by J B Cantwell
I broke into a run, immediately winded by my panic.
Wait. Pace yourself, or you’ll never make it.
I forced myself to slow down. Between my pack and Cait, I had nearly eighty pounds on my back.
The sky cracked again. And again. It was only a matter of time. The clouds were right behind us.
Be careful. Don’t fall.
I had seen the people who had been caught out in the rain in the hospital when I was a small child, their skin taught and red as though seared with a hot iron. If I fell and twisted an ankle, hit my knees in the dirt the way Cait had, it could be the difference between life and death.
The raindrops started. I felt the first one on the top of my fist, the second on the tip of my nose. The acidic water rested innocently on my flesh for several seconds. Then it began to burn.
“Owww!” Cait yelled from my back, clearly struck, herself. “Owww, it hurts!”
“I know,” I called back. “Hang on. Make sure you’re covered by the blanket!”
Her cries became howls of pain as I ran through the fields. We had to get there. Had to reach beneath the protection of the old buildings up ahead. I heaved us through the dirt, which was quickly becoming sticky mud.
How long had it been? How far had I come? A half mile? A mile?
The water began to puddle at my feet, and it splashed up around my calves with every stride I took.
I panted, pushing myself to go faster, all the while keeping the buildings up ahead in sight.
Were they getting closer?
Rain made its way into my eyes, and they stung as if I had opened them under ocean waves.
They were getting closer. Up ahead, I could see the road, long disused and crumbling. I didn’t bother to look for cars as I stumbled across the pavement. There would be no traffic out here. There would be nobody at all.
“Are you okay?” I choked as I ran.
Cait’s quiet whimpers of pain seemed to bounce around the inside of my skull.
My face burned. My bare arms felt like they were on fire. Now that we were close, I couldn’t tell with my stinging eyes if this was the farm at all. But it was shelter. It was a way out of this pain, and I pushed with everything I had to get us there.
The water seeped through my pants, coating my skin with the sharp sting of acid.
Why had I come? In that moment I wished I had stayed in the Fold. What good could come from returning to a place like this? Earth was ravaged. Destroyed. And now it would destroy us.
The mist that hung in the air was finding its way into my throat, and I coughed. It seared as if I was drinking boiling water.
Cait had gone quiet now, but her fingers gripped hard around my neck. I put my head down, trying to shield my face from the spray. I looked up from time to time, watched the looming farmhouse getting closer and closer.
The rain seemed to sense that our respite was close. The sky opened up and dumped water down upon us. Just steps away from the front porch of the house, I was completely drenched but for the place on my back where Cait’s little body was pressed into mine, every other inch of me screaming in agony.
Then we were there. I dropped Cait, hard, on the porch. She came back to life, wailing in pain. I fell to my hands and knees, crawled towards the door, everything blurred and confused. My eyeballs felt like they were melting within their sockets. The handle was locked. I pounded on the wood, praying that someone inside would hear us, would help us.
I slumped down at the doorway, no longer able to summon any strength to fight. Every ounce of energy I had was gone, sapped away from the run, insulted further by the stinging rain. I heard Cait’s cries, but I could do nothing for her. I could barely breathe, myself.
The world started to go dark, and I fought off unconsciousness. I had to get us inside. I had to protect Cait. I had promised I would.
Behind me, I heard sounds, muffled by my exhausted brain. The door handle creaked, the wood groaned, and the door to the house opened.
Someone stepped over the threshold. Then, a cry. A cry that wasn’t Cait’s. I tried to look up, but saw only the outline of a person hovering above me, the shapes made blurry by my damaged eyes.
“Aster?”
I opened my mouth to speak, to agree.
Yes.
My brain called the words, but my voice stayed silent.
The person kneeled over me, her shocked face coming into sharper focus as it got closer.
I stared into the eyes of my Grandmother, warm and full of concern, as the world around me dimmed to black.
CHAPTER TWO
I woke in the guest room where I had stayed when I had first come to the farm. The mattress was still as lumpy beneath me as it had been the last time I had been here, the wallpaper still ancient, slowly peeling away from the walls of the old farmhouse where my dad was raised. If I hadn’t known better, I might have been tempted to believe that it had all been a dream. That everything I had experienced in the Fold had been nothing more than a horrible nightmare.
But the skin on my arms, tight and still stinging from where the rain had coated it, would not allow me to deny reality. I shifted a little and groaned as I felt it crack like brittle paper.
Grandma appeared in the doorway, a small bowl in her hands.
“You’re awake,” she said. “Thank God.”
She walked over to the bed and sat down carefully on the edge of the mattress.
“Where’s Cait?” I asked, unable to raise my voice louder than a whisper.
“Who, the girl?” she asked. “She’s downstairs watching television.”
Television. I wondered how she was reacting to something so unusual.
“Is she okay?”
She took a piece of cloth, dipped it into the solution in the bowl and began patting my wounded arm.
“She’ll be fine,” she said. “She only got the burns on her hands, and one little spot on her face.”
I sighed with relief. The blanket Kiron had gifted to me had proven more magical than I ever would have thought. It must have protected her from the rain.
