Except for the light, I might never have left. Maybe I’m still there, hurrying down to the river ahead of my enemy. My heart thumping in my ears, every instant brimming with what I’m about to do like I’m carrying a cup of water, trying not to let it spill. It feels as if it should be getting darker, or lighter, but the depth of the shadows never changes. Maybe I’ll be here forever, going down and down the ravine toward the river. With William following me. Faithful. Clueless.
But the path has an end, just like it does in the real world: through the last screen of trees before the river, over the footbridge. Here’s where I turned aside, the narrow, stony track of some runoff channel. It winds down a scrubby slope to the riverbank, slicing through thin whips of saplings just tall enough to swallow us, thick enough to make the bike path behind us disappear.
Not far from here is the bank where Deirdre and I spent a thousand afternoons in another world. The last time was in the spring.
* * *
I lay next to her under the greening willows, my sword tossed in the grass beside me, poking the water with a long stick as she ripped her math notebook to shreds, page by page, grim and systematic. The water devoured the pieces. She’d gotten detention the day before for losing it. When it resurfaced in her backpack, crudely rendered dicks adorned every page.
Her mouth was marked by an ugly gash, a bloom of bruises. She wouldn’t tell me how she’d gotten it. My heart gave another twist of rage every time I looked at her. They’d never dared to actually lay a hand on her before.
“It was Tyler, wasn’t it?” I said. It was always Tyler. Never so you could prove it. But it was him, pulling the strings, inventing the names. For no reason, as far as I could tell. Because she was prey. For the lulz.
It had started with little things. Petty things. Making fun of the way she laughed. Pulling her hair when he sat behind her on the bus, and when she accused him, protesting that he would never; he didn’t want to get fleas. And when all his little henchmen hopped on the bandwagon, sharpening their pitchforks, he thought it was hilarious.
If I was there to overhear, I could twist arms, dig into pressure points, extract apologies. But I couldn’t be everywhere. They laughed at me too, just more cautiously. And they stayed out of my reach. After I got suspended for giving David Emery a black eye—I’d launched myself into four of them as they stood over her, following her across the yard—they just turned invisible and kept at it. Leaving notes. Stealing things.
We’d tried telling a hundred times. Sometimes it had spurred a talking-to, a class lecture on bullying from the guidance counselor, non-apologies delivered with a smirk. After a while, we’d stopped bothering. Like the few kids whose attempts at kindness were quickly exhausted, the adults weren’t really on our side. Deirdre was just too shrill, too brittle, too demanding. No social skills. She brought it on herself. What were they going to do?
“He’s the warlord,” Deirdre said darkly. “All the goblins dance for him.” She threw the last handful of confetti, dabbed carefully at her face, wincing. “You’re the Queen of Swords. You have to do something.”
“So maybe we need to capture the warlord.” I said it so calmly. Icy reason. The sun glinted on the water, the unfolding leaves. Everything was so sharp, so clear.
“And make him sorry.” Deirdre glowered, then sighed. “Yeah, right.”
“He’s getting cocky. Usually they don’t leave marks. We can’t do anything that leaves marks.” I trailed my stick in the water, ignoring Deirdre’s look of surprise.
Water doesn’t leave marks.
“I’ll take care of this,” I said.
I levered myself to my feet and waded out into the current, ignoring its knife-cold edge slicing through my shoes, and plunged the stick into the water.
“I will. By wood, stone, water, and bone.”
I left the stick wedged upright among the stones, a seal on a compact. A promise.
* * *
I hardly notice the round rocks turning under my feet as I lead William down through the thicket to the black rush of the water. Onto the riverbank. The one I know so well. The water, flowing fast and deep here, glints choppy rose-gold, reflecting the false directionless sunset, bordered all around by shadowy brush.
On the narrow strip of shoreline is our guide, collapsed into inanimate pieces, a sad heap of wire and debris scattered among the river stones, eye sockets winking in the half-light. A signpost: This is it. End of the line.
