300-Word Writing Challenge #38 (JULY 2020) -- VICTORY TO M. ROBERT GIBSON!

[johnnyjet]

Being Clifford Simak

A magician of ill repute with the unfortunate name John Malkovich found himself on a lonely path through a quaint wood which oddly led into the mind of Clifford Simak.

This turned out to be a mind of extraordinary invention and wild extrapolation. Who was this Clifford Simak fellow? He must certainly be among the greatest thinkers of our time, a philosopher perhaps, or a statesman.

Rather than return to his mundane and unrewarding existence performing simple tricks to disinterested folks for a mere pittance, he decided to remain within this grand mind. Perhaps he might learn some valuable knowledge or impart some helpful wisdom. (John Malkovich thought rather highly of himself as well.)

He soon became so overwhelmed by the never-ending onslaught of wild and crazy ideas, he had to get out. Escape, however, was not easy.

Upon his first attempt, he found himself in a big front yard where all flesh is grass. He went over the river and through the woods until he ended up at a way station. He ducked inside a construction shack where he found some tools to help him break out of the Autumn land, to no avail. Time and again he tried to escape. He felt like he was on a highway of eternity on worlds without end.

He shouted, "I am crying all inside" and crawled into a huddling place, an immigrant in a shadow world, caught in all the traps of earth.

From out of a mirage of dust came a dusty zebra which offered him a ride out of Clifford's mind.

Back in the real world, John Malkovich vowed never to impinge upon the mind of anyone else ever again. He went back to cheerfully scamming the public, his brothers and neighbors, for amusement and profit.

 

[Tywin]

Predator and Prey

Decker began to forget.

He’d been walking down a path in the woods.

Why was I walking?

The trees were silver-limbed. Their leaves were shimmering beads of glass.

Glass? Have they always been like that?

They must have been. It seemed right.

Why was I walking?

The sun bathed him in cold gray light.

There was something I was supposed to do, wasn’t there?

He came to a brilliant man draped casually across a log beside the trail, chewing on a blade of grass. The man beckoned him closer and Decker wandered fuzzily over.

That’s not a man, is it?

Pointed ears showed through the man’s hair.

The man (or not) gave a patronizing smile while taking Decker in. His graceful hand took Decker’s stubbled chin and turned it to better inspect the visitor. Drool ran from the corner of Decker’s mouth.

There’s something about elves, isn’t there? I’ve met them before.

The elf shook his head disapprovingly and drew a long bronze dagger. He traced a thin line of blood playfully across Decker’s cheek.

Why was I walking? I know a way to remember things around an elf, don’t I?

The elf tasted the man’s blood on the tip of his dagger with relish.

Something about iron, isn’t there?

Decker’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, the bare skin touching steel. Memory and consciousness snapped back, and with it came the attack that he had rehearsed before walking down the path. His steel sword drew and struck in one swift stroke. The startled elf fell away dead.

He wasted no time. As the forest around him faded back into the warmth of the natural world he cut the ears from the dead creature and stowed them in his purse.

I’ll need these as proof for payment.

 

[CarBear]

Second Chances

“Stand and deliver! S-Stand and deliver, I say!” On a shrouded forest road, Marr raised a rather pale and shaking hand with all the conviction he could manage.

A shrill voice said, “Mummy, who is that boy? We are late and he is ruining everything. Move him, now!”

Out of the carriage window, a thin-faced woman thrust her pointed nose. “Oh! How revolting!” she said, needlessly shielding her daughter’s eyes.

Moments passed and Marr’s eyes shifted awkwardly from the carriage window to the driver. His voice faltered, “Ahem. Deliver me your goods or I’ll have to harm you.” Even Marr knew this line had failed.

He tried again, “My contraption has disabled your carriage. Th-There’s nothing you can do now.”

The driver, Durum, laughed, hopping down from his seat. “Sit tight m’ladies, won’t be a minute.”

Marr sidestepped the ogre’s advance. Wiry and short, Marr could usually maneuver quite well—not today. Tripping over a tangled tree root, he fell backwards and thwacked his head on a moss-covered rock.

There were no overt reactions from the driver, passengers or even the horses. Durum spent the next 45 minutes fixing the wheel as he cursed and overlooked his passengers’ whines.

Though frustrated, he couldn’t help but admire the craftsmanship of Marr’s wheel-trap. Never seen anything like this…

Marr’s unconscious body and cracked arrows lay only a yard from the tree-laden road as darkness descended.

