Young Writers Society

Chapter 14

Meeting Thicket~

They did not stop until the soles of their shoes were burning hot, their laces fraying and their faces gleaming with sweat. Along the railway line, up a hill, down a hill, on a road that wound past the river--Evian finally relaxed as the scenery grew more familiar. When they arrived at a small lake, he gestured at Lira to stop. A cluster of trees stood on either side of the lake; the trees’ branches were black, their leaves pale and cobwebby where they skimmed the water. The grass was yellowing, and when Evian stepped into it, the top of the tallest blade brushed against his knees.

Lira jumped from sandy patch to sandy patch, avoiding the grass altogether, but Evian closed his eyes and relished the feeling of it rubbing against his ankles. It had been so long since he had been here. So long since he and Eleanor had skipped down this path and she had hidden behind trees, pretending her father could not find her if she covered her eyes with her hands. Four years since he had been to Arrowroad. A year since he had lost her. It felt much longer.

She had called this place Meeting Thicket.

Evian sat down on a rather large toadstool, sucking in air like he would never get enough of it. Two hours had passed since their adventure in the Forest O’Gluhm, and Evian had refused to sit down until he was sure they were off Inspektor Bonn’s lands. ‘That man is wretched, positively wretched,’ he had repeated to Lira, over and over, until it was branded in her mind as well.

‘Why—what did he do?’ she had asked, but he merely shook his head and walked faster, tugging at her hand as they went. ‘Took something from me’ was all he would say on the matter, so Lira had let the topic drop.

There were more important things that Evian wished to talk about than reminders of what he no longer had. He waited until Lira was finished with splashing her face with water, then got to his feet and began pulling mushrooms from the base of the toadstool he had been sitting on. He knew from experience that the wood from the lakeside trees would not burn, so they washed the mushrooms and ate them raw. The water from the lake was muddy, but when it slid down his throat he felt like someone had put out a fire in his lungs.

‘We’ll rest for an hour before moving uphill,’ Evian said, wiping his muddy hands on the ground. He stretched his legs out and looked at Lira expectantly. Her face was still dirty and there was a bruise on her chin from where she had crashed into a tree on their way out of the forest. She looked tired, even more exhausted than he felt—he supposed it was because of the magic she had used to transport them—and it was like she was about ready to collapse on her feet.

‘I know—I know you’re tired,’ he said, snapping a blade of grass into two and twirling it in his hands. He tried not to cringe at the understatement. ‘But I need you to … explain what happened. We can’t sleep. Not yet. Home’s too close—beyond the trees and up the hill, then on for a bit until we reach a flatter bit of land. If we keep going, we can get to my village by sundown. So…’ He tore down the centre of the piece of grass, his fingers nimble as he stripped away at it, until all that remained were identical pieces of what looked like green thread. ‘You can start by telling me how you got here, about your magic.’

‘It’s not magic,’ Lira said quickly, copying Evian and breaking off a fistful of grass. She began knotting the individual lengths together. ‘It’s something everyone can do, back home, if you’re taught it. My mum taught me, though she wasn’t from Rek. She had a Gift. It’s hard to explain.’ Her thick eyebrows furrowed together as she bent over the intricate knots she was weaving. ‘Like, at home, if you have the ability to do something, it is normal. But if someone who does not have any—any roots?’—she looked up at Evian to confirm the use of the word—‘in that place, it’s odd. It’s special, because they are not learnt in the art.’

‘I understand,’ Evian said, leaning his back against the large toadstool. ‘So what you have is inherited?’

‘Yes, because my father was pure Rek, even if mother wasn’t. I could have learned it from her, if I didn't have my abilities, but it’s hard—not everyone has a Gift.’

‘Do you think I have it?’ Evian asked.

Lira shrugged. ‘If you haven’t displayed any signs of having it before now, I don’t think so.’

‘Pity, I was real keen on learning how to turn fog into sludge,’ Evian said, rubbing at his eyes with the back if his hand. When Lira did not respond, he sat up to look at her. She regarded him with confusion, her mouth twisted oddly.

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘You want to learn how to do—that?’

He laughed. ‘I was joking.’

She relaxed visibly, her fists unclamping from around the knotted grass, which now resembled a thin piece of rope. ‘You have a strange kind of humour,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to tell if people mean what they say here. It's like lying is funny to them.’

‘It’s not lying, per se,’ Evian said gently. ‘It’s called sarcasm.’

