by Tara Grayce
Mom’s mouth curves into a small smile. “Just Mrs. Corin. I’m not a queen here.”
Brett nods, but I can see he’s struggling to wrap his mind around that. It probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, so wholly embracing our two identities, yet also being able to separate them depending on what realm we’re in. We can’t think of ourselves as a princess or queen or king over in this realm any more than we can act less than royalty over in Averell.
“And Melltra? What happened to her?” Brett glances between us.
“We don’t know yet.” I clench my fists. What if Dad got hurt fighting her?
“She got away.” Dad’s voice comes from the doorway a moment before he steps inside the room. He’s still dressed in his Averellian clothes with his crown and everything. He probably isn’t going to stay in Michigan long. “By the time the dragons got there, she had already cleared out. Her and all of her farffles. We tracked them for a ways across the wasted fields but lost their scent in all the ash.”
I blow out a long breath and stare at my hands in my lap. This isn’t over. I hadn’t even realized how much I wanted Melltra to be captured and all danger to be over until now I know it isn’t.
I’m not sure why this makes me think of what Melltra said about my parents and the end of the last war twenty years ago. Perhaps because it was unfinished business from that war that nearly started this one. “She said you guys cast her out. That both you and the dragons refused to give her a home after her parents were killed. Is that true?”
Dad crosses his arms. “Melltra Larrona was lying. Manipulating you. At the end of the war, we tried to get her to come back to Largone Castle with us. Yes, the dragons refused to recognize her as one of them, but we offered to let her stay there. She was the one who refused.”
Mom rests her hand on my shoulder. “Did you really think we would have turned a teenager away like that?”
No, I hadn’t really believed that. Not truly, had I?
But there was a moment there in Melltra’s dungeon when I had doubted my parents.
I should have known better. Story of my life right now.
“What happened to her? I mean, how did she become like she is?” I glance from Mom to Dad. “I’ve met other people who are half-dragon and half-silvaran or half-unicorn. Usually they don’t end up...like her.”
Dad shakes his head. “Her parents, Bircra and Fyrrgoghrr were experimenting with magic in ways magic should never be tested. They were doing spells like what Melltra did to change the farffles into silvaran forms. My parents suspected then, and I do as well, that those magical experiments harmed Melltra and made her what she is.”
I lean back in my chair. It isn’t my parents’ fault. Not in the slightest.
The door of the farmhouse slams.
“Don’t slam the door.” Dad mumbles under his breath.
“I got everything!” Ryan shouts as footsteps stomp up the stairs. He bursts into his room with a bundle of clothes in his arms. “The white shirt and jeans were easy. I think I got your right size, Brett, but the shoes were interesting. We couldn’t remember the exact shoes you were wearing, so hopefully your mom doesn’t notice the difference.”
I straighten. “Dad, did you find my getaway bag at Eekrok Castle? It had Brett’s clothes in it.”
Dad shakes his head. “No. Melltra must have taken it with her.”
That knot cinches tighter in my stomach. Nothing should come of it. Brett’s Earth clothes will disintegrate in Averell. Melltra will have no way to figure out where they came from or why they are falling apart. They will simply disappear.
But it is concerning. We are never supposed to leave anything from Earth in Averell. We’ve never done it before, and I can see on Mom’s, Dad’s, and Ryan’s faces that they don’t like it any better than I do. Dad and Mom probably worse.
Ryan tosses the clothes on the bed. “Everyone clear out. All right, Brett. Time to get you looking like yourself again.”
I follow Mom and Dad from the room. Once we reach the living room, I plop onto my favorite end of the couch. I’m surprisingly tired, as if I was the one who ran for miles across Averell. “Are Trygg, Nella, and Herockghyrra all right?”
Because I had to get Brett to Earth as quickly as possible, I hadn’t been able to stick around long enough to see how the rest of my friends are doing.
After Mom claims her end of the couch, Dad sinks into his leather easy chair. “We met your friend Nella and her family halfway to Largone Castle. They are unscathed, though a few suffered from inhaling the noxious smoke.”