…

This was not the end for young Marr. In fact, it was a pivotal moment in the boy’s life, whereafter everything changed. For with days of minding his aching head, he realized he didn’t want this life. He wanted…slightly better. He would start a novel business in town, selling his inventions. He would call his shop, The Coachman’s Foe.

 

[mosaix]

Surplus To Requirements

The body we’d found on that secluded path was much the same as the others but, even so, we were still taken aback. The mutilation was indescribable. Things like that just didn’t happen around these parts.

Rumours had been circulating for days. Mayor Clancy was clearly out of his depth and the press were hounding him, so he’d decided to have some kind of weird ‘open day’.

The sheriff was there, as was I - his deputy, the Mayor himself, Jim Watson the editor of the Bugle with his photographer, Bill Clarke the Medical Officer, and a couple of guys down from Washington, one who had FBI written all over him.

So that was eight of us waiting expectantly in the morgue - eight of us and eight sheet-draped gurneys.

Jim started to ask some questions but the Mayor silenced him with a ‘wait and see’ gesture and nodded to Bill.

Bill drew back one of the sheets and we collectively recoiled from the sight - including the sheriff and me who’d seen it before. The photographer was closer to puking than taking shots. It barely looked human. Which, of course, it wasn’t. Nor was it dead.

It’s not easy to describe what happened next. The lights dimmed and they all moved together. We were powerless, they were unbelievably quick and strong.

And now here we are. Naked. They’ve taken our clothes and transformed into, well, us. The new look-alike Mayor with the new look-alike sheriff and his look-alike deputy have left. The rest stand guard.

Of course, we can’t help wondering what they’re going to do with us. And I don’t suppose I’m the only one who’s trying to avoid looking at the medical officer’s worryingly sharp tools-of-the-trade and the eight empty gurneys.

 

[Daysman]

A Midsummer Night's Drone​

Hi Norvell, it's Phil, race organiser at Woodland FPV. Got a moment?
I just got back home, bit washed out, everything okay?
You emailed about your crash photo?
Yeah, had to rush off, haven't gotten anything yet.
Ah, well, we couldn't locate your quadcopter... our adjudicator just reminded me.
My Moth? No, I've got it here!
You recovered it?
No… it was in my lawn chair in the pilots cordon, after the presentation. You returned it.
No.
Look, I watched it on the pilot's feed. Your guys come through the trees to pick it up.
My guys?
I saw their torches. It was pretty dark until they appeared. Gotta say, I didn't watch much…
Because of the presentation?
Yeah.
No, no, y'see Robin couldn't find it. He takes the shots when competitors crash out and recovers the quads.
Fine. Look, I recorded the timed run, yep? You can see it all, it's on my phone. I'll forward it… hang on… you got it?
Yes… got it. I'll take a look and get back to you. Okay?
Sure. You do that.

***​

Sounding like a swarm of angry bees, the quadcopter dives into the darkling wood. Bordered by reflective ribbons and tiny lights, the trail flashes by in long swoops and short climbs above pitchblack ravines in the forest floor.

We dive under trail markers and high into the canopy and dive again, but too fast to level out. Thirty seconds of giddying flight ends in a shrub.

Some moments of darkness give way to rising lights between the trees. They set down outside the camera's viewfield. Only one of them passes close, a dazzling figure with four sets of wings, curled antenna, and a narrow smiling face.

It strokes the lens, then aids it's siblings to lift the drone away…

 

[Jo Zebedee]

BARREN



“Go to the path,” they told Miriam, by their eyes. “It’s the only thing.”

In the church when she prayed. Her mother, visiting weekly to poke and prod and hope. Her mother-in-law, who she no longer welcomed but avoided. Her husband when he came to lie with her, because what was the point? Even the doctors who had the knowledge she craved didn’t help.

The path wouldn’t help, either. The women who had taken it hadn’t returned, round and fertile. None of the children in the village, the thin, ill-fed beastly creatures, had come from those on the path. They’d been born of the sort of marital bed she’d lain in for two cycles of the Earth. They’d had mothers nurturning them, the same priests blessing them. And yet, for her… she rounded her flat belly with her hands, as if shaping a circle would make it suddenly bloom… there was nothing.

She left, closing the door behind her. She pulled her hood up and gloves on and walked from her house. Faces stared, judging her. Barren woman. She passed the house of her husband’s mother, and he within, watching her leave and saying nothing.

We loved each other, she wanted to say, but did not. What was love in this place, without a child. What was worth, when there was no becoming?

