(no subject)
A short chapter, for all one of you (ilu diapadme, lol) reading this. I know it's been forever but my writer's block finally broke!
CHAPTER FIVE
“Ok, tell me again why I'm dressing for a funeral in 1885?”
I was standing in front of Moira and Thalia (Asher was readying the horses for our trip) dressed all in black from head to toe, my hair pinned back away from my face. The dress I was wearing had a lace overlay with solid black underneath, and it came with a black lace veil that covered my entire face. Hence the funeral jokes.
Thalia smiled indulgently.
“You have to visit the Narrator, who will help you defeat Aella.”
“The Narrator? What is she, like the book God?” I snorted raising one long lace sleeve to scratch my arm. Thalia nodded at me seriously. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might say.
“And she usually doesn't let herself get involved with matters such as these. But you must convince her that it's in her best interest to do so.”
“But wait,” I said, turning away right as Moira was pinning one last piece of hair back. She grunted at me, annoyed, but I ignored her and continued, “Why do I need her if I have magic? And why do I have to defeat Aella at all? I'm just here for Oliver.”
Thalia gave me a sharp look that told me I was mere seconds from being scorched if I didn't stop asking so many questions, which I combated by smiling back at her as charmingly as I could. She sighed.
“You have magic, but you don't know how to use it. So far you've only demonstrated magic by accident. To fight Aella, you'll need skill.” I started to open my mouth but she cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Yes, you do have to fight Aella. It's the only way to end this. Now, to answer your first question... We are disguising you as one of the Narrator's high priestesses. They wear the veil and black dress for the Narrator. You see, as a symbol of their loyalty to her and not to the ways of magic, they blind themselves and wear veils over their damaged eyes.”
“Ew,” I said, and grimaced, touching my temple near my right eye. There was no one I liked enough to blind myself for, at least no one I could think of straight off. I thought a second, staring at the veil that Moira held in her open hands. “But I'm really wearing the veil to cover my eyes, right? So no one knows I have magic?”
“Whoever said you weren't clever?” came Asher's voice from the doorway. I rolled my eyes at him.
“I'm pretty sure you did.”
He smiled at me faintly, surprising me, before his face finally settled into its default frown of concentration. He crossed the room towards me and took the veil from Moira, turning it over in his large, tan hands.
“Let me make sure I understand this correctly: She's a Blind Priestess, on her way back from visiting a sick relative. I'm her escort, a palace guard.”
Moira nodded.
“And if we run into Aella's men on the way?” I asked. “They know Asher and they're clearly looking for him.”
Here Thalia stepped in.
“I suggest running,” she said. I raised my eyebrow at her. “Quickly, of course, “ she added, as if that might appease me.
Moira took the veil back out of Asher's hands and raised up on tiptoe to put it over my head. Once it had settled over my face I turned from left to right, curtseying in what I thought was the general direction of Thalia.
“Over here, love,” she said to my back. I turned, giggling.
“How do I look?”
“It'll do,” was Asher's curt response. “Now come on. We'll need to move quickly.”
“Yes sir,” I said and mock saluted him. With the veil down I couldn't see how he reacted but I could imagine the serious look on his face; I had it memorized already.
Pulling the veil back so I could see, I looked at him. A thought suddenly occurred to me.
“Wait, if you leave Thalia, won't I forget you?”
Thalia smiled and waved her hand, a reminder of what we had come through so far just from a touch of that very hand.
“Remembering me is easy enough,” she said, and there was a kind tone to her voice that I wasn't accustomed to. It was almost like she felt sorry for me. “The rest is the hard part.”
A few minutes later, and I was once again facing Asher with my hands on my hips. The veil was slung back over my hair so I could see to argue with him, not that it was helping me any.
“What do you mean, we're sharing a horse? I can ride fine all by myself.” Never mind the fact that they only horse I'd ever ridden had been a pony at the zoo when I was five. It couldn't be too hard, right? Surely it wasn't as difficult as driving a car. Horses seemed very 'get on and go' type riding, they didn't have any of those buttons or clutches or gears that a car had. Besides, this one was big and white and had intelligent brown eyes that would never let me be hurt, no matter how incompetent I was on it. At least, that's what I told myself.
“Gracie, we've been over this. You can't ride a horse if you can't see. Besides, what are you afraid of? I won't bite.” From anyone else that would have sounded like a joke, but from Asher and his serious tone, it sounded more like a threat. I found myself wishing I had control of the magic I supposedly had, if only to grant him with a sense of humor.
Instead I grumbled my way up to the horse and tried for several seconds to figure out how to get on by myself before finally giving in and accepting his help. He lifted me up sideways onto the horse until I sat side saddle atop it, so I shifted in my dress, trying to put my leg on either side. The dress would not allow it.
