Lucas wrinkled his nose. “Gross, that is not a pleasant mental image! I know it’s hard, but we need to keep going. There has to be something here, and it’s the only lead we’ve got. Failure isn’t an option whenever success is!”
We fell back into reading again for about five minutes, before Evelyn slammed her book shut and pushed her stool back in frustration.
“This is ridiculous!” she snapped, viciously twirling a limp curl around her finger. “Could we have a break now, please? I cannot endure this torture for another second!”
“It isn’t torture,” Lucas defended lamely. “But if you really need to…”
“I’ve found something!” I gasped.
“Really?” The both shouted in unison, standing up so fast that a stack of seven books fell onto the floor with a dusty plunk, scattering loose pages everywhere, and their stools toppled backwards and rolled halfway across the room.
“No,” I laughed, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “Just trying to liven things up. You should have seen your faces!”
“Penny, that’s not funny!” Evelyn complained, though I could see laughter in her eyes. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
Lucas shot me a dirty glare, tromping over the pile of fallen books to go and fetch his stool. I was laughing so hard there was a stitch in my side, and goodness, did it ever make me feel better! I hadn’t really laughed properly in such a long time.
“I found something!” Lucas shouted from across the room, straining to pick up his stool.
“You can’t get us that soon after I just did!” I giggled, trying to relax and get back to reading. “Silly Lucas.”
“No, seriously! Come and have a look!”
I shared a quick glance with Evelyn, unsure whether to go and risk being made the victim of a lame prank for the sake of a possible clue. With the alternative being more reading, we both decided to play dangerously and see what he was on about.
There was a book lying open on the floor, clearly from the pile they had accidentally knocked over. At closer inspection, it seemed to be on folk tales, with full-page drawings of colorful characters and a narrative tone to the writing. Beautifully bound in faded chocolate leather with thick ivory pages, it was pleasant to look at and probably entertaining to read, but I couldn’t see what the big deal was about it.
“Um…” I searched for words.
“Look closer,” Lucas ordered sternly, and Evelyn bent so far forward that her head nearly touched the paper and completely blocked my view.
“There’s a few pages missing,” she analyzed carefully. “But that’s all I can see which is odd. They probably fell out when we knocked them off, I wouldn’t panic too much.”
“No,” I checked, peering over my shoulder to see if there were any pages which were the right size and quality for the book. “Nothing that matches.”
Lucas carried the volume to the desk and set it down so we could all have a look, him kneeling on the floor. Sure enough, if you looked closely at the spine, there were telltale jagged edged which signaled the forceful removal of probably three or more pages. It skipped between two fables seamlessly, but clearly one had been taken out. What was more, there were three letters written on the skimpy remainders of each stolen paper.
We now had R-D-O-U-I-A-E-S.
We updated our notes, but for once we didn’t dwell on them.
Lucas flicked a quick interpretation at us. “So dare u?” Still makes no sense, there’s probably more letters to go. I’m more interested about where these papers are, hmm?”
A sudden thought came to me. “I know! This has to be what Tressa and Avery found, and they ripped it out and hid it somewhere! Maybe this was why they wanted Lucas’s other books, so that they could see if there was anything else!”
“They must have taken this one from me whilst I was reading it, then they couldn’t find my other ones,” Lucas theorized mildly. “I wondered where it had gotten to.”
Half of me was relieved that it wasn’t D who had given them information, and the other half felt strangely sad. Why had D isolated me, then? Why was I so special, besides the dreams and the fact I could rip? What did it all mean?
“Now we just have to find the story.” Evelyn sighed, flopping back onto the bed behind her in exhaustion. “Why can’t things ever be easy?”
“It’s pretty obvious where they are.” Lucas shrugged. “The only place we ever hid things – under the bed. Tressa’s bed it nothing but ashes now, so I’m hoping Avery had them, else we’re finished.”
