Terribly Lottey

  Chapter Six

  I washed the pots in lukewarm water without soap. My hands didn’t ache; I was numb. But I wanted to work. I wanted to do this. Being alone in the kitchen right now was far better than anywhere else I could be, besides a trillion miles away.

  My heart skipped around in a circle when someone entered the kitchen through the creaky, swinging door.

  “It’s been a while since you’ve had to do that, isn’t it?” Ryse asked.

  In a way I was glad it was him. “I guess I miss it,” I said cynically.

  I never knew his reasons for edging himself into what I’m doing nearly ever night. But he did, and at the moment he let himself up on the counter and watched me work.

  “Want some help?”

  I shook my head.

  “Lottey,” he sounded distraught. He let out a breath when I didn’t answer, and he continued. “Lia said you’re going back tomorrow night.”

  “Yes.” I answered quietly. It was too painful to hear my own response.

  “Then tomorrow night you could be dead,” now he sounded firm and vociferous. And maybe concerned.

  “And what could be different here.” I couldn’t even bear to make it a question. My voice quivered and was so quiet; if I were louder, I’d burst out into tears.

  “What do you mean?” Now he sounded concerned.

  I bit my lip and choked a little inside. I spoke as if someone had their hands around my throat. “Lia and Cook threatened me a little, and, well, I have to go.”

  “A little?” He knew now what was afoot. I could tell by the look on his sunned face. He had darkened quite a bit since we’d left Jyne’s mansion; he used to be close to the same color as I. So did that mean that I had darkened? Was I not snowy and velvety skinned anymore? I wouldn’t know.

  “Who’s more dangerous?” He asked, confronting my fears.

  Oh, the hope I felt in his face. I want to start bawling and fall into his arms. Then I’d cry myself sleep and never wake up.

  “What have I to live for?” I tried to screech. “I don’t have any money, or title, or any family. I have no family, Ryse. What does anyone care if I’m not here anymore? So, Lia will have to hire help again. It’s not that hard.” Tears stuck to my eyelashes and made it hard to see.

  “Lotts,” he hadn’t called me that but once before. It was kind of nice to hear it. “You can’t just give up because you have no reason to keep trying.”

  “It’s pointless,” I sobbed. I could make out his eyebrows weaving around in intense thought. I wished I could think that hard. I couldn’t think at all.

  “Why?” He surprised me by whispering hoarsely. Then he cleared his throat and looked me in the eye, no longer sitting on the counter. “Can I tell you something, Lottey? What I want to say may change things, if you let them, and… it might not. I didn’t want to tell you before, I was afraid…” His eyes looked extremely green, greener than the ocean. I wanted to jump in them and drown myself.

  “Tell me.” Badly I wanted to hear what he had to say. I thought I knew what it was. And as I gazed at him, I wanted to hug him and sob on his shoulder as he told me. “Tell me,” I repeated.

  He wet his lips and looked a tad anxious. “Lottey, I, I…”

  “Yes?” I said breathlessly.

  His eyes got huge and he said it before he lost his nerve. “I’m your brother.”

  I tried to move but I slipped on the damp floor and dipped myself into the water basin I was washing in. I heard whispers all inside my head. This was not was I expecting to hear. I was so shocked that everything I saw was bright and blinding. “What?”

  No. No he wasn’t. I thought I… no wonder he acted so strangely when I had tried to kiss him. My face got hot and my stomach flipped. How did I know this was true? How did he know? I almost swallowed my tongue… I was dizzy and this smack was hard to take on top of my dying soon stress. Ryse helped me from falling. It felt funny when he touched me.

  I tried to add it up: neither of us had a last name. We both had the same hair and eyes, down to perfection. And I had thought earlier about the sameness in our skin– but a lot of people had to look like this. It was the look of a normal good-looking servant.

  “Uh?” I was choked.

  He looked choked too. Confused as I. He had his hands on my shoulders to keep me from toppling over, and I saw a word flash across his face.

  Big brother.

