Chapter 8 - ADRIAN
1009 Words
Darkness greets me as I open my eyes. The sounds of the nights drift around me. Trees loom above like giants, their branches, gnarly hands waiting to tear me apart.
Why am I in the woods?
Slowly, painfully, the memory comes back. Each image like a stab to my gut. The fairy…the spell…
“Fi!” I cry out, looking frantically around. We can’t be in here in the middle of the night. Witches would be roaming, their b****y mouths greedily searching for the meat of little girls. We must leave. We must get home.
Home…
The word hurts as I think of our mother, her face pale, dark circles around her eyes. Her voice was always so weary and exhausted. Would she be looking for us? Or would she refuse, simply because she can’t bear to find our bodies, mauled by the Witches?
“Fi!” I call again. Silence greets me and a new fear clutches at my chest. How long did she have? How long? My hands begin to shake. I cannot…I cannot bear to find her cold and lifeless…I…
“Why are you out here?” Startled, I turn around. I barely notice the shape between the trees. A little girl as old as Fi, her black dress fluttering in the wind. A hat was mashed lazily against straight hair that fell against her neck. Her yellow lamp like eyes glowed in the dark.
A Witch…
It was as if my heart stopped. A cold that had nothing to do with the chilly night air spread all over my body. No…Fi…Fi…
“Where is she?” I stand up, swallowing a lump that rose in my throat. “What…What did you do to my sister? Where is she?”
I realize I am in tears, my mind conjuring pictures of Fi, thrown into a cauldron, screaming for help…
Why the hell don’t I feel angry! Why don’t I want to kill this thing that took my sister away from me! Why don’t I want to kill the smug as heck fairy who put us in this mess! Why the hell do I just feel…
It takes me a moment to understand that empty is the word I’m looking for. I damn well don’t want to go back and tell my mother that my sister is dead and I sure as hell don’t want to be in the sheet propped up on sticks that we call home without Fi... Without her smile and chatter and nagging and asking for stories…More and more tears stream down my cheeks that I don’t bother wiping away.
All that talk about how you won’t run… That you would give the fairies the fight of their life…So easy to talk, isn’t it? Not so easy when your sister is gone and her murderer is standing before you…
“I’m sorry…I didn’t see anyone around except you.”
Her response was surprising in itself but so was the child-like innocence in her voice.
“I’m Ari.” She says, nervously, looking down at the ground. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She pauses, her huge eyes gazing at me. “I can try taking the spell off but…”
“What spell?” I ask, automatically. I remind myself not to be fooled. The creature in front of me is not a child. It’s a b****y Witch. A despicable monster who is going to rip me apart and kill me. Just like she killed Fi.
“It’s supposed to make you stay here, so things that hunt in the night can kill you.” The terror and disgust in her eyes are the most genuine emotions I have ever seen in my life. So…this is how the Witches did it. By appearing to be nothing more than sweet angelic children and then...
“You don’t need to pretend,” I say. “You can go ahead.”
“What?” The Witch child stops in her tracks. “I don’t…”
“You can go ahead and just…kill me, boil me, eat me…whatever. I don’t care.”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
The answer, so simple, so gentle, sent a shiver through my spine. Is this how she got Fi? By pretending to be a kind sweet child who wanted to be her friend. And Fi…Fi, who has never had any friends in her life just…
I wait for the fury to rise. Isn’t that how it worked in the stories? The hero’s loved one is killed and the hero wants revenge…Except this despicable hero wants to curl up into a ball and die because she can’t summon up the basic courage to move on and live in a world without her little sister.
Pathetic!
The Witch stops a few feet from me and raises her hand. She closes her eyes and chants some nonsense rhyme, her face screwed up in concentration. Like Fi when she is trying to do something difficult…
“You can stop trying to act like a good-“
My words are cut off as thunder booms through the woods. Lightning flashes like a many-legged monster, striking a tree in a distance. The air around me lights up an electric blue. It is as if I’m trapped in this strange magical bubble. A sphere of crackling blue…
Then just as suddenly as it started, it stops. The light disappears. The storm is gone as if someone just flipped a switch.
“What just…”
“The spell is gone.”
I look up to see the Witch child on the ground, trying to sit up. Her fingers are shaking. Tears glint in her face.
“Go…” She clenches her face, her face twisting in agony. Her breathing strained, just like Fi’s after she had fallen ill. “Go before…”
It’s foolish. She is a Witch! She is trying to trick you!
I ignore everything the rational part of my mind says and walk up to her. As the moon peeks its head from behind the cloud, I see it. The gaping pus-filled wound on her face. Her hair is matted and rough on the tips. Red streaks her large eyes.
“Did someone hurt you?” I ask, kneeling before her to inspect the wound. “I can go home and…”
She shakes her head, her breathing becoming more laboured. Her lips part as if to say something but before she could her eyes flutter closed. Her little body goes limp.
- Writer
