by Lenore, Lani
Rifter, there are so many things that I need to say. She did not get the chance.
A sound echoed through the sky – a piercing animal cry – and Rifter lifted his head to observe it, staring intently into the distance.
“We can’t talk here,” he said firmly. “It isn’t safe in the open. Come on.”
Grabbing her hand, he pulled her into the woods, away from the beach. She’d seen this place before, but it was much different now.
The trees were pale and dead. It was not grass or fallen leaves that passed beneath their feet, but ash and soot. The smell of smoke and burn invaded her nostrils, but while Rifter pulled her along so forcefully, she could not help filling her lungs with the tainted air.
This forest was burned by the Scourge years ago, she recalled. It hasn’t grown back.
There was a disturbance above and Wren lifted her eyes in time to see several dark shapes fly by overhead. They looked like a flock of large birds, but she feared they were not.
“Keep moving,” Rifter said lowly. “Almost there.”
Rifter guided her farther until they reached a hollow cave mouth which seemed to hum on its own. He tugged on her hand as he guided her inside, but paused just within the opening where there was still a bit of light. He was quiet as he peered around, his eyes glowing in the dark. Wren examined the cavern as well, noting the jagged spikes that had formed on the ceiling. Somewhere deeper inside was the resonating sound of dripping water.
“Are we safe here?” she asked quietly, but even that echoed.
“Safe as anywhere,” he replied. She didn’t like the sound of that.
He turned to face her, his cat eyes flashing. There were so many emotions in those eyes: hatred and love walked hand in hand, followed closely by innocence and wisdom. He looked at her, his expression that of a poor little boy who didn’t know what to do, but the way they were shaped under his brows made him look sinister. Was she to feel sorry for him? To take him in her arms? Was that what he wanted?
“Is this where you live?” she asked, but there was no evidence to support her guess.
“I have no home anymore,” he said sadly. “I have to keep on the move, always.”
“Where are the others?” Wren was beginning to feel nervous, but she had already guessed the answer before he confirmed it for her.
“They’ve gone,” he replied, and a harsh bolt of fear rushed through her chest. Surely he hadn’t meant that they had died!
“They’ve…?”
“They left me,” he said, but Wren only felt slight relief from that. “They’re out there somewhere now, on their own.”
Those six boys that Rifter had chosen to be his companions – the six that were left in a long line of the fallen – had once called Rifter their leader. They had not always seen eye to eye with him, but their loyalty had been strong. They’d fought for him, despite the circumstances, and Wren believed every one of them would’ve died for him as well. Something terrible must’ve happened to cause them to leave him.
There were so many things to address, but to start, Wren took a deep breath to steady herself. She looked at the light-haired boy, trying to find the one she remembered.
“Tell me what happened,” she said firmly. “Why is the world dead? Why have you aged?”
He didn’t answer immediately, instead circling around her, considering. She watched him, his movements, feeling his eyes penetrating every part of her as if he was staring through her flesh. Finally, he stopped behind her, leaning in against her hair.
“You’re beautiful,” he said near her ear, as if just discovering it. Wren felt her heart speed as it had in former days. “Somehow more than I expected – than I remembered. Perhaps I’ve only missed you.”
He touched her shoulder affectionately, and she savored the sound of his breath. She might have claimed not to know him, yet she felt something inside at his show of admiration. It was pleasant, but she could not allow herself to be taken by it.
“I owe you so many apologies, Wren…”
“I just want the truth,” she insisted, but did not bother pushing him away. “What took you so long? What of the others?”
She paused as a thought came to her.
“He came back, didn’t he?” she assumed. “Did you dream him up again?”
“No,” Rifter said, his gaze shooting to hers. “This has nothing to do with the Scourge. I swore he would stay dead, and that, at least, I’ve been able to manage.”
Wren was able to feel a bit of relief at that, but it faded swiftly, giving way to further confusion. How had this happened if the Scourge had nothing to do with it?
Rifter stepped back from her and strode away. She was relieved when his glowing eyes turned, and yet sad that he had retreated from her.
“I’ll start at the beginning. Is that what you want? You will have your answers.”
Wren found a place to sit on a damp rock formation as Rifter leaned back to sit on the air – merely one benefit of being able to fly.
“It was the darkness,” he said. “By the time you left, it was already on its way; we just didn’t know it. We had a lot of guesses, but never quite decided what brought it on. It came on like a storm over the sea, but the effect was a thousand times more than what the Scourge could do. Those dark clouds rolled over, and the land died.
“I was away when it happened – taking you back to your old life. I didn’t have the chance to stop it, and then it was too late. That darkness – or nightmare, or whatever it was – destroyed everything. It corrupted everyone at least a bit. Some fell into despair completely.”
Sounds like the asylum, Wren thought, shifting uncomfortably. Perhaps our lives have not been so different.
“It was a change in Whisper that I noticed first,” Rifter went on. “She was very sensitive, you know. The darkness snared her heart.”
