by Lex Chase
In the video, Taylor’s long dark hair was dusted with snow and ratty, because it hadn’t been washed in four days. His skin was pale from the lack of proper meals. He had sustained himself with granola bars and ramen. Taylor looked into the distant skies, his peach-pink eyes filled with hurt. Taylor remembered that day. He was so close back then. So close to walking away. So close to vanishing into nothing.
Billy had asked him, “What do you want most in the world?”
In the video, Taylor kept watching the sky. Taylor remembered on that day he had wondered if that was the last snowfall he’d see. “Only one thing?” he had asked Billy.
“Okay… I guess a few things,” Billy had said. He sounded so happy but so oblivious, as Taylor back then was falling apart.
Taylor had looked into the camera, and the sense of loneliness filled his happy-colored eyes. “To be Snow White,” Taylor had said. “Because Snow White always lives happily ever after.”
Atticus clutched the phone in his hand.
Taylor backed away as Atticus gave him a predatory grin. “It’s not what you think,” he said softly, at a loss from the emotions from such a darker time in his life rising up in him. “At-At, it’s not what you think.”
Atticus tilted his head like a vulture considering where to peck first. “Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure you have a way to explain this all away.”
Taylor’s lip quivered. “Atticus, please. It’s not what you think.” He backed away, holding the pixie cages close to his chest. “Please. I can explain. But this has to stop. Please. This has to stop.”
Atticus’s face pulled into a grimace, and his eyes flashed into a spark of white. In his hand, ice crystals gathered over the phone. “Yes, do go on, Taylor. Explain. You can always do that. You’re good at that. You can always think of something.”
The ice crystals layered, growing in fractal patterns, forming into a spiked ball of ice. With a determined toss of his arm, Atticus smashed the ice ball to the concrete and the phone with it.
Taylor trembled and fought to maintain his bravery. On the other hand, it was a fool’s errand to remain in the presence of one who had offensive magic.
Atticus raised his arm as an icicle the size of a long sword solidified in his hand.
Taylor danced back but collided with a picnic table. The pixie cages fell from his arms and cracked open. Ringo and Honeysuckle tumbled onto the concrete of the gazebo. Taylor dived to protect them from Atticus’s onslaught. He tucked the pixies to his chest and rolled away with them.
Atticus’s icicle stabbed into the Twine Ball, gashing out moldy thread. Particles flew with the refreshed rancid smell. “Go on, Taylor,” Atticus said as Taylor rolled to his feet. “Explain yourself. I’m waiting.” He readied for another stab with the icicle.
“He doesn’t have to explain anything, you frigid bitch,” Corentin said, just behind Atticus.
Atticus turned, and Corentin ducked in anticipation. He drove his fist upward, clocking Atticus hard in the jaw. Blood sprayed from Atticus’s mouth. He crumpled into a heap at Corentin’s feet.
“Where have you been?” Taylor said in a panic, and Corentin took him by the upper arm, dragging him away.
“Trying to find you and not get killed?” Corentin asked. He looked down to the pixies in Taylor’s arms. “Are they…?”
Taylor bounced Ringo and Honeysuckle gently, like infants. Ringo’s head rolled, and he blinked. “You okay?” Taylor asked.
Ringo nodded slowly. “Can’t fly…,” he said, then coughed.
“Can you guys use magic?” Corentin asked.
“A little,” Ringo said and then trembled with another round of coughing. “Honeybee?”
Honeysuckle stirred. “How can I help?” she asked and then sighed. “So tired….”
“Can you heal all of us?” Taylor asked. “Ringo said you were better at healing than him.”
Honeysuckle struggled to nod. “Dab the tears from my eyes and put them on your tongue.”
Corentin took Ringo from Taylor without being asked. They each took turns gently wiping away a teardrop and tasting the sweetness.
“Honeysuckle nectar,” Taylor said and blinked. The cooling salve washed over him as his road rash dissolved and the cuts in his legs and arms closed and melted away.
He then watched Corentin’s broken form mend. A long gash through his hair drew together, and a series of cuts in the meat of his arm vanished like nothing was amiss. His road rash likewise dissolved into nothingness.
