by Amanda McGee
Our plan was to enter and not die. The truth of it was, as soon as we stepped from the tree line our game plan would mean squat and I think we all knew that. But sometimes having any type of strategy, even one you knew would fail, helped ease your mind.
A nervous rumble in my stomach echoed the anxiety blistering throughout the rest of my body. I had made it this far without panicking, which was much longer than I had projected. Tristan placed a hand on my shoulder without turning to look at me. I would have crumbled if he had.
“Just be alert at all times,” Blaze said. “We don’t know what to expect.”
Sadie’s tiny body trembled and we all noticed. She appeared smaller somehow. I knew she had the heart and capability to defend herself, she was just afraid like the rest of us.
“You’ll be fine, Sade,” I whispered. “If you weren’t scared, I would be worried.”
“We are more than capable as long as we keep calm,” Blaze continued. “We are all in this together, just remember that.”
Pep talks are truly useless in life and death situations!
“Let’s just get it over with,” I said. “One way or the other this ends now.”
I tried to sound strong and confident but an unsteadiness in my voice offered little reassurance. Super powers or not, to me I was still Alex Ryan, loner and recent orphan. My faith in Blaze, Tristan, and Sadie was unfaltering; I prayed I would not hold them back.
This part of town was different from the rest. The vibrant beauty had been sucked out of it and all that remained was eerie gloom.
A reddish haze enveloped Katerina’s castle and the rest of the gray sky hung above us like a watchful spy meant to track our every move. Ominous, dark clouds seemed to follow us, urging us to fear what lay ahead.
There was no soft, green grass or colorful flowers. Instead, the grounds were covered in dirt and black, abstract trees. Even the air was different, which could account for the landscaping. The once comforting warm breeze was tainted with wickedness and grew heavier with each step. Our strained bodies needed all the strength we could muster to move us through this dreadful environment.
My head drooped in anguish. Tristan quietly grasped my hand but I could not bring myself to look at him. The group stopped moving and, in my distracted state, I nearly crashed into Sadie.
Brick by brick my gaze drifted upwards to the angry vines and undoubtedly evil grime that clung to the walls like that was its only purpose in life. The castle and my fear grew.
“What is that smell?” Sadie whispered. “Burnt eggs?”
Malevolence radiated from the enormous stone fort, polluting the once majestic land with hatred, destroying its beauty and suffocating it with darkness. All we could do was hope it would not do the same to us.
Katerina’s abode, although it was a castle, was nothing spectacular. Perhaps it was the lack of romance or regality most castles possessed or, conceivably, it was due to Katerina’s noticeable disinterest in basic upkeep.
Focus. Be alert. Don’t trip. Don’t get anyone killed.
These thoughts revolved in my head until I practically forgot where I was. The rest of the group was turning the corner ahead. I had fallen far behind.
“Hey!” I whispered. “Wait!”
Tristan sprung from behind the wall, visibly frantic. He waved for me to hurry while shushing me at the same time. The faster I walked the more he reminded me to be quiet.
“How am I supposed to hurry without running or making noise? You are stressing me out!”
Just then Sadie let out a terrifying shriek.
“Sadie!” I screamed.
Tristan and I rounded the corner to see Sadie and Blaze tussling with three guards. I rushed over and threw a right hook at the first man I came to.
Seeing my siblings threatened brought out the fighter in me. With a single punch, the large guard hit the ground with a super-sized thud. My attention was freed in time to see Blaze finish off his attacker while Sadie and Tristan defeated the last one.
Until we arrived in Haliwick, I had never been in a fight in my life. I had never been made to throw a single punch or even raise my voice in anger, but lately that had changed.
I was thankful that by some stroke of fate my family was blessed with an understanding of combat. Either through magic or luck or a combination of the two, we could hold our own. Though my hands quivered after each encounter, there was something oddly exhilarating about battle. I still found fighting barbaric but it brought out my competitiveness and spoke to the hidden, yet remarkably proud side of me.
Of course, being good at it helped a lot.
“There’s a door through here,” Blaze said.
“Be careful,” Tristan added. “I think it’s safe to say they know we’re here.”
Blaze created a makeshift flashlight with his palm to light a path through the overgrown weeds and vines shielding the doorway. The obstacles proved to be no match for Blaze, even using one hand. He clawed through the stubborn undergrowth with ease and no assistance.
Blaze entered the doorway first, stopping once inside to investigate his new surroundings. All must have seemed well because he returned to help Sadie through the iron door’s rather awkward opening. Blaze lifted Sadie and pulled her inside without a grumble from either of them. Tristan shuffled me around him and towards the door, signaling that it was my turn. Though I was more than capable of entering the castle on my own accord, I knew Blaze would never go for it. He grabbed me around my waist, his large hands almost touching on either side of my stomach. I suddenly felt small, insignificant.
If Blaze could affect me this way I shuddered to think what Katerina could do. Confident was not a word I would choose to describe myself. I was certainly no coward but it seemed I lacked the gene that would allow me to think of myself as anything but ordinary.
