Wyatt stood just behind her, frozen as she was. If he had taken the time to wonder what lay beyond the small bedroom, what he saw would have been at the bottom of the list.
“Cool,” Lucy said, stepping from the carpet and onto a thick bed of pine needles.
Wyatt followed, taking in the scent of pine and dirt. As he stepped into the forest, he heard the door slam shut behind him. He whirled around and found nothing but more forest. “Why is it always a forest?” Wyatt asked.
“You know where we are?” Lucy asked.
“Uh…I don’t think so. The trees are too small to be the Gazarian Pines, but too big to be the woods outside Greenwood. And it’s definitely not the Shadow Forest. Those trees are different.”
“So, we’re lost, huh?” Lucy asked without an ounce of worry in her voice.
“Don’t you find this strange?” Wyatt asked.
“Nope,” Lucy said. She pointed a finger past Wyatt. “But that’s a little weird.”
Wyatt turned around and gasped as he watched the distant shape of a person running between the trees. They saw just a tiny smudge of color that kept passing behind trees, moving further away from Wyatt and Lucy.
Lucy pushed past Wyatt and began running toward the person. “Come on, Wy, we got to follow.”
Wyatt kicked himself into action and ran after her. “Why? Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy called, staying a couple strides ahead of him. Even as a younger version of herself, she was still faster than Wyatt. “But we have to follow. It’s how dreams work.”
“But you’re not even sure this is a dream.”
“Nope,” Lucy said. “Doesn’t matter.”
Doesn’t it? Wyatt wondered to himself as he chased after.
He managed to catch up with the spritely girl, and together they tore through the forest. They didn’t seem to draw any nearer their quarry. And it was increasingly difficult to keep sight of the fleeing person.
“I think whoever it is is faster than us,” Wyatt gasped, coming to a stop and resting his hands on his knees.
Lucy skidded to a halt and turned back to him, not nearly as winded as he was. “We can’t give up.”
“Why not? I’ve done enough running around in real life; I don’t need to be chasing people through my dreams, as well. And if this is a dream, why am I so tired?” Wyatt said, still struggling to catch his breath.
Lucy frowned at him, but then shifted her expression into one of surprise. She held up a finger. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.
Wyatt tried to silence his breathing as he looked around. After a moment, he asked, “Hear what?”
Lucy waved her hands at him. “Shhhh.”
“Lucy—”
“There!” she shouted, running past Wyatt again. She grabbed his arm as she streaked by, forcing him to follow once more.
They ran a few steps and then stopped. “Do you hear it now?”
Wyatt pulled his arm away from Lucy’s grasp, but didn’t say anything because he did hear it. “Sounds like…crying?”
Lucy nodded and slowly walked ahead, scanning the forest on both sides of her as she went. Wyatt crept after, doing the same. They both walked in shared silence, driven on by the sound of stifled weeping. It grew louder with each step until they passed by a particularly thick tree and found the source huddled against the thick roots.
Lucy and Wyatt looked at each other and knelt down an arm’s reach from the figure. A head of black hair was wedged between knees, around which arms were tightly wrapped. Wyatt thought the person was girl, and perhaps a child, but it was difficult to tell in the dim light and with her curled upon herself.
Lucy reached a hand out, but Wyatt grabbed her wrist before she could touch the stranger’s shoulder. She glared at him.
“We should be careful,” he said.
“But—”
The crying stopped and the person bolted upright. Lucy and Wyatt fell backwards at the sudden movement.
Deep brown eyes, brimming with tears stared at them, and Wyatt felt the bottom of his stomach fall out. “Athena?!”
The girl started, fell away from them, and struggled to her feet. She was younger than Wyatt knew, but it was undoubtedly Athena, a mirror image of the photograph Wyatt had seen when he had magically appeared in her room at The Shepherd’s Crook.
“Athena?” Wyatt asked again, standing but holding his ground.
“That’s your friend?” Lucy asked. “The one we’re looking for? Well, that was easy.”
Athena looked at Lucy and then whipped her gaze back to Wyatt. Their eyes locked, but there was no recognition within. Wyatt took a single step forward and held out his hands in peace. Athena took a step back.
