CHAPTER 8 - WERE WE ALL GO

Charlotte

“They are all moving in the same direction,” Leo insists. He’s right. As usual, he is right. I was supposed to be the mentor, but . . . I’m no mentor. The evidence of that sits around the fire with Leo and I as we discuss the movements of the residents of the Radiant Woods. The evidence lives in my skin and my blood. In the soft curve of my hips I had always known were mine. In the angle to Leo’s jaw and the hair that grows from it. It took a week or two, after Leo’s new abilities awakened. But I am who I have always been now, through and through. So is he. A man and his mother. We are who we have always been, and we fit in the bodies we have now. Because Leo refused to accept a reality defined by the control of other people. The same way I did, once. The same way I always cried out to do.

Even more than that, evidence of Leo’s bravery lives in the man and woman who join us. ‘Monsters’ we had encountered as we tried to find our way home. People who had been left here for who knows how long. But not just any people. Both of them are like us. Framed as monsters. As something to be feared, avoided, and discarded. Both of them, given their humanity back. Both shocked and sobbing when they finally woke up as who they really were and not the distortion that had been chosen for them by these woods. Not just human, but . . . like us, they’d had a lie chosen for them the moment they were born. Vance, the older of the two, had been beaten and given to the church of the collector when he refused to be a mother. Ryanna, who looks no older than Leo, had been abandoned here when she told her parents her name. And yet, Vance has the body of a man and Ryanna the body of a woman. A change both new and welcomed by both.

I have a great deal of pride whenever I look at Leo now. Pride and shame. Because He was right. I’d wanted to save everyone. I didn’t want to lose anyone else, ever again. And I would die before I let Leo lose anyone like I had. I thought I was saving Lillith, and Sarafyna, and Leo. I thought I was saving everyone. But . . . both of these people. Both of these people are just like us. Lillith told me about the Houses of Penance. She told me what eventually happened to its residents. I have always understood that people like me must have been among the ‘undesirables’ abandoned in this way. But we have found and saved two people. And both of them are like me. That is no coincidence. How many of us . . . how many of us have been disposed of like this? Why? Why? Why do this to us? What have we ever done to anyone? What have we ever done but try to live, and breathe, and look at the light?

This was always where I was heading. The Radiant Woods, all around us. I alone had been spared for so long. Because of my position. Because of my mana. But once the struggle for the throne was over? Once there was no one left to challenge whoever was left on the throne? Once they didn’t need me to secure their own power? This is where I was heading. This is where Leo was heading. This is where all of us end up, eventually. That much is clear now. This is where we have always ended up. Which means this . . . this is where Amelia is. That is the thought that has been running through my head since we found Ryanna. This is where I would have sent Leo. This is where Amelia is. This is where Leo was going. This is where Amelia is. I spent my entire life thinking my childhood friend was dead. Thinking she had been killed. But she disappeared. And this is where they put all of us.

I was willing to give up everything. The body I’d always wanted, only half finished. My joy. My future. Because I had seen so many people fail. I had lost so many friends to a fight we never, ever won. I was willing to live in misery to give my son a chance at the joy I would never find. But it was a lie. A false dichotomy. There was never a choice. There was never a compromise. There never would be a compromise. We are all left here. It was only a matter of when. It was never a real choice. I don’t know what happened to Lillith. But if she is dead, it’s my fault. Everyone who died because of the deal I thought I struck is on my shoulders. I don’t know how to live with that.

I could have lived with a return to normal. A return to misery. A world where everyone got their lives back. It would have even been an improvement. Former slaves would have been allowed to return to freedom. But that was a lie. I can feel it when I look at Vance. When I look at Ryanna. I had bought a desperate lie because I could at least dream of a future for Leo. Because I thought I had found a way to survive with chains around my ankles. And I can’t even see how much damage I caused. All I can see are three people who hadn’t broken where I had. I would be beyond miserable, except . . . this is where Amelia is. She could be alive. I can see her again. I can see her as she actually looks, if I can get Leo to her.

“Mom, are you listening?” Leo asks. He still calls me mom. Even more now. He had been the only friend I’d managed to keep alive. To keep safe. And I’d kept him that way for so long I started to think I could play the game well enough to keep him alive forever. I am such a fool. I don’t deserve that title. I almost took everything from him. “Mom?” He asks again, and a hand gently lands on my shoulder, forcing me to jump. Oh. Right. Again, everyone but me is looking forward where I am only lamenting my past. It’s Vance’s hand on my shoulder and I look up into his glass eyes. Vance and Ryanna don’t speak much. Not yet. Vance hardly speaks at all, if he doesn’t have to. But their eyes tell years of stories. I wince.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Yes, Leo? Sorry, I was lost in thought,” I respond.

