Tainted Frost, page 28
But minutes tick by and she’s still nowhere to be seen.
“David?” I call out. “Gary? I think she’s gone.”
A low, throaty chuckle curls toward me over my shoulder. “You fool. As if that pathetic show of power would be enough to stop me.”
“It stopped you last time,” I say, turning my head and looking straight into her lightless eyes.
“That was simply luck, my dear.”
Every muscle in my body tightens and I swing my right arm like a boxer, blasting her straight in the face with my light. This time, crashing down into the ground isn’t so painful, and I get up quickly.
The witch lies in a face-down heap several yards ahead of me.
Her hut stands firm and quiet at the center of the clearing. It gives off the oddest sense that it’s watching me. I look back at the witch, who’s still lying motionless on the ground, then run toward the hut.
As I climb up the stairs, I’m suddenly jerked backwards.
Black tendrils curl around my throat like thick vines, tightening slowly, and with a hard yank I’m pulled back. I brace myself for a meeting with the ground, but instead I’m spun around in a circle so rapidly everything blurs. My arms flail around uselessly at my sides.
Abruptly, the spinning stops.
My heart beats hard and fast, my lungs squeezing in my chest. I blink several times before the world is mostly stationary again. The witch has me suspended in air, her snakelike strands of hair tightly coiled around my neck. My own hair falls around my face as I look at her, staring at her cracked skin and abyss-like eyes.
She smiles. A smile of hunger and triumph.
She stands still and smiles as strands of her hair, like living things, curve and tighten even more around my neck. I struggle wildly, kicking my legs and raising my arms to try and blast her. But I can hardly breathe. I’m a battery rapidly losing power. Fighting her is as useless as boxing with the wind. Eventually my arms drop, my legs still.
My head droops as I feel increasingly sapped of energy. I can almost see it being pulled out of me in waves. No. Panic makes me struggle again, futilely, like a rag doll swinging in a breeze. The witch throws back her head and laughs, and there’s a sensation like I’m falling into her black mouth, her sharp gray teeth slamming down around me like a metal grate.
I realize then that she’s draining all that is me, my essence, my energy, my soul, into herself. She will hollow me out and add my bones to her collection.
A second later I’m falling, hard, onto the ground. I rise up on my elbows to see a gray wolf at the witch's throat. Gary. David runs into the clearing and helps me up, grabbing my arm and all but dragging me behind the hut. We lean against one of the poles surrounding the hut, trying to catch our breath.
"Are you all right?" David asks.
I feel dizzy and weak. I shake my head.
"Just stay here," he says. "I'll be back."
"Where are you going?"
"To get Alex."
I nod. "Okay." I want to move, to help, but I just sink down onto the ground, into the snow. My hands tremble, my entire body shakes. I drag deep lungfuls of air inside me, hoping I can calm down, gain enough strength to go back out there.
David returns with a wooden cage cradled in his arms, a raven inside. The raven flaps its wings, like it’s trying to fly out of there. The bars are thick wood, curving from top to bottom. There’s no opening anywhere.
“There’s no way to open this thing,” David says. “I think you’ll have to blast it.”
“No way,” I say. “I can’t. I’ll kill him.”
The raven is quiet and still inside the cage.
“How are we supposed to get him out of there?”
“We’ll worry about it later. Right now, you have to take it and get out of the clearing where it’s safe. Go now while she’s distracted.”
I turn my head to see Gary in wolf-form lunging at the witch. Drops of blood fly through the air, disappearing as soon as they hit the snowy ground. For a second I see her throat is torn, but then it closes up like it was never touched. David runs off, out of the clearing, and relief washes over me briefly. Gary lunges at her again, but she pushes him off like he's a mere nuisance. An annoying fly. Gary falls back onto his side, still in wolf-form, and doesn't move. The witch grins at me, beckoning with a finger.
I stand up on quivering legs.
