Rachael Arsenault
© 2020
Acknowledgements
A lot of the final touches were being put on this book during strange and uncertain times and, as I write this, I’m unsure if the world will have returned to normal by the time Those Who Fall is released. Trying to create during a period of chaos and fear is not an easy task — I’m sure other writers and creatives can relate to the feeling that what they’re doing is trivial or fruitless.
So this book is dedicated to everyone trying to make art during dark times. Your work is more valuable than you know, bringing joy, catharsis, and/or distraction to people when they need it most.
I also want to acknowledge the frontline and essential workers during this crisis — nurses, doctors, pharmacists, cashiers, delivery drivers, custodians, and countless others are keeping the world running while we strive to flatten the curve and find a cure. You are underappreciated and underpaid for the invaluable labour and support you provide. Thank you.
Chapter One
I had never been a big fan of rain, but I never hated it as much as I did now.
The campsite was soaked, frigid water pouring through the canopy of trees overhead, drenching us so thoroughly that even my bones felt soaked. My clothing clung to my skin in a cold film, the stench of B.O. and unwashed clothes only magnified by the rainwater. It had been raining for a couple days. Farida hadn’t packed a tarp or anything that could be used for waterproofing. We hadn’t expected to need it. We hadn’t expected to be hiding in the woods this long. We had thought…
I wasn’t sure what we’d thought. That we’d grab my parents and go stay in a nice hotel somewhere?
We’d been stupid. I’d been stupid. But that seemed so long ago — I’d lost track of the days. Honestly, it may have only been a week.
One week. My hand automatically drifted to the pocket containing the small piece of smoky quartz that had thrown my life into a complete tailspin. Just one week ago, I had been worrying about living away from my family and friends while trying to sort out my thesis. One week ago, I had walked into the Friedman Museum and left by way of a dragon — a creature I had inadvertently summoned from the magic stone that was now tucked away in my pocket.
It was so absurd I almost convinced myself it was a nightmare. But I was too wet and cold for any of this to be part of my imagination, and none of that was even the weirdest part of the disaster I had found myself roped into.
That piece of quartz held a dragon that I could summon at a cost, the magic wearing away at my body and my lifeforce like sandpaper. It also allowed me to call on poisonous black mist. Doing either usually left me practically paralyzed if not outright unconscious because I barely knew how to use magic — because, unlike Farida and Masika, I shouldn’t even have magic.
I glanced over at Farida. We were huddled against the trunk of a massive oak, its branches providing the best cover from the rain, our sleeping bags zipped tight around us in some desperate hope for warmth. It had been kind of pointless trying to find somewhere a little dryer to sleep, given that we couldn’t change out of our wet clothes, but we did anyway.
Farida was staring blankly out at the woods surrounding us, her eyes dull and dark-rimmed. She had looked like that ever since… ever since we’d burned the body. I wasn’t sure she was sleeping at all.
Part of me wanted to suggest we pack up and keep walking — neither of us was going to sleep in our current condition. But it was slippery and lightless and there was no telling what lurked in the woods at night. Besides, it wasn’t like we had somewhere else to be.
It occurred to me that we hadn’t set a watch schedule the past few nights. Maybe Farida had just elected herself for the task.
Maybe neither of us cared enough to bother.
I itched to check my phone. Had Arman left another message about my parents? Was there any news about them going missing online? Was anyone searching for them? A darker, more morbid and pessimistic side of me wondered if they were even still alive. Now that Masika was dead, Arman might not have any use for them anymore. Afterall, she was the one he had carried a vendetta against all these centuries, bent on getting revenge after the Ivory Circle seized his stones and Masika tried to kill him.
Then again, when I had met with him at the abandoned farmhouse in hopes of freeing my parents, he had claimed that he wasn’t interested in Masika. He had wanted something from me. Or at least that was what he said. His word wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy.
In any case, I was trying to keep my phone turned off as much as possible. Once the battery died, I wasn’t sure if I’d get a chance to charge it again. Still, I couldn’t stop the worrying plaguing me.
“Farida,” I whispered.
She jolted like she hadn’t realized I was there. When she turned to me, it seemed to take her a moment to focus and longer to form words. “What?”
“Do you think…” But the question died on my lips. It was too selfish to worry about my family when hers was already dead.
She, apparently, had filled in my incomplete sentence with her own expectations. “I’m fine. Just go to sleep.” She turned away, resting one shoulder against the trunk of the oak so I could only see the back of her head.
Even though it wasn’t what I had planned to ask about, it still irked me that she was obviously lying. What was the point? We were going through this hell together. There was no such thing as hiding.
Rain drummed against the leaves overhead and cars crashed through puddles on the highway just out of sight, but the world had never been more empty or silent as I stared at Farida’s faint, shadowed outline in the dark woods. “You don’t have to be okay, you know.”
She didn’t answer.
“I didn’t know her well, but… But I miss her, too. She should be with us right now. And—”
“You didn’t even like her,” Farida cut in sharply. A pause. Her tone was different, softer: “I’m — I didn’t—” But she never finished.