Hardly daring to look, Lucas lifted up the coverings and clutter to peer under where Avery had once slept, grabbing blindly into the darkness in hope of catching hold of a clue.
“Got it!” he shouted triumphantly, and I nearly knocked him down again trying to see the writing. “Get away, Penny, I’ll read it out.”
Once upon a time, there were three little girls and three little boys. They lived with their caregivers in a cottage on the edge of a dark forest, and they were very happy. As they grew older, however, things started to change. The children were no longer content with what could be found in the confines of their house, and so one day, a girl wandered away from the garden and into the forest. Far from the horrors she had been told to expect, the girl found nothing less than the entrance to Faeryland itself, concealed in an old log surrounded by toadstools! Even though she had been told to beware of the creatures that lurked in the woods, she was entranced by the faery’s sweet music and strange magic, so every day she would escape from her lessons to listen. The faeries didn’t mind, saying that she could sit and listen to their music as long as she didn’t bring her other friends along. They were gentle creatures, but their word was their law, and they could not stand for it to be broken.
The girl was too blind to see this. So enraptured was she with the sounds of Faeryland, that she could not imagine a punishment harsh enough to prevent her from bringing her friends too. And so she brought her friends along the next day.
The faeries were furious. The six children unwittingly trampled the clearing, their excited chatter nearly blocking out the fae songs, but that was not what angered them the most. The girl had lied to them. And so, as punishment, the court faeries trapped all six children in a realm that was neither Reality nor Faeryland, but a dreamscape that reflected all the darkest parts of their personalities. Before, they had been defined by their good traits: leadership, wit, kindness, curiosity, intelligence, and love. Now, there was nothing left but their vices: jealousy, hatred, bitterness, greed, fear, and deception. They were stripped of everything but their flaws, and those who had once been great friends turned into vicious enemies.
The court faeries took pity on them. Whoever proved to be the strongest and managed to stay good through the trials would be allowed to leave the prison and return to Reality, but the rest would have to stay forever. Using their magic, they watched how the children reacted to steadily worsening nightmares. One by one they succumbed to their inner weaknesses, until only two were left.
As it happened, the faeries from an opposing court discovered what was going on, and began favoring one of the children. They offered him one wish, and he asked to know what his opponent’s biggest weakness was. The answer surprised him: it was friendship. They were each the other’s biggest weakness. Armed with this knowledge, when the next nightmare attacked them, the boy did not help his friend, but coaxed her into putting herself in danger for him. True to their promise, after her fall, the faeries let the boy back into Reality.
Friendship can be either your greatest strength or deadliest liability.
“Is that it?” Evelyn leaned back, frowning. “How is that relevant in any way at all? Are they saying this entire place is being controlled by fairies? What?”
I read it again, ignoring her. A pit seemed to be growing in my stomach as I realized what the legend was saying, and what it would mean for us. Everything Tressa and Avery had done made sense – mostly, and half of me wished I
hadn’t seen it myself. Designed so that only one could escape.
“It’s dated to 1899,” Lucas whispered hoarsely, pointing at a date below a charcoal sketch of a winged creature watching two children from behind a tree, a thoroughly unreadable expression on its pointed little face. “All the other books were dated at least fifty years earlier! We don’t know a thing about what’s out there anymore. If this is true, we’re not even part of that world, we’re in some kind of other pocket that can be controlled from the outside. I mean, obviously it’s just a fairy tale, but there’re just too many similarities for it to be unrelated. Somebody, maybe Beatrix, planted it here to hint about—”
“Dear lord, that’s what bothers you?” I snapped, feeling strangely angry. “Lucas, this is basically saying only one of us is ever going to get out, and everyone else will be stuck here forever!”
“For all we know this might have been put here to divide us,’” he argued, sounding unconvinced. “It certainly worked with Tressa and Avery, didn’t it? He disposed of her thinking that they couldn’t both make it. Got rid of the competition, didn’t he? Perfect if someone wanted her gone, or wanted our numbers to dwindle faster.”
