Chapter: 2
Alone in the World
“No. Please no.” Gren watched as the face of her mother began to reflect that of monsters in her horror books. The mother continued to yell at the stone doorway. “Stop, don’t.” before turning her wide eyes and furrowed brows toward Gren. The look she gave her daughter was more frightening than any of the previous yelling.
“Gren, pack as much food as you can in all of our bags as fast as you can.” The mother began to hurry inside the cabin but stopped. “Quickly, Gren. I need to make sure he’s safe,” She said as she turned and scrambled for the stone doorway, throwing up the dust she had just been sweeping out of the cabin. “And follow as soon as you can.”
Upon reaching the doorway, she flung her hand against it, looking back at her little girl with a face forced into a faux reassuring smile. Gren's limbs twitched as her mother disappeared just as suddenly as her brother.
The farm grew larger around the lone child as silence settled in. Just a minute before her mother had been sweeping and Syth tended the grain all while she ignored them. Now, even the chickens sat quietly in their roosts, undisturbed as the wind quieted down.
She shut the book, after throwing in a slip of paper as a bookmark, pulled herself up, and picked her way through the vegetable garden and toward the cabin.
An odd feeling pressed onto Gren. She had been alone before, but it had never been as deep as this. When she had been alone, it was because her family was simply in the cabin or outside. Now, even as she pushed the corn stalks out of her way, she knew no one waited for her inside.
“Hello?” She called out, knowing no one would answer. She smiled at the unfamiliar feeling of being unheard. “Hello, I’m talking to you.”
“What do you want?” She expected Syth to say, but only a ghost of a memory answered her. She giggled slightly.
“I’m king of the cabin,” Gren yelled as she walked toward the middle of the room with a chest as full of air as her little lungs could hold. She swung her arm and pointed at the grain field. “You must bow your heads to me or I shall cut them off and eat them, raw.”
A wind pushed against the grain and bent them forward as it flung the hood from her head. Gren’s chest forgot its pose as she began laughing.
“Perfect timing.” Her ears rose as she smiled and turned toward the cabin. “Syth, I was just saying –,” she cut off when she remembered there was no one to explain her joke to.
A thought passed through Gren that she could probably just start reading and not pack. But she disregarded that, her mother would be angry. She needed to follow her family.
As she entered the cabin, she grabbed two backpacks, one a dark blue with two large zipper pockets, and another, a faded tan, that held its one opening closed with straps.
In the tan backpack she began throwing in canned food from one of the various shelves on the wall opposite the door. She added some of the recently picked tomatoes, carrots, and corn. She turned to an old wood stove and reached above for the spices. When the tan bag bulged and the straps barely kept it contained, Gren grabbed the blue pack.
In this she began throwing in various clothes, some of hers, her mother’s, and Syth’s. She pulled her hoodie off and stuffed it in. After filling the smaller front pocket she moved on to fill the larger back space with as many of the paper back adventure books as could fit. She almost managed to force the resentful zipper closed before she realized that she hadn’t packed any of Syth’s books.
She ran over to his side of the cabin and grabbed the most recent book on top of the pile. It couldn’t have been further from professionally made if Gren herself had made it; rather it claimed plain brown leather, cut sloppily into a square, as its cover. The pages sewn into the book ranged from pure white, to an odd dirty blue. It stopped her for a moment. Her father’s book had been copied over a thousand times, but they had always kept the original.
“Are there any other books you want?” She turned to look for Syth, fully expecting him to be there. She was startled to remember he wasn’t. She reminded herself not to do that again.
After quick pondering she switched this book with one of her adventure books already in the bag. It hadn’t been one of her favorites and she didn’t mind leaving it behind, not too much at least.
Throwing the blue backpack on her back and caring the other in her left hand, she walked over to the chicken coup. She couldn’t leave her loud friends behind to starve. She had even named them.
“Okay,” Gren looked at the white one. “Snow, you go first. You’re the brave one.” Gren held out her hand and both chickens approached her looking for feed. “Up you go.” She said as she lifted the white hen in her hand. The chicken gave a mild, disgruntled squawk but seemed otherwise content, having long since become used to Gren’s manhandling.
She took the hen to the doorway and gave her a slight toss in its direction. The chicken hollered at this sudden betrayal and flapped her wings harder then she had when she had been climbing the fence earlier that day. They made no difference though, once she brushed against the door. One moment she was there, and the next she wasn’t.
“Now, Little Chew Chew, don’t worry. I won’t do the same thing to you.” Gren made a swiping motion to the remaining brown hen who had been loitering around the open entrance to the coup, wondering if she should leave. Upon seeing Gren lunge forward Little Chew Chew bolted out.
Gren dropped the bag and went for the chicken as fast as she could. She just managed to scoop up the screaming hen with both her hands before she had really managed to take off.
After snatching the bag she had dropped, Gren threw the little brown chicken toward the gate a bit more roughly than she had with Snow. After Gren became more alone than she had ever been before, she approached the door herself.
