by Deiri Di
Each and every seat was taken by the bright and bubbly members of the senior class – the impeccably groomed, the ones that everyone knew were going to blaze brightly in the future—the popular.
They all stared at her.
Students at the tables nearby caught onto the silence and followed suit, dropping conversations to stare.
"Alone. I need to talk to you alone," Mari said.
Someone giggled.
The murmuring started.
Speculations.
When she spoke to Bob yesterday, lunch seemed like the perfect time.
She should have thought this through.
She should have waited to catch him after school. Anything but approaching him at lunchtime in the middle of a crowded cafeteria when Chase was surrounded. It was a peanut butter hair moment.
Everyone wanted to know what was going on with him.
Mari wasn't the person who ran into him last summer when he bumped into her in the public library. She wasn't the little girl anymore who would panic. The urge was there – the desire to flee. A smaller piece of herself wanted to give into embarrassment and run away.
But she wasn't that smaller piece anymore.
She was something different.
So she stood there and stared him down until he rose to his feet.
Then she turned and walked out of the cafeteria, not checking to see if he followed. She didn't need reassurance to know that he was behind her.
She led the way away from the bustle of the cafeteria, through the open-air hallways, and across the campus to her favorite oak tree – a solitary structure surrounded by a sea of cement.
It wouldn't be alone forever.
The school had just received a large alumni donation that they could only use to smash up portions of the suffocating cement and place various fruit bearing trees throughout the campus.
She stopped to look at the thick bark of the oak.
How could she start this conversation?
"I thought you said what you had to say," Chase said.
Mari turned to face him.
He stood there in his tight-fitting jeans, so different from the days they’d spent together in the palace. He wore these clothes as comfortably as he wore his leather armor and sword – just another costume, another part he was playing.
"Stephanie said Vladmir is dead," Mari got straight to the point.
She had to know the truth.
She wouldn't stay locked in the box of her imagination's creation of reality.
"Yes." Chase took a deep, slow breath as something dark, something painful, rippled across his face. He exhaled, and the storm behind his eyes settled with it. "I'm now the heir to the throne."
"Then, why are you here?" Mari didn't understand. "Shouldn't someone else be hunting Gin?"
"Mari... I was never a match for Vladmir," Chase took another deep breath. "My entire life has been about surviving, where he thrived. My skill with swords and potions is because I don't have half the magic of even the weakest pure-blooded elf – I have had to learn whatever I could to just stay alive."
Pure-blood?
"Pure-blood?"
Chase's mouth twisted in disgust. "I'm the result of a moment of perversion with a human – the thought that I could inherit the throne enrages half the court. With Vladmir dead, the attempts to end my life have increased tenfold. The court elves think to prove I am too weak to rule."
Prince Vladimir tortured his brother. He used him for his own games and amusement, ordering him to guard Mari and watch over her when he couldn't be bothered to do it himself.
His family drove Chase to hate himself.
That look of disgust, the mean things he said to her about humans – all of that was really just directed at himself. He grew up thinking he was the result of perversion. He was raised believing he didn't deserve love.
What a childhood.
"Chase," Mari touched his cheek. "Do you think I am weak?"
Chase closed his eyes.
"No," he exhaled. He put his hand on top of hers, enclosing her fingers in his warmth. He opened his eyes. Those little flecks of gold danced across the brown canvas. "You are the strongest person I've ever met."
"I'm human."
Chase smiled, the first smile he'd directed at her since he'd appeared at her school. "Yes, you are."
"Tell me why you are here."
"When you were held at Lady Silvia's castle – I didn't just rescue you. I did something else."
She had been trapped in a coffin-sized dungeon, small and claustrophobic, no room to stand up, barely room to turn around, just a little cement hole for excrement.
She had freed herself.
When she’d climbed the stairs and found him standing in the midst of guards slain by his sword, of course, she’d thought he was there for her.
Mari pulled her hand away from his cheek.
He let her go.
"When she snatched you, she also stole the dragon egg from its display. I stole it back from her. A dragon would put me on equal footing. No one would doubt me if I survived the raising."
Mari was conscious of the weight of the egg in her backpack. "Survived?"
"Dragons are predators. Very few elves in history have survived the attempts to raise and train a dragon, and only two in our long history have subjugated the beasts well enough to control them as adults." Chase shrugged. "For what my life was, for what my life is, I would rather die in a dragon's teeth than a successful assassination. But I was careless."
The egg had just been sitting there, in a bag, under his bed. It had been so easy to just take it and stuff it in her own, wrapped in the cloak he had given her.
"When I got back to the palace, I had only moments before I was taken for my punishment, so I stuffed it under my bed like an idiot."
She had found him hanging in midair in the dungeon, suspended by bonds of magic, left there as his blood dripped down his sides from slices his brother had carved into his flesh.