“What the hell?” William pants.
Breathe, I tell myself. Keep breathing. Almost there. That was then. This is now.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Hang on.”
I pull one of the monster’s stick arms loose from the wire knotted around it, pick my way to the edge of the water, stab it into the silty earth among the rocks, twist it around as far as my wrist will go.
“Open up,” I tell it. “By wood, stone, water, and bone.”
The water swirls past, indifferent, as I stomp in a hurried circle around the twig.
“Wood, stone, water, bone,” I pant. My kick at the pebbly riverbed sends a spray of water onto the bank. “Goddammit! Wood, stone, water, bone!”
“Is…something supposed to happen?” William ventures.
I turn to face him. And here we are. There’s a price; there’s still a price to pay. I sink to my knees. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t breathe. I can’t do it. I can’t do it again.
“Skye? Skye! Hey!” I try to push him away, but he grips my shoulders, gives me a little shake, kneeling down to look me full in the face. “Come on, don’t fall apart now. You’ve got this. Okay? We’re good. We’re fine. We just need to figure out where to go, all right? We can go back to the path. It keeps going, doesn’t it? Or should we follow the water?”
“I don’t know,” I sob. Because I do know. It’s laid out before me, what I have to do. One way forward. What they wanted all along. Then and now collapsing into each other, no difference left between them. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know—”
“Hey,” he repeats helplessly, pulling me close, and I press my forehead into his shoulder and cry like I’ve never cried in my life, in sheer stormy desperation. Someone stop me. Someone wipe this out. Make it a bad dream. I’m hurtling down the tracks, falling from the sky.
Eventually I hiccup into hopeless silence. William shifts a little against me, but only to get comfortable, and leans his cheek against my hair. The water chatters endlessly past us.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into his shirt.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs back.
“It’s not. I dragged you down here, and now—and now—”
“You didn’t, though. You told me to go home. Remember?”
I can’t answer, and when I stay silent, he presses on.
“Look, I made a choice. A stupid one, probably. But, well, here I am. So let’s just get through this. Together. Okay?”
“You’re a way better person than me, William.” I push myself away from him, brace myself against one of the skinny trees instead. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Nobody should be here,” he returns, unfazed. “So let’s go get your sister and get the hell out already. Right?”
When I shake my head, he puts his hands to my face, his fingers sliding warm into my hair, his eyes on mine bright and earnest in the twilight.
“Seriously,” he says. “Who knows what use I’ll be, but you’re the girl who’d survive the zombie apocalypse. You can do this, okay? I know it.”
I clutch his hand against my cheek, without a word to say. If everything is permitted, then I’m allowed to accept this. I’m allowed to pretend it will be all right for a few more minutes. He leans toward me, hesitant, every bit closer a question, until his lips meet mine.
When my mouth opens under his, he draws a shuddering breath, and I pull him closer, tangle my hands in his hair as his slide up my back. This is where I’ll stay, where I’ll lose myself, where I’ll stop time.
But it doesn’t work like that, of course. And eventually he pulls away.
“I’ve wanted to do that since basically forever,” he confesses. His shaky smile might break my heart. It hurts to return it. When I reach out to tuck away the hair falling into his face, he leans into my palm, kisses it.
“I messed up your hair,” I say, sniffling, and he laughs, yanks the elastic from it so it falls around his shoulders, starts to gather it up again.
“No, here,” I whisper. “Let me.”
I push myself up, leaning on his shoulder. Set the backpack carefully on the ground, still within reach. One, two, three steps, and I kneel behind him. Hesitantly at first, I run my fingers through his hair, combing it back.
“Is it safe here?” He peers nervously into the brush crowding the riverbank. “Maybe we should keep moving.”
“They’re not coming after us. Not yet.”
He doesn’t ask how I know, but he trusts me. He relaxes, by slow increments, into my touch, folding his legs, getting comfortable.