As her arm rose toward the stone a realization hit her. She wouldn’t be coming back to her farm. It tugged at her for a moment; she didn’t really want to leave. She just wanted to return to her perfect pumpkin reading spot and take advantage of the chore free day her brother had given her.
She knew that these past years had been the best in her life. The memories of them on the run were hazy, even more so the ones before her father had died, but she could remember bits. She remembered being hungry. She remembered being scared of the unknown that waited in each room and the evil strangers you could find inside of them. She remembered being too tired to get up. Only her stomach and mother’s constant urging kept her going. The only good memories were from their house in the city and her father’s late night readings.
When they had gotten to the farm, it didn’t seem like it would last. Gren woke up every morning thinking they were going to have to leave again. It took a month before it started to seem real and even longer for the farm to start producing enough food for them to trade to the occasional traveler. The room supplied a stream of clear water for them along with all the dirt, seeds, and sunshine they needed to survive.
The cabin had been old and filled with dust, so much so that she had been expecting spider webs to attack her face as soon as she walked through the door. But there were none. This room didn’t have any spiders.
They had slowly built their life in that cabin, almost a complete family. The food had been filling. And her brother had always excelled at making her laugh, even when her eyes were dripping with exhaustion. They discussed the books they read; even though they had different taste they still ended up reading from each others stashes.
She could remember, about a year ago, she had been about to trade a book of hers with another one from a traveler. Syth had come running out of the cabin screaming for her to stop so earnestly that she began to fear something had gone seriously wrong. When he reached her he admitted he just hadn’t finished reading the book yet, and didn’t want her to trade it.
Just today he had been worried about her and offered to do her chores. She had been tired after sneaking out and reading a book by moonlight. At night, once she could hear everyone’s steady, deep breaths from under their covers, it was common for it to become too appealing for her to resist a good chapter or two. Even if he knew that, he would more likely laugh than be angry at her.
She didn’t want to leave that caring, happy life behind her in exchange for the vague and dark one of her dreams.
But her memories hadn’t been made alone. It was her brother that made her smile. It was her mother that managed the farm. Even if he was no longer here, it had been her father who had read to her every night. She loved them all, far more than a farm.
She pushed her hesitant hand from its spot hovering above the surface of the doorway, and felt the cold stone suck the heat from her.
She knew it must have been just as immediate as her mother and brother, but to her everything slowed. The wind stilled against her frozen face, and the sound of her gasp stretched into a constant, steady tone. She saw the grain bend into a permanent bow as the water’s ripples froze in place. She watched her farm slow and blend in with the mountains plastered on the walls of the room. As she captured a mental picture of her home, she wondered if she would ever get a chance to see it again.
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* * *
The room she appeared in was far too abstract and strange for her to categorize it. A mist that could just as easily have been darkness, hung over the entire area, making it impossible to see any further than a single grain field over. Not that there was anything to see. With the exception of the floor, she was drowning in the dark. It gave a feeling of supreme vastness, the same feeling that a person gets from below their feet after being stranded in a deep and wide ocean. It made her chest tighten and suffocated her with its feeling of grandeur.
Gren noticed the darkness first, but it couldn’t hold her attention. The floor flashed against the black, disorientating Gren enough that she nearly fell. Wave after wave of small blue flames in the millions rushed forward. They flickered and formed in a pattern of squares and zigzags that splashed against each other and rippled across the floor. Diamonds and circles alike were created in its chaos and gone just as soon as the fire faded into submission.
Gren looked below her and saw fire feeling along the sides of her shoes. They had startled her, but now only captivated her. Their tips waving in the air before dipping back down into the floor. She bent her knees and sat on her heals, reaching to the dancing fire. She managed to touch the iron floor and feel the small holes drilled within before a wave of blue passed her. Under her hand, the flames popped out from their hiding places and moved across her fingertips.
The whole right side of Gren’s body jerked back. She stood up and took two steps away from where she had been burnt, while putting her fingers in her mouth.
As she shot an angry look at the flames, she noticed something she hadn’t before. Music played from the darkness, echoing all around. The music wasn't like anything she had heard before, composed of high pitched shrills and odd noises that could barely be said to coincide. As it vibrated and built to higher notes, the floor seemed to follow it and dance along to the music.
The popping and scratching sounds moved in a rhythm and conducted for the floor. As it sent out high electric beats, so did the floor try to imitate with waves of deep blue sparks that disappeared as soon as the music stopped, waiting for the next tone.
A low boom sounded through the music in a slow beat and the floor responded in kind. Across Gren’s limited field of vision, she could see towers of flame spring up taller than she was. There colors of red and yellow mixed together to sprout light in all directions. As the music and deep sounds rippled the air over and over, Gren was assaulted with flash after flash from the light of the towers.
Gren looked down and away from the light. Her feet slid slightly as she shifted her weight. She blinked away an after image to see a black smudge across the floor. It was rubber. The floor was melting her shoes.
