Worlds of Ash Rewritten

Chapter 16-22

Chapter Sixteen

Water came to her ankles. It felt slick, and cold. Ash closed her eyes. She didn’t want to watch as the wolf neared, but then—so sudden—she was yanked away.

Ash opened her eyes. This was weirder than what it had been like when she’d moved through glass. There was gray all around—like she was in a dense fog, a kind of dampness that was in no way liquid or thick.

She went up. Ash could feel it, a whoosh of thrust at her feet, and a moving of the gray as she shot towards what was above. But what really let her know she was traveling higher was a spot of light which grew and grew until she was standing in it. She was back in her world, her school—at least the parts of it she could see—making that a fact she didn’t have to question. She really had made it so close. She was in a parking lot behind her schools’ gym.

Ash took stock of how she was. She stood in a puddle about the same size as the one next to the Unkindness but except for the bottoms of her sneakers, the rest of her was dry and wonderful. There wasn’t even a hint of that horrible irritation anywhere on her skin—the way out of that awful world was definitely better than the way in.

“Would you please step off me,” Poppa Henry asked. Ash finally found him along the sections of water she wasn’t standing in. “I can’t see you with your feet in my face.”

Bending over to catch her breath, her hard running finally catching up with her, Ash sucked in large gasps of air and waved down at her grandfather. She even held up her blue mirror so he would move into it.

Somehow, in her excitement, she’d missed how terribly exhausted she was. Her whole body shook from how fast she’d gone, and she had to pray hard for her lungs to stop feeling like they were about to collapse. But, finally, she took one last deep breath and just willed a lot of her pain into the furthest reaches of her mind. With that done, a sense of composure was regained—her heart slowing, her body not shaking quite so bad—and she stood up as straight as she could be before walking towards the double door emergency exit of her schools’ gym.

“You okay,” Poppa Henry asked. His voice wasn’t coming from the puddle. It was back in the blue mirror.

Ash looked down at him. “I’m fine,” she smiled.

And she was. As she regained even more of her breath, she felt such a sense of pride. Had she really just outrun a wolf?

“I was only winded for a second.” Ash confessed. “But I—I jumped, and you—did you get lost?”

“A bit,” Poppa Henry said, “I thought I had it, I really did, but in the end, I only keep apologizing to you, my Little Ash. When I left, for some reason I found myself in that creek we both had been beside. I still couldn’t use it to leave the Unkindness, but I could get stuck in it for a few seconds, and then I had to leap to what felt like the right puddle. Luckily, I guessed correct and you were already there, but if I’d missed…

“I promise, my Little Ash, I do. Out here, it is easy. I’m sure I can make it right to where I want to be, mirror to mirror, pane of glass to pane of glass. As long as I’m in a real world, a living world, then if I can feel it, I know can instantly get to it. I’m so sorry I almost lost you.”

Ash stopped walking. “But you didn’t lose me,” she said. “I’m okay.” That sense of pride—it wasn’t just when she’d escaped from Arathus that she’d been brave, she’d been brave on the Unkindness too—remained. Actually, she couldn’t stop feeling rather great because of that. “I’m more than okay.”

“But I can be better,” Poppa Henry said. “It’s why I made this Reflection—at least one reason why. I knew something might happen to my body and that a part of my soul might need to stick around. I became trapped in all this glass and water so I could help you, so I could help everyone, but I haven’t done enough. From now on, I will keep you perfectly safe. I will make sure no situation is as dangerous as what just happened.”

Ash kept on smiling. She began to walk again too, this time with another deep sense that was filling her from top to bottom—a certainty that her Poppa Henry really would do as he’d said. Keep her safe, help her out, he may have thought his guidance on the Unkindness had been bad, but only for a quick second had she ever doubted him.

The emergency exit to her schools’ gym swung wide. Honestly, it banged open so loud Ash automatically flinched and looked up.

Emily Baker was there. She laughed as she shooed her two cronies away—Phyllis and Freddy immediately giving her all the space she needed. Maybe leaving the Unkindness had been a mistake.

“And here I thought you were hiding,” Emily said. It seemed she wanted her friends to stay at a good distance. Only she kept walking forward.

Ash went still. To her horror, all that pride, and greatness—I was brave once, twice over in fact—and all the safety she’d just felt from her grandfather, instantly faded. She couldn’t find it in herself to take another step.

“You missed all of school,” Emily said. “You did something you said you wouldn’t, yet you also confirmed what I’ve always known. You hid like the coward you are, but now you’re here. Maybe you’re finally gaining a spine.”

Emily went silent, but her walk—that she kept up. She let a smile grow on her lips too. If Ash hadn’t known her better, it might have made her all the more beautiful.

Ash shook her head. Here it was, the return of all her fear. She was a coward, just like Emily had said, all that bravery an obvious lie since she’d gone right back to being same old Ash, scared and defeated forever.

But there was something else that caused Ash to feel an even greater level of dread. Emily had just said, “you missed all of school,” yet it was slowing starting to dawn on Ash that maybe intramurals had already wrapped up too. It was clear Emily had already changed out of the red shorts and gray shirt of that hard time, but it also looked as if she’d showered and that could only mean that school hadn’t just ended, it had to have been over for quite some time.

Peter had to be in the library then, done with his test. He’d probably been waiting for hours, just wondering why their mother or father hadn’t come to take him home. Was that enough time for a Light Bender to get to him?

“Is it the nice girl who stuck her tongue out at you the other day,” Poppa Henry asked. Ash had brought the mirror close. Her left hand clutching it secure to her chest as her right arm hung loose at her side. “Is it her?”

“Yes, it’s her,” Ash said. It was a harsh whisper she hoped only Poppa Henry could hear.

“What did you say,” Emily shouted. She was just two feet away and getting closer. “Don’t talk under your breath! Yell anything you like!”

Poppa Henry sighed. “You sound scared.” He was ignoring Emily’s taunts with an ease Ash wished she could imitate. “After being on the Unkindness, and dealing with Arathus and Casten, don’t tell me this girl frightens you.”

“I…yes,” Ash said. Emily was now a foot away, another step, depending how large, and she would be right in Ash’s face. “She’s worse than the Unkindness, worse even than a snarling white dog! Of course, I’m scared!”

“We don’t have time for this,” Poppa Henry sighed. “Punch her.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It’s not the best idea, I know that, but—like I said—we don’t have the time to think of something decent and, anyway, she won’t be expecting it. Punch her, and when she falls, run. Stop standing around and take off.”

“But she has others with her, two others.”

“At her side?”

“No, she made them wait behind her.”

“Good, they’ll be shocked. Have you ever hit this girl?”

“No.”

“Perfect, it’s a certainty. Do it now! Ball up your fist, and clock her! You’ll have a few seconds, maybe a good twenty, where everyone will be too stunned to respond.”

“This is how you’re going to help me,” Ash asked.

She was worried, yet she also couldn’t deny that a certain thrill was starting to vibrate along her soul. This really was something she’d never done before. Maybe it would even help her to be brave for a third time.

Poppa Henry sighed again. “I’m telling you this is necessary—so, it’s on me. Punch her.”

“What are you doing,” Emily asked.

She was right in front of Ash, blocking her way. But instead of attacking, all she did was look at Ash with a worried and nervous expression. She was close enough to hear that Ash was speaking with someone, yet she wasn’t close enough to see who that someone might be.

“I guess I’m doing this,” Ash said. She flung out her right hand, all worries gone as she gave in to a hope: please, please let this make me be brave again. “I guess I’m hitting you.”

Chapter Seventeen

Once more, she was flying with lungs ready to burst. Yet, for some reason, words like despicable, and hate, were soon keeping step with her—each one echoing so loud as they ran around inside her mind. But then, somehow, words like elation, and joy, and I’m glad I did it, glad, began to run with her as well. Honestly, Ash had no idea what was going on with her thoughts.

But she did have a pretty good idea about how successful her Poppa Henry’s plan had been. Hitting Emily really had bought her some time. Freddy and Phyllis were too surprised to stop her. They just watched as Emily fell to her knees, blood flowing quite free from what had to be a broken nose.

And there it was: the single thing that finally caused Ash to center so she could think clear. That blood made all the elation and joy come to an immediate halt as hate and despicable won out. She would have to apologize for that punch, probably apologize real soon and quite a lot. It was the one thought that took over until Ash could hear nothing else.

She fled into the gym, not bothering to even say hello as she flew by a stunned Coach Littleton who was sweeping up the basketball court alone. “Can you see him; can you sense him,” Ash asked as she brought her mirror to her lips.

The gym became a blur as she rounded a corner. The library was only a few feet away. But it revealed nothing to let her know if her brother was inside. “Can you see Peter?”

“I,” Poppa Henry said. He eyed her carefully. “I haven’t left to find him, and I won’t go.”

“Why,” Ash asked.

She reached the library. She was outside two rather large doors, giant oak ones with glass windows at their center that let her see the school librarian inside: an older lady who was reading a book from behind a black metal desk.

Row upon row of shelves, which reached almost to the ceiling, surrounded that woman. They made trying to find Peter a difficult proposition. Ash would have to go in—that was a given—but if her Poppa Henry was going to stay in her mirror, it meant a long process of only asking where Peter might be while Emily got back on her feet.