I touch my face. While waiting for Brett to wake up, I took the time to inspect the rash on my face in Ryan’s mirror. Some of the swelling must have gone down since Trygg first told me how horrible I looked, and I think being on Earth has helped since the bumps now feel smaller beneath my fingers.
“Are they staying at the castle? I invited Nella to visit and said I’d take her shopping, though she’ll understand if I tell her I can’t because I’m grounded.” I glance between Dad and Mom.
“We’ll...have to discuss what punishment we think is appropriate.” Mom glances at Dad. Uh, oh. One of those looks. Not sure what it means for how much trouble I’m in.
“Before I forget, Chieftess Mizzorami of the Ellian Forest dryads may pay a visit. Something I said to her may have been taken as an invitation. If she does, I promised she’d get the best hospitality we can give her as thanks for the hospitality she gave me and Trygg.” Not that I doubt Dad and Mom would give her anything less than the best. That’s why they are so well-respected in Averell after all. “And I may have promised an ogre named Grundel a prime, fully organic, non-magically modified steer in exchange for not eating us.”
“I think I’ll have to hear the full story one of these days.” Dad looks and sounds almost impressed.
“It’s a long one.” I shake my head. “Trygg? Herockghyrra? Are they okay?”
“Trygg and Herockghyrra both seemed to be recovering well when I checked on them before coming here.” Dad leans his elbows on his knees. “The Flame asked that we reopen treaty negotiations so that we can discuss how best to fight Melltra together. Though they still turned down my offer of hospitality at Largone Castle, and I have a feeling they will go off to fight Melltra on their own the moment the opportunity arises.”
At least the Flame is willing to talk peace, now that she has proof Dad and the unicorns weren’t at fault for her daughter’s disappearance. Hopefully fighting a common enemy will help the negotiations move along better than they were before.
I draw a deep breath. I can’t put off saying these words any longer. “I’m sorry for disappearing the way I did. I should have come to you the moment Brett stumbled through the portal. But I thought I could fix it on my own, and I didn’t want to bother you during the important meetings. It was foolish, I know. I’m sorry.”
I don’t say I’m sorry I was captured by Melltra. That isn’t my fault. Yes, I made it easier for her, but Trygg and I probably would’ve been taken one way or another.
Dad nods, and he and Mom share another one of those looks. The kind where they are having an entire conversation just through eye contact. Perhaps all married couples do the look, but my parents are exceptionally good at it, having perfected it in plenty of diplomatic negotiations in Averell.
Mom turns to me. “You gave us quite the scare. We’re disappointed that you would so recklessly go off by yourself.”
Dad places his hand over Mom’s where it rests on the couch’s armrest. “But we are also proud of the way you handled yourself as you traveled across Averell and escaped Melltra.”
“It wasn’t just me. Trygg and Herockghyrra did a lot of the work, and Brett...” I glance toward the hallway and Ryan’s bedroom. “We wouldn’t have escaped without Brett.”
It may have been an accident that he stumbled into Averell, but that accident saved Averell from war.
Ryan’s door opens, and Brett shuffles out, followed by Ryan. Exce
pt for the dark circles under his eyes, the fragile pallor of his skin, and the red bite marks up both of his arms, Brett looks identical to how he looked the day he entered to this farmhouse to work on a science project.
That day seems like forever ago. Four days ago in Averell. Three in Michigan.
Brett glances around the room. The only two open chairs are a hard rocking chair and the middle seat on the couch between Mom and me. Brett slides onto the rocker. Ryan flops onto the couch.
“Brett, you understand you won’t be able to tell anyone what happened in Averell. You can’t tell anyone it exists. Not even your mother or your closest friends.” Even though he’s sitting in a cream easy chair in a small farmhouse, Dad’s expression and tone are that of the king of the silvarans in Averell. It helps that he’s still wearing his crown.
Brett nods. “Yes, sir. I promise I won’t say a word. But...but my mom. She must be worried. What do I tell her?”
Ryan grins. I can’t see what’s funny, but Ryan has always had an odd sense of humor.