“It doesn’t change anything.” Evelyn shrugged, eyes distant and glassy. “Let’s try our hardest to crack the secrets. If only one succeeds, fine, but it won’t be because we stabbed each other, it will be because of who figured things out first. Which would have happened anyway. So stop worrying.”
“Damn it,” Lucas swore bitterly, pushing back from the desk and pacing the room. “Yes, you get to be with your precious Fred, but what does this mean for Penny and me? She already knows something I don’t, I can tell, and neither of us are likely to give up cracking this darn code.”
“You’re smarter than me,” I retorted, not denying anything. “You have the books, the brains, and I have nothing but a piece of information that’s a pain in the backside rather than of any help!”
We stared each other down, and my heart beat unevenly inside my chest. For whoever won, they would face a whole new set of challenges outside the Boundary, alone and unsure of what would be found. The rest would be together again, back to everyday life in what was left of the manor. Which was the better option?
“You’ve forgotten Avery,” Evelyn added thoughtfully. “He got a free pass to the finals by slashing Tressa, and I’ll bet he won’t get down easy.”
Lucas and I both swore colorfully again at the same time, making Evelyn squeak in protest like the old days.
“It sounds like some sick game now. Finals, winner, loser, prize. I wonder if Beatrix knew.”
“Of course she did. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started training favorites, since we all know she liked Fred and Evelyn best. Typical they ended up together, eh?”
“I’m still here,” Evelyn snapped. “And don’t turn me down so easily. If there’s even the slightest possibility that we could get out and still be together, well that’s a future I’d fight to the death for.”
“Let’s hope there isn’t that chance,” I said without thinking. “I’d hate to fight you – your nails are much longer and I bet you don’t play fair.”
“Don’t, Penny,” Lucas cautioned tiredly. “It won’t come to a fight. Our strategy would simply be to dispose of the beast known as Avery, then take everything else as it came. May the best person win after that.”
25
We found the remaining letters scrawled on the walls of the room we now occupied the following morning. It gave me the goose bumps to think that they had been written whilst I had been sleeping in the same room, but it was comforting at the same time to know it was our friends doing it from wherever they were.
“Why don’t they just write the whole thing out?” Evelyn frowned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and quickly pulling on her lavender dress.
They had been penned in some kind of black chalk, messily and much larger than the other, more subtle predecessors, pointing to us having perhaps missed some hidden letters before. It seemed rushed – our friends thought we didn’t have that much time left to figure it out.
“I don’t know,” I answered vaguely, doing a quick scan to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “We’ll just have to ask them if and when we see them again.”
I was about to go and get Lucas when something stopped me. It would be so easy to write them out and rub the chalk from the walls. He would never know, never solve the puzzle. I would have a better chance of getting out.
“Penny?” Evelyn pushed hesitantly, her wide brown eyes telling me she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Don’t be like Avery. It isn’t worth it. Please.”
I sighed, hating myself for the doubt. “I’m sorry. Let’s go now before I change my mind.”
She nodded, relieved, and we pattered down the sooty corridor towards Lucas’s room, reciting the letters under our breath so that we would not forget them in the ten seconds the journey took.
Lucas was still asleep in bed, snoring slightly, covers pulled sideways so that they heaped over his torso and left his feet bare.
An evil grin crept onto my face.
His washbasin was filled with a murky water that hadn’t been changed for days, left to sit in a china bowl and saturate in ashes, leaving it ice cold. It really was petty of me, but I couldn’t resist.
“DEAR LORD WHAT ON EARTH!?” Lucas yelped, jumping out of bed at a speed I had never before seen him accomplish. His hair was plastered to his head, dripping onto his pajamas and onto the floor in a freezing puddle.
Evelyn turned away, unable to look at a boy improperly dressed in clothing made see-through by the water, but I could tell she was hiding giggles from behind her hands.