“Why won’t you go,” Ash continued. There was noise behind her, the sound of someone—a good three someone’s, most likely—running through the gym and flying past Coach Littleton. Had Emily gotten up much faster than expected? “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t get lost anymore,” Ash sighed. “There are mirrors and panes of glass in the...just step into them and help me find Peter before someone I hurt comes back to return the favor.”

“Ash,” Poppa Henry said. He wasn’t calling her Little Ash. Was he upset? “Don’t be foolish. You knocked down one obstacle, and if she return’s we will deal with her. But we have other problems. Bigger problems. Look at how much light is in that library!”

Ash looked this way and that as she pushed open those giant oak doors and smiled awkward at the librarian who looked only upset that she was there. School had, at last, truly finished for the day—most students shouldn’t have been around—and it was clear this lady just wanted to sit and read rather than to have to deal with some girl.

But Ash ignored her. She looked only towards a bank of windows that were over on her left.

Her school library was just this squared-off area which sat alone in the middle of two hallways that were not all that far from the gym. Its walls were thick glass too, huge things held together by strong steel dividers and the occasional oak wood door. They were walls that usually didn’t look out onto anything except empty lockers, and empty stretches of marble, for most of the day.

The library also evenly split the school into differing levels. The sixth and seventh graders were off to the left as well—they had a hallway all to themselves—with the eighth graders and their basement subsection found to the right and down another hall. Every library window shouldn’t have had any natural sunlight pouring through it, yet Ash knew one truth that most of the kids at her school probably never understood.

There was a door down the hall reserved for sixth and seventh graders—a tiny emergency exit that, unlike the one in the gym, worked fine—and late in the afternoon, at around four when intramurals were wrapping up and the school was starting to let the last stragglers go home, sunlight poured through that door. It had a window, a huge rectangular one with crisscrossing lines of silver embedded deep within the glass. Ash had many a day stared at that window, putting a hand up to her eyes to block the light flooding through it, as she’d waited for Peter.

But as she stared now, much later in the day than ever before, closer to four-thirty, maybe five, sunlight was beyond pouring. It seemed more like there was no window at all on that door, only a blinding and pure yellow. Such light let the whole left side of the library be bathed in uninterrupted warmth. Ash couldn’t find one shadow that would be safe from people who could travel through worlds.

“So much,” she whispered. She kept her blue mirror close to her face no matter how weird it must have looked to the librarian who still seemed quite upset.

“Then I shouldn’t,” Poppa Henry said. “If Casten or Arathus—”

“Can I help you,” the librarian asked.

She was usually such a nice older woman, a lady in her late sixties with a soft doughface and dark hair tinged with an ever-growing tide of gray. Ash had seen this librarian many a time during her stay at her middle school, but as that woman finally sighed and put down the book she’d been reading, Ash realized she couldn’t remember her name.

It could have been Mrs. Abernathy, or Mrs. Amber. It started with an “A,” Ash knew that, yet with her Poppa Henry in a mirror only a few inches from her lips, and with Emily Baker still somewhere behind—with even all that sunlight threatening to allow people inside who wanted to take her away—Ash couldn’t come up with anything else.

“Please, Poppa Henry, we have to hurry,” she said. She smiled at the librarian too as she held her blue mirror closer. “Just go.”

“Okay,” Poppa Henry said. “I don’t like it! But I’ll go!”

“Young lady,” the librarian said, “may I help you?”

It was Anthony, Mrs. Anthony, that name popping into her mind as Ash dropped her hands to her side. She was a woman who most likely wouldn’t have cared if Ash couldn’t remember who she was since she probably had no clue who Ash was either.

“Yes, I’m here to get my brother,” Ash said. Once more, there was noise behind her. Something loud was happening, yet this time, when she turned, Ash didn’t just hear someone, she saw them.

Emily—blood still flowing—and Phyllis, and Freddy, banged loudly out of the gym with Coach Littleton right on their heels. A towel, stained dark red, was wrapped around the coach’s hand. It looked as if he’d held Emily up to try and fix her, but Emily had broken free.

“Are they coming for you,” Mrs. Anthony asked. She stared at Emily, Freddy, and Phyllis who had again been waylaid by Coach Littleton. The man was fast. Though he’d been last out, he’d caught up. He had Emily by her arm. “And what does that have to do with your brother?”

Ash sighed. “Mrs. Anthony,” she had to say this quick. She had even less time than she’d thought. “Don’t you remember me? I’m the girl always waiting on Peter Ash. I’m his sister. I’m Ash—Amanda Jane Ash. Do you know where Peter is?”

“I see a lot of students,” Mrs. Anthony huffed. She had her book back up, that well-worn paperback cracked wide as she flipped through a few pages before finding exactly where she’d been. “You can’t expect me to remember all of them all the time,” she continued, “especially when I have to suffer through this ghastly age. I have also worked in this wonderful school for thirty years—lots of kids passing through, lots of faces I shouldn’t have to study, yet I study them. No one can expect me to remember everything.”

She huffed once more as Ash began to think her previous assumption, that Mrs. Anthony was usually nice, may have been based more on her soft features—an odd waddle under her chin, maybe all that gray in her hair too—rather than anything real. It truly was becoming more and more obvious that Mrs. Anthony didn’t care one bit about any kid she’d oddly said she studied. Ash was even sure Emily could have burst inside with murder on her mind and as long as Mrs. Anthony could keep enjoying her book not one single finger would be lifted to stop the carnage.

“Mrs. Anthony,” Ash said.

Her voice was sharp and cutting, maybe a bit high pitched too because behind her more noise was rising. It was the sound of Emily screaming, and Coach Littleton hollering, and as Ash walked forward—a hand already stretched out—she pushed the book Mrs. Anthony was reading down so no noise, or novel, would garner more attention.

“His name is Peter,” Ash said. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, pushing that book was an act that—like punching Emily, or running past a wolf—was something she never would have done the day before. “He should be the only kid in here. Please, let me know where he is.”

“That little boy, the one who doesn’t seem special no matter what everyone says, you wait for him,” Mrs. Anthony asked. She looked even more upset before she cast her eyes back over Ash’s shoulder. “What is going on out there?”

“Never mind, where is he, where is Peter?”

“The only boy here is near the encyclopedias in the back,” Mrs. Anthony hurriedly said. Whatever was happening over Ash’s shoulder really must have been interesting. Mrs. Anthony was starting to fidget in her seat as she spoke. “I remember because usually no one is there. Usually, I just have a kid who hangs out in my math and science section.”

Mrs. Anthony got to her feet. She still wasn’t looking at Ash and now it seemed fidgeting, and her book, were no longer things she wanted to deal with either. She just kept staring so intently at the hallway outside. There was even a moment when Ash had a strong urge to turn and look as well but, instead, she bolted.

Ash had always thought Peter must enjoy the sections found in the farthest corners of the library but narrowing it down was a huge help. She doubted Mrs. Anthony realized that both kids she’d mentioned—the one most often in the math and science section and the one who was now with the encyclopedias—were truly the same, but they were. Even in her absent-minded unconcern, she’d narrowed down exactly where Peter would be.

“My word,” Mrs. Anthony said. It was a sharp and sudden outburst—almost a scream. “Did that boy—did he hit Jefferson?”

It was the last thing Ash got as she whipped around the black desk and made a quick angle to the right. She headed towards a far wall where only one worn and hardly used shelf of books waited.

The doors to the library exploded open as Mrs. Anthony no longer almost screamed. She managed to yell quite loud.

“There she is,” Ash heard Emily say, a garbled and mangled cry barely rising above Mrs. Anthony’s continued shrieks. “Get her!”

Ash ran harder. She was tired of it, tired of flying down something—the Unkindness, the gym, now the last few sections of the library—but she ran, the rows of shelves bleeding into one until she reached a final section and turned down it with the hope of seeing Peter with a book in his hands and an anxious face wondering why no one had yet come to pick him up.

She found Arathus and Casten instead.

Chapter Eighteen

“Ash,” Peter said.

Ash came to a sudden stop before blinking hard. Arathus and Casten were looming so very large in her sight it was difficult to see anything else, but she blinked again, and everything rushed into focus. Her little brother really was there and he really wasn’t alone. This time, Arathus and Casten had brought some back up.

A short and squat man, wearing heavy green robes and thick brown leather pants—Ash was pretty sure he had to be the same short man she’d seen at the lake—and a tall willowy beauty with strange white hair who had on her own heavy green robe and brown pants ensemble, were gathered close to Peter with Arathus circling nearby. Her tiny brother—with Casten’s hands on his shoulders since that Elf was right behind him—was stuck in the middle of one awful fellowship.

“Peter,” Ash said. Her voice lost all its strength as she held tight to her blue mirror and wondered if she should look at it in the vain hope her grandfather would be there.

“Ash,” Peter said again. “What’s going on?”

But Ash couldn’t answer. She wanted to, a great desire to just blurt out some long speech about how Penthya was real—and actual Light Bender’s were in their school library—was so close to spilling past her lips, but then something heavy and large took her by surprise. Ash was grabbed by the waist and slammed to the ground.

It was Phyllis. All Ash could see of her was her happy and idiotic face, the rest of her two-hundred-plus pounds hidden yet easily felt.