“If you braid it, it’ll stay better.” My voice still trembles. It’s been a long time since I braided Deirdre’s hair, and my fingers are clumsy parting William’s. I have to try a couple of times before I manage to cinch that first plait tight enough to hold. “Why do you wear it so long, anyway?”
“Because my dad hates it,” he says, and then, trying to look back at me, “Why, do you?”
“No. It suits you. Hold still.”
One strand over the other. It goes so quickly.
“What did they say we’re looking for?”
“A key. And a bell.”
“So the stick was supposed to be the key, right? Where was it supposed to take us?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Maybe we need the bell first. Did they hide it somewhere, or what?”
“I’m thinking,” I whisper.
It takes me longer than it should to secure the elastic. I inhale carefully, flatten my icy hands against his back, slide them over his shoulders, press my cheek to his. He leans into me with a sigh.
When the crook of my elbow closes around his neck, my other arm pressing him down into the choke from behind, it takes him a second to sort out what’s happening before his hands fly up to break my grip, to push me away, to hit me. To make me let go. And he can’t. He doesn’t know how.
It’s not breath this hold cuts off; it’s blood. So for ten seconds, forever, his frantic gasps fill my ears as he flails in my grip. Ragged single words. No. Stop. Don’t. Worst of all: Please.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into his hair. Over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
Ten seconds.
I told him.
His hands slacken and drop away, his heels stop their grinding scrabble against the pebbly ground, and he sinks back against me, dead weight. I allow myself one sob. And then I let go, heave him awkwardly to one side, let him slide to the ground.
My hands are numb and shaking, but a razor-edged momentum carries me through every ruthless step of what I have to do, a chasm I can cross if I don’t look down, if I don’t stop. The roll of wire is still in my bag. I loop it around his wrists, one after the other, over and over again until it pinches against his skin, against the white bandage on one arm that’s almost luminous in the twilight. He twitches and shudders under my touch. Not much time left. I can’t stop. It’s him or Deirdre. It’s him or I lose. I tried to warn him. They all did.
I’m twisting the wire around the nearest sapling, winding it through and around, weaving it tight, when his hands spasm open and closed, and he draws a sharp breath, like he’s waking from a nightmare.
He tries to move. Tries to roll over. Tries to twist his hands free, to pull them loose. Yanks at them. It makes the leaves of the tree dance and quiver. He twists around, panting, coughing, and finally catches sight of me, standing frozen behind him with the willow branches snagging in my hair.
I close my eyes, but the look on his face sears into me. In a heartbeat, he’s understood everything. Here it is—the very bottom. The ground rushing up to meet me. The end of the world.
“Oh no,” he croaks. “No, no, no, no—”
He jerks at the wire with every repetition of the word, throws his weight against it, but it’s merciless. Stronger than either of us. If I’m going to save Deirdre, this is the price. I have no choice. There’s no going back.
“You don’t have to do this.” His voice is full of gravel. I must have hurt his throat. “Jesus, Skye, don’t do this. Please. Please. Oh God. Please let me go.”
I can’t speak. I’ve swallowed glass. But a faint silver jingle twinkles through my silence, pauses, zigzags closer, bright and cheerful in the twilight. A bell.
Mog’s bell.
William tries to sit up, to look for its source, but he can’t get farther than leaning awkwardly on his elbows, pushing at the rocks with his feet. The sound bobs down the slope. I half expect the quirk of a tail to brush against my legs, but there’s nothing there—just the sound, weaving around us once, twice. Urging me toward the water.
“Skye,” William begs as I step around him and pick up the stick from where I left it among the rocks. “Don’t leave me here.”
I don’t answer. I’m steel. I can do this.
But then there’s another sound: a crunch, a rustle. All around us. Twigs snapping under uneven footsteps. Without thinking, I meet William’s eyes, and I know exactly what he’s remembering. The dead animals, torn open. Kevin’s mangled leg.
