by Donna Hosie
I always wondered if the ghosts around Avalon Cottage were scared of me. It appears that wasn’t so far-fetched.
I shift my legs out from under Rustin’s head and lie down beside him. Would he mind if I snuggled in? I’m not going to wake him and ask, so I just do it, spooning my front against his back. He smells of coconut, cigarettes and pine. It’s a nice combination.
Rustin grunts and rolls over. I make myself comfortable in the gap underneath his armpit. His breath is raggedy and his heart seems to echo on every other beat.
I try to think over the last few days. What day is it now? I’ve already lost track since the Friday night Lilly crept into my bedroom with the cursed ring. Since then I’ve seen more, done more, than in the last sixteen years, but for the first time I’m starting to think of the future and my place in it. Is this where I’m supposed to end up?
I can hear something chipping away. My head rises a few inches off the ground. It’s the scarred girl. She’s whittling down a piece of wood with a knife. I’ve seen Rustin do it countless times. Our worlds aren’t so different, not really.
Perhaps I do belong here, in some way. I could visit Logres during holidays. Auntie Titch and Uncle Bed would put me up. They don’t have kids of their own, and Lilly would love it. She could get a dress to match that bloody awful red sequin bag she carries around.
I shift my arm so it lies across Rustin’s cloak. It feels warm and wet. I must have my hand on a part of his cloak that was soaked as we were sucked into the bog. I move it; Rustin gasps. I can still hear his heart. The beats are slowing.
My senses are still heightened. There’s a metallic smell wafting up from Rustin’s cloak. I sit up quickly and pull it back.
“FREYA,” I scream. “FREYA, HE’S BLEEDING.”
Scores of bloody lines are soaking through Rustin’s clothes. I pull up his tunic top and cry out at the sight of the cuts that have been slashed across Rustin’s stomach.
Within seconds, Freya and another woman are on their knees beside Rustin. They mutter and mumble and their eyes go white and all I can hear is the sound of my own scream.
A man with the tops of his fingers missing, bundles me away. Before Rustin is blocked from my view I see Melehan tackling the scarred girl. He pulls the knife from her hand and snaps the piece of wood under his foot.
She’s staring at me and laughing.
Chapter Twenty
Jalaya
“What did you do to him?” I scream. “You bitch, I saw you. I’ll kill you.”
Two Gorians are holding me by the arms, but they’re weak from living in hiding for so long. They are no match for a 21st century Taekwondo black belt who can break wood with her head.
And I’ll break that bitch’s face with my head for what she’s done to Rustin.
The man with missing fingertips goes down first. I drag my right arm from his flimsy grasp and hit him in the throat with a knife strike. Another Gorian man has hold of my left arm. My rage is fuelling my movements now and I take him down with a crude hammer fist to the nose. He screams out and drops to the ground, clutching his face. Blood spills from between his outstretched fingers.
“Lady Mila, no,” cries Melehan, shielding the scarred girl. His broad body completely covers her; he has her knife in his hand.
Think. Control. Believe. I repeat Freya’s words over and over in my head. The easy part is believing, because right now I know that I’m capable of adding way more scars to that laughing face of hers.
“Get out of my way, Melehan,” I say. My voice is controlled, and deeper. It’s coming. I know it’s coming. My fingers start to tingle. The heat is glorious. I want this. I need this.
“Lady Mila, no,” repeats Melehan, standing his ground. “Your companion is healed. Look, he rouses already. Jalaya did not hurt Rustin with intent. You are not a vengeful person, I know you’re not.”
Rustin groans. Freya and the other woman are spitting onto his stomach and chest and packing green weeds into the wounds. Already the bleeding as stopped and the red slashes are closing up.
“He is the artisan. He is the artisan.” The words are coming from the girl, but they are hissed, not spoken. I can see her tongue curling in her mouth as she says them.
“There are other ways, Jalaya,” snaps Freya. “You have placed the companion to Lady Mila in mortal peril. Melehan, bind Jalaya. She will be brought before the council in the morning.”