Phyllis had always been a mousy black-haired girl with squinty black eyes trapped beneath puffy cheeks that threatened, often, to swallow those eyes completely. No matter how rich she was, her size made school intolerable. It was a curse of overeating—plus other such unattractive qualities like a bad hereditary trait for greasy skin—that always managed to push aside any comfort money might afford.

Phyllis knew teasing, and struggle, and, long ago, she’d gotten close to Emily to survive; Emily not minding in the slightest. Though she and her family were well off, Phyllis was pure money, and Emily couldn’t ignore that. She had the beauty and the confidence, but Phyllis had the cash and a willingness to share that cash with anyone who was popular. In another world, Ash could imagine how Phyllis and she might have bonded over the hurt they both had suffered. But with Emily’s encouragement, Phyllis had become nothing more than the muscle, the weight to Emily’s threats whenever Freddy wasn’t around to do the heavy lifting.

“I got her,” Phyllis squealed. She jabbed a knee into Ash’s side as she giddily turned to the approaching Emily.

They’d burst their way into the library and had flown past the still screaming Mrs. Anthony who had at last begun to put some words back into her hysteria. Ash could barely hear her, it sounded like she was saying, “Let Jefferson go,” and “How dare you hit him,” but Ash wasn’t certain. She could guess that Freddy King, another large child, yet one with more muscles and less brains than Phyllis, had finally gone from threatening his classmates to being violent with a teacher. It was the only way Phyllis and Emily could have gotten to her.

“Keep her down,” Emily said. She was almost to the back row, her voice still muffled and syrupy, as if she was talking through thick liquid. “I don’t care anymore! I’m going to break her face!”

Neither had seen the three figures or the dog just yet. It was the only explanation that came as Ash struggled under Phyllis’s grasp and finally managed to turn her head. Phyllis had knocked her well past the Light Benders, yet Ash was just able to catch it when Casten let go of Peter. She watched as he moved around some nearby shelves to judge the situation from a safe and concealed position.

Ash even caught it when that lady Light Bender leaned over to whisper something to Arathus. But the short and squat one—a strange fellow with a thick black beard and two axes strapped to his back—stayed silent as Ash only saw the slyest of grin’s start to spread across his lips. It was something that immediately gathered all her attention. After Casten had walked off that short fellow had used one stubby arm to keep her brother still while, with his other, he’d held dirt caked knuckles over Peter’s mouth. He already had become of major note—he really needed to get his hands off her brother—yet that grin instantly made him all that Ash was concerned about.

It just made her think that the Light Benders might be happy about this. Casten may have been the only one who didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by what was going on, but whenever she looked elsewhere, Ash knew. The woman with the white and willowy hair held a furrowed brow as she whispered, and Arathus’s maw was pulled back into a fierce yet silent snarl whenever she whispered as well. They both were talking but still ready to attack, yet Ash kept returning to that sly grin until that thought of, “might be happy,” suddenly shifted. The Light Benders—all of them—had to be standing around, and whispering, and grinning, because they wanted to wait a minute so she could get pummeled.

But when Emily finally made it to the back of the library—and still failed to notice anything in green—it was clear that, for Casten at least, waiting was no longer an option. He shook his head and moved. He looked first at the short man and the white-haired woman—made sure they did have Peter—before ambling slowly towards Ash, his hand gripping the black and red leather hilt of his sword with fingers gone tight with irritation.

“You hit me,” Emily said. Her hands were over her nose, that alone most likely garbling up her speech and making it so she moved slower than the usually glacier Phyllis Manning. “You’ll pay!”

“If she pays for anything, she will do it in Penthya,” Casten said. His voice was mighty. Mrs. Anthony’s screams were drowned out by him, Emily nearly jumped out of her skin because of him, and Phyllis hurriedly stood up.

Casten had authority in his words. Ash couldn’t deny that as she also stood, but it seemed Emily was struggling to feel the same. She turned and saw the clothes Casten was wearing, the green cloak which covered much of his brown leather pants and pretty much all of a green wool shirt even Ash hadn’t yet seen. It was an outfit that perhaps Emily would have made a snide comment about—her lips were pursed as if she were about to let something awful flow—but then she caught sight of his sword. No matter how she might be able to ignore the authority of his words, there was no way anyone could ever ignore the power—and respect, and its own authority—that Casten’s sword exuded.

Even while sheathed, that blade was impressive. Its black hilt was laced with lines of dark red that caused all eyes to be drawn to it long before the gleaming silver blade was revealed. But Ash had already seen that blade, how it came to a sharp point at its tip, and how it had flecks of something just as black as its hilt running all up and down its length. Emily was clearly nervous just by getting a glimpse of it, yet Ash couldn’t stop worrying about what would happen if Casten ever pulled that sword out.

“What—who are you,” Emily asked.

Her words were tiny and halting. It was like she was having trouble forming them in her mouth, her slow speech giving Casten all the time he would ever need to reply. But he never got the chance.

More figures arrived. They were just there. One second, nothing was behind Casten or near to Ash—the next, large gray shapes were moving down each row with their own weapons already drawn.

They were Light Benders, had to be, but rather than wearing any kind of green cloak—or brown leather pants—they were virtually naked except for long and tattered bits of brown cloth tied around their waists. It was cloth that was also mud splattered and torn, yet somehow each bit stayed put no matter how fast these creatures moved. It was rather impressive.

“Penthyan coward,” the largest and closest gray beast said. It held a large and curved sword too, every gray beast held that kind of sword, their blades thick and sharp, yet not as shiny as Casten’s. “Give the kin of Ash to us!”

Casten did as Ash had feared. He swung his blade free as he eyed all the creatures nearby, the ones back towards Peter and Arathus and the ones closer to Ash and Phyllis.

But no matter how much Ash may have been concerned about what would happen when Casten finally drew his sword, she never could have guessed the outcome that arrived. Someone passed out. Emily froze and went silent, yet as she became a statue, Phyllis collapsed. She screamed soft and was on the floor, hitting not nearly as hard as Ash had thought someone of her size would do.

“Impossible,” Casten said. “The Errun can’t…not again. How did you re-find your way?”

Casten stared only at the gray beast who’d called him a coward, one that as soon as it had been named became something Ash realized she should have recognized. With wide unblinking black eyes—and a mouth filled with thin razor-sharp teeth—that creature was an exact representation of what her Poppa Henry had described whenever he’d talked of Penthya and some of its greatest nightmares.

“How,” Casten continued, “the Silver Throne is damaged, and you…your kind has less strength than us? How did you ever capture enough magic to…?”

“I am a Pride,” the Errun that Casten was talking to said. “Maybe I have the same power as Syndon. Maybe as his son…”

“Chood,” Casten said. He shook his head wearily. “I should have known. If you have the wretched blood of Syndon in your veins, I can only imagine the perversions you are capable of.”

“Many,” the large Errun, Chood, said as it stepped closer to Casten. “I am capable of so many perversions, and I will gladly do them again and again if it means I can gain freedom from the wasteland that is my home!”

More Errun closed in. The other Light Benders back towards Peter pulling out their weapons as they did.

“No one told you to go there,” Casten said. “It is your own fault for living in the Western Wilds. If you don’t like it, I suggest you go back to wherever you came from.”

Chood pointed the tip of its curved sword at Casten’s face. “If you only knew what we left behind! We can’t go home, but if we suffer, you shall suffer too! You’ve neglected Cathedral, and that, Elf, has allowed us all the time we could have ever wanted! Once more, we can bend light, and we will not lose that gift ever again! The children of Henry Ash will come with us!”

Casten leapt, but not towards Chood. He went for Ash. “Morgan,” he yelled as he flew, “take the boy—return to Penthya!”

Emily got in his way.

Ash wasn’t sure. She didn’t really see what happened. It just seemed as if Emily had finally decided to move, yet only succeeded in jumping right into Casten arms. She hit him and bounced—was flung into the waiting grasp of another Errun who scooped her up as if she was a delightful prize it had not expected.

As for Casten, he was hardly fazed. Emily’s hit knocked him back, but it didn’t send him sprawling. He kept his feet. He even had enough presence of mind to quickly lash out and sever the head of the Errun who had Emily in its grasp.

“He’s protecting her,” Chood said. He was pointing only at Emily who had returned to a state of mainly frozen, catatonic-like shock. She did nothing except wipe at a spray of gray that had hit her in the face. “She’s the granddaughter!”

Things moved rather fast after that. Ash was already acting like Emily—she was not doing anything other than breathing. The only movements she made were slight turns of her head as she looked this way and that to stare at what was going on.

The white-haired woman—the one who had to be Morgan—Ash saw how she grabbed at Peter and seemed to catch her breath, how she also began to concentrate as if getting ready to go somewhere, to maybe bend light and escape as Casten had told her to do. She hesitated.

Ash saw it all. Morgan looked towards Casten and the Errun heading his way. She even nodded as if she’d made up her mind before she let go of Peter and brought up a bow that had been strung on her back. An arrow appeared in her hand a second later as one of the Errun soon found a large, and sharp, stick in its throat. Morgan’s onslaught was furious, and Chood was forced to take his focus off Casten as that creature snarled something Ash couldn’t understand.

But whatever it was, the rest of the Errun turned towards Peter. He was staring just as Ash was doing. Instead of trying to escape, he, too, wasn’t moving, yet the small man who now had two axes in his hands—or maybe he was a Dwarf since he had to be Penthyan—wasn’t.