She began to look around for a place to get away. She needed a platform off of the fire or a door out of this room. As she swung her head, she saw nothing but the dark and the flames that illuminated it.
Her breath quickened as she thought.
There was nothing to run to. She dreaded to think what would happen if one of those large fires engulfed her instead of the dark. But she couldn’t help herself.
“Caaaa!” A sharp cry pierced through the music and into Gren’s ears.
Gren turned her head and saw a hen flapping wildly and scrambling around in a circle as fast as her little legs could throw her. The chicken crowed as she did her utmost to put out the fire that enveloping her brown feathers.
The hen Chew Chew's desperate flailing managed to blow out the flames on her wings and extinguish herself. She ran off into the darkness, still crying out for help, looking for a shelter from the oven she had been tossed into.
By the time the cries of the chicken faded from the surrounding black, Gren had managed to recognize a pile of what looked like charcoal. The braver of the two hens was recognizable only through the process of elimination, as her feathers had no trace of white left.
Seeing the chickens started an adrenaline reaction. Gren’s heart jumped and energy filled her limbs.
Her legs pushed off, slipping against the liquid rubber as she lurched forward. She tossed the bag she had been carrying in her hand to the side to burn. Her only focus was making it out of the room.
A tower of flame burst up from her right and she twisted left to avoid it. She could feel the heat rolling off of it onto the side of her face and the right side of her body. She yelled as she felt a stinging pain all across her arm and the rest of her seemed to become cold.
It was when her yell came out broken and mangled that she realized she was crying, weeping as she ran, causing her to swerve. Silently, she forced down panic and sobs and focused her fear into her run.
She ran faster than she had ever realized she could.
Pillars of flame flashed as she sped across the landscape. Strong beats shook the air around her even more than the jolts as she hit the ground. Each time the music dropped low, the room light up as mountains of fire reached for the darkness above them. Some moments the burning yellow tendrils were far enough away that Gren could begin to feel hope, only to have one appear close enough to warm the vibrating air around her.
This continued until Gren truly believed she would die. As fire burned around her and her shoes slipped along the silver floor, she considered giving up. Her right arm felt hot and was burning more than even her lungs as they gasped wildly for the crisp oxygen. She didn’t think making it was possible.
Knowing that a doorway could come out of the darkness at any point was the only thing that could keep her going. But as she ran, that hope withered in the face of the massive flames the rose around her.
Which is why, when it finally did appear, it took a moment for her to believe it was real.
A stone doorway appeared from the darkness off slightly to Gren’s left. She turned for it, already reaching her hand out, relived that she had made it.
She leaned her weight onto her left leg as she turned, and the rubber on her shoe slid. Gren didn’t have time to catch herself before her face slammed against the floor.
The flames spread across her cheek and licked at her eyelid, trying to find a way inside. It invaded her ear and the smell of burnt hair invaded her nostrils.
Gren panicked and her breath caught in her throat as she scrambled to get away from the heat. Her previous resolve crumbled as the skin of her cheek stung. She screamed out and twisted her back to bring her face up, like a worm feeling the air. She reached her hands out, trying to push herself back to her feet.
Her hands seared as she touched the floor and she quickly pulled them away, but she still needed to find a way up. She came to rest on her forearms which then began to feel the heat of the iron. A tear fell from her reddened cheek and evaporated upon the floor as she put her hands back on the hot iron.
A tower of flame shot up in front of her, but she couldn’t notice. Her hands were on fire as she pushed her chest off the ground. She screamed as she moved her legs beneath her and could feel the burnt skin stretch and tear along the knee.
She pushed off the ground with her foot and continued to the door, wanting only to touch its cool stone.
Her legs felt numb as her fingers stung and stretched toward the square door. As the heat was sucked from her burnt fingertips, she heard the music tempo drop till it rang a constant pitch. The towers of flame slowed in their act of licking the darkness shrouding the room, and a sickly sweet smell filled Gren's nostrils before she vanished from the room.
* * *
The next room came as a relief. It only just covered 5 meters, enough to allow a single, great red oak to sprout up and push against the mossy walls. Sunlight barely pushed through, tenting the soft dirt and Gren’s shaking hands with the red color of the veiny leaves. A single stone doorway was the only exit on the opposite side of the room, but was ignored as the harsh bark of the trunk became Gren’s backrest.
Grass heavy with dew, tore from its place in the soft ground as Gren ripped it out. With shaking hands, she rubbed it softly across her forearm hoping to cool it, weeping to herself as the grass stung her wounds. She just wanted it to stop burning. She could still feel heat radiating from her hands and face, even as she brought grass up to her left eye, which she had yet to open.
She lowered herself onto the ground, pressing her face against the wet grass that lingered there. Her fingers weaving between the blades as she faded away, thinking only of how much she wanted this all to end.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Not much to say other than poor Gren. And poor little Chew Chew. That room was no fun at all.