by Dylan Peters
“Hey, leave him alone,” Jim shouted, but the three water dogs paid him no mind. They continued advancing on the little squirrel.
Jim shuffled backward and went to the ground, digging his hands around in the muck until he came up with a small rock. Quickly he made for the bars of the cell and reached his arm out as far as he could. With a sidearm toss, he flung the rock toward the dogs and hit one on the back leg. Unfortunately, Jim had not been able to put much force behind the throw, and the dog ignored being hit.
“Get away from him,” Jim shouted at the dogs as they continued to hem the blue squirrel in.
Jim went back to searching in the muck for rocks, and now Kay and I helped him. More quickly than I expected, we found enough rocks to make a small pile. Jim grabbed them with determination.
“Okay,” he said. “Everybody give me some space.”
Jim stood, and this time he walked to the back of the cell instead of the front. Then, he wound up, twisting his body to put greater force behind his throw. Kay and I both backed against the sides of the cell so that we were giving him plenty of room.
Jim’s first throw passed the bars of the cell but missed the dogs and hit the stream with a splash.
“C’mon,” Jim chided himself.
He wound up again and threw a rock with enough force that he grunted as he released it. This time the rock met its mark, whizzing past the bars of the cell and smacking one of the dogs on its back. The dog yipped and spun, snarling at Jim from across the stream.
“Yeah, you see me now, don’t cha?” Jim growled.
He wound up again and managed to hit another dog in the leg. Then he threw a rock close enough to make them flinch. Soon all the dogs had their attention on Jim instead of the little blue squirrel. Jim kept chucking one rock after another, and each new throw seemed to increase in velocity. Now the dogs were under full assault and had forgotten about the blue squirrel altogether.
One last thwack, right on the forehead of one of the dogs, and they had had enough. With yips and snarls the three dogs jumped back into the stream and left through the archway they had come in by, their dorsal fins signaling their exit. Jim pumped his fist in celebration.
“Yeah!” he shouted.
The blue squirrel stood up tall on its hind legs and chittered at Jim. It shook its fur dry and rubbed its paws across its face. Then it leaped across the stream and chittered at Jim again. The squirrel was thanking him, and Jim smiled in return. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the squirrel rushed away into the shadows of the dungeon. I couldn’t see where it had gone, but it seemed as though it disappeared from the room completely. I wondered if it might have found a small hole in a wall or something.
“All right!” Jim exclaimed and held his hand out flat in front of me.
I stared at him blankly.
“Slap my hand, Creepy,” Jim said in disbelief. “It’s a freakin’ high five. Don’t tell me the every-flame cooked your high fives.”
“No,” I said awkwardly. “I still have them.” And then I slapped Jim’s hand like someone who had literally never had them.
“Still have those stories too?” Jim asked with a smile. It was pretty obvious that the event with the squirrel had pumped him up.
“Um, sure… yeah,” I said, continuing my painful streak of oddness.
“We’ll leave you to it, then,” Jim said with a nod. “If you can just stall Kesia, keep her guessing, then we’ll come up with a way to get out of here. You’ll see.”
I nodded and that was that. The dungeon was again silent. Jim walked over and sat down next to Kay who still had Reego held in her arms. He put an arm around Kay’s shoulder and she leaned her head into his chest. It was good to see them be affectionate with each other. It gave our situation an appearance of hope, something I was having a hard time forcing myself to find.
Jim kissed Kay on her head. It was the kind of kiss someone gives a family member, not a girlfriend, but somehow it seemed more appropriate than a kiss of passion. It was the kind of kiss that conveyed love, not lust. It was the kind of kiss that comes with a promise. Jim was here with Kay in the closest thing to hell they had ever experienced, and he was letting her know that he wasn’t going anywhere; he was going to continue to fight for their future. I envied Jim. The thing I never wanted to admit, even silently to myself, was that I really envied him. Especially because the last person I wanted to be right now was myself. I had no idea how to come up with a story that would save our lives. I had no idea what to tell Kesia to prevent her from killing me or mystically removing the Everflame from where it now burned. As I stood in the muck and darkness of our prison, the fear that I would never come up with a story was mounting in me. I needed something to distract me from my worry. I needed something to break me out of my downward spiral of self-doubt.
