12

 

While the friends embraced, a medic sprite whirred into the room carrying a silver tray with three paper cups of medication on it. They watched as it sidled up next to the vacant bed in the room. A long silver arm with a pincer extended out from its back, grasped the paper cup, and held it gingerly up to the bed waiting for the nonexistent patient to open its invisible mouth, which the sprite promptly dumped the pills into. The pills landed softly on the pillow, and the sprite zipped over to the door, dropped the paper cup into the waste bin, and left the room. Immediately a female orderly dressed in white walked briskly into the room. She nodded at the three friends, who were locked in an embrace and staring at her wide-eyed. She scooped up the medication, dropped it into a small box that she was carrying and ran back out the door, chasing the medic sprite.

The three friends fell apart from each other laughing. Caleb clutched his sides and guffawed himself off the bed onto the floor. Mallory stood up, wheezing and trying desperately to catch her breath and stop the giggling. Alex laid in the bed nearly screaming with laughter. Just as they were starting to calm down, Caleb crawled over to the empty bed, got up on his knees and pretended to throw medication at the pillow. The teens fell into fits of laughter again.

Time seemed to slow down for the old friends as they laughed, but soon the laughter died down, and the room dimmed with the gravity of the situation. Those medic sprites used to help people, and now they were not only useless, they were a nuisance—dangerous even. If one gave the wrong medication to the wrong patient, it could be lethal.

Alex began to cry again. “I worried that no one would ever come to see me at all after what we did,” she said through sniffles and tears. “My grandfather came once when I got out of the ICU. He wanted to know if we’d really dropped the book into the fire. Once he knew for sure, he left. I called after him. I wanted to know if my parents were coming to see me. He turned around and looked at me as if I were a monster for even asking. Oh Mal, I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. I think he hates me. I think my parents hate me. Maybe the whole city hates me!”

Mallory lowered herself back to the bed and took hold of her hand. She wanted to say it was not true, but she had been out there in the streets and seen the hate directed toward her. It was impossible to know how many were aware of Alex’s involvement, but if they knew, they probably did hate her.

Caleb stood behind Mallory and said, “Alex . . .”, but that was as far as he got. Mallory knew him well enough to know that he was too honest to lie, even to comfort his friends. He had no doubt overheard people talking: the City Council, his parents, their parents.

“Well,” Mallory demanded. “What are they saying about us, Caleb? You might as well tell us; we’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

Caleb shifted uncomfortably. “No one hates you, not so much anyway. They’re just scared. My father says that when people get scared, they say and do things they don’t mean.”

“What do they say, Caleb?” Mallory pressed.

Caleb sighed. “I’m not going to repeat it, Mallory. They don’t mean it.”

“Are you scared? Have you said things you don’t mean?” Mallory’s gray eyes flashed as she stared Caleb down.

Caleb met her gaze with a strength of his own. He was the only person besides Mallory’s grandmother who had never tried to change her and was completely at ease with both her curse and the indomitable force of her will that she had developed in compensation. The corner of his mouth turned up in a half-grin. “I’ve never said anything I didn’t mean, Mal. And I still want what I want.”

Alex’s voice sounded uncomfortable, “What is happening?”

Caleb looked past Mallory, still half-grinning. “Mallory and I are getting married.”

Alex laughed nervously, looking up at Mallory, “What?”

Mallory shrugged and plopped down on the side of Alex’s bed. She flicked her curly brown hair haughtily, “Caleb proposed a couple of weeks ago, but I turned him down.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Alex said.

Mallory crossed her legs and put both hands on her knee and made a pouting face at Caleb. “What? That Caleb would propose?”

“No, that you would turn him down!” Alex pushed herself up farther in the bed and stared wide-eyed at the two of them. “Why would you do that? I thought you wanted to marry him?”

“I never said that!”

Alex shrugged, “Well, you sure didn’t want your new sister to marry him!”

Caleb clapped, “I knew it! Why do you have to play hard to get, Mallory?”

Mallory jumped off the bed and yelled, “I’m not playing!” She ran past Caleb toward the door. Just before she left, she turned and said, “Sometimes things aren’t meant to be. I wish you both would just leave it alone.” She could not remember which way the elevators were, and she could hear Caleb calling her name in the room, so she ran to her right without looking back. She burst through a pair of double doors at the end of the hallway. The elevators were not this way, but she really did not want to go back to all the questions she could not answer, so she wandered deeper into the labyrinth of the hospital corridors searching for a stairwell.