  He had been following me to protect me. And when I had been so stubborn and annoying and ungrateful, he had been disappointed about how his long-lost sister turned out be, and he ignored me. Oh, I was sick. “How do you know?” I wiped my eyes.

  “Everyone told me. Before you came, Lady Jyssel took me aside and explained to me who you were and why they were taking you in. I tried to get to know you, and stuff, but you didn’t really want to have anything to do with me.”

  A guilty feeling shot through my ribs. I hadn’t wanted to do anything with him. “Then why didn’t you just tell me then?” I asked despairingly.

  He kind of smiled, a little sudden smile. “You wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “So why do I now?” I didn’t even know the answer to that. But he was right, I wouldn’t have believed him. I would have laughed in his face and pushed him out of my way. “You’re… you’re a pretty good brother,” I whispered, even my whisper-voice cracking.

  But he was. He had made sure I was completely taken care of.

  I won’t bring myself to write what I thought he was going to say. I still can’t believe what he really did say.

  If I were in his place I wouldn’t not have ever been so patient with someone like me.

  “And that’s why you can’t die. Not yet.” His eyes sparkled passionately.

  I fell into his arms and gave the first hug I had ever given to a real person from my real family.

  But it all didn’t feel real– but, when I looked in his face, I sort of saw some of me there. We didn’t act anything alike, but we hadn’t been raised anything alike, either. Would I be as great as him if I’d been brought up a servant? I don’t know if I have it in me.

  When the shock was finally a little less, and I could stand straight without plunging head first into my washing water, I asked him, “If I can’t die right now, what am I going to do?”

  I think he laughed. My vision still spun a bit.

  “We can do just about anything we want right now, Lia’s drunk as the rest of them.” He scratched his back in thought. “I don’t know how she gets up every morning like she does.”

  “Yeah, but Cook isn’t. Cook doesn’t get intoxicated. She doesn’t even drink.” Cook always sat in the corner and made sure no one was fast with Lia.

  “Ay. But we have to get away.”

  I knew that much.

  Wait. I did?

  “What do you mean? How are we going to get away? Where are we going to go?” I got frantic rather suddenly. And out then I shouted, “You’re my brother!”

  “Yes, I know.” He was still tolerant with me and my unintelligent ness.

  But I had to shout it. It just hit me. Ow, and it was weird! “I have a brother and– how old are you?”

  “Eighteen. But Lottey, focus.”

  “I don’t see it.” I felt blank. He was two and half years older than me.

  “What?”

  “What I’m supposed to focus on. Tell me.” I felt like a mouse being pulled from the trap. But oh, it was just because the cheese looked so good.

  “Think of your arms being severed from your body.” He grinned when my hand flew up and clutched my neck.

  “And that’s supposed to help me focus?” I breathed.

  “Just think about that happening if you don’t focus.”

  I should have seen it before. He really acts like and older brother. I had thought it was flirting before, but now I saw it was brotherly teasing. And it bothered me as it would a little sister. I wanted to stick my tongue out at him.

  “Okay, you make su
re Cook doesn’t see me through the window and I’ll run out the back and–”

  “Lottey, there are no windows.”

  “Right.” He was going to have to be the one that came up with the plan. I was too boggled with shock and craziness and subtle fear at the moment to think of anything he wouldn’t laugh at.

  “Do you remember Ivanm, from the passage over?” He asked me.

  Do I. “Mm.” Of course I did. My memory wasn’t that bad.

  “He’s here in the boardinghouse.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “How come I haven’t seen him?” I asked.

  “Would you have wanted to?” He smirked. “He doesn’t have the money to be an actual boarder.”

  Ah. That sounded like him. “So is he hiding under your bed?”

  “That would be difficult, Lotts.”

  Oh yes; the beds didn’t have frames. They laid flat on the ground. “I would have put him under my bed.” And smash him to bits.

  “Well, I can’t leave him here. He’ll have to come with us,” he confirmed.

  I made a choking noise. “We’ll be caught before we get off this street. He’ll sneeze really loud, or say, ‘hey look a butterfly’ or something.”