That Dwarf was smiling even more broadly as he dove into the horde coming his way. He fought madly, almost crazily, his little legs flying around much faster than Ash would have thought possible. Laughing in utter glee, he dodged around the many taller Errun as his two axes went about their terrible work. With Morgan busy firing arrows, and with Peter, Ash, and Emily standing stock-still, it was easy for him, and for Arathus who was at his side, to go to work. They all fought amazingly. Before the Errun realized what was going on, most were dead. It looked as if Casten and his fellowship might win.

But then more Errun came from out of nowhere, Ash watching in horror as they headed straight for her brother. She even saw how the large white wolf she’d been so terrified of back in her room got hurt. Arathus took an Errun blade down her side, howling fiercely as her flank was sliced open. The Dwarf quickly jumped to her, got rid of her attacker, but the damage had been done. Arathus fell to the ground in a heavy heap, whining sickly as the Dwarf tried to keep her safe from any more harm.

“Get out,” Casten said. He’d already finished with the few Errun who’d stayed to deal with him. “Morgan, go! Take Yorgeth and Arathus with you!”

The last Errun near to him, Chood, suddenly struck as Casten got his sword up just in time. With Emily, he hadn’t been fazed when she’d run into him, and with all the other Errun he hadn’t seemed out of sorts either. But for this, he broke. Casten stumbled.

“I told you I was his son,” Chood said.

That beast even flexed its meaty arms as it lifted its sword once more Casten’s way. Most of the Errun were over by Peter or were lying dead near to her, but Ash still caught Chood checking this way and that to make sure. What was that creature up to?

“However,” Chood continued. Its quick bit of checking was done. “That is only something I say when any of my Band are near. But with none of them now close, I will let you know a secret, Elf! I am Syndon, not his son, and my power has only grown while you pitiful Penthyan’s thought me dead!”

Chood, no, Syndon—could it really be—raced towards Casten, moving quicker than anything Ash had yet seen. Quicker than Arathus, than the wolves of the Unkindness, even the Dwarf she now knew was named Yorgeth. For a moment, Syndon was standing a few feet away—then it was right in Casten’s face.

“Casten,” Morgan said. She tried to run. But another Errun got in her way. She had to dispatch it with an arrow she didn’t bother to put into her bow. She jammed its tip right into that Errun’s neck.

“Go,” Casten said. He dodged Syndon’s blows and succeeded in avoiding almost all. But one snuck through. It tore into his thigh as he fell to a knee. “Yorgeth, get her—get her and the boy and go!”

Ash had been splitting her attention between the fight Casten was having and the battle raging a few feet away. Morgan and Yorgeth were outnumbered—were slowly losing—but they seemed to be doing much better than Casten even though Morgan had been forced back near to the fallen Arathus.

Everyone was encircling Peter—they kept the approaching Errun from sneaking up from behind—but Ash could tell that Yorgeth was conflicted. As easily as she’d seen that sly grin on his face, she could now make out his worry. He had one hand on Arathus, but the other was held before his eyes as he looked at Peter and then at Morgan.

Suddenly, Ash knew what he was considering. She also quickly found out she could move after all because as much as she’d once wanted to keep Peter away from anyone dressed in green, she now prayed Yorgeth wouldn’t abandon him. Surely that tiny man would want to keep any kin to her Poppa Henry safe, yet as she flew towards the Dwarf, she knew different. He was conflicted because he could only grab one if he was also holding onto Arathus, and it seemed he was siding more with Morgan then with her little brother.

Ash took two leaping steps, but she was already too late. In an instant, all the Light Benders were gone.

Chapter Nineteen

Ash thought about that morning. Peter hadn’t heard her yell. He didn’t know she would have done anything to be rid of him, but she knew. How could she lose him without saying sorry?

She tried to run faster. Just a few minutes ago, she’d been a blur on a dark highway—and in this very library—yet, now, it was as if one step was taking an hour to complete.

The world took on clarity. Peter was grabbed by an Errun with three fingers instead of four. He gave a quick yelp of pain, but then he surprised Ash by striking with a speed that was impressive.

Ash never would have thought it of her lanky little brother. He swung an elbow, and broke a nose, as some of those words—like joy and elation—started racing around inside her mind again. But while her assault on Emily had sprung her free, all Peter’s attack did was to give him a brief reprieve. For a moment, the Errun at his back howled in agony as thick grey blood spewed down its chin and onto its chest. Peter turned, his glasses barely staying on his face as his mop of wild brown hair whipped around. He looked this way and that, but there was nowhere for him to go.

More and more Errun arrived from out of the sunlight streaming into the library. Peter was swallowed by a swarming mass with hard leather skin and hands that were almost as dangerous as their swords. The last sight Ash had of him was of Peter, again, looking right at her. He was petrified…and then he vanished.

Actually, he vanished, and then almost all the Errun around him vanished, as Ash fell to the floor. No one had yet laid a single finger on her, but she could no longer stand. Her brother…she could hear it. The emptiness of his absence was a deafening roar she couldn’t quite get a handle on. How could she not fall to her knees after that?

Ash stared towards the front of the library. Mrs. Anthony was still there. She was yelling at Jefferson to…but wait…was she talking about Coach Littleton? Ash had never heard that man’s first name before, he was just coach, but it had to be him. Mrs. Anthony was telling Jefferson to stop messing with that boy. It didn’t seem real.

Sure, it had turned out Mrs. Anthony wasn’t all that nice, but other than that she had still just been the same old librarian Ash had known for years: someone who only read books from behind her black metal desk and liked to huff whenever she had to hand over any other book to any student who asked for one. She certainly wasn’t a screamer, and never had she ever yelled about students hitting their teachers or teachers striking back at their students. Nothing was connecting with the woman, and the library, which Ash had always thought she’d known.

Ash turned to the row where her brother had been, everything was still empty, but she stared and stared as if convinced she was seeing it wrong. She blinked hard and shook her head, but Peter never returned no matter how much she tried to wish him back.

She looked over her shoulder. She had forgotten all about Casten and Chood—no, Syndon, it was Syndon. Everything in this library was getting new names, maybe even Emily was about to step forward and say that, in an attempt at full honesty, she wanted to call herself Patricia or Molly because why not.

Emily…Ash couldn’t believe that either. She’d let Emily slip from her mind as well.

But as she turned to her, Ash was prepared. New name, new face, she was certain she could handle any surprise, yet Emily was as she’d been before. Frozen in horror, just as Ash had returned to being.

“Where are the other kin,” Syndon asked.

That beast now stood over Casten who lay on the floor with his hands at his stomach. A wide and gruesome gash was visible where only a green shirt and, most likely, unharmed skin had been before. Syndon still had his sword, and a few other Errun were still around as well, but Casten had nothing.

His sword, so mighty, so powerful, had been sent flying to land down near to Ash. In fact, it had gone a bit past her. It lay close to where Peter had been though Ash hadn’t noticed a thing when it must have flown on by.

“You are wounded,” Syndon said as that beast brought the tip of its blade to just under Casten’s chin. “I already have the male Cub, and the female is over there. With us, they will never come to harm as they would have with you. Tell us where Henry Ash’s son is so we can save him.”

“Save him for what,” Casten asked. He struggled with each word as he clutched at his wound. A river of bright green, Ash looked twice, but, yes, it was green, came up from beneath his fingers. “Save them so they can be slaves in the Western Wilds?”

Syndon laughed. “Better than Trial so the Silver Throne and all the others can be set right.” It sounded like something was dying. Errun laughter was just skin crawlingly awful. “Just how much of their blood will be drained to do that?”

“None,” Casten said. “The old ways are no longer needed.”

He could barely get his words out, yet what he’d just said had been enough for Ash. Was that what the people of Penthya were going to do? Were they going to bleed her family dry?

“Four centuries of chaos,” Syndon said, “of violence and madness following Denthro’s death, and, still, you believe Penthya to be a beacon of light? You’re as wild as us, how many battles between former friends have you had for control of Castle Watch and its thrones? How much Penthyan honor and glory has flowed along your streets in the name of peace and putting the proper leader into a position of power? The old ways are your ways.”

Casten leaned up. He took one of his hands off his stomach to do it, and it must have hurt him terribly, but he got as close to Syndon as he could.

“We already have Steven,” he said. “The son is already in Castle Watch, and no magic you have will ever get you to him. He is all we need.”

Syndon quickly knelt. Ignoring the wound on Casten’s stomach, that huge beast jammed one huge finger into the center of the gash on Casten’s thigh.

“Do not presume me a fool,” Syndon snarled. “Not all Errun are the mindless beasts most of you Penthyans think us to be. In the years since Denthro’s death, we have learned more about the Bright and the Black than just how to bend light. We know all about the five thrones, and Steven Ash may have been what was needed before he had children, but now with them alive, it will take each to bring back the Bright. You need the boy we already have, just as you also need that girl.”

Syndon pointed. But, again, it wasn’t Ash who was being singled out. Emily was the target, the sharp grey end of Syndon’s finger a clear indicator of how she was what was wanted. Syndon even nodded to the few other remaining Errun nearby to take hold of Emily, and only when they had her in their grasp did Ash realize what must have happened.

