Inherent Fate

by Geanna Culbertson

  I stood there and thought on the notion. Daniel had laid it out pretty clearly and he was right. I swallowed my pride and the pang in my chest that wished there was another way. I knew that there wasn’t, so I gave the only answer that could hope to save us.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Daniel nodded once, finalizing our agreement, then turned to go inside his room. “I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby at quarter past four,” he called over his shoulder.

  I took a couple of steps down the hallway. “Daniel,” I said, rotating back around. He paused and looked at me. “For what it’s worth . . . I hope that if a time does come when our doubts come against our trust, the trust wins and we do finish this quest together. In one piece, but also together.”

  fter tracking down Anna, Greg, and Berto to say thank you and goodbye, I made my way back to my room. Yunru was pouring over a pile of books on her bed. It reminded me of an evening at the beginning of the semester when my friends and I were in our room at Lady Agnue’s.

  Blue had been spread out on her purple comforter surrounded by books about fairytale history. Her dark blonde waves were tied up in a scrunchie on top of her head as her intense blue eyes scanned each page with excitement. SJ had been sitting with perfect posture at her desk, studying her potions book. Her long black hair was neatly tucked into a braid, and the gold color of her day dress matched the gold design carved into our suite’s floor and ceiling.

  This recollection came and went in an instant, so much like the quick flashes of the future I suffered from while I slept. My heart ached slightly. For unlike my dreams, which told of things yet to come, this passing image was of a time long gone by. It was a memory of a world that we’d left behind and people we no longer were, and that was a sad thing.

  Yet as the last bits of the recollection fled, that sadness melted into something else. While I regretted the rift I’d created with my friends and was worried about all that was coming for me, I realized I was still glad for the change. I was glad to no longer be the girl in that memory.

  When we’d left Lady Agnue’s, I remembered feeling excited about the journey ahead despite the uncertainty and peril that came with it. I still felt that way now. The world of classes and homework and school was so small and ordinary compared to the world of today. And the girl I’d been in that bedroom all that time ago was a mere silhouette of the person I sensed myself becoming.

  It was true I’d made mistakes, and I probably would continue making them. I’d been hunted and almost killed. I’d hurt people and I’d put my faith in myself through the wringer. But I knew that through it all, I had changed for the better. I felt stronger and wiser. I was accepting more about myself each day—the good qualities like my sense of fight and ability as a leader, and the less favorable ones like my fears about the future and myself. After everything that had come to pass I felt confident. It was not the hollow kind that I had felt before, but the real kind where no attack on my self-esteem or physical person could shake me to my core.

  I may not have known what that translated to in terms of who I was, or what kind of hero or princess it made me, but I did know it was a start. And as I continued to fill in the pieces of myself—accepting more as I learned more—I believed that I would come out the other end as the something more I always hoped to be. Something stronger, something admirable, and something better than the archetype stereotypes out there ever thought I could be. I had doubts about a lot of things—Daniel, the Author, where this journey would lead—but I had no doubts about this. Not anymore.

  I finished my last piece of chocolate cake as Yunru read from her texts. When the final bite of frosting had been consumed, I wished her goodnight and thanked her as well.

  “Will we ever see you again?” Yunru asked.

  “I hope so,” I said, meaning it.

  “Here,” Yunru said. She scribbled a long string of numbers onto a scrap of hotel stationery and handed it to me. “This is my phone number back home in Hong Kong. If you’re ever there, give me a call.”

  “Thank you,” I said, folding the small piece of paper. “I wish I could give you one, but I don’t have a phone.”

  “That seems impractical,” Yunru commented.

  I shoved the paper into my left boot for safekeeping and hugged her. “Good luck with everything, Yunru. I hope you find what you’re looking for and that one day you’re the world’s most famous fairytale expert and TV show host.”

  Yunru smiled from ear to ear at the thought and hugged me. Then she headed into the bathroom. When she closed the door, an impulse came over me. I didn’t know if it was a kind one or a foolish one, but I went with it anyways.