  “And if he does, we’ll run on and leave him in the middle of the street with his butterfly. But right now I need you to go get him. He’s in my room; just tell him who it is and he’ll come out without question. I need to get some stuff together. Meet me out in front of the boardinghouse.”

  “You’re my brother, you can’t tell me what to do,” I said, as left the kitchen to do as he said.

  It was so loud when I walked through the main room that I thought my head would explode. And it stunk. I heard Lia screaming, “One more! One more!” But she sounded kind of woozy.

  I hopped up the stairs without even cook noticing me. I just hoped silently that it would be that easy to get out, and Ivy with me. That would muddle things, I knew.

  I knew exactly which room was Ryse’s. I cleaned the rooms once a week, and I knew what dirty clothes belonged to him. Plus I had clothed his bed the day he had come. It was the last room to the right. I walked through the wooden door that had a dozen little peek holes that had most definitely been made accidentally. And there was no telling how.

  I shut the door behind me tightly. “Ivanm?” I looked around the room, but I didn’t see him stir. “Ivy, it’s me, Lottey. I’ve been threatened to be killed be two people and Ryse is my brother and now we have to run away or I’ll die, and you have to come with us.”

  He still didn’t reveal himself.

  Impatiently, I began walking around the room, uncovered every little thing he could possibly be hidden under. Was he really clever enough to hide so well? “Ivy!” I demanded, planting foot firmly into the bouncy wooden floorboards.

  Then I heard… a snore.

  I threw my hands up manically and tore through the blankets on Ryse’s bed wildly. And I found him. He was curled up in a ball, sleeping soundly.

  That irked me. I slapped him in the face to wake him up.

  He opened his eyes and looked around, not sure where he was for a moment. But then he saw me, and he grinned. “I knew you liked me.”

  I wanted to slap him again. “Come on!” I grabbed his arm and jerked him up.

  “What for?” He looked awfully confused.

  Oh, yes. He was asleep when I explained it to him. “Ryse is my brother.”

  “Yes?” He already knew that. Wow, I felt left out.

  “And three people are out to kill me.”

  He chuckled happily and deeply. “I didn’t know you had it in ya.”

  I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “And now we have to run away or I will be dead tomorrow night.”

  “And this involves me?”

  I smiled hugely and pasted. “You must come with us.” His turtle-ness was making me nervous and anxious. “Come on!” I urged.

  “Alright. But I’m thirsty.”

  I popped him one on the head. He’s my height; it wasn’t hard. After that he came with me.

  I shushed him as we started down the stairs. I held on to him at the wrist just for safe keeping. I didn’t trust him not to do anything stupid with my life on the line. I’m not that naïve.

  Everyone was still as loud as a swarm of bees. We tiptoed, and Ivy was slow. I could feel him tensing up. I thought we were going to make it easily, but of course that would never happen.

  A stair creaked loudly. It scared me to death and I slipped and fell the rest of the way down, dragging poor Ivy with me.

  The swarm stopped buzzing. All eyes were on us.

  “Who’s that?” Lia screeched, making with gestures, her wrist all floppy.

  “Um.” I wanted to say, ‘Who is who? I don’t know what you’re talking about’. The only thing I could think of on the spot was, “He’s a nonpayer. I’m taking him out back to wallop him good and send him on his way.”

  Lia and Cook stared at me.

  “You?” Lia burst out in a laughter that brought her tears.

  “Well,” Cook gruffed, “even considering who we’re talking about, the boy looks weaker than her.”

  “Boy?” Ivy exclaimed. He tried to squirm free from my grasp but couldn’t.

  “See? She’s got him under control.” Cook thought it was funny, nonetheless.

  “Yeah, but you are the one who beats the nonpayer,” Lia got up in Cook’s face, pointing at her, and then kissed her on the nose.

  Everyone cringed.

  “You would do that to me, and make me angry? And tomorrow I’ll go and tell dear old Visel how evil you are to me.” I glared roughly. But it was forged; my insides quivered like an earthquake.

  “Oh, pffft,” Lia remembered. “Have at him.”

  And the noise resumed.

  “Wow,” Ivy said. Only I heard him.

