Emily regretted her step almost immediately. Or rather, wondered if subtlety would’ve been a better route to take.
Short answer: yes, yes it would have.
She got what could lightly be described as weird looks almost immediately. The woman selling bread had stopped talking to her new customer, and instead was staring, openmouthed, at Emily. Emily quickly looked away, only to stare into the faces of two women in dresses, walking quickly and muttering behind their hands. Emily’s face heated up in embarrassment as she looked down at her shirt and pants—all clearly out of place. She’d have to stay on the down-low until she found something less conspicuous, steal from a clothesline or something. Wasn’t that what they always did in cartoons?
The two women had passed her now, still whispering in those strange tones. Now that she stood in the street, its smell was overpowering: a combination of bread, roasting meat, smoke from an army of chimneys, and something particularly distasteful that Emily didn’t want to dwell on. The street was filled with noise, particularly to one side, which she assumed must lead to a square or market. Vague shouts of sold wares, prices, high-pitched laughter, someone shouting out something about “peace talks.” Someone’s door slammed shut. More people were around her, all staring. There was a creaking, trundling noise too, growing louder and louder. Something moving. Her head frantically whipped around and she fell as a horse and cart thundered past her, leaving her on the ground, coughing in dust-soaked air. As it cleared she noticed that those staring townspeople had surrounded her in a ring. All were staring at her, all whispering, all dressed in those strange clothes.
Her heart was frantic, breath fast, and face hot. The last time she’d had so many eyes on her was in elementary school when she’d run off of the stage in fright. Now she was older, yes, but she’d never faced so many in such a familiar environment. Her throat was closing up in panic. She should’ve stayed more discreet. She ran.
Emily tore down the street, away from the noise of the square. Then ran down an intersecting one, and then another. Nevis’s streets were an easily decipherable grid. These were a maze. They looped and diverged in soft angles, dotted with the occasional preacher dressed in black in front of a few congregants, or store selling clothing, tools, or rolls. She ran by a single story building with a pitch black overhanging sign. A man set in harsh lines stood outside of the door. He watched her and her strange clothes all the way up the street. A few turns later, Emily ran into a woman, knocking her down hard enough to free her tightly coiled hair. Emily stammered out an apology and continued, panting. She hadn’t run so far in months. Many streets opened up into larger squares, often with a well surrounded by bucket-laden townspeople and a few and stalls, but it was clear as Emily continued, that she was getting farther away from the heart of the town. The passers-by grew fewer until there was no one left to stare. She stopped then, in the middle of an abandoned street.
She panted, hands on knees, into the silence, hearing that humming undercurrent once again. Clearly a fringe part of town—the houses surrounding her were either boarded up or falling apart; with collapsed roofs or rotting doorways. And the few that appeared unharmed were silent. She realized now, how loud her breathing was, the quiet of everything else. No cars or people, only emptiness and smoke rising in the distance from the populous parts of town. A bird more colorful than she’d ever seen landed on the dirt road a few feet from her. As a rabbit hopped out of the doorway of a house nearby. No cars or people, only emptiness and smoke rising in the distance.
She began moving again—walking, not running—just taking it all in. What was she supposed to do now? What would happen if more people saw her? She clearly didn’t belong—not just in a ratty sweatshirt, but in a sweatshirt at all. But even the thought of letting go of what little ties she had to Earth? to Sylvia and to Claire, wasn’t an option she wanted to consider just now.
The spaces between the houses were growing larger. Little things; the last remains of a rotted hay bale, a collapsed cart, the peaking of weeds through the dirt road, made the emptiness palpable. The streets forked and forked and she began to wonder if maybe she should’ve asked those whispering girls for help, basic info even. A map? Modern grid patterns for streets, Emily decided, were underrated. Another fork loomed, facing her with a yawning doorway.
She kicked a pebble.
A tiny, innocuous action. Just to see if she would make it in. It skittered furiously away from her foot, and it looked like it was going to make it too—maybe a little to the right—until it stopped under somebody’s foot. Uh oh. The foot slipped, and its owner, a boy, fell roughly backward, fall only cushioned by his backpack. Still, the sound his body made when it hit the ground was enough to make her wince. Having just fallen (literally) out of the sky, her back wasn’t feeling too great either. She rushed forward, apologetic and frazzled at the same time because this “journey” wasn’t going very well.
“Sorry!”
The boy’s face—around her age—tightened in pain as he made to get up. He didn’t acknowledge her approach, instead whipping his head around at something she couldn’t see. Emily’s steps faltered, thoughts falling between unease at her general out-of-place-ness and the overwhelming feeling that whatever he was staring at couldn’t be good. And, unsurprisingly, It wasn’t.
The clanking of stiff metal joints reached her ears and eyes. Emily stared as the group of knights she’d seen earlier ran—as fast as a knight in full plate armor could—to surround the boy as he struggled to his feet. Emily shrunk into the shade of an overhanging roof house, hoping to whatever was out there that the knights, barely fifteen feet away, wouldn’t notice her either.