Every hallway looked the same: pale Dikaió lights, white-tiled floors, wooden-paneled doors, various pieces of equipment littering the hallways, men and women dressed in identical hospital scrubs scurrying about, popping in and out of doors. It was all a blur. Then she heard a familiar voice say her name, and she slowed her pace and looked around. The old nurse that had led her to the room to get her cast taken off was standing at a nurse’s station talking with two other female nurses, a woman in a suit with her hair pinned tight in a bun, and an older, well-dressed man. The man she recognized immediately; it was Alex’s grandfather, the Administrator. They had not noticed her, so she pulled herself up against the wall and listened.

The old nurse’s mouth was running: “. . . those two love birds came to get Miss Knenne’s cast cut off. They were laughing and getting very personal with each other, the way young’uns do when they’re sweet on each other. I took her back to one of the rooms, the doctor cut her arm loose, and then the next thing I know they were tussling in the waiting room. Miss Knenne was on top of the Governor’s boy and just before they started kissin’, I made sure they knew I was still there watchin’ the whole thing. I don’t mind young love, but this ain’t the place for it. And I don’t mind sayin’ that just because the Dikaió’s broken, don’t mean I want to see the Triad taken over by two houses, which is why I called the Chief Medical Officer here to send for you, your Honor. Seems like the Administrator’s house would be worse off with a match like that.”

Mallory’s cheeks flushed. That old bat had the nerve to gossip about the heirs of the Triad? She was ready to go tell her exactly where she could go when the Administrator responded, and Mallory froze in place: “I thank you, Ma’am. You were right to call. I agree that Ms. Knenne and Mr. Aiworth should not be matched, though I do not think my house would be weakened for such a pairing. Strengthened, I should think.”

“Well, you certainly can say that again,” the old nurse laughed. “That Knenne girl is a walking disaster. The whole city had been dreading her being the next Matriarch. She’s just as likely to curse us than christen us.”

A woman’s voice Mallory could not place as one of the nurses or the hospital’s Chief Medical Officer chimed in with a musical voice, “She’s already done that, hasn’t she?”

The group sounded a solemn agreement.

The old nurse addressed the Administrator, “And what of that, sir? Where’s the justice for the Knenne girl? Isn’t that your department? If it were one of us who’d done all this, your magistrates would have put us in stocks in the city jail, though there ain’t been need for that since I was a wee girl, when those boys built that fire sprite that destroyed part of the city. Seems to me we got another arsonist with what happened to City Hall. Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but why ain’t the magistrates dragging her off for a trial yet?”

The Administrator responded, “I won’t address the Council’s business here, but rest assured, plans for redressing Miss Knenne’s crimes are being discussed in earnest.”

The old nurse laughed: “I suppose the Matriarch’s holdin’ up that process. I wouldn’t want my daughter to face your justice neither. No sir, I would not.”

Mallory could not listen anymore and headed back the way she had come. Eventually, she found the elevators, and absent-mindedly pushed the down button. What did the Administrator intend to do with her? Would Alex face the same punishment? The Administrator’s family were probably arguing against punishing her just like Mallory’s mother for Mallory. How much of this did Caleb know? Was that why he was pushing marriage now? Was it a way to protect her from justice? Did she deserve protection?

The doors to the elevator opened, and Mallory stumbled inside. She pushed up against the wood paneling on the far wall of the elevator, and leaned her head back against the cool surface, closing her eyes. In the thirty seconds that the elevator dropped to the first floor, her mind took another dark turn. Was Caleb so desperate to marry her all of a sudden because he knew what the Council was discussing? And if so, was the Administrator right in his estimation that their union would be a weakness, Dikaió or not?

Caleb would be better off without her, it would be better to let him know, but as the doors opened and she opened her eyes, the first thing she was confronted with was Caleb leaning up against the wall watching the elevator, waiting for her. Just the sight of him made her reconsider everything about their relationship and his awkward proposal again. What was wrong with her?

Caleb clearly had no useful answers for her. He smiled that lop-sided grin of his and sort of leaned his way off the wall toward her. He had the most elegantly lazy way of moving: completely carefree in every motion. She stepped off the elevator, and he sidled up beside her, near enough that she felt a quick warm breeze wave off him, but not close enough to touch her. He leaned his head down in a conspiratorial tone.

“Thought you could duck me, did you? When I found the elevator was not on the first floor, I knew you’d come down at some point.”

 

Mallory walked down the hallway and into the lobby. “I’m really not in the mood to talk about our relationship right now, Caleb.”

“That’s fine,” he said walking beside her. “I wanted to show you something. Remember?”

“I just want to go home. Please! Just leave me alone.”

Caleb stepped forward two large steps and stood directly in Mallory’s path. “You’ll want to see this, Mal. It’s in the dark woods.”