“How am I going to do this?” I asked aloud.
“Well you're going to ride like a lady would, for one thing,” he said, and put his hand on mine to stop me from hiking my skirt up any further. I stopped cold.
“You mean to tell me you expect me to ride facing sideways for this whole long ass trip?”
“That's exactly what I expect.”
“How am I supposed to keep from falling off?” I asked.
He climbed onto the horse, one agile leg after the other and positioned himself in front of me as close as he could get.
“I suggest holding on,” he said, and jabbed at the horse with his feet. The horse took off and I reached out instinctively to grab him, anything, to keep myself from falling off. Thalia waved goodbye at us from Moira's doorway but neither of us paid much attention. We crested the first little hill, fussing at each other the whole time, and in a blink of an eye she was gone and we were on our way.
We covered quite a distance without speaking to each other, both of us considering the other some type of necessary evil that must be overcome to complete the journey. At least, that was how I viewed it and from the way his back tightened up every time I spoke, I'm pretty sure he felt the same way. Finally, he spoke.
“We'll have to rest often to keep the horse from tiring. I suggest you keep the veil on at all times in case anyone else approaches us. We won't be able to explain you not wearing it.”
I was receiving this lecture because I had already slung the veil back over my hair again after only a few minutes of having it on.
“It's itchy,” I said, aware of how childish I sounded and yet unable to stop myself, “and it's hard to breathe with it on.”
“Will it be hard to breathe without your head?” he asked. I could only assume that was a rhetorical question. “Because that's what will happen if Aella finds you.”
“Well aren't we just a Negative Nelly,” I brushed my bangs back out of my face, reluctantly clutching him harder as we seemed to pick up speed. “Ugh. I think I'm getting horse sick.”
He ignored me. He did that a lot. I made a mental note to make it as hard for him to do as I could going forward.
We were both quiet for several minutes as the scenery flew past us, the ground a blur of green beneath and the sky growing darker as it faded into evening. It was peaceful, almost nice, but I couldn't enjoy it because at that moment, my ill timing brain coughed up another question.
“How long is this going to take, getting to the castle? Like, a day? Two?”
He didn't answer but he did scoff, which I found most ominous.
“Well, where are we going first?”
“Ingress Forest.” Ah! An answer. Better to press on quickly, before he stopped.
“Why there?”
“Because we have to find a door.”
“In the middle of the forest?”
Again, no answer.
“What kind of doooooooooo...” He kicked the horse and we sped up, my last word drawing out into a scream as I grabbed at his perfectly formed abs to hold on. I pressed my face against his back until I could see nothing, and hated him to pass the time.
Eventually the field ran into another forest, and we stopped at the edge to rest. With the both of us and our food, the horse couldn't travel very long, especially at the speed we'd been going. Asher jumped off, helping me to the ground as an afterthought. His handsome face (tolerable, my brain corrected. He was a jerk and his face was merely tolerable) was set in hard lines. Thinking, no doubt, about Selene and the trouble she was in. Some of their mushy scenes together seemed to float to the top of my brain: their first kiss in the middle of danger, the long, drawn out descriptions of each others “beautiful eyes” and “alabaster skin.” I watched him carefully as he tied the horse to a rock and pretended I didn't exist, searching his (tolerable) face for signs of heartbreak and worry. His mouth was closed and his eyes were dark, and if there was anything there beyond mild annoyance at the task at hand, he guarded it well. I pulled my gaze away and sat down on another nearby rock. My feelings, as always, were conflicted.
I'd never been in love, but I had plenty of ideas about it. From my observations (mostly of the written word variety), I didn't think it was neither as easy nor as hard as The Keeper books tried to make it. To be perfectly blunt, their type of love seemed like, well, a bit of a sham. Not that I was going to tell Asher that. It wasn't my place. Besides, he'd already tried to kill me once and seemed fully capable of leaving me on my own in the middle of this strange place to die at the hands of whatever wild beast roamed this land.
I turned from Asher, who had finished tying up the horse and was now pacing along the edge of the forest, and shook my head. Leave it to me to wax poetic about love when I had better questions to think about. Like where the hell we were going, or if the forest in front of us was the right one, or what kind of door were we looking for. Apparently it was possible for me to daydream no matter where I was, even when I was in the middle of my own self insert adventure.
“Is that the Ingrid Forest?” I asked, gesturing with my head to the woods before us. Unlike the bright green woods we had entered when we first came, this forest was dark, with the trees growing thickly together, letting in very little sunlight. Above our heads the sky was clear and blue, but a few feet into the forest and it was nearly as dark as night.