I sat staring at her, willing her to actually say “I’m sorry” or “I didn’t mean that.” My throat was tight.
But the only sound was the endless, meaningless noise of the world outside of us.
I couldn’t respond. How could I? I missed Masika — I grieved her — but I hadn’t liked her. And she hadn’t liked me. Yet even though I knew it was true, even though I knew our relationship had never been happy or pleasant or even one of comradery, it still felt wrong to not have been on good terms with her when she was alive.
She had saved our lives. Masika had come to our rescue, using magic even though she knew doing so would kill her. Her hold on life had been too tenuous, strung together from the sacrificed lifeforce of generations of descendants, and the destructive nature of magic irreparably unravelled her near-immortality.
I would be forever grateful for her sacrifice, and I would feel forever guilty for it. The guilt gnawed at me even harsher for never… what? This wasn’t like the grief and fear I felt for my parents, where I kept agonizing over what the last thing I had said to them was. I wasn’t worrying about how long it had been since I’d last said something heartfelt to Masika or told her, “I love you.” Because she wasn’t family and she hadn’t exactly been a friend. It was like finding out someone I had been begrudgingly partnered with for a class presentation had passed away. I didn’t quite know where to put my grief.
Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against the rough, wet bark of the oak. This was all my fault, wasn’t it? It certainly felt that way. I was the outsider, the outlier, the useless one. If I’d even been able to defend myself…
I never should have joined them. Farida may have blamed herself for dragging me into all this, but I blamed myself for agreeing to go along with it. It had
seemed enormously preferable to possibly being charged with terrorism, but now I wondered if maybe I deserved that. At least in prison, I wouldn’t hurt anyone. My incompetence wouldn’t force an old, frail woman to sacrifice herself by using magic again.
The guilt was twisting my gut so much I had to breathe slow and deep to quell a wave of nausea. But it wasn’t just my uselessness and bad decisions that made me feel guilty.
If I was being honest, there was a small part of me that was relieved, almost. Even through the grief and guilt and being lost in loss, a little voice in the back of my mind whispered, “You can relax now. You don’t have to keep proving yourself or biting your tongue to please her.”
It just made me feel worse. Like I deserved to be sleeping in the cold mud, if only because some small sliver inside of me was a disgusting, heartless person.
~
With morning came weak, cloud-choked sunlight and an end to the rain, though that was only a moderate improvement in our walking conditions. We were still soaked to the bone and the ground was slick with mud and wet leaves. No way the meagre sunlight would dry things up anytime soon.
I was glad we didn’t have much left in our bags (though my empty stomach said otherwise). Less weight meant less to fight with as we slipped and slid along on our walk. It helped that we had condensed down to two bags so that all we had to carry was Masika’s little blue backpack and my own backpack that had once been for school. We had left behind the Jetboil, mess kit, and tea supplies at the abandoned farm — we weren’t gonna have much more use for any of it. And if we did find ourselves in the position to use the equipment again, it would be easy enough to come back to the farmhouse and collect. In any case, once our food and bottles of water had dwindled to nothing, we were left carrying the stones, the LifeStraw, an extra sweater each (both also drenched from rain), and a first aid kit.
That morning, as I lifted my sopping backpack onto my shoulders, I turned to ask Farida if she had a destination in mind yet — but she was already walking away, her feet squelching over the mud. I fought to catch up and keep up, regretting, not for the first time, my preference for wearing Toms. My feet had been pruney for more than two days, and an old layer of skin was sloughing off of my heels in the wetness.
We walked on the very edge of the treeline, closer to the highway than we would normally dare. Even though we both knew the weak sunlight would do a shitty job of drying us, it was still better than walking in the colder and darker woods. My feet and legs and back and everything ached as we trekked along, but I was getting used to it. It faded into the background like most things did lately.
Farida walked ahead of me. She carried Masika’s old backpack, which was filled with the magic stones the old woman had carefully collected during her exceptionally long life, as well as a container of Masika’s ashes. The dilapidated farm where she’d died had, thankfully, had a few dusty but useable old jars, so we had filled one with as much of her ashes as we could gather.
Now, watching the backpack jostle against Farida’s back as we walked, it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know what was in it. I mean, I knew it carried a bunch of stones, but I’d never been allowed to touch the bag, let alone look through it. How many stones did we actually have?
I was going to ask. I scripted the question in my head, debated on tone and delivery, imagined how to frame it as casual small talk — but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t muster any words. I stared at Farida’s braids, which were becoming a serious mess, and the whole pre-planned conversation fell apart in my head.
I felt like I hadn’t seen her face in days.
Chapter Two
I wasn’t sure how many hours had passed when we came upon the house. The sun had risen toward its peak, struggling to shine through the sheet of white-grey clouds that blanketed the sky, the light as weak and dreary as it had been when we’d set off that morning. Even still, seeing the house come into view was a little bit like the clouds had parted to beam down a heavenly spotlight. We hadn’t seen any potential shelter in days and I didn’t think I was the only one tired of sleeping in the mud. There were no shingles on the sides of the house — logo-decorated paper covered it instead, rippling in the faint breeze as though waving us closer.