She gives the fallen Gary a cursory glance, smiles. It makes me rage. I take shaky steps toward her. At one point I fall and have to get back up, and it seems to take all of my strength to do it. But I get up.
With the very last ounce of strength I can somehow rally, I lift my arms, thinking of my dad, and my mom, our family, and how we used to be so happy.
I squeeze my eyes shut, squeeze every muscle in my body, and will, will, will the light and fire to come surging out of me in a crackling rush.
There’s a great kaleidoscopic explosion of color and shape before everything blinks into blackness.
Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna.
Someone’s calling my name. I open my eyes. But at the sight of bright white light, I quickly close them again.
The name-calling continues, and now there’s something soft and gentle touching my face. Fingertips fluttering against my cheek.
“Anna. Wake up.”
A shadow falls across my eyes. Slowly, I open them. Alex’s head and bare shoulders hover over me. “Are you all right?” he asks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His hands caress my cheeks. I want to tell him something, want to reach out and touch him, but I can’t move.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, then leans down and kisses me lightly on the lips. And even though I’m still hurt and angry and I’d rather feel nothing, I feel everything. Warm and full and safe. He pulls back and all I see are his dark eyes falling into mine. I love you, I think. Then, no, I hate you. Suddenly his head whips around to look over his shoulder. He looks back at me, then quickly runs off, a bright flash of light following his departure.
David’s concerned face appears after Alex leaves. “Holy shit,” he says, eyes widening. And I get sucked back into the darkness.
The next time I wake up, I’m flat on my back, cushioned on all sides and being pulled along in the snow. David appears beside me on his skies and grins. “Hey, you’re alive.”
“Barely,” I manage to croak.
“You’re doing great. We’re almost there.”
“What am I lying on?”
“A sleeping bag. You’re actually inside it.”
“Oh.” I lift my head to see Gary on skis ahead of me, a bungee cord running from the sleeping bag to his waist. “This is so undignified,” I say.
“Sorry, princess,” David says. “Next time we’ll bring a golden pumpkin carriage. Or whatever.”
“That’s all I ask,” I mumble. “And I have to work out more, guys. I can’t fight witches so out of shape.”
David snorts. “Yeah. Everyone knows big muscles are what it takes to fight off witches.”
My eyes keep fluttering closed, and after a while I stop fighting to keep them open.
Chapter 33
I haven’t seen Alex in a week. But I’m not thinking about him. I’m not thinking about him at all. I’m just sitting at Lulu’s by myself, waiting for Natalie.
Alex hasn’t been at the hockey games. He hasn’t been at Jerry’s. He hasn’t been seen with any of his friends. But I don’t care. Not even a little bit.
His brothers, though, have been everywhere. At the skating rink, on the slopes, on the streets. They don’t have the “flu” anymore and are running around telling everyone how great it feels to be outside. I bet it does.
I can’t figure out how I feel.
Except for Alex’s blatant absence, everything in Haven seems usual and predictable. But it’s only like that for the lucky ones. Everything has changed. For me. For David. For Gary too. And definitely for Alex.
At least that’s what I think.
Maybe everything has changed only for me and that’s why the entire world looks alien now. Nothing seems real. I’ll look at the sky as if it’s an illusion. I’ll touch everyday objects and not recognize their contours. I’ll look in the mirror and stare at my face like it’s brand new.
It's almost like I'm inside a swirling watercolor painting. Nothing is clear. All edges are blurred. Colors and shapes disappear into one another. It's difficult to believe that I'm real. Or that anything at all is real.
Time is strange too. All tangled up like yarn. It's only been a week since we went to rescue Alex, but it feels like it was so long ago that I can barely remember it.
I don’t care what Alex is doing right now. I don’t care what he’s feeling or thinking. I’m not even thinking about why he’s disappeared. I’m not remembering his face when he was stroking my cheek and looking into my eyes and saying sorry.
It’s all over and done and forgotten. It never even happened.
