Lost and Found
An Inkling of Magic - Chapter 30
Shivering, Elspeth struggled to her feet – a hiss of pain leaving her as her body protested the movement from its many tender places that she’d bruised when she fell. She pulled the sharp pieces of gravel from the palms of her hands with a grimace – most were just small things pressed hard into her hands, but a couple were actually remarkably sharp and had drawn blood when they’d dug in and scraped along her palm. They weren’t deep cuts, thankfully, but deep enough for the blood to trickle down her wrist as she inspected it to see the damage and wished that she had a rag to try about it as a makeshift bandage.
A frustrated sound escaped her as, with nothing else to use, she smeared the blood and mud on her jeans in an attempt to wipe her hands clean. It didn’t really help matters much, her jeans also caked in mud with very few clean areas left, but at least the bleeding had slowed.
Elspeth sighed as she took in the state of herself and looked again at her surroundings. “Oh, Elspeth,” she sighed, “you’ve really done it now.”
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“She’s not here!” Niamh panted bursting into the covered porch where the others had stayed as she ran the full length of the house and back. “I’ve checked in every room and Mum says she hasn’t seen her either.”
“You’re absolutely sure, Niamh?” Kieran asked a teasing edge to his voice despite finding nothing funny about his friend’s sudden disappearance, “Els did usually beat you when it came to hide-and-seek.”
She rolled her eyes and blew a lock of her dyed hair out of her face. “Of course I’m sure, you natter-head. I’m telling you Els is gone.”
Kieran fisted his hands in his hair and let out growl that sounded more like a groan of pain. “I just don’t understand,” he cried, his accent thickening with emotion, “why in blazes would she run? That’s not like her.”
“And getting into fisticuffs in front of her isn’t like you,” Granny pointed out from her chair in the corner with a scolding look at her grandson, “that poor lass has been through enough without having to see the two of you carrying on like two seagulls after the same chip.”
Kieran had the good sense to look chastened while Derek continued to pace the small, enclosed porch with great agitation and an expression of stone. Much to Kieran’s surprise it had been Derek that they’d had to hold off from tearing off aimlessly after Elspeth literally requiring Kieran and Farren to grab him by the shoulders in an effort to stop him before they really knew if she was gone or not or had just vanished into another room to escape their fighting. He could have easily broken their hold on him, but a word from Farren hissed lowly in his ear had stopped him.
“Well, she can’t have gotten far,” Niamh said, “not in that freak storm at least.”
“Except we don’t know when she left. She could be much further than any of us think,” Farren countered from he sat head in hands on the floor. “We need to stop standing around and just get out there!”
“Perhaps she’s just gone home, and there’s no need to worry,” Granny interjected.
Farren shook his head wildly, looking up with panicked eyes. “No, you don’t understand. We need to find her. There’s…” he pushed himself up from the ground, his face paled at the memory of their run-in with the creature – a mngwa Elspeth had called it – that was apparently hunting his sister. “We just need to find her.”
“So, what, we just split up and search all of Hydendale and the countryside for her?” Kieran asked with a guilt-ridden moan. He hung his head in shame at having been the one to start it before looking up at Farren with pain filled eyes. “She’s your sister, where do you think she might have gone? If we wander about aimlessly we’re just as likely to miss her as find her.”
Farren opened his mouth to reply, but Derek beat him to it. His own tether at an end, he abruptly stopped his silent pacing and whirled around with his green eyes flashing.
“We’re wasting time!” Derek snarled. He levelled his glare at Farren whose eyes shared the same fear-stricken madness in them that danced with the fury in his own – fury at himself for, for the first time, failing to notice when Elspeth wasn’t there and fury at every second ticking by when they still had done nothing. “You know what’s out there,” he hissed, “every second I’m not with her is a second when it might find her.”
“It?” a chorus of confused voices asked.
A deadly resolve came over him as he held Farren’s gaze and ignored the three pairs of blue eyes staring at them – two with great confusion, but one with great worry.
“You lot do things your way,” he said in that dangerous calm of his, “but I’ll do them mine.”
Then, before any of them could ask what he meant, startled gasps went up from the room as he vanished in blaze of green and orange light more wild than ever before.