The boy stood, brushing himself off and drawing himself up to his full height. He leveled his gaze at one knight wearing a cape, the leader.
The boy was shorter, but his posture and the almost boredom on his face made him dwarf the knights. “For the last time, can I help you?”
Only now did Emily realize one of the boy’s eyes was nearly swollen shut, a natural reaction to a metal-clad closed fist. They’d been chasing him for a while. And thanks to her, he’d been caught. Wonderful. Her foot twisted in the dirt, indecisive. She should do something. Could she save him? Her gut said probably not. And what would happen if they saw her?
Leader-knight seemed undeterred by the boy’s arrogance. “You owe me something, boy.”
“I do?” The boy’s voice seemed as bored as the rest of him.
The knight’s eyes narrowed, a hand straying to his sword pommel. He was silent for a moment. The boy revealed nothing. The rush of indignation flooding Emily on the boy’s behalf froze into a fear intensely that she nearly jumped at the sudden hiss of metal as head-knight pulled his sword from its sheath. One of the knight’s lackeys was grinning. Others were whispering to one another, moving about restlessly. They crept closer, tightening the circle. A few knights were as still as the boy, though without his bravado. One stood back with eyes as wide as Emily’s felt.
Leader-knight’s head tilted briefly at a lackey nearby, all the while continuing his and the boy’s silent stare-down. The lackey rushed him. And when the boy managed to land a clumsy punch, more joined. The boy was forced to his knees, lackeys holding each arm. The fear-turned-horror settled in the pit of Emily’s stomach, her knees were shaking. Was this man really going to—? Was she really going to watch?
“My men here know I don’t like being talked back to.” He grasped the front of the boy’s tunic. The boy hid his wince well.
“For the last time: what did I do?” the boy’s voice was slightly higher-pitched than before, but his face still gave nothing away, “don’t you have bigger things to worry about? Magic? The war?” his lip curled, “seems like an awful lot of effort for someone minding his own business.”
Head-knight’s brows had nearly stitched together, knuckles clenched tightly around the sword hilt, but suddenly his mouth broke into a grin. He released the boy’s tunic, who slumped back down under the weight of the lackeys.
“You know, I was thinking of just taking you to the slammer. But maybe General Druett,” the boy stiffened, “would be a better choice. I hear he’s left Beauvais. Looking for someone. Who knows? Maybe he’ll come here next. They say he doesn’t take kindly to loudmouths.”
The boy broke eye contact.
“No, eh? Then I think I’ll just kill you.” The knight raised his sword.
His lackeys shifted uncomfortably around him, but no one spoke. Emily’s heart jackrabbited around in her chest. The boy strained, trying to get up, but he was forced down again. He squeezed his eyes shut. Emily’s lip was trembling, knees quaking. She wanted to go back. Am I really going to watch this? If Sylvia were here, she would rush forward without a second thought. But the rules—property ownership, gravity—didn’t apply to her. They did for Emily, so much so that she sometimes suffocated under their weight. The first time she’d “climbed”—Sylvia had practically pushed her up it—a tree, she’d fallen.
Sylvia, I can’t do this. Am I—
“Wait!” everyone froze. Emily clamped her hands over her mouth, fully exposed now. Oh my god. She’d completely revealed herself. The weight of every eye forced her out of her stupor and she stepped hesitantly into the open. The lackey holding the boy down kept a tight grip, but even they watched her.
Their leader looked her up and down, demeanor changing abruptly. He sheathed his sword.
“Can I help you, Miss?”
What had she just done?
“N-no!” Emily shook her head frantically, “I, um, was just passing through.”
“Ah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you should keep walking. This is unpleasant business.”
The boy’s eyes were clenched tightly shut, concentrating on something Emily could not name, the humming undercurrent in the silence seemed to grow. Whatever he was doing, it was incredibly important. No one else had looked at him yet, in fact, the lackey’s grip on him had begun to loosen. She needed to stall, for whatever the boy was doing.
The knights’ attention was wavering, she hurried on, “I’m lost!” and it was back. With a momentary hope that someone might, she asked, “do you happen to know where Wisconsin is?”
Everyone looked even more confused, the boy’s eyes shot open. The humming reached a fever pitch. This was it.
“Do we know where what—”
The ground with something—a small earthquake, the boy at its center. Emily stumbled, breathing in the still air, the calm arrogance of the boy’s face, and then the ground under the knights exploded.
Thrown back or up or sideways, the knights fell like rag dolls. Their leader himself was thrown in Emily’s direction and she dove to the side, not about to be caught unawares as she had with the cart. As newly-freed dust choked the air, Emily just sat there for a moment, frozen as newly-freed dust choked the air so thickly that she almost missed the boy’s silhouette until it was just before her. His eyes looked down at her from an uptilted head. Without a word, he jerked it towards an adjacent street, then ran.
Emily ran after him.
Comments (0)
See all