And yet I still feel like I’m stumbling through a dense fog.
I spent Christmas at the Petrovskis’, my muscles sore and aching. David had to lie and say he trained too hard during hockey practice to explain why he could barely walk. I lied and said I had started a new exercise regimen. Both of us were still dazed and blank-eyed after everything that had happened.
We ate turkey and ham and reindeer sausage, which one of the guests accidentally called by name. And Max totally freaked out, jumped off from his chair, and declared “We can’t eat reindeer. Santa needs them!” Then we all spent about a half hour explaining that reindeer sausage wasn’t made from the type of reindeer that Santa used to fly his sleigh. Max seemed to calm down a bit after that, but he wouldn’t touch the sausage.
I gave David an Apple gift card to go toward his computer fund. He gave me an ugly Christmas sweater and a book on aliens. He’s convinced I’m an alien.
My mom spent the day with some friends. Honestly, it was for the best.
New Year’s Eve was basically the same. Me with the Petrovskis, and mom at her friends’. I came home around 12:30 and found her bag on the table and her coat draped over a chair. The door to her room was closed. I wondered if she’d even lasted until midnight.
Celebrating the New Year had always given me a sense of hope and excitement for the future. This year felt like just another day transitioning to the next, except we all had to count down from ten at midnight. It felt so dumb.
School starts tomorrow, and I honestly can’t believe I’m looking forward to its routine.
Natalie comes through the front door of Lulu’s and wakes me up. She’s wearing jeans and a gray sweater with hot pink pom poms sprouting all over it. She sits down across from me at our usual table by the window. I rub one of the pom poms on her sleeve. “This is new.”
“Yeah. I was sewing all night. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
Tobias brings over the hot chocolate with marshmallows and vanilla bean cupcakes I ordered when I came in. Natalie cups her hands around her mug and leans in.
“I just had all this adrenaline for some reason. And I decided once and for all to ask Gary out. For real.” She takes a breath. “What’s the worst that could happen? Right? Yeah, he could reject me, and I’d be completely humiliated, and never want to show my face in public again.” Her eyes are large and terrified.
“I think it’s a great idea,” I say.
“You think it’s a great idea to be humiliated and forced to become a hermit?”
“No. I think it’s a great idea to ask him out. It’s the only way you’ll get to know him. It’s hard to figure him out, but I feel like he definitely has depths he keeps hidden.” I’ll never tell her how I know this, of course.
“Depths? What do you know about his depths?”
“You know, like, he’s a great leader. Everyone on his hockey team looks up to him. Everyone knows he’s had a hard childhood and still has it rough at home. That’s probably why he always seems so closed off. I’m just saying it’s worth a shot, and I really don’t think you’ll become some sort of pariah if he rejects you.”
She looks thoughtful, eyes on something on the wall behind my head. “I guess that’s true. He’s definitely had it rough. He barely even ever smiles. Like, ever.”
“He smiles,” I say, feeling suddenly protective of Gary.
“I know, but hardly ever. I’ve seen him smile maybe four times my whole life.” She tilts her head. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m attracted to him or something.”
“Well, being a mystery wrapped in a puzzle has been attractive throughout history,” I say, taking a bite of my cupcake.
“Exactly. But you’re right. I should do it. I already missed the whole brilliant pre-New Year’s resolution thing about talking to him. I’m never making another pre-New Year’s resolution again.”
“So now your actual New Year’s resolution is to ask him out?”
“Yeah.” She licks some of the frosting off the cupcake. “I guess so. Plus I have more time now.”
“Isn’t it true most people break their resolutions like two weeks into January?”
She gives me a look. “Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
I can’t help but grin. “I’m just trying to motivate you to do it before then.”
“I know, I know. I totally failed, and I can’t fail again.” She points a finger at me. “You have to hold me accountable. No more excuses.”
I put a hand over my heart. “I solemnly swear to hold you accountable to fulfill this very important New Year’s resolution.”