“Time to get up, sunshine,” I said tonelessly, arms folded across my chest. Goodness, I wanted to laugh! “We found the rest of the letters.”
“Penny,” he hissed through chattering teeth. “That wasn’t funny at all, all right, at all. I’m cold now, my bed will be soaking for days, and I haven’t got any more water left! What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh, Lucas,” I snorted, composure breaking as I regarded his furious face dripping with the contents of the basin. “You should have seen the look on your face.”
For a moment, his eyes flashed black, and I took a step back in alarm.
“What is it?” He frowned miserably, shivering with blue lips.
“Nothing…” I shook my head. “Get dressed and I’ll make it up to you; I think we can finally solve the letter puzzle.”
“That was terrible of you,” Evelyn chided as we hurried back into the room. “Truly appalling.”
“You were trying not to laugh,” I accused, opening the door and going back inside. “Don’t act so innocent!”
“I know!” she gasped, a mixture between a wail and a chuckle. “That’s why it’s so terrible, I shouldn’t have found that funny!”
Lucas strode in with as much dignity as he could muster a couple of minutes later, fully dressed and hair drying off to look rather on the fluffy side of things.
“What have we got here?” he muttered to himself, whipping out a pencil and scribbling down the letters. “All right, so we have R-D-O-U-I-A-E-S-T-W now. Are you absolutely certain this is it, Penny?”
“Yep,” I nodded. “See over there, by the ‘T’, there’s a full stop? Kind of like telling us they’re done, I thought.”
Lucas went over to inspect the little chalk dot and turned back to us with an odd expression on his face.
“It’s not a full stop,” he began, fixing Evelyn with that strange look of mixed pity and concern. “Don’t freak out, but that looks like an, ah, kiss. An X. Like what people use on cards to—”
He didn’t have time to finish. Evelyn had barreled past him and stared at the marking for a few long seconds, before whispering, “It’s in his handwriting.”
She backed away slowly, eyes welling up and shaking her head. Before I could say anything, she had let out a small sob and ran fro
m the room at full speed, tripping over the threshold but not stopping.
“Evelyn!” I shouted. “Come back! We need to figure this out!”
“Her eyes had gone black,” Lucas told me fearfully. “When she turned…”
I wiped that image from my mind, not wanting those mind monsters to ever come back in full form again.
We had to go after her before she did something stupid, that much was for certain.
We ran after her, dodging past the debris and through the ruins to the gardens, desperately trying to keep our eyes on the steadily retreating form. It was a veritable minefield out there, charred grass making balance impossible and scattered rubble sticking up in all the most unavoidable places. Around the border of the woods, massive black tree trunks had fallen all over the lawns, and for a moment I was overcome with regret for the once-beautiful forest I had loved so much. Even the manor looked forlorn, with its stone walls crushed by a collapsed roof.
“Keep going,” Lucas urged softly, seeing my expression. “It’s all we can do now.”
“I know. It just seems like such a shame…I never realized how lovely it could be before, and now it’s destroyed…” I shook my head, trying to focus. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll get out, and it won’t matter what state it’s in.”
“Exactly,” Lucas agreed. Neither of us mentioned the fairy tale.
Even the rhododendrons had finally died, I noticed. This detail I was actually glad of, as the constant ‘beware’ symbol had given me the shudders whenever I had seen them. The vibrant bushes were nothing more the soot.
Deeper into the woods things got slightly better as the fire hadn’t quite gotten this far. The trees were poorly, most of them brown and dead, but at least they were standing. It began to grow misty and ahead I could see it was increasingly foggy.
“Evelyn!” Lucas was shouting. “Get back here! You’re wasting time, what are you doing?”
I heard a far off sob coming from deep inside the skeleton forest, and all of a sudden I knew what her plan was. Lucas must have figured it out too, as he stopped his careful walking and began to sprint forwards, regardless of what he had to hurdle. I followed, and I dived further into the fog. I soon lost my way and couldn’t see Lucas or Evelyn any more.
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