He throws himself back into trying to escape, thrashing, scrambling to get his knees under him, to find some leverage. The branches stir all around us, parting before bony faces, cloth-bound arms, misshapen bodies, feathered and spiked and moss-covered. A dozen of them, more. Fanged jaws gape open, claws flex.
I shrink back a few steps. The icy river soaks through my shoes. William strains after me, against the bite of the wire, away from the monsters hobbling slowly, carefully toward him.
“You can’t do this!” It’s a sob. “Help me!”
The monsters peer cautiously at me, sink one by one into a creaky bow. There are so many. I could never fight them off. A rock rolls under my foot, and I lurch backward again. One splashing step. Two. The bell weaves closer and then away again, pinging impatiently, waiting for me.
“You can’t just leave me here! You can’t! Skye! Skye!”
They’re closing around him now. He knocks one of them over with a flailing kick, yanks his knees up as a bony hand delicately pulls his shirt back to expose his pale stomach, jerks his head away from the caress of sharp, mismatched bone fingers. And I just watch. I’m cold and sick and very far away. This can’t happen. The price is too high. Any second now he’ll break through my makeshift bonds. Any second now he’ll scramble up the slope away from me, back to the real world.
But there’s no escaping them. I’ve made it so there’s no escape. They bend over him, and there’s just enough space between their bodies for me to see the point of an antler descending slowly, so slowly, toward his face. His breathless whimpers fracture into a scream.
It goes on and on, a scream like I’ve never heard, like Kevin must have screamed. It fills my head, rings into the sky. Do something, I tell myself. Come on. One way or another. You have to do something. Do it now.
And I plunge the branch I’m clutching, the key, into the water, and twist.
The world wheels around me, the sunset light slides from the horizon, stars bloom overhead. Vertigo sends me to my knees in the water, and I clutch the branch with both hands. It’s the only solid thing in the world. The rocks sink away beneath me into soft, sucking mud. William’s voice is swallowed up by a tide of delighted, speculative whispers that fill my ears and then ebb away to the very edge of hearing. Silence finally falls, and I sag dizzily in place, shaking, retching.
Nightmare. That’s what this has to be. I can’t have done that, oh God, please don’t let me have done that for real. But the truth burrows deep, past the depth of any roots. Inescapable as a hand pushing me underwater. It comes howling out of me as a wail, an ugly, animal sound that fills the whole world and changes nothing. I can’t help it. I can’t stop my awful, hacking sobs any more than I can stop breathing. It can’t have happened. It makes no sense. There should have been someone to save him.
Instead, there was me.
And here I am. Without him. Still breathing, in spite of everything.
Because I have to. I have to keep going. I have to find Deirdre.
When I can finally lift my head again, the sky is full of a cold, green light, shifting and trembling like a field of wheat in the wind, stars glinting through it. The creek that I’m kneeling in is a shining path out into the wilderness, the smooth, glassy water reflecting the lurid sky. The house, the road, the empty lot have been erased—the forest is all there is, stretching out before me. Fireflies wink through the tangle like stars, but all around me it’s utterly silent in a way these woods have never been. Except for the clumsy sloshing of my movement, the rasp of my breath. Except for the bell twinkling impatiently in the brush, farther down the creek, circling back to see if I’m following yet.
I won’t think any more about what I’ve left behind. I can’t think about it. There was a price, and I paid it.
Out there, that’s where I have to go. It’s a road. And at its end is Deirdre.
Under my hand, the prickly branch I held has grown smooth, heavy, warm—a polished hilt. When I pull it from the water, it catches the shimmering light as if it’s part of the creek. A sword. Not the blunt wooden one I’ve always carried, but a true sword, liquid and sharp. It hurts to look at.
I stagger to my feet, making ripples shatter the perfect reflection of the shivering sky, and mop my face with my sleeve. Then I hold the sword out before me and splash forward, along the creek. Into the woods.