Ringo’s eyes brightened, and bursts of blue sparks shot down the veins of his broken wings, renewing them. He fluttered from Corentin’s grasp, grinning brightly. He then sank to his wife’s side. He took one of Honeysuckle’s tears and let her taste it off his finger.
Honeysuckle’s lashes fluttered, and she sighed. The healing power of her own magic pulsed through her. The light danced through her skin.
They watched and waited. Ringo wrung his hands.
In a shower of sparks, Honeysuckle zipped out of Taylor’s grasp and then flew in figure eights around him and Corentin. She twisted midair to admire her repaired wings. Honeysuckle hovered between Corentin and Taylor, proud of herself. “Now that we’ve taken care of that nasty busi—” She screamed and pointed behind Corentin.
Taylor looked up and saw Idi, the obsidian-skinned Witchking himself, approaching like a rolling hurricane. “Run!” Taylor yelled.
They scattered into the mundane crowd. Taylor hurried, with Ringo flying fast and keeping pace with him. He skidded by the face-painting booth. A mother scooped up her small daughter before Taylor could crash into her. Taylor stopped, scanning the crowd for Corentin. The glimmer of Honeysuckle’s wings buzzing through the concessions tipped him off.
“C’mon, Ringo!” Taylor said and took off again, with Ringo zooming behind him.
The skies grew dark over the carnival. Taylor knew they had to draw Idi and Atticus away from the mundanes or this city would be lost like Margate City. Taylor saw that, at the moment, the mundanes didn’t seem to notice a lot of anything going on. He caught mumbled questions about mentions of rain in the forecast.
Taylor and Ringo made it to the concessions, but Honeysuckle was nowhere to be seen.
“Get back here!” Atticus bellowed from the funnel cake stand.
Ringo made a hurried shooing gesture at Taylor. “Go, go, go!”
Taylor didn’t need to be told a fourth time. He sprinted off again. “Corentin?” he yelled as he ran. “Corentin, where are you?”
Honeysuckle’s wings shone like a beacon at the carousel in the distance, and Ringo pointed. “There!”
Taylor scrambled through the sandboxes and craft area. Parents yelped in surprise as he ran through the activities. He kicked up colored sand and blustered through construction paper in his passing.
The skies grew darker still, and the thunder rolled. Families looked to the skies and started ushering their children to shelter.
Taylor circled around the reeking Twine Ball once again. Idi was waiting for him around the final corner. Taylor tumbled to the right to avoid capture. He recovered his feet but tripped over his own missteps, and the momentum carried him forward.
Corentin dashed out from behind an ice cream cart. They mutually reached for each other. Taylor slipped out of Corentin’s grasp and crashed through a short fence to a petting zoo.
Fumbling through the lambs and sheep, Taylor’s foot caught on a patch of slick hay. He stared wide-eyed as he slid across the enclosure and smacked into a craftswoman and her great spinning wheel. He stopped himself from falling onto her by bracing himself on the sturdy spinning wheel.
They stayed there, staring at one another. Taylor was more excited that he didn’t fall on her, but she seemed more terrified. Taylor frowned, thinking he had ruined her handspun yarn with his blood. “S-sorry…,” he mumbled and slowly straightened.
The craftswoman shivered and pointed a shaking finger. “No, dear…. Your hand….”
; Taylor shook his head once. He didn’t understand what she meant. He looked up, and Corentin watched him as if he had just swallowed a toad. He shrugged. “What?”
“Taylor…,” Corentin said and carefully reached out. “Let me see your hand….”
Taylor still didn’t get it. “What about my ha—” He fell silent when he finally understood. He held up his right hand, genuinely curious at the wound and how he didn’t feel it at all.
The spindle of the spinning wheel had broken off and remained impaled through Taylor’s right palm.
Taylor turned in a slow circle, holding out his hand. The spindle remained tight and stable in his palm. Atticus stood just beyond the petting zoo gates, gazing in wonder at Taylor’s wound. Taylor then met the attention of Idi the Witchking. He too stayed silent in curious contemplation. Ringo and Honeysuckle were next. They held each other and frowned as Taylor fought to understand.
