“It wasn’t about Tressa, or the trials, or anything like that,” Avery muttered, his flushed cheeks turning an even deeper red as he bowed his head, gingerly straightening his shirt. “If you must know, it was about who Evelyn and Fred are.”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked, not quite understanding.
He laughed bitterly, kicking some nonexistent pebble and shoving his hands in waistcoat pockets.
“Taunt me all you like, I’m truly past caring. The thing is…I’m jealous.”
“Of Evelyn?” I scoffed. “We can’t all be gorgeous.”
“No…” Avery hesitated, the bitter look still etched onto his features. “Not like that. I’ve never been likeable, not like they are, and it didn’t bother me until…well, it doesn’t matter. I made that perfect facade crack. I won. And it feels bloody awful. Tressa and I are like the bad guys now, but if that’s what it takes to get out of here, then I’m willing to play the part. You don’t know what we… There are some things you don’t…” He broke off, unable to find the words.
I hesitated, not entirely sure what he was getting at.
“Look, just do us a favor.” He sighed. “Don’t judge us. We’ve got better reasons than you might think.”
“What?”
“See you,” Avery bid me as he retreated into the corridor, along with a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.
My hands trailed into my pockets as I tried to process what he meant, when they brushed against my letter. Only, it wasn’t mine; I had used much thicker paper than this.
D had replied to me.
16
Penny,
I am so delighted to hear from you as well! For years I have waited to communicate with the living inside the Boundary, as it has been eating away at me as time goes by that I can do nothing to help or guide you. Unfortunately, I cannot answer many of your questions and can merely offer advice. It is the way of the in-between world in which I am forced to reside. Listen to me when I tell you that you need to distance yourself from your friends as soon as possible. It sounds awful, I know, but the trials always take the same steps to turn you against each other; the only way to avoid the imminent destruction is to isolate yourself. I will not be surprised if your next letter tells of this. I grow tired, and must finish this regrettably short letter.
My wishes for good luck, D.
I repeatedly read the words until I was certain that it was not a figment of my imagination but a true, material letter. Besides my ecstatic happiness that D was real and replying to me, I felt disappointed that he had answered none of my questions and that his advice was less than pleasant. Still, if it was the only guidance he was giving me, then I supposed I had to take it.
Clutching it tightly, I took a shuddering breath and slowly lowered my fist into my pocket. I would write back as soon as possible to gain an equally speedy response.
I ran as fast as I could towards the library, throwing open my desk and beginning to scribble down words before the paper had even hit the top of the desk. I had only written a greeting before I stopped and tried to think again of how to phrase what I wanted to say. If only I could meet D and ask my questions to his or her face! It would be so much easier, considering my mouth worked much faster than my mind sometimes.
Dear D,
Oh my goodness, you have replied! I won’t pretend that you didn’t bring unpleasant news, but I’m delighted all the same! I don’t relish the thought of abandoning my friends, but I understand what you mean…still, is there no way to protect everyone? Oh, another thought has just occurred to me! I think this is probably an unreasonable request to ask of you, but do you possibly know anything about the dreams I have been having? Am I the baby, as I believed? And another touchy question; is she – sorry, Beatrix – with you, wherever you are? Are you alone? If we fail, will we join you? I find myself with more questions than answers now, and so I shall leave my letter at this so not to swamp you.
Please reply with haste,
Penny
The next morning I woke up with a pounding headache, as usual, feeling slightly nauseous, as usual. By the looks of the minimal light escaping from behind our curtains, the weather was as dreary and bleak as it had been for the past few weeks.
Feeling truly done with life, I clambered into boring grey half-mourning dress and half-heartedly tried to tame my limp hair into a respectable shape again. Looking in my vanity mirror by my bed, I got a clear view of what the trials had done to me physically.
I had big purple bags under my eyes from the scant amount of sleep I had gotten, and I could have sworn that even to me they were slowly becoming blacker, like those of the demons that had been haunting us. My skin was pale and sickly, and I had lost weight due to the poor quality food.
I splashed water on my face, and then checked my pockets with a bit more enthusiasm for a new letter. I was let down; the only note was my own.
“Morning.” I nodded stiffly to Tressa as she glided past, her scoop neckline showing her collarbones protruding unhealthily. She gave me a curt bob of the head to acknowledge me, but that was it.
“Urgh, I feel awful!” Evelyn whined crossly as she appeared, tearing at frizzy ringlets in desperation. Her dress hung off her like a sack, and even her soft heart-shaped face was gaining a sharp tone from the thinness. “Mental battles, I can handle, but as soon as my hair is compromised I’m finished!”
“You look fine,” I said tonelessly, trying and failing to gather some emotion for life.
“Do I? Really? Fred said the same, but that’s only because he’s so eager to please.” Evelyn frowned, bending in front of my mirror to double check. Her face fell when she saw herself close up, bottom lip sliding into a pout.
“We look hideous and ill, all of us,” she announced in the same way a philosopher might proclaim a revolutionary discovery. “This has to stop before we waste away to our deaths.”