  I activated my Hole Tracker, widened the perspective of the map to allow a greater area to be displayed, then flipped through the time settings. I searched for a wormhole opening on Earth sometime in the next month, far away from Germany. The holes here, after all, seemed to be connected to Alderon.

  I found one meant to appear in a place called Copenhagen about six weeks from now. Quickly I scribbled down the coordinates and the time of the opening. Then I turned off the Hole Tracker—just as it started to spark—and shoved the note deep within the folds of one of Yunru’s books.

  I liked Yunru; she’d been kind and gracious and had treated us like family despite being strangers. It felt wrong to hold the key to her lifelong ambition and say nothing. Leaving this as a clue was a good compromise. Finding it and following it would be completely on her.

  Maybe it was an irrational decision, but it felt like the right call. As I climbed into bed and drifted to sleep, I felt sure of it.

  I was starting to get used to walking through the landscape of my dreams. It was like descending into the dark, musty basement of your school—familiar, but the shadows still kept you on your toes.

  I floated through a sea of red, black, and blue. The black was from the general darkness of the void. Waves of blue pulsed through the backdrop like I was surrounded by water. Moving amongst it were the blurs of dozens of graceful girls in scarlet dresses.

  The gowns and girls glided around me. After a minute of being dizzied by their motion, the scene shifted. I was alone in my bedroom at Lady Agnue’s. Everything was still and quiet for a moment. Then a buzzing sound came from my bed. Slowly I approached it.

  On my bedspread I found the source of the noise: a compact mirror. It was like the other compacts I’d dreamt about recently. The bronze shell had the words “Mark Two” engraved on it. I’d seen Arian talking to his accomplices through various Mark Two compacts in my dreams. They seemed to allow the users to communicate with one another through their looking glasses. Past that I didn’t know what they were or where they came from. My only clue had been their name.

  The magic mirror from Beauty & the Beast—which used to have the ability to spy on, but not interact with, others—had the phrase “Mark One” engraved onto its back. But I didn’t know what that meant, nor if there was any way to learn the truth now that I’d destroyed the mirror in my face-off with Arian on Adelaide.

  Intrigued, I picked up the buzzing compact on my bed and opened it gingerly. When I did, a woman’s face filled the mirror looking back at me. It was the woman from my dreams—the woman who’d been warning me to remember the dragon.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  In a flash, everything was gone. My dream shifted. I saw Chance Darling for a moment. Then a bright explosion knocked him off his feet. Another man rushed out of the smoke toward him, cognac lapel flailing in the wind and dagger in hand.

  Next I saw a vision of Big Girtha. She was Mauvrey’s friend and lackey and had spent years antagonizing girls at Lady Agnue’s. Given that I was Mauvrey’s favorite target, I had always gotten special attention from the lumbering protagonist who was the younger sister of the famous Hansel & Gretel siblings.

  Hence my surprise at what came next.

  Big Girtha—bordering five foot ten, hands like a coal miner, and brown choppy bangs with all the
femininity of a broomstick—approached dream me in a hallway of Lady Agnue’s. Dream me was wearing a white peplum top over navy leggings tucked into black combat boots. Her hair was shorter and flounced around her shoulders, a style I rather liked.

  Dream me didn’t tense when she saw Big Girtha approaching, nor did her expression show any signs of guardedness. Most bizarre was when the two hugged.

  It gave me the heebie-jeebies to witness the contact between them. I was all for breaking archetypes, but that was too out of character for me to comprehend.

  After this scene came another sight that was hard to fathom—this time in a good way. I saw Mark. Actual Mark. The long-missing prince of Dolohaunty was walking down an elegant stone hallway with a smile on his face. Red carpet lined the floor. Tapestries hung from the walls. Two armored guards followed him.

  When my perspective widened it revealed the five of us—me, Jason, Blue, Daniel, and SJ. Daniel hung back a bit, but the rest of us rushed at our friend and tackled him in a group hug.