"I didn't know who took the egg. Gin was the one who took you back to your realm, and she never came back. I don't know how she slipped her bonds – shapeshifters are tied tightly by magic. I managed to trace the egg here to your realm, but the tracer spell I cast on it was destroyed soon after Gin went missing. I know the egg is here. I just can't pinpoint where."
So it was Gin who took her to the hospital.
Chase looked at her with the honesty of fear. He was so tall and fit – he was a man who could deal death with the bite of steel, yet standing there in front of her, he had cracked open to display the bits of him she'd never seen before.
He was afraid.
He couldn't leave her alone because he was afraid.
"I can't go back – not without a dragon. I'll die."
She could just give it to him. She could swing the backpack over her shoulder and hand it over. It would be so simple.
"When you find it, how will you train it?"
"Dragons have to know without a doubt that you are their master. You have to break them, and you have to do it from the moment they hatch. They can't know anything but the fear of disobedience."
Nope.
No way.
Chase had been damaged by his upbringing.
The thought that he would take a beautiful, dangerous creature and torture it so that it would obey him – that came from the elves. They would pin fairies to their dresses, using them as ornaments. That was the culture that raised him, and that was how he would approach training her dragon.
There had to be a better way, and she would find it.
She would find a better way.
Mari tightened her grip on her backpack.
"There is just one more thing," she said.
"Ask," Chase said.
A shock ran down her spine, strong and blatant.
It was the warning sign of powerful magic.
She ignored it. She had to finish this conversation. She had to learn everything she needed to know while
Chase stood open before her.
He'd never spoken with this kind of honesty before.
"How did Vladmir die?" As the question left her lips, she knew the answer. She didn't want to know. She wanted it to be something different. It had to be something different.
His eyes widened ever so slightly.
"Mari," his tone was calm, still. The words were handed over to her like an offering. "You killed him. You smashed his head in with a rock."
No. No, that couldn't be right.
How could that be right?
How could it not?
She had brought the rock down over and over and...
Suddenly, the oak tree reached down with a branch and grabbed Chase.
[ 5 ]
The branch caught Chase in the stomach and lifted him up off the ground.
It slung him through the air into another branch. He was unable to do more than grunt as it flung him down into its roots.
"Chase!" Mariposa rushed towards the oak tree.
The roots slithered like snakes around his body, entangling him. She grabbed one and tried to pull it off of him.
It just tightened.
He gasped for breath, struggling as a thick root constricted across his chest. The roots twitched, and he sunk.
"Let him go!" Mari dug at the dirt, anything to keep him from sinking deeper into the ground. "Give him back!"
The tree ignored her.
He sunk another inch, roots slithering around his face.
She grabbed his hand.
There was nothing in his face but fear.
Fear and pain.
The tree shuddered, and Chase jerked out of her grasp, out of sight, roots and dirt covering the place where he had been.
The tree stopped moving.
There was no sound but the rustle of wind through the oak leaves and the harsh rattle of her own breath.
A spell. It was a spell.
She could break spells.
She was special.
Before, in the hallways of the palace, when the stone had come together to form a golem that tried to smash her out of existence, the animation spell was a glowing ball in the center of the whirling rocks. She had grabbed it and pushed it into her.
The reason that she'd been drugged with a love potion?
They had to get it inside her for it to have any effect.
Even then, she broke the spell.
Where was it?
Mari stared at the tree.
Where was this spell?
She looked up into the branches. She felt a slight tingle in her spine as she gazed upwards into the branches.
She was also afraid of heights.
There was no time for that.
Mari grabbed the lower of the now still branches and hauled herself up into the tree. She climbed higher, following the sensation in her spine.
Her arms burned as she used parts of her body she'd never used before.
There it was, a fading glow of magic nestled in the crook of the tree. As she watched, it grew dimmer. If she grabbed, it would dissipate. The only problem was that it was already going, and Chase was gone.
The spell had done its job.
Mari pressed her hands against the bark, careful not to touch the magic. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be the end of him.
If he died here, now... if he died here, chased from his home because of her actions – if he died here, it would be because of her.
Because of her effect on his world.
Mari closed her eyes and followed the feel of the magic. It touched the tree, sinking deep inside of it, working it's tendrils out into the branches.
The branches didn't want to move.
The tree didn't want.
It existed.
It stretched up towards the sun, absorbing the life-giving rays. It breathed in carbon dioxide and exhaled oxygen. It didn't drink the water from the earth. The water flowed up into it, carrying the soil's nutrients, the building blocks that allowed it to grow ever higher.
The magic worked inside like a worm and created the tendons of movement, shifting the tree like a puppet.
She followed the tree down to its roots, to the uncomfortable lump tangled up, writhing and causing damage to the smaller filaments. The lump slowed.
It stopped moving.
Mari reached out and stuck her hand into the spell.
She poured herself into it.
