Inherent Fate

by Geanna Culbertson

  Thinking about how long that list was gave me a headache. Hence why I was not fond of talking about the genie lamp. It made me too frustrated.

  I was grateful when Daniel let the conversation die. I preferred to distract myself with the various oddities that we encountered along the Weser.

  Every so often we came across human-shaped statues. These statues looked like they were running from something and were incredibly lifelike. We also saw lots of wildlife. Daniel and I recognized some creatures—fish in the water, snakes in the marsh alongside the bank. Others we didn’t—like some weird half-rabbit, half-bullfrog things that looked like the less attractive cousins of the bunniflies in Ravelli.

  I eyed one of these creatures curiously as it sat on a partially submerged sandbar in the middle of the river.

  The Rabullfrog—as I decided it should be called—had a furry, grayish-brown back. Its belly was the same color, but was slimy and extended out in a bulbous lump like a fat guy who’d just dined at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Rabullfrog’s eyes were bright red and its ears were five times the size of a normal rabbit’s. They draped behind the creature almost regally.

  The Rabullfrog on the sandbar seemed to be looking at me. Its eyes flashed and its gut expanded further. I expected it to make a sound like “ribbit,” but when it opened its mouth a very different sound came out.

  “BLARD!”

  Three more Rabullfrogs hopped out of the water onto the sandbar, joining their comrade. Their giant, soggy ears dragged behind them.

  Trouble brewing in the sky tore my attention away. The lightning strikes were getting closer. Not only were the sounds much louder, they were more frequent.

  I tilted my head toward the sky as another flash burst forth. The light caught in the reflection of Daniel’s eyes. I mused for a moment how fitting it looked. His eyes always had such intensity that the sparks of the storm seemed right at home.

  A cloud lit up angrily, rumbling the world. Three more cracks followed. Had I not been looking at Daniel, my travel companion would have been toast. For it was right at that second that a streak of lighting shot at the ground where he stood.

  I moved faster than the violent light and dove toward Daniel, grabbing him by the jacket and pushing him out of the way. The lightning barely missed us.

  A heartbeat later he and I jumped again. A second crackle struck the sand. On the third strike our worry escalated to a dangerous level.

  After the first bolt of lightning touched the ground the Rabullfrogs had begun to hop back into the river. Alas, not all of them made it. Mid-hop, one Rabullfrog was struck by a lightning bolt. Instead of electrocuting him, it turned him to stone and the newly-formed Rabullfrog statue dropped lifelessly onto the sandbar.

  A fourth lightning bolt suddenly did the same to one of the creatures at the threshold of the river. That Rabullfrog turned to stone as well and sunk through the tumultuous water, petrified in both senses of the word.

  Daniel and I exchanged a look, but no words. We started to run.

  The sky was churning sickly like it had the flu and it produced lightning strike after lightning strike as if trying to purge itself of the electricity making it sick. The other atmospherics didn’t help the situation.

  When you’re running so fast that your heart ricochets off your uvula, oxygen is your friend. You know what isn’t your friend? Sandstorms.

  Wind tore up the sand, making it hard to see. The dry air made it difficult to breathe. It was becoming almost impossible to see the path ahead. There was so much sand swirling through the air that the Weser on the left was turning into a blur—everything was, except for the lightning strikes when they slit the sky and crashed down on our heels.

  It was so hazy that we didn’t notice that we had come to the summit of a massive dune. The sudden drop surprised us both, and we fell down the slope as an aggressive bolt of lightning impacted the ground.

  I tumbled in a daze. When I got to my feet I saw something glinting in the distance. It looked like a mirror. Focusing harder, I realized there were houses nearby, tucked into a valley. Each had a roof composed of giant mirrored panels like Goldilocks’s fortress. And then I understood why.

  A giant crackle of lightning pummeled a house at the edge of the village. But rather than turn the mirrors and the dwelling to stone, the bolt ricocheted off a mirrored panel and shot back into the sky.

  The mirrors repel the lightning!

  I flicked a glance at Daniel. He’d realized the same thing. Our previous aversion about going into town had nothing on our preoccupation with not getting turned to stone. We dashed for the safety of the houses as more lightning came down.

  The nearest house had a back window that was slightly open. Not wanting to risk another second of being exposed, we made the split-second decision to go through the window rather than running around to knock on the front door.

  Daniel yanked open the window fully, boosted himself up, and hopped through. I followed. Once we were both safely inside he shut the window. It was not a moment too soon. The most powerful bolt of lightning yet burst from the sky and slammed into the area behind the house where we’d been standing.

  We sank to our knees and leaned against the countertop below the window, catching our breaths. The lightning continued to crackle outside, but my heart rate calmed now that we were no longer in the line of fire.

  When my pulse returned to a relatively normal pace, I stood and took in the room. The shack looked humble from the outside. Inside was just as quaint. The wood floor was rough and splintered. An iron stove stood on the right, adjacent a worn oven. The ceiling was relatively low. The paint on the walls was a dark purple that reminded me of the color of the official Lady Agnue’s school flag.

