Thirty
Quell
When the starting horn blows, I’m already in the forest.
But nothing looks the same as it did when Adola led me to the guesthouse the first time. I find the worn path and follow it. Fog wreathes the thick nest of trees. Cold simmers beneath my skin, my toushana awake and ready. Trust my instincts. Focus on what I want. Beaulah’s words urge me forward. I pick up my pace to a light jog.
Voices echo in the distance. A thud, proceeded by grunts.
I still. Toushana coils in my chest, snaking its way through my arms, and when I open my hands, a cloud of darkness is there. I abandon the trail but follow it from a distance, keeping an eye on its winding bends, looking for Della or Charlie. By the time my throat burns from the cold winter air, I still haven’t spotted the guesthouse. Did I make a wrong turn? A pair of glowing eyes appears in the distance and it stops me dead in my tracks. Easy now. Calm. I stand firm, but when I blink, it’s gone.
I’m about to keep going when a husky voice not unlike Charlie’s pricks my ears. A coppery scent hits my nose. Besides the burial, I wonder what other terrors Beaulah has them face in there. I never asked her. Heavy footsteps plod in my direction, and I watch as an unfamiliar pair dressed in House robes trudges through the forest. Thick ropes are slung over their shoulders and red-stained sacks drag behind them. Whatever is in there reeks of blood. I can hear Beaulah’s voice in my head. The path to a breakthrough is paved in fear.
They walk past without noticing me, then veer off the path. When they’re out of sight, I find the trail again. Howls and rustling leaves send a chill up my spine. But there is no sign I’ve been followed. I jog until the path abruptly ends. Every intersection of the woods looks like the one before it. My heart rattles with panic. Charlie knows his way around these woods better than anyone. I need to find that guesthouse, fast. I pick a direction and sprint.
The woods thin. Up ahead is a clearing with a sprawling, oversized oak, its tall, thick branches sweeping the ground. I slow, realizing I’ve gone the wrong way again, and a shrill scream rips the air.
“You have to pile it all in, you fool,” someone says. “Can’t make it too easy to get to the finish line.” The hardness in his tone renders me straight as a board. I hold in a breath, listening. But I only hear the scrape of metal, followed by a dull thud. Then another scrape and thud in a steady motion.
Scrape.
Thud.
Scraaaape.
Thud.
The commotion pulls my attention in that direction, as I try to make sense of the eerie sounds. Beneath the oak is a man holding a giant shovel. He shoves it into a mountain of dirt, using his shoe to deepen its scoop. Then he heaves the dirt into a hole—a grave—in the ground. Another man beside him watches.
Someone is buried alive under there.
“That should be good.” The one holding the spade unties the bloodied sack slung over his back. He spills chunks of raw meat around it. I swallow but remember that these guys aren’t going anywhere. I turn to tear myself away, to keep looking for some sign of the guesthouse, when the men pick up their shovels and jog past me.
“The girl’s next.”
Adola.
Where are you going?!
They stop and squint in my direction, and I realize I said that out loud. I step into the moonlight. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
“You’re leaving them here!” I look for other men hiding in the brush, but there are none.
“We’ve got other graves to dig.” He checks his watch. “You should get out of here.” They rush off in opposite directions with their shovels and half-filled sacks. How will Adola escape? She has got to be pushed out of the nest someday. Maybe the sheer terror of it will awaken something ferocious in her like it did in me. And if it doesn’t?
A sudden scream.
An explosion of dirt and ash.
The grave is no longer filled. A hand rises from it, clawing its way up and out of the ground. A boy lifts himself, breathless and trembling. I’m trying to release a tight breath when a blur rushes past me.
Snapping growls collide with shrieks.
The boy hollers again; an animal’s whimper follows. The scene at the foot of the oak has changed. The boy and the beast wrestle, tumbling one over another. I look around again, waiting for help to step in, but there is no one. Toushana streams through the air, connecting with his hands. A shrill shriek tears from his throat as he pins the wolf. He brings a rock down on its head so hard it doesn’t move again. Back on his feet, he charges at the wolf pack, his own teeth bared, darkness thrashing in his grip. I look away just before they slam into one another.