“Ingress. Ingress Forest,” Asher corrected, and turned his stoney face to where I was looking. We both stared for a few minutes, my gaze switching from his face to the woods as I waited in uneasy silence for him to speak again. After a while, I didn't need for him to because the look on his face said it all. I was picking up what he was putting down, so to say. This place was going to be dangerous.
“Let me guess,” I said, my voice betraying the tension underneath my nonchalant words, “No one has ever made it all the way through the forest to the Narrator's Castle. Mortal danger and monsters and unending pain awaits us.”
He didn't answer, didn't even smile. Just stared straight ahead. After a moment, I sighed. I was going to have to bite the bullet. I wasn't going to let the adventure of a lifetime be ruined by bickering with the hunky hero. I stood.
“Look, I know we didn't quite get off on the right foot, with you trying to kill me and me making fun of you and all. I get that. But we've both got a really good reason for going to this stupid castle. We've both got people we love that needs saving and I don't think anyone else is going to step in and do it for us.” He didn't look at me, but I saw his back relax a little and took that as a good enough sign to move forward. “Maybe we should just have a truce. Ya know, like I agree to be less annoying and you agree to lighten up a bit. What do you say? For them.”
He stood there a moment, unmoving as a statue, so still that for a second I wondered if I'd managed to freeze time without meaning to. Finally, he turned and, wonder of wonders, gave me a tiny smile. It was enough to make a grown woman swoon. Luckily, I felt nothing but relief. And maybe mild arousal. But really, mostly relief.
“For them,” he said, and put out one strong, tan hand. I grasped it in my own pale one, and shared his smile.
“For them.”
I released his hand somewhat reluctantly and turned back to the forest. It was dead quiet, without even the chirping of birds or insects to break up the silence. I knew that just because I couldn't see any animals didn't mean they weren't there, but still the idea of something living inside all that darkness didn't seem right. Anyways, I had a feeling I didn't want to see the kind of creature that would live in it.
“Maybe we should rest a bit longer...” I said, starting to rethink this whole 'rushing head first into mortal danger' thing, but Asher was already moving towards the horse to untie it and even I knew it was too late to turn this ship around. I was in it now, for real, and there was nothing to do but continue to move forward.
“Well, here we go. It can't be too bad, right?” I said, then cursed myself. I'd read enough books to know to never say those words and yet there I had anyways.
This could not end well.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Ok, tell me again why I'm dressing for a funeral in 1885?”
I was standing in front of Moira and Thalia (Asher was readying the horses for our trip) dressed all in black from head to toe, my hair pinned back away from my face. The dress I was wearing had a lace overlay with solid black underneath, and it came with a black lace veil that covered my entire face. Hence the funeral jokes.
Thalia smiled indulgently.
“You have to visit the Narrator, who will help you defeat Aella.”
“The Narrator? What is she, like the book God?” I snorted raising one long lace sleeve to scratch my arm. Thalia nodded at me seriously. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might say.
“And she usually doesn't let herself get involved with matters such as these. But you must convince her that it's in her best interest to do so.”
“But wait,” I said, turning away right as Moira was pinning one last piece of hair back. She grunted at me, annoyed, but I ignored her and continued, “Why do I need her if I have magic? And why do I have to defeat Aella at all? I'm just here for Oliver.”
Thalia gave me a sharp look that told me I was mere seconds from being scorched if I didn't stop asking so many questions, which I combated by smiling back at her as charmingly as I could. She sighed.
“You have magic, but you don't know how to use it. So far you've only demonstrated magic by accident. To fight Aella, you'll need skill.” I started to open my mouth but she cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Yes, you do have to fight Aella. It's the only way to end this. Now, to answer your first question... We are disguising you as one of the Narrator's high priestesses. They wear the veil and black dress for the Narrator. You see, as a symbol of their loyalty to her and not to the ways of magic, they blind themselves and wear veils over their damaged eyes.”
“Ew,” I said, and grimaced, touching my temple near my right eye. There was no one I liked enough to blind myself for, at least no one I could think of straight off. I thought a second, staring at the veil that Moira held in her open hands. “But I'm really wearing the veil to cover my eyes, right? So no one knows I have magic?”
“Whoever said you weren't clever?” came Asher's voice from the doorway. I rolled my eyes at him.
“I'm pretty sure you did.”
He smiled at me faintly, surprising me, before his face finally settled into its default frown of concentration. He crossed the room towards me and took the veil from Moira, turning it over in his large, tan hands.
“Let me make sure I understand this correctly: She's a Blind Priestess, on her way back from visiting a sick relative. I'm her escort, a palace guard.”