I looked at Anna still sitting silently in the corner of our cell, and immediately realized I hadn’t paid her enough attention. She had been very distant since entering the cell. Was she angry with me for leaving the group? Did something happen to her in that cocoon to change her?
I started to walk over to Anna, and she locked her eyes on me as soon as I came close.
“Don’t,” she said curtly.
I stopped dead in my tracks, just a few feet from where she sat. “W-what?” I said in confusion.
“Just don’t,” she said again. “I’m fine. I just want to be left alone.”
My worst fears were being realized. Anna was angry with me, but I had no idea how to fix it. I didn’t even know what to apologize for. I didn’t know how to act, or what words to use, or if I should just leave her alone. What if I pushed and made it worse? What if I let her be and deepened whatever resentment she was feeling?
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled like an idiot.
“Just stop looking at me,” Anna said.
“Hey, Arthur,” Kay said. “Come sit over here with us for a minute.”
I turned from Anna with my face red, thankful no one could see it in the dim light of the dungeon. I had been here before. This situation was all too familiar. I was being Creepy again, and not the Creepy who was the hero of the Nullwood. I was being the Creepy who gets sent away, the Creepy who makes people uncomfortable. I was being the Creepy who doesn’t even know when I’m being shunned until someone else has to spell it out for me like I’m some delusional freak. What did I do to find myself back here?
I sat down next to Kay with my head spinning and my stomach in knots.
“She’s been through a lot,” Kay whispered to me as I sank down next to her. “Anna just needs some space. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not you.”
Kay’s words were like a breath of oxygen after I had thought I would never get to breathe again. I wasn’t the problem. Thank god, I wasn’t the problem. But if it wasn’t me…
“What happened to her in the cocoon?” I whispered back to Kay.
Kay looked at me with sadness. “She just needs space.” That was all Kay had to say.
I looked back across the cell at Anna. It made me sad that I couldn’t be the thing to pull her out of her depression. Yet I was thankful I wasn’t the reason for it. I took a deep breath and sighed. Then I put my hand on Reego’s neck and ran my fingers into his fur. I guess I had a habit of thinking things were worse than they really were. In my mind’s eye, I thought back to the moments in the dome of colored branches before I blacked out. I thought back to the moments after Ah’Rhea had stabbed me. I remembered feeling Reego’s presence and seeing him in a blur of flame. I don’t know why I thought he was on fire. Maybe I’d hallucinated as I was losing blood, or maybe it was just my imagination making things more fantastic than they were. I leaned my head back against the steel bars of the prison and closed my eyes. The image of Reego in flames had seemed so real, but I guessed Jim was right. I was a storyteller, for better or for worse.
“What the—?” Jim exclaimed, and I felt Kay let Reego slip to the floor.
I opened my eyes to see what h
ad happened, and the scene before me seemed impossible. Jim and Kay were on their feet, backing away from Reego who was aglow in mystical red flames. He looked just like he had at the dome of colored branches.
“How are you doing that to him?” Kay asked me with a shaky voice.
“I’m not doing anyth—”
I stopped speaking and immediately realized I had not ceased contact with Reego. My hand was still on his neck. I looked at my hand as the mystical flames danced across it. I felt nothing, even though the flames were up to my forearm. Then the wild dog turned and met my gaze with fiery red eyes.
All at once, I realized that I hadn’t imagined Reego on fire at the dome of colored branches. It had truly happened. I ripped my hand away from him and jolted back against the steel bars. I gasped and then heard a loud click. The flames dissipated from around Reego and the dog turned his red eyes toward the dungeon door. During our panic and confusion, mynahs had returned, and coming in just behind them… Kesia. She was here for me. I was out of time.
