Mark of Betrayal

by A. M. Hudson

  “Well,” I said, fastening the chain around my neck. “It belongs to me, now.” It rested neatly just below my collarbones, the chain slightly longer than the one my locket used to hang from—my own little treasure, the key to all my secrets.

  I stood up again, dusting my knees off, brushing aside the silly idea that they key might be a metaphor—the key to hope. No way. That’s way too corny.

  As I took a step, heading to who knows where, my ears pricked to attention. Somewhere in the distance, I was sure I heard voices. The newfound idea of hoping awakened my positive internal thinker and so, I farewelled the endless valley with one loathsome glimpse, and walked toward the ‘possible’ chatter.

  But I only took two steps before my heart stopped and my feet froze, my eyes widening around the most magnificent sight I’d ever seen. People! My insides went on a frenzy. They’d found me.

  “Mike?” I called, my dry throat amplifying the angst in my voice but drowning out the volume.

  I looked inside myself for some strength. I hadn’t used my voice for so long now I could hardly remember how to say my own name. Swallowing, I moistened my throat with the last stratum of saliva and took a breath. “Mike!”

  The sun was almost gone again, but darkness shouldn't affect his hearing. I trudged over the dry ground and stood right beside him, laughing.

  “Mike.”

  But he didn't hear me. He plain didn't hear me; he stared forward, focusing on something, as did every person in this small clearing with him. I looked at each face, studying each concerned gaze, and realised they were all watching one thing; my head turned slowly to the centre of the clearing and my heart washed away with a breath of pure shock.

  The blood oath.

  There, by the Stone of Truth, kneeling, eyes closed, bloodied wrist outstretched, was—me! I hadn’t left yet? I was still there.

  “No!” I ran toward me. “What are you doing? We’ve done this! We’ve done this!” I yelled at her, but she didn't hear. “Please? I walked all night. Don’t you see?”

  None of them saw, though; they all watched her as she cut herself open and bled on the Stone, her lips moving with the words of her promise.

  I felt hollowed out, numb, walking backward until I found the welcome embrace of wiry branches, holding me up. “Please stop,” I whispered to myself. “Please don't say the oath.”

  Her words trickled through me like a bad memory—one you wish you could forget, and without looking up, without taking a breath, she lifted the dagger and held it to her chest.

  “No.” I reached out, buckling over with wide eyes bulging when a jagged, burning sear scorched the bones inside my chest. And with a tight-fisted grunt, drew back, hitting my head against the tree as the tip of her blade popped the surrounding pocket of fluid inside my heart, pausing its ragged beat momentarily.

  Her breath stopped; my breath stopped, and time flattened out around me. She slowly scraped the dagger out; every inch like a slather of wood grating over teeth.

  Sound came rushing back, the volume too loud, and I gasped a wild, shrieking breath, clutching my breast. My heart started back up again, pumping gushes of blood out over my fingers, staining the silver silk—soaking through and dribbling in a warm tickle down my stomach.

  “What's happening?” I said, my breath barely a whisper; my eyes open, unblinking. “I don't understand.”

  Mike and Emily watched as I bled my oath—the real me—or the imposter, I didn’t know, but I watched on too. She rose to her feet, and with her eyes closed, her lip stiff—trying in vain to hide her pain under the mask of deception—she walked toward Mike—toward the edge of the forest.

  As she passed each subject, they read aloud the words that burned her skin—my skin—each sentence like spiky, acid spears of hot lava. Wasps, bees, bashing my knee on a step was nothing in comparison to this.

  But she walked—her face perfect, her lips red with blood, her skin pale under the dark inks of her Markings. She was flawless and so beautiful, while I fought to breathe—a sticky, sweaty mess of my own tears and blood.

