by Lizzy Ford
“There,” he says. “Food.”
The smurfs have appeared in the corridor below.
Jared and I wearily climb down the wall. We pick up our trays and form our own queue for more blue food.
He gets a dessert. I make a face at the dessert smurf. We pay and sit down beside the wall to eat.
The smurfs disappear. Jared and I eat and lean back against the wall. I refuse to allow my eyes to close longer than a blink, not when I know what happens if they do.
Jared is grimacing as he gazes at a forkful of food. “What kind of animal is this?”
“It’s spam. They take a bunch of animals, throw them into a blender and process the slime into patties,” I explain.
He lowers his fork. “Where’s the beef?” he asks.
“Not here,” I reply. “Who do you think is guiding us with the snow?”
“I don’t know. I hope they’re taking us where we want to go.” He hands me half of his dessert and what remains of the spam.
I accept it, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’ve been nice,” I say. “Are you Beetledude in disguise?”
“I didn’t know he was a person.”
I eat my blue cake with its blue icing slowly. I’m a fiend for sweets. “You still want to take over the galaxy, don’t you?”
“I’m this galaxy’s hero,” he assures me. “Maybe a bigger one than you already think I am.”
This gives me reason to pause. What can be worse than someone who wants to rule a galaxy? Beetledude, maybe, but that’s because he’s gross.
“What does that mean?” I ask, uncertain I’m ready to know the answer.
Jared smiles. It’s hard to think of him as a villain at all when his teeth and lips are blue. “We should go.” He stands and offers me a hand.
I set the empty cake plate aside and take his hand.
“Did you have some kind of divine experience or epiphany?” I ask.
“No.”
I don’t know what’s going on with him. He’s definitely been more subdued since he rescued me from Freddy. It’s possible he’s exhausted, like I am. It’s more likely something else is wrong. If the labyrinth showed me his life stories, did it show him the same? If so, does he understand he’s a character, not a real person? And that I created him?
I imagine if he knew that much, he’d have thrown me off the top of the wall already. I have to assume maybe the labyrinth showed me something it kept from him, but I don’t know why.
Trying to understand anything more than placing one foot in front of the other gives me a headache.
“More snow,” he says.
We trudge towards it. Despite the food, I’m not feeling refreshed at all. Jared has dark shadows beneath his eyes. We aren’t going to last much longer without sleep, and we’re nowhere near the center of the labyrinth.
“We need rest,” he says at last and stops.
I nod and sit down gratefully. “We can take turns sleeping.”
“I don’t think you’ll know to wake me that way, or me you.” He kneels beside me.
“Good point.”
“We do it together.” He extends his hand towards me and shifts to sit on his haunches.
I take his hand. We rest back on the top of the wall, holding hands, gazing at the three moons. Shivering, I move closer to him for warmth.
“We’ll make it.” He squeezes my hand.
I’m not sure I like this thaw. It’s kind of weird. In a way, I think it was good for us to be at one another’s throats and arguing all the time. After all, we’re enemies or will be again once we find the Ring.
“We need milkshakes,” he adds and then sighs.
I smile to myself. He has no idea what those are, but I agree. “They’re really good,” I supply. “Like mochas but frozen.”
“Maybe a milkshake gremlin will make us one.”
“God, I hope so.”
My eyes drift closed. I don’t want to sleep, but I’m too tired to stay awake any longer. Besides, we’ll enter the dream world together. If either of us sees a gremlin, we know to wake up. Although, I hope Freddy gives me time to down a few shots of vodka before chasing me.
“Do you think the coffee gremlin was right?” Jared asks in a sleepy tone.
“About what?”
“About the beginning and the end. About us sharing a past and future.”
“I don’t know how we can figure out that answer until we see the beginning and the end.” I’m starting to sound like a gremlin.
Whatever Jared says next, it’s swallowed by slumber.
Even before his eyes opened, he recognized the chill and scent of snow. The Knight had returned to the snow world. Tensing, he opened his eyes. This place was part of the dream world, where Freddy could kill him.
He was alone, standing at the point he’d reached last time: a quarter of a mile from the castle. One set of footsteps led toward the castle. Blood marred the snow beside the footprints. The little girl was nowhere to be seen.
Fear as stark as blood against snow struck him at his core. It wasn’t Freddy or some other monster he was afraid of. He couldn’t identify why he was scared at all.
But looking at the solitary tracks leading to the castle …
His heart and breathing quickened as they did when faced with lethal danger.
The knight stood in place, struggling to make sense of what some part of him – deeply hidden – already understood.
He clenched his fists. He’d never backed down from a challenge in his life, and he wasn’t about to now. He began walking towards the castle, heightened senses absorbing all they could from his surroundings, in case danger struck before he reached the fortress in front of him.
As he strode forward, the images of the castle’s interior replayed in his mind, followed by visions of the area around the castle: the small village sandwiched between the double walls, his private stables in back, where the best horses in the kingdom were kept. Beyond the walls were mountains, and beyond the mountains was the ocean, into which a winding river fed. A long, slender island sat offshore on the other side of a causeway where the clear water of the river met the salty depths of the ocean.
