the knee.
“Stop crying,” the raven said in a voice the girl with beads in her hair recognized at once. “It’s me. I’m okay.”
“Renata?”
Wiping the tears from her eyes, the girl with beads in her hair scooped the raven up and folded it into her arms.
INTERMISSION
In a remote, undesirable corner of Camp So-and-So, there was a clapboard tool shed that was unremarkable in every way except for the sheet of parchment tacked to the door that read:
THE STAGE MANAGER’S CREED
Dealing with Actors, Crew, Producers, Directors, and Other Difficult Sorts
1. Be where you are supposed to be. Do not make me have to send someone to look for you.
2. Do not mistake your place in the cast for your place in the production. All of you can be replaced. I cannot be replaced because no one else wants to be the stage manager.
3. Things that do not belong backstage: your sass, backtalk, significant other, or diva attitude.
4. You will attempt to usurp, disrespect, and undermine my authority. You do so at your peril. You will try to make me cry. Stage managers never cry.
5. The stage manager cares not for glory and status. The stage manager strives for higher things. Without the stage manager, nothing works. Without the stage manager, there is only chaos.
A pair of stagehands stood before the door, reading the sign absentmindedly as they waited to be let in, even though they had read it many times before and it had long ago stopped being intimidating, funny, or even pathetic to them. It was just Robin.
That was how she was, that was what she kept tacked to her door. Maybe it made her feel better. In any case, all the stagehands knew it was better to stay on Robin’s good side, to do what she said without asking too many questions, to tell her about little problems before they became big problems.
“What is it?” Robin asked as she opened the door, searching the faces of the stagehands for hints that anything was amiss.
“We’re checking in,” said one of the stagehands.
“Like you asked us to,” said the other, sounding a bit snottier than Robin liked, but she decided to let it slide. There was too much to do. She didn’t have time to make them like her, too.
She motioned for them to step inside the tool shed, though they would have preferred not to. It was a dim, claustrophobic place, and every available inch of wall was papered with maps, drawings, diagrams, and lists like the basement lair of a psychopath obsessed with set design instead of serial murder. A heavy oak desk took up most of the room, leaving little space for Robin, much less for the two stagehands, but they crowded in around it. As Robin settled in with her clipboard and pen, the stagehands studied the shelf that hung over the desk. It was littered with a sad menagerie of clay and papier-mâché figurines made and abandoned by several decades’ worth of former campers. There was a mermaid, a gryphon, a leprechaun, and what looked to be a werewolf, as well as an assortment of monsters and swamp creatures. Two of the models sat in the middle of Robin’s desk, and if the stagehands hadn’t known better, it would have looked as though they’d interrupted her in the middle of playing with them. One was shaped to resemble some kind of half-serpent, half-arachnid creature, and the other was a black horse with glowing red eyes.
The first stagehand pulled a notepad out of its pocket and read from its notes.
“Cabin 1 is on board for the All-Camp Sport & Follies. As you know, Cabin 2 went to the equipment shed for the truck . . .”