Dad relaxes and leans against the back of his chair. “Once Ryan told us what had happened, and we realized it wouldn’t be easy to find you and Amy, we did the only thing we could think of to explain your disappearance. We let your mom report you as missing to the police. As far as everyone is concerned, you were kidnapped.”
Brett rubs at his arm. “That’s sort of what happened.”
“Exactly.” Ryan sits forward on the couch. “That’s why we needed clothes close to what you had been wearing. You’re going to be found safe and sound early tomorrow morning, well, this morning actually.”
“When the police question you, you can truthfully describe Melltra to them, her human-like form anyway. Tell them as much of the truth as you can. We’ll go over what you can and should say before we stage your rescue.” Dad rubs a hand along the armrest of his chair. “I wish we didn’t have to deceive the local law enforcement, but they wouldn’t believe the true story.”
It wouldn’t be hard to pull off, not with Brett looking like he’s just spent the last three days kidnapped. “So, what do I have to say to explain how Brett was kidnapped from the house?”
“Actually.” Dad turns to me. “To keep the suspicion off us as much as possible, we had to tell the police you were missing too.”
Chapter 20
We Stage a Kidnapping and Finish Our Homework
As it turns out, my parents, Ryan, and Gary are rather good at staging a kidnapping and escape. Scarily good, apparently. Probably because they used as much of the truth as possible.
When my parents and Brett’s mom reported us missing, the police interviewed Ryan and Erin since they were the last people to see us. Erin reported how I checked the bathroom for Brett and acted strangely right after that. The police searched the bathroom—with the portal concealed behind rows upon rows of totes and whatever junk Ryan, Gary, Mom, and Dad could scrounge from the entire house to make the room look like a packed closet—and found the window lock jimmied and broken. Our cell phones, wiped clean of prints, lay in the weeds outside, helpfully planted by Ryan.
And that’s where the clues had ended, until tonight.
I hike across the barren, but tilled field. My feet sink into the clods of dirt which would soon be planted with rows of corn. Dirt clings to my jeans and smears across my shirt, the same clothes I’d worn the night Brett and I disappeared.
Brett leans on my shoulder. His white shirt is coated with dirt as well. Both of us had rolled in the field to complete the muddy, three-day-lived-in look for our clothes.
Ahead of us, a farmhouse stands in the middle of the sprawling fields, several windows beaming light into the star-strewn night. From what Ryan has observed, this farm is owned by an elderly couple. A safe place for Brett and me to stumble across looking for help after escaping our captor and her evil henchmen, and a place three hours away from my parents’ house.
Brett staggers over a clod of dirt. “Sorry. I’m still wobbly on my feet.”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve said that to you. You went through a lot in Averell that you shouldn’t have gone through.” I tighten my grip on him to keep him steady.
“Why are you apologizing? I’m the one who should’ve known better than to touch a portal I’d just stumbled across and go wandering through a fantasy country all by myself.” Brett stares down as if to watch where he is going.
“You didn’t know. After all, stepping through portals and going on fun adventures are what people always do in the fantasy books.” I shrug and focus on my own feet. It’s surprisingly difficult to walk across a freshly tilled field in the dark.
“Is it bad that I don’t regret it?” Brett kicks at a dirt clod as we keep walking. “Averell is...amazing.”
“Even after being locked in a dungeon by a psychopathic dragon-person and her evil rabbit minions?” I can’t help a smile. It sounds so ridiculous here on Earth, even though it had been deadly serious over in Averell.
“Even then.” Brett meets my gaze as best he can in the dark. “I don’t think I can never go back. It’s a part of me now.”
He nearly died there. It has changed him. Can we really ask him to give up the wonder he’s seen in Averell? Dragons and unicorns and naiads and dryads and castles?
“I’ll talk to my dad. You already know about Averell. It would be better if you visited with our help instead of trying to sneak into our basement one night when you’re desperate to see it again.” I glance up to make sure we are still going in the right direction. The farmhouse now looms against the stars.
“Do you think he’ll say yes?”
