by Ruby Brown
“I’m coming with you,” Trixie said stubbornly, and she started to follow.
Mal stopped abruptly and glared at Trixie, who looked back at her with a raised chin and blazing eyes. “You are not coming with us,” Mal said, her voice undercut with a threatening growl. “You are going to go inside and...”
“And what?” Trixie challenged. Mal had never seen her like this. Her fists were clenched at her sides and her face was set, determined. She wasn’t going down without a hell of a fight. “Go back to being treated like some kind of prisoner? Trapped in that library the whole day, with Allie? I hate that place, and I hate her. I’m not going back.” Trixie’s voice cracked and tears filled her eyes.
“I get it,” Mal said. “You’re looking for an adrenaline rush; you want to go on a great adventure. But this isn’t...”
“You don’t understand!” Trixie yelled. Mal recoiled from the sudden sharp burst of noise. Trixie closed her eyes and breathed deeply, unclenching her fists. Suddenly, the door to Tenebar burst open, and one of the guards were standing at the door. He had obviously been sent to investigate the source of the shouting. His eyes went from Trixie, to Mal, to Claire. There was no mistaking the spark of recognition in his eyes, or what he was going to do with the fire magic that burst to life in his calloused palms.
“Run!” Mal screamed, and the three of them spun and started running like hell for the shelter of the forest. She could hear the guard following; feel the blazing inferno that surrounded them as he tried to surround them in a circle of fire. But she quickly realised that they had the advantage. The guard couldn’t use too much fire, or he would burn down the surrounding forest, the main thing that sheltered them from unwelcome intrusions. But he was yelling for backup, and as soon as they arrived, they were screwed.
As opposed to Claire, who sprinted with a quiet and grim determination, Trixie’s breathing was being ripped out of her in frantic screams. Mal knew that she should be as scared as Trixie was, but for some reason she felt...almost happy. With disgust, Mal realised that it was her Akraansir magic, feeding off of the fear and death of the situation. The terrible urge to kill rose up within her. Mal clenched her fists and kept running.
Finally, they burst into the forest, stumbling over tree roots in the darkness. “We need to split up,” Mal rasped.
“I’m not leaving you,” Claire said stubbornly.
“Fine. Be stupid,” Mal snapped. “Trixie, go on. Get away. We’ll meet you at the graveyard.” Mal didn’t know why that was the first thing that came to mind, but it was. Trixie opened her mouth to argue, but Mal practically screamed at her and she shut her mouth with a snap before turning and running into the forest to their right. Mal and Claire went left, ducking and weaving through the trees, running on pure adrenaline. Mal had gone into autopilot, just doing whatever she needed to do to survive. She could barely spare a thought for the safety of her friend as she hurtled through the darkness like a comet through space.
Suddenly, Mal was hit from behind with something large and heavy, and she fell down. She rolled down the hill, coming to a hard stop at the bottom with something pinning her down. Mal kicked it off and then realised that it was Claire. The footsteps of the people from Flybird were getting closer and closer. Frantically, Mal looked around and saw that there was a log they could hide underneath. “Hurry up,” Mal said as she scurried underneath the log, pulling her knees right up to her chest. Claire followed, pressing herself against the log to try and conceal herself as best she could.
Mal and Claire sat there, trembling, as their pursuers came closer and closer. Mal stifled a scream as a pair of heavy boots landed in front of them, sure they were going to be caught, but then the owner of the boots kept running, going away from them, obviously convinced that they were further ahead. Paralysed by anxiety, Mal and Claire watched as four more pairs of shoes landed in front of them and then took off running. Even after the fourth person disappeared into the darkness, neither person trusted themselves to move. They sat there, trembling, convinced that the people would soon return.
Finally, Mal cautiously crept out from her hiding place. Muscles tense, her hand clutching at her knife, she stood up and looked around, straining her eyes to try and see through the darkness and determine if there were any human shapes lurking within. When she had reassured herself that it was relatively safe, at least for now, she beckoned Claire out into the open as well.
“Sorry about knocking you over,” Claire whispered once she was standing next to her friend. “I ran into a spider web.”
Mal just glared at her, and then started walking. Timidly, Claire followed her. They walked in silence as the darkness deepened around them, the stars providing the only faint source of illumination. As they were running away, Mal welcomed the darkness, but now she was afraid of it. She had always hated the dark because she couldn’t see what might be lurking in the shadows. It was getting cold and as the adrenaline ebbed away Mal got so tired that she could barely keep herself upright. Mentally apologising to Trixie, who must be terrified out there by herself, Mal turned to Claire and said “we need to find somewhere to sleep. We’ll go to the graveyard tomorrow.”
Claire was too tired to argue. To their left, there was a large, hollowed-out tree with just enough space for them to rest side by side. They lay down on the ground, staring up at the inside of the tree. Mal didn’t know about Claire, but she was just hoping that no bugs or insects fell down from the top of the tree and land on them while they were sleeping.
Mal was pulled from her train of thought by Claire saying “Mal...”
“Hm?” Mal asked.
“What I said...when I was in the jail cell...I told you that I was in love with you...”
Mal felt her whole body tense up. She didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. “What about it?”