  Mike reached for her as she passed him, and though it was a small movement, I saw her shake her head, keeping her eyes closed, as if she knew, as if she needn't see him reach out but knew he would. I wanted so badly for her to fall into his arms, have him make everything okay—just know that somewhere out there, one of us was safe. But she wouldn't. She had a path to walk—and she walked it blindly, not knowing the hell I’d been through—the hell we would go through all over again as soon as she set foot over that border.

  Morgaine edged forward several times, hesitating before launching after Ara and wrapping a dark-purple cloak over her shoulders without disturbing even one step. I saw it wrap her, but felt the warmth on my own skin, and when I looked down, the silky velvet rested softly over my shoulders, hiding the silver dress. I touched my bloodied fingers to it, matting the velvet slightly.

  “She looks so beautiful,” Morgaine said, covering her mouth.

  Mike blinked a few times, practically biting his own fist. “I don't like this, Morg.”

  Her fingers floated slowly up through the air and came to rest on Mike’s arm; he looked at her. “She’ll be okay, Mike.”

  “I'm not so sure anymore, I... We gotta stop her.” He darted forward and everything disappeared in a cloud of whitewash as Ara placed her foot to the doorstep of this ever-holding prison.

  “No!” I screamed at her, grasping the air where Mike’s hand had been. “What have you done!”

  Each step she took forward, deeper and deeper into the Walk of Faith, saw the burn of our promise mark my skin once more. I held my arm out and watched it snake its way along—the words becoming clear to me once more; you will never escape. Leave the forest by dawn or be trapped in there for eternity.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the ghostly whispers of the warning.

  “Never step foot in the Forest of Enchantment—never step foot in there at dawn.”

  Dawn.

  The word echoed all around me in the haunting silence of eternally consequential mistakes. My failure would repeat itself over and over again for me to watch, to relive.

  I rested the back of my head against the bark of the tree, but stumbled back, falling through nothing, seeing the world go white around me…

  …My eyes flashed open. I looked down, standing where Ara had been only a second ago.

  We merged. I became her, but with the memory of a treacherous night too fresh in my mind to stop the tears. I just wanted to go home—be normal, be with David. Nothing more, nothing less.

  I sunk to the ground—a pitiless soul in an empty world—and hugged my knees to my chest, weeping into my arms. I was alone. Forgotten. A memory they would mourn, for sure, but evermore only that.

  Trudging endlessly down an entirely different path, I shivered at the thought of the darkness to come.

  My legs hurt, aching as if hands of reverberating sharpness were rubbing up and down my thighs, and my stomach felt like I swallowed a big, empty bowl of space. Even the grumbling hurt.

  I rubbed the tops of my legs, letting my skirt rise higher than I would if there were others around. All over my skin, the Markings made me look like a favourite old Barbie doll someone’s little brother had gotten hold of and scribbled on with a permanent pen.

  “This sucks!” I flopped down on my back, blowing my tantrum out with a hard pant. Overhead, my only friend shone down on me, lighting the sky pink as it had done on the last dusk, and beside that, my enemy crept in like purple shadows, disguising itself as clouds.

  Hope was lost. It was my job to find it out here, but I failed. Now, I couldn’t even seem to find the beauty of the forest, either. It wasn’t pleasant like a national park or the forest by the lake. This was wild and untamed and open and no one knew where to find me. I wished the trees weren’t so high, so that maybe I could feel sheltered. I just felt so out in the open—like anyone, anything could be watching. But nothing ever showed. Tha
t rude crow hadn't even returned.

  Though this world maintained it was dusk, I felt time passing again. I lay on the dirt, semi-conscious, singing to the sky, twirling the key around and around. Every now and then, I held it up to the light and moved it along so the pink sun made the silver sparkle. I wondered whose key it was—what it locked away, whether it was a good secret or maybe a bad one. And wondered if perhaps it was a secret of the heart, like the ones I held. Maybe whoever owned this key felt love for another man, even though she was married, or maybe, in truth, it opened the lock to her lies—perhaps lies she told herself because she didn’t want to know the secrets.

