Scarlet and the Keepers of Light

by Brandon Charles West

Dakota looked up at her with his piercing blue eyes. “Mrs. Hopewell, as long as I have breath, I will bring her home to you.”

  Breaking down completely, she threw her arms around Dakota’s thick neck. Dakota stood stoically while she sobbed against him, although his eyes glistened a little more than usual. Finally she broke her embrace and went to her husband, sharing a few intimate words.

  “Mr. Hopewell,” Dakota announced after they had all said their good-byes. “I’ll lead the charge out. Stay close to me, and I’ll try to run at a human-friendly speed. The key moment is going to come when we begin to change. It’s going to be a little alarming. We can’t stop running though. It’s very important that we keep moving.”

  Dakota looked out from the oak tree at the forest beyond, his eyes filled with both concern and apprehension. “At the half-mile mark, the Stidolph will attack the Mortada. It’s going to be violent. You have to stay strong, Scarlet. We can’t stop and help, no matter what. We have to break free. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Scarlet said, her voice wavering.

  “There’ll be a time for you to fight,” Dakota said, trying to sound reassuring. “Just not yet. We have a lot of work to do first.”

  Scarlet was scared, and her fear was clear in her eyes, which now were brimming with tears. She was leaving her mother and sister, and outside of Illuminora, where she had felt safe and wonderful, the world seemed poised to kill her, if it could. The Mortada, the evil figures who had broken into her house, who had caused her family to flee their home, were waiting outside the tree.

  Then it was time. Her thoughts, her apprehension, would have to wait. Dakota took off, running a bit faster than Scarlet would have thought of as human speed. She could hear her father’s footsteps pounding behind her, and although it seemed as though they had been running only a short distance, she could already feel a stitch forming in her side.

  Through the haze of fear and the pain of her burning lungs, a thought occurred to Scarlet that sent a wave of panic through her. She had been thinking of the clearing in reference to when she had arrived. Then it had seemed such a short distance, but now they were no more than six inches tall. The clearing would be a great distance to someone that small. Every inch was like a foot, every foot several yards. There was no way she would be able to keep up this pace for that long.

  Suddenly she felt a strange, uncomfortable sensation, and she could hear Dakota yelling at her to keep running. She felt as if every bone and muscle in her body was being stretched to its limits. The grass and weeds that moments ago had been taller than her began to shrink, first to just below her head, then to her waist. Scarlet willed her feet to continue moving forward, trying her best to focus only on Dakota bounding ahead of her.

  Within a minute, the grass was being crumpled underfoot instead of waded through, and the world around her had become instantly more familiar. She had been in Illuminora so long that she had forgotten how strange it was to be shrunk. The stitch in her side began to fade, and the terrain whirled past as they dodged trees and leaped over underbrush.

  Moments later the first Mortada caught sight of them, and with a call to his companions, he set off in pursuit. He was fast. Impossibly fast. Though they’d been taken by surprise, the Mortada had already closed the distance between himself and Scarlet’s father to only ten feet. She dared a look over her shoulder and instantly regretted her decision. She was overcome by a feeling of hopelessness.

  As the Mortada reached out to seize her father, the first of the Stidolph arrived. The massive wolf hit the Mortada like a freight train, sending the lithe figure sprawling into the woods beyond. The Stidolph was joined by several more, but, heeding Dakota’s words to keep moving, Scarlet couldn’t tell exactly how many. A minute later the only sign of either the Stidolph or the Mortada was the vicious growls and cries of pain and anguish that carried through the forest behind them.

  Scarlet’s lungs were now burning to the point of bursting, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. Mercifully, Dakota suddenly stopped. With a motion of his head, he directed them all to a thicket of underbrush.

  “Keep still and quiet,” he whispered.

  At that moment, a group of three Mortada stalked past the spot they had just vacated.

  “I can smell them—we’re close,” one of the Mortada hissed.

  “You’ve been saying that for the last mile,” another retorted, his voice strained and irritated.

  “Did you hear that?” the last Mortada asked, his voice quavering with fear and pain. “It’s more of them.”

  “Shut your whining, they’re all dead.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Scarlet put her hand to her mouth to stop from gasping. Were they talking about the Stidolph, Dakota’s friends? Had they all died helping them escape?

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  “You know what he will do to us if she escapes.”

  “Of course I know, you imbecile. They’re surrounded. She will not slip past us this time.”

  The Mortada moved off in the direction Scarlet, her father, and Dakota had been traveling. Dakota waited several long minutes before emerging from the brush. He lifted his muzzle and searched the air with his nose.

  “They’ve managed to get in front of us. We’re surrounded.” Dakota lowered his head and began to pace methodically around in a circle.

  “What do we do now?” Mr. Hopewell asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Dakota admitted, his voice distant, as if he was lost in thought.

  Scarlet tried to calm herself, deciding to focus on the light within her. She didn’t send it out or try to form it into substance, but just concentrated on it, letting it soothe and warm her. Words Xavier had spoken to her began to roll over in her mind. You are only limited by your imagination.