Mallory froze and stared at him. Her mouth was agape, and she blinked several times trying to process what she had just heard. “What?” she finally managed.

“The dark woods. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

He turned around and started walking quickly across the lobby of the hospital toward the hallway with the only working exit. Mallory watched Caleb walking away, but she was a statue. Her mind’s eye traced the shadows of the dark woods, and she imagined all the horrors they held, and fear spread like ice in her veins. Her arms and legs were stiff, wanting very much not to lead their host into an encounter with anything that required the light to keep it out of the city.

Then that portion of her mind that had always caused her the most trouble reared up and breathed warm life into her stationary limbs. Curiosity drove her forward, first shuffling one foot after another, then running to catch up with Caleb, who had not once looked back to see if she would follow him. He knew her too well to wonder.

Mallory caught up with Caleb outside the hospital. He was heading toward the pastureland and beyond that to something he had found in the Dark Woods—something beyond the light.

“What is it, Caleb? What’s out there?”

“You’ll have to see it for yourself, Mallory. It’s hard to believe. It really is.”

They reached the fence of the pastureland, which was made of wooden beams set between wooden pillars, constructed in the time before the city’s memory, like most things in the city. Over time, a few beams had rotted through, and since carpentry was a discarded art, they had been replaced by sprite steel, which did not break down or rot. Mallory wondered why they had not just replaced the whole fence, but she supposed that it would take too much steel since the pasturelands surrounded the entire circumference of the city. She looked across the pasturelands to the dark forest, and then looked to see if the herds were still staying away from the dreaded place. They had been clustering up by the fence closest to the city, but they were not there now.

About twenty cows were a couple hundred yards away from them, standing in a circle with their heads facing out. The circle was shrinking as the cows backed up towards its center. They were bellowing and waving their heads wildly. The sharp white horns they brandished, moving back and forth tracking something in the grass around them.

Mallory felt the hairs raise on her neck when she saw them: There were silver-haired four-legged animals running on all fours around the cows, herding them into the circle with yelps and snarling. There were six of them. They had long, bushy gray tails that were all pointed upward toward the sky. Their ears were also pointed and moved about tracking the sounds of the herd. She figured they were roughly the height of a sheep, judging by their proportion compared to the cows. Whenever a cow got too close with her horns to one of the creatures, they jumped nimbly away with the speed of a rabbit, and the hair on their body bristled. They snapped at the cows with their mouths, which were also like rabbits’ mouths but longer and more pronounced. Mallory could see even at this distance that their mouths were full of wickedly sharp teeth. Their incisors were especially long and curled their lips in a snarl, even when their mouths were closed. They made guttural growling noises that carried on the wind in between the fearful lowing of the cows.

Seeing a break in the snapping creatures from the dark woods, one of the cows broke ranks and started running full sprint across the pastureland. The rest of the herd took her lead, and they all started running frantically in the same direction. Mallory looked in the direction of the cows’ path and saw that they were running toward a wooden pen separated from the rest of the pasture. Inside the pen stood a massive bull. He was watching his herd with fury rippling through his muscles. He paced back and forth, tossing his head, desperate to plow into the creatures.

An older cow lagged behind the fleeing herd, and the creatures from the dark woods swarmed her. Two nipped at her hind legs on either side, and two ran in front of her, steering her away from the herd with snarls and bites. The other two made a wide arc, and in a coordinated moment, the ones on her heels sank their teeth into the cow’s hind quarters, and the flanking creatures converged, leaping into the air and hitting the lowing animal at caddy-corner angles, causing her to spin slightly. They latched onto her with their vicious teeth, and her front legs buckled in opposite directions under the weight of their diametric momentum. The two that had been shepherding her away from the pack dashed forward and slashed at the old girl’s neck while she bellowed in terror.

 

Mallory bit her lip and grabbed Caleb’s arm, “We have to help her!” she screamed.

Caleb looked at her wide-eyed. “What would we do? We’ll get killed if we go in there!”

Mallory looked at the herd who had reached the bull, crowding up against his pen, though it offered no protection as the bull could not cross the barrier to come to their aid if he wanted to. Tears sprang to Mallory’s eyes. “We’ve got to do something! We can’t just stand here and watch.”

“Look!” Caleb pointed.

