White Tree Sound

by Lizzy Ford

  I shuffle on my knees deeper into the cave, towards Jared, whose eyes are on the entrance of the cave. I stop beside him, not caring that my thighs and his are pressed together. There’s no way we’re facing a monster today after what we’ve been through.

  The roar comes again from nearby.

  My breathing grows loud, erratic. I’m ten seconds away from a complete breakdown.

  Jared grips my forearm and twists it to see the ring.

  Muddy brown. I’m interpreting that as danger but not the kind of danger where we die.

  The roar sounds. This time, it’s farther away.

  Neither of us dares relax quite yet, not after our terrible luck. When it comes again, even farther from our hiding spot, we breathe a collective sigh.

  We consult the mood ring, which is dark blue. It’s not black, and that’s all I care about.

  Jared releases me and sits back against a boulder. He pulls his knees up and rests his elbows on them, rubbing his face. His features display what I feel: doom. We aren’t meant to make it through this quest. I want to make some kind of joke about how it can’t possibly get worse, but I don’t want to jinx us more than we already are.

  It’s suddenly night. And cold.

  God, I hate the weather and progression of time here.

  “Cold?” Jared asks wearily.

  “No,” I reply stubbornly.

  He wraps one arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his body. I relax immediately. He’s warm and smells better the more he sweats. He wraps his other arm around me and rests his cheek against the top of my head.

  Neither of us has the energy for a smartass remark about anything. I can’t help hoping there’s a magical barista gremlin waiting for us when we wake up. I don’t even want to imagine what this place has in store for us tomorrow. We have to kill a monster, and I’m not even sure why anymore.

  “We aren’t doing what the mocha gremlin said,” Jared murmurs, as if reading my mind.

  “Going back to the beginning? I was thinking about that, too.”

  “Unless this is the beginning.”

  “How can this be the beginning?” I muse. “It’s the end of our quest. Or should be, once we reach the castle, if we aren’t killed first.”

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “The Ring will know.”

  His breathing deepens. His body relaxes, and he drops off into sleep.

  As tired as I am, I’m thinking about what happens when we find this mysterious ring. If he wants it for nefarious reasons, and I want to protect the galaxy from him, then we’re going to have a showdown of some sort. I can’t physically fight him.

  I don’t know where that leaves me.

  I also don’t trust this world to provide us with any sort of predictable outcome. Maybe there’s no ring at all. I’d like to think nothing can surprise me after my three days here, but … that’s not true. I’m terrified of the kinds of surprises awaiting us in the morning.

  Despite my concern, I’m deep in slumber in his arms again seconds after I close my eyes.

  I awaken when my feet grow cold. The gentle swish of water into the cave greets me.

  I’m so tired of being cold.

  My eyes open. The cave is starting to fill with water from the lake. My feet are immersed in water.

  “Hey, Jared,” I mumble and sit up. He’s leaning against a rock, and I’m half seated, half lying on top of him.

  He stirs. I climb to my feet and stretch. I didn’t sleep as well this night, probably because I couldn’t help worrying about what happens when we reach the Ring.

  He stands.

  Wordlessly, we wade out of the cave and to the rocky embankment beside the lake. The moons are on the eastern horizon, two ticks closer to eclipsing than when we fell asleep.

  I grab the mouthwash waiting for me and gaze out over the lake. It’s calm and serene, a cool, pretty morning.

  “Elf,” Jared says, an odd note in his voice.

  I hand him the mouthwash.

  “Elf.”

  Turning, I gasp.

  The twenty foot tall, three-headed monster is standing nearby, waiting for us. Two pacballs dangle in the air above them. Three very human faces are set atop scaly green necks. Each neck wears a placard.

  “The Sicilian, The Spaniard, The Giant,” Jared reads the placards. “Does this make sense to you?”

  “Yeah. They should be guarding the princess.”

  “You shall not pass, unless you defeat us in one of three challenges,” the three voices say at the same time.

  Jared appears perplexed.

  I rub my face and eyes. This is stupid, another trial meant to distract me from the journey.

  “What kind of challenges?” Jared asks the monster.

  “You choose. Skill, strength, or strategy,” chants all three heads.

  “Skill,” I respond.

  “Strength,” Jared says at the same time.

  We eye each other.

  “Unless you woke up with a sword, we aren’t going to win with strength,” I tell him.

  “Strength is straightforward. We don’t know what skill they’re talking about,” he counters.

  “What skill?” I address the monster.

  “We cannot tell you until you accept!” they chant.

  “How about the third option?” Jared asks.

  “We have a better chance of outsmarting them than we do overpowering them,” I reply.

  “Assuming it’s something we can outsmart them at. What if it’s obscure trivia?” His face scrunches like it does when he says something he doesn’t understand.

  “Does it matter? You don’t even know what trivia is,” I say.

  He sighs. “Strategy,” he says to the monster, displeased.

  “Come with us!” The monster turns and walks away.

  Jared isn’t happy, and neither am I.

  The monster leads us away from the lake, past the trees hedging it and towards a small structure rising eight feet tall, perpendicular to the ground. Red tokens are stacked on one side of the structure, black on the other.