“It’s okay,” Wyatt said as softly as he could. “It’s me, Wyatt.”
Athena frowned for a moment, but then turned suddenly to the side and screamed. Wyatt retreated a step and watched in horror as a large figure shot out from behind a tree, caught Athena around the waist, hoisted her over a shoulder, and began running. Athena continued to scream and thrashed against the newcomer’s hold, but it had little effect.
“Athena!” Wyatt shouted, breaking into a sprint.
Whatever man or creature had Athena was unnaturally quick, and in a matter of seconds was entirely gone from sight, leaving only a trail of wispy black fog. Athena’s heart-rending shrieks lasted a moment longer, but then they, too, faded into haunting silence.
Wyatt shouted a few more times and stumbled to his knees, staring at the last point he had seen his lost friend. Time hung suspended until a touch at Wyatt’s shoulder shocked him into the present once more.
“Was that really Athena?” Lucy asked.
Wyatt nodded. “A younger version of her. Younger like we are. But she didn’t recognize me. It was like she couldn’t even see us.”
“Who was that man that took her?”
Wyatt shook his head and sat back on his heels, chin dropping to his chest. “I don’t know. What is this, Lucy? It doesn’t feel like a dream.”
Lucy sat on the dirt next to him. “Maybe it’s not.”
“Then what? If it’s not a weird dream we’re sharing, then what is it? And why are we younger? It’s not like we time-traveled. That wouldn’t make us younger, though it would explain why Athena was. But that makes even less sense than everything else I’ve gone through. Nothing like this has happened before—”
“But you broke it.”
Wyatt looked at Lucy, dumbfounded and horrified. “I don’t think this a dream at all. It’s a—”
“Memory,” Lucy said flatly, still refusing to look at him.
Wyatt nodded slowly. How had Lucy put it before? The memories are leaking…they had hypothesized that the Realms were constructed of memories, both good and bad, that Lucy had shuttled away, but Wyatt didn’t know if he believed it. Until now. Beyond that acceptance, a new realization blossomed.
“But this can’t be your memory…” he said, nudging Lucy.
She looked at him and shook her head.
“And it isn’t mine, I don’t think.”
Lucy shook her head again.
Wyatt felt the entire forest spin around him. He squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to steady his thoughts.
When he opened his eyes, the forest was gone. In its place was a small bedroom of stone. He was sitting on the floor, next to a bed, bathed in morning sunlight streaming in through a single open window. Lucy was sitting up on the bed, staring at him.
“I think we’re wrong about the Realms,” Wyatt said.
Chapter Five
“OOH! FOOD!” LUCY shouted as she and Wyatt entered the common area of their suite.
Wyatt was still too confounded by previous events to respond, and watched as his sister skipped to the table at the center of the room and began helping herself to the steaming dishes. They hadn’t talked about their shared dream…or memory…or whatever it was. And the more time that passed, the fuzzier it became for Wyatt. He knew at one point it had
seemed real, no different than when he bounced between Earth and the Realms. But now it was beginning to feel more and more like a dream. Dreams always had a funny way of blurring the further one got from them. Despite all that, Wyatt remembered Athena. The rest was mist and vapor, but the look on Athena’s face and the pain in her voice as she was torn away from him was breathtakingly real.
Lucy shouted something at him, but her mouth was stuffed with food, and the words were mangled beyond recognition. Wyatt watched her for a few more moments before crossing the room to the door of the second bedroom.
He knocked. No answer. He knocked louder. “Ms. Abagail?” he called out.
Wyatt listened for another breath before grabbing the latch and slowly easing the door open. Peering into the room without entering, Wyatt could see Ms. Abagail sprawled atop the single bed, hair covering her face.
“Ms. Abagail,” he said again, raising his voice.
Ms. Abagail groaned and rolled over. Her eyes remained closed. “Too early,” she said.
“But something funny happened—”
“Too. Early,” Ms. Abagail growled more than said. “Get out.”
“But—”
“Out!”
Wyatt snapped back, shutting the door in his own face, nearly clipping his nose. He stared at the wood of the door for a moment, then sighed and joined Lucy at the table.
