“Penny?”
“I’m fine,” I snapped, sounding unnecessarily chilly. “Get back to decoding.”
“What’s going on with you?” Lucas demanded in an equally cold way. “You’re acting just like Tressa and Avery before they—”
“I’m nothing like them!” I shouted, balling my fists and turning away to the window, where the rain was pounding at a rate that matched my growing frustration. “I’d never do what Avery did!”
“What about our pact? Did you follow it? Have you kept nothing from us? You have all this information from nowhere, all these special powers, you disappear and zone out as if you’re talking to someone who’s not there.”
Lucas wasn’t particularly angry. He spoke evenly, firmly, and I nearly blurted everything out to him.
“Do you know what?” He sighed when I didn’t respond. “I’m going to take these letters, and I’m going to figure them out by myself. You’re welcome to copy them down, but I’m not sharing if I find out the answer, and I’m not going to help in any way. We’ve tried doing this together, and it clearly hasn’t worked, so from here on in, it’s every person for themselves.”
And with that, Lucas scooped the things from the desk, and stomped calmly from the room. Evelyn’s jaw dropped open in surprise, and (of course) her eyes began to well up with tears. I just ground my teeth and pushed my face against the freezing windowpane, feeling for the first time, truly alone.
“He didn’t mean it?” she whimpered, turning her forlorn pout to me. “We…we can still work together, right? I want you to get out more than Avery, so I won’t be much of a threat to you, promise!”
I turned from the window to see her face quivering at me hopefully, and for a moment I considered simply running up and hugging her, telling her to hold on a few more days until she could be with Fred.
But I didn’t. I just muttered, “No. You heard Lucas. Go fend for yourself, and please don’t do anything stupid.”
Suddenly, the room felt very claustrophobic. In actuality, it was freezing cold, not a warm mantelpiece to be seen, but I had never felt it to be so stuffy.
Without hesitating, just in case I decided to stay, I pushed past Evelyn and barreled out of the door towards blessed fresh air – the smoky smell was killing me.
“Don’t leave me alone!” she shrieked, grabbing onto my arm and sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, shrugging her forcefully off. “But Lucas is right. This isn’t working anymore.”
“Penny!” she screamed, her pleading cries ricocheting of the walls in haunting echo.
I knew Evelyn feared isolation perhaps above all else, but I couldn’t stay anymore. I mentally couldn’t handle these downcast, doomed people right now, though those grief-stricken sobs nearly melted my heart and forced me to turn back.
Past the ruins I ran. Across the burned lawns. Steering away from the miraculously untouched graveyard. I lopped down on a scorched tree trunk, which had fallen onto its side, with little regard to the rain which was soaking my hair to a flat cap and ruining my only dress.
“Is this what you wanted?” I shouted to no one, listening to the fury in my voice reverberate through the estate. “Are you happy now?”
The rain poured harder, stinging my skin, and I chucked a rock at the sky just in case it hit someone sitting there.
Of course, there was no one there. There never had been anyone there. Only us. We had never done anything to deserve this. And I didn’t even know who my parents were anymore! How was it that D had a mother and father and I didn’t?
I touched the faint scar on the side of my head where the Master had slammed me against the wall with a flush of anger. Damn them all to the deepest pits of hell where they belonged, those murderous, secretive, manipulative, stupid…whatever they were supposed to be. Whoever they were.
Exhausted, hungry, and really quite cold, I flopped back down on the burned tree and let my head fall into my hands, eyes dry although I dearly wanted to cry.
Then I realized that there was a massive hole in the trunk, just big enough for a smallish person to squeeze inside if there were to play hide-and-seek…it was the cedar. The cedar I had always favored and loved, which had granted me safety every time I had chosen to hide inside of its ancient trunk. Now it was nothing more than a charred corpse in a dead world, devoured by a fire that seemed to be consuming more than just the physical aspects of this deranged estate.