When Casten had first lashed out, he hadn’t swung his sword at Syndon, or gone for any of the many Errun that had been near to him either. He’d only killed the Errun he’d bumped Emily into, and that must have made every beast think she was what they needed. Somehow, they could feel that some kin to her Poppa Henry were close, but without knowing exactly who those kin might be they’d made a very strange mistake.

“We have the children of the child Henry Ash’s did save,” Syndon said. But forget strange, Ash was having way more trouble trying to understand how anyone could ever make such a terrible error? Emily looked nothing like Peter. “And don’t think me foolish or stupid,” Syndon snarled on, “or that I don’t know you have to have them all. If the Seal is weak, then either Henry Ash or his daughter is dead, and if that is the case, you will need Steven and his children, and if you have Steven, then wherever he is, we will go. We will tear your civilization apart. We will even tear apart that other girl over there. She will be an example.”

Ash saw Syndon’s finger finally dance her way, another slight nod of such a large head a secondary indicator of what that beast was up to now. That monster wanted her to die; an Errun with a sword drawn, one walking right for her, the last bit to fall into place. Syndon may have had a desire to save the kin of her grandfather, but in a cruel twist of fate, that desire was only going to end with one of them taken out.

The Errun with that sword got closer, and Ash remained unable to move. She didn’t even see the point in trying.

Something happened. Ash couldn’t tell what it was, but something flashed out, like a moving ray of sunshine. It flew towards her, bent to pick something up, and then only flew right past the Errun who was still coming her way.

Ash couldn’t believe it. The ray was in such a hurry to get to Syndon it had forgotten all about her. She held her breath, there was nothing else she could do while waiting for the end.

But the end never came, and Ash finally broke. She turned, terrified only that as she went that nearby Errun would get even closer, but she had to look. Somehow, it had become like her—frozen, its eyes slack and devoid of life—except, no…it wasn’t like her at all. It was dead.

Ash watched as that beast began to move again, or at least watched as one part of it did. Its upper half slid back and fell to the floor, the ray of sunshine not having forgotten her after all. That Errun, and its drawn sword, had been sliced clean through as that ray had gone on by.

Ash blinked hard before taking a second to truly look at what had saved her. It was her Poppa Henry. As she turned, she saw how what she’d taken for a bit of moving sunshine was really her grandfather’s Reflection—alive and free of whatever it had sprung from. This time, her grandfather looked like the glass walls of the library. His solid form didn’t reflect those he was fighting, but rather it allowed for Ash to see everything through him.

Her grandfather had also picked up Casten’s sword and was using it much better than Casten had. Syndon was only grunting and snapping in frustration each time her Poppa Henry deflected a blow which Casten probably couldn’t have handled.

“Errun scum,” Poppa Henry shouted. Casten’s sword was singing as her grandfather flung it around in a display of swordsmanship Ash was in awe of. She didn’t see how Syndon could withstand it.

Syndon smiled. Like that skin crawling laugher, such a sight was only horrid—as if a mask of cancer had been set upon that creatures’ lips. “A part of Henry Ash lives,” Syndon said, “and does so inside a Reflection. But you should have been like me, Henry, like Syndon, you should have made a Reflection only to then possess your own spawn immediately. It is just the very best way to last longer than you’re lasting now.”

Again, not many heard Syndon’s words. The number of Errun still in the library where so few, and of those that did remain most stood around Emily or were closer to Ash. Also, all those Errun looked way too stunned to grasp what was being said anyway. Apparently, even when you were a being from a world like Penthya, it wasn’t every day you saw glass come to life.

But Ash didn’t miss a thing, and it appeared her grandfather heard as well. Poppa Henry froze—everyone was doing that today—as Syndon fled. That beast scampered over to the Errun who still had hold of Emily.

“You can’t,” Poppa Henry screamed. “Ophallo is dead, and when he went you were in the one place he took with him! I know! I heard! The Silver Throne burned Cathedral! It’s the only reason why all the five thrones could ever be as broken as Casten told me they were!”

“Yet,” Syndon said, “we are here! I am the proof!”

Chapter Twenty

Ash heard sneakers—she guessed four—squeaking as they tore into the library. She also caught the sound of someone choking, or maybe it was a grunt of displeasure. Whatever the case, everything was about to get way too crowded.

“My Little Ash,” Poppa Henry said. “Are you with me?” A hard and solid hand, one kind of cold and going a rotten, greyish, black reached out to take hold of her shoulder. “Ash, are you there?”

Ash turned to her grandfather. Impurities were starting to appear all over his body. Beyond the greyish black, pock marks of midnight—like tiny eyes into darkest space—were now spreading slow across both his arms and along his chest and neck. What was wrong with him?

“Peter,” Ash said.

She’d been wrong. The sneakers, even Mrs. Anthony who was still screaming, were not about to make this library anymore crowded. Syndon was gone, light somehow swallowing that beast—and all the other Errun that had still been around—as Ash had stayed on the ground. Anything that appeared now would just be filling up the empty.

“Not crowded at all,” Ash laughed. She didn’t know why she was doing that. She felt more like crying.

“What,” Poppa Henry asked. He tried to shake her lightly, but his hand, it was no longer rotten grey, it was putrid black. It must have messed him up. “Ash, are you okay?”

Ash tried to see her grandfather’s face inside the thing before her. “They took Peter,” she said.

“I know,” Poppa Henry sighed. He stopped shaking her so rough too. That was nice. “But we’ll get him. Peter and your parents, we’ll get everyone—we’ll even get that girl they took. But you have to stand. Can you do that for me?”

Somehow, Ash did stand. Her knees buckled slightly, but with her Poppa Henry’s help, she managed to gain her feet right before she heard a much sharper squeal of rubber. It was something new, the noise of someone who’d run hard only to come to a sudden halt, and Ash heard it all by herself since her grandfather had already left her side.

She turned. Good old Jefferson, Coach Littleton in the flesh, was there and in his arms—trapped in a very harsh and probably very uncomfortable headlock—was Freddy King. He pounded violently on Coach Littleton’s side. Trapped as he was under the coach’s left arm, he didn’t seem to be getting much air, but the swollen lip on Coach Littleton’s face, and a bruised and puffy eye as well, let Ash know that Freddy had already put in enough licks to deserve whatever he was finding.

“What’s going on,” Coach Littleton asked.

Ash still wanted to explain. Coach Littleton did deserve something—maybe a short story or two about Penthya to fully clarify what the Errun were and why they’d come to her school—but, again, Ash couldn’t say a word. Yet this time her silence wasn’t due to being slammed to the ground. This time she was mute only because she already saw how Coach Littleton’s jaw was hanging open in surprise. There was no way he’d have heard her even if she had tried to speak.

It was the dead Errun. Somehow, Ash had also let them slip—maybe her brain was just too troubled, every recent event causing her to not think clear anymore—yet now those bodies were all she could see. They littered the rows behind Ash and the floor right in front of her. There was even poor Phyllis, still alive yet lying in the midst of so much grey blood. Honestly, maybe the library wasn’t as empty as she’d thought.

Coach Littleton let go of Freddy. It was clear the surprise had traveled from his face to encompass his entire body. He was too stunned to hold onto anything anymore, but keeping Freddy under control quickly became a non-issue. When Coach Littleton set him free, Freddy went whiter than Ash thought possible. He took in the chaos of the library and swayed. Ash was certain he, too, was about to hit the floor, maybe even land next to Phyllis and quite a few corpses.

Something scooped her up. Something hard and with black fingers gathered her off her feet as, suddenly, Ash saw how it wasn’t just the dead Errun or Phyllis that had been such a shock to her classmate and her coach.

Poppa Henry, with Casten under his other arm, grabbed her and ran towards the same section of glass he’d just come out of. He jumped out of one world and into another, Ash only having a quick second to wave goodbye before she dreamt.

It had to be the journey between worlds. Or, perhaps, it was only when that journey happened through glass. Ash hadn’t dreamt when Poppa Henry had yanked her through a puddle, but here, she was doing just that.

“The courtyard,” Poppa Henry said, “was red brick. But not like any red you’ve ever seen.”

This dream was vivid. It felt like she was in the past, resting so warm in her bed as her grandfather told her some great story. Her eyes were shut too, but she wasn’t asleep. It was just the best way to paint with her Poppa Henry’s words.

“Imagine red,” Poppa Henry said. His voice was velvet, an extra cover of warmth. “Are you imagining?”

Ash squeezed her eyes tighter. “Yes.”

“Good,” Poppa Henry said, “very good. Now take that red, and add a dash of amber sunset, a sprinkle of your very own streaks of crimson hair, and a touch of heat.”

“Like fire.”

Her eyes were still closed, yet Ash was sure she caught her grandfather shaking his head. “Not fire.” He went silent for a second. “More like,” he sighed, “like a warm embrace from your father after he’s been at work for far too long. The heat of comfort. It has a color all its own, did you know that?”

Ash frowned. That didn’t make any sense. “No.”

“Well, it does,” Poppa Henry said. “Love, passion, those are classic examples of red, a bright scarlet perhaps, or maybe a deep river of rouge. But take that amber sunset or a burning dawn, and you come close to comfort. Can you see it? When your dad slowly opens the front door, what do you feel?”