Moira nodded.
“And if we run into Aella's men on the way?” I asked. “They know Asher and they're clearly looking for him.”
Here Thalia stepped in.
“I suggest running,” she said. I raised my eyebrow at her. “Quickly, of course, “ she added, as if that might appease me.
Moira took the veil back out of Asher's hands and raised up on tiptoe to put it over my head. Once it had settled over my face I turned from left to right, curtseying in what I thought was the general direction of Thalia.
“Over here, love,” she said to my back. I turned, giggling.
“How do I look?”
“It'll do,” was Asher's curt response. “Now come on. We'll need to move quickly.”
“Yes sir,” I said and mock saluted him. With the veil down I couldn't see how he reacted but I could imagine the serious look on his face; I had it memorized already.
Pulling the veil back so I could see, I looked at him. A thought suddenly occurred to me.
“Wait, if you leave Thalia, won't I forget you?”
Thalia smiled and waved her hand, a reminder of what we had come through so far just from a touch of that very hand.
“Remembering me is easy enough,” she said, and there was a kind tone to her voice that I wasn't accustomed to. It was almost like she felt sorry for me. “The rest is the hard part.”
A few minutes later, and I was once again facing Asher with my hands on my hips. The veil was slung back over my hair so I could see to argue with him, not that it was helping me any.
“What do you mean, we're sharing a horse? I can ride fine all by myself.” Never mind the fact that they only horse I'd ever ridden had been a pony at the zoo when I was five. It couldn't be too hard, right? Surely it wasn't as difficult as driving a car. Horses seemed very 'get on and go' type riding, they didn't have any of those buttons or clutches or gears that a car had. Besides, this one was big and white and had intelligent brown eyes that would never let me be hurt, no matter how incompetent I was on it. At least, that's what I told myself.
“Gracie, we've been over this. You can't ride a horse if you can't see. Besides, what are you afraid of? I won't bite.” From anyone else that would have sounded like a joke, but from Asher and his serious tone, it sounded more like a threat. I found myself wishing I had control of the magic I supposedly had, if only to grant him with a sense of humor.
Instead I grumbled my way up to the horse and tried for several seconds to figure out how to get on by myself before finally giving in and accepting his help. He lifted me up sideways onto the horse until I sat side saddle atop it, so I shifted in my dress, trying to put my leg on either side. The dress would not allow it.
“How am I going to do this?” I asked aloud.
“Well you're going to ride like a lady would, for one thing,” he said, and put his hand on mine to stop me from hiking my skirt up any further. I stopped cold.
“You mean to tell me you expect me to ride facing sideways for this whole long ass trip?”
“That's exactly what I expect.”
“How am I supposed to keep from falling off?” I asked.
He climbed onto the horse, one agile leg after the other and positioned himself in front of me as close as he could get.
“I suggest holding on,” he said, and jabbed at the horse with his feet. The horse took off and I reached out instinctively to grab him, anything, to keep myself from falling off. Thalia waved goodbye at us from Moira's doorway but neither of us paid much attention. We crested the first little hill, fussing at each other the whole time, and in a blink of an eye she was gone and we were on our way.
We covered quite a distance without speaking to each other, both of us considering the other some type of necessary evil that must be overcome to complete the journey. At least, that was how I viewed it and from the way his back tightened up every time I spoke, I'm pretty sure he felt the same way. Finally, he spoke.
“We'll have to rest often to keep the horse from tiring. I suggest you keep the veil on at all times in case anyone else approaches us. We won't be able to explain you not wearing it.”
I was receiving this lecture because I had already slung the veil back over my hair again after only a few minutes of having it on.
“It's itchy,” I said, aware of how childish I sounded and yet unable to stop myself, “and it's hard to breathe with it on.”
“Will it be hard to breathe without your head?” he asked. I could only assume that was a rhetorical question. “Because that's what will happen if Aella finds you.”
“Well aren't we just a Negative Nelly,” I brushed my bangs back out of my face, reluctantly clutching him harder as we seemed to pick up speed. “Ugh. I think I'm getting horse sick.”
He ignored me. He did that a lot. I made a mental note to make it as hard for him to do as I could going forward.
We were both quiet for several minutes as the scenery flew past us, the ground a blur of green beneath and the sky growing darker as it faded into evening. It was peaceful, almost nice, but I couldn't enjoy it because at that moment, my ill timing brain coughed up another question.
“How long is this going to take, getting to the castle? Like, a day? Two?”
He didn't answer but he did scoff, which I found most ominous.
“Well, where are we going first?”
“Ingress Forest.” Ah! An answer. Better to press on quickly, before he stopped.