“Well...you saved me from that place...so you must feel the same way...right?”
Abruptly, Mal sat up and glared down at her friend. Clare looked shocked, scared, but Mal didn’t care. Harshly, she said “I saved you so you can help me save my parents. That’s all. Don’t try and fool yourself into thinking that I would love you after what you did to my brother, to my family.”
Mal moved as far away from Claire as she could and then lay down again, facing away from her. She closed her eyes, determined to drift off to sleep. The last thing she remembered before she fell asleep was the sound of Claire quietly sobbing, and the terrible spike of guilt that stabbed into her heart.
Chapter 31
The next day was bright and sunny, the complete opposite of Mal’s mood. But as she traipsed through the forest towards the graveyard, with Claire struggling to keep up, the physical activity made her feel a bit better about everything. Finally, she’d calmed down enough to slow her furious pace and let Claire catch up.
“Listen...” Mal said awkwardly. “About last night...”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Claire snapped. “You’ve already made your feelings pretty clear.”
Mal immediately knew that she’d stuffed up, big time. Claire hadn’t spoken so angrily to her in years. “I’m sorry, Claire. I was tired, I wasn’t thinking straight...”
“Oh, so you are in love with me then?” Claire asked. Behind the sarcastic tone, Mal could sense a small glimmer of hope, and it hurt her.
“No...I’m not.”
“That’s what I thought,” Claire said, All traces of hope had gone, replaced with despair and bitterness. Now it was Claire’s turn to increase her pace, leaving Mal behind as she walked through the forest. Mal could feel her anger returning and she knew that if she wasn’t careful she’d end up screaming at Claire, so she tried to distract herself by looking at the forest around them, taking note of the gentle green gradients and the birdsong that filtered through the sun-spattered trees, the random pops of colour as wildflowers peeked cautiously from around and between coarse tree trunks. She knew they were getting close to the graveyard when she saw the roses, exactly
the same as the ones that she had lain at Leah’s grave in what seemed like another century. It gave her a strange kind of pleasure when Claire, who was clearly uncertain about where to go next, dropped back and let Mal take the lead. Confidently, Mal walked through the last stretch of forest before the two of them stumbled upon the first crumbling gravestone, speckled with moss, the inscription lost to time.
Argument forgotten (for the time being), the two girls huddled together, looking for some kind of reassurance to take away the eerie feeling that followed them as they traced a path through the stones, keeping their eyes peeled for a flash of red hair in the mass of grey and green. When Mal first saw Trixie, a bolt of fear shot through her, but when she recognised who it was she relaxed. She approached cautiously though, for she could tell by the look on Trixie’s face that they had done something wrong.
Trixie was covered in dirt with leaves in her hair. Her clothes were torn and there was a large scratch on her arm. She was absolutely furious, glaring at Mal and Claire with clenched fists. “Where the hell were you guys?” she said angrily.
“Trixie, I’m sorry. We were heading towards the lake but it got too dark to keep going,” Mal explained soothingly.
“You left me here,” Trixie said loudly, her voice wavering. “You left me alone!”
Mal’s first reaction was annoyance, but then she realised just how scared she would have been in Trixie’s situation. Pursued by people twice her size and strength through a landscape she barely knew shrouded in impenetrable darkness, only to come and spend a freezing night with the bodies sleeping below the soil, with nothing and no one to protect or reassure her when things rustled or snapped amongst the trees. She looked a little closer at the girl in front of her and took note of the violet circles under the red eyes that betrayed how much she had been crying. She suddenly noticed that Trixie’s crossed arms, which she had previously taken as a sign of hostility and disdain, were in fact a defence mechanism to stop them from seeing the way she was trembling.
Lost for words, Mal just opened her arms and hugged Trixie close to her, stroking the flaming curls of her hair. Trixie tensed up at first, and Mal prepared herself to be pushed away, but then she felt a pair of strong, slender arms close around her back. When Trixie eventually pulled away, Mal’s shirt was streaked with tears.
Mal smiled at her, and then looked around them. She should have picked a better place to meet up. Most of the trees had been cleared to make way for the dead, and it didn’t provide the best cover. She led the two of them deeper into the forest until they found a large lake that they could sit on the edge of as they scooped the water up with their hands and drank. Nevertheless, Mal kept one hand on her dagger at all times. She was starting to understand why Rose’s hands were always hovering around the guns at her waist, ready to use them at a moment’s notice.
“So, Claire...” Mal said, uttering the first words that the pair had spoken to each other in since this morning. She heard her voice crack with the effort of keeping supressed emotions buried, and she hated herself for it. “Do you know how to get to Akraansir from here?”
“Not really...” Claire admitted, but when she saw Mal glaring at her she said “but I can definitely think of something.”
The three of them sat in a circle and talked for hours about what their next move would be. Although she would never admit it, Mal was impressed by how much Claire knew of Akraansir’s headquarters. As Claire spoke, drawing with a stick in the dirt to try and illustrate what she was saying, Mal started questioning her perspective on the whole thing. She was trusting Claire with not just her life but Trixie’s too. No matter their history and the complicated mess of emotions Mal felt in her chest whenever she looked at Claire, it was undeniable that Claire was a dangerous criminal who had killed her brother and had close ties to the most powerful dark force in the world. She was letting Claire lead them wherever she wanted, in the hope that she was leading them to the headquarters rather than into some kind of ambush. And once they were in the headquarters, Mal and Trixie were completely powerless, relying entirely on Claire to help get them through it.