Her hand paused, and through my blurry vision I saw her glaring down at me. “What were you thinking?”
I ignored her question, still too caught up in my own thoughts.
“Where’s Mom?”
“She’ll get here in a day or two,” she said, resuming the treatment of my arm. A light tingling sensation came to the surface of the skin where she patted. “I called her after I got you up here. You were delirious. If it wasn’t for the girl, Cait you call her? If it wasn’t for her help, I don’t know how I would have done it.”
I tilted my head back against the musty pillow and, for the first time in a long time, let myself relax.
Everything was going to be okay now. Cait wasn’t badly injured. Mom was on her way. I was warm and comfortable, as comfortable as I could be with my wounds.
Grandma stayed silent for a time, carefully treating every inch of my exposed skin. Both arms, my face and neck, and halfway up my legs were affected and burning. As she spread the liquid over my skin, the pain gradually eased. She handed me the wet cloth.
“Squeeze a couple drops into your eyes,” she said. I did as I was told. The relief was immediate, and slowly the room, and her face, came into clearer focus. I handed the cloth back to her.
Finally, when she had checked me over for any spots she had missed, she set the bowl on the night stand, sighing heavily.
“I don’t know how your mom is gonna react, seeing you after all this time,” she said.
How she would react? I didn’t understand her concern.
“Her heart broke in two when you left,” she went on. “I thought I might lose her there for a time. Losing Jack was bad enough, but Dana, too…”
Her voice drifted off, and a thin tear streaked down her cheek.
“I didn’t leave,” I croaked. I suddenly felt unsure, nervous about the mess I had left behind. “I was, well, I was taken.”
H
er eyebrows raised high on her forehead.
“Taken? What do you mean? I thought—we both thought that you left. That you were angry about the summer.”
I laughed a little, but the effort hurt my insides, and I stopped abruptly.
“I didn’t leave on purpose,” I said, stifling a cough. “Trust me.”
“Well, where did you go, then? Someone took you?” she asked. She looked confused. I guess she had never considered anything other than abandonment as a reason for my disappearance. So few people lived out this way, I could see why kidnapping had never entered her mind. But I hadn’t expected them to think I had run off, and a cold feeling of dread hardened in the pit of my stomach. Was this what my mother thought, too? That I had left her? Like my father had?
“Nobody took me,” I said. “Not exactly. You remember when I was spending all that time up in the attic? I found something. It was a sort of map, only it wasn’t. It was a portal. I’ve been on another planet, on a few planets, actually, all this time.”
I cringed, waiting for her reaction. Now that I was finally speaking the words, the explanation about where I had vanished to, I was terrified. Would she think I’d gone crazy?
Then, she did something unexpected. She smiled.
“I think you’ve been remembering your Pa’s old stories,” she said. Her look shifted to pity. “You poor thing. You must be awfully traumatized.”
“Dad’s old stories?” I asked. My dad had never so much as read me a picture book, let alone told me stories as fantastical as what I had experienced. “No. I’m telling you the truth. I know it’s hard to believe.”
“Child,” she interrupted, patting my hand with her warm, wrinkled palm. “I think whatever you’ve been through has—”
“That’s not it,” I protested. “Ask Cait. She’ll tell you the truth. I rescued her from the Coyle. She was under his enchantment. And I brought us back here. Grandma, we’ve been on the other side of the universe this whole time. We’ve been in the Maylin Fold.”
At this, her patting stopped. She stared at me, mouth slightly open, as if I had said the last thing she had ever expected to hear.
“What did you say?” she asked. She looked weirdly terrified.
“I said we’ve been in the Fold all this time. I met a wizard. His name was Almara. And he had left a map, I think it was originally supposed to be for Brendan, to follow him. Only Brendan couldn’t get back to Aeso from here. I was able to, though. Probably because Earth is closer now than it was back then, and—”
“That’s enough,” she said sharply, standing up from the bed. “I didn’t realize your father knew so much about the nonsense passed down the Wood line. I’m only sorry he told it to you at all.”
“Wait. Dad knows about this?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Jack knows all the crazy stories from his pa’s ancestors. I told Charles years ago to stop telling the stories to him. He was just a child, and fairy tales told as truths help no one. Especially someone with Jack’s…problems.” She stopped, averted her gaze, and I could tell she was reliving some of her own nightmares. The nightmare of having a sick child and not being able to help him, for instance. “We all have to live in this world, no matter how broken it is now.”
I was reeling. My dad, all this time, must have known exactly where I was. Or at least he might have had a good idea. Had anyone thought to ask him? I struggled to sit up in the bed, but the skin on my arms gave way, cracking in earnest. I felt the tickling sensation of blood as it trickled down my battered forearms to the bedsheets. I gasped at the pain of it, and soon I was struggling to hold back another coughing fit.
I held out a hand to her, a gesture asking her to wait, to not leave me here alone with so many thoughts swirling in my brain. I had too many unanswered questions.