  An archway framed in iron led to another room that was concealed from view by long curtains. I thought the curtains looked too fancy and embellished for drapery. When I narrowed in on the design I realized that they were made of scraps of ball gowns. Someone had cut up once-fancy dresses to make them. The tablecloth on the dining table was made in the same fashion.

  Suddenly Daniel lurched back. I glanced in the direction he was looking. A fat gray cat had passed beneath the curtains and entered the kitchen. Its stomach dragged on the ground as it moseyed forward.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing, I just . . . I hate cats.”

  The creature plopped itself down on the kitchen floor two feet from Daniel. Its stomach was spread out like a flattened beanbag chair, and it regarded me with narrow blue eyes before closing them and falling asleep.

  “That’s not so much a cat as it is a lumpy carpet,” I commented. Then I couldn’t help but release a slight laugh at the wariness in Daniel’s expression.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “What?” I grinned. “I’m not saying anything.”

  “With you, that’s worse.”

  The curtains to the kitchen were brusquely thrust aside. An older woman with a mean face stood before us. Her voluminous hair was silvery like the cat’s.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

  This woman must’ve been beautiful in her younger years. Even with the wrinkles, I was struck by her elegant features and pronounced bone structure. Although she wore the housecoat of a shut-in grandma and the footwear of a farmworker, she had a powerful presence. And despite being an old lady, she demonstrated the good posture of a young protagonist under Lady Agnue’s tutelage.

  “Um, sorry for the intrusion,” Daniel said, gesturing to the window behind us. “The storm was getting pretty bad out there and we had nowhere else to go.”

  The old lady nodded. “It’s not wise to be wandering about outdoors when a stone storm is brewing. It would have served you right to get struck. Society has no need for ignorant children.”

  I suppressed a scoff. After all, such a statement didn’t mean much coming from a woman who was stuck in a vast prison full of antagonists that society had kicked out.

&n
bsp; “We were lost,” I replied in half-truth.

  The old lady stepped between Daniel and me and glared out the window. “Well, no matter. The storm is in its final chapter. You can go back to wherever it is you came from in a matter of minutes.”

  “That’s a pretty fast turnaround for a storm,” I commented.

  The old lady tore her gaze away from the window and stared at me. Her eyes radiated coldness despite being a warm hazel. “Stone storms only last seven minutes. Everyone knows that.” She leaned in closer and looked me up and down. I gripped the countertop with one hand and leaned back instinctively.

  “Where exactly did you two say you came from?” she asked.

  I narrowed my expression. “We didn’t.”

  “Knight,” Daniel said, looking over the old lady’s shoulder to make eye contact with me. “She’s right. Look. The storm is almost gone. Come on, we should go.”

  I glanced outside. The window revealed a red and navy sky with barely any clouds and no sign of lightning. The sand was also settling on the ground—the wind letting it rest at last. It was the perfect opportunity for us to leave. Unfortunately, the old woman didn’t see it that way.

  “Knight . . .” she repeated, swiftly coming closer to me. I took a few awkward steps back, still holding on to the kitchen countertop. The old woman pursued me until I was up against the wall. “I thought you looked familiar. Maybe not the nose; it’s rather masculine. But the face . . . And the eyes, they might be green, but they’re hers. There’s no mistaking it.”

  Without breaking eye contact the old woman suddenly lunged for the knife rack on the counter. In a second she had a blade in her hand and had it halfway to my throat. My reflexes were barely fast enough. I grabbed her wrist just before the point touched my skin.

  Daniel stepped in. He gripped the old woman by the back of the neck and hurled her across the room with a single sweep of his muscular arm.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Stunned, I stood frozen for a second. Daniel yanked me through the curtained archway as the old woman tried to regain her bearings. The cat stared up at me and meowed, protesting its disturbed nap.

  Daniel and I entered a living room with a sagging mustard couch, a fireplace, a desk full of parchment and withered quills, and a bookshelf. We made for the front door, but I stopped as Daniel thrust it open and dashed out. A picture frame on one of the bookshelves had caught my attention.

  I picked it up. The photo featured a younger version of the old woman with three girls. The girl on the far left didn’t have a face; that part of the picture had been torn off. But I did recognize one of the other two girls—the redhead. I’d seen pictures of her before.

  “Daniel!”

  I raced out into the night after him, slamming the door behind me. “That woman,” I said, out of breath. “I think that’s my mom’s wicked stepmother. This redheaded woman . . .” I gestured at the frame in my hand. “She’s my aunt. Well, my step-aunt anyway. Unlike my mom’s eldest stepsister, she wasn’t evil or banished to Alderon. I’ve seen pictures of her in some of my mom’s old albums.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “So what? My wicked step-grandmother tortured my mom for most of her childhood and teenage years. That’s the woman that my kind, wonderful mother sometimes still has nightmares about from all the mind games she endured.”

  “And?”

  My expression darkened. “I never thought I would ever meet her face-to-face. Now that I have there’s a few things I’d like to say to her, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” he replied. Daniel glanced around at the other decaying houses in the area. The glow of the lights inside poured onto the sand-covered streets. “I just think it’s a bad idea.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to pull an SJ and tell me that violence is never the answer.”