I turned to look again at the manor. To my surprise, it seemed even more dilapidated than it had a day ago. The brick had crumbled more, the roof sinking more, everything seeming to slowly be falling apart as if it were a lit candle. Slowly melting.
I whirled around and jogged a little ways into the woods. Rain slapped my face, but I didn’t let it deter me. In fact, after a few minutes of being pelted with a torrential downpour, the weather seemed to give up and simply stopped, leaving everything to become eerily quiet save for the rhythmic drips coming from the deadened, overhanging branches.
I snatched a fallen stick from the ground. It was about the length of my arm, and scorched black on one side. Tentatively, I held it out in front of me, using it both as a means of getting through a forest of collapsed limbs and as protection if more nightmares were lurking in these woods.
I shivered, my breath foggy in the chilly air. I efficiently prodded the dead undergrowth out of the way with a satisfactory thwack, thwack…
Then came a loud buzzing noise that nearly destroyed my eardrums, and a rip that threw the stick from my hands before disintegrating. I lurched forwards with a small shriek, stumbling quickly to the side before I tumbled through the Boundary.
It had moved! It had come inwards about ten feet, shrinking the forest considerably, and giving me a brand new fear.
“You can’t do this!” I yelled angrily at the sky, looking through the Boundary towards the path I had once walked, and now would never be able to walk safely again. “This is cheating! This isn’t fair!”
For once, there was no snide response in my mind, only silence.
How long would it be before the woods were gone entirely? Then the lawns, then the manor itself? How was it possible for the Boundary to move?
My toes began to burn, and I jumped backwards in alarm – even as I stood there, it was advancing inch by inch.
I ran back to the lawns, hoisting my skirts and hurdling the obstacles until reaching the cedar I sprawled back onto its trunk, completely out of breath and feeling rather faint. Ashes danced across the grey world on a light breeze, the same color as the sky, the crumbling manor, the tall silhouettes of the woods, the ground. Everything.
R-O-D-U-I-S-E-A-T-W…what could it possibly be?
A curtain twitched, and I spotted Lucas quickly moving away from the window. It was a shame it had come to this, but still inevitable. I wouldn’t tell them about the Boundary.
“Fine, I admit it. I need help. I hate you, but I need help,” I hissed under my breath, waiting for D to respond.
Whilst I waited, I casually created a rip near the window Lucas was now back staring out of, so that it shattered into spider-webbed cracks and provided no transparency. Ha.
Don’t kick a dog when it’s down, D said tiredly in my mind. The manor is destroying itself without your help.
“Hello,” I greeted with a practiced coolness. I was not begging, I was not relenting, I was simply accepting help that had previously been offered. Right? “You wanted to help me, and now I need—”
Stop there, D halted me mid-sentence. You’re now separated from your so-called friends, who have decided not to help you after all…funny, seems I predicted that a while back. And also, just courtesy rules, don’t tell someone you hate them when you need their help, it’s just not polite and isn’t—
Then, just like that, the drawling voice cut off. I searched my mind for traces of the other consciousness, but there was nothing. Then, like a light flickering back on, I felt it again.
That…that wasn’t suppo
sed to happen, D muttered in irritation, sounding slightly nonplussed but cool as usual. This whole thing is so unstable it’s hard to even keep connected…damn it Madon!
I clasped my hands over my ears as though that would quieten the shriek D suddenly let loose, waiting with my teeth gritted for the fury in my head to stop and become coherent advice.
Don’t you ever trust him, D snarled viciously, between many colorful phrases that made me blush from the ferocity of the language. You want advice? In exactly four hours, when the sun sets, I want you and the remaining two to come to the fallen cedar. Then forget any affection you have for them, and win the trial, all right? No excuses. Oh, and don’t waste time on the puzzle, because it’s easily the stupidest thing they could have thought to tell you. Let Lucas waste his time, but don’t you make the same mistake.
“I can’t promise you all of that,” I managed to croak. “I won’t ever be able to forget them. But I’ll try to win, if you can promise me they’ll be all right afterwards.”