‘Funny sort of chasm,’ she mumbled, and Evian laughed again. He shifted slightly so that his back was once more resting against the toadstool. He wondered how to phrase his next question—should he ask about what had happened at the station, with the Vampire Princess? Or should he ask about how she had ended up working for Warren in the first place? In the end, it was Lira who made the decision for him; she cleared her throat and began to speak:

‘I was still having lessons when I was taken away from my mother. That's why I can't control my abilities all that well; they rush out of me sometimes, and I am unable to channel them to do as I will. When we were at the ... at the station, the Vampire Princess, she...' Lira paused, her gaze travelling from the grass in her hands to the lake, where the sunlight glinted off the squalid water. Evian followed her gaze.

The reeds that crept out from beneath the trees' gnarled roots dipped their heads over the water, shivering as a light breeze swept by. The sun's hot rays drooled down the back of Evian's neck, but as he looked past the lake's swarthy surface, at the dense undergrowth surrounding the lake, at the base of the lakeside trees, he could not help but shiver as well. The grass was dead-looking--grey, matted to the trees' black trunks and sticking straight up like long, thin thorns. Anyone—anything—could hide behind it. Evian blinked. He thought he saw the grass move, but blamed the fatigue for making him see things that weren't there.

'Is something the matter?' he asked Lira, who had lapsed into silence. She snapped out of her

'I thought I saw...' Lira squinted into the trees. 'Nothing. Must've been the wind.' She shook her head, her thin braids swishing around her face. 'But, yeah, the Vampire Princess, you heard her, right?'

'Yeah, she went on quite a tangent about her name, that's what I recall,' said Evian, and Lira laughed. 'But she was pretty scary, demanding you come with her like that.'

'She was.' Lira picked at the bright blue sash wrapped tightly around her waist. 'She started to pull me towards the track, I was scared. And the fear kind of ... exited? It turned into sheer force, out of my control. I think I might have broken her memory, too.'

'Like what you did to the trainmaster?'

'Yes, but...' Lira looked sheepish. 'Unintentionally. I had to focus my power out properly, with the trainmaster.'

'But you didn't make him lose his memory, did you?' Evian said. 'You changed it.'

Lira nodded.

'And this is completely natural, this ability? Gosh, what are your people like?' Evian smiled lopsidedly.

'We're half-vampire, actually,' Lira said lightly, and Evian nearly choked on his spit.

'So you're somehow ... related to that woman from the train station?' he asked disbelievingly, rubbing the side of his face as a droplet of water sploshed down on his forehead. He looked up at the sky. 'I think it might rain.'

'Yeah, we might be. Related to her, that is...' Lira looked rather alarmed at the thought. 'Shouldn't we be off?'

'Yeah...' Evian got to his feet, extending a hand to Lira and pulling her up, too. 'What you did in the forest ... we shifted places and I was in a cloud—did you do that?'

'I transported us,' Lira said, shifting uncomfortably. She tugged at her scarf, where she'd knotted it as the nape of her neck. 'It's dangerous ... not everyone does it, because it's so easy to get lost.'

'We could have died.'

'Yes...' Lira breathed out, slowly. 'We almost did, anyway.'

They bent down to take another drink from the lake, then when they stood up, Evian spoke again. 'One last thing—do your people live longer than us? Because when I was at the Inn, two vampires came up to me and ... it's sort of a long story,' he admitted, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

'I saw what happened,' Lira said quietly. 'I was wiping down tables.'

'Ah,' Evian said. 'Well, I kind of remembered something that hadn't occurred to me of late.' He scuffed a worn shoe along the ground. ‘I used to work on a pirate ship, mopped the floors and everything. More than ten years back. So one night, it sank, and I almost drowned, but someone managed to rescue me. They looked…’ He grappled for words, frustrated that he did not know how to phrase this better. ‘They looked remarkably like you.’

‘Me?’ Lira blinked, surprised. ‘But I’m only thirteen, I couldn't have been, er, whoever it was.... And we’re not—as far as I’m aware, we don’t live longer than other people, no.’

‘Oh.’ Evian was visibly disappointed. ‘I wonder who that girl was, then.’

‘Perhaps it was my mother,’ Lira suggested, fiddling with her scarf again. She bit down on her lip. ‘My mother had a lot of adventures before she came to Rek.’

‘Maybe,’ Evian echoed. He looked at the ground, lost in thought, then lifted his head up and smiled wanly. ‘C’mon,’ he said.

It was as they walked towards the trees that a dark figure came hurtling towards them. It crashed into Evian, and he yelped, falling backwards. Lira, who was standing behind Evian, quickly sidestepped, only to hit her head on a low-hanging branch. Disorientated, she rubbed her watering eyes, trying to massage the prickling sensations of pain from them.

Her vision cleared somewhat to that of a young boy, no older than fifteen, grinning widely at her.

‘Hi!’ he said loudly, succeeding in startling her so that she slipped in an effort to back away from him.

The last thing she remembered was a loud splash, the feeling of water soaking into her boots, and a hiss as a water snake swam across her vision.