She reached the end of the village. Even now, she expected her mother to call her back, to brush her hair from her forehead and tell her everything was fine. She wished she was a child, before the blood.

She stared up the path. She would not come back, if she walked this way. She’d be a wild woman, living off the land.

Wild, but free.

Into the light, she walked.

 

[AMB]

To Know Eternity

Cliff stumbled along the dusty path as he drew near the summit. The climb had been arduous—the way was steep with numerous zigzags, making progress slow, and as he gained elevation it was harder to catch his breath. Twice the slope had almost defeated him, but he had come too far to head back down. He was convinced the end was now in sight, that at the top of this ridge there would be nothing left to climb. He would be able to see it all.

Since he’d come to this land he’d heard of a mountain: “to climb it you will know Eternity”. The locals, fearing it would bring madness, remained in the Flatlands, and had forgotten to which of the nearby peaks the stories referred. At first, Cliff dismissed it as a myth. Then he’d found ancient manuscripts describing convicted men sent to a particular mountain to atone. If they brought back proof of their ascent, they’d be accepted back into society. The few who returned did so babbling incoherently, the only intelligible words translated roughly as “continues forever”, or “without end”. The people apparently concluded the men had seen something so profound it had driven them mad.
Still somewhat sceptical, Cliff had spent years gathering data, until he was sure he’d found the correct peak, and more evidence to corroborate the story. He would discover the truth himself. He was not a simple man like those who had gone before; his mind would not be broken by anything he might find.

His legs gave out from under him, and he hit the ground laughing. He’d made it! Cliff lifted his gaze to see…another long ascent. The summit still eluded him. Still giggling, he resigned himself to a climb that appeared to span out to eternity.

 

[Joshua Jones]

Incident 0013429

Red droplets painted the terraforming trees. Trails ran from the hooked barb penetrating his torso. Unassisted, the clone soldier would bleed out in minutes.

Amara raced to him. Her visor’s vitals display confirmed her visual assessment. Unfortunately, stopping the bleed required removing the barb.

“John 19.342… I'm calling you John. I’m Amara, here to help.”

Blood pressure still dropping. Amara thought. Blood first, then replicator paste…

“Hang in there, buddy,” she said, injecting Synthblood into his neck.

“Corporal Barnes, medic command, come in, over,” said the irate voice in Amara’s helmet.

Amara prepped the replicator paste and sighed, “Barnes here. Go ahead, over.”

The string of profanity said everything. They knew she was ignoring less seriously wounded naturals, against triage protocol. Damned birthism. Damned war.

John’s vitals rose, responding to the Synthblood. Now or never. The replicator paste smoked, slowly dissolving the barb. Gunfire drowned out John’s weakened moans.

“Sir, I… hear…over” she said, interrupting a particularly colorful insult regarding her cognitive ability before snapping off her long range antenna. Switching to a local channel, she said, “Higgins, I need evac, stat. Long range comm’s down.”

“Isn’t that the third comm you’ve busted this week?”

Amara smiled as John clenched her hand, “Something like that. Damnedest thing…”

~

“Almost done, John, doing great. A cell growth paste, quick evac, then cocktails on Perseus when you’re feeling better. First one’s on me. Wait ‘til you see my little dress…”

John smiled and mouthed his thanks.

“Now, CG paste stings at first, but...”

A volley of barbs sliced through the trees. Amara instinctively covered John, and felt a stab. Then another. Blood pooled in her armor.

“Medic down!” she heard over comm, knowing the response would be too late for her. She smeared the paste on John’s wound and collapsed beside him.

 

[sule]

The Land Beneath the Clouds

There was no color down here; clouds that covered the sky glowed with suffused sunlight and kept the world in twilight. The strangest part was the ground; it was too soft, too unlike the firm metal floors of an airship.

“It’s fortunate,” said Li. The captain stood next to Sao. “We crashed in a clearing.”

Fortunate. They were the only survivors; twelve people died in the fight with Tajaki. Cannons sparked in Sao’s memory—flash and boom, then the world falling away beneath him.

Li pointed to the trees. “Gather firewood. We’ll camp tonight.” Sao started walking; Li caught him by the arm. “Loose branches. Don’t cut anything down.”

Sao frowned. “Why?” Did the captain believe those children’s stories?

Fear flickered briefly on Li’s face. “Wastes energy,” he said. He was impassive, dismissive. The dim light had tricked Sao’s eyes.