  The longer I laid on the cold dirt, the clearer the sounds around me became; the lonely song of twilight hummed my heart to ease—the crickets, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the distant, sleepy ballad of a bird. I closed my eyes and let myself imagine home. Home. Mike. His smile, his smell, all powdery-smooth, and the warm, scratchy stubble on his chin that’d prickle my forehead when he’d kiss my brow.

  Home is David. His eyes. Green. Greener after we’d make love and the electric blue surge of my uncontrolled passion had run free of them.

  I shut my eyes tighter around the memory and held it all inside. Eventually these memories would fade, just like all the faces of my past. But right now, while I’d only been lost for a few days, they were as clear as a summer sky.

  When I opened my eyes again, with the memory of summer so strong in my heart, midday actually filled out the forest around me. A sweet chocolaty scent ran through me with a deeper breath as I rolled onto my side, seeing a shape through the glare, like a beautiful man laying right in front of me, face to face. His green eyes stared into mine, but even though the day was so bright that sadness seemed misplaced here, his soul looked lost, broken. I reached up, slowly tracing my thumb over each grain of hair along his jaw, feeling every bump, every rise in his skin, stopping on a small scar at the base of his chin—one he got when his six-year-old brother kicked him for losing a paper boat he’d made.

  “Jason?”

  His smile was so filled with kindness that my heart burned with the almost forgotten feeling of being loved.

  “Jase, are you really here?”

  “Ara?” he said in that smooth, low voice. “You have to get up—you have to keep moving.”

  “I—” My eyes rolled back, closing. “I can’t. I failed, Jase—”

  “No. You only fail if you don’t get up.”

  “But I didn’t find it—hope. I thought I did, but…it was only a thought—an idea, and I keep losing it. I just keep losing it.”

  “Hope was never to be found, Ara. Hope is something you always had in you.”

  “But, I'm not what my people needed me to be.”

  “No, because you are more than they hoped you would be—capable of more than they allowed you to believe.”

  I shook my head against the dirt. “I couldn't finish the walk. I'm no good to anyone, now.”

  “You’re still as valued as you were when you left. You never needed to prove anything to them about your worth, sweet girl—you only need to prove it to yourself.”

  “But it’s all gone. Everything I was supposed to be—supposed to do—all gone.”

  “I don't know what the future holds for you when you return, Ara, and I don't know what your people will say, but I know that no matter what you’re worth to them, you will always be everything to one person in this world.” His shaggy hair fell loosely in the dirt above his brow, and his sparkling grin, as he ran his fingertips along my face, made me feel as if he was really here. “Find your way home, Ara—find your way back to that one person, and you will never doubt yourself or your worth, ever again.”

  “Well, who are you talking about? What one person?”

  “Your true love.” He shuffled a little closer; I felt his knees against mine. “He will hold you, kiss you and adore you—come what may.”

  “David.” I smiled.

  “Perhaps.” He stroked the tip of his thumb down my nose. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps he is much closer than you think—waiting for you to return to your dreams again, so he can hold you there, in his lonely reality—for eternity.”

  “You?”

  “Come back to me, Ara.” He took both my hands. “Come back to me…”

  Dark splotches distorted the image of Jason’s face; I blinked a few times, trying to make it clearer.

  “Come back to me…” His voice echoed away.

  “Jase?” His touch dissolved. I sat bolt upright in the dark of night. “Jase?” Stay.

  But he was gone again, leaving me battling with the deepest part of myself that loved him once—loved him, but never got to say goodbye. I wish I could’ve told him how I really felt—wish I could’ve told him in a room where it would have mattered.

  But each time that battle began in me, screaming at the heavens, telling me to love him, I fought it down—sent it away. The girl I saw in my dreams was right; I loved him once, and I didn't want to grieve him. I could grieve my mum, I could possibly even grieve Mike, but…just not Jason.

  I covered my face, trying to sneak back into the world he and I shared. But it was always only a dream—one that equalled reality in all five senses. I wanted to go back there—to him. And that scared me. Because I knew, of all things I had to face here, facing that truth was the worst.