  We actually made it outside, and met Ryse in front of the house on the street. He had three satchels, and he handed us each one.

  “I’m impressed,” Ryse told me.

  “I knew you would be,” I glowed.

  “Shouldn’t we have horses?” Ivy cried, as we started to walk out into the night.

  “Agh,” I cried back, and clapped my hand over his mouth. “Ryse I told you!!!”

  Ivy mumbled something.

  I let my hand off his mouth and enthused, “Say it quietly.”

  “Stop hurting me.” It was almost a whine.

  I wanted to giggle maliciously. But I held back and continued following Ryse at a quickening pace.

  “At the end of this road we’ll hit a thick patch of wood that is only about a hundred feet long. After that there will be a long, hilly, dark stretch of land that will last us a few days. But after we get through that, nobody should be able to find us,” Ryse explained.

  But I gulped. “If we get through that.” What he had just explained sounded exactly like the land where Visel’s castle sat. The shadows loomed in and haunted my thoughts.

  “What do you mean?”

  I explained.

  Ivy got frantic. “Who is your Visel man, anyway? Is he mean?”

  I started sobbing lightly and pitifully.

  “Stop it, Lottey.” Ryse sounded harsh.

  I stopped abruptly, surprised at him, and crossed my arms as we moved forward quickly.

  “Oo, sibling fight!”

  We both glared at Ivy.

  Yes. Siblings. I wondered what it was like for him, to have never known any family– and then he met me. He was probably a bit disappointed. Probably had wished for a brother instead, or maybe a mother.

  Wait.

  If we were siblings then our mother would be the same. Except I had never known my real mother. “Ryse did you know your mother?” I said frantically, abruptly.

  He shook his head. I didn’t press any further.

  When Ryse had said the woods we’d hit were thick– it wasn’t exaggerating. They were so thick, the trees so close together, that it was like– I??
?m not sure. An obstacle course a boy and his chums would make up for one another. We squeezed through, finding big enough slots to fit. It was all such a tight fit that I hardly ever touched the ground.

  “I’m so glad this won’t last long,” I wheezed.

  “Well,” Ryse wheezed back, “it won’t take long as long as we’re going the right way. And it’s hard to tell when there isn’t any light to follow.”

  I wanted to relax all my muscles and die, or fall asleep, or cry. “I knew I never liked ParKesh.” I knew it, I did. I always knew it. I just never knew how deadly it was. “You know, I have people in three places that want to kill me,” I whined shrilly.

  “Make it four,” said an annoyed brother.

  And Ivy agreed, making my sore muscles feel tangibly spent.

  Number one on my list of fatal enemies was Jyne. Then there was Visel, who was like an appetizing poison. And lastly there was Lia and Cook, who really only counted as one.

  I hooked my legs out straight in front of me on a loopy branch. I climbed up a little higher, and lost my grip. I rolled off of trees I had been relying on and hit the ground.

  “The ground!” I fell on my face and laughed madly. “And I’m not even dead yet.”

  Soon the rest arrived.

  I looked up, when I dared to, and saw what I would like to call the badlands. I don’t think they have a name, so I am presenting the deathly looking place with something to be called. And I have quaint reasoning: it’s a land, and it is bad. There is nothing else to call it.

  And, to everyone’s complete surprise, the entire reason the land was bad was sitting right in front of us.

  “Is that–” Ryse said.

  “I’m going to die,” I cried.

  “Can we go back?” Ivy proposed.

  I turned to him. “And leave me to die? Don’t you care about me?” I snapped.

  He looked a little sheepish.

  “So how do we get around a castle like that?” Ryse asked himself.

  Yes, right there was Visel’s castle. I don’t know how it got there. This didn’t seem to be the same place it was when I was here last, but of course that memory was a little shaved.

  “Well, let’s go.” Ryse sighed and pushed on.

  “What?” Ivy and I said. But I knew we had to, even though I dreaded it more than anything. I ran to Ryse and caught his hand. He didn’t look at me, but he smiled diminutively.