“She isn’t a morning person, is she?” Lucy asked around a mouthful of biscuit.
Wyatt shook his head. “On Saturday mornings, she used to tell us not to talk to her until the sun was as high as it could get.”
“Hmm,” Lucy mused, head cocked to the side. “Biscuit?” she asked, holding out her hand.
Wyatt shot a look at Ms. Abagail’s door before accepting the biscuit. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he took the first bite. He couldn’t even be certain how it tasted, for in what felt like a blink, it was gone, and he found himself pawing at the table for more.
Lucy laughed, grabbed an apple in one hand, and a piece of steaming meat in the other. Wyatt found something akin to bacon and began stuffing it into his mouth as quickly as he could.
“Try this,” Lucy said, tossing a pastry at him.
It hit him in the chest and dropped into his lap, but he snatched it up and bit off half the thing in one bite. When had he last eaten? As troubling as his situation was, it became a distant thought, replaced by the need to feed. Finally, a problem he could solve.
“Anything to drink?” he asked after he devoured the pastry.
Lucy pushed a ceramic carafe toward him, sloshing dark liquid onto the table. Wyatt grabbed it with both hands and took a deep swig. Fire lit across his tongue and chased down his throat into his gut. A tingle shot up from his toes and spread to the rest of his body. Wyatt set the pitcher aside with a violent cough.
He kept coughing until Lucy swatted him on the back several times. “Thanks,” he said weakly.
“No good?” Lucy asked.
Wyatt grabbed another pastry and chomped into it. It helped quench the fire left behind by the unknown beverage. “Not sure that’s for drinking, but it certainly woke me up. And I’m all tingly.”
“Oh! Fun,” Lucy said, reaching for the carafe. Wyatt grabbed it before she could and placed it on the opposite side of the table from her. She pouted.
“You don’t want it. Trust me.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling at him. Jam was smeared across one cheek and her hair was disheveled. “Brother.”
He smiled back and felt his skin tingle again, though he didn’t think it had to do with the strange concoction he had drunk. He patted Lucy on the shoulder, immediately blushed from the awkwardness of the gesture, and returned to his breakfast.
“Do you miss it?” Lucy asked after Wyatt had made his way through another biscuit and a pair of muffins.
“Miss what?”
“Being a Druid. Being magical.”
Wyatt grabbed at his chest, feeling the emptiness carry straight to his core. “Yeah, I guess.”
“But I’m the Druid now, right?” Lucy reached beneath her shirt and withdrew her Druids’ seed. The green gem set in dark wood glittered in the early morning light. Wyatt didn’t think his had ever been so clear and vibrant. When he had given it to the Bad Man, it had been nearly black.
“Guess so. Do you feel any different?”
“Different than what?”
“Well, when I first came to the Realms, I could, like, hear this whisper. Hard to explain, but I learned it was the Mother speaking to me, giving me power. But if you’re the Mother…”
Lucy pinched the gem between her forefinger and thumb and brought it to her eye. “I never said that. You did. I’m just Lucy.”
Wyatt watched the sparkle of the gem and felt a thin glimmer of jealously break through the darkness. If he took the amulet from her, could he become a Druid once more? Wyatt shoved the impulse away, back into the depths of his mind, but still it scratched at him. Wyatt dug his fingers into his chest, hoping to quell the itch.
Lucy replaced her amulet beneath her shirt and looked at Wyatt’s chest. “You all right?”
Wyatt looked down at his hands, scratching at his chest as if they sought to rend the flesh from bone. He forced them to stop.
“Oh, you’re bleeding now,” Lucy said, shuffling closer atop the bench they shared. “You shouldn’t scratch so hard.”
A small spot of red slowly bled through the white of his buttoned nightshirt. Tentatively, Wyatt undid the buttons from the top down to assess the damage.
“Cool,” Lucy said as Wyatt pulled the halves of his shirt apart. “Does it hurt?”
In the middle of Wyatt’s chest, where his Druids’ seed had once grown, was a mass of pink and purple scar tissue. It took up a fair portion of his upper chest. Lucy pressed a cloth napkin against it, stemming the weak flow of blood from the small cut Wyatt had opened up in the massive scar.