We crept along the sodden grass, stopping halfway across the expansive lawn to get a closer look while still maintaining a safe distance. The windows looked newly installed with big company stickers across them, yet they were coated with dirt and stains. The front door had no doorknob. Through the grimy windows, it looked like the inside was just Gyprock. No priming, no painting — nothing.
“Old squat?” I asked hesitantly when Farida strode toward the door.
“No.” She didn’t so much as glance back at me. “But I can make it a new one.”
The inside was in the same half-finished state. Some rooms had flooring, but others were bare. The kitchen had cupboards scattered around, draped in protective plastic as they waited to be installed. There were no sinks in the house, though there were areas with visible plumbing where a sink could be put in. A thick layer of dust covered everything. We found a pile of unopened boxes of flooring in one of the would-be bedrooms with an invoice slip dated for March — about half a year ago.
For whatever reason, this renovation project was on a very long hiatus. We would probably be safe here for one night, maybe longer if we were feeling bold.
“I guess we can start laying stuff out to dry,” I said. My voice echoed through the empty main room. It made me feel strangely alone, even as Farida nodded and unshouldered her bag so she could remove her rolled up sleeping bag from the top.
The house was modern, with an open concept kitchen and living room branching off into a hallway lined with three bedrooms and a bathroom. A picture window dominated one wall of what would have been the living room, filling the space with sunlight, which was warmer and stronger now that we were safely indoors. It was the perfect spot to dry out our gear. We laid everything out in silence, the lack of conversation amplified by the size of the room, the sense of distance in a space that should have been for closeness and bringing people together.
I needed to get away. The more I was around her, the worse I felt. It wasn’t her fault, exactly — I couldn’t judge her for grieving, but… It was uncomfortable. And hard. And I needed a minute to myself.
Once I was fully unpacked, I grabbed my phone and charge cable and started wandering through the house. I highly doubted the house actually had any electricity, but I had to try my luck. My phone was near dead and it was my only slim chance of getting news on my parents.
I poked my head into each of the rooms on the main floor and, when none of them looked promising, headed down the stairs leading off the kitchen toward the basement.
The basement was one big room. I had pulled off my shoes so they could dry out in the sun with the rest of out gear in the living room, and my pruney, sloughing feet did not welcome the cold of the bare concrete floor. There wasn’t even Gyprock on the walls, exposing the wiring and plumbing like guts. Dust and sawdust covered everything, filling the air with the scent of cut lumber. An assortment of power tools was in one of the corners.
With a surge of renewed hope, I rushed over. There was an outlet there — no plate covering it, just a socket to plug something into. I crouched down beside the table saw that stood against the wall, quickly plugging my phone in. As I held the button to turn it back on, I held my breath and prayed.
My phone came to life, the light and colours splintered by the spiderweb of cracks that spread across the screen. In the top right corner, the little battery symbol had a lightning bolt through it. I could have cried in relief.
The only real problem now was that I had no signal. Texts and calls wouldn’t have come through while my phone was off, so I would have to wait until I was back in range of a signal to know for sure if my parents (or, more likely, Arman) had tried to contact me. With any luck, it was just being underground that was blocking my signal.
I would have to try again upstairs after it was charged.
“What are you doing?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin and ended up whacking my head off the corner of the table saw. White spots flashed in my vision and I struggled to find balance to stand.
“Sorry,” Farida muttered, already retreating up the stairs.
“No! No, it’s fine! I was just distracted.” I forced myself to stop rubbing at the throbbing spot on my skull. I didn’t want to scare Farida off when she had finally come to talk to me — it was like she was a stray cat I was trying to coax closer. “I was just checking if this place had power so I can charge my phone. We’re in luck.”
“Oh. Cool.”
We stood there awkwardly, looking at each other without making eye contact, her partway up the stairs and me in the corner wondering if my head was bleeding. It was several long seconds before she slowly started to descend the stairs again. When she reached the bottom, she was hugging herself, probably subconsciously. I noted that she was still wearing her sweater, even though it was drenched. I doubted the thing was actually keeping her warm, but I wasn’t about to question it and risk having her shut down the conversation again. “Is there any… anything?”
“No — well, I dunno. Maybe. I can’t get a signal, but that might just be because we’re underground.”
“Oh.”
“I could go back upstairs and check.”
“Right.”
It was beginning to look like I had used up all of Farida’s words for the day. Stifling a sigh as I unplugged my phone, I reminded myself that this was the longest conversation we’d had since Masika’s death. Progress was good, even if it was slow.
We headed back upstairs and I wandered the main floor in search of a signal. I found one right by the picture window, basking in the heat of the sun. It was a meagre two bars, but it was enough: My phone vibrated.
Those Who Fall Page 1