“Jeez, Tess . . . this is a complete society, just like any other. They have hierarchies and despots and sociopaths, just like anywhere else.”
“I know, I know, Miss Political Science, but don’t you sometimes wish that the fairy tales are real, that’s there’s somewhere magical aside from all that crap?”
“Your Judaeo-Christian, Paradise Lost slip is showing,” I said.
“God, Ash! Do you have to be so bloody analytical all the time? How do you live like that? Always measuring and assessing . . . We just survived an aborted flight on the underside of a floating animal!”
“Yeah, well, right now I am assessing the risk of us getting drenched in the rain that’s coming and its high. There looked like some kind of folly or something over this way I think. We better haul arse if we don’t want to spend the day shivering and wet.”
My lecture seemed to do the trick. We piled one of the parachutes roughly back into its pack and I strapped it to my back. At the very least it could become shelter if we needed it. We started off walking through a bunch of trees, struggling to get past the whippy branches and were rewarded when we stumbled out onto a path. The tall boundary fence of the estate was behind us, so surely, the trail would lead us to something. Our heads jerked up as the wind picked up, great rumbling rolls of thunder sounding overhead. “We’d better find somewhere soon,” Tess said and we both took off at a faster clip. The sky was purple as a bruise and roiling above us when we came across what I thought I had seen. It had been little more than a white blur as we fell, but it was now apparently a circular arrangement of spindly cast metal arches, the gaps between them filled in with decorative stained glass. We both scurried inside, the interior
much warmer for letting the former sunlight in without the whipping wind.
“It might blow over,” Tess said, looking out through the doorway of the folly at the sullen clouds. “The wind that was pushing it at us seems to be moving it over the estate.”
“Maybe.”
“I wonder what happened to the poor aerowhale?” she said, looking up at the sky as if to look for signs of it.
“Tess–”
“Do you think it might have been light enough to stop from crashing, once we were out of the basket?”
“Tess–”
“Well, do you?”
“Tess, we’re in a cruel and unusual world, a lot like our own. The prince is a rapist and a sadist. He tried to rape me several nights ago; apparently skinny jeans really are a natural deterrent. The only thing I could do to persuade him not to was to say I would help him get you to fall in love with him. He beat Gabe to unconsciousness; right now I don’t know if he’s in a coma or is brain dead. He was returned to us completely brutalised and covered in faeces, causing God knows what infection. We brought guns with us, but they have taken them. We’ve got bikes, but they have been locked up, too. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but we need to get the fuck out of Dodge, as soon as we can, before this raving narcissistic psychopath kills or maims another one of us irreparably. That’s what we need to focus on, Tess, not this, not the fucking aerowhale.”
She stayed standing in the doorway, looking up at the sky, as if she’d heard nothing I’d said. The storm boiled in the background, a dramatic contrast to her implacable stillness. “I know,” she said finally. She pushed herself off of the doorframe and came inside, though her eyes didn’t meet mine. “Well, I didn’t know the details, of what had happened to Gabe, to you . . .” Her arms wrapped around herself and she shook her head. “This isn’t like the books.” She snorted at this, “Of course, this isn’t like the books. I sound like a moron saying it, but . . . well, what else did I have to go on? If Nan had a portal to alternate dimensions in her shop, I’m sure others do, but no one is going on 60 Minutes and doing a tell-all about it. There’s no handy Portal Management for Dummies guide printed yet. Perhaps that’s a job for me when we get home,” she said with a pained smile. “But I just wanted this to work; I wanted the books to be right so much–”
“I know you did, kid.”
“It’s so seductive, since Nan’s death we’ve had experiences that people dream about. Meeting Prince Charming, King Arthur . . . The Big Bad Wolf was way sexier than I would have anticipated.”
“Yeah, he was hot, but also a pushy prick.”
“And meeting Merlin, the magician.” I stayed silent, watching the expressions shift on my sister’s face. Her eyebrows came down hard; her eyes screwed up tight before opening wide, staring at the sky. Oh, God, I thought as I saw the shine there. She blinked hard to try and stop it, but I was at her side, my arms wrapped around her in the next moment. “I thought we were special,” she said, tears running down her face. “How could we be anything else? How could all of this stuff happen if we weren’t?”
“Oh, Tess,” I said, rubbing her back as she sobbed into my shoulder.
“What does it mean? If all this stuff has happened and we aren’t special? Are we some kind of cosmic joke?”
“Probably,” I said with an involuntary chuckle. “Look, you’re not ready to hear this, but maybe what we’ve got to do is stop thinking about stories of farm boys saving the world and more about what we can do. We’re not stupid; we have skills. Let’s use them and get the fuck out of here. With some careful research, we may well find the portal that opens on your sugar-drenched bunny fantasy world and you can have that adventure. We just need to get home first.”
The universe’s response to this was to open the heavens. Rain poured down around us, starting to seep inside the doorway. We settled down in the rear of the folly, sheltered by the warm glass and drew the parachute around us. Once we were huddled down and beginning to warm up, Tess said, “So, what the fuck are we going to do?”
35
“There you are.” We woke with a start to see several grey-pelted wolf people standing at the front of the folly, peering in at us. “Come along,” one said briskly. “There’s a carriage outside. The prince has been doing his nut, wondering what happened to the two of you.” And that was how we were unceremoniously returned to the citadel.
“When we get inside, insist on coming to our room,” I said to Tess as the horses' hooves clattered over the cobblestones of the courtyard.
“OK, but–”
“We need to stay together. There’s room in ours. Tess, you don’t want to be caught on your own here. The prince thinks getting you to fall in love with him is the way he’s going to return to his former glory. He’ll stop at nothing to achieve that.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Natty said as we walked in the door. “I thought he’d gone and killed you.”