“You and your looks,” Tressa hissed in annoyance, pulling back her blond hair into a ponytail, which only enhanced the sharp bony angles of her face. “Honestly, if you had only listened to Avery and me about taking action before, we wouldn’t be in this mess! We’d have made progress.”
“You don’t know that,” Evelyn argued, trying to scoop some powder out of a tiny ceramic jar with the crook of her little finger. “It might have just ended up even worse. Besides, you could have acted without our consent and you didn’t. We disagreed, but we never tried to stop you.”
The two girls, who had mere months ago been the best of friends, glared at each other challengingly before Evelyn gave up and looked away first.
“Breakfast,” Tressa suggested with all the warmth of an icicle.
“Yes,” I agreed, rising to her commanding stance and tipping up my chin. “Let’s go.”
We all despised breakfast now. The food was guaranteed to taste ashy, and the only reason we choked it down was so we didn’t starve.
Walking with several feet between us, we glided downstairs to the breakfast room like the living dead. The boys met us just outside as usual, also looking absolutely awful. Lucas was standing firmly in between Avery and Fred, though he couldn’t block the venomous stares being shared between the two.
“Hello, all,” he greeted us with relief, giving his two charges warning glances to be civil in front of us.
Fred beamed despite the circumstances when he saw Evelyn, breaking ranks to give her a warm hug, which she delicately returned.
I noted curiously that Avery made no conspicuous reaction to this, but retained his stony expression with darkening eyes. If he was jealous of their happiness, he was only half trying to hide it.
Tressa did not return pleasantries, forcing her was through the breakfast room door first and leaving us all to trail behind her.
My first reaction was shock. There was no food on the table! Only slender, shiny, pointy things I recalled from a while ago at dinner, that closer inspection made my breath catch in my mouth and my emotions change to ones of fear.
&nb
sp; They were knives. Not harmless flat butter knives as we were accustomed too, but sharp things used only for slicing the thickest of meats. They were deadly, dangerous, and there were six of them: one for each of us. I did not know why they were there, only it could not be good.
“Where’s the food?” Fred gasped in horror. “What’s going on?”
Avery and Tressa shared a look then, and my throat went dry.
The mutual understanding that passed between them did nothing to boost my confidence in the situation, instead raising even more alarms that this was bad.
I took a closer inspection of the knives, taking in their razor sharp blades and wicked pointed tips. I noticed, they were emitting a low static pulse, rather like the contraption upstairs had but on a lesser scale.
We each reached forward in uncertain awe to touch the things, and all at once our hands closed around the buzzing metal.
It made my hand sting, but before I could register the feeling of touching the static, something even more bizarre happened.
There was an almighty rip in the room, and with a jerk, I felt myself and the others being ripped out of the manor and flung shrieking to the Boundary woods, to face the next event of the trials.
When the sickening spinning stopped and the blurred scenery came into focus, I felt more than a little ill and extremely nauseous.
We had been transported to the very edge of the estate, so close to the Boundary itself that I could hear the trickle of water as it made its seemingly harmless rounds about the perimeter.
The worst part was that we were trapped.
On one side there was the Boundary, and on the other sides there were enormous trees that had grown together into one massive trunk, forming a natural, solid wall at least five yards long that left us confined to the resulting clearing with no escape, holding nothing but our deadly knives.
“What the bloody hell was that?” Avery managed to gasp after we had all grounded ourselves and taken in the ominous surroundings.
For once, Tressa didn’t correct him, seeming as shaken as the rest of us albeit slightly less terrified.
Fred dropped his knife to the ground as if it was something poisonous, a look of utter horror on his face, and Evelyn hastily did the same with the same disgusted expression at having to touch such a vulgar weapon. I, on the other hand, held on to mine grimly. We had been given them for a reason, and I wasn’t about to discard my only means of defense without knowing why.
“A rip,” Tressa answered flatly, evaluating the clearing critically. “We discussed this, Avery, remember?”
“I wasn’t expecting it so soon,” he grumbled, twirling the knife between his fingers with unsettling ease and digging a hole absently with his toes in the soft, earthy ground. “I thought we’d have longer to prepare.”
“You knew this was going to happen?” I exclaimed incredulously. How much had they kept from us? I felt my anger boiling back up again at the stark impassiveness they showed to the situation, as well as a strong need to hit something rather hard. Preferably Avery.
“Not this precisely,” Avery explained impatiently. “But—”
“Oh, go ahead!” Tressa interrupted in a slightly hysterical tone, fist white around the hilt of the knife. “Go and give them all the same advantages we have! I mean, if someone’s going to die, it may as well be us right?”
“Die?” Lucas demanded, flicking them a furious glare that mirrored my own. “Advantage? I think some serious explanation is due from you two. We all understood that you wanted to take the offensive path, but we never knew you had actually discovered anything useful.”
“Au contraire, Lucas old chap,” Avery said with a huge smile, though the rest of his face seemed tired and worn. “We managed perfectly well without your precious books.”
“Books?” Now it was Fred’s turn to gape in betrayed amazement. “You had books all this time, and you didn’t tell us? I thought we were supposed to be together on this!”
I snorted. “The ‘let’s work together’ motto didn’t last very long at all, did it?”