  We stayed kind of close to the castle, because the further we were away, the easier we were to spot. Ryse genius-ly told us exactly where to walk, and it seemed to be the perfect plan.

  For ten minutes– oh, the castle is so big. And to think that I had toured the entire place? We brushed our way through the scant grass and dust as quietly as we could. Not even Ivy said a word.

  But then– I heard that hideous laugh.

  It wasn’t as loud as it was the night before, and I wasn’t even sure if it was directed towards us. But we all froze, our lungs seeming to collapse.

  Ivy made a squeaking sound. I kicked him. Or was that why he squeaked?

  We didn’t move for what seemed an hour, though it was probably only a minute or two. Time stretched like a stocking being pulled between two people. When all was quiet, and we thought we were safe, we started moving again.

  And all of the sudden– he jumped. He jumped from the top of his castle, I saw him. He fell and fell, and he landed at our feet. On his feet.

  Needless to say we all froze again. Because: Visel was standing right there in front of us.

  Then, uncontrollably, I screamed at the top of my lungs, making my hair stand out on end. I think it was a spasm.

  “I thought you knew where the entrance was, Sharlotte,” Visel scoured my face with his eyes, almost sourly.

  “Are you not happy?” I heard myself say.

  He grinned. “Come with me.” He turned and started climbing the wall to his castle.

  “Why?” I asked. “How?”

  “Stop asking questions, Lottey.” Ryse looked fiery.

  “Lottey?” Visel raised an eyebrow, hanging onto the wall with one hand casually. “Is this an affectionate nickname?”

  “Um.” What was I going to say to that? I went and put my arm through Ryse’s. It made me feel safer when I had no answer.

  “They love each other a lot.” Ivy said, cowering behind us. He sounded wry.

  I could have whacked him for that. Now he made it seem as if Ryse and I were engaged or something.

  “If I recall, I invited you only, dear, and I’d send you an escort. You’re a bit early.” He took out his pocket watch.

  How was he hanging on to the wall?

  “I?” What would he do to us if he found out we weren’t exactly here to see him?

  “We aren’t here to see you!” Ivy spat, trying to sound brave.

  I turned around and smashed his toe. “You’re a– a– a big mouthed little person!” I screeched breathlessly.

  “Not here to see me?”

  Oh, no. Visel sounded amused.

  “As you said, milord, it isn’t yet time for her to be here. In fact, it’s hardly the same day. We were running an errand for the mistress at the boardinghouse,” Ryse said, so cleverly. He shook me off of him.

  Ivy stepped forward and put his hand around my waist. I quickly smashed his toe again.

  As he hopped skipped and bounced around holding his foot, we waited for Visel to say something. But he didn’t. I started getting itchy and sweaty, and the more anxious I got (with death on my mind) the more amused Visel got.

  And of course, Ryse’s expression was blank as stone.

  How I hate the word amused!!!

  Finally, after I began and ended hyperventilating, Visel said, “Won’t you stay for a bite to eat?”

  Ivy swallowed so loudly that I could hear him. “Is he going to eat us, Lotts?” He whispered in my ear.

  I jabbed him with my elbow. “Only Ryse is allowed to call me that.”

  He– I think, may be mistaken– he whimpered. “I told you, stop hurting me.”

  “I’m telling you, stop exasperating me,” I whispered back sharply.

  “Won’t you?” Visel was now waiting on us to respond.

  “No,” Ivy said.

  “Yes,” Ryse said. His was always the final word. And it shocked us. I wanted to scream, what do you mean yes??? Couldn’t the three of us beat him off? I had gotten away the first time.

  “What are you doing,” I screamed in a very quiet whisper at Ryse.

  “I’m hungry,” he said simply. And by looking at his face, I was given absolutely no clue about what he was planning.

  Did he want us all to die?!?

  “Very well.” Even more amusement. Visel jumped off the wall. “I suppose we should go the other way.”

  “It’s more natural,” Ivy said, shaking as if he had just had knives thrown all around his head.

  So we followed him. Of our own free will. Well, except for Ivy– I’m not sure how exactly we were able to get him to come along. He kept muttering about how he should have stayed at the boardinghouse and have Cook finish him off; she was, after all, completely human.