  An idea struck her like a thunderbolt. She had the ability to infuse objects with light, and once having done so, she could manipulate them to her will. She could . . . move them. She thought of library books and how she had made them fly off the shelves, and then how Xavier had turned them into a cyclone. A cyclone that had moved with such speed that it appeared to be a single cone of light. Could it be possible . . .

  “I have an idea,” Scarlet announced.

  Both her father and Dakota turned to her, looking hopeful and interested in any idea that might get them out of their predicament.

  “How far do we need to go to be safe, and in what direction?” Scarlet asked.

  “North—that way, probably twenty miles before we could be sure the Mortada would be off our trail,” Dakota answered, tilting his head in the right direction.

  “What is your idea?” her father asked.

  “You’ll have to trust me, Dad.” Scarlet said, closing her eyes and letting the light begin to spread from within to the surface. Within seconds she had become a bright figure of light, shining like a beacon through the forest.

  “Scarlet, no,” Dakota shouted frantically. “You’ll bring them straight to us.”

  There was a rustling through the woods as the Mortada began to converge on Scarlet. She did not extinguish the light, however, instead expanding it until it consumed—transformed—Dakota and her dad as well. Ten or more Mortada reached the spot, shouting curses, and beginning to conjure darkness against her.

  Then, with a simple thought, Scarlet, Dakota, and her dad were gone.

  ***

  Just a moment before, Charles had been standing in the forest; now he found himself on an open plain, not a tree in sight. The effect was so disconcerting that he stumbled several times before he could regain his balance. He looked around desperately for Scarlet, who was standing next to Dakota, only feet away. His own light and Dakota’s had gone out completely, but Scarlet’s was still fading slowly.

  “This far enough?” she asked lazily, her eyes closed.

  “I shoul
d think so,” said Dakota, looking around and sniffing the air to get his bearings. “We’re in the land of the dwarves.” The big dog sounded astonished. “I’ve never even heard of a Tounder doing such a thing.”

  “Xavier said . . . your imagination. . . . I feel . . . woozy,” Scarlet slurred. Then, to Charles’s horror, she crumpled to the ground.

  18

  A Glimpse of Scarlet

  Brennan had no way to explain what had just happened before his eyes.

  He’d been watching from the ridge, his eyes trained on the clearing so intently that they ached. Although Chosen had pointed at the great oak, announcing that the girl had left, Brennan saw nothing at all. Then three figures seemed to sprout instantaneously out of the ground, several yards into the underbrush at the clearing’s edge: a young girl, a man, and a strange-looking wolf. Could they have climbed out of a hidden tunnel? Impossible. They were already in midstride, running headlong, at the moment they first appeared.

  Until today Brennan’s only experience with magic had been the dark cloud Chosen had conjured against the Mortada. Neither that, nor the sudden appearance of the three running figures, could prepare him for what he saw next, though.

  In the distance he could just make out the Mortada closing in on the group. He’d frozen in horror and despair—surely it was all over, before he’d had any chance to help—when suddenly the girl began to glow. Light of a startling intensity radiated from her, and spread to her companions. The Mortada were still racing toward her, with only strides to go, when the girl, the wolf, and the man lit up as brightly as the sun and then, leaving only a trail of golden light, vanished.

  Brennan looked immediately to Chosen for some kind of confirmation that he had indeed just seen what he thought he’d seen, some confirmation that he wasn’t losing his mind. Chosen was laughing.

  “Guess there’s not much doubt now,” he said, still chuckling to himself.

  “Much doubt of what?” Brennan asked in disbelief. “What just happened?”

  Chosen stood and began to gather his things back into his bag. “What happened is, the girl just extended our trip a little.”

  “A little? She just disappeared!”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. She did no such thing.” Chosen looked off in the distance for a moment, absorbed in his own thoughts. “I must admit, I’ve never seen the likes of that before. She is definitely the one.”

  Brennan was frustrated. What was going on? He couldn’t seem to get hold of any fact before everything shifted again. “One what? She’s definitely the one what?”

  “It means”—Chosen’s tone was dismissive—“that she is definitely the one I seek. We have a long road ahead of us. Get ready.”

  Within a minute Brennan had packed the few items he’d acquired on the road, a change of clothes, some food, and a bedroll, slung his pack on his back, and was jogging to catch up with Chosen. He was still mulling over what he had seen just before when he nearly ran into Chosen, who had stopped abruptly.

  A large group of Mortada blocked their path. The golden-haired men didn’t look happy to see them.

  “We heard about what you did, Devoveo,” one of the Mortada said through his teeth. “We had heard that you had become—well . . . But still, I never thought you would murder your own kind.”

  Chosen stared blankly at the group of Mortada, seemingly at a loss. This was alarming; Chosen hadn’t seemed the least disconcerted the last time they faced a group of Mortada. In fact, his behavior was so different now that Brennan wondered whether he’d dreamed the whole episode of the Mortada in the tunnel, even though he knew he couldn’t have.

  “Don’t act as if we’re in any way beholden to our own kind, Multus,” Chosen said finally, although his usual self-assurance had not returned.

  “Do you know what I think I’m going to do?” the Mortada

  called Multus said lightly. “I’m going to have your companion kill you for me. I think that would be fitting.”