  “No. Violence is always the answer. I just think we have a more pressing deadline. You don’t have time for a family reunion right now.”

  “Two minutes,” I said firmly. “Keep out of sight. I’ll be right back.”

  “Knight—”

  “Daniel, please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I always wished I could confront this woman on my mother’s behalf. It’s closure.”

  “Ugh, fine. Go. You can use your wand again, so at least this will be quick.”

  “I’m not planning on using my wand,” I said. “I won’t need it. But I promise you, this will be quick.”

  re-entered the house. Carefully I closed the door behind me then set the picture frame back on the shelf.

  There were two other doorways in the living room—one led to the kitchen and the other led to a hallway that twisted to a different part of the house.

  “Oh, Grandma, it’s Crisanta,” I called, easing my way to the kitchen. “I forgot to mention that I’m missing about sixteen years’ worth of birthday money from you. Don’t feel bad. I’ve got another coming up in a couple of weeks, so you can send me the back pay.”

  I heard a floorboard squeak and spun out of the way to dodge a knife that was hurled at me. It stuck into the wall above the fireplace mantle.

  My wicked step-grandmother stepped out of the hallway on the other side of the living room. She had two more knives in her elderly—but definitely not frail—hands.

  “When I heard that our queen had placed a bounty on your head I could not have been more thrilled,” she said. “The only thing that would bring me more joy than seeing your mother’s head cut off is knowing the agony she’d feel when her precious daughter lost hers.”

  “Bitter much?” I crossed my arms. “Mother’s Day must be a real rough time for you, huh?”

  The old woman screeched and threw another knife. I lunged to avoid it. My friend Blue was the foremost expert in combat at our school, especially where knives were concerned. She always had her trusty hunting knife and an assortment of throwing blades on her. As her training partner, I’d had plenty of practice evading them.

  The curtains to the kitchen brushed against my shoulders. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to know,” I said. “You weren’t always like this. You turned dark in your efforts to crush my mother. Was it really just because she was a protagonist and you and your kids weren’t? Even if you were jealous, she was only a kid. How could you hate her that much?”

  “Your mother was not special,” the old woman said. “Simply a girl with a pretty face no lovelier than that of either of my two daughters. Her father was a protagonist, but when he died we were just another pack of commons. When your mother turned seven, I received the news. She was chosen as a protagonist. Her book had appeared. She would be off to Lady Agnue’s while we were left behind in the dust. I decided I would not stand for it. Why should she have a chance to escape the life of the ordinary when my own daughters didn’t? So I bribed our kingdom’s ambassador to keep your mother’s book a secret for a few years, giving me time to put her in her place. Thus, when she finally went off to school I had a firm enough grip on her that she would never think of herself as special.”

  “You manipulated and tormented her.”

  “I kept her from developing an ego while ensuring that she would always be obedient and would take me and my daughters with her when she rose to success. It was difficult work that required reinforcement every summer when she returned home, and through the letters I sent to her at school. But it was worth it. When she graduated she was the submissive shut-in that I’d always hoped for.”

  “Until she met someone who made her feel like she wasn’t.”

  “Your father.”

  “My father,” I agreed.

  “Your mother never should have met him,” the old woman growled. “He poisoned her mind against me. He had my eldest daughter and me thrown into Alderon. And we’ve been rotting away here ever since.”

  The old woman flung her final knife. I dodged it.

  “Seems like the punishment was justified to me,” I scoffed. “When you
found out she was leaving you, you tried to kill her.”

  “She deserved it.”

  “No,” I said. “She didn’t. But you deserve to be in Alderon. I hope you rot away in here forever. You chose darkness over family and this is your punishment.”

  “Oh, Crisanta. I didn’t choose darkness. It infected me like it can infect anyone; even a pretty little protagonist like you. You’d be surprised how easy it comes. It starts small, but it seeps through with the right amount of anger and hatred.”

  “Thanks for the ethics lesson, Grandma. Maybe I’ll use it in a psychology class next semester. Lady Agnue’s does offer a course called Sense, Sequins, & Sensibility. But if you’re all out of creepy advice and knives, I think I’ll be going.”

  “Just because I’m out of knives doesn’t mean I’m out of options, dear.”

  The curtain behind me rustled and an arm brandishing a knife swung out and wrapped itself around my neck. I assumed the woman holding the knife was my oldest step-aunt. One half-glance at her blonde hair and brown eyes and I was sure of it.

  “Oh good,” I said, pushing back against the arm wielding the blade. “More relatives.”

  Utilizing a maneuver I’d practiced a hundred times with Blue, I spun with the force my step-aunt was putting into her blade and rotated her with a jolt. Her knife stabbed into the wall just before I flung her into the wall. I kicked her in the stomach immediately and she was thrust back against the fireplace. She hit her head on the mantle and was knocked unconscious.

  My wicked step-grandmother rushed at me. I easily evaded her attack and redirected the force of her charge, pushing her into the kitchen. I heard pots and pans clanging to the ground. Pulling one of the knives out of the wall, I pushed the curtains aside and strode in after her.