“But he is the artisan,” screams the girl called Jalaya. “He can help us, he can help me.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean he’s the artisan?”
All thoughts of kicking her ass from here to Camelot flood away in a cold flash. Why is she saying that Rustin is the artisan? The artisan was the thing the Gorians wanted.
This is insane. They can’t have Rustin. He doesn’t belong in this world. He’s mine. He belongs in my world – with me.
“Lady Mila, Jalaya will be punished,” says Freya. Her bony fingers sweep over Rustin’s chest before resting in the dip in the centre of his ribcage. His breathing is short and shallow, but at least he’s breathing.
“What did she mean by he’s the artisan?” I repeat. “What did she do to him, and how did she do it? Rustin isn’t from this world, he’s from my world. My mother’s world. He’s a student, a carpenter...”
Low murmurs sweep through the Gorians. All are now standing, watching.
Rustin opens his eyes. The whites glisten under the moonlight, but they are also flecked with tiny burst blood vessels. I crouch down next to him and he takes my hand.
“Lilly, right. This is all for Lilly.”
I’m starting to get scared. Choices are individual. I can control mine, but I have no say over what other people choose to do. You can only hope they make the right decision for themselves.
“What have you done, Rustin?”
“I’m going to help you. It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” he says groaning.
“Rustin.”
“Mila, stop freaking out. It’ll be alright.”
Freya covers Rustin with a clean cloak. His blood-soaked one is thrown on the fire. As it burns, two grey smoke figures rise from the flames. They are holding hands but their faces are indistinguishable. As they rise higher, they are pulled apart before disappearing into the night sky.
“Bind Jalaya’s hands, Melehan,” orders Freya.
Jalaya has stopped smiling; in fact she looks terrified. I don’t know how she did it, but I think every scrape she made on the wood with her knife was replicated as a wound on Rustin’s body.
“Freya, how did she hurt Rustin?” I ask. “There was no blue flame and no spell.”
“Jalaya is not one of us,” replies Freya. “She is not of Gorian birth, although we treat her as one of our own. She is special, but foolish.”
“So how do I know she won’t do that again?”
“She won’t.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Mila, it’s okay,” says Rustin. He tries to lift his head from the ground, but even in the dark, I can see the grimace on his face.
I kneel down next to him and move his long hair away from his face. His skin is warm, but comfortably so. Whatever spell Freya and the other woman did has worked, because the colour is coming back to his cheeks already.
“When did you know it was you they wanted?” I whisper, choking back the sob that’s gripping my throat.
“When we lined up and they took my hand,” he replies. “I saw things, Mila.”
“What things?”
“The trees...I saw the trees.”
I think back. I saw the trees too, more defined than I have ever seen before.
“So did I,” I reply. “It doesn’t mean you’re the artisan.”
“I didn’t just see the trees,” says Rustin. Then he nods to Freya. She hands him a round container, made of brown animal hair. She tips it towards his mouth and green liquid pours out. It flows so quickly it spills out of his mouth, bubblin
g down his chin before pooling around his neck. I wipe us the excess with my sleeve. It smells of cut grass and peppermint.
“Your companion will be safe, Lady Mila,” says Freya. “I see the doubt forming behind your eyes, but you have chosen your path now. It would be folly to go back to the castle.”
“I want you to go back,” I say to Rustin.
“Never gonna happen.”
“I can do this by myself.”
“You’ll need me before the end, Mila.” His voice is starting to slur and his eyelids are closing.
“I need you safe,” I reply.
“And I need you...”
But whatever Rustin needs me to do remains unsaid. His eyelids close and stay that way. A slight smile curves his lips. He doesn’t have thin lips. They remind me of satsuma segments.
He’d been eating oranges before we kissed that time...