“Thank you. Anyway, what’s new with you and Alex? I haven’t seen him around much.”
I raise my mug for a sip and shrug. “I haven’t really seen him around much either. Maybe he caught the flu from his brothers.”
“God, probably. I always get sick when my sisters get sick. Little infectious goblins.”
I snicker at that and spill some of my drink onto the table. Right away Nat slaps down a couple of napkins to soak it up.
“I’m serious,” she says. “They cough and sneeze all over the place. I need a Hazmat suit just to enter my own house.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Alex probably did get the flu.”
“I wonder if he’ll go to class tomorrow.”
I wonder the same thing, but I don’t reply. I don’t think he’ll be at school tomorrow. His absence all week has been so unlike him. He’s always at the center of everything that’s happening. The fact that he hasn’t been at hockey games is the only thing that makes me believe he might be sick. Still, there’s a deeper feeling that he’s being MIA on purpose. That he’s not ready to face the world just yet. Or not ready to face me.
“Are you gonna finish your cupcake?” Nat asks.
“It’s all yours.”
“Thank you.” She goes straight for the frosting first. Her brows furrow as she contemplates the cupcake a little too seriously. “I’m actually excited about this year. New year, new us, and all that. I mean, I don’t really believe that everything just magically changes on January first, but there is this sense of starting over, like we’re all hitting the reset button at once.”
“I can’t say I’m excited,” I tell her. “Just feels like any other year to me.” I hate how depressed I sound. “But I’m glad you’re excited. And you’re right that there’s this symbolic, like, feeling of starting over, which is nice.” I look down at my mug, feeling like Eeyore.
Natalie doesn’t say anything. She finishes the cupcake and crumples up the wrapper into a tiny ball. “Well,” she says, “in the grand scheme of things, it is just another year, another day really. Some old dudes a million years ago decided January first would be the start of the New Year and now we all just have to go with it. They could’ve literally picked any other date. Like September 22.”
“That’s your birthday.”
“I know, and it’s the best day.”
Of course we both laugh at that. But her voodoo worked because I feel less like Eeyore now. I’ll never be a Tigger, but I hope I can one day be somewhere in between.
“But I hate that school starts tomorrow,” Natalie says. “I haven’t even figured out what I’m gonna wear yet.”
“Oh my God, the struggle.”
“I know! It’s so real.”
“You know you’re gonna be best dressed no matter what.”
“Thank you, number one fan.”
Grinning at her, I motion for Tobias to come over. I put in another order for hot chocolate, because I don’t want this moment of comfort and normalcy to end. Natalie is one of the people closest to me who doesn’t know anything about what’s happened in the last three weeks. With her, I don’t have to talk about witches and people shifting into animals at will or why my fingers shoot out lightning. With her, I can talk about New Year’s resolutions and what to wear on the first day back to school after break, and not worry about things I can’t explain or understand.
I’m craving mundanity like never before. Just to feel like my life hasn’t been turning cartwheels for days with no hope of ever standing upright again.
“I would wear this pom pom sweater tomorrow,” Nat says, “but I already wore it today, obviously. Plus, I don’t want the pom poms to be mistaken for enthusiasm to be going back to school. Because I’m totally not enthused.”
“So you’re gonna wear all black then?”
“I actually might. Considering I’m definitely in mourning for the end of winter break.” She puts her elbows on the table and rests her chin in her palms. “I hate this feeling. This, like, kind of depressed, annoyed feeling that just sucks away all my energy.”
“It’s the back-to-school blues.”
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know. Lately it’s been happening more often. I just feel restless a lot. I can’t wait to be done with high school and go to college and finally start my life. Don’t you ever feel like you’re suffocating here?”
The truth is I really never had before now. But so much has changed. I shrug. “Maybe once in a while. I mean, it is a pretty small town.”
“We don’t even have a store that sells clothes that aren’t just hoodies for tourists.” She throws her hands up.