“I think so.” Trygg is bound to ask about Brett. It would make sense to have Brett continue to visit occasionally.
It doesn’t seem so strange to think about Brett in Averell again. We nearly died together. We faced a horde of evil rabbits and a poisonous gas breathing dragon-monster-woman.
He isn’t just my high school crush anymore. I’m not even sure if I still have a crush on him. Whatever fluttery crush-infatuation I had has drowned under all the complicated stuff between us now. I’m not sure what I’ll find when I sort all this out.
I stumble from the field onto the firm, mowed lawn in front of the farmhouse. “Let’s go announce our escape.”
TWELVE HOURS AFTER knocking on the farmhouse door and asking to call 911, I finally have peace and quiet as I stretch out in the bed in the local hospital, where I have been taken for observation. Brett has a room somewhere down the hall, though I can’t go looking for him hooked up to all the monitors and IV drips and stuff like I am.
Both of us have been questioned by the police. I’m not sure they believe us. After all, the story that some crazy woman with her four henchmen locked us up in a rundown barn where she horded rabbits sounds a little far-fetched. But both Brett and I have the bite marks on our arms to prove those rabbits bit us multiple times, a fact that earned both of us a round of rabies shots.
I rub my upper arm where my muscle still hurts from the injection. From what I gathered during my interviews, Brett’s dad was the number one suspect for the first day of our supposed abduction, though he had been cleared when it was discovered he really had been in California and Las Vegas during the time we went missing.
I smooth the thin sheet over myself. The pulse monitor on my finger is annoying and bulky, but it doesn’t impede my movement as much as the IV needle stuck in the crook of my left elbow.
“Amy!”
I have about two seconds of warning before Erin barrels into the room and throws herself onto the end of my bed.
“Are you all right? You look okay. Can I hug you?” Erin searches my face, as if trying to see if my soul has become dark and twisted with all the trauma.
“I’m fine, really.” It’s all the answer I can come up with. Right now, it’s the truth. I feel fine. I’ll have to see what the next few days bring, but right now, I’m just too thankful that all my friends are alive and Averell isn�
��t at war to think too much about what I’ve been through. “And you can totally hug me, if you can get past all the tubes and wires.”
I hold up both arms to show off all stuff I’m hooked up to.
Erin evades the monitor cords and IV and squeezes me in a hug. “I was so worried.”
Her tone is serious, and Erin doesn’t usually do serious any more than Trygg does.
I wrap her in a one-armed hug. “I’m fine, really. Just a rash and rabbit bites that will go away in a few days.”
Erin lets go and perches on the edge of the hospital bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Not really. Especially since what I really want to talk about—Averell—is still a secret. “How about you tell me about school? What did I miss? I’m sure things were a bit crazy, with two students missing and our faces plastered all over the news.”
Erin nods. “It was. I was interviewed by the police and three of the local news stations, and so were the principal and a few of the teachers and other students. It’s amazing what good, popular students the two of you are. No one could say a bad thing about either of you.”
“That’s what usually happens with stuff like this.” I grin, hoping both my expression and my tone let Erin know she’s allowed to go back to her normal self. I want her to make a joke out of this. For both of us to laugh about it. The more we laugh, the less all of this will hurt me later. “I suppose I gained a whole bunch of new ‘best’ friends?”
Erin finally grins. “Yes, but I made sure the reporters knew that I was your very bestest friend.”
I relax against the pillow as if I can just close my eyes and the last few days will disappear. They won’t. I’ll probably have more interviews with the police when they run out of clues. I overheard the doctor recommending a trauma counsellor for both Brett and me. We’re going to be something of celebrities at school as all the students and the teachers want to know all the details of what happened, those same details we can’t tell them.
But in some ways, things haven’t changed all that much. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after, I’ll return to school and sit in the same desks with the same teachers and do boring stuff like take notes and pop quizzes and tests. When I’m released from the hospital, I’ll return to my home in Averell and wake up in my bed in a castle with dragons flying outside the window and unicorns racing across the far, green hills.