Suddenly, I felt that I had to find him, my dad. I had to tell him. About these past months. About how I had been healed. Maybe Grandma was wrong. Maybe, all these years, what everyone else had taken for madness had simply been the truth.
And no one had ever believed him.
Was it possible?
“I’m telling the truth,” I said, finally catching my breath, my tone nearly begging. “Ask Cait.”
“The girl won’t talk,” she said, her voice as stern as I’d ever heard it. “I don’t know where she came from, but she needs to go back home. You can’t just pick up kids when you’re off having an adventure.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. She thought I had been out on an adventure? For the fun of it? She folded her arms, not understanding that to take Cait home would require a lot more than just a drive down the road.
Her face darkened.
“I want to know where you’ve been,” she said, walking towards the door. “And trust me, your ma’s not gonna be too keen on hearing this nonsense, either.”
“Grandma, wait,” I called.
But she didn’t wait. She strode from the room, her anger overcoming her. And I was left with my mouth hanging wide, lost for an explanation she would accept.
I watched the sky outside slowly darken as the sun set behind the thick blanket of clouds. Overhead, the steady drum of rain gradually lightened until only an occasional pattering could be heard sounding against the metal roof of the farmhouse.
Somewhere out there my mother was driving, on her way here. I imagined her face, set with the determined look of hers I knew so well, like a steel mask shining with her intentions. And what could I expect when she arrived? Would she get angry like Grandma had when I told her the truth about where I had been? I knew the answer to that already.
Yes.
For the first time since I had left Earth, I felt something other than longing to see my mother again. The familiar feeling of dread that came with silly things like lost homework and late arrivals filled me. I pushed the feeling down, determined myself to stay strong. She might be angry when she got here. That was fine. I would have to deal with that. But in the end I would have to make her see the truth, one way or another.
Grandma had kept Cait away from me for the entire day. Maybe she was down there trying to get her to talk, to tell her what she wanted to hear. But I couldn’t see how some horrible tale of kidnap would be any better than the true story I had told.
Still, part of me understood her doubt. It was crazy. Would I have believed some kid from school if they’d come back after a long absence, spouting tales of wizards and monsters and jumping from planet to planet like some sort of cosmic ping pong ball? No, of course not.
Would I have believed it if the person had been Grandma?
I didn’t know.
I grew restless lying in the bed. So many days of living on the run had resulted in changing my body from that of a soft, weak-limbed, sick kid to the hardened, lean muscled machine of an athlete. Despite my injuries, I was anxious to be up and moving again.
I looked down at my arms. The cracks had scabbed over, and the skin surrounding them felt noticeably softer than it had before Grandma’s treatment. Whatever she had put on my skin had helped immensely. It still felt tight and uncomfortable all over, but my skin had stopped cracking with my movements. I should have stayed in bed for much longer, given what I’d been through. A few days of rest would have done me good. But I needed to see Cait, to make sure she really was alright. Her wounds were probably in the same state as my own by now, irritating, but already on the mend. But I was concerned about what Grandma had said about her not talking. I had promised to take care of her, and I needed her to understand that she was safe here, even if our stories were not going to be believed. Each pang of stinging from my own body reminded me that I was not off to a very good start of presenting Earth as somewhere friendly for her to hide out.
I hobbled over to the dresser and found that Grandma had left an old pair of flannel pajamas for me. The fabric was soft and warm, so unlike the clothes I had been wearing for the past eight months. Putting them on, I was amazed at how easy everything was here compare
d to in the Fold. Even though Earth was in a steep state of decline, I was warm, fed, and comfortable. It seemed impossibly decadent compared to trekking through the prickly forests of Aeso, or the cold, hard caverns in the Fire Mountains.
I looked out over the fields, long unplowed and unplanted.
Comfortable but dead.
These pajamas were from a different time, a time before Earth’s deterioration, saved and tended for generations. The green outside had shriveled long ago, leaving only the soil’s fruitless attempts to grow the grass anew as it was battered, time and again, by the poisoned rains. Everything in this part of the country had been abandoned decades ago as the people moved into the cities, hiding from the elements. Earth had been built into a place that worshipped excess while it still had resources to waste. Now, all we were left with was what remained from the days when the fields grew green. In time, even these soft pajamas would become coarse and worn. What would remain of our comfortable civilization in a hundred years? Two hundred?
We would lose our comfort as the goods of our ancestors slowly decayed. But we would have no breathtaking vistas to warm our hearts in the place of the lost softness. Only the dead soil would greet our hungry eyes when we went searching for beauty.
The floorboards creaked beneath my bare feet as I moved into the hallway, clutching onto the dark walls for support. As I approached the stairs, my way became easier, lit by the dim electric lights filtering up from downstairs. Sounds of cartoons drifted up the stairwell, and the smell of dinner made my stomach grumble loudly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had sat at a table and had a proper meal.
I made my way down the staircase, eager to find the source of the smell. The television came into view, and before it sat Cait. She sat up on her knees, her face just a few inches from the screen. I looked around the room, but she was alone. I walked to the set and knelt down beside her. She glanced at me, then back to the images on the screen, completely entranced.