After they’d finished creating a plan, they started talking about what kind of provisions they’d need for the long trek ahead. Mal hated herself for not thinking to get food or water before she had left Tenebar. She had just been so scared that someone would catch them that she hadn’t paused to consider that people actually needed food and water to survive. The lake was alright for now, but they couldn’t take the water with them.
“Wait, what powers do you have?” Mal asked Trixie.
She didn’t expect such a simple question to create such a big response. Trixie jerked backwards as if she had been shocked, and instantly her face closed up. “Why are you asking?”
Confused, Mal said “well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you use your magic, but if you can conjure water, that would be incredibly helpful right now.”
Trixie shook her head quickly. “I don’t have water magic.”
“So what do you control?” Claire persisted, curious.
“Um...fire,” Trixie said quickly, and looked away. “I’m not very good at it, so I don’t use it very often.”
In the end, they could see no other option but to go to Mal’s house and get food and water from there. They knew that Tenebar would probably have the house on watch, but they didn’t feel comfortable stealing food from anywhere else and at least they knew that the house was close. They just didn’t know which direction to go, so Mal spent the rest of the night worrying about that. As it was her house, responsibility for finding it had been firmly placed on her, and she felt like her bones were cracking with the pressure of it. All her thinking was giving her a headache. A very large part of her never wanted to set foot in that house again. It had transformed from the vessel that held her life into the host of heart-wrenching memories she’d rather forget. She couldn’t trust herself not to have a full-on mental breakdown the minute she stepped through the door. She paced up and down, peering through the trees with unrealistic hope that she could see some kind of landmark. Every now and then, she’d venture a little deeper into the darkness to get a better view, but she was incredibly careful not to leave Trixie alone with Claire for long and to always be in earshot in case Trixie started screaming.
Mal circled closer and closer to the others as the light died, and by the time the sun had properly set, none of them dared to move more than a couple of metres away from each other. Mal noted the crouched, defensive positions that all of them remained in, the pack mentality they assumed. It didn’t help that the only weapon she had with her was her pocket knife, which she was twirling in her hands because she couldn’t stand to keep still. Retreating to the flimsy shelter that Trixie and Claire had constructed gave her some kind of reprieve, until her imagination started taking the strange sounds that echoed around them and warped them until Mal was convinced that if she poked her head out of the shelter she would see a six foot, fire-breathing demon ready to feast on their flesh...or something like that.
Mal was the first to wake the next morning. Claire was sleeping on her side, one hand clenched loosely around a clump of grass. Trixie woke up almost immediately after Mal started stirring, proof that maybe she hadn’t been sleeping as peacefully as it seemed. Trixie’s bones cracked as she stretched, which made Mal wince, and then the two of them headed down closer to the lake.
“Are you sure you know the way to your house from here?” Trixie asked as she washed her face.
“No.”
“Can we trust Claire?”
“No.”
“You’re not a morning person, are you?”
“No.” She looked up at the sky and squinted against the glare of the early morning sun. It would be best if they started moving now, however Claire still hadn’t woken up. Undeterred, Mal walked over to Claire, picked her up, and threw her in the lake. Several minutes later, Claire grumpy with dripping wet clothes, they started walking across the forest. They
were all very cautious as they moved, trying to make as little noise as possible. Mal was leading the group, frantically scanning their surroundings, keeping an eye out not just for potential threats but for anything that proved they were heading in the right direction. Her theory was that if they just kept going straight, eventually they would find the edge of the trees and they’d be able to see the streets, giving her a rough idea of where they were.
To her surprise, it worked. A few hours later, and amidst the complaints of the girls behind her, she realised that the trees were thinning. She could see the outline of houses and the carefully labelled grey roads that divided them. Wild forest gave way to carefully manicured garden and pristine white houses to hide in. Mal was immensely relived when she recognised the street signs, and knew exactly where they were. All of the nights she spent sneaking out with her friends had paid off.
Mal took her sweater back from Claire and used the hood to hide her face as they walked on the pavement. She was terrified that one of her neighbours, peering through their curtains, would recognise her. She nervously sped up, but then froze when she saw the unmistakeable bright yellow glare of police tape surrounding her house. How did she not realise that in the time she was gone, her house would have been turned into a crime scene? After all, no one’s going to walk into a house and see a message written in blood and go “oh yeah, that’s perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about”. Idiot.
She turned back to the others and saw her worried expression mirrored perfectly on their faces, but Claire quickly turned to anger. “Of course the police are here! God forbid something actually goes right!” She breathed in deeply and ran her fingers through her hair. With strained calmness, she continued. “Well, we can’t go in now. We’ll never make it if we’ve got the police tracking us as well as Tenebar. We’ll just have to try a different house.”
“And what if the owners are home?” Trixie said. “We’ll get in just as much trouble that way.”