You don’t promise, then neither do I. Besides, I couldn’t care less about what happens to them – they’ll live after they lose, but I’m not interfering after that.
“So what exactly happens at dusk, then?” I asked, trying to be single-minded about winning. My friends would be fine, was that not all that mattered?
I could almost feel D grinning inside my head as the voice answered, Well, you could say it’s the finale. By the time the sun rises tomorrow, we’ll have our winner.
27
Four hours. Once that would have seemed like forever, but now I couldn’t even grasp just how little time I had left.
I would have to tell them, else they wouldn’t be given a sporting chance, although it pained me to have to fight them. I could never do what D wanted and forget my love for them, and in asking for me to do so, I knew that some sort of conflict would be involved.
Not knowing what to do with myself (should I prepare in some way – make amends whilst it was still possible?), I sat down on the cedar and lapsed into a melancholy state of thought. The ashes whipped silently around on a wind that was attacking the crumbling manor walls without mercy, and as I watched, a few more bricks tumbled in defeat to the ground.
Three hours.
I heaved myself off the trunk and set about walking the edge of the forest, listening to the crackling of the Boundary as it edged closer to our dying land. I managed to do several laps around the manor, thinking about many things, one of which was D.
Two hours.
My legs ached from walking across such an unstable surface, and I had a headache from being near to the Boundary for so long. I leaned against the unstable manor walls, mind turning now to the outside, and what it might possibly be like. Assuming I even got out, of course. When I pulled away from the wall, I noticed that a fine dust from the disintegrating bricks coated my dress.
One hour.
The sun had passed its peak, and through the thick layer of grey clouds I could see it sinking over the western woods. The wind picked up, seeming to whisper meaningless taunts in my ear, and I decided it would probably be best to go indoors for the moment.
I crossed over the ruins, a graveyard of colorless rubbish, which had once been our splendid past, and up the faded staircase, which didn’t seem so grand with the shattered remnants of a pearl chandelier decorating the creaking wood.
Evelyn was curled up in what was now our room with her head resting against the glass, not crying, but shaking. She didn’t notice as I peeked in the door, so I let her be, casting a weary glance at the black chalky letters scrawled on the wall – hopefully D was right and they spelled something useless, because I hadn’t the faintest idea what they could possibly mean.
Lucas was in his chamber, writing feverishly on a scrawl of paper, nearly hidden behind a massive stack of books he had piled on his desk. I tried to tiptoe away without him noticing, but he was more alert than Evelyn by a mile, and I cursed under my breath as his head whipped up in surprise.
“Penny.”
“Lucas.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing.”
“Mm. Yet you must have come for something?”
“I wanted to see where you were.”
“Why?”
“Why so nosey?”
“Why can’t you just tell me? Or is this another secret?”
I gritted my teeth. The sarcastic, bitter argument was so unlike us, and I hated it. Although he had a point…
“All right, I am keeping secrets. Though I might remind you that it wasn’t my idea to go our separate ways, it was, in fact, yours.” I sniffed primly, hands on hips and wearing my best hurt pout. “Luckily I’m in a particularly forgiving and generous mood, so you may know that it would be beneficial to come down to the grounds in roughly half an hour.”
“Beneficial?” Lucas laughed without humor. “To whom?”
I didn’t reply, flashing a sickly sweet smile and turning from the room, knowing without a doubt that curiosity would propel him to come anyway.
“And work on your dramatic exits,” I heard him mutter as I shut the door. “Your attempts are frankly quite embarrassing.”
I stood in the corridor for a few minutes, wondering what to do with myself yet again for the last thirty minutes of relative normalcy I had left.
“Evelyn?” I called into the room, shivering from the blast of cold air that rushed out as soon as I set foot in the room. “Just wanted to say meet me outside in a few minutes, okay?”
She ignored me, though I could tell from the way she flinched at my voice that she’d heard perfectly well.
Great to feel loved, I sighed to myself.