And then we were all yelling at each other like caged lions, letting loose all our accumulated anger and frustration in multiple rants and screaming, so that the clearing was suddenly deafening with the noise of our arguments.
I didn’t know at whom exactly I was yelling, perhaps all of them, but I could feel the angry words spill out as my face flushed red with a tirade of accusations aimed at no one, everyone, and partially myself for letting it get this bad.
Through the haze of emotions I saw blows being dealt, curse words being bellowed, and eyes turn a solid, feral black. I did not stop myself at this though, only raising my voice louder over the racket so that it could be heard, and for the first time in weeks people would know exactly how I felt!
It must have been quite a sight for anyone watching. Then there was a high-pitched scream and I saw Tressa trip over a root. She was falling right towards the Boundary, hands plucking desperately in midair for a nonexistent handhold to break the impact.
Dimly, I was aware that I should be acting to save her, but my anger was still at too high a boiling point for me to care.
Lucas, on the other hand, still had his rational head intact. Without hesitation, he darted forward and seized her arm before she could tumble through the Boundary.
“That was close,” he muttered to the floor.
“Good reflexes,” Avery said in a drawling tone, though he too appeared shaken by such a narrow escape.
“Oh, Lucas!” Tressa gasped, face as white as her hair. “Thank goodness you thought to…when I wouldn’t…I mean, thank you! I’m sorry…I’ve been so horrible and you still… But of course you don’t know…”
“What are you blabbering about?” I rolled my eyes, dusting the dirt off my skirts discreetly all the while as if this new approachable Tressa was going to whirl around and scold me for it like the old days.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, eyes reddening – with tears? Was Tressa the Cold actually going to show regret? “Well, more like you don’t know… Oh, Avery, what have we done?”
A muscle tensed in Avery’s jaw as he regarded Tressa, and for the moment it seemed as if there was no one in the clearing but those two.
I found myself once again surrounded by secrets and lies, which I could not solve, but only watch and hope they unfolded in my favor.
How frustrating, but also interesting! A little near-death experience was all it took to make Tressa’s harsh facade crumble.
“It was your idea,” Avery reminded her in a low voice. “You said you were prepared to do it to win.”
“But…how can we? They saved my life, when we would have just let them go…it’s awful, Avery, and I can’t stand it anymore,” Tressa argued, her voice gaining strength towards the end. “This has been killing me on the inside for a long time now. Penny and Evelyn are more than my friends; they’re my sisters. Fred, Lucas and you are like family too, and I always have felt like I’m their…guardian, I suppose…especially after Beatrix died. It kills me, Avery, and I’m surprised you don’t feel the same.”
“I do!” he contradicted, and with the tortured look in his eyes I actually believed him for a while. “I’m not heartless.”
“As deep as this is, would anyone mind letting the rest of us know what you’re on about?” Evelyn butted in crossly, folding her arms across her chest and pouting beautifully. “I hate being clueless in conversations.”
“Hear! Hear!” I agreed crossly, feeling my hand tighten involuntarily around the hilt of my knife as a sliver of unease shivered its way down my spine. I had the peculiar feeling someone was watching me, although all eyes were trained on Tressa.
Avery and Tressa stared each other out for a few minutes, and it seemed there was a silent battle raging in the few feet between them. The rest of us stood quietly and watched, trying to keep our frustration contained.
To my surprise, it was actually Avery who first broke eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered to the ground, fists clenched. “To all of you.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Not good enough. You need to tell us what you’ve been up to.”
“We…we did find something,” Tressa began to explain, tears still rolling down her face in silent regret. “It was awful, and I half wish we hadn’t found it at all; it made us realize exactly how dire the situation was and what needed to be sacrificed in order to beat the trials. We decided not to say anything because it would be better that way for you…you wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge constantly weighing you down. Perhaps I still don’t want to take that back. It’s changed me, and not for the better; I’ve been simply horrible to all of you, because in some twisted perverse way that has helped me deal with the truth.”
“What did you find?” I probed, perturbed by her cryptic apology, but pleased that it was an apology nonetheless. Avery was getting very agitated, twirling the knife with renewed ferocity, refusing to join in on the conversation. There was a shadow in his eyes, which I had never seen before, but I stubbornly told myself not to see it as a true threat. This was Avery after all, and what could he possibly do to us?
“I’d like to know why you were so nasty, Avery,” Fred interrupted. “I can’t hear any heartfelt apologies coming from you.”
“You have something I don’t. I got jealous.” Avery shrugged carelessly. “Not that it really mattered; I just hated feeling outdone.”
“Does this have anything to do with me?” Evelyn piped up hopefully, having forgotten about the argument already.
“Not anymore,” Avery said under his breath, scuffing the toes of his boots against a prominent root.
I felt awkward, silly almost, as we plunged again into silence. There was not a sound but the wind whistling gently through the trees overhead, pulling the strands of the willow branches into a reluctant dance.
“How are we supposed to get—” I began, boredom working itself up in me.
When Evelyn and I walked in on Beatrix’s body in the library, time had seemed to stop. What happened next was the complete opposite; it went so fast that I had trouble recalling the exact event even two weeks later.
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