It was this area that gave the kingdom part of its name.
Except he didn’t know what that name was.
He was growing accustomed to being frustrated, if not by the labyrinth, then by the sense something here called to him, and he didn’t know what. This place, the snow world, was his.
But why? And how?
The Knight reached the drawbridge. It didn’t open, as it had thousands of times before in a memory he couldn’t recall.
He spotted the wooden door beside the drawbridge and walked to it. It didn’t open when he tried it. He stood back and gazed up at the stately stone walls, on top of which snow was piled. The snow world was peaceful, quiet.
“This is the beginning,” he said aloud, trying to reconcile the thoughts in his mind. “This is the beginning.” Was it also the end? How could any place be both?
He came from here, so why wouldn’t the castle let him enter?
He blew out a breath of anger and watched the puff of air float toward the sky.
You can’t die here, the little girl had told him more than once in the last vision.
If that were the case, then why wouldn’t the castle let him in, before Freddy found him?
His eyes dropped to the door again and then down. The footsteps he’d followed hadn’t gone inside, either. They led along the castle walls and disappeared around a corner.
The Knight followed the tracks. They led away from the castle, up a hill, and disappeared. He grew more anxious about Freddy and hoped a beverage gremlin appeared to warn him before he was slashed to pieces.
He went over the hill and down and then up a second hill. At last, he crested a hill and spotted the boy in the black coat kneeling at the top of the hill ahead of him. Afraid of the dream changing before he had a chance to reach it, the Knight ran down the hill without t
aking his eyes off the boy. He reached him and stopped.
The boy knelt in front of a tombstone, tears on his face and bloodied nose dripping.
Coldness slid through the Knight, deeper than before, and the paralyzing fear returned.
“Please tell me it’s not her,” the Knight whispered, uncertain how he could care so much about someone he’d known for this short a time.
The boy lifted his head at the sound of the Knight’s voice. “It’s not,” he said softly.
The Knight frowned and closed the distance between them.
The tombstone was blank. “Then whose is it?” he asked.
“No one’s. I can’t die here,” said the boy.
The Knight studied the tombstone then the sad boy.
“That’s why she brought me here.”
“I don’t understand,” the Knight whispered.
The boy stood and swiped his nose messily. “I died out there. I can’t die here.” He began walking towards the castle, which was when the Knight noticed there were not two sets of footsteps leading to this point.
Just one. The boy’s.
Something very cold slithered through him.
“Wait,” he called. “You and I …” He didn’t know how to ask the question at the tip of his tongue.
“Are the same?” the boy finished for him.
The Knight nodded.
“Yes,” he said.
“And we … I died out there. Where is there?”
“Her world.”
He began to understand. “So she brought us here. To this world.”
“We can’t die here.”
“No way, man,” the Knight said, wanting to squash the emotions rising within him. “She saw this world and didn’t recognize it!”
“When you grow up, your heart dies. Her memory of me died with it.”
How old was the girl who led him out of the world? Six? Seven? Did he blame her for not wanting to remember?
“I need to know what happened,” he said urgently, hopping to his feet. “How did we die in her world? How did she bring us here?”
“Car accident,” the boy said. “They told her I moved away, but she knew that wasn’t true. So she created this place and brought me here.”
The Knight wasn’t certain what a car was, but he didn’t need to know to comprehend that something bad had happened.
“We grew up together but she doesn’t know it. I go on adventures with her, but she doesn’t know that, either,” said the boy in a hushed tone.
“I’ll bring her here and remind her.”
“Why?” the boy appeared surprised.
The Knight asked himself the same thing. How could he remind her of an incident that painful? She’d tried to save him in what way she knew how and then forgotten, perhaps out of necessity. Or maybe, because her heart died in the cruel world of adulthood, like the boy said. How did a child that young deal with loss?
“I’m not real,” the Knight breathed.
The Knight stood very still. He felt the tiny shocks of snow land on his exposed skin, the sharpness of the cold air in his lungs. His body was warm, and he had a pulse. Feelings. Senses.
How could any of that be true, if he wasn’t real?
“You are to her,” said the boy.
“Why now?” the Knight asked. “I can’t recall anything before space. Definitely not this place.”
“She needs you.”
The Knight glanced at the tombstone, which took on a much greater significance. When he looked towards the boy once more, the child was gone.
Why did a woman - who had created an entire world - need him? He didn’t even know where her world was. He assumed they were from the same world, the one in which they were currently stuck in a labyrinth.
Did it matter she was from a different world? This one was as real as any, and they both existed here. How could it not be real?
His initial panic subsided. This world, and hers, was one of many. He had died in her world, and she had made him a new one.
How was it possible for anyone to create an entire new world? Was she a magician? A more powerful Power User than any that had ever existed?