Flying across the pastureland toward the suffering heifer were two silver culture sprites. Their silver arms began to lengthen as they drew nearer, and two of the dark-woods creatures spun around, growling; their fangs barred; red drool dripping from their chins. They were guarding their prize from the silver intruders in the pastureland. The sprites’ arms were now several feet long and trailing behind them in the grass. They stopped in front of the creatures. Then, in a synchronized gesture, they each raised one of their long arms, which arched up in the air and back down like a limp rope. The sprites brought their arms down lightning fast, and the silver-rope arms whipped out at the creatures almost faster than Mallory’s eyes could track. It took a second at this distance for the sound to reach Mallory and Caleb, but their motion was followed by a crack like thunder and a sputtering of half-yelps. Bits of gray fur puffed up from the path of the sprites’ whips. The creatures tried to turn and run, but within two steps they had fallen over in the grass, dead.

The other four creatures that had been biting at the wounded heifer sat up at the sound and watched their comrades fall before the sprites. They hunched down and growled but began to walk backwards slowly keeping their eyes trained on the sprites. The sprites circled around the injured animal, and then raised all four of their whip-like arms and flew quickly toward the remaining creatures. The growling creatures turned and started running back toward the dark woods, yelping to each other—but they were not faster than the sprites that cut them down within ten feet of the wounded heifer. The sprites then seemed to scan the area, turning this way and that, and then they turned around to the animal on the ground: It was no longer calling out in pain, but just lying there in the grass.

“I’ve never seen the culture sprites kill an animal before,” Caleb whispered.

“C’mon,” Mallory called, climbing over the fence and running toward the wounded cow.

“Wait, Mallory!” Caleb yelled after her. It was not any use to try and stop Mallory once she was in motion, and she knew that Caleb would be right behind her when she got to the injured animal.

The sprites’ arms had shortened to their normal length. One of them was spraying something on the cow’s wounds, and the other had a needle and thread and was stitching up some of the worst injuries. It only took a few moments, and they had closed up the open wounds, and pushed the animal back to her feet. She was unsteady, but they pushed her along toward the herd that was still clustered around the bull’s pen, looking wild-eyed.

Mallory walked along beside them, not sure what she would do if the cow fell back down, but she desperately wanted to help. When they reached the herd, the injured cow pushed herself into the comfort of the herd that parted for her, and the sprites then prodded some of the other cows to move in and close the gaps around her protectively, shutting Mallory out. She pushed through the herd anyway, being jostled and lowed at angrily, but she was determined to check on the cow that had been attacked.

She got through to the bull’s pen and still did not see the cow or the sprites. She stood in the midst of the jostling herd, nearly overwhelmed by their caustic smell like a mix of hay, multivitamins, and just a hint of something sweet like coconut. Their breath was heavy and hot around her, and everywhere she turned were horns, hides, and wild eyes. Suddenly, she had a deep sense of claustrophobia, and she needed to get out of the middle of these animals, so she ducked through the wooden railings of the pen in front of her. 

She took a deep breath of the open air. Another deep breath sounded near her that had not originated from her, and it was followed by a loud snort and a thud. She turned to see the massive bull just a few yards away from her in the pen. Its muscles looked like someone had stuffed too many pillows inside a single pillowcase, and they shuddered under taut skin as if they wanted to break out and kill Mallory themselves. The bull’s horns were much larger than the cows, and they were twisted forward for spearing. Its body heaved with fits of ragged, angry breaths. The bull’s eyes were rolling in their sockets, bloodshot with murderous intent, but they were rolling in Mallory’s general direction. Mallory felt herself freeze, just like when she was on the operating table, but there was no crazy laughter around her. The bull roared and charged.

Mallory felt someone grab her by the shoulder and the scruff of her shirt, yanking her hard under the beams of the pen’s fence. The bull’s horns scraped across the wooden beams, showering splinters where she had just been standing. Its body pressed against the fence, and Mallory could see the beams bend under its weight. She was getting pulled backward farther and farther away from the fence and the danger of the bull, back into the thick of the herd. Part of her logical mind knew what happened next was crazy, but when she was back in the midst of the herd, the same claustrophobia she had felt before hit her, and she began frantically clawing back toward the bull’s pen, but she could not break free of her rescuer’s grip.

When she was finally pulled free into the open space of the pastureland, she took a deep breath and felt her fears settle down. She turned around expecting to see Caleb behind her, but instead she found one of the silver culture sprites. It had saved her from the bull’s charge. The other one was holding Caleb back from running into the herd of cows. His face was full of panic, and he was batting at the thing with his fists and screaming, “Mallory? Mallory?”

It felt good to know he intended to risk his life to save her, but she felt better letting him know she was safe before he got past the sprite and tried to fight a bull for no reason.

“Caleb!” she called.

He turned his head toward her voice, and the moment he saw her, his body relaxed with relief. He backed up, and shook loose from the sprite, which seemed to understand that he was not going to try to fight the bull anymore and let him go.

“Mallory!” he called. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I think so.” She looked down at herself and could find nothing amiss, save a bit of mud from the pastureland caking her shoes. Well, she hoped it was mud anyway. “I’m fine.”