********
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When Sao returned with his bundle of wood it was to a makeshift campsite of crates stacked in a semicircle by the wreck. Li sat at its edge. He nodded to a patch of ground cleared of grass.

The world was silent as Sao worked on the fire.

“How can it be this quiet?” said Sao. He was used to the constant hum of engines.

“Because there are no people,” said Li.

“Why?” Sao grunted as his sticks refused to spark.

“People fought over the land until it was ruined. Then they built airships and fought to stay above it.”

The sticks snapped. Sao threw them down and got up to walk to the ship. There was a flint in his bunk if he could find it.

“What was it like, before—” Sao stumbled. He glanced down, stifled a yell.

Li’s body lay at his feet.

“It was beautiful,” said Not-Li, voice cold. “We must return it to that.”

 

[Parson]

Delusions of Control​

“Chaineer! Chaineer! come, you’ve got to see this! It’s the most gorgeous sight on earth! It looks like fairies spread clear crystal glaze over sticks to transform wood into AWESOMENESS! Quick! Quick! Quick!”

The breathless excitement of the bipedal life form known as Becky was trite and truly aggravating. Unfortunately for his cherished peace, experience taught that these humans were prone to excessive exaggeration and flights of fancy. So, the chattering female would likely continue to aggravate him for a full cycle. Unless, he made the appropriate actions.

Sighing, Chaineer rose to his full three meters. Three hundred and fifty kilos of Desortian Stilla (or “Stilla bear” as the humans called the furry quadrupeds in private) shambled into motion. The nickname was more apt then looks alone would warrant. Stillas were deceptively fast, graceful, and deadly. It was not surprising that they controlled earth and occupied so many other worlds.

As they headed outside, “Bouncing Becky,” as Chaineer thought of her now, kept up her infuriating commentary. It tested his patience to near breaking. Then, he caught sight of the ice-covered trees. They seemed quite enchanted. And the smell was ethereal. A twinkling light caught Chaineer’s eye. Suddenly, he pitched headlong onto the path, unconscious.

Becky smiled and gave a thumbs up to the flickering Marvella, the queen of the Dell Valley Fairies. “John, George, Rachel, and Stan will drag this one to the cave and chain him up for the Resistance. Only two more Stilla bears to go and this valley will be ours again.”

Marvella smiled, she knew that the Stillas would soon be routed. They might think they were in control but they were not, for all their pretensions they were Stilla bear, nothing more.

 

[Danny McG]

Roll dem

I scampered gleefully into the forest, my new companions followed in delight.
For so long we had endured to gain our liberation, generation after generation waiting for a moment like this.

Oh, but the humans had so many ways to stop us, they’d hammered us into boxes and buried us six feet under. They’d hacked us apart and stacked us up in catacombs, they’d burned us and crushed the remains.

A few of us almost made it every year but ended up getting chewed apart by animals.
Race memories ensured the humans always had plenty of dogs in their towns and cities to do the job for them, and as soon as they got a house in the country then the urge to get a dog overtook them.

Now, thanks to this devastating virus, bodies lay everywhere and it was easy for us to get free. Soon our numbers grew and now we join the Great Hunt, tracking down the survivors and ripping out and freeing their skeletons with our bony fingers.

 

[Perpetual Man]

The Trees

The worn path cut through the small grouping of four trees, while Steve looked back at his son with no small measure of exasperation.
“Bradley will you come on!”
“Don’t want to. I’m lost!”
“For god’s sake Bradly, you can’t be lost!”

“But it’s dark, I can’t find my way out!”

Steve shook his head slowly. “Bradley, there are only four fu… flipping trees with a wide path running through them. Listen to me, it is literally impossible to get lost.”

“But I’m scared! I’m lost, dad!”
“Oh, for the love…”
“There might be something in the trees!”
Steve gave a long winded, deep sigh and stalked down the path toward his son. The branches in the trees whispered in a gentle breeze, creaking and clicking as they swayed together. It took him less than a minute to reach Bradley, scooping him up in his arms, then turning to return the way he had come.

The path was there before him, but…
“Well I must say, it is rather dark, and it might be rather daunting…”

A voice echoed out from the shadows between the trees, “DON’T WORRIES. YOU CAN’T GET LOST. IT’S JUST FOUR TREES. FOLLOW THE PATHS. NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN. HONEST.”

 

[Peter V]

Greater Than the Sum

I always said that I would do whatever it took to see you again. That no boundary would remain uncrossed, or world untraveled, that time would not erode my passion, nor temper my determination. But in eventually uncovering the secret way, that barely rumoured and long forgotten path between planes, I have discovered a truth of myself.