He looked down at his hand and the horrific wound. Taylor snorted and then chuckled and then burst into laughter. He didn’t feel it. He didn’t even feel it go in. He didn’t feel it now that it was in. The absurdity of it all hit him with the last blow to his sanity.
“Bitches, are you for real!” Taylor screamed. He cackled and gripped the weighted end of the spindle in his left hand.
“Taylor…,” Corentin said quietly. “Taylor…. Don’t….”
But it was too late. Taylor pulled the needle from his hand in a slurping suckle. He laughed as the blood flowed down his arm. He threw the spindle aside and held his hand up like a blessed artifact. “Are you for real?” Taylor asked again, his grin bright. “I’ve been through this, all of this, and this is what I get?” He turned in a circle again. Again no one moved. He laughed at how asininely everyone gawked at him. “So. I went through life being told I’m a fucking fairy-tale princess. We don’t know which one, but go with it. I say okay. Because I am five, and I want to play with my GI Joes.” He looked at his hand again. It didn’t hurt, which was the curiousness of it. A new wave of cackles came to him. “This is bullshit,” he said and spun in a circle. The blood splattered around him.
“Taylor…,” Corentin said and reached out.
Taylor danced away from Corentin. He waved a bloody finger. “No! No, no. You’re not real.”
Corentin straightened. “What?”
Taylor laughed, and the freedom of the truth invigorated him. “This is a trick. All of this! It’s a trick. And I bought it. Man oh man, did I buy it.” He pointed at Atticus, and the blood splattered onto his jeans. “You guys are actors, aren’t you? This is a government experiment or something, isn’t it?” He flicked his hand at Idi, and the blood splattered onto an invisible barrier. “Look at you. You were probably paid a lot of shit to watch me crack up all my life.”
Taylor spun again, flailing his bloody hand. He laughed, and the world seemed to come to a halt. “Me? A fairy-tale princess? It’s bullshit!” he said and thrust his hand at Corentin. “Look at this. Look at my hand. You tell me I’m a princess. You let me go through life thinking I’m a fucking nobody. And then!” He clapped his hands, and droplets of blood spritzed across his face. “I go and fucking stab my hand on a spindle. A spindle!” He tossed his head back and cackled. “And nothing happened. Nothing!” He pointed and finally realized the punch line of the joke. “Isn’t the joke on me? Be promised greatness in some backhanded compliment way, and then… here I am!” He pointed to the wound. “Spindle. In. My. Hand. And poof!” He giggled. He grew light-headed from the release of anxiety and his last threads of sanity. Taylor didn’t have a care in the world anymore. Nothing. They could have taken him away on a cloud for all he cared.
“Taylor… Taylor…,” Corentin said. He beckoned Taylor to him. “You really need to let me see your hand….”
Taylor snapped back to reality. And the rage filled him that these actors would still maintain the ruse. He thrust his hand at Corentin again. “See? What is there to see? Do you want a closer look at how fucking crazy I am now?” He danced away to Atticus. “Do you want an official diagnosis? How about completely demented?” He shifted again to Idi. Taylor smiled with narrowed eyes. “Man… they are dumping a fuckton of the special effects budget into you.”
He cackled with the merriment of release flooding through him. “It’s a lie. It’s all a lie! All a li—” Taylor’s eyelids fluttered as a honking snore ripped through him, and he collapsed into the hay.
Taylor floated away on the peaceful nothings of his dreams.
CHAPTER 32:
THE HUNTSMAN
The World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Cawker City, Kansas
June 14
CORENTIN STARED at the sleeping Taylor, perplexed and fascinated that he didn’t make the connection all along. Especially with as much as Taylor excelled at being able to fall asleep at a moment’s notice.
Taylor rolled over in the hay as though he were getting comfortable in a soft bed. He smacked his lips, and then his jaw dropped open, unleashing a round of ghastly snores.
“Sleeping Beauty…,” Atticus said. He, too, seemed curious at his own brother’s curse come to life.
Corentin’s gaze flicked to Atticus and then to Idi, then he sprang over the short fence and dashed into the petting zoo paddock. He dipped to scoop up Taylor, only to be thrown back with a shock wave of magic ripping through Taylor. The force rolled like a tsunami crashing through Cawker City.