Though I knew that she too, unsure of what else to do, would follow my instructions and meet at the cedar to face whatever was coming. Thirty minutes passed much slower than the last three-and-a-half hours had, but apparently wandering up and down a desolate corridor, accidentally ripping my gown to shreds on the rubble of the collapsed roof was a good pastime, because darkness soon began to fall and I made my way back to the cedar.
The mist rolled over the black grass in a haunting way, swallowing the forest in its density. The sky was a deep purple, tingled with darker splotches of clouds, and the ashes had settled with the wind, leaving it seeming almost peaceful. Deadly, alien, but yes peaceful. I sat on the cedar, which looked white in the light, and waited. Lucas was the first to arrive, arms folded and pride injured.
“I came. What’s going—”
I held up a hand to quieten him. Somehow, his voice seemed to ruin the beautiful evening, and I wanted to savor it whilst I still could, even if it was dying.
Evelyn scuffled over a few minutes later, head down and mute when I greeted her.
We waited, and after a while I thought that maybe D had tricked me and nothing was going to happen.
There has been some resistance from a certain someone, D defended himself as I thought that opinion. But he’s no match for me.
As if to prove it, there was the biggest, widest rip I had ever felt, so huge I could see the space opening even though it was not my own rip. From the gasps Evelyn and Lucas uttered, it was clear they could see it too.
I didn’t think that I had passed out, but clearly I had, because there weren’t three of us anymore after I blinked. There were four.
“Stop gaping like dumbstruck goldfish,” Avery muttered dryly. “There are easier ways to die other than choke on this godawful air…what the bloody hell happened?”
Evelyn was white as a sheet, eyes nearly popping out of her head. Lucas had his fists clenched in a barely concealed fury, like me at the moment.
Avery looked rather worse for wear, his shaggy hair matted and clothes just as grubby as his thin face. Otherwise he was perfectly healthy, standing with his arms crossed with a deliberating expression that was clearly trying to decide whether to approach us to explain, or run in the opposite direction.
“You,” I snarled. “You filt
hy, traitorous, backstabbing little toad…”
“Hey!” He raised his arms in surrender, backing away. “In my defense, I knew that she was going to be all right and that the only way to get out of that arena was for one of us to—”
“Stab someone?” Lucas finished for him, livid. “So you could get a free ticket to the end?”
Avery nodded, shrugging. “Pretty much.”
I punched him square in the face, sending him sprawling backwards into the dirty ground. He sprang back up in surprise, wiping the blood from his nose.
“You cut her,” I spat. “You don’t do that to friends, no matter what prize you get! You let them win, you let the trials win!”
Despite the fact I had him pinned to the ground by his throat, Avery managed to wheeze, “But you did too, didn’t you, Penny? You listened to D and used it against the others…”
I dropped him as if he was poisonous, recoiling in shock. Avery knew D.
Lucas had been watching my reaction with amusement, seemingly mildly disappointed that I had decided to let Avery go. Evelyn was being sick in the woods, and emerged with a greenish tinge to her face.
I mentally reached for D, demanding an explanation, but I got nothing except silence in return.
“You need to figure out who the bad guy is in this fairy tale,” Avery hissed at me, shaking slightly as he stood up. “There are several choices, and I’m thinking that you didn’t pick the right one.”
“I know what I’m doing!” I shouted back.
“Sure.” He rolled his eyes. “I can tell by the way you’re all aimlessly standing there waiting for something to happen that you’re perfectly in control. Enjoy yourselves.”
“Where have you been, Avery?” Lucas asked, frowning.
“Right here, actually,” he answered conversationally, watching me with a cautious side-glance. “It was really weird…I kept drifting in and out of consciousness but I was always somewhere in the manor. You couldn’t ever see me though, so I just hovered around the breakfast room. I was blacked out for most of the time, so I haven’t really any idea why things are the way they are. I take it Freddie tripped over the Boundary?”
Boundary Page 24