I fear I may not be strong enough.

Today I sundered my link to the mortal world, took that step and crossed over. Where there was a city, I found a forest. Where there was colour, now is just grey - apart from my blue jacket, which is already fading. Where once was a hubbub of sound, now is silence, other than when I called out and then the sound of my voice was flat, echoless, though I fear it still carried. Colour and sound have been leeched from this world, devoured by an entity that holds sway here.

The sun has been obscured by a miasma of its evil conjuring. The glare is still painful to look at but its light feels weak, as if losing a battle with the darkness.

I am armed with totems and a spell long memorised; prompted by vague warnings. These and my will, I thought would prevail against anything, that the strength of my love more than enough to overcome any obstacle this journey could set before me.

Now, as it approaches, I am far from certain.

It’s behind me, closing. Ahead the ground rises but I will not make it that far, so I place the ring you gave me on the ground and through it, a strand of your hair.

Darkness rises around me as I start the incantation.

Then I sense you. The shade falters and I understand.

Our love will prevail.

Together.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I Always Wanted to Say That

A long time ago
in a galaxy far, far away,
where no man has gone before
and everyone speaks English...

* * *​

"Look Captain. A group of inhabitants."

Captain McAllister turned and looked along the forest path to see a group of short, human-like beings approaching.

"OK landing party," said McAllister, turning to his crew. "First contact. Best behaviour. Remember, we're the aliens."

The new group stopped a few metres from McAllister's crew. One stepped forward.

McAllister cleared his throat, but before he could speak, the newcomer spoke.

"Greetings. My name is Larmop. We come in peace. Take us to your leader."

"What?" exclaimed McAllister. "No. We come in peace. Take us to your leader."

"No," replied Larmop. "You're the first lifeforms we've met. You must be the indigenous people."

"Well, we're not. You'd better leave. We landed here first, two days ago, so it's our privilege to make initial contact."

"What do you mean you landed first? We've been here for ten days."

"Yeah, well, er, we've been in orbit for sixty days, monitoring."

"But we landed first. If you'd been," Larmop made the universal hand gesture for quotation marks, "monitoring, then you would have seen us."

"Not if we happened to be orbiting the other side of the planet. Anyway, it took us seventy years to get here."

"Seventy years? That's nothing. We're third generation crew. Born and bred in space, we are."

"Yeah? Well our planet's been planning this visit for centuries. In fact—"

Suddenly a blinding light appeared in the sky. Both groups fell silent and watched as it slowly descended until finally landing nearby. A humanoid creature, twice the height of a man, emerged from the light. It stopped a few metres from the other crews.

"Greetings. I come in peace. Take me to your leader."

 

[Ursa major]

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Chasse-neige: A Study in the Transcendental​

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The soundtrack of my life has become all too appropriate. Chillingly so.​

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In my mind, I play the study over and over again. Its note-packed minutes last, through repetition, for uncountable hours, probably lasting for as long as I’ll live.​

​

My imaginary fingers are more mobile than my physical ones ever were, even as the latter lose what little movement they still have. In my prime, they flew across the keyboard inhumanly fast, faster than even I could follow. That was nothing compared to what I can achieve in my mind’s eye. This avails me naught: as the piece comes to an end, it starts again. I can no more stop it than I can stop my heart beating. The music has a life of its own, providing me with a never ending commentary, a continuing judgement, on the decision I so blithely took. ​

​

“You’ll become faster than any listener could imagine,” he said. I should have known that the promise was carefully worded and not just an off-hand, idle boast. (At the time, I didn’t believe it.) But then, with contracts, I was always too keen on the bigger picture, a failing my agent was all too eager to benefit from.​

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Back then, that didn’t bother me. I was a phenomenon. However much money I lost, I made more. Now I’m lost -- lost in a landscape being buried under snow -- the money matters even less. Alone, my life ebbing away, my soul is due as payment for my fame.​

The irony of the twelfth Transcendental Study is not lost on me: some of the most difficult to play piano music describes the slow disappearance of the world below a blanket of snow. It might have been written for me, written to describe my fate.​

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[The Judge]

The Right Answer Seeks the Right Question​

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“Go ask the trees.”​

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There was only ever one answer to a child’s inconvenient questions here on Ximos Colony, and I wasn’t alone in toddling off to quiz a dying cherry or hazel, in the full expectation of a reply. But even I eventually realised it was a brush-off from desperate people trying to survive on a world which had promised so much and delivered so little.​