The fairy, Whisper, had never been very high on Wren’s most-trusted list, though Rifter had never seemed aware of the creature’s misgivings. Something had finally gotten his attention. Did he know about what had happened at the orphanage?
“Why did she kill the children?” Wren asked. “Was it because of me?”
“Yes,” he said soberly, and Wren felt her chest ache, even though she’d already known it.
“When I got back, everything was in chaos. It happened so quickly! As we were trying to figure out how it had happened, what had caused it and how we might beat it back, I lost track of time. Time meant so little to me back then. But I didn’t forget you, Wren. I want you to know that. I never forgot you.”
He reached for her hand. The way he looked at her now, even with his fierce eyes, made her want to take away his pain.
“I believe you,” she promised, holding his hand between hers.
Does he have fever? Why is his skin so hot? She wanted to ask, but he was speaking again and the moment passed.
“When I started talking about bringing you back, Wisp became angry. I had thought we were past all that,” he said, shaking his head.
“Me too,” Wren agreed quietly.
“She felt that she was the only thing protecting me, and she wanted it to stay that way. I didn’t know what she was planning – didn’t know to stop it. It was my fault. She had been corrupted long before; I just turned a blind eye to it.”
Rifter had always turned a blind eye to the actions of his fairy companion. The truth of it was that Whisper had never needed the darkness. That night at the orphanage was not the first time she had tried to kill Wren. Wren hated the thought of this, but perhaps it was that simple. Those children had died just because of her, and yet she had lived.
“Whisper came back to me and told me what she had done – that you were dead. I didn’t want to believe it, but when I went to see for myself, it was true. You weren’t where I’d left you. A while later, that entire group of children showed up on the beach here.”
They appeared as wanderers – ghosts. Wren’s heart ached for them.
“Th
ey were still looking for this place after death, but you weren’t among them. I had to believe that you were alive, but I couldn’t find you. Without Whisper, and without your own dreams to bring you back here, I couldn’t see you in the other world. I had to give up. Only recently it occurred to me that I might use my own shadow to find you, but that was a bad idea from the start. Mimics have always been corrupted. They are of the darkness. Seems that it did work, however. It eventually found you – even if it tried to kill you.”
“What happened to your mimic?” she asked then, recalling that it had simply disappeared inside her cell.
“It must have sensed I was close when I was looking for you at that prison. It attacked me in one of the hallways, but I was able to subdue it.”
“So you were behind the riot after all.”
He nodded. “I needed a way to get you out. Chaos is a good distraction. At least you weren’t hurt.”
Hurt? Wren had been ignoring the dull pain in her arm but allowed herself to look at it now. The long line where the shadow had cut her had stopped bleeding, but her skin was smeared with old blood. She covered it with her hand, hiding it with her hair, and Rifter did not seem to notice it at all. Instead, he became agitated, rising up to pace as he continued his story.
“To see the land as it was… I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Still, I didn’t bring him back. Even so, he knew that this would happen. He planned it.”
The Scourge…
“Before I killed him, as the two of us were tumbling down into that lava pit, he told me that I wouldn’t be able to keep him away. He told me it wasn’t over. The Scourge set something into motion that day, and he knew that it would come back around. None of us were aware enough to see it.”
Wren thought back to those last days. Unlike the rest of them, she’d spent time with the Scourge – talked with him privately in a way that the others never had. He hadn’t told her all of his plans against Rifter, but he had given her the impression that there was something more to what he had intended than what he’d presented them with that day.
He told me that he’d opened the mouth of hell.
“I have lost my power over this place,” Rifter confessed, his voice full of self-loathing. “The Vow of the Never-Ones has been broken. Whisper was separated from me – by my own choice – but we had begun to age long before that. Of course we didn’t know it right away, but it didn’t take so long to learn. We all changed.”
“Changed?” Wren feared that word, now more than ever.
Rifter looked up to peer straight into her eyes, peeling away the layers of her soul.
“Can’t you tell by looking at me?”
A shrieking cry from the dead forest echoed down to them and Wren jerked her head around, fearing the emergence of a nightmare.
“We have to go deeper,” Rifter said, taking her arm.
Ahead of them, the cavern was yawning and ominous, lit only by a hint of bright green fungi that was growing in clusters on the ceiling and walls.
“We’ll get lost,” she tried to protest.
“You’ll have to trust me.”
She wanted to, more than anything.
Wren allowed him to pick her up. He flew deeper into the cave, moving silently through the air. She kept quiet, though she could not see anything aside from the glow of his eyes. She decided then that, though she might have been blind to the darkness, he could likely see through it.
He hadn’t gone so far before she could see a glow in the distance, and eventually Rifter touched down beneath the light of a few dim crystals that were glowing deeper within. Wren had seen some like these before, years ago at the mermaid’s lagoon, but these seemed to be losing their life and luminosity. They had once been bright and beautiful, lighting up the place where the dreams had gathered, protected by strange, bubble-like eggs.
That was the night he kissed me for the first time.
They stopped at a point where the cavern gave way to an open pool of water that seemed to flood the rest of the cave. He peered around in silence and Wren was good enough to copy him. When everything seemed still, he turned to her again.
