Fly or Fall

Chapter Four

Though there were some resemblance in body, this carriage was sleeker and more metallic. The wheels were lower and smaller. She'd say it looked more like a car but that wasn't quite right. A combination of the two perhaps.

Inside were four seats, two in the back facing the front and two up front facing the back. Anna climbed in after Sage and Andy after her. He settled next her in the back. Sage pressed a button on her armrest and a transparent screen descended between then. A map appeared and she typed in coordinates and the carriage started moving. Reeling from the sudden jerk of motion Anna dug her nails into the arms of her leather seat. They were going fast, faster than any carriage and faster than most cars.

It was a moment before her body adjusted to the speed and when it did, she looked out the window and watched as the world around them blurred. She saw lights as they passed what she thought was a city. She turned to ask Sage but sunk into her seat as she watched the older girl scrolling through a device in her lap. It suddenly reminded her of her phone. She pulled it from her back pocket and turned on her screen.

"It's not going to work," Andy said and she turned to him. "I already tried mine."

"Oh," she said as she let it sink in that she wouldn't be able to contact her friends. The realization hit her like a boulder. How was she supposed to survive without them? What would they think happened to her? They were going to worry about her. They'd notice something was wrong and then...

There was nothing she could do about it now. All she could do was hope, hope they'd find aunt Layla soon. Then she'd go home and this world would be nothing more than a distant memory.

>>>>>>>

A cool breeze blew past Anna as she stepped out of the carriage and into the night. She inhaled deeply, savoring the freshness of the air after twenty minutes in the enclosed carriage. She stretched her arms above her head and yawned, she was exhausted, more so than she had been in a very long time. Andy stood next to her his gaze fixed ahead, he was looking up at the two-story gothic house which stood before them.

It was built of stone and in the darkness of the night a shadow was cast upon it. Anna shuddered, taking a step closer to her brother. The fear of being swallowed up by the building overtook her for the briefest of seconds. There was an impalpable strength to the bold arches of the windows and doors, a rigid vigor to the unmalleable iron gates that surround the house and an inert danger to the glow of the blue flames flickering by the entrance. Something inside of her told her to stop here, to not go any further. The thought was irrational, she knew it. But her instincts screamed danger.

"Are you coming?" Sage asked. She'd crossed the gate and stood looking back at them with her brows furrowed and her lips pursed.

Anna opened her mouth to say no, of course she wasn't going anyway near that house. It was haunted. She was sure of it. If this world was real, if somehow witches—or whatever they were—were real, what's to say ghosts weren't?

"Come on," Andy said before her lips could form any words. He put his hand out for her to hold and in that one gesture she found her strength. She took his hand and nodded before they both followed after Sage.

They hadn't held hands like this in years. It was something they did when they were younger. But somewhere along the way they'd outgrown it. It seemed silly to Anna in that moment. How could she outgrow her strength? She was braver when Andy was standing next to her. Like on their first day of grade zero when everything was so new and different, when everything they'd known their first five years of life was changing, Andy had been the one to give her strength. He was her strength.