Young Writers Society

Last line of 12.1:

The bear grunts. Still suspended in animation, its black eyes swivel in its head and land on us.

“Conrad,” I say, backing away again, eyeing how the bear has started to flex its paws. “RUN!”

“I can fix this!” Conrad says, jabbing his palm towards the beast’s chest. “Stop! Stop!”

There are no further flashes from his palm, and the spell he already created has almost faded to nothing. I leap forward, grab Conrad’s wrist and take off in the opposite direction—so quickly that if he didn’t move his legs, he would’ve flown behind me like a kite. The sudden movement dislodges the white creature from his shoulder; it glides unevenly to the ground, where it scurries beside us with its odd assortment of legs, squeaking as it goes.

My mind races, eyes scanning the terrain for an escape route. There’s nowhere we can go where the beast can’t get us. The only hiding place on offer is the occasional tree, and we just witnessed how well that tactic will turn out.

Then the shimmering river sparks an idea. Well, not so much an idea as a last resort. I release Conrad’s arm, allowing him to run ahead with his new friend. “Get to the riverbank. We need a bridge.”

“But there isn’t a bridge!”

A raucous grunt announces the reanimation of the beast, followed by heavy paws pounding the ground.

“Make one!”

Conrad kicks into gear and veers towards the riverbank. “We need to cross the river please!”

The water immediately stirs and bubbles, the yellows and blues reflected from the sky flouncing on the churning canvas. From within the river’s depths, a series of stone pillars breach the surface, stopping just above it with a satisfying crunch, giving me the impression that they’ve locked into place.

The bridge is better than I could have imagined. It seems the world created one that would be easy enough for us to scuttle across, and utterly treacherous for a large, rampaging quadruped. It just so happens we have one of those clawing and snarling in pursuit of us.

Conrad’s white creature goes first, bunny ears flipping up and down as it expertly launches from pillar to pillar. When it reaches the other side, it beckons us across with frantic squeaks and beeps. Conrad follows suit, carefully hopping from each steppingstone and joining his friend with one last graceful bounce.

By the time I’ve caught up, so has the beast. The ground tremors beneath my feet, sending ripples of seismic force up my legs as I hurtle onward. Slowing down would be a death sentence. I’ll have to run the entire way across, one foot per pillar, maintaining my stride.

Unfortunately, the bridge has a plan of its own.

The second I make contact with the first steppingstone, it shudders and quakes, as if touched by something utterly repulsive, and then the lot of them begin to sink back into the river! The sudden disruption underfoot makes me teeter sideways. I’m already committed to my momentum. I can only hope I make it far enough across so that when I plunge into the water, the beast cannot simply pluck me back out with an oversized paw.

When I reach the middle of the river and the pillars begin to dip beneath the surface, my balance finally deteriorates. I vault into the air, pinwheeling my arms.

Oof! My stomach slams into the riverbank, knocking the air out of my lungs. My legs crash into lukewarm water, knees scraping against gravel. Winded and immobilised, I clutch onto tufts of grass to stop the current from pulling me in.

“We’ve got you, Hen.”

A pair of hands clamp hold of each of my wrists, and together, Conrad and his friend drag me onto the riverbank, panting and heaving like a stranded fish. I flip onto my back, sopping wet, each breath burning my lungs with exertion.

The beast paces back and forth on the opposite riverbank, snarling, eyes locked on our position. Either it cannot swim or doesn’t want to, because it draws back its head and releases one last skyward roar of anguish before sauntering off.

As it turns away, a glint of blue on its hindlimb catches my eye.

“Is that . . . another symbol?” I ask nobody in particular, each word taxing on my puffing chest.

Conrad leans forward, placing a flat hand above his eyes, shielding them from a sun that doesn’t exist. “I think you’re right.”

“But you . . . ? It’s not yours?”

“No. I’d be able to feel it.”

This heavy statement bleeds into an even heavier silence. Once my breaths come easier, I find my feet, eyes trained on the beast as it shrinks into the distance. That was too close. Conrad’s inability to sense danger will be the death of us, if I don’t find a way to rein him in. How will that ever be possible in a world that grants his every wish?

“Look what it’s doing,” Conrad says, sensing my mind is elsewhere. The beast curls up at the base of a tree, tucking in its head and paws, as if to make itself as small as possible. Then before our eyes, its fur glows, morphing from the shade of dying grass to highlighter green, brilliant and luminous, perfectly camouflaged with the field around it. And with that, a deadly trap has been set.

“That’ll ruin someone’s picnic,” I say.

Conrad nods.

A breeze hits us from behind, whipping our hair. I think nothing of it, until a sharp point rests against the nape of my neck.

“Don’t move.” The whisper is feminine, though there’s nothing soft or pleasant about it. The voice told me not to move. The harsh, assaultive tone told me what would happen if I did.

“Clasp your hands behind your back,” she says, then waits for us to comply. “Now I want you to turn around. Slowly. You first, blondie.”

In my peripherals, Conrad rotates on the spot, his friend perched on his shoulder, along for the ride.

The woman gasps. There’s a shuffle in the grass, and I can’t tell if she’s stumbled back in surprise or hurried forward to attack. So I spin around too.