“No!” I yelled. “Not yet! I’m not ready! I’m not ready!”
The door to the cell opened and the mynahs had me in their clutches faster than I would have thought possible. Jim hurled himself at one of them, but he couldn’t help me. A mynah swung one heavy arm down and knocked him to the floor with ease. Reego leaped forward and sank his teeth into the other monster, but he too was knocked away quickly. It was no use. I would be taken.
“No!” I yelled again as the mynahs pulled me from the cell and headed for the dungeon door. “No!” I yelled knowing I didn’t know how to stop Kesia from claiming her prize. The Everflame was within me, but if I couldn’t use it now, the story would be over for all of us.
16
The mynahs dragged me up the stairs and through the corridors of the Starless Tower while Kesia led them onward. As always, I saw their memories as they held me. The memories were the same for these mynahs as the ones before, all fear and oppression. I came back from the memories quickly with no new ideas of how to free myself or my friends. I had to come up with some sort of story or solution, but how?
The halls of the Starless Tower were dark stone intermittently lined with steel barred rooms. The place was a fortress, not a home. It was a place where things ended, not began. There was little light to be seen, with the exception of small torches on the walls of the short staircases that took us from one floor to the next. The climb was long, and my arms and legs ached from the constant pushing and pulling of the mynahs’ grip.
As we ascended, we passed the cells of other prisoners in the tower. I saw more than one human face pressed against the bars of a door. Some cried out, pleading. Some shrank away as we approached. I looked for my mother each and every time, but never saw her face. It hurt my heart to think she was so close and yet I could do nothing. I was a prisoner just like every face I saw, and I shared with them the shame of having been captured.
I imagined fantasies in which I knew how to use the Everflame. I used it to help everyone escape. I was a hero. I let the fantasies play out in my mind, and I led the prisoners all the way out of the Nullwood, past the dopplemars and the strange birds. We even waved to Wembley and Ignatius on the trek to the border. I led the prisoners all the way back to the school where they were met with… guns and fearful gazes. Wouldn’t you know it? Even my fantasies were turning out poorly.
My attention returned to the walls and cells. More than one room I looked in as we passed held an animal of some kind, though in the darkness it was hard to name them all. I wondered if they were mysticals. It was crushing to be reminded that even mysticals were not powerful enough to stop Kesia. My previous thoughts were coming back to taunt me—in this place we were all animals, whether we wanted to be or not. Kesia was making sure of that. She was a true villain, but there had to be some way to stop her.
Floor after floor, we climbed higher and higher in the Tower until I thought I would die from stress or boredom or both. I wondered if Kesia intended to take me to the room at the top of the tower I had seen when arriving. Maybe she planned to throw me out the highest window just to see if the Everflame would come popping out of me. Maybe she was taking me to a dark cell like the ones we passed to live out the rest of my days filthy and alone. Maybe she wanted to try her mist upon me again.
I had stopped it twice. Once at the dome when she tried to put me to sleep, and once when it invaded my vision. Maybe the solution was in my ability to stop her mist. Maybe that held some sort of secret. A forbidden thought crossed my mind. Should I try it? Should I attempt to bait her? She knew I had entered a vision while we were flying. What would prevent her from knowing if I did it now? If I could lure her in without allowing her free rein, could I learn something?
In that moment I decided it was worth a chance. Whether I was a fool or not, I was willing to take the risk. My visions had brought me this far, and maybe I didn’t completely understand them yet, but I knew they were important. I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and tried to empty my mind.
I opened my eyes and found myself on the beach again, nose to nose with the shadow bear. It breathed heavily and regarded me with curiosity. I looked around and found no sign yet of Kesia’s mist.
“I wish I had known you were here to help me from the beginning of all this,” I said to the shadow bear, but really just to myself. And I sighed.