A vicious bark.
Howls of pain.
Whimpers.
Then silence.
I dare look, and the boy’s knees hit the dirt. He’s covered in blood. Four wolves lie around him, unmoving. I feel sick. He pulls himself back up to his feet. His clothes are ripped to shreds and he limps away. Still, no one slips from the shadows to help. Either they’re awful at their jobs or Beaulah lied. The guesthouse. Charlie lying. But my legs are like lead.
Adola will never survive this.
I groan and race off through the forest in the direction the men went. I want many things, and her surviving this is one of them.
I’m out of breath and everything hurts by the time I find them. Adola stands between an empty grave and a mountain of dirt. Just beyond her, I can faintly make out the pointed eaves of the guesthouse. My heart skips a beat.
“No!” Adola holds the shovel overhead. Then she swings it at the one who is supposed to be burying her. I chew my lip, moving through the forest around the unfolding scene. The guesthouse, the answers I want, are right there.
He yelps, narrowly skirting the blow. “You’re supposed to cooperate.”
“Get away from me!” Adola swings again, and this time the spade slams into his leg. He stumbles, dropping his sack of bloodied meat. It spills on the ground.
“You’re nuts!” He scurries up and dashes off.
I check the surroundings. I know what’s coming. She has seconds to get away. And I have a choice to make. I don’t know if Beaulah realizes how unprepared her niece is. How close help needs to be. But I’m not going to sit and watch while someone who is trying to find the courage to be okay with being different is killed. I turn my back on the guesthouse and run to her.
“Adola!”
“Quell?”
She drops the shovel and bursts into sobs. Wisps of toushana are on her hands. She holds them out to me.
“I’m trying,” she sobs. “I swear, I’m trying—”
“Listen, you have to—”
Low growls snap our mouths shut.
Adola’s eyes widen.
“Run!”
She hesitates. “No, I can’t. You—”
A wolf bounds toward us and leaps. It slams into Adola, knocking her to the ground. I draw the deathly magic to my hands, and my palms fill with darkness. I grab the wolf by the scruff of his neck and lock my arm around his head. His fur burns away, my toushana turning it to wisps of nothingness. Then I bear down on his throat. When a burning smell hits my nose, he tries to jerk away. I release him and he runs off, tail between his legs.
“Go! Get to the finish line. I will draw them out.”
“Quell!” Adola balls her fists.
“You’ve much worse odds than I do.”
“Hurry, please.”
“I will.”
She darts away.
The circle of wolves around me tightens. There are four here, but more are in the forest. I swallow, holding my toushana fiercely in my grip. The world blackens at the edges, my magic begging for release. I back away slowly and my foot nudges a chunk of meat on the ground. My toushana zips through me and I unleash it, turning the meat to rot. The wolves watch, licking their chops between their bared teeth.
A distant whimper.
A horn blows.
I gather all the meat and destroy each piece.
“Go!” I say. “There’s no food here anymore. It’s gone.”
They close in around me with snarls in their throats.
My fingers are icy and their tips are bruising. With everything I have, I pull at the braid of ice wrapped around my ribs. Fog forms at my lips as toushana seeps from every part of me, engulfing us in shadows, singeing everything it touches. One mutt backs away. Another follows him. But the largest one, with a grizzly brown mane and a head bigger than mine, crouches, preparing to lunge. I stagger my feet, ready to catch him, though my bones are still aching.
Suddenly, the world becomes a haze of sharp teeth, of scratching, ripping. I pummel my fists into anything that touches me. The world tips sideways. My back slams the ground. A mouth chomps at my face.
“Help! Someone, please!”
Another wolf grabs hold of my leg. I brace for the bite. But it just grabs me by the pants and pulls. I kick, screaming and clawing at the ground, leaving dark trenches in the wake of my toushana-filled hands. But it’s no use. They are too big and too strong. Two have me now, dragging me deeper into the forest. I aim a kick at one wolf’s head, but he shakes with all his might and the world rocks as my body shakes in the power of his jaws. I’m pulled faster across the rough ground, and the guesthouse looms into view.
Teeth grab me by the hair and slam my head to the ground.
The world goes black.