“Patrick?” Muddled syllables stumble from my lips, and my vision blurs soft and gray around the edges. My nerves are dulled smudges against my skin. I hear myself groan, and I close my eyes again.
Muffled voices puncture the blackness.
“...alive! …eyes are opening!”
“Of course…alive, …see her breathing.”
“I wonder…happened to her?”
Consciousness seeps through my mental fog, and my eyes fly open. Three red figures backlit by a gray sky loom over me. My vision sharpens, and the figures come into focus. My eyes dart between three feminine faces in red-hooded cloaks. Two of them look to be about my age, one is much younger. They take a step back when my breath begins to heave in rapid pants. I shift my head, but something hard digs into the back of my skull and I freeze. Am I paralyzed? I test my fingers, and they curl on command, the earth cold and hard beneath my fingertips. Not paralyzed. But what if I’m injured? I shouldn’t move in case I’m injured—Okay. Just. Stay. Calm.
My eyes continue to bounce between the three faces. “W-where am I? Where’s Patrick?” My voice sounds unnatural, its cadence too sharp.
“Who’s Patrick?” The youngest looking one asks in a peculiar accent.
“Shush!” The blonde one nudges the girl in the ribs.
The other woman with dark curly hair offers a smile, but her eyes hold a wary alertness before saying, “This is The Withering Woods.” I stare at her, trying to place that neighborhood on my mental map of downtown Los Angeles. Brows furrowing, the curly-haired woman continues. “May we help you?”
“Where’s Patrick? What just happened?” It comes out as a whimper.
The same woman shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I do not know a Patrick. My name is Caia. This is Baliella and Opalyn. We are in service at the castle.”
My brows knit together. Castle? “What castle?”
The young one, Opalyn, smothers a laugh prompting the blonde one to elbow her again. Goosebumps pimple my bare limbs. I shift my focus from the three strangers to the forest beyond. Every tree is bone white and stripped of its leaves, not a single palm tree in sight. My eyes flit to the ground. What is left of the grass is dead and brown with a crusting of frost. A shiver runs through me. Either I’m dreaming, or something is very seriously wrong.
“Are you well?” Caia asks, and halts the panic curdling in my stomach. “Are you in need of assistance?” Her words curl around each other in an unfamiliar lilt.
“I—I don’t know. I was with Patrick in the magnolia tree and now everything is…” My words trail off as realization slams into me. These three strangers aren’t speaking with an accent. They are speaking a different language all together. But the worst part is I not only understand them, I am also speaking the same language. “What the f-” It’s a dream. I’m dreaming.
My head spins. I try to rationalize what’s happening, but there is an empty space in my memory. My brain leaps between the memory of climbing the magnolia tree with Patrick, to finding myself in a dead forest. A forest that is definitely not in LA. I fell out of the tree and got a concussion. That’s why I don’t remember anything. I look up at the woman named Caia. “I don’t know how I got here. I think I need an ambulance?”
She gives me a gentle smile, one you would use to soothe a child after a nightmare. “We are traveling to the castle now. Would you come with us? We can acquire you clothing and something to eat.”
Looking me up and down, Opalyn whispers to Baliella with a giggle, “Maybe she’s a bedmaid?”
Baliella’s reply is acidic. “Shut your mouth, Opalyn.”
Not knowing what else to do, I nod. Taking Caia’s offered hand, I pull myself up to standing. The elevation change makes me feel even woozier than before, and I press my fingertips to my forehead. “Thank you,” I murmur, but Opalyn’s sharp gasp interrupts me. Her eyes are trained on the ground behind me. Caia and Baliella go stone still.
Don’t turn around. Don’t look.
I turn and look.
The grass is green and lush where I had been laying. But my mouth drops open when the verdant patch begins to shrivel back to brown, dry grass until there isn’t a single green blade left.
This keeps getting weirder and weirder.
A strangled cawing echoes throughout the brittle forest, and our heads whip toward the sound.The grass forgotten, we stare into a dense section of ivory trees, barely breathing. After several seconds of silence, Caia lays a delicate hand on my shoulder. “Come,” she whispers without taking her eyes off the woods, “you must be freezing, and we all must be going.” She whirls off her red cloak and wraps it around my shoulders.
“I can’t take your cloak, you’ll be cold,” I protest.
Fastening the clasps at my neck, she laughs. “You are in your undergarments and have no boots. I will be fine.” She gives me a warm smile, but her brown eyes remain sharp before she turns toward a dirt path. Baliella and Opalyn turn to follow her, but I notice a look that passes between Caia and Baliella. An unsettled concern ripples over their features.
Undergarments? Maybe I’m having one of those dreams where you wear nothing but your underwear in public. I look down, but I’m still in my sleeveless blouse and tiny shorts from last night. Well that makes all this disturbingly real. But was that last night? How long have I been lying here? It could have been three minutes or three days. "This is a dream," I tell myself. "This has to be a dream.”
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“Come on!” Opalyn urges. “We can get you a hot tea when we get to the castle!”
I press a hand to my neck, feeling for my mother’s necklace, but the delicate metal does little to soothe my fears. Instead, I put one foot in front of the other, and follow the three strangers toward the dirt road. “This is a dream,” I whisper to myself. “This is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream.”
-
I’m grateful Caia insisted I take her cloak. The wind whips around my ankles and tosses my long, black hair back and forth, knotting the strands. I can almost convince myself this is all a dream, but it’s hard to ignore the very real feel of the biting wind and my frozen feet. I grasp the cloak tighter and try to keep up. The bare branches of the forest creak and clack in the wind creating an eerie chorus urging us along the path.