I won’t give Jalaya, Melehan, Freya, or any other Gorian the privilege of being the last thing I see this night. I need to sleep; my body is aching with weariness. I snuggle into Rustin once more, but this time I don’t place my arm across him. Instead I hug myself. I’m too scared to touch him, just in case…
“Mila,” murmurs Rustin.
I raise my head but he’s still asleep. Bending, I kiss his chin.
“I’ll look after you,” I whisper. “I promise.”
I know it’s a dream because Aidan and Katie are in it. The four of us are standing around a burning oil drum at the hang-out, but the fire isn’t red, it’s purple. Katie is wearing a wedding dress that has white ruffles from the bodice to the ground. I go to throw confetti over her, but as I do, purple sparks ignite from my fingers, setting her wedding dress on fire. She starts screaming and black-cloaked figures come gliding out of the pavilion. Then the ground starts vibrating and a line of knights on horses appears in the distance. They’re charging at us.
A hand appears out of the burning oil drum. It’s deathly pale with incredibly long fingers. A pale blue ring glimmers on the index finger. The flames turn into water. Rustin and I pick up the oil drum and the skin on our hands starts to blister, scorched by the heat. We douse the flames engulfing Katie, but as we do, she starts to change into another person: taller, slimmer, with long wavy blonde hair. As the knights get closer, I see my dad, leading the charge. He’s wearing a red cloak and silver armour. Over the top of that he has a sleeveless tunic with a red dragon on the front.
As he raises his sword to strike me down, I wake up.
Just a dream. It was just a dream.
But my dreams are starting to turn into nightmares.
The spell I did to conceal us during the night worked. As soon as the first pink rays start to infiltrate the nest of trees we’re resting in, the Gorians start to wake. I’ve been awake for...I don’t know. It could be an hour, it could be ten minutes. Time is nothing anymore. I’m so tired I don’t know how I’m going to walk today, let alone concentrate on learning how to control the flame. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in days. I know I’m seriously cranky if I don’t get sleep. I take after my mother there. Lilly is like our father and doesn’t need much shuteye. She can be totally hyperactive after two hours napping. I still need coffee and energy drinks after eight hours.
Me + cranky + magical powers = trouble.
I’m amazed at how well Rustin looks. It’s unnerving. He has so much colour in his face it’s as if he’s been on holiday. He’s moving really well too. He lifts up his shirt to show me his scars, but they’re now faint white lines. I don’t touch him, even though my fingers twitch.
“When we next stop, I will continue your training, Lady Mila,” says Freya. “But for now, it is the Gorian way to move in silence or prayer. I ask that you and your companion observe our traditions while you are with us.”
At first I’m happy to acquiesce. I want to keep my senses alert for danger in this new time. But as we continue to walk through the wood, I start to get the feeling that Freya and the others are deliberately trying to keep me away from Rustin. There’s always someone between us, whether it is Freya herself, or one of the other seven Gorians. Meanwhile, Melehan is standing guard over Jalaya. Her hands are tied behind her back and her shoulders are hunched. She looks defeated. The look of triumph she had last night has gone. Now I’m closer to her, I can see the scar on her face is actually a burn. Her hands and wrists are like it too. It looks painful, especially as her hand ties are rubbing on the scarred skin.
It’s hard to have any sympathy though, after what she did to Rustin.
The forest floor isn’t as marshy in this next part of the wood and so we don’t need the floating spell. I’m itching to try something magical again, but every time I look down at my fingers, all I see are my dirty, ragged nails. The silence is starting to bother me too. I’m used to existing in noise, whether it’s with my friends at school or Lilly shrieking her way through Avalon Cottage. I even miss my mum’s nagging. No. I don’t miss her nagging. I just miss the sound of her voice.
I’m trying not to miss my dad because I’m angry with him. He should have told me, trusted me. I think I was able to do the concealing spell so well because I wanted to get one over on him. It feels as if he’s been lying to me my entire life. I know my mother did as well, but at least she had a reason. I can’t think of a good enough reason for my father to do what he did.
