Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 30

Elise wasn't herself. Looking up, without any command over her actions, she stared into a dark room.

"Welcome, again."

At first she thought it Admiral Duval standing before her—a lecherous grin simpering in his beard—but it was another man, even taller, wearing a uniform dark and pitch-black cloak. With a deep and commanding voice, he again spoke. She couldn't see his face.

"Do you remember your name?" his voice echoed.

When Elise thought, and she thought so hard it ached, she realized she didn't. She didn't remember her name. She shook her head.

"And how about mine, child? What is my name?"

If she looked close enough in the spare angles of light she might have seen a contour of his face, a glint of his eye—even just a shadow—but she didn't want to see it. She looked back down. On his hip, without a sheath, glowed a green sword.

"Jean... Bibel."

"Very good," he said. "Your memory is improving. Tell me again how we met. The clearer it becomes, and the more you speak it, the better you will feel. Tell me how we met."

"You... captured me..." Elise couldn't think of anything else to say. Her chest swelled.

The cloaked figure shook his head. "No, I did not capture you. I brought you back. I brought you home again. Don't you remember?"

Her chest continued to rise, and now the feeling rose into her throat. "No... you're lying."

"I am not. I cannot lie to you anymore." The voice, if somehow it could, grew gentler. "Tell me, what is your name?"

"You're lying!"

He seemed to brace himself. "I see that it will all be over soon..."

"YOU'RE LYING!"

She reared and ripped, and as she shouted she felt her muscles tensing with incredible strength. With one great push, she exploded the magic cage around her. The electric sphere, the fiery tower, the diamond walls, fell. While Jean Bibel stood watching her, she rushed right at him. Her hands became claws.

Elise fell against the deck plates, breathing heavily in a cold sweat. Bracing herself against the floor with wet hands, she managed to stagger up against a throbbing head.

"What a terrible dream..." A dream through another's eyes.

Through her own eyes blurry but clearing, she found herself on the bridge of the Whim with Dorothy and Giada, both of whom had slumped unconscious over their controls. Dorothy looked particularly pale and unwell.

"Anyone? Is anyone here?"

Looking around, she saw no others except Alexis, asleep on the floor behind her. Slowly Elise's memory returned to her, but it felt more like recalling a dream than real life. Stepping slowly toward Dorothy, she followed her hand toward one particular control. Her last act had been to turn on the Whim's headlights and taillights: beacons across the dark, silent waters.

"I'll get us out of this, Dorothy. I promise." She reached her arms around the girl's neck and gave her a hug. The witch's breaths rattled low and slow, and Elise held on for as long as she could. For hours after that, then—she didn't even know long—Elise sat at the front of the ship, watching out the window.

How much could happen in one girl's life? As she watched the black sea, Elise thought back on all that happened so far, not beginning with the death of her parents but long before that. Shearing sheep and rolling about green hills in butter churns seemed like a hundred years ago now. Elmul seemed a million miles away. Even meeting Dorothy, when she stamped her foot through Crab like making country wine, seemed like an eternity past. Maybe it had been that long. Maybe it had been that long since she sat with Dorothy in that leaning three-story house and tried to make conversation with her, only for the witch to avoid her at every turn. Why had the witch avoided her? Sometimes she could be so opaque, and so peculiar. How had she gotten so strong after just thirteen years? Her belly felt like steel. Who had first introduced her to smoking? What did her other spells look like? What had it been like to be raised by orcs? Why