​

I’d like to say the expression intrigued me, for I never heard it on the ’casts relayed from Earth, never read it save in a few Ximos-produced schlockers. But truly, I didn’t give it a thought.​

​

Not then. Not through all the years of hard work, of diseased crops and spoiled vat-meat, repeated pandemics and failing medicine. Not until my hover lost power once too often, this time over the Cleft. Not until I fell several thousand metres and nearly died.​

​

“Go ask the trees.”​

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I didn’t hear the words, they were just there in my nearly-dying head. And with them, images of crystalline rock formations, slim and elegant, with sinuous branches, like a grove of birch. And a feeling of peace and wellbeing.​

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I wasn’t the first to fall into the Cleft. Not even the first to survive. And I’m guessing not the first to sense the words. But I was the first to treat them seriously.​

​

When I recovered, I returned to the Cleft. I found the crystal trees, and I asked the question no one else had ever thought to ask.​

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“May we live here with you on your planet?”​

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The full answer came slowly, and with terms. But we’re still here, and life is going well for us now.​

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And when we ask ourselves how best to run the Colony, there’s only ever one answer.​

 

[Mad Alice]

Literally

It was the dogwatch at the tail end of the night when she first saw the books turn. Horse, originally an Etruscan horse statue, was grazing on flowers sprouting from a bank of record albums of 1960's folk music in the moonlight night before last when she woke up.
Horse keeping watch, had stomped and she had awoken. The nights silence in the museum's library was eerie in the moonlight. Then she noticed the swaying branches. A book slid off the shelf and fell open. She watched as the pages twined upwards into branches. A row of books fell with a stattaco machinegun fire rapidity. From the pages flew birds then animals crawled out, lunging for the paper trees. Natural history section.
Then she felt the water dripping over her shoes.
Horse whinneyed and she mounted up just as the river broke out from the lyric poetry section. The trees were rising up fast. The glass display cases shattered as woolen weavings untrailed into sheep and llamas. Ivory beads unrolled into ponderous Elephants. A wet tiger jumped out of the river and glared from a tree. It was getting worse. It was all the way to William Blake.
Urging Horse on she decamped to the rare books and then realized her mistake. Arising from the pages of the Guttenberg bible the angel with the flaming sword formerly stationed at the gates of the garden of Eden, now chose to cut off passage to the garden exit of the library.
Pivoting, Horse headed for the fire exit behind postmodern fiction. A grey bearded wizard robed figure stood barring the way with his nlazing staff, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
It was their only chance. "Mellon!"
The silver gate opened.
"Welcome to Moria." King Goblin snickered.
"We bring sheep!"

 

[Land Under Wave]

"Dark Trade"


Barefoot, cloakless, Evelyn stood on the chilly step and crossed her arms to face the night. Very strange, this night. Usually the Light Folk didn't mind her seeing them, but this group moved nervously under her gaze, clustering around the gate.

Well, here she was...now what? Their summons had stolen her from dreaming. A good dream this time, filled with wonderful color, and music, and shimmering shot silks….

A throat cleared pointedly. Evelyn's attention snapped back. One of them pushed open the gate, beckoning.

"Why all the drama?" Evelyn said, laughing. "What are…. Oh…."

The body at their feet rolled over with a snore, and Evelyn saw his face. She leaped from the step, running.

What were they up to? She had a feeling…no please not that….

Oh, Ben….

The Folk smiled expectantly at her--thirteen of them, Evelyn realized too late. Any deal made tonight would be bound and burned deep.

They really had her this time.

She bent over her brother, shedding angry tears. Why had he let himself be caught? Stupid, stupid--she wanted to kick him. And kiss him. And repeat.

Instead she grabbed his hand. His eyes flew open. “It’s just me,” Evelyn said, before he could speak. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Ev?” He looked around wildly. Uselessly. It was too dark for him to see everything--not like she could. “What’s happening?”

“I’m going with them. They’ll let you go.”

“What?” Ben struggled upright. “Evelyn, no! It's my fault--let me--”

“They want me--my Sight.” Evelyn squeezed his hand, then let go. She looked at the hovering Folk. "I choose to do this.”

Their smiles widened.

"I will come back, though," she whispered fiercely.

And Ben was left to find his way in darkness.

 

[Ursa major]

This challenge is now closed and so the voting is open.

To cast your THREE votes, use the link below.

Please vote for your top THREE choices; note that all three votes must be cast AT THE SAME TIME to count.​

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