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The weather hadn’t improved much, but at least the rain had stopped. The clouds were still black as sin though and you would think the sun had gone down from how thoroughly they had blotted it out.
“I wonder if Derek has anything to do with it,” Elspeth maundered out loud, recalling how the rapid shifts in the weather over the last week or so always seemed to coincide with the fae’s ever changing moods – or at least the extreme ones, more than one storm had violently appeared when his temper had been stoked.
She did vaguely recall seeing something about elemental magic in her quick read through about the fae in the book Mr. Grimmlich had given her. She might need to give it another read unless she wanted to ask Derek about it directly.
Elspeth snorted at the thought. “Not likely. If I ask him a question, he’ll turn it into a bargain and expect me to answer one in return.”
And she knew just what it was that he’d ask and she wasn’t ready to go there just yet. Her visit to Mrs. Skrollman earlier might have provided a little bit of insight into what had happened back in Faery, but she couldn’t be sure, not yet anyway.
Another thing that hadn’t let up any was the wind. It was harsh and howling and, every now and then as she slogged down the slopping mess that used to be a road, she could hear the crack of tree branches snapping. Every one of them made her jump as she half expected to hear the unearthly yowling of the mngwa or its low, blood-chilling growl with its almost purr like quality only without the friendliness of a purr – in fact, if a cat could produce an evil laugh like a villain from a movie Elspeth imagined it would sound rather like the mngwa’s growl.
Completely disoriented as to where on earth she’d ended up or just how far she’d run after bolting, Elspeth had turned around to at least go back the way she’d come. If it was merely a straight road that eventually it would lead her where she needed to be.
And if it’s not a straight road? her mind whispered traitorously from its dark corner.
Elspeth kept on splashing her way through the flowing streams of mud that the wind was pushing as she limped on down the road and tried to ignore the thought. She knew the corner of her mind that had made it all too well and if she allowed herself to dwell on the doubts and fears it tried to shove in her face she just might break down. It was the same part of her that had taunted her with glimpses of a future where she was locked up or medicated to the point she didn’t even know her own name anymore.
You left your backpack in Derek’s car remember? it prodded again, refusing to give her peace. That means you can’t phone anyone. You’re completely alone, cut off, and there might be a giant cat that shouldn’t exist hunting you as we speak. Tears ran silently down Elspeth’s cheeks and she clenched her jaw, but the dark side of her mind wasn’t finished yet. Do you think they’ve even noticed you’re gone yet? it continued, knowing exactly where to dig the dagger. After all, you’ve about perfected the art of being invisible who would notice if you weren’t there?
“Shut up!” Elspeth screamed at last, her feet halting in their steps as she clenched her eyes shut against the tears that were now a torrent instead of a trickling stream.
Her shoulders shook as she fought against the broken sobs that wanted to tear from her throat. She needed to be quiet, she knew that. If the smell of the blood that was smeared on her jeans and coagulating on her hand, having finally stopped bleeding, wasn’t enough to draw the mngwa to her – not to mention whatever else was out there – then the sounds of her distress would surely finish the job.
She didn’t want these thoughts, they weren’t profitable and never had been, but she’d lived in fear for so long that that fear wasn’t so easily banished. Hidden, shoved away into the dark recesses of her mind, yes, but it knew well how to pick the locks of its cage and though her main fear might no longer have its hold on her that merely meant that it would strike at whatever new weakness she presented it.
Only if you let it, a voice said with strong determination in her mind.
Derek.
Elspeth’s eyes shot open with a gasp and she looked around with a frenzied need. Nothing. She was still just as alone on that mudwashed road as before.
A choked laugh left her. “Great!” Elspeth said, her voice cracking a little, “now I have a part of my mind that’s sounding like him. As if having the real thing in my head weren’t weird enough.”
She frowned. That was yet another thing she had to file for later under ‘questions I’m not sure I want the answer to.’
The words her mind had adopted Derek’s voice for still echoed inside her. Fear might have had a stronghold in her life for the last ten years, but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t be broken. Oh, how she was tired of giving it so much power over her.
“Not anymore,” Elspeth swore, a deep resolve settling inside of her.
