Page 96 of Synodic

The next morning my giant fox-like guardian had vanished. Having fulfilled her purpose in keeping me alive throughout the night, she wisped away like the morning mist of a pond.

My feet and shoulder throbbed. The chill of the night had numbed my injuries, but now in the thawing morning, they were stiff and tender. I would have to find a creek to clean my wounds in and fashion some sort of shoes from the fabric of my dress.

Luckily the beasts who sliced me open didn’t appear to be poisonous or diseased. If they were, it might still be a few hours before symptoms showed, but I couldn’t stay here forever. I needed to keep going, keep making my way back to Rowen.

To move is to survive.

Before I left my safe haven, I grabbed my knife and listened to the sounds of the forest. Dead silence, not even the scuffle of a leaf stirring. The spirit had done a thorough job in clearing the area.

Slowly, I began crawling my way out on all fours when an intense and brutal force knocked me in the face.

My whole body went limp from the blow, and I fell to my stomach with a thud. A strong hand grabbed me by the hair and lifted me until I was face to face with the enraged eyes of the red man. I held his wrists, trying to stop the pulling at my scalp, but my world was spinning, and I could barely see straight.

The caked blood that dripped down his face like a ghastly sash was my only reality. He hadn’t cleaned it or applied any of the salve he’d used on me. He must have been searching for me all night.

“You’re a dead bitch.” He continued to hold me up by my hair. My scalp screamed as he pressed his nose into the side of my face, and I could feel his lips across my skin. “I can’t wait to slowly carve out every last inch of you before you die. In the end, my queen will demand that of me, and I will take great pleasure in doing so, carrying it on for days as I repay you for the lovely token you left upon me. And it will be this face that gladly watches as you take your final begging breath.”

I got one last look at his enraged and maimed face before he slammed me back against a tree, and hitting my head in the same spot as the knot, I saw no more.

35

The alarm on my phone began rousing me from the darkest sleep I’d ever known.

It was so quiet I barely noticed it at first, but the grating noise persisted, growing louder by the second.

Wait. If I had my phone, that meant…

It had been a dream—all of it.

How many times had this very sound pulled me from Luneth, a world that could never have possibly been real.

The glaring truth was too much. I wasn’t ready to face it, wasn’t ready to open my eyes. I couldn’t accept the last few weeks had been nothing but a dream spanning the length of a single night. A lie.

I blindly reached for my alarm to silence the chime pounding in my skull. I begged and pleaded for the dark silence to return, if only for a little while longer. I didn’t want to wake to a world without Rowen, without Luneth. Not yet.

I had convinced myself so thoroughly that it was real. That every moment, conversation, and touch was the most alive I’d ever felt. I’d brought myself up too high, and now the fall back down would surely break me.

I would go to my parents and tell them everything. It was time. I couldn’t live like this any longer, with absolutely no control over my mind or thoughts. Any drug they wanted to give me, I would gladly take, any treatment they wanted me to try, I would willingly participate in.

My alarm was blaring now, and I kept searching for my phone, desperate to shut off the horrid sound, but I couldn’t feel it anywhere. The vibration of my phone was so strong it was shaking my entire bed, filling my head to the point of bursting.

Fed up, I finally opened my eyes, but not to the four walls of my room.

It wasn’t the sound of my alarm I’d been hearing but a cavern filled with hundreds of people surrounding me, jeering and shouting at me to wake.

Panicking, I took quick assessment of my body and noticed I still wore my ripped Celanova dress.

I had never left!

But where was I?

I could tell I was underground by the weight pressing all around me. Surprisingly, the air wasn’t stale but cool and fresh, most likely circulated from the surface.

I scanned the subterranean amphitheater. Masses of unknown faces muddled together as they watched me like I was some odd rarity on display for their viewing pleasure.

It seemed the raucous crowd hadn’t done anything but jibe and gawk at me. But where was the red man? With the unbound fury I saw in his gaze before he knocked me out, I was surprised I even woke at all.

“Ah, there is our sweet little star coming to,” said a melodic female voice that immediately silenced the crowd. The sound was beautiful yet unforgiving and reminded me of a black widow, mesmerizing as she spun her thread into beguiling designs, only to realize too late it was you she wound in her fatal web.

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