  “And Visel’s not?” I asked, but as I considered my question, I wasn’t really even sure if I wanted it answered.

  The drawbridge let itself down for us magically and we continued following dreadful Visel into his horrid house. Castle.

  “Wow,” Ivy whistled, suddenly forgetting about his death wish and observing the obscure wealth around him.

  Yes, everything was still gold. But also, it was still dark. Gloominess fluttered about like a wailing ghost and I wanted to run and hide.

  Visel stopped, and a butler came into the room. “He will take your coats,” Visel said, not really looking at us. When he did look at us, he realized we didn’t have any coats, so he cleared his throat and said, “Press on.”

  So we pressed. I suppose it would have been a lot less frightening if I hadn’t been in the place the night
before, with a bad experience. It was really terrible when we passed through the office.

  I gasped.

  No one looked at me.

  It was odd; everything was completely nice and neat, exactly how it had been before Visel had gone crazy. Every paper was tidily in order; no chairs were turned over. But, to my horror and dismay, there was a blood spot on the far wall where I had been standing when he had mauled my head. I remembered: smashing myself against the wall, completely terrified, after my head was bleeding. I wanted to turn to Ivy and point it out to him and tell him that it’s my blood, but then we’d never get him to go a step further. He’d probably spin and run for the hills until his stubby legs gave out.

  “Will you be staying past dinner?” Visel asked, breaking the shallow silence.

  I dreaded what I’d hear Ryse say.

  “That’s for the host to decide.”

  Wow, Visel must be a contagious disease. Ryse seemed happy all of the sudden.

  Agh, happy! The word takes me under par. Even my finger nails cringe now. I would be content to live with a world full of angry people, now, if I could run away and never see Visel again.

  Now, he was too beautiful to like.

  “I’m not hungry,” Ivy offered.

  I would have hurt him again if he had been closer. But he was walking in front of me, closer to Visel; closer than I dared. He probably didn’t even realize where he was standing. I could see his head floating in a fizz of horror three feet above his neck.

  When we finally arrived in the dining room, Ivy was the first (who else?) to discover the ceilings. He got a little excited about the echoing, but after he was seated and once more remembered where he was, he once more acted dismembered from the inside out.

  The first course came out; it was de javu. The exact food from last night– well, not exact I suppose and pray, but it was the same. I ate mechanically before Visel even put his napkin on his lap. Ivy stared straight in front of him with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other as if he could see right through the far wall.

  Ryse looked to be enjoying himself.

  Was that possible?!?

  “Everything is so good I can’t help but eat till my teeny stomach can’t handle anymore,” I gritted. My eyes were half closed each time I brought the heavy golden fork to my mouth. “Is this poisoned?” I asked, directing to Visel.

  “Would you like it to be?” He smirked evilly. Was it evil? Or was his dashing smirk or grin or smile always meant to be evil, but I was always in such a trance I didn’t realize it?

  I wanted to try something. “Visel, you’re ugly.”

  His eyes dared up from his plate. “What did I do to you?” An ironical question.

  “No, I don’t mean your actions.” I reconsidered. “Um– not that I love the way you dealt with my head last night, that was exactly what I mean.”

  “What exactly do you mean.” He didn’t even bother to make it a question; his voice was edgy and his nostrils flaring.

  I gasped, nearly ecstatic. “Are you not happy?” I asked for the second time tonight.

  “Can you not see the joy and glee rippling over the side of my blissful heart?” Something about him was changing rapidly. It got me excited and nervous and terrified for my life all in one minute second.

  “Do you really want her to answer that?” Ivy butt in with food hang over his teeth and onto his chin.

  I would’ve like to butt something into him. Did he not know how to keep his drippy mouth closed?

  “No, but I can see the soup rippling over the side of your bowl.” The chicken flavored liquid in his gilded porcelain bowl was bubbling– almost as if it were boiling, but faster and it was pouring out in streams as if it had no end. I looked up at Visel’s face. He was staring straight at me. There was something about his hotness– the red swarming in his eyes and the way his fingers tightened and closed over his fork. I jumped up from my chair and ran.