  “I know this one!” I exclaim.

  “Mocha gremlin,” Jared says, attention completely elsewhere.

  The gremlin and her coffee cart stand beside the mega-version of Connect Four. She’s smiling, and steam rises off the espresso machine.

  Uncertainty, laced with fear, drift through me. “Does that mean this isn’t real?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know.” Jared is as troubled as I am.

  She’s making a jumbo-sized coffee for the monster, which accepts it and goes to the side of the game with black tokens.

  Jared and I approach the coffee gremlin.

  “Oh, you made it!” she says cheerfully. “Mochas?”

  I nod, trying to figure out if this is a dream or not. How would I know?

  “Have you found the end or the beginning?” she asks.

  “Neither,” Jared answers.

  “You have time. Don’t worry.”

  We don’t have much time, judging by the moons.

  She hands us our drinks.

  “Can you tell us if we’re on the right track?” I ask.

  “No,” she replies.

  Jared and I freeze in place, our mochas halfway to our respective mouths.

  “I can’t tell you,” she clarifies. “But there’s always more than one way to reach a destination.”

  “That means we’re not,” Jared mutters under his breath.

  “Pretty much.”

  We go to the red side of the game with our coffees. Two pacballs hang in the balance above the board.

  “We have to get four of our colors in a row and prevent them from doing the same,” I explain to Jared.

  “Sounds simple,” he replies.

  The only challenge isn’t much of an impediment, given our previous experiences. The board is six feet tall, which means we’ll have to work together to lift the tokens and slide them into place.

  “Rock, paper, scis
sors for who goes first,” chants the monster.

  I walk to the board.

  The monster shakes its hand, and I focus on beating it at the first game. We choose on three.

  I have scissors.

  The monster chose paper.

  “In your face, Sicilian!” I say under my breath and return to Jared. “We go first,” I inform him.

  We size up the board and our tokens.

  “That’s the first position we need to secure,” he says and points to one of the central slots.

  “Absolutely not. Corners first. Always,” I reply.

  “A corner can be blocked more easily.”

  “Do you have any idea how many times I played this as a kid?”

  “This requires strategy, which I use daily in designing – and winning – space battles. Which one of us thought space had air?” he challenges.

  We glare at one another.

  I take it back. We have a much greater challenge than the size of the tokens. Jared and I either work together flawlessly or throw wrenches into each other’s gears.

  The monster’s heads are watching us.

  “You need to trust me on this,” I say firmly.

  “No. You need to trust me for once.”

  “What do you mean for once? I trusted you on the cliff,” I point out.

  “You also sleep in my arms.”

  “Exactly. I do trust you to an extent.”

  “Then let me decide our first move!”

  “Why don’t you trust me?” I reply. “I’ve done this before.”

  Equally aware our discussion is being overheard and monitored by a three-headed monster, Jared moves closer to me, so we can talk in relative privacy.

  “I can trust you and still think you’re wrong,” he says. “I’m asking you to trust me this morning. You can make the second move.”

  I’m about to retort when his words click. He trusts me. The sexiest man in the galaxy trusts me. The villain trusts me. The man who showed up to have coffee with me trusts me. I’m surprised – in a good way. A mocha gremlin kind of way.

  “Your move,” I say.

  Jared goes to the stack of tokens nearest the board and lifts one. He staggers beneath its weight but approaches the board. I hurry forward to help and pause.

  “Put it down. We can make a pile so it’s easier to reach the top,” I say.

  “Rad idea.”

  We stack three tokens to make it easier for him to heft the first one and slide it into the slot. It drops into place, and Jared steps back.

  The monster drops a black token into the board seconds later.

  Jared steps aside to let me choose the next move.

  I point. He hefts another token and slides into place.

  The monster drops its token effortlessly.

  Jared and I stand beside one another. “Now we take a corner,” he says. “Unless you object?”

  I shake my head.

  We play back and forth with the monster for an hour or so, until Jared is sweating from the effort of lifting tokens.

  In the end, the game is a draw. No one wins.

  I wait apprehensively for the monster’s reaction.

  “Again!” it roars.

  The tokens magically lift from the board and return to their respective positions on each side.

  “New strategy,” Jared states. “Mind if I go first?”

  “Go for it,” I reply.

  An hour later, we reach another draw.

  The monster throws a tantrum while Jared and I watch. It’s nice to see someone else frustrated for once.

  “You were right,” I admit. “You are good at this.”

  “I told you. Strategy is my life.”

  “No, I mean at frustrating someone else to the point they pull up a tree and fling it,” I respond, eyes on the tree the pissed monster just threw towards the lake.

  “You can keep yourself warm tonight,” he growls.

  “If you’re not careful, you’ll cease being the villain soon,” I say. I start towards the game board.

  “Villain?” Jared echoes.

  I catch the odd note in his voice but don’t pay any attention. I’m too interested in making sure no trees are thrown in my direction. “Hey!” I shout to the monster. “One more game. If neither of us wins, we can do another round of rock-paper-scissors!”

