Chapter 15: Manic Pixie Dream Cult
Cecily was running as fast as she could away from where the house had dropped her off. I’m in trouble, she thought as she glanced over her shoulder. She’d only walked through the door a few seconds after August and Ravioli Girl, but there was no sign of them, and the entire house had disappeared a moment later as well. Now she was alone, confused, and being chased by a swarm of butterflies the size of dinner plates. Like any person with eyes and a heart, Cecily normally found butterflies charming, but when they were over ten times as big as they were supposed to be, they were truly horrifying. Their legs were each almost a foot long, and Cecily could see her own terrified face reflected over and over again in their gigantic, disco-ball-esque eyes.
The dozens of butterflies had set upon her as soon as the house disappeared, congregating from the field where they had been hidden in the multi-colored grass. Cecily was sprinting toward the nearby forest in the hopes that they wouldn’t follow her into the trees, and the stream of determined butterflies streamed behind her like a rainbow river. This is the worst Pride march I’ve ever been a part of, Cecily thought grimly as an orange, white, and pink butterfly got dangerously close to touching her hair. Without warning, two new butterflies burst out of the grass in front of her and she yelped and slowed down, trying to figure out how to change course. There were butterflies everywhere, and in a moment of panic, all logic fled and she found herself opening her locket.
The hissing raccoon burst out of the open locket and Cecily grabbed the animal in midair and threw it at the butterflies that had gotten in her path. She missed, but succeeded in scaring the giant insects enough to clear her path. She put her head down and ran harder, finally reaching the trees before any of the butterflies could set their creepy appendages on her.
As she had hoped, the butterflies piled up at the treeline but didn’t follow her into the woods. She stopped running and straightened her spine to stare down the hundreds of eyes that each contained hundreds of smaller eyes until the butterflies took their weird-ass tongue tubes and beat it. “Yeah, and stay away!” Cecily called after them, then leaned against a tree to catch her breath. The raccoon sat up from where it had landed in the grass and, after a moment of looking around, walked to the forest as well and began sniffing things. Cecily watched it, then decided to let it roam loose for a few more minutes while they both got their bearings.
The forest was full of tall trees covered with moss, which sounded like the forest Amy had found before, although Cecily had no idea why the house would let her out here but none of the others. Something felt off about the trees as well, but Cecily couldn’t put her finger on it. After a few minutes, it hit her. The trees look normal! she realized, looking around at the brown bark and dark green moss. These look like Earth trees! For an insane moment she wondered if the house had teleported her back to Earth, then she caught a glimpse of a distant twelve-inch butterfly wing and shook her head. This was definitely not Earth, but the glorious lack of color and pungent smell of rotting wood felt like a step in the right direction.
Cecily jumped as she spotted movement a few feet to her left, but when she looked over, she saw that it was just a beetle climbing up a tree trunk. A normal sized, normal-looking black beetle. I need to figure out what this place is, she thought, looking deeper into the forest. It would be nice if I knew where the hell August is right now. But there was no sign of her brother and no indication that Ravioli Girl’s house was coming back anytime soon. Cecily looked at the raccoon, which had trundled over to the tree with the beetle and was staring at it contemplatively. “It’s just you and me, raccoon,” Cecily said, but the animal showed no recognition that it was being spoken to. “Rude,” Cecily muttered as she closed the locket and the raccoon disappeared. I guess it’s just me, then. She took one last glance at the butterfly-infested field outside and turned to walk deeper into the forest.
The further she went, the more it looked like a normal, uninhabited forest, with small, dull-colored bugs and animals. A gray squirrel scurried up a tree as Cecily passed and she watched it cling to the bark. “Did you get teleported here, too?” she asked it softly. “Did this whole forest get teleported here?” She kept walking and stepped over a large root. “Maybe that’s why the rainforests are disappearing, they’re all ending up in this world,” she muttered, then laughed to herself. “Just kidding, I know that’s our fault. Wow, I’m talking to myself like a crazy person already and I’ve only been alone for half an hour. Eh, I might as well embrace it.” Cecily hummed a short note. “Now, if I were an immortal being named Baby, where would I live?” She sighed. “On today’s edition of Sentences I Never Thought I’d Say…”
She kept walking for what felt like an hour before stopping to sit against a tree and rub at her pink stone ankle, which still felt strange to walk on for an extended period of time. I wonder if my ankle will still be like this when I get back to Earth, she wondered. Shit, I hope the potion doesn’t stop working and leave it permanently stone. That would be a little hard to explain to other people, but if Cecily could just get back to Earth, she honestly didn’t care if she was slightly disfigured. At this point, a stone ankle felt like a small price to pay to be home, in a place with GPS, air conditioning, and tiny bugs. And pasta that doesn’t turn you into soup, she added. That will be a welcome change, right?