The more he thought, the deeper the questions became. The sense he’d experienced since shortly after encountering her now made sense. They were connected in her world. It was impossible for their fates not to be entwined, when this world had begun when they entered it together.
Pensive, he stood in place until he began to shiver. Logic replaced his initial shock. He recalled nothing solid about his life before becoming a space knight of the Red Order. There was no solid evidence he’d ever been anyone else. Sometimes, he recalled dreams that could have been memories, and he often spoke words and quotes he didn’t know, because they made sense in the situation. He recognized some of the creatures whose paths he’d crossed, even though they didn’t exist in his world.
What happened between the time when Elf brought him here and when he became a space knight? The boy said he went on adventures with her, but the Knight recalled no such journeys.
This was the beginning. His beginning. Their beginning. That knowledge itself seemed more important than what had occurred between his arrival and his adventures in space.
The Knight crossed his arms, gazing around for another doorway to leave. The castle wasn’t ready to welcome him just yet, and he didn’t dare linger too long, for fear of Freddy.
He couldn’t reach the Ring from within the snow world, either. Discovering the truth behind his creation only added to his urgency to reach the Ring first. If Elf didn’t remember him, and knew his intentions with regards to the Ring, she was just as likely to banish him, or worse, kill him, if she obtained it first.
If she needed him, and it was because of some kind of danger, then it made more sense for him to obtain the Ring so he could protect her and his galaxy from whatever it was she needed protecting from.
He had learned answers to questions he hadn’t asked and no answers to the ones he had. Confusion remained rich in his mind, but his sense of purpose had only become more concrete.
Whatever his past was, he was on the right path now. He had to complete his journey. After that, he’d figure out what came next.
His eyes lingered on the tombstone. Sorrow was heavy in his gut, though he purposely tried to block it. He didn’t want to think about what it meant if he was dead in one world. The thought of dying in any world was frightening.
He was full grown, strong, influential, a Knight in every aspect. He didn’t need to fear anything in any world. He’d made it this far.
With her help. When they were together, nothing bad happened to him, as the little girl promised. When they were apart, that’s when things got rough.
The little girl had claimed she wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. Elf didn’t know it, but she was fulfilling the role she’d forgotten.
The Knight turned his back to the tombstone.
Freddy was standing at the peak of the adjacent hill.
“Oh, come on!” the Knight shouted. He had no weapons and even if he did, he’d never been able to face Freddy successfully. “Wake up!” He pinched his arms hard enough to hurt.
Freddy raced down the hill, dropping onto all fours in the snow.
The Knight turned and fled.
“Wake up!” he shouted to himself.
He tripped over a tree branch hidden beneath snow and smacked his head into a stump.
He woke up – or thought he did. When he came to, he wasn’t in the labyrinth at all but standing in a strange looking kitchen. The first light of dawn stretched across the horizon visible out a window over a sink, and a solitary form slumped beside the counter, holding a rectangular object he felt he should have identified but couldn’t recall what it was.
He and Elf were sharing a dream again. Whereas they’d shared the snow world dream, this was her world, a place he found appalling, not because there was anything wrong with his surroundings, but because it was t
oo unfamiliar. It was nowhere near as technologically advanced as his spaceship, and lacking the charm and elegance of his castle. If asked later, he’d never be able to describe her world, except that he understood why she’d created a new one for him.
Elf’s sniffles and crying left him feeling uneasy. He wanted to do something about it. Whether that was walk away or move closer, he couldn’t exactly identify. When her shoulders began to shake, he stepped closer, the protective instinct clamoring for him to make sure she was okay.
“Elf,” he said.
No response.
“Elf.” He reached out to touch her shoulder. His hand slid through her body. When he first met the children in the snow world, they hadn’t been able to see him either.
He leaned over her shoulder but could make no sense of the words she read on the rectangle. They hurt her, though, for pain was etched into her features. Not the pain of a physical injury, but the kind of pain that came from within.
Had he ever experienced that pain? He couldn’t recall – but he innately understood it, too. Perhaps, in one of the dreams that sometimes seemed like memories or perhaps, these phantom feelings stemmed from his childhood, from dying and losing his world.
That’s it, he realized. He had lost his world and somehow, Elf was losing hers.
Uncertain how to explain what was happening, all he could do was watch her cry.
This scene. Again.
I hate it.
My hand trembles as I unlock my husband’s phone. The initial text I saw was completely innocent. It wasn’t from her, and it wasn’t from any of his friends who already knew about the relationship.
It was from a colleague asking when his transfer was coming through.
I didn’t know about the transfer, so I unlocked the phone to see what he was talking about.
I re-read the text. As I did that day, I flip back to the rest of his messages and spot a name I don’t know.
My hand shakes. I keep telling myself it’s a dream or vision. I don’t need to feel the familiar shock and soul-deep pain that comes with the ultimate betrayal. A fling is one thing, and so is an affair.
But pledging your undying love to someone else and planning a life together? At least have the balls to tell me you don’t want to be with me!