“What is out there?” she asked quietly, looking back toward the direction of the forest, but it was shrouded in darkness.
“Valkyries – some of the lesser nightmare monsters. The island is overrun with nightmares now,” he said, shaking his head. “After a while, there were simply too many to fight. The task became too much, and because we couldn’t seem to find an end to one thing or another, the state of the world got away from us.”
What had happened to those resilient boys that she had known, willing to fight for anything? Wren’s brow furrowed at this thought.
They finally reached a point that broke them down completely. They gave up. She was sure of it.
“The land and its people turned against us,” Rifter went on seriously. “We all separated, in fear for our own lives, and are branded traitors here. This world has rejected me. The nightmares have taken over. It is not safe, even for me. Not anymore.”
Wren listened to the story, her eyes growing wider. This place had been a wonderful escape for her once. Once, it had promised her a new beginning. To hear what had happened hurt her as much as any of them.
“That’s terrible,” she uttered quietly. “It’s horrible…”
“You believe in me, don’t you?” he asked her, leaning closer to assure that her eyes met his. “Despite what I look like now, you can trust me?”
He had asked for her trust, and how could she deny him? She had waited all these years just to be back with him, and if there was some way that she could help, she had to do that.
Rifter brushed his hand across her neck, burying his fingers in her hair, and Wren made her decision. Though he didn’t look like she’d expected, he was still the boy she had fallen in love with those years ago. She had promised him forever back then, and she had meant it.
“Of course I believe in you,” she assured him. She saw a gracious smile rise up on his mouth but it vanished as he began to speak urgently.
“Now that I’ve found you, we can’t wait another moment.”
“For what?” she asked. Then it came to her. “Rifter, do you know how to fix things? Can Nevermor be saved?”
“I have a plan, but I can’t do it without you. Your presence changes everything.”
Wren felt something then that had abandoned her since laying eyes on this place: hope.
“The truth is that I am nothing without them, Wren. I learned that back then, but it is even truer now. I need you to help me find them. They will listen to you.”
She knew exactly who he was speaking of. The Pack…
“But, why won’t they listen to you?” she asked before she had thought much about it.
The look in his eyes then was dangerous, and she did not know how to respond to it.
“They have grown as well, you see, and are slowly becoming corrupted by the darkness. Some have even seen the Scourge’s side of things. I know this.”
Wren could hardly believe that, but she supposed that a lot could change over time – even a few years.
“What makes you think they will listen to me then?” she asked, overwhelmed by it all.
Rifter looked up at her, his eyes lighting wildly.
“You are a prominent figure to them,” he explained. “They protected you – fought for you. You’re beautiful and innocent, and haven’t been touched by this corruption. In their eyes, you can do no wrong. They have missed you just the same, and when they see you, they will be able to trust me again.”
Trust you? His statement struck her, but she did not say anything toward it. Wren considered it all, biting her bottom lip thoughtfully.
“Will you help me?” he asked eagerly.
She felt pressured, but she could not say no to this. She couldn’t go back to the asylum now – wouldn’t – and if she was going to be here, she needed to make herself useful in restoring the place.
&nb
sp; “Of course I will help you,” she said with a brave smile.
His face lit up with pleasure. “Good, I’m running low on help these days.”
Wren felt better at that, seeing how he looked at her so affectionately. Perhaps this was the side of him that she remembered – or the one she had retained. She needed to hold onto that if she was to accept what he was now.
She thought of kissing him then, never mind the fanged teeth. His mouth was still attractive, and she’d wondered if his kiss would recall anything to her. She was just about to move closer when they heard the cracking sound above.
Rocks shifted, grinding together, breaking apart. Wren’s immediate instinct was to duck down, fearing that the beasts outside had found them, but it was much closer than that. Tiny pebbles began to fall as the ceiling of the cavern shifted.
It’s a cave-in! she realized frantically. We’ll be trapped!
Rifter was quick to push her behind him, guarding her as the ceiling fell, and Wren had just lifted her eyes to observe the rubble before she gasped at the shock of her revelation.
The pile of stone was alive!
The creature before them was some sort of hard-shelled beast with crystals growing from its back, but it had awakened at the sound of their voices – or perhaps by Rifter’s presence. It had been a long time since Wren had seen a creature like this, but Rifter was not shaken. He drew his sword – a basic piece stolen from a pirate – standing firm.
“Find a place to hide!” he told her hurriedly. “I’ll keep it off you. Go!”
Wren didn’t question it. She backed away into the rock formations of the cave as the nightmare creature lunged at Rifter on all fours, but he was quick as ever. The years had not dulled his senses. He stepped out of the way as the monster dove past, leaping up as the crystals grazed his sword.
Wren moved blindly, seeking a place to hide. She did not have to know anything about this cave monster to know why it existed. It was like so many other beasts that roamed this realm, having been born from the remnant of a nightmare that had washed up from the sea of dreams.
As her heart sped and her breath rushed through her lungs, Wren understood what Rifter had been trying to tell her in all that he’d just explained.