  This vision vanished, but the discovery it left was far from fleeting. It was so impactful that my entire dreamscape felt a pang as my heart registered the truth. Mark was alive. If I saw him in my dreams that meant somehow, someday, we would see him again.

  Flashes fell through my perspective. A torn envelope with a logo in the top left corner that read “Metropolitan Museum of Art.” A platter of nachos. The glint of the sun against the ocean. SJ letting out a scream as someone grabbed her by the neck and threw her against a gray stone wall. Black glass raining down. A round, polished oak table that was large enough to seat fifty people. Jason on some sort of street surrounded by silver knights charging him with weapons. And finally, a fluttering red flag with the insignia of a gold phoenix.

  Then I turned and saw Arian.

  I felt the urge to run from him and strangle him at the same time. Alas, I was unable to do either. I was not a participant in this vision, just an observer.

  Arian stepped into a study of sorts. The sole doorway on the left was covered by a set of maroon curtains that fell to the cedar-paneled floor. The walls of the room were dark but glistened slightly, as if made of glass.

  There were bookshelves lining the walls on two sides. Against the far back wall was a solid marble desk. It was black, as was the chandelier hanging in the center of the room. The latter reminded me of the one in Lenore’s office. Then I noticed the girl sitting behind the desk.

  She was young, but older than me—maybe twenty-six. Her large eyes were framed with intense eyeliner. Her black hair was pulled up in a ponytail that showed off her regal bone structure and caramel-colored skin. She wore a fitted black crop top with shimmering silver shoulder pads that matched her pointed, dangling earrings.

  Something about the confidence in her posture and the commanding pout of her expression made her radiate power.

  “Majesty,” Arian said as he crossed the room. “We have her.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Arian,” the girl said, a thin layer of annoyance in her tone. “How do you know she won’t escape again?”

  The sound of the voice caused a tremor of recollection inside me. There had always been three recurring characters in my dreams. Natalie Poole was one. The second was Arian. The third was a girl who I’d never seen, but whose voice had occupied the shadows of my nightmares.

  I’d long wondered if I would ever be able to place that voice to a face. Now, finally, I could. From the first syllable this girl uttered the veil was lifted and I realized I’d found her. This was the girl who’d haunted my head alongside Arian for so many nights. And if Arian was calling her “Majesty,” I knew this must be Nadia.

  I studied her with fresh perspective.

  “This time is different,” Arian responded. “She is beyond the help of her friends and her magic. One way or the other, she’ll give us what we want.”

  The girl’s eyebrows rose with intrigue. “So you have your precious M.R.I. then?”

  “Yes. Which means our girl will either crumble to the amount of power we force out of her after so many resurrections, or it will kill her. Either way she will be taken care of before anyone ever finds her.”

  The girl nodded then took a deep breath as a thought crossed her mind. She folded her hands on the desk. “Just in case, I want regular check-ins with our hunter on the inside. Her friends aren’t going to give up trying to find her, and if they get too close I want you to make sure she—”

  Like a gust extinguishing a candle flame, her voice was cut off by the sound of an E-flat. Faint woodwind music began to echo in the furthest corners of my mind. As it grew louder, Arian’s scene faded. More flashes intercut each other like one reality tearing into the next.

  A carnation with glistening red petals. A set of female hands shaking and covered in blood. The woman in the teal zip-up jacket mouthing the same sentence. The music in my head was so loud at this point that I couldn’t hear what she said. But I didn’t need to. The words on her lips were easy to read and always the same: “Remember the dragon.”

  With one high-pitched note I was shocked awake. I expected the music to stop, assuming it was a product of my nightmares, but it played on. The sound flowed in through the open window of our hotel room. I stood slowly, the soft, hypnotic lullaby compelling me to move toward it. As I made for the window I noted distantly that there was movement in the room. Yunru was out of bed and headed for the door.