Like she had determined back in Mr. Grimmlich’s store in what felt like a lifetime ago, it was high time she stopped letting fear control her. She’d not done a great job of that over the last twenty-four hours, but, this time, she was going to make that choice stick by continuing to make that choice every time fear reared its ugly head and started whispering its poison in her ear.
She’d be lying if she said her fears just up and vanished – they didn’t, she could still feel them lurking in the shadows just waiting for a crack to open up in the new armour that she’d donned against them so they might overpower her once more – but she finally felt like, just maybe, she didn’t need to let it rule her, that she could find the courage to finally conquer her age-old, silent enemy.
With a new resolve and a quick, silent prayer that she would be given the strength she needed to have the victory, Elspeth wiped the tears from her eyes – the mud and half dried blood smearing across her face as she did – and set her sights back on the road before her.
“Just one step at a time, Elspeth,” she told herself in reassurance, more than just the literal steps giving it weight, “that’s how you’re going take this. Just one step at a time.”
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It wasn’t just the places she’d bruised or scraped in the fall that hurt anymore. Now, it was every muscle in her legs and spreading up her back that hurt as, with an ever increasing limp, she trudged along in the hopes she might yet recognize some small landmark. She hadn’t yet. So far, all she’d been able to figure out when she wasn’t teetering on the edge of an emotional breakdown is that she must have blindly run west away from town rather than towards it as she’d ended up in the densely wooded hillside. It was that wooded hillside where she’d met Niamh for the first time, but it was such a vast expanse that she had easily only explored a fraction of it and, unfortunately, this wasn’t part of that fraction.
Elspeth frowned as she looked up at the sky. The light, what little there was with the blockade of clouds that loomed overhead like a legion of soldiers fervently waiting for the command to fight, had dimmed even further and it made her wonder just how long she’d been walking. It felt like ages, but, alone and anxious, a second was as a thousand hours so it was near impossible to actually know the time when she didn’t wear a watch.
What need did she really have for one when she almost always had her phone with her? There was also the small matter of her skin pH being more acidic than normal as it had slowly eaten away at the band of her last watch until the clasp had finally become so thin it just snapped. And it wasn’t the only watch to have met that same fate, every watch she’d had had suffered the same end until she gave up on ever being able to keep one alive.
I could sure use one right now though, she thought miserably, flinching at the sound of snapping twigs.
Elspeth tensed, but kept her eyes focused ahead of her. “It’s just the wind, it’s just the wind,” she repeated to herself with a shaky breath, jumping again when she heard another one snap.
She swallowed hard and tried her best not to panic. There was a whole host of explanations for the sounds that didn’t include a giant, mythical cat stalking her. Still, there was an eerie familiarity to the way she felt that had her remembering a chase down main street. This time though, she didn’t have a fae around to help her out run it if her uneasiness wasn’t just her mind playing games on her.
Resisting the urge to run despite all the ways her body was hurting, Elspeth did manage to pick up her pace and limp along a little faster. She also listened.
She released the breath she was holding when she didn’t hear any change in the sounds around her. “You’re just being paranoid again, that’s all,” Elspeth said.
But you weren’t so paranoid last time though, were you? her mind whispered just to be contrary which she did her best to ignore.
Her heart jolted though when she suddenly heard more twigs break and what she thought was the soft padding of paws. Logic abandoned apart from the reasoning that now might not be the best time to ‘face her fears’ if said fears came with sharp teeth, Elspeth bolted as, fueled once more by adrenaline, she ran as fast as her hobbling, aching legs would carry her.
The world around her all but greyed out as panic took over and she ran with faltering steps and tunnel vision down the road and sent mud flying in all directions. I bet you look quite the fright right now, the thought coming unbidden as she nearly stumbled when her foot found a hidden pothole beneath the muddy water that was streaming down the road. She could feel a new track of cold, wet mud trailing down her face and down her arms from where it splashed her joining the rest in a race as two which track could get the farthest before it dried and became like a shell from which she would later emerge.
She was at least going downhill now, that much was good, she just didn’t know how many ups-and-downs she still had to go before she was back to the open fields below the wooded hills. If she could just get to the end of the treeline she would know precisely how far she was from her friends’ house.