Freya calls out and I come out of my trance. I was so busy thinking that I haven’t taken in our new surroundings. We’re still in the forest, but instead of thick, dense firs, the trees are taller and thinner. I have no idea what kind they are, but they look as if one good gust of wind would bring the lot down like dominoes.
Everyone has stopped walking. I quickly look around for Rustin, and to my horror, I see he’s standing next to Jalaya.
And he’s smiling at her.
A queasy cold motion rocks my stomach. Why isn’t Melehan getting in between them? Why aren’t any of the others getting in between them? They were quick to move into the space between me and Rustin when we were walking.
A scratching sensation prickles my neck. Something is going on, I just know it. I need to get Rustin to tell me what he saw last night. He was in a trance-like state with white eyes, but then his stomach got slashed and I forgot about it. Yet I think his trance was actually more dangerous than the cuts inflicted by Jalaya.
And why is he smiling at her for crying out loud? She tried to kill him.
“We will stop for the breaking of the fast and for the Black Order to pass judgment on one of our own,” announces Freya. “Melehan, bring forth Jalaya.”
Jalaya stumbles forward, catching her boot on a root. Rustin is the one who steps forward to help her.
He shrugs at the look on my face. I hope I look as dumbfounded as I feel. I don’t understand what Rustin’s doing. He should be putting as much space between him and that girl as humanly possible.
“May I speak for her?” asks Rustin. “And I’d like to untie her hands.”
“Are you insane?”
“Mila...”
“Did you hit your head? Oh my god, you’re under a spell, aren’t you? That’s what she did. She didn’t just try and kill you, she’s bewitched you.”
“Mila, I feel fine. Great, in fact. I feel useful for the first time since we got here,” replies Rustin.
“She’s put Rustin under a spell, Freya,” I say. “You can’t listen to him. He needs to go back to the castle.”
“The artisan is of sound mind,” says a man with a deep rumbling voice. “You were right, Freya. It was not just the coming of the daughter we were blessed with.”
“He’s not an artisan,” I cry. “Stop calling him that.”
“Mila, they think I am,” replies Rustin. “I think I am.”
“Lady Mila, in our tongue an artisan is a man of skill. It was foretold by an elder of the Black Order that an artisan would come with the return of the daughter of Morgana. That he would be an oak-seer,” explains Freya. “He would not
be a journeyman, but his own master, and he would build the first Gorian temple for worship and sacrifice.”
“So, let me get this straight,” I reply incredulously. “In exchange for helping me cure Lilly, you want Rustin to build you a church?”
“Lady Mila, I told you that Jalaya was not Gorian,” says Freya, taking my hand in hers; her wrinkled skin is so transparent it’s like being wrapped in gauze. “Jalaya is of an Order from across the sea. She is one of the Aes Dana sect. It is said in their lore that the artisan could be found by whittling away at a branch of mistletoe. That the cuts to the heart of the tree would reveal themselves across the heart of the true artisan.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to just ask him?” I cry. “What kind of idiot takes a knife to a piece of wood in the hope that the cuts also appear on a person?”
Rustin starts laughing. On any normal day I love hearing him laugh. It comes from deep in his chest and makes his whole body shake.
But today is anything but normal.
“What is so funny?” I demand.
“You,” replies Rustin, still laughing.
“I’m glad you find this so amusing. You have no idea what it was like for me, seeing you bleeding like that. I thought you were dying.”
I turn away, desperate not to let anyone see me cry, but everywhere I look there are eyes watching me, judging me. Everyone here thinks I’m an idiot. And they’re probably right. I’m no more capable of finding the Ring of Morgana, learning to control the purple flame and curing Lilly as I am of becoming the Queen of the World.
Bony fingers press into my back.
“Not Queen of the World, Lady Mila,” says Freya, scaring the crap out of me because she can clearly read my thoughts. “But one day you will be Queen of Camelot and Queen of the Gorians. By coming here you have sealed not just the fate of yourself, but of the artisan too.”