If this is a dream, all I have to do is wake up. Wake up, Nina! “Wake! Up!”
My three escorts stop in the middle of the road and turn to look at me. “Sorry,” I say, but it’s lost in the wind. Caia and Baliella continue walking, but Opalyn slows to walk alongside me.
I can feel her eyes studying me. “You’re sort of odd, aren’t you?” she asks brightly. I keep my head down and don’t answer. “That’s okay! People think I’m odd, too, because my mother was Althias and my father was Achrann!”
“Opalyn!” Baliella hisses from up front. “You know you’re not supposed to tell that to strangers!”
The girl throws her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. “Oh please don’t think less of me. You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”
“I don’t even know what any of that means,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road.
She tilts her head to the side. “Huh. Where are you from?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Is that on the other side of Mount Glaeona?”
“You don’t know where Los Angeles is?”
Opalyn shakes her head. I give her a sideways glance, this time taking in more of her features. Wisps of strawberry blonde hair escape her hood and frame a round face making her look about twelve? Thirteen, maybe.
How does she not know where LA is? Pressure builds in my chest. A desperate kind of panic tingles at my finger tips. “Would you mind if I borrow your phone to call my mom?” I silently curse myself for putting my sandals and purse on the ground before climbing the magnolia tree.
“A phone?” Her forehead crinkles.
“Yes, like a telephone to make a phone call.” I try to force annoyance into my words, which is better than letting the fear that gnaws at my insides take over. This is a dream, I remind myself.
“Oh, I think you mean telepathy! No one has been able to do that for ages,” she says.
“I don’t…what…?”
“Don’t worry, we can figure out how to send your mother a message so you can get back to Lost Angels.”
“Los Angeles,” I correct.
“Right!” She grins.
I glance up when the road begins to bend. Through the naked trees, an actual castle comes into view. It resembles one I would have seen in fairytales made of moss covered stone complete with towers and battlements and silky blue flags snapping in the wind.
“They really do work in a castle,” I mutter to myself, holding my hair back from the wind to gawk at the ancient building. Opalyn gives me a quizzical look, as if to say, of course we do.
Caia slows her pace. “All of you come closer, but keep your eyes straight ahead as if we are not speaking.” Baliella and Opalyn’s immediate obedience forces me to comply. “When we get to the entrance, I will speak for all of us. This means not one word from any of you, Opalyn.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Opalyn give a slight nod. Caia’s voice is barely audible, but deep with warning when she whispers, “Do not mention the grass to anyone.”
A chill runs through me, and I swear I see Baliella pale as we space ourselves apart again.
We cross a wide, rotting bridge over an empty moat, but before reaching the main gate, the two young women and Opalyn take a sharp left down a narrow path along the castle wall. We soon reach a much smaller, rusted gate at the side. Caia approaches and offers up a yellow card through the metal bars. A large gloved hand snatches the card, and Caia takes several steps back. A few moments later, the gate clangs before crawling upward with a series of jarring clanks. Caia whispers to me without turning, “Do not take off the cloak. Do not look anyone in the eye.”
I tilt my head forward in understanding, and watch her step into the castle only to be yanked to the side by a helmeted man with an aggressive grip. I can’t stop the gasp that escapes my lips, but snap my mouth shut when Baliella gives me a warning look.
“Caia Viddeer of the laundrette section of Castle Breydoch?” The man says it like an accusation, not a question.
“That is I.” Caia keeps her head bowed, eyes trained on the ground.
“Your exit card says you left with two companions, so why do I see a third female?”
“She is our newest laundress. My companions and I were tasked with collecting her.”
The man grunts with dissatisfaction, but says, “Continue on through Search before retiring to your quarters. No other travel is permitted.”
Caia dips her head in acknowledgement before turning to signal for us to follow her. I take one step, but stop short when I run into Baliella. Her face is inches from my own, her brows drawn down over her icy-blue eyes. She waves a hand in front of my face and harshly whispers, “Remember what Caia said. Don’t look at anyone.”
Deciding to trust these strangers, I train my gaze on the ground and trail them into an adjacent stone chamber. The room is cold and musty, but lit by a glowing orb hovering in midair. A dream. This is definitely a dream. Two guards sit at a table in the corner, but rise as the four of us enter. One grabs Caia by the wrist and drags her to the center. The other does the same to Baliella. The two women lift their arms in a T formation as the men run their hands down the front, back, and sides of their bodies before pushing them toward a worn, wooden door at the other end of the room.
I allow myself to be pulled to the center of the room along with Opalyn. I rein in the fear that creeps up my throat, and mimic Caia’s and Baliella’s arm pose. It is a small mercy that the search is performed on the outside of our cloaks so the guards won’t see my “undergarments”. The men shove Opalyn and me toward Caia and Baliella who swiftly open the door and duck into the hallway.
Just before I exit the room, a glint along the upper wall catches my attention. I glance up, and notice a narrow cutout in the stone wall.The metal tip of an arrow juts through, and it’s trained on the four of us. My pulse quickens, and I dart into the hallway as Baliella closes the door behind us.
The hallway is dank and dim, lit only by candles affixed to the walls. Caia winks at Opalyn and whispers, “You did good, Opie,” before walking down the hallway with the three of us trailing behind her.
I glance back at Baliella. “Are you sure this castle is a safe place?”
She scoffs. “Safer than The Withering Woods. But just barely.”