She got up and continued on toward what she hoped was the middle of the forest, although she’d lost all sense of direction. I could be in here for days, she thought, then realized that if she didn’t find any civilization soon, she would have to figure out food and shelter. She’d never been much of a camper, and since being in this world she and August had always had access to food either from the market or from fruit trees that Puddle had shown them were safe. She didn’t like the idea of scavenging in an Earth-like forest, where the plants seemed more likely to contain poison than weird magic.
“Okay, how does one find people?” she muttered to herself, then looked down at her locket. “Any ideas, raccoon?” Her brief downward glance proved costly, as she walked directly through a spiderweb, getting the sticky strands across her face and hair. “Ah! Shit! Gross!” she cried as she tried to peel it off as quickly as possible and simultaneously check her body for any spiders that may have been home at the time of the incident. Fortunately, she didn’t find any arachnids on her, but the unpleasant sensation left her cursing for the next several minutes as she stomped her way through the forest.
She was preoccupied enough with her own annoyance that she didn’t hear anything coming until a voice spoke from behind her. “Are you alright?” it said, and Cecily spun around. A teenage boy was sitting on the back of a deer as if it was a horse, and both boy and deer were staring at her with wide eyes.
“Yes! I’m fine,” she answered, quickly trying to collect herself. I guess the trick is to yell loudly enough for people to find you, she realized. I’ll have to use that more often.
The boy was still staring at her with big green eyes. His brown hair was about shoulder-length and he looked very tan, despite being in the shaded forest. Sitting on the surprisingly strong doe, he looked like an illustration in some horribly corny YA novel, the kind that caters to lonely teenage girls with mommy issues. “I don’t recognize you,” the boy said with obvious confusion. “Were you just made?”
“Yeah, I’m not from around here,” Cecily answered slowly. “Wait, did you say ‘made’?”
The mystery boy grinned. “Curious! Would you come with me? I’d love to show you to the others.”
Who talks like that? Cecily wondered, but she didn’t have a better plan, so when the boy turned his deer and started trekking through the woods, she followed.
She followed Mystery Boy for probably forty minutes and he didn’t speak the entire time, just periodically glanced back to make sure she was there and smiled when he saw that she was. It was weird, but after a while Cecily realized she didn’t mind the silence. She hadn’t met any quiet people in this world and had almost forgotten that introverts other than August existed, but it was nice to discover someone who didn’t feel the need to constantly talk to her.
Despite that, she was still relieved when she started to hear voices up ahead. Voices meant civilization, and civilization meant food. The boy dismounted from his deer and gestured for Cecily to follow him, which seemed unnecessary considering that she had already been doing so for over half an hour. She obliged anyway, and they stepped past a few more trees into view of his village.
There were a dozen small houses built between the trees–and in at least one case, around a tree that was growing through the middle of the house. There were three people talking in a group in front of one of the houses, and they turned to look at Cecily and her guide as they approached. When they saw Cecily, they all adopted the same surprised and confused expression that the boy had displayed, even though they looked objectively more odd than her. Their hair and skin were random colors, much like the grass in this world, and some of them were even patterned. Cecily noticed for the first time that the boy who had found her had faint stripes on his body, like a pattern you’d see on a cat. The more normal the forest, the less normal the inhabitants I guess, Cecily thought.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Who is this person, Keep?” one of them, a middle-aged woman with light blue skin, asked as she hurried over to meet them.
“She’s a stranger!” the boy–Keep–announced excitedly. “She came from somewhere else!”
“And where is that?” the woman asked, turning to Cecily.
“Um, well I’m not sure where it is in relation to here. I actually ended up in this particular forest on accident; it’s a bit of a long story,” Cecily explained apologetically.