  The monster sets down the boulder it was about to hurl and approaches the board. “Very well,” the voices say.

  Satisfied, I return to Jared.

  He moves away from me. “You choose this time,” he directs me. His tone has cooled. His arms are folded across his chest, and he’s not looking at me.

  I glance towards him, uncertain what caused the sudden chill.

  An hour later, we tie the monster again.

  “Final round!” the monster roars and holds out its fist.

  I walk to the board and extend my clenched hand as well.

  One, two, three.

  I play scissors.

  It plays rock.

  “Oh, no,” I whisper. Fear zips through me. Jared is close enough for me to hear his breath catch.

  “And now, you will pay!” the monster roars.

  “But first, we all need refreshments,” a cheerful voice says.

  We turn to the mocha gremlin, who has been joined by a male gremlin in a hat. A soda machine is on his cart, which is parked beside the coffee cart.

  “I’m definitely okay with that,” I say.

  The monster’s faces scowl, but it heads toward the carts first.

  Jared and I follow.

  “What do we do?” I ask as we wait for the monster to decide what it wants to drink.

  “The only thing we can do. Run,” Jared whispers. “The monster is too big to fit into the cave. We hide there.”

  Then what? I don’t ask. He doesn’t know any more than I do. At this point, we’re making shit up in the hope we survive long enough to figure out what to do next.

  “One, two. He’s coming for you,” the beverage gremlins say in singsong voices.

  I recognize the nursery rhyme and try to place it.

  “Three, four. Better lock the door,” say the gremlins.

  “This is bad. But I don’t know why,” Jared whispers.

  “I do.” I whip around, seeking the freaky serial killer the gremlins are singing about. Jared turns his back to me, and we search our surroundings visually.

  The monster is gone, along with the Connect Four game. Everything else looks the same. There’s nowhere for anyone to hide in the middle of the field where we’re standing.

  “Tell me why I’m scared,” Jared orders me.

  “Because they’re singing about an immortal, psychotic madman who slashes people to death,” I reply.

  “That explains it.”

  “Do you see anyone or anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  My heart is racing. I didn’t plan to be murdered today.

  A low, smoky growl comes from the direction of the gremlin carts. The creatures are sipping their respective beverages, watching.

  I face Freddy. He’s not exactly how I remember. He’s literally a cougar standing on two legs and dressed like Freddy did in the movies. Instead of razor sharp metal talons, his natural claws are exposed and ready to slash.

  “Freddy Cougar,” I state. “We can’t catch a break.”

  “Run!” Jared shouts and bolts in the direction opposite the madman.

  We run hard until we’re panting, towards the lake.

  Why aren’t we getting any closer?

  I sneak a look behind us and let out a terrified shriek.

  Freddy is at the normal leisurely stalking pace of a movie serial killer. But I’m not like the teenage girls the madmen normally chase who decide to explore the second story of a house after all their friends have already been murdered.

  I’m at a dead run.

  “We aren’t moving!” Jared shouts.

  I look down. We’re on a grass-covered t
readmill. We’re going nowhere, which is what the teenage girls in the original movies did, too. I already know what’s supposed to happen next. I’m supposed to trip, and Freddy –

  Jared stumbles and smashes to the ground. He’s thrown backwards off the treadmill and sprawls at Freddy’s feet.

  I cease running, breathless and scared. I can’t fight the monster chasing us. Freddy may never die, but he’s defeated in every one of his movies. How?

  One, two. Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock the door. Five six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight …

  “Dream!” I cry. “This is a dream!”

  Freddy appears in dreams and kills the kids, who then die in real life.

  “Wake up, Jared!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Wake up!” I smack my cheeks and pinch my arms, hoping the pain wakes me up, too.

  Jared climbs to his feet.

  Freddy raises his arm to slash my companion in half.

  I snap awake.

  I’m in the cave by the lake with cold water lapping my feet and the chill of morning in the air. Panting, I look around wildly until I’m certain Freddy isn’t waiting in the corner to kill me.

  Jared mumbles in his sleep.

  I reach over and shake him. His eyes open and then close just as quickly. Three shallow slashes appear across his chest, tearing his uniform. I shake him harder. He fails to rouse, and I slap him hard.

  “Snap out of it!” I shout.

  Jared jerks awake and sits, arms flailing as if he’s trying to fend of the serial killer after us both.

  “It’s okay!” I cry. “You’re safe.”

  He sits up, breathing hard. “What just happened?” he whispers, stricken. He touches the scratches on his chest and stares at the blood on his fingers.

  I sit back, hands shaking. “I think this place just upped the ante on us. Freddy appears in dreams and murders people. Which means …”

  “… we can’t sleep.”

  He appears as grave as I feel.

  “At least we know if we see a beverage gremlin, we know it’s totally a dream,” he says and rubs his face. “We didn’t face the three-headed monster.”

  “Not yet. I didn’t lose the game, unless losing in a dream means losing in real life.”

  God, I can’t keep everything straight! I need a list of rules. I can’t help my roving eyes. Are we really awake? Will we have a warning next time Freddy shows up?

  I didn’t think this adventure could get any worse.