Chapter 10: Into the Hills

I dragged over a chair, sat, and looked at Mr. Woodhouse. He looked back with wide eyes and a painful grimace. Above him, the same light hung that had hung above me, and surrounding him was the same circle. My chair was just within its bounds, and I thought I could sense faint wisps of magical energy move behind me. I wondered: how much could he sense, what magical flows and currents were evident to him, and could he control them without speaking, without incanting a spell?

We each waited for the other to speak until it became clear that neither would go first, that we were both stubborn and would wait a very long time.

I spoke first.

"I read your spells. I can't cast, but I know what I read. Those are not spells to help Renee. They are some dark bargain, and the price was my blood."

Holding me in his fixed gaze, he still didn't speak.

"So, will you tell me what you were doing and how we can help Renee?"

Still saying nothing, still staring at me, he let his gaze run down my body. I felt uncomfortable and shifted in my seat. My borrowed clothes felt too tight. When I pushed down my skirt, it seemed too short.

I dropped my eyes, and when I glanced back up, his grimace had become a smirk. I noticed that his leg had straightened, and I hadn't heard him cast, so I knew that given enough time he could indeed work magic without speaking.

"Tyballa, please untie me and return to the seat. I think you're ready for one more exsanguination, and then I'll have enough for the procedure."

When I tried to glance back my eyes dropped again, and I knew that such things, my dropping eyes, my faltering voice, would only make him sure that he could win. It was sad, really, that I hadn't more presence, more poise, that I couldn't convince him, just by speaking, that he must help Renee, that he had no choice, that to not help – right then, no more waiting – would cost him his life. Maybe, perhaps, if I could say the right words with enough force, he would believe.

"Mr. Woodhouse, if you don't help Renee right now, I'll kill you."

That seemed pretty direct. He laughed.

"Oh Tyballa! You sweet thing. Your loyalty to my sad little dyke of a daughter is charming, but..."

His smiled deepened. Then, he shouted a single word, a dark horrible word. Something fluttered in the air – no – not the air, beyond. I felt swirling energies, a magic vortex.

It started from the runic circle and collapsed, passing through me like a wave. It surrounded Mr. Woodhouse. The air around him blurred and distorted. It whistled and hummed. Then it rebounded from him and struck me, hurling me from my chair, casting me hard against the wall. I fell to the floor with a smack.

I rolled, got my legs beneath me, and shot to my feet. But by then he'd broken free from the leather straps and was standing. He began to incant. The door still hung loose on its hinges, broken from my first attempted escape. But he was right there within striking distance.

Another spell would take a long time, at least the sort that could hurt me. To run or to kill?

I ran. I wouldn't be the one to kill Renee's dad. He probably knew that.

I wore no shoes. I wore a tiny skirt the color of the midday sky and a yellow cami of an almost spidery fabric. It was very cold with a few fluttering snowflakes. I ran up a hill behind his house and through the woods under a starry sky. I ran very fast and heard the nightlife of the animals, their eyes lit by starlight, peering at me through the trees. I ran, and there was no way a human could catch me on foot, not in the woods, not in the darkness. I went down the opposite side of the hill and into a narrow stream flowing fast. I ran along the stream, splashing through the frigid water, my feet growing numb, and I'd never felt more alive. Coming to a narrow roadway curling through the hills, two lanes with no line down the middle, I crossed and sprinted up the hillside opposite, leaving behind the stream, the road, Mr. Woodhouse, and the human world. I ran far into the hills. I slept among leaves.

I awoke in the cold morning to the sight of a prancing fawn and its mother. I went to them and stroked them. Wanting to play, the fawn nuzzled me and leapt at me. The mother came to me gently with mysterious eyes. She nursed me, and I drank my fill.

I stood on a hill and looked down on a collection of buildings so brightly lit that, even from afar, my shadow was cast on the foliage beyond. The place had a large parking lot with many large trucks. Beyond the trucks were three buildings, one long with many doors, one with bays that contained trucks being repaired, and one low with glass windows. In the third building I could see the vague hints of figures moving, and I guessed that this was a sort of inn or way station for servicing trucks. An unlit road ran past and seemed to wind and weave through the hills. I walked toward the place.