The road curved again and her heart sank when, instead of continuing on straight down the hill, as straight as a curving road to go, it ran into another road running perpendicular to it. Her legs nearly buckled beneath her as she halted her break-ankle-speed at the crooked stop sign where the two roads met – it was leaning just a little too much to the right from where someone had hit it at some point in time.
Hunched over with her hands braced against her knees, Elspeth fought to catch her breath and to silence the pounding in her ears. She’d counted more than one rhythm in it as she’d run. The pounding of her heart and the pounding of her feet had been expected, but it was the softer patterns that beat alongside them that had made her heart leap when she’d first heard them. Almost as alarming was that there was only the one now.
Still breathing hard, Elspeth straightened up. She cast a look down either direction of the road in front her – too the right, she could just see where it gently dipped to continue on down the hill while, to the left, there was a sharp turn and too many trees to tell which way it went. Biting her lip and too lost in her own head, she failed to hear the crunching and splashing approaching from behind.
“You look like you could use some help.”
Elspeth jumped and screeched at the unexpected breach to the silence.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the voice apologized.
Heart in throat, Elspeth looked to her side to see an SUV stopped beside her with the passenger window rolled down and the driver, a man in a suit, looking down at her.
“I didn’t mean to scream,” she laughed nervously, embarrassment and relief making her blurt the first thing that came to her mind.
He smiled. “So do you?” he asked, “need help that is?”
Elspeth hesitated. She did need help, but this man was a complete stranger to her. While she couldn’t say she knew everyone that lived in and around Hydendale, it was still small enough of a town that a car as nice and new looking as his would not go unnoticed. Even beneath the layers of mud clinging to it, she could make out its metallic navy paint and the shine of chrome that hadn’t lost its finish yet.
The stranger chuckled at her hesitancy and his smile softened. “I promise I’m not a serial killer. Just a man on his way to Hydendale wondering if he can’t provide some help to a girl more mud than human who looks incredibly lost.”
She blushed at his description of her. “I’ll ruin the inside of your car,” Elspeth argued weakly, the resistance going out of her.
“I can have it cleaned,” he countered before adding, “my car has heat. You’re dripping wet and I can see the goosebumps even beneath all that mud, so I know you must be cold.”
As if to prove what he’d just said, the wind blew harder, making her hug herself in a poor attempt to retain any warmth that was left in her. She opened her mouth to reply, still unsure of just what was going to come out of it, when a twig snapped.
Elspeth paled at the sound and hoped her shivering and bedraggled appearance made a good enough mask for the spike of fear that rekindled inside of her. Swallowing, she cast an uneasy look at the woods around her.
Taking a deep breath she turned her attention back to the patiently waiting driver of the SUV. “Alright.”
His smile broke out into a grin. “Hop on in then.”
Body aching and eager for that warmth he had mentioned, Elspeth wasted no time in doing just that.
“Thank you,” she said, closing her eyes in appreciation of the heat blowing on her from the vents. Already Elspeth could feel the chill the rain and wind had planted in her bones being banished.
“So where can I drop you off?” he asked.
Opening her eyes, she finally got a good look at her good Samaritan. Dressed like he’d just left some high-powered boardroom, he was an older man but still with plenty of years ahead of him and his hair, cut and styled in a medium length comb over, was mostly silver but still showed hints of its darker youth. He had a slight scruff too as if he’d forgotten to shave for the last couple of days. All-in-all, he made a rather distinguished first impression.
It took a second for his question to register, but, when it did, a sharp pang of colliding emotions all hit her at once. As much as she was certain that they must all be worried about her by now, Elspeth felt the overwhelming need to go anywhere but back to the O’Rourke’s – not looking like a half-drowned Irish setter and fixed to bite their hands as an anger set in over the mess that got her this way. She didn’t feel like facing Maelyn in this condition either; so home, however much she just wanted to curl up in the covers of her bed and pretend like this day had never happened, wasn’t the best choice either. That really left only one place.
“The bookstore in Hydendale, please,” Elspeth said, naming the place that had been a sanctuary for her for two long years, “the owner’s a friend.”
And, as she stared out the window as the car eased back to life and began moving, she failed to notice the hulking form of a cat that took off between the trees and disappeared into the depth of the woods nor the grey and black streak that darted across the road behind them to join it.