“Kill him,” Idi ordered Atticus sharply. “Kill him. Now!”
Atticus dived for Taylor’s sleeping form, and Corentin was ready. He blocked Atticus with his own body, crouching over Taylor. Atticus fell on his stomach across the width of Corentin’s back. He tumbled to the dirty hay, stained with mud and blood.
Atticus shot to his feet, and an icicle dagger took shape. He flipped the icicle in his hand and gestured his intent to stab Corentin. They circled each other, and Corentin felt naked and unprepared without a blade to protect himself. But he did have one weapon.
He lunged for Taylor again. And the shock wave burst from Taylor’s body. Atticus and Corentin both crashed onto their backs. Corentin got to his feet first and pinned Atticus by sitting on his chest.
Atticus blinked once as Corentin’s fist cracked into his jaw. He gasped, and Corentin took another swing and hit against the bone of Atticus’s cheek.
“Taylor is mine,” Corentin snarled. “You will not take him away.”
The shock wave from Taylor pulsed once more, and prickles of sprouting thorny plants crept through the hay, stabbing at Corentin’s shins and Atticus’s back. Both of them flinched.
The pain persisted, and the black briar vines grew taller. They fell from the new weight and curled across the ground, spreading like a blot of ink into water over the grass. Corentin backed off Atticus in an instant. Atticus likewise danced back from the spreading vines.
Ringo beckoned Corentin away. “Come, come!” he said in an urgent growl.
“But Taylor,” Corentin said and threw a hand out at the sleeping princess.
Ringo shook his head and held out his hand. “He’ll be fine. We have to get to higher ground.”
Honeysuckle offered her hand as well. “Come on, gumdrop,” she said, flicking her fingers. “Take our hands.”
The ground trembled with the eruption of vines. Corentin clasped the pixies’ hands and said a prayer in the back of his mind. Ringo and Honeysuckle jerked Corentin from the ground and carried him away into the skies. He watched below him as the vines spread, thicker, taller, and consumed everything in their path.
The street carnival rides squealed as the metal beams contorted and snapped under the weight. They vanished into the thicket of black thorns. The mundanes ran. Corentin gasped as the mundanes screamed the telltale tortured howl as their minds simultaneously broke with reality.
Ringo and Honeysuckle deposited Corentin on the catwalk of a water tower. He ran the circumference of it, trying to get a better view of the widespread attack of Taylor’s curse. He clapped a h
and over his mouth as buildings were crushed and vanished. Cars flipped from the growth and twisted as vines held them like the curl of a python. Ringo and Honeysuckle fluttered around the water tower with him.
Corentin smacked his hand to the railing. “Idi used Taylor as a weapon.” He snarled his disgust. “He anticipated this! It’s like fucking Margate City!”
In the distance, another shockwave boomed, louder and more powerful than before. From the epicenter, from Taylor himself, a thick stalk shot from the ground.
Corentin clung to the water tower railing as the supports rocked like a tree in the breeze. “What’s going on?” Corentin yelled to Ringo. “Can you see?”
Ringo spread his hands, and a spark of magic formed a magnifying piece of air. He stretched the image to the size of a television screen. Inside the trunk, a gigantic pink gem, large enough to encase a body, pulsed with light.
Corentin squinted at the magical picture. “Taylor’s in that thing. We have to get him out. We have to save him before these briars keep spreading.” Corentin looked down again. The briar vines kept rolling onward as far as he could see over the flatness of the surrounding land. It was a small blessing they had slowed down to a creeping crawl.
“You can’t go into this ill prepared,” Honeysuckle said.
Ringo nodded. “You’ll need your tools of the trade.”
Corentin narrowed his eyes as Ringo and Honeysuckle flew at him. They spiraled around his body, sucking him up into a funnel of blue and gold glittering contrails. His tattered clothes winked away stitch by stitch. In their place, gray leather pants clung to his legs, tucked into armored boots. A heavy green tunic gave a comforting weight on his shoulders, and the cotton shirt under it the freedom of movement. Leather bracers laced over his forearms, and gloves slicked over his fingers. On the leather of the tunic, the spirit of his ancestor’s old oak tree rose in an embossed layer.