She’s dressed entirely in black, with lightweight leather boots, legs clad in tights, muscular thighs encircled with crisscrossing straps and buckles. Her chest is protected by metallic armour, and fastened to the shoulders, billowing in the wind, a hood and cape. From beneath the hood poke shoulder length tangles of hair, either dark by nature or the dirt coating it. Her eyes, blacker than my new ones, blacker than everything she’s wearing, are locked onto Conrad’s. In each of her hands, pointed directly in our faces, are long, silver throwing needles.

“You’re pure,” she tells Conrad, tilting her head slightly, as if she might catch him in a different light and prove herself wrong.

Pure. That’s what Kit said. Conrad’s soul is pure, and mine is tainted. Worthless. If this woman is able to tell that about him by looking, then she either has the same ability as Kitsune, or more likely, something about Conrad’s appearance gives him away. Do his eyes, swimming with iridescent colours, offer a window to his soul? Does this also explain why the world listens to his needs, and seems to work against mine?

“My name is Conrad. This is my brother, Henrik.”

“Where are you from?” She demands. The question doesn’t sound how it would if you expected someone is simply visiting from a neighbouring village. If she starts asking us questions like this—or more accurately, if Conrad starts answering questions like this, then she’ll find out we’re tourists within seconds.

I try to turn the tables back on her. “What do you want with us?”

The corner of her mouth flickers. A micro expression. The ghost of a smile. “You might’ve noticed that I have the upper hand here, kid,” she says, emphasising her needles by drawing them closer to our faces.

“What are you going to do, crochet us a blanket?”

She takes a step back and her arms fall to her sides. Her face remains entirely empty. Unreadable. Her eyes, two wells of abyss-like darkness, lock onto mine. Then her arm is a blur, striking upwards, and from her hand a needle releases. I brace myself for impact, but it streaks past my face in a flash, ruffling my hair.

My heart plummets into my stomach. Somehow I hold my composure. I can’t let her know she’s shaken me.

“You missed.”

“Did I?”

A throaty roar echoes in the distance as the needle finds its mark, followed by further howls of agony. Unable to turn my back on the woman, my mind paints a picture of the beast writhing in pain, perhaps clawing at a large needle embedded in its flesh.

The commotion ends with one last rattling draw of breath and the sound of a heavy mass slumping to the ground.

“You killed him!” Conrad gasps, looking over his shoulder. “Why would you do that?”

“To prove a point,” she says, shrugging, twirling the remaining needle in her fingers like a baton. Her eyes flick back to mine. “Do you have your listening ears on now?”

“What do you want?” I ask again.

“I wouldn’t mind being a foot taller. Maybe idiots like you would take me seriously.”

“What else do you want?”

“I want to know who your brother is.”

“He told you. His name is Conrad.”

She points over my shoulder with her needle, towards the dead beast. “Oh, he’s a lot more than just Conrad. He was able to override the spell placed on a Sentry.”

I can't pretend to know what she's talking about. I also can't admit how woefully ignorant of this world we are. So then what—

“Your vacant expression brings me to my second point, kid. I’m wasting my time on you. So I’ll be taking your brother to someone who has the answers. You can come if you want. Or not. Whatever.”

“You can’t take me,” Conrad says, voice quivering. He lifts his hand, palm pointing at the woman. “I hope you know that I’m magic!”

His words knock the wind back out of me. It’s the first time Conrad has ever threatened anyone in his life. Do I think he’d actually follow through with it? Absolutely not, no chance at all. Yet the fact that he’d even pretend to knotted my stomach.

“Kid, you’ve got two seconds to point that tiny palm away from me.”

Her eyes betray her for just a fraction of a second. A glimpse of fear momentarily eclipses her self-assured death stare. Two seconds tick away. She sighs, twirls the needle in her fingers . . . then sheathes it in a strap on her thigh.

For a second I think we’ve successfully called her bluff. Until—

“Take the pure one.”

Before I can so much as wonder who she is commanding, a brutal wind picks up out of nowhere, rushing into us from the side. The sudden appearance of the gust alone is bizarre. What’s truly odd is the way it only slightly buffets me, yet completely lifts Conrad off his feet, sending him sailing into the air. It's as if it weaved around me to directly target him instead. He spins, weightless, suspended a few feet above the ground, then falls in a tangle of arms and legs, rolling in the grass.

I dash forward and throw all of my energy into a punch directed at the woman’s head. She sidesteps the haymaker, allowing me to follow through and unbalance myself with my own weight. I crash to the ground at her feet.

“This is getting a bit pathetic, Henrik. Like I said, come if you want. I won’t lose sleep if you don’t.”

She takes off in Conrad’s direction. For a second he finds his feet, until the wind whips him again, sending him barrelling in the grass. The white creature follows behind her, flapping its wings and squawking in protest. It’s not so much that she’s kidnapping Conrad that boils a rage inside me, more than the way she idly turns her back on me as if I pose no more threat than a dead fly.

As one last ditch effort to save him, I rush to close the distance between us and throw another punch. This one connects with the back of her head, which dips forward slightly with the impact. She stops in her tracks.

I’m not sure what I expected to happen. She’s muscular, sure. Yet she doesn’t seem much older than I am. And I’m a foot taller than her. What I’m definitely not expecting is for her to slowly whirl around, cape swishing with the movement, and glare at me with a blank expression.

She sighs again. Then in one swift movement, she reaches behind my head and yanks it down onto the edge of her skull.

There’s a flash of white, then nothingness.