Caleb crossed the distance between them in what seemed like two steps and pulled her into an embrace. Mallory tensed for a moment, wanting to pull back and define their relationship once and for all, but it did feel good to know with such certainty that he genuinely cared for her. She had not felt this feeling for weeks: the feeling of being in the arms of family.

Caleb pulled back and looked into her eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine!”

“Okay, let’s get you home then.” He turned toward the city and started to take a step.

Mallory grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. “Isn’t there something you wanted to show me? In the dark woods?” She pointed toward the woods.

“That was before I knew there were creatures like these lurking in there. I think it’s better to take you back.”

“The creatures are dead, Caleb.” Mallory walked over to one of the bodies of the dead monsters. It lay motionless. Its gray fur was stained with blood, and a long red tongue lolled over its teeth and out of its mouth.

“Mallory, be careful!”

Mallory laughed, “You’re not my mother, Caleb Aiworth! Now, come here and look at this thing.” Caleb moved in for a closer look. “See?” Mallory motioned. “It’s just an animal, not a monster.”

“It’s a monstrous animal,” Caleb corrected.

“Maybe, but they’re dead now. C’mon, show me what we came all the way out here for, so we didn’t make this trip for nothing.”

Caleb stretched his head slowly to the side until his neck cracked. “Fine! If I found what I think I found, these things just prove how much we need them.”

Caleb ran toward the dark woods, and Mallory ran after him. The shadows of the trees were growing longer as the day descended into the evening hours, so they hit darkness before they came to the tree line. The temperature around them dropped ten degrees in the shade, and Mallory, even though she was hot from running, felt the hairs on her neck rise again as the chill ran over her body. There was a red strip of fabric tied to a broken tree branch laid up against one of the massive trees, and Caleb was running toward it. He must have marked the place where whatever he wanted to show her lay inside the dark woods. He slowed down when he got to the branch and waited for Mallory to catch up.

“It’s not far inside the forest: just a few feet actually,” he said in hushed tones.

They walked around the tree that Caleb had marked, and Mallory marveled at the diameter of its trunk. If she were to hug one side of the tree and Caleb the other, she was not sure they could reach each other’s hands. Maybe with Alex they could encircle the tree, but she was doubtful. The next tree they encountered was about eight feet away, and it was just as big as the first. Mallory looked up into the canopy and was fascinated to find that the trees’ branches were not entangled in one another.  Between the leaves that traced through the top of the forest, there were clear lines of sky showing like grout between the cobblestones of the outer walls of the Matriarch’s house. The trees seemed to respect each other’s space, and Mallory worried how they might feel about her and Caleb trespassing in their domain.

Caleb stopped and said, “Here it is!”

Mallory looked down from the canopy and found herself confronted by a sprite. It was old. It had begun to rust, and holes had broken through its exterior in places, but bits of silver sprite steel still shone through the rust. Compared to the trees, it was miniscule, but compared to Caleb and Mallory, it was gigantic. Mallory figured the old sprite must be twelve feet high, at least.

Caleb ran over and pointed at the rusted holes. “Looks like they’re not indestructible after all, right? Also check out the top; this one has a head and eyes.”

Mallory had noticed. It looked agitated, annoyed. Forever angry about some distant past. Its arms were quite large with nozzles for hands, and hoses ran from the nozzles to large packs on its back. “For water, do you think, or . . .?”

“Fire,” Caleb said matter-of-factly. “I’ve looked through the fire sprite book in the Book Club. It’s nearly identical.”

“What’s it doing out here?” Mallory asked walking around the sprite, looking into holes in its armor, and picking out bits of plant life that had grown into it over the years.

“I wondered that too. Protection, I think, and now that I’ve seen the kinds of creatures living in this forest, I wonder if our ancestors used it to burn back the forest before the light was invented to keep the city safe. Once the light was built, they wouldn’t need it anymore, so they left it out here to rust.”

Mallory bit her lip and tilted her head, considering Caleb’s idea. Then she turned to face him and smiled deviously. “Why Caleb Aiworth, you’ve had a logical idea. I think you may be embracing the role of Dikaió Chorus after all!”

The corners of Caleb’s eyes crinkled as his face brightened in a lop-sided grin. “Does that mean you’ll marry me?”

Mallory laughed heartily, “I don’t know about that, but I’ll help you figure out how to get this sprite up and running again to protect the city from those animals in the forest.”

Caleb nodded, more solemn now. He looked up at the fire sprite, shadows encompassing its rusty hull as the sun set, and said, “That’s what I hoped you’d say.”