Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 9

Behind her smelt of coal and brightened gas flame, but it was the cold breath of ocean spray that caught her in the face. Elise coasted high above a storm-wracked sea toward an island of sheer and solid rock, whereupon—CRASH—a bolt of lightning illumined, at the spire's summit, a castle of formidable cost. The confounding fork electrified pink the horrific, violaceous waves.

Elise soared up, ghostlike, and approached the fortification. Unimpeded she passed between two bastions, through the weighty walls and into the sanctum itself. She had gone straight through stone. On the other side, the sound of showers was replaced by a menacing silence.

She proceeded into gold granite halls; they all looked the same. Only occasionally, through a doorway beyond a magical boundary, she would spy an aged library, a magnificent fresco, or an assemblage of arcane devices, perhaps. In the lowness of light, it looked dangerous.

And the further she went, the murkier her path became. Through one portal she saw a solitary chair in the dark; through another, mirrors reflecting back at her. A brilliant mind had organized this place, to what end she dare not imagine. Like backstage a puppet show, she could almost see the master's dreaded hand at work.

After many lightless twists she heard a tempered voice.

"Three points higher than yesterday. A marked improvement."

Elise drew nearer. The voice echoed more loudly. She heard an electric shock, then a cry of pain.

"Astonishing."

The voice was masculine, deep, and entrancing. Elise entered a stone chamber. There in the center—inside a fay's pink diamond, inside an energy-gilt dodecahedron, inside a glass box, inside a titanium canary cage—sat a girl in rags. Outside it stood a figure in a black uniform and terrible black cloak.

"What's the matter, child?" asked the towering man, whose face Elise could not see. He wore a green-glown sword at his side. "Why do you cry?"

Inside the cage, a diminutive Dorothy of ten years old had begun to sob.

"Perhaps you feel sorry for what you will do to us, we mortals... for the pleasure you will reap at the expense of thousands."

"What do you want from me?!"

Elise, quivering, drew all the way in.

"You."

Energy surging from all sides into her body, the little witch crumpled to the floor with a pitiful scream.

Then, Elise noticed something she hadn't before. While her friend lay sadly splayed, she saw on the witch's arm a little black mark, beautiful and liquid bright, which like an ink spill began to grow.

"Aah!"

In a fever sitting straight up, Elise grabbed her throbbing head. She had been sleeping, but to call it rest would be a terrible mistake. Through fuzzy, food-starved eyes she could barely see across the glade anymore. But she did see them. Whether she possessed just enough wherewithal, or she was simply losing her mind, Elise saw several small, rounded figures of pure shadow, who danced without gravity across the surface of the pond.

"Ghosts...?"

The girl struggled up and approached the haunts, which continued their moonlit revelry. They were not even knee high, circular save pointed ears and tiny limbs, and had glimmering purple eyes. They looked like the most peculiar fairies.

"What... what are you? Do you know what I saw... in my mind?"

The ghosts began to round her instead, bouncing higher and higher until some cleared her head. For some reason she didn't feel afraid.

"Can you speak? Can you even understand me?"

The haunts, of which there were seven, dropped to the ground and followed one after the other in a train to the edge of the pond. Spreading out again, they raised their tiny hands and clapped without a sound.

From the pond rose a beautiful lavender stone. It glowed faintly white.

"It's... it's beautiful. What do you call it?"

Quietly they drew it to them. Two lifted it and carried it to Elise.

"For me? Th-thank you..."

Nodding, bowing, and dancing all the while, the ghosts leapt into the dark.

Elise turned to find Dorothy, pale and sweating, still lying on her back. She looked as though she were having nightmares, ones that—unlike Elise—she had yet to wake from.

"Oh, God, what's even going on?"

Knowing nothing else to do for either of them, Elise lay down beside Dorothy and moved closer until their cold bodies touched. When they touched they grew warmer, and at once Dorothy's troubled face began to relax. An hour later she looked content.

In this way, with the traveling sack atop them like the scraps of a blanket, Elise finally drifted off to sleep again. Many times, however, she had wanted to look at what lay beneath Dorothy's sleeve.