Poppa Henry knew of how, when she’d been real little, Ash had once waited on her father. Long before her mother had gotten too busy with work, her father had been the one always away, and sometimes, if he did arrive home early enough, Ash would sit by her front door and smile whenever he would finally step inside. Ash had even told her Poppa Henry of how her father would pretend to not see her until she would laugh for him to pick her up, yet she’d never told her Poppa Henry of how that had made her feel. She’d always thought she didn’t have to.

“I feel,” Ash said. She was about to open her eyes. “I feel—”

“Keep imagining,” Poppa Henry said. A hand was at her brow, her grandfather’s palm softly pressing down. “And no looking. What do you feel?”

“I’m laughing,” Ash said. Suddenly, all those brush strokes of red brick were altered into a landscape of that door and how she’d once been picked up. “I’m happy.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I—”

“And is there color,” Poppa Henry asked. “Picture happy in your mind, just picture it. Tell me, what do you see?”

Ash huffed. She didn’t understand. She was nine—well, almost not nine, and she was getting older all the time—and this seemed childish even for that age. It was definitely not something a just-about-to-be ten-year-old should have to deal with.

But then she had it. A deeper image of her front door, how it swung toward her on a whisper. She even saw herself waiting before—so sudden—it was there. A touch of red, a ticklish lick of silk, it danced along the edges of what was in her mind. Poppa Henry had been right. Feelings could have color. This red was warm, yet not a fire. It was more like being wrapped in some kind of crimson quilt, the warmth of bed sheets you’d been hiding in during the coldest of nights.

Ash pulled her grandfather’s hand away as she opened her eyes. “That kind of heat,” she said. This wasn’t childish. She’d been given a gift. It made her feel more mature. “The bricks had a red like that.”

“Exactly,” Poppa Henry said. He sat back in his chair and threw his arms out in joy. “It was so red, and there were so many bricks—endless amounts. They came from the slopes of the Cliffs of Random and…well…really, if you were to ever walk up from the coastline of the Infya sea, all the way through Bayden proper and just to where the Northern Reaches begin, but not too far beyond that, you’d find the Sentries and that’s where our bricks were from.”

Poppa Henry brought his arms back over his chest as Ash once more closed her eyes. She needed more. She wasn’t seeing anything yet.

“What are the Sentries,” she asked.

“Two mighty peaks,” Poppa Henry said, “harsh granite things that jut up towards the heavens. One seems to be staring into Bayden and Penthya—the other is turned to the north and all that the Giants call their own. You truly never want to go beyond the Sentries, beyond them and you get way too close to the Giants, but between those peaks there is a valley and in that valley there was a mine once, a special mine, and that’s what I want you to see.”

Ash had it now. The rocks around that valley were dark and rather sinister. “And the bricks were taken from a cave?”

“Well,” Poppa Henry began, “actually, the Dwarves who mined there didn’t find brick—they just pulled out buckets of thick red clay. It was as if they had pieces of the heart of Penthya, such a vibrant—”

“The heart,” Ash said. Her imagination was no longer painting anything she liked. “That doesn’t—”

But she should have known. Though Penthya could go dark, her Poppa Henry would never let it get too bleak.

“It’s okay,” he said. A hand was back at her brow. But rather than resting over her eyes, fingers patted her head. “It’s like feelings having color, it’s—it’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful?”

“Absolutely, think of your heart, all the love you have for your parents, for you brother—”

“I don’t—”

Poppa Henry laughed. “Yes,” he said, “you do. You love Peter, I know you do, and what if you could take that love, your heart, and present it to him, to your mom too, or to your dad. You’re still fine, nothing is hurting you, but you’ve given them the most amazing thing ever: the very center of yourself. That is what the red clay was like. It was as if Penthya or Bayden or just the Cliffs of Random wanted us to know how much they loved us. They gave us a gift.”

Ash smiled. Gifts were being handed out everywhere this night.

“Penthya gave you its heart?”

Poppa Henry took his hand from her brow. “Yes,” he said. “The Dwarves thought the clay nothing, they were content to throw buckets of it out into the open, but we would take it, heat it, make it into brick, and then put those bricks into the streets that wove in and around the most amazing castle you’ve ever seen.”

Ash perked up. “Watch,” she asked. She opened her eyes again. “You’re talking about Castle Watch?”

“Is there any other castle,” Poppa Henry asked.

Ash shook her head no. She adored Watch and any story that dealt with it. The place was such a wonder.

How her Poppa Henry always described it—a large mansion, something with white walls made of such thick oak, and with long hallways that were dotted here and there with suits of armor and pictures of revered heroes. Watch was also protected by magic, by spells so strong any attack would be doomed to fail before it even started, and, of course, there were the five thrones. Along some revered corridor—and behind what had to be the thickest of doors—sat a Silver Throne that had two golden ones at its side, those thrones of gold having two others made of bronze as their neighbors. Ash was almost certain no other castle, or house, or mansion for that matter, would ever have thrones like that in them.

“Is this—” Ash asked. It suddenly came to her. She loved to hear about Watch, but she absolutely adored hearing about that castle when it was the center of one particular story. “Is this the Isabella and her mystery husband thing?”

Poppa Henry gave her a happy grin. “So smart,” he said, “it is.”

“But—” Ash felt as if she was glowing. Without any prompting, her Poppa Henry had let her know she was brilliant. “But you’ve always—it begins with the man, with Isabelle’s man, riding his horse into the courtyard. Why are you telling me about bricks?”

Poppa Henry leaned forward. “Even familiar stories,” he explained, “can be spun new. I have told you of how Watch was named by David Random, by a man who fell into Penthya from our very own world. I’ve even told you about Isabella, and her mystery husband, but I’ve never said what kind of bricks her mystery husband was on when he saw her. I thought I should change that.”

Something well known, spun new. It was yet another insight that helped Ash to better understand the world. “And the bricks,” she asked. She could spin things new too. “How did they sound when the hero rode upon them?”

Poppa Henry closed his eyes. Ash doing the same a second later. “Good question,” he smiled as they both got back to dreaming.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ash had returned to the Unkindness. Her dream—or memory, or quick bit of nothing—abruptly finishing as she found herself on her knees, the fingernails of her left hand digging into wet slabs.

Her skin burned and itched. Not as badly as it had before, but bad enough to let her remember why exiting the Unkindness was so much better than entering it.

She picked herself up. Ash even brushed off the legs of her jeans, and the sleeves of her long red shirt, before she wiped a few errant strands of brown and red away from her forehead. She didn’t know if it was from her first trip to this highway, or if it was from her visit to the library—or maybe if it was even from all her recent running—but somewhere, and somehow, she’d gotten very dirty.

She beat harder at her clothes, a puff of dust—what she hoped was just a mess from her own world—quickly blossoming out all around. Ash flicked a few fingers at it, tried to shoo everything up and into wet and ruin rather than down onto the road below, when suddenly a sharp sting was felt underneath the nails of her left hand.

She took a look, a slight welling of blood quickly found beneath those nails—blood mixed in with a bit of dirt from the Fields of Kawshun—but she was too tired to give any thought as to whether any of that could ever be an issue. She brought her fingers to her mouth.

But after a few seconds, a thought did rise. It just came to her—what would happen if she spit? What if even a tiny bit of Kawshun dribbled off her chin? Ash swallowed—not a worry, or another thought, stepping forward to make her wonder if this could be an issue too.

She turned and saw the Reflection of her grandfather as he lay Casten down onto the road. The pane of glass they’d just come through was there as well. It was above and behind her Poppa Henry, and Ash took note of how Freddy and Coach Littleton remained safe on the other side.

She dropped her now okay hand from her lips. Underneath her nails, everything still stung, but no blood or dirt was weeping out. She’d gotten it.

“You alright,” Poppa Henry asked. The black on him remained. In fact, it was worse. It had already wound its way over more and more of his body. “My Little Ash, are you alright?”

The black was making it harder and harder for her grandfather to stand. He swung on his feet, his legs cracking as Ash saw tiny fissures running up and down his length before he caught himself.

“I—” Ash said. In her return to the Unkindness, she’d fallen a good distance from where her grandfather stood, yet in three or four steps she was at his side. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“I have a few minutes more,” Poppa Henry said. He stared at her, or at least she thought he was staring. His glass head had yet to give her any eyes to let her know what it was he was looking at. “But why did you have your hand in your mouth, are you hurt?”

Ash sighed. “Just got cut and was trying to clean out all the Kawshun I hadn’t yet gotten. Was that…will the dirt make me sick?”

In an instant, everything that hadn’t stepped forward took a great big leap to the front of her mind. Was the Kawshun filled with germs? Was it poisonous? Maybe her desire to clean her own wound hadn’t been so wise.

Ash thought she could sense it in her gut too. A kind of lurch, as if she was going to be ill. But she wasn’t sure if it was nerves or something worse.

Poppa Henry laughed. “Swallowing the Kawshun is not a problem.” His glass body shook from his enjoyment. It cracked a bit more too. “On this road, you only need to worry about slipping off, getting lost, putting some of the Kawshun onto one of those slabs, or staying here whenever the very rare sunset occurs. Swallowing is okay.”

Ash sighed in relief as the unsettled feeling in her stomach disappeared. It really had been nerves.

“Good,” she said. The black on her grandfather was now at his ankles. “But what about you? Are you okay?”

Poppa Henry brought a hand to his face. He turned it back and forth in front of where his eyes should have been.