You have magic powers! Hellooo?
I could only shake my head. I had to be the only person in the history of mankind to have an inferiority complex and magical abilities.
Clinging to Blaze’s shoulders I could see the inside of the castle, at least this particular section. To my left several measly flames flickered atop equally miserable candles, evenly spaced along the wall of the haunting corridor. I smelled the dampness and heard the drip-drip-drip of the stereotypical leaky basement pipe. My foot became caught on some unseen object. I struggled against it, Blaze jerked my body towards him but I was yanked from his grip and slammed to the ground.
Like a silent assassin, a prickly vine had inched its way around my foot and was crawling up my calf. Its thorns pierced my jeans and vulnerable flesh, drawing blood. Screams of intense agony rang out in my head, urging me to allow them out.
"Sadie, help her," Blaze commanded.
Without ever seeing her, I knew what Sadie was doing. My emotions leveled out, my silent screams no longer needed to be heard. The pain was still there but my desire to announce it had vanished. Tristan pulled a knife from his pocket and launched into a full-on attack to liberate me.
The briar continued to grow, writhing its way up my leg. My knee and thigh were now captive, pulsing in agony as the plant’s sharp teeth tore holes in my skin. Tristan assaulted the persistent vine with great fervor but the vine’s determination was unrelenting. I fought to remain calm and conscious. My hands bled from my own failed attempts to free myself.
Sadie emerged from behind Blaze. Without a hint of panic, she stared down at my captor. With a soft wave of her hand the vine stopped its progress. Not wasting any time, Tristan charged through the wicked shrubbery and freed my leg enough to pull me to safety. The two of us toppled helplessly, rolling out of the brush and into the openness.
Our tumble stopped and a vision exploded. I saw an ambush. Katerina’s burly bodyguards scooped Sadie up because she never saw them coming. Before Blaze realized the situation, three men restrained him. The vision’s perspective changed to show Tristan’s capture, and then mine. A loud scream ended my trance.
A large group of
guards had crept up behind Sadie and Blaze. I clamored toward the door desperate to save them. Just as my useless vision predicted, my brother and sister never saw it coming.
Blaze kicked both feet into the door, slamming it shut.
“No!” I shrieked.
My battered fingers clawed at the thick metal door with as much hysteria as the rest of me felt. My hands bled even more. From within the castle walls, the sound of Sadie’s fading screams echoed off the stone corridors as they hauled my family away from me.
Tristan, who had been feverishly slicing through the remaining tangled vine around my ankle, tossed me over his shoulder. Despite my squirming, he carted me away from the castle at a record-breaking speed.
“What are you doing?” I screamed. “We can’t leave them!”
Tristan ran without a word until we were deep within the surrounding forest. He released his grip and the second my feet touched the ground pain and anger overcame me.
“What is your problem?” I screamed. “That was my brother and sister we just abandoned back there.”
“Blaze closed the door for a reason, Alex.”
“But we just left them.”
“If we had gone in they would have captured us too,” he said. “We can’t help them if we are all imprisoned.”
“But we just left them. Without the potion, they will grow weaker by the hour until...” my voice cracked and I knew I could say no more.
“Alex, look at you,” he said, reaching for my hands. “Your hands are torn to shreds and your leg looks like it was in a bear trap.”
Staring down at my bloody hands, I waited for the healing to begin. The throbbing of my injuries was nothing compared to the pain of watching my brother and sister be taken prisoner. One by one, my cuts bound themselves. Before the blood had time to dry, my wounds healed.
“See!” I announced. “I’m fine.”
I hadn’t possessed much faith in our mission when we first set out and now it had become nonexistent. Tristan was relentlessly encouraging, but my confidence was faltering to the point where no amount of reassuring words would help.
But that didn’t stop him from trying. Somehow that in itself was slightly uplifting.
“Katerina won’t harm them, she needs you for her scheme to work.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are the key. Your family’s powers rest on you. That’s why you seem to have more power than Sadie or Blaze. Their abilities are their own but you control the source of your family’s magic.”
“I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. Katerina can have it. I just want my life back!”
I collapsed onto the dewy ground. The dreaded hole began to reopen inside of my soul. The familiar emptiness after the death of my mother had reappeared, draining what little optimism I had. This week had been such a blur that I never stopped to notice its miraculous repair. Now that it had returned, I could say with great certainty that it had been patched and it was all thanks to Sadie and Blaze.
Despite not knowing of Sadie and Blaze’s existence, a part of me had somehow felt their absence. The missing piece was never a flaw in my design but rather a broken connection that could only be fixed by my brother and sister.
I wish Katerina had taken me too.
“I thought I had a handle on my visions,” I said. “Why was there such a late delivery? I barely had time to see anything before it happened.”
“I told you, Katerina knows your powers. She knew we would come eventually. She was probably just toying with you.”
“We were stupid to think we could defeat her. Our only weapons against her were our powers, but if she can control them then we have nothing.”
“We just have to be smarter than her,” he said. “She can only control your powers if she expects them. She has flaws, we just have to find them and use them against her.”