“Why there?”
“Because we have to find a door.”
“In the middle of the forest?”
Again, no answer.
“What kind of doooooooooo...” He kicked the horse and we sped up, my last word drawing out into a scream as I grabbed at his perfectly formed abs to hold on. I pressed my face against his back until I could see nothing, and hated him to pass the time.
Eventually the field ran into another forest, and we stopped at the edge to rest. With the both of us and our food, the horse couldn't travel very long, especially at the speed we'd been going. Asher jumped off, helping me to the ground as an afterthought. His handsome face (tolerable, my brain corrected. He was a jerk and his face was merely tolerable) was set in hard lines. Thinking, no doubt, about Selene and the trouble she was in. Some of their mushy scenes together seemed to float to the top of my brain: their first kiss in the middle of danger, the long, drawn out descriptions of each others “beautiful eyes” and “alabaster skin.” I watched him carefully as he tied the horse to a rock and pretended I didn't exist, searching his (tolerable) face for signs of heartbreak and worry. His mouth was closed and his eyes were dark, and if there was anything there beyond mild annoyance at the task at hand, he guarded it well. I pulled my gaze away and sat down on another nearby rock. My feelings, as always, were conflicted.
I'd never been in love, but I had plenty of ideas about it. From my observations (mostly of the written word variety), I didn't think it was neither as easy nor as hard as The Keeper books tried to make it. To be perfectly blunt, their type of love seemed like, well, a bit of a sham. Not that I was going to tell Asher that. It wasn't my place. Besides, he'd already tried to kill me once and seemed fully capable of leaving me on my own in the middle of this strange place to die at the hands of whatever wild beast roamed this land.
I turned from Asher, who had finished tying up the horse and was now pacing along the edge of the forest, and shook my head. Leave it to me to wax poetic about love when I had better questions to think about. Like where the hell we were going, or if the forest in front of us was the right one, or what kind of door were we looking for. Apparently it was possible for me to daydream no matter where I was, even when I was in the middle of my own self insert adventure.
“Is that the Ingrid Forest?” I asked, gesturing with my head to the woods before us. Unlike the bright green woods we had entered when we first came, this forest was dark, with the trees growing thickly together, letting in very little sunlight. Above our heads the sky was clear and blue, but a few feet into the forest and it was nearly as dark as night.
“Ingress. Ingress Forest,” Asher corrected, and turned his stoney face to where I was looking. We both stared for a few minutes, my gaze switching from his face to the woods as I waited in uneasy silence for him to speak again. After a while, I didn't need for him to because the look on his face said it all. I was picking up what he was putting down, so to say. This place was going to be dangerous.
“Let me guess,” I said, my voice betraying the tension underneath my nonchalant words, “No one has ever made it all the way through the forest to the Narrator's Castle. Mortal danger and monsters and unending pain awaits us.”
He didn't answer, didn't even smile. Just stared straight ahead. After a moment, I sighed. I was going to have to bite the bullet. I wasn't going to let the adventure of a lifetime be ruined by bickering with the hunky hero. I stood.
“Look, I know we didn't quite get off on the right foot, with you trying to kill me and me making fun of you and all. I get that. But we've both got a really good reason for going to this stupid castle. We've both got people we love that needs saving and I don't think anyone else is going to step in and do it for us.” He didn't look at me, but I saw his back relax a little and took that as a good enough sign to move forward. “Maybe we should just have a truce. Ya know, like I agree to be less annoying and you agree to lighten up a bit. What do you say? For them.”
He stood there a moment, unmoving as a statue, so still that for a second I wondered if I'd managed to freeze time without meaning to. Finally, he turned and, wonder of wonders, gave me a tiny smile. It was enough to make a grown woman swoon. Luckily, I felt nothing but relief. And maybe mild arousal. But really, mostly relief.
“For them,” he said, and put out one strong, tan hand. I grasped it in my own pale one, and shared his smile.
“For them.”
I released his hand somewhat reluctantly and turned back to the forest. It was dead quiet, without even the chirping of birds or insects to break up the silence. I knew that just because I couldn't see any animals didn't mean they weren't there, but still the idea of something living inside all that darkness didn't seem right. Anyways, I had a feeling I didn't want to see the kind of creature that would live in it.
“Maybe we should rest a bit longer...” I said, starting to rethink this whole 'rushing head first into mortal danger' thing, but Asher was already moving towards the horse to untie it and even I knew it was too late to turn this ship around. I was in it now, for real, and there was nothing to do but continue to move forward.
“Well, here we go. It can't be too bad, right?” I said, then cursed myself. I'd read enough books to know to never say those words and yet there I had anyways.
This could not end well.