His fingers were pitch black, as cold and as empty as a cloudless midnight, his hand able to turn, his wrist flicking with a tiny bit of effort, but his fingers stayed rigid. They only moved and then splintered when he very harshly forced his knuckles to bend.

“I got lost again,” he said. “I don’t know why that keeps happening, but I wanted to find Peter as fast as I could, and I suppose I jumped too quick. I got stuck in the windshield of a passing car. I shouldn’t have. I jumped to what truly felt like something much closer, yet I ended up so far away and…well, once I realized my mistake, I tried to jump back but I only got a couple classrooms before I reached the library. After that, I had to act fast and what I used to make another body just wasn’t big enough. It’s making me fall apart in a hurry.”

Ash shook her head. Something didn’t add up. “Wait,” she said. She thought about the fight in her bedroom. “Why aren’t you letting that body go? You made a Reflection before, and I’m certain I heard Casten yell that you’d gotten rid of that one real fast.”

Poppa Henry’s body cracked yet again. When he turned from Ash to look down at Casten, hundreds of fissures appeared.

“I didn’t have anything to hold onto when I jumped then,” he was so unconcerned with how his Reflection was breaking. “But I suppose with everyone safe, I can let this form go. Hold up your mirror.”

Ash looked at her hands, suddenly sure she’d lost or had broken that blue thing in her mad dash all around her school. The Errun had been fighting close by and Phyllis had tackled her to the ground long before she’d ever fallen to her knees or had been pulled back onto the Unkindness. She’d even punched someone in the face—the mirror had to be gone, or beyond ruined, because of that…right—but when she looked and saw it in her right fist (and Ash had no clue how it had gotten there) it was fine. Even when she flipped it over and stared at its cool reflective surface, there was no sign of anything wrong.

“How is this not destroyed,” she asked. She held the mirror up. “How is it even still with me?”

“Oh, that,” Poppa Henry said. “I made sure to add a little something extra to that a long time ago. I made it so that that mirror would never again get lost or be broken.”

He moved slightly—a tentative step, more of a shuffling of one foot forward rather than a huge leap—and was gone. His body—the parts that were a dark and complete midnight and the smaller sections that remained clear and pure—fell to pieces before exploding into tiny piles that were caught by a sudden breeze.

“I gave this mirror to your mother and father,” Poppa Henry said.

He was in the blue mirror. Ash turned it and saw him there. It was as if he was standing at a distance so she could see all of him not just his forehead and eyes.

“At the time,” Poppa Henry continued, “I didn’t want the thing to break anymore. You see, this mirror is Penthyan—something I stole from a dear old Wiggan—and it was once much larger but after many months spent in the wilderness, and a need to use it as a weapon, it became smaller.

“What I gave to your parents was the last good piece, and I didn’t want it to get hurt ever again, or for anyone in my family to ever let it go, so I cast some of my best spells, something I should have done long before. It is another reason why I wanted you to take it. This mirror is quite special, in fact, it is so special it can do something I think you might enjoy.”

Ash held the thing close to her face, trying to listen as her grandfather began to say words she had never before heard. It was three of them, possibly Greek or Latin or some other language maybe only used in Penthya. Poppa Henry spoke quick as the sound of something sinister, a howl from perhaps more wolves of the Kawshun, almost drowned him out.

The blue in her hands changed. It flowed as if it had life, a wild and crazy intent that made once stable plastic transform into something much more rope-like. Ash’s blue mirror quickly became her blue necklace, the mirror remaining, the rope did encircle it complete, but what was solid plastic soon was gone as a blue satin loop appeared in its place.

Ash draped it around her neck. Once the blue stopped moving, this new loop let everything drop to only a few inches below her throat. It was just the most perfect spot.

“This is amazing,” Ash laughed. “Why didn’t you do this before?”

Poppa Henry sighed. “An old man who isn’t even a man anymore must be forgiven his lack of mental acuity. Back when I first took this mirror, I never thought about protecting it from damage until it was already broken, and now I’m ashamed to say that until this very moment, I didn’t think about making it any easier to carry.”

Another howl echoed over the Unkindness. It was the sound of a leader being followed by others. A whole pack of wolves was getting ever closer, but one was definitely running ahead of whatever horde was tearing its way through the Fields of Kawshun.

Ash lifted her mirror back up. The wolves were worrisome, yet everything was still far enough away for her to let it be. “You really stole this,” she asked.

“Yes,” Poppa Henry confessed. He walked forward until Ash again saw only his eyes and forehead. “Another regret of my life, I took this from a Wiggan Tribal named Pullun. He was nothing but decent to me, and I stole something he must have had simply because he was the leader of his people. If it is possible, and with your help, I do hope we will return it once I set things right.”

Ash smiled. She’d been disappointed to hear that her grandfather was a thief. That plus his prompting which had led her to punch Emily—and what she’d heard from Casten and Arathus—had even made her wonder what else her Poppa Henry could be capable of. But this was reassuring. Sure, he was now a Reflection, but he also kept proving himself to still be the grandfather she remembered.

“Of course, we’ll return it,” Ash said. His desire to fix one wrong made her oh so happy.

A flash of black, a large and furry mass of teeth and legs, crested the top of a nearby hill. The first wolf, the one whose howl had been running ahead of the rest, had found her.

“We’ll return this mirror to Pullun after we get mom and dad and Peter back; when we get Emily back too, I suppose,” Ash said. Everything remained okay. That wolf might be closer, but the Unkindness would still protect her. “But will it be enough? You said it used to be bigger, will he want this?”

“When we give it back,” Poppa Henry said, “I can do one last spell, grow it to what it once was. It will destroy all the other spells I have on it—and make it so no other spell can ever be placed upon it either—but I can return this mirror to its former glory when everything is finished. I can make everything better once Penthya is healed.”

Ash nodded. “Sounds good,” she said, “but now can you tell me where I’m supposed to go? How can—”

The first wolf leapt into the air. But instead of hitting some barrier, it kept coming. It landed right onto the middle of the Unkindness.

Ash ran to where she’d fallen. She didn’t know why she went. Her legs just fled and she was carried along.

She looked down. A few fingers had dug painfully onto the highway, but she hadn’t thought anything bad had happened. Yet, now, as she peered as close as she could get, she saw one drop—just a splash of red mixed in with three even smaller flecks of dirt. Some pieces of the Kawshun were on this highway.

“Poppa Henry,” Ash yelled. The wolf was still far off. But it was closing quick as more of its pack started to crest the same hill it had already crested. “I got the Kawshun onto the Unkindness!”

Ash scampered back to Casten and then to the pane of glass just behind him. Coach Littleton and Freddy Williams were still on the other side, but Ash realized they were moving slow rather than fast. Unlike what Arathus and Casten had been doing after she’d jumped through that glass cabinet in her dining room, Coach Littleton and Freddy were walking and looking around in a very languid manner. They had only just begun to turn down the row her Poppa Henry had carried her along.

“Ash,” Poppa Henry said. He was suddenly in the pane with Freddy and Coach Littleton behind him. The blue mirror was aimed towards the thing, Ash realizing her grandfather must have simply stepped over as soon as he’d seen it. “Ash, grab hold, I can pull you up.”

A hand was out for her to take, but Ash ignored it. She turned to the still unconscious Casten. “Can you get him too,” she asked.

“Not yet,” Poppa Henry said. “I just got rid of the other body I made, and it takes a good five minutes before I can do something like that from a pane I’ve already used! I could step out of your blue mirror, but I wouldn’t be able to keep my body solid for more than a second if I did so that’s…just…you just come back to the library and then we can worry about the Elf!”

Ash kept staring at Casten. His green blood was flowing more slowly from his wounds, but it was flowing. There was no way he would suddenly stand and escape on his own.

“If,” Ash said. It would also take too long for her grandfather to try and step out of anything else on the Unkindness. She just knew it would. “If you fall apart before you get back into a reflective surface, what happens?”

“Unless I use magic too dark to think of—magic that would rip someone’s soul away from their body so I could make it my own—I would die,” Poppa Henry said. “But that won’t happen. Just take my hand, go back to where it is safe, and then I’ll return for Casten.”

“No,” Ash said. Returning would take too long as well, yet if she were quick there was one last option. “I got this.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The wolf was fast, incredibly so. Ash wasn’t sure if it was the same one she’d beaten to the puddle, but with her luck, it probably was.

She grabbed hold of Casten’s foot. He barely moved an inch.

She was so stupid! Getting Casten to her Poppa Henry was the worst of plans—there was no way that pulling him would be fast, it would probably take as long as everything else she’d already thought of—and even if she did find success, Ash now saw how she could only get Casten close to the pane, not up and through it. Where her Poppa Henry was perched was just way too high.

Ash dropped Casten’s leg. It was already too late. The wolf was closer. She needed something, yet for the life of her, she couldn’t remember where Casten’s sword might be.

It wasn’t on him. She knew that much. Her grandfather had used it back when he’d fought with Syndon, but he must have let it go right after. Ash hadn’t seen the sword since he’d gotten rid of his glass body.

“Right in front of him,” Poppa Henry said. Ash looked back over her shoulder. Her grandfather was on his knees, his hands up against his pane as he pointed beyond her. “His cloak is covering it! But it’s there!”