The three villagers plus Keep looked even more eager at that. “We would love to hear your story, and the longer it is the better!” a man with gray skin and a short orange beard said. “Have you been alive long?”
Cecily blinked. “I… I guess so? Is twenty years a long time?”
The villagers chuckled and looked at each other. “Not at all, but it at least means you weren’t just made,” the man answered.
“When you guys say ‘made,’” Cecily interjected, raising a hand, “do you mean ‘born?’”
The stunned silence that followed was dramatically disproportionate to what Cecily had just said. Everyone stared at her, then Keep tentatively asked, “You were… born?”
Cecily considered making a run for it at that point. This conversation was starting to freak her out and she keenly felt her lack of reinforcements, but at the same time, these people seemed just weird enough to know something about a man named Baby. Plus, she didn’t have anywhere else to go except back to the butterflies, and she was not about to face those monstrosities again. “Yes,” she finally answered. “I was born twenty years ago, as I mentioned.”
The four villagers looked at each other again and Cecily felt oddly left out of whatever groundbreaking revelations they were having. “So, there are two options here,” the first woman said to the others, then looked back at Cecily. “Has the Creator gotten better at making people, or are you descended from the French?”
“I’m sorry, the- the French?” Cecily repeated. “You said the French?”
“Oh, so you are one of them?” the woman said, misinterpreting Cecily’s bafflement as confirmation. “We knew them many, many years ago, but it got too hard to live together when they were all having children and aging and dying while we, well…” She shrugged. “It was just hard to see.”
Cecily shook her head. “No, I’m not… I’m not French. I’m just confused about how you guys know about France. Unless…” She looked at them eagerly. “You aren’t from Earth, are you?”
“That’s where the French were from, right?” Cecily heard Keep quietly ask one of the other villagers, a teenage girl who hadn’t spoken yet and also appeared to be faintly glowing. She nodded and Cecily pointed at the two of them.
“Are you saying a whole group of other people from Earth came here? From France?”
The older woman touched Cecily’s arm gently. “Well, yes, dear. Did you not know that? You aren’t related to them?”
“No, but I’m from Earth, too, just a different part!” Cecily said, so excited about the possibilities that she didn’t care about the breach in personal space. “Do you know where these French people are now? Can you point me to them?” She didn’t speak a lick of French, but she was sure they could figure out a way to communicate. Hell, as far as she knew, this was the kind of magical world that automatically translated everyone’s speech; that would make more sense than everyone here somehow being fluent in English.
“I didn’t realize new people were still coming over from Earth,” Keep commented. “I thought that once the Creator had figured out how to make people, everything would just be made here instead of brought over.”
Cecily took a deep breath and grabbed Keep by the arms. “Nothing you just said makes any sense to me,” she said very slowly. “But I cannot emphasize how important it is that you make it make sense. Tell me absolutely everything.”
Keep looked taken aback by her sudden intensity, but the others just looked excited. “Let’s gather everyone together,” the bearded man said. “This is the most excitement we’ve had in decades, so we should all share it.”
“Over a meal!” Keep agreed.
Cecily released his arms. “Maybe we talk first and eat later?” she suggested, but her new acquaintances were already dispersing to knock on doors and spread the word of her arrival. Only the silent girl remained, and she gave Cecily a soft smile and took her wrist to gently pull her past several houses and around a few trees until they reached a pavilion filled with benches and tables. They sat, and the girl stared at Cecily for a few minutes. Her skin still had that very faint yellow glow, like a glow stick that had been cracked a few hours ago. Other than that, she looked almost human, with long, straight, honey-blonde hair, dark brown eyes, and a splash of freckles across her nose.
“Do you know anything about the other people from Earth?” Cecily asked the girl, who nodded but didn’t say anything.
Cecily was about to pry more, but she could almost hear August’s voice in her head. You really need to start learning people’s names. She sighed. “What’s your name?” she asked the teenager, forcing her face into a friendly and nonthreatening smile, the kind that hopefully said, I’m just a few years older than you, so you can trust me.
The girl smiled nervously but still didn’t answer. Of course I end up with the one that doesn’t talk, Cecily thought glumly. I guess I’ll have to wait for the others to get back and make their meal.