The glow flickered for a moment.
Her spine vibrated with a sensation that traveled down her arm. The glowing ball of magic grew brighter.
She could feel it.
The spell blended into her, and she could feel the twisting tendrils.
Mari lifted her roots and their contents, pushing it out into the open air.
Then she clenched her fist.
The spell popped, and the tree rustled into its separate existence.
"Chase?" Mari slid down out of the tree. Chase was there, but he wasn't moving. She ran over to him.
He wasn't breathing.
She shook his shoulder. "Wake up!"
She pressed her head against his chest.
No heartbeat.
She folded one hand on top of the other, placed the heel of her hand against his breastbone, and began rapid compressions. She counted.
Then she tilted his head back.
Mari pressed her lips against his and gave two deep breaths, watching to make sure his chest rose.
Then back to compressions.
As her lips pressed against his a second time, he stirred, eyes fluttering.
"Oh, thank Godzilla." She brushed the hair out of his eyes.
He reached out, laced his fingers through her hair, wrapped his arm around her waist, and pulled her down on top of him.
He kissed her.
She melted into the moment for one long breath. There was a space there, room held for open hearts across the boundaries of trauma and sorrow. That space was filled with the heat of his body against her, the long hard length of desire that thickened in between them.
The rock came down over and over...
Mari put her hands against his chest to push herself away from that heat, that touch she craved and couldn't stand - but she didn’t move.
She froze there.
It was just his lips against hers.
It was his heart beating in his chest and the click of a camera app.
The click of a camera?
Mari jerked away from Chase to see an underclassman standing there, lens pointed right at them.
Click.
"Go away!" Chase snarled at the student.
The young girl squeaked and ran.
Mari pushed herself off of him, slipping out of his arms.
He reached after her.
"How did you even... breaking the spell would have left me under. How did you do that?" His forehead dug into furrows as he tried to wrap his mind around the concept.
Mari struggled to process it all.
It was too much, too quickly.
His life was in danger because of her.
She did something to the spell.
She killed his brother.
She killed someone.
It was too much.
Mari ran away.
#
Mari hid under the bleachers.
She pressed her forehead into her knees and curled up into a little ball under the back corner. If she didn't move, maybe no one would find her. If she breathed quietly enough, perhaps she would cease to exist.
The bells rang, calling her to class, but she didn't budge.
She stayed there, clutching her knees, trying not to think, trying not to watch her memory as the rock came down over and over and over again.
Why didn't she stop?
Why did she keep hitting him?
She didn't move from that spot for two class periods.
She didn't move until Benjamin found her.
"You're wearing it in the picture." He stood there,
the fall sun outlining the highlights in his golden hair.
For a moment, Mari didn't know what he was talking about.
Then she did.
"Let me see."
He held out the image.
There she was, Chase's arm wrapped around her waist, his fingers entangling her hair, his lips... Her hands were on his chest, pushing away.
Around her wrist was Benjamin's green bandana.
She'd tied it on her wrist that morning so she'd remember to give it back.
Oh, what had she done?
"Everyone has seen this." She didn't ask it as a question because it wasn't a question. Rabid dissemination of gossip was a mark of the immaturity of high school students.
Ze, the purple maned fairy, landed on her shoulder to stare at the picture.
"Bite him. Bleed him. Make him cry."
Mari didn't respond to the fairy. She'd had plenty of practice not reacting to the little monsters. Just because she finally understood what they were saying and knew the name of one single fairy didn't mean she'd start chatting where people could see her talking to things they couldn't see.
"Yeah." Benjamin's face was painfully neutral as if he was trying not to react to something, as if he were hiding something.
She didn't know if she could be that calm in his position. His lucky bandana was in that picture. Everyone knew what it looked like. He wore it to every major game. She'd dragged him into her mess.
One good deed left him sitting in a pile of gossip.
Mari groaned and fell back onto her back. Ze fluttered up then landed on her stomach. Mari continued to ignore the fairy and stared up at the sky through the bleachers' metal rails. "Maybe I should just switch schools."
"A quarter of the way through your senior year? Yeah, right." Benjamin sat down next to her.
"Why are you even talking to me?" Mari flung her arm across her face, blocking out her view of the metal barred sky. "Why not just join the 'We Hate Mariposa' group online that you have probably already been invited to? You can sign up and tell everyone that I'm a crazy girl who stole your bandana. Save yourself."
"Why don't I go seek the approval of the mob?" Benjamin hooked his finger through his bandana, still wrapped around her wrist. He lifted her arm off of her face. She blinked up at him. "Shall I baa and smile sweetly until they come to fleece me of my golden coat?"
"What?" Mari didn't get it. He was clearly referencing something. The next time she was near a computer, she would have to search for golden fleece and see what he was talking about. One thing she knew was that you should never pretend that you understand something when you don't, even if you're worried about looking foolish.