Ash jumped as the wolf did the same. Casten was on his side. His head was pointing towards the wolf with his arms, and green cloak, splayed haphazardly across his neck and over his face. How his cloak had come to cover most of his upper body was beyond Ash—it must have happened when he’d been thrown to the ground—but as she dug underneath thick green, she prayed for a miracle.

She felt a hilt, her fingers banging against the end of Casten’s sword as she grabbed hold and yanked up. The wolf was upon her. It nipped at her right shoulder, the force of its impact sending her skittering along the highway until she smashed into the grey wall with Casten beside her.

But the wolf’s teeth barely broke her skin. Everything was such a soft pinch, not the agonizing tearing she’d been expecting, and hitting all that grey hadn’t been too bad either. Had she just escaped any major damage?

Ash yanked at her weapon. The wolf slowly moved away, yet the sword refused to budge. She tried a little harder, pushed and pulled, yet the blade would not surrender its hold.

Ash released the hilt—let the sword stay if it wanted—as she got to her feet and took stock of what it was she’d done. The tip of the sword had lifted only a little when first she’d grabbed it, yet that had apparently been enough for that sword to catch the wolf under its furry throat. After that everything must have then used that fur to rise more, the poor beast actually driving that sword further into itself as its leap onto her had made the edges of such sharp silver cut deep into its middle.

Ash kicked at the wolf. It rolled lifelessly down the Unkindness, and when it finally came to rest, she saw faint smoke lifting off its body. There wasn’t much, only light wavy grey against the air of an already grey sky, but it was there. The wolf was burning.

“Ash, are you alright?” Poppa Henry was yelling from behind her, his voice raw and weak. It sounded like he’d been yelling for quite some time. “Are you okay?”

Ash shook her head and turned to her grandfather. There were still wolves coming, they were already on the Unkindness. She couldn’t face them, but neither could she quite grasp what it was she’d done.

Back in the library, when she’d seen the Errun and the Light Benders, she’d stayed frozen in stunned awe. But she had also punched Emily, and, on this very road, she’d once run from one wolf and now she’d just slain another. What was going on with her?

Ash had no clue. Yet she did know—for sure—that there was one question that was even bigger. How had she killed something that was already dead?

“Are you okay,” Poppa Henry asked again. He was still in the pane—on his knees with Casten completely out of it beneath him.

“I—” Ash said. “I’m fine. But—how did I kill that wolf?”

“You didn’t kill it,” Poppa Henry said. He got to his feet and pointed at what she’d cut. “You set it free. If a soul gets lost in the Kawshun, it does get warped into those things, but that warping is merely a shell around the true soul beneath. Look at what you’ve done. You’ve actually saved your life way more than you know.”

Ash turned back around. The faint grey she’d seen was no longer there—the body of the wolf now a torrent of foul tendrils. That smoke shot up and up, wafting straight towards the heavens. It caused the coming pack to halt and whine in fear.

Finally, the smoke faded, yet it left behind a man: someone with long black hair who was clothed only in the tattered remnants of an old and heavy shirt that fell way past his knees. That man stood exactly where the dead wolf had been. He even had Casten’s sword held tight in his hands.

The man stared at Ash. “You opened me,” he smiled. “How can I thank you?”

Ash nodded towards the pack that remained a few feet from them both. Most of the wolves were still sniffing the air in uncertain fear, but a few were growling and making slow steps in their direction. Whatever it was that had made them halt, it wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Can—” Ash began, “can you get them to leave?”

The man followed her gaze. “No,” he sighed. “They smell their former leader, a scent they are used to, yet they can’t understand why that smell has changed. Once they realize I am no longer like them, they will come. Nothing can stop that.”

Ash quickly pointed towards the glass behind her. Even though the man wasn’t looking, she had to do it. “Then help me get up into that,” she said. “Help me get that Elf up too.”

The man shook his head. “This is my pack.” He raised the sword he held. The few wolves that had been edging closer were joined by others. “I have to set them free.”

“Please,” Ash said, “help me.”

The man sighed again before briefly turning. “I have to help them first.” But he also nodded to something over his shoulder, something just behind the wolves. “However, that might be able to help…whatever it is.”

Ash looked. A vague blue light was slowly cresting the same hill that every wolf had just come over. The light was even getting stronger, and stronger, as above it a circling horde of black birds flew.

“Riders,” Poppa Henry said, “the blue light and the ravens of the Unkindness herald their arrival! Stay with Casten! Ash, stay as far from the wolves as you can get!”

Ash had no clue what her grandfather was talking about, but she still had the presence of mind to do exactly as he wanted. As the blue light crested the hill, she stayed at Casten’s side. It really was riders, four of them. Ash couldn’t see clearly, but there were definitely four and all were on some very strange looking horses. Honestly, Ash thought those horses had to be sick, or dying, they looked so awful.

Unlike those who rode upon them, the horses were easily seen even at such a distance and Ash could tell, each was white. But it was a white beyond any kind of healthy color, a pale and twisted hue some animal truly would acquire mere seconds before it breathed its last. The horses were thin too, their bones almost poking through the flesh that their riders rode upon, and they also had glowing pink eyes. It all led Ash to only one conclusion: she’d been wrong. Such a sight wasn’t just awful, it was nightmare inducing.

She had to turn her attention elsewhere, and soon she was looking at the man she’d torn out of a wolf’s body. He must have run, or maybe he’d stayed still as the wolves had charged, because now he was in the middle of that vicious pack. He was swinging Casten’s sword at each beast who dared to lunge his way.

Yet something odd made Ash look closer, and then closer, just to make sure. The man was holding Casten’s sword with two hands. He was using it accurately—actually, he appeared to be rather skilled with it—yet he was also having to incorporate his whole body to do so while she had found that sword to be quite light, so light she’d lifted it with the slimmest of effort. Why was it different for him?

Ash shook her head. She still had other things she could look at.

Three more wolves were down, two with sides slashed wide open and smoking, and one just whimpering soft with a leg gone and a good portion of its back cut to ribbons. That last wolf was drifting more and more away, its body turning into grey tendrils just like what was happening to the others, but it was burning slower than they, its painful yelping no longer terrifying anyone or anything. Its agony only inspired the other wolves to attack all the harder.

The man went down. One second, he was bringing Casten’s sword back above his head—the burden of it perhaps what caused him some trouble—and the next, a wolf had him by the throat. It dragged him to the edge of the Unkindness.

Ash moved. Again, she just knew she had to help.

“Don’t,” Poppa Henry said.

“But…” Ash turned his way, “that man—”

“Just watch.”

“But—”

“Just watch,” Poppa Henry said again.

The man was off the Unkindness, most of the pack grabbing on. They began to pull him deep into the Kawshun.

Yet as fast as those wolves were—and as good as they worked together—they weren’t as good as the riders. Those figures on sick white horses suddenly arrived, the blue light they’d brought with them flashing powerfully as it poured down from a sapphire jewel positioned on the top of a staff which Ash could now see was being clutched by a woman with dark black hair and eyes the same color as the light she carried.

That blue quickly hit the wolves, each letting loose of the man as soon as it touched them. They even all howled in the worst pain Ash had yet heard in this grey world before they all tried to leap back onto the Unkindness. But they couldn’t, the barrier had returned, and they only fell back onto wet and ruined earth as all the wolves still on that highway instantly collapsed. They exploded and left behind bewildered and shaking people who were in different stages of undress.

Some had on only pants—others just long shirts—yet each was wearing things that were as tattered and as ruined as what the man Ash had freed wore. Still, Ash couldn’t help but to also notice how elated these new people were. They stared at one another and finally yelled at the top of their lungs, “We’re free,” until none had any breath.

“Yes, you are free,” the woman who held the staff said.

But her voice held no concern for the people she’d helped, and her blue eyes didn’t appear to find them all that interesting either. As the wolves who’d been outside the Unkindness scampered off, the woman stared only at her staff. The other riders—another lady, and two other men—at least nudged their terrible horses in front of the souls still on the Unkindness, but that staff woman just watched, and watched, as the blue returned to the jewel she carried.

“You can come with us if you wish,” the staff woman said as she finally looked at those who were around. “Or you can go off on your own as you did before.”

The man Ash had freed got back on his feet. He began to brush himself off before he smiled over at the staff woman.

“We just woke from a wretched nightmare,” he sighed. “We have just been released from the anger and rage we have known for far too long, and I must ask, how can we trust you when I’m sure none of us ever saw you when first we arrived in this place? We got lost because no one on starved horses ever came to show us the way out. How can we believe you will help us now?”

“These are Kawshun Horses,” the staff woman said, “and there aren’t that many of them, there aren’t that many of us. This place is mainly filled with wolves and ravens, and you will have to forgive us if we didn’t get around to you before. This world has an end, but it is still a large world. We didn’t notice you.”

“But you notice us now,” the man Ash had freed asked.

“Who are you,” the staff woman said. “Give me your name.”

“No, I want to know—”

“And you will find out. But give me your name.”

“Not until you give me yours.”

“Alright,” the staff woman sighed, “my name is Amalin, and you?”

“Jeth,” the man Ash had freed said. He brushed black hair from his face and flicked long strands off his forehead and ears. Ears which Ash saw weren’t like the ears of any man she’d ever seen. They were sharp, and pointy, and just like Casten’s. “My name is Jeth,” the man said again, “and in another life, I used to be an Elf.”