The meal took five hours to prepare. Keep and the others gathered each one of the twenty-five townspeople together, then they took their time deciding what to eat, gathering their ingredients, and cooking, all the while casually chatting and laughing with each other as if they didn’t have a stranger from another world waiting desperately for answers. They would include Cecily in their random small talk, asking her opinion on the weather or the addition of an ingredient, but whenever she tried to bring up the French or any other aspect of Earth, they told her to wait until the meal was ready. It was agony.
Cecily tried to gather what she could from their chatter, but they didn’t share much useful information. All she could figure out was that there were only about two dozen people living here and they’d all known each other for a long time and were very close. Everyone seemed happy and excited for their meal and conversation with Cecily, but they also seemed to be in absolutely no rush to get there.
When it looked like the meal was almost ready, Cecily got up to quickly stretch her legs before the next bout of sitting. It was dusk and the stars were starting to come out. They were just a bit bigger and brighter than Earth stars, but Cecily was sure if she studied them further she could find more things wrong with them. They probably change position every night or make faces or something, she thought as she stared at a cluster of them.
A movement in one of the trees caught her eye and she glanced over toward the source. There was a dark shape set against the tree bark that was hard to make out, but after a few seconds Cecily saw the starlight illuminate a mess of white hair and the shape of a boy. “Bright?” she called up to him, finally spotting his wings curled up behind him. “Bright! Is that you?”
Bright was sitting on a thick branch with his back to the trunk, but when Cecily called out to him he stood and leaped off, taking flight. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?” Cecily asked as he swooped toward her, but instead of landing, he passed overhead, close enough to ruffle Cecily’s hair, then with a powerful flap of his wings he propelled himself above the treetops and soared away.
Cecily waited for him to circle back, but he didn’t. “Bright?” she called, hoping that he was hiding in the trees somewhere. When he didn’t come back, Cecily threw her hands in the air. “Bright, you asshole! You can’t show up and then leave me like that!” I had so much to ask him! Has he found any of the others? Has he found Baby? Does he know where this is in relation to home? But, as usual, Bright had deliberately chosen to be unhelpful and frustrating. “I hate that kid,” Cecily grumbled as she returned to the pavilion to hang out with marginally less unhelpful and frustrating people.
At the very least, the meal was delicious. Cecily hadn’t eaten since that morning and was famished by the time the forest commune had finished its extensive cooking regimen. There were savory pastries filled with cheese and potatoes, a salad, several kinds of fruit, and even what looked like roast chicken. Cecily couldn’t recall seeing people eat meat in this world before, and the thought of ending her forced vegetarianism made her stomach growl even more than it already was.
“Where did you get all these ingredients in the woods?” she asked Keep, who had sat down next to her.
He filled a plate and handed it to her. “Oh, it isn’t from the forest. We have some farms and livestock outside the forest that we tend to, and that’s where most of our food comes from.”
Cecily wanted to ask him if he’d seen the giant butterflies, but as soon as the plate was in front of her, all thoughts fled her mind other than the food. She tucked in and was halfway done with the pastry before she realized that the others had been waiting for everyone to be served before eating.
Oops, she thought, swallowing self-consciously and watching as the last few villagers served themselves. Once everyone had a plate, the others started eating, but Cecily was amazed by how slowly they ate everything. Keep would take a single bite, then spend a few minutes chatting to the blue-skinned woman next to him–who was named Pick–before taking one more bite. Maybe they do everything slowly here, Cecily thought, remembering how long the meal preparation had taken. Or they just want to draw it out because of how long it took to cook. In any case, she wasn’t ready to eat that slow, and no one seemed to mind when she finished her plate and went back for seconds.
Cecily felt a little more patient now that she had food in her stomach, but she still had a hundred questions that needed to be answered. Once everyone had finished eating, the villagers moved the tables out of the pavilion and rearranged the benches to be in a circle, then they all finally turned to her.
“Time to tell some stories!” A high pitched, childish voice said from behind Cecily. She turned around and saw the silent teenage girl from before, who smiled and sat down next to her. “My name is Beginning,” the girl said in that same four-year-old voice, which was very confusing to hear from a girl who looked like she should be at least sixteen. “Why don’t you tell us your story?”