  I got up, got to my feet and started walking again.

  He asked me to come back to him. He was here—if that was a dream or not, I didn't care. I felt home—felt him, and I just wanted that back again. Death, dream or reality. It didn't matter anymore.

  The trees thickened around me as I scuffed gracelessly over the dirt. Each entangled finger of branches seemed to deliberately slow me down—touching me, grabbing me, snagging on my dress and arms.

  “Stop it.” I shoved a dry, twiggy talon off my flesh. “Stop. Touching. Me!”

  But none of them listened. They had me. They owned this part of the forest, and I wasn't allowed to go there.

  I swiped my tears away and stood still in the crowded cage of dense shrubbery.

  Maybe the trees were right. Maybe I was headed in the wrong direction. In my mind, I was walking to him—to Jason, but I was supposed to be walking home—to David. My husband. The one who has stayed with me, married me, put up with all my temper tantrums and stupid ideals. The one who always would.

  Maybe I was supposed to walk back to him. Maybe I could never go to Jason because the road to the underworld was guarded by things unseen.

  I had to turn around. I had to get back home—to life, to my people—to David.

  Somewhere up in the night sky, the moon had risen, offering a pale glow to the darkness, illuminating the base of the trees in a soft, dull-blue—giving everything a dreary, grainy appearance. I looked along the length of my forearm and twisted it to see my elbow; the tattoos glowed, as if the moon was calling to them, and they were answering. Perhaps they had a clue, a message of some kind that would tell me how to get out of this forest.

  Everyone seemed to have had their own theories before I left; ‘Follow the North star,’ Walter said. ‘Walk the path before your feet and don't look up,’ someone else had said, and Emily quite simply said, ‘Let your heart guide you.’

  I looked behind me then to the path I’d been heading—to Jason—noticing that the trees had closed in, blocking that trail, making it impossible to get through.

  Was that it? Follow my heart? Was I walking toward my heart?

  I thought of David—saw his secret smile in my mind, felt the warmth of his love and let it fill me up from inside my chest, branching out like climbing vines.

  “David.” I spun around then, in a completely different direction, but I knew it was the way. Walk toward what your heart desires.

  “David,” I said to myself, and as I took a step, something cracked under my foot—the sound making my eyes wide before my hair and arms went vertical and my feet carried my body on a direct path downwar
d.

  I squealed, grasping at every branch to stop myself falling, coming to rest with a thunderous impact on my knees, my hands, then my head….

  A rushing sound, like an express train in a subway, forced my eyes open. Small needles of dry pine blurred my vision for a second; I blinked them from my lashes, my eyes focusing on the waning daylight, while a woodsy, earthy smell dried my nostrils with each breath.

  I lifted my face from the crook of my elbow and sat up, circling on my knees a few times in the barky bed I was laying.

  “Wait!” I frowned and looked down at my hands, my arms and my stained dress. “Déjà vu.”

  My heart faltered. Everything stopped.

  I sunk down into my elbow and rolled onto the ground, flat on my back. “Déjà vu.”

  Chapter Ten

  With my hands clasped over my belly, the ability to cry deflated from my tired soul, I decided to let myself stay put and expire.

  As midday drank the cool in the air and infected it with a gooey heat, I laid, watching memories like films in my head, while the bare branches above me joined hands again across the grey-white sky, applauding the movies as they ended. Everything seemed to move slightly around me, as if it couldn't sit still.

  Worse had come to worst. All the hope I thought I found was never really hope at all; it was positive thinking—just the thoughts of a stupid young girl who really believed that everything would be all right in the end. But it isn’t. It couldn’t be. Why would it be?

  It was all Emily’s fault. Listen to my heart. What kind of stupid advice is that? All it’s done is get me into more trouble. I should have listened to myself and just given up a few sunrises ago. Then I wouldn’t be even more tired, even more beat up and bruised.