  “Yunru?”

  She didn’t respond. She simply reached for the handle of the door and turned the knob, walking into the corridor in her bare feet and lavender pajama set.

  I started to call after her again, but the haunting music seemed to dampen my will. My thoughts felt fuzzy. Before I knew it, I was halfway across the room, heading for the door myself.

  Suddenly the phone on the nightstand rang and my thoughts sharpened. The high-pitched sound was like a mental reset, driving away the hold of the melody.

  My eyes bugged out and I dashed for the phone. “Hello?”

  “Guten morgen, miss,” a sleepy sounding man replied. “Apologies. You requested a wake-up call for ten minutes past four. Please accept our humblest apologies for the delay. I hope this does not cause you great inconvenience.”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall, squinting through the darkness to make out the position of the hands.

  Half past four! The hole is opening now!

  Daniel and I had to get to the river, but I also had Yunru to worry about. She was gone and I had no idea what had possessed her or where she was going. I slammed down the receiver, jumped into my boots, and bolted for the door. When I raced into the hallway I saw Daniel coming out of his room. His wake-up call must’ve been late too.

  He jogged up to me. “Do you hear that?” he asked. He held up a finger and narrowed his eyes, listening. I began to hear the vague flute melody again—not as loud as before, but growing in resonance.

  “Yeah, it’s faint but I think it’s coming from outside,” I replied. “It was louder before. It pulled me out of my dreams. But that’s not the only weird thing. When I woke up, Yunru was leaving the room. There’s something wrong with her. It looked like she was in a trance.” I hurried down the hall to the stairs. “Come on, we have to make sure she’s okay.”

  We worked our way down the elaborate, twisting stairs of the hotel, across the bar, the library, and the lobby, then finally onto the cobblestone streets.

  At first I didn’t see Yunru, but then I spotted her heading along the street that led to the river. “Yunru!” I called. She didn’t respond.

  When we caught up to her, I was surprised by the deadness in her eyes and the bright purple color that flooded her irises and pupils. Even as we caught up to her she kept moving forward, not noticing us.

  “Yunru,” I repeated.

  She didn’t hear me. I, however, did hear something. The music.

  The notes swirled around me like a thick wind, getting louder and harder to ignore. The entrancing rhyth
m bled into the folds of my brain. My head turned in the direction that Yunru was going and my body wanted to follow.

  In my periphery, Daniel was shaking his head. The music must have been affecting him as well. He looked pained. It was hard to focus, but I put my hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  He turned to look at me. When he did, concern streaked his expression. “Knight, your eyes.”

  I drew back. “What about them?”

  “They’re purple. Not completely like Yunru’s, but it’s like someone dropped food coloring in the pupils.”

  Behind Daniel, I saw a young boy in white-and-blue striped pajamas climb out a window. It was on the ground floor, so he easily clambered over the flower-filled window box and onto the street. He shuffled past us, pursuing the same route as Yunru. The same shade of purple also filled up his sockets.

  I narrowed my eyes in thought. “Daniel, did you see that newspaper in the hotel rooms that talked about the disappearances happening recently?”

  He nodded.

  My gaze followed the young boy, the music still tugging at me. “I think I know what’s causing them.”

  “Obviously,” Daniel responded. “The music is luring people away. But why are these guys the only ones getting hypnotized?” He violently shook his head again. “And why does it seem to be getting louder but no one else in town can hear it?”

  He was right. The music felt like it was blasting now, but we seemed to be the only two who had woken up that weren’t completely hypnotized. Suddenly my left foot inadvertently took a step forward. I grunted and yanked it back. My whole body felt like a leaf caught in the tide; it couldn’t help but be pulled along. Daniel clutched his head. His eyes were normal, but he was clearly being affected by the music.

  Once more my body felt yanked forward; this time it was harder to resist. I took two and a half steps but grabbed Daniel’s arm to steady myself before I could go any farther. Realization finally settled in.