Tristan’s voice flowed with a soothing assurance. I almost believed him. This time not even his words or stares could shake the crushing emptiness devouring my insides.
“This was a mistake. We are losing and we have barely gotten started.”
It was obvious that I was being dramatic but I couldn’t have cared less. Tristan’s expression revealed that, despite my overreaction, he knew I was right even if he would never admit it. We took a risk to save our lives but instead managed to grab a shovel to help dig our own graves. I felt trampled, but if my defeatist attitude brought Tristan down with me, Sadie and Blaze had no chance.
If I could tone down my fears perhaps I could turn up the positive attitude for all our sake.
More importantly, if I did not emerge from this fiasco as one hell of a person, someone somewhere got something wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Watching them being taken away and not being able to help just brought all of my fears to the surface. I had pushed my anxieties way down this morning but they came rushing back.”
“That is understandable. I know this is hard for you and I was just trying to be encouraging. I suppose that isn’t what you need.”
“No, that is exactly what I need,” I said with an actual smile. “All we have now is me, you, and positive thinking. If we lose anything else I may have a stroke.”
His laughter warmed my wrecked heart. Tristan had done more for me than he would ever realize.
Well, tell him!
Tristan joined me on the damp ground as leaves fell from the trees above us. He reached over, plucking one from my hair.
Mom used the “You’ll understand when you’re older” line when things did not go according to my plan. I thought she was nuts.
She lived here, she might have been.
With every year that passed I learned new things that proved my original ideas were often misguided. In the middle of a forest in a mystical realm that hovered around, within, or nowhere close to Earth as my newly discovered siblings were being held prisoner by a pissed off witch, I had learned several more new things.
Yeah, that life is a crapshoot.
The past few days had shown me that I had control over absolutely nothing. I could organize my time into as many neat, color-coded, well-thought-out compartments as I wanted, but the universe always had other plans. No matter how fast I tried to run or how creative my hiding place was this life found me anyway…then full-on linebacker tackled me to the ground.
Yet, here I sat. Through it all I was still breathing and mostly functional. I was scared to death for Sadie and Blaze but somehow I was finding my faith again. They were two of the strongest, most capable people I had ever had the pleasure of meeting. Knowing them they were probably more worried about me than I was about them.
Tristan tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. Our eyes met. In the midst of the madness, I had fallen in love. I could have kicked myself for thinking life was something I could do alone. Sitting with Tristan, and the hundreds of butterflies that now lived in my belly, I was grateful for his presence.
“Thank you for being here,” I said.
“No problem. I didn’t have much else going on anyway.”
“Look who found a sense of humor,” I said, getting in a playful dig of my own.
His fingers intertwined with mine. My nerve-endings came alive, shooting up my arms like a private fireworks show. I had to fight to stay present and not drift off into Tristan Land where the sun was always shining, smiles were involuntary, hearts were filled to the brim with love and happiness, and I was unable to think of anything but him.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked.
“We get back up and try again.”
“How are we supposed to do that exactly?” I asked. “We’re a few men down.”
“Maybe I can be of some assistance,” came an unknown voice.
****
Chapter Twenty-One
Murmurs and the whistle of a teakettle startled me into consciousness.
The last thing I remembered was sitting in the forest with Tristan. Now my feet were han
ging off of a tiny bed surrounded by tiny walls in, what I predicted to be, a tiny house.
The smell of freshly baked bread and honey tickled my nose and taunted my rumbling belly. In the doorway appeared a short, childlike person. He was slightly hunched over making it easy to observe that his head was almost entirely bald. His big ears and warm smile were so endearing that I almost forgot that he was a stranger.
But he isn’t a stranger!
“It’s you! I know you!” I shouted. “Tristan!”
Panic ran deeper each time I shouted his name. I kicked the covers, desperate to be free. Without the composure needed to intelligently untwist the sheets, I only managed to further entrap myself.
Both of my feet tingled with an intense numbness from dangling off the end of a bed that was two feet shorter than I was. I leapt up with escape being my lone concern. My head banged into the ceiling just as the sheet wrapped around my legs sabotaged any and all balance or coordination. After what seemed like an eternity in slow motion, I crumpled to the floor.
Luckily, my face and elbows broke my fall.
“Are you okay?” Tristan said in-between hysterical laughs.
“He’s with her!” I yelled. “He works with Katerina!”
I was either embarrassed or extremely angry, either way my emotions were volatile.
I slid toward the wall on my throbbing, red elbows. The aged logs structuring the walls of this funhouse were the best, and first, place I could find to use as a prop for my battered body and spirit. Kicking my legs, I struggled to free myself from the sheet that was still holding me hostage.
“Is this alive too?” I shouted. “Why does this keep happening to me?”
Tristan squatted next to me attempting to once again liberate me from the confines of the presumably evil bed linens. Because he was unruffled, removing the sheet proved to be a simple task for him. He, of course, could not resist finding a certain amount of humor in my predicament. His amusement evaporated the second he saw my bloody elbows.