I passed along a row of gigantic trucks parked with their motors running in low, loping rumbles. The trucks seemed big enough to live in, and I guessed that their drivers were probably sleeping within, and when I passed one, I indeed saw a man peer from a small window on the side and watch me. I imagined what he must think, for I was a small barefoot girl wearing the skimpiest skirt and a barely opaque spaghetti-strapped cami. It was low enough that the tops of my breasts were visible, and if I leaned forward, it covered almost nothing at all. It didn't really hide my nipples anyhow. I wore no panties, and if you chanced to look when I sat down, you would get a full view. My hair must have been quite messy. I had picked out the twigs at sunset.

The third building, the one with people milling about, seemed to be a restaurant. I walked to it. When I entered, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked. A woman in a little sky-blue uniform called out to me, "Uh – darlin' – you can sit where you like."

I looked around at the customers. There were many large, hard men eating alone. There was a family with a father, a mother, and two boys, on a trip perhaps. A blond girl with her back to me sat facing a boy with messy brown hair and a smug grin. When she reached to grab his hands, he pulled them just beyond range.

The boy and girl ignored me. The father and mother gave me sharp, disapproving looks while their sons craned their necks to stare. The other men leered, all of them.

"You can sit with me, sweetie," one of them said, a stocky man with a grizzled beard and dark eyes. He slid over and patted the seat beside him. I tried to ignore him, but he said, "Come on sweetie, come here." His voice was low and gravely. His smile hinted at unpleasant things.

The mother and father looked even more uncomfortable, and they muttered something to each other. Reaching across the table, the father tapped the face of one of his boys and said, "Don't stare. Look at your food." Both boys looked forward, but their eyes shifted, and they stole little glances of me. That pleased me, just a bit.

The woman in the blue uniform watched from the door of the kitchen. She didn't say anything, and I got the sense that she had long resigned herself to certain sad facts about the world. My feet felt cold on the hard tile floor.

"Come on, sweetie, let's get a feel up that skirt," the stocky man said. He seemed ready to get up.

"Can we get our bill?" the father said. The other men watched with crazy eyes and terrible faces. The couple were arguing, the boy sitting with a crooked smile and the girl muttering a litany of complaints.

The stocky man got up. The waitress crossed the room carrying the family's bill. The girl crossed her arms and said something very mean to the boy, who looked shocked.

The stocky man reached me. When he tried to grab my shoulder, I drifted back. When he extended his reach, almost pitching forward, I grabbed his wrist and twisted. Bones snapped. He bellowed and dropped hard, knees on tile. Then I jumped up on a table, my skirt fluttering about. The two boys looked up with the veriest amazement. Their mother gasped, and the waitress dropped their bill. Joining his sons, the father stared. They all got a good long look at my pussy.

The couple finally noticed me, and the girl turned to the commotion and knew me. "Tyballa?" she called out. It was Chloe Sommers, the pretty blond girl who had once fought Madison Shelton, and who was well liked by Hannah and Renee. "You're Tyballa, right?" she called across the diner.

"Yes. Hello Chloe. Can you help me?"

We raced along the highway in a large steel car with a rumbling engine, away from the diner and away from any authorities who might be curious about a young girl who had broken the wrist of a large man. I sat in the back of the car, slid far to the right, looking at Chloe's silhouette. Her hair hung over the seat before me, and I wanted to touch it. But I remained still and watched the slanting shadows from the occasional light that swept across us.

We had rushed to the car after the events in the diner, and we hadn't said much except that I was fine returning to the school with Chloe, and that her boyfriend was named Brandon. If my joining them had eased their unhappy mood, they didn't show it. He sat grasping the wheel and focused on the road that whipped by. Occasionally, lit by the dashboard light, the reflection of his eyes showed in the mirror above him.