Wyatt put his hands over hers and forced her to let go of the napkin. “I got it,” he said, suddenly feeling far more self-conscious than he was used to.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Lucy said. “I have a scar, too.” She reached up and parted her hair away from her left temple. There, amid the blonde locks, was a thick scar that curved above her ear.
“How’d that happen?” he asked, setting aside the napkin and buttoning his shirt.
“No idea. Yours?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
Lucy frowned. “If I knew, I’d tell you. We’re brother and sister now. That means no secrets.”
“Everyone has secrets. Even you.”
“Do not.”
“Then what happened to us? To Mom and Dad?”
Lucy’s face contorted with rage. “That’s not fair!” she shouted, at the same time swiping her arm across the table, scattering its contents in all directions.
Wyatt jumped up in an attempt to avoid the edible projectiles as well as the infuriated girl. He managed to half-fall, half-sit on the floor behind the bench. Lucy climbed atop it, armed with a wooden serving spoon. She pointed it at Wyatt.
“You tell me what happened. All I know is that it was your fault!” Lucy’s face was bright red, the spoon shaking violently in her white-knuckled hand.
Wyatt stayed where he was, legs up on the bench, back to the floor, eyes locked on Lucy. “It wasn’t my fault!” he retorted. “I told you before, when we were at Greenwood. It was an accident. A car accident. Ms. Abagail showed me the newspaper article about it. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. If you could just remember, then maybe all of this craziness would end.”
“It is not my fault! You gave the Bad Man your power.” Lucy punctuated each statement by kicking an object in Wyatt’s general direction. “This was my secret place. And you took it away from me, just like you took Julia away.”
Wyatt swatted aside a flying roll only to catch a clay dish in the chin. He scrambled to his feet. “We wouldn’t even be in this mess if you hadn’t made this wo
rld and put all your messed-up memories in it. The Bad Man is here because of you. And probably the Regents, too. I have friends out there,” Wyatt was yelling now, and gesturing at the nearest window. “And I’ve lost even more friends here. The Realms aren’t some playground or fairy tale land you can just play in and hide whatever stuff you don’t want to deal with. It’s real.”
Lucy stopped in the middle of the table, quivering with rage. “The Bad Man said you wouldn’t admit what you did. He said to stay away from you. But you wouldn’t leave us alone.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Wyatt shouted back. “Mom and Dad are dead, Lucy. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Admit that and maybe we can fix things.”
“Liar!” Lucy dropped the spoon and pressed her hands over her ears, continuing to scream the single word.
Wyatt felt hot fire burn up from his gut. Why was she being so stubborn? It had been an accident. He’d read the paper with his own eyes. It wasn’t a mystery anymore. And any blame he had once placed on himself was misguided. It had to be. He hadn’t killed his parents. It had been an accident. Perhaps a deer had run out into the street. Or maybe his father had fallen asleep at the wheel and veered into danger. Wait. How do I know my father was driving?
The door behind Wyatt blew open, smashing into the wall with a loud retort. Lucy stopped screaming and Wyatt turned around to see Ms. Abagail looming in the bedroom door, eyes glowing like embers, pinning him in place.
“Why are you screaming?” she demanded, switching her glare back and forth between Wyatt and Lucy.
“She can’t admit that this is her fault,” Wyatt said, jabbing a finger at Lucy.
Lucy leaned forward, eyes pinched shut and fists clenched, and began shrieking with a guttural ferocity that forced Wyatt back into Ms. Abagail. She pushed him away and walked toward the table, crushing food beneath her bare feet.
“Hey! Knock it off, right now!” Ms. Abagail shouted at Lucy.
Lucy continued to shriek, the pitch in her voice increasing. The few things still on the table began shaking, and Wyatt could have sworn that he felt the floor shift beneath him, if just an inch.
“Yeah, we get it,” Ms. Abagail said with far less tact than Wyatt was accustomed to seeing from her. “You can scream real loud and real long. Well, it is too early for this.”
The Druid's Guise: The Complete Trilogy (The Druid's Guise Trilogy) Page 65