I wondered if you would ever remember me, the bear replied.
I took a step back, shocked that the bear had touched my mind to speak to me telepathically.
“Remember you?” I asked. Yet as I did, epiphany struck. “You’re the bear who brought me to the dome. You’re the bear that saved me.”
Yes.
There was a glint in the bear’s red eyes, and it seemed happy or maybe relieved.
“Are there other shadow bears like you?” I asked. “Were you born in the Demise?”
No. I lost loved ones when the black woods came, the bear said. We were not bears of shadow.
The bear’s fur was so dark, even under the light sky of my vision, that it almost appeared flat, and the bear’s red eyes were like nothing I had known in the world before. I didn’t understand how it had existed in the world before the Demise.
“What changed?” I asked vaguely.
You, the bear said simply.
“I don’t understand.”
When the light and the dome bound us, I found myself within you, within your darkness. It grew upon me and changed me. We are more alike now, you and I.
“Is this now the only place you can be?” I asked.
It is the only place I have been since the light and the dome. I am with you.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I didn’t know.”
I know you did not, the bear said. I knew you had forgotten. I could feel it. But… you are here now.
“Yes,” I said, and nodded. I was struggling with the realization that the bear had been with me but alone. I could feel its sadness, and I felt guilt now that I could also feel in it renewed hope. “But I… we are in trouble.”
Let me help, the bear said.
“But I don’t know how,” I admitted. “I—ah ah ah.”
Suddenly pain racked my body and I fell to the sand, writhing like a worm in the sun. I could see nothing but fierce green light. I squeezed my eyelids shut. It felt like my teeth were trying to shake free of my jaw, and then just as suddenly as it had begun the pain flushed away, and I opened my eyes.
I was lying on a stone table. Through a large open window I could see clouds swirling in an impossibly dark sky, and somewhere in the distance I heard the screeching of a mynah. I turned my head and just feet away was Kesia. She had taken me to the top of the Tower, and now she was trying to pry the Everflame from me.
“What were you doing in your mind?” she asked with malice.
There was fear in Kesia’s eyes. It was unmistakeable, and I quickly realized she had been reticent to enter back into that world w
ith me. It was a place she didn’t fully understand, and that made her anxious.
“Nothing,” I answered like a child who had just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
“Don’t lie to me,” Kesia said and shot a bolt of green energy at me from her fingertips.
I cried out in pain as it hit me, but it didn’t send me into convulsions as it had in my vision. She wasn’t trying to harm me, just scare me. She still needed me to solve her riddle.
“If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll use the Everflame against you,” I said and then sat up on the table.
The fear left Kesia’s eyes almost immediately after I spoke, as if I’d woken her from a dream. Her wide smile returned and she laughed. She was genuinely amused by my threat. That was not the reaction I had hoped for. Kesia gathered herself and took a step closer to me. The black tendrils that clung to her body released their hold on her and waved in the air like ribbons in the wind. They looked dangerous, like a nest of vipers ready to strike.
“Arthur. Dear, Arthur,” Kesia said as her eyes burned with green fire. “You may have become a hindrance to me, but don’t think for a second that I don’t know everything about you. You don’t know how to use the flame. I have been deep in the minds of your friends. I saw all that Ah’Rhea knew… and I have seen all that your mother knows.”
“You don’t know anything,” I said, not sure how I gained the courage to deliver words of defiance.
“Don’t I?” Kesia spat back. Her shoulders jutted forward threateningly, and the tendrils waved around her. “Don’t I know all about the pathetic boy who sits upon my table? Tell me, Arthur, do you cling to weakness for fear it’s the only thing you have the strength to hold onto, or are you simply too stupid to see it for what it is? I know all about you, boy. I know you run from problems. I know you hide from conflict. I know you weakly retreat into your mind like a snail into its shell. I know you are a pale sniveling wretch of a boy who uses his lack of a father as an excuse for his own pathetic frailty.”