“That’s alright,” he says. “What do you think? About where they are going?” I look at Leo and bite my lip.

“You said they seem to be heading in the same direction?” I ask and he nods.

“It’s hard to tell, since the Radiant Woods recede when I approach them. But tracks are left behind, and for the last few days, they have all started to point the same way,” he elaborates.

“Um, do either of you remember any patterns like that?” I ask, looking toward our new friends. Vance simply shakes his head and Ryanna puts a finger to her chin in thought.

“I don’t think I was stuck here as long as he was,” she answers hesitantly. “But I don’t remember ever being pushed one direction over another. I was never even allowed near anyone else. Sorry,” she replies. I shake my head.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I insist and she blushes before apologizing again.

“Right, sorry, I just–“ she starts.

“I get it,” I interrupt. “I think we are all forced to apologize a little too often. But I think . . . “ I trail off, worried to make another guess. I was so wrong last time I tried to gamble on the future. But Leo wasn’t.

“I think this is a good thing,” Leo says, echoing the thought I was too afraid to share. “If all the monsters go to the same place, we can save all of them at once, right?” I nod gently, and Ryanna seems to get jittery at the thought.

“Do you think they’ll be like us?” She asks excitedly and I smile gently. She’s right to be excited. Excited to no longer be alone, especially after what she has been through. Excited to actually change people’s lives. I understand it. I am excited at the feeble hope of saving Amelia, if there is anything left of her after all this time. If she is even still alive at all. Ryanna deserves this joy. Even after Leo found her, life hasn’t exactly been easy. We eat when the Radiant Woods dissolves and we find edible fruits and vegetables in the real flora left behind. They only have clothes because I spent time aspecting cloth mana, and I am no seamstress able to put it together sensibly. She should be miserable. But whenever we find new tracks, she is so hopeful.

“Yes,” I answer. “In one way or another. Maybe they won’t be exactly like us, although I think quite a few will. But yes, I think in some sense, they will be like us.”

“Why do you think they suddenly changed course?” Vance asks. He is less optimistic. Always so weary. He doesn’t speak much, but he always asks the questions we don’t want to.

“I don’t know but,” I pause, picturing the claws. The teeth. The carapace. Monsters meant for war. To kill and destroy. “But I think it will be best if we find them first.”

“We have nowhere else to go,” Leo adds. “They are going either where the Radiant Woods wants them, or they are helping us. And . . . and I think I know where they are going.”

“Oh, to this Lillith girl?” Ryanna asks. “You seem to think about her a lot. I don’t know why they would be going to her, though.” Leo shakes his head.

“I don’t know if they are going to her specifically. But, I’m betting she has something to do with it. When the world shifts beneath your feet, she usually does,” he answers.

“Except when it’s you shifting the world beneath mine,” Ryanna counters. “So is she a sweetheart or something?” Leo shakes his head, unembarrassed.

“No, nothing like that. I’m not really interested in any women that way. She’s just . . . someone kind,” he answers. Vance seems to understand this, and I do too.

“I hope you are right,” I say. And I do. I hope Lillith is alive to face whatever is coming. Because that would mean I didn’t get her killed. “If anyone could face them without hurting them, it would be her. If anyone knows to even try it’s her. I hope you are right.”

“So. What do we do? Do we just . . . follow?” Vance asks. My skin itches to take action and I can feel it in everyone around me too. We all have our reasons. We all have our pasts and futures to fight for. Ryanna wants to meet more of us. Leo wants to see the rest of his family and rejoin the fight. Vance . . . I don’t know what he wants, but he is moving forward. And me? I want everything to be alright. I want to know that despite me, everyone survived. I want to see with my own eyes that I was wrong. That a better world could be won. Because even now, I have a hard time really believing it. Even now, something burrows into my ear and taunts me. Tells me that the little comfort I had was the best I could ever have. But Leo rejected that, and these two people have lives again because of that rejection. But me? I need to really see it to genuinely believe it is possible on a wide scale.

“Yes,” I respond. “Yes, and we do it quickly. As quickly as we can. We move whenever we have the energy. We don’t let a single person suffer in those woods for a single day longer than we have to. We follow them, and we find a home.”

“You heard her,” Leo says. “We follow.”