  Multada looked intently at Brennan and smiled wickedly. He was larger than the rest of his group, but his ashen, flaking skin, a flaw Brennan had never before seen in a Mortada, marred his striking features.

  “Boy,” he said, in a lyrical lilting voice that sent shivers down Brennan’s spine. “Come here.”

  Just as when Chosen had spoken to him in Caelesta, only much more powerfully, Brennan was seized by a tremendous compulsion to obey, a fear verging on panic that if he didn’t do as the Mortada asked, something terrible would happen. And then he shuddered, and a tremendous anger suffused him with heat, driving away the need to obey. He walked toward Multus, staring intently into his eyes, but allowing the Mortada to believe that Brennan was still under his control.

  “I want you to kill Devoveo,” Multus lilted softly, with a triumphant smirk. “I want you to strangle him.”

  Brennan smiled back at the Mortada, who, large as he was, was still almost a foot shorter than Brennan. With the quickness of a snake striking, his hands shot out and seized Multus by the throat. Multus’s face went white with shock as he reached up and clawed at Brennan’s hands, trying to wrench them away.

  “What was it that you wanted me to do?” Brennan asked sarcastically.

  Multus began to writhe as he struggled for breath. His fellow Mortada moved to help him, but Brennan turned, lifting Multus several inches off the ground and holding him like a shield between himself and the group. “Another step, and I’ll break his neck.”

  The Mortada froze, but did not retreat.

  The problem was, Brennan realized, he hadn’t really thought this out. He’d been so wrapped up in his own anger and the need to do something that he had no plan beyond seizing Multus and threatening his minions to stay back. That had worked well enough . . . but he couldn’t just stand there holding the Mortada up in the air forever.

  “Let him down, Brennan,” Chosen said coolly.

  Brennan looked back to make sure he had heard correctly, receiving a curt nod. He set the Mortada down and slowly backed away, never taking his eyes off him.

  Multus straightened his cloak, trying to look composed, though he was white to the lips, and clearly shaken. “Another time, perhaps,” he said casually, his voice hiding his fear admirably.

  “Another time,” Chosen replied.

  Multus and the Mortada slunk away in the direction they’d come from, and in less than a minute they were gone.

  “What just happened?” Brennan asked after a moment of tense silence.

  “It’s too long a story for right now. You are a very brave boy, you know that? That’s a very powerful and evil being you just assaulted. I have never seen fear in his face before. He is not used to anyone being able to stand up to him.” Chosen bent to retrieve his pack, which he’d dropped on the forest floor. “I think he was in shock.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes. He’s my brother.”

  Chosen straightened, his face expressionless, turned, and resumed his silent march through the woods.

  19

  Melody’s Song

  Melody and Cricket sat side by side, looking out from the terrace off the castle’s front tower where Scarlet had once spent so much time gazing out over Illuminora. The view did not bring Melody the same peace that it had brought her big sister, however. To her, the village just looked sad. Without Scarlet, the bustling village was going to be a lonely place.

  Her mom had not come back from saying good-bye at the base of the tree. Maybe Melody would feel better when she did. But now, slumping down against the wall of the terrace, she put her head in her hands and began to cry.

  Cricket trotted over, lay down beside her, and flopped her large head into Melody’s lap.

  “They come back,” Cricket murmured in a soothing tone. “Dakota and your dad and Scarlet, they all come back.”

  “I know,” Melody s
aid, sniffling. “But I’m going to miss them so much.”

  For a while, the two sat quietly on the terrace, finding comfort in each other’s company. Neither noticed that they had been joined by a third person until several minutes had passed.

  Melody let out a little gasp of surprise. “You scared me,” she said.

  “I am very sorry if I did, Melody,” Xavier said, sitting down beside her on the terrace floor. It looked like it was hard for the little man to do this. He groaned a little on the way down. “I am getting to be an old fellow.”

  “How old?” Melody asked.

  “Very,” Xavier answered. Melody couldn’t help but return his smile. “You are sad.”

  “Yes,” Melody answered, trying now not to cry.

  “It is quite all right, my dear. There is nothing wrong with tears. We have plenty of water to fill you back up if you need it.”

  Melody giggled a little. “You don’t need to fill up from crying.”

  “Probably not. You’re right. But just in case, I wanted to let you know.” Xavier laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I feel like I haven’t slept since before you and your family got here. I’ve been tossing and turning. I think, although I can’t prove it, mind you, that someone . . . put frogs in my bed.”

  “Frogs?” Now Melody laughed outright.

  “Oh yes, it is a very serious matter, frogs. They wiggle and croak. Terribly hard to sleep with frogs in your bed.” The little man sounded quite serious.

  “But who would put frogs in your bed?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.” Xavier opened his eyes slightly and winked at her. “You know, I have heard you singing a lot since you got here. Do you like to sing?”

  “Oh, yes. I love to sing.”

  “I thought so.” Xavier sat up and turned to face Melody. “Did you know that here in Satorium there are special types of singers who sing special types of songs that are magic?”

  “Really?” Melody asked.