  There was an archway that led to the veranda where he had taken me last night, and I ran for that. I don’t how my legs moved so fast. I prepared myself to see smoke rising from my heels.

  I screeched, tripped on myself and tumbled out the archway, dodging the fork he had thrown at me. He had that much muscle? Of course he did. He nearly ripped my head of previously. I heard the fork hit wall and expected it to come out the other side.

  Why did I run? It had been a good thing. I lay on the marble ground the sky above that looked no higher than the dining hall ceilings. I could taste blood in my mouth and felt it dripping onto the pureness of the stone floor. I knew I needed to get up. And go where? I was trapped. And what of Ryse and Ivy? I pried my eyes opened and saw them sitting at the table, a bit of shock on their faces, and no Visel in sight.

  Ryse stared at me. I wanted to reach out for him. He was always the one to rescue me from anything.

  A yank from the head, and I belted out a scream with a voice I forgot I had. I was swung in a blur that was so painful I wanted to laugh madly. I reached out with my arms, clawing eccentrically and biting my tongue. I felt as if I were a mass of the smelliest dung possible that was being flung over a fence. When I finally stopped spinning I burst into tears. I couldn’t open my eyes. I could feel his hand– Visel’s hand, entangled in my hair, and heard his hideous laugh. When I pried my eyes open for the second time in the last minute, I was dangling a million feet in the air. The ground seemed like a land across the sea that would take months to reach. I stopped wriggling, and tried to turn my eyes to see Visel the horrible. I caught him in the corner of my eye.

  He was still laughing away.

  Didn’t continuous laughter make him ill in his stomach area? Madly, I mimicked him with all the strength I had, exaggerating his idiocy. It shot a surge of grievable pain up every strand of hair. I screamed at him, my muscles tensing like a fish in a net.

  “No need to get excited,” he smiled, stopping his mockingly gruesome laughing.

  “What is it with you and being happy?” Every word I said was a scream. There wasn’t enough calmness to be speak calmly. It would be even more of a waste than him dropping me over the side of this horrid veranda.

  I could feel blood dripping from scalp down to my shoulders, traveling over my eyes and mouth and the back of my neck to get there.

  “Ryse!!!” I screeched, although it sounded more pitiful than I would’ve liked.

  “What is it with you and making me unhappy?” Visel resumed his horrible smirk once more.

  “Well I’m unhappy but I don’t grab you by your hair and swing you over the side of a castle!!!”

  “And why is that?” Oh no, amused. He was amused now. “Because,” he explained to me, answering his own question, “you can’t.”

  I twisted a little to see if I could spy Ryse. My eyes fluttered backwards when I didn’t.

  “Am I no threat to your existence?” My voice was leaving me. I couldn’t scream.

  “My existence? I’m the threat to existence.”

  Oh, his horrid, awful, beautiful face was looking at me so intensely and I wanted to kick it in the mouth. I wanted to smash it inward so he’d never be so beautiful again. I wanted to kick it– I swung my legs backward, gaining moment in a rapid second, completely forgetting that he could drop me at any second. With all the force I could wield at the moment: force built up my walloping and beating servants from anger and impatience, from years of impertinence and always getting my own way, I kicked him in the face and knocked him back ten feet. In the slowness of a haze I saw him fly back, his nose very warped– just like Jyne’s, and a big slash across his cheek. Just from my boot? But the downfall from this triumph was… I was the downfall. I was falling down.

  Nothing saved me. I fell. But of course, I didn’t die. How else could everything be written down? A bit of luck struck me when I struck a tree and it broke my fall. I was caught by Ivy, except it was more like I landed on Ivy.

  Both of us have a sprained wrist.

  Ryse yanked me up by my p
aining wrist, for he didn’t know it at the time, even after I yelped at him like a protective gander. We ran, and as we did that, I realized I was leaving a trail behind me.

  A trail of hair.

  Aren’t I getting good at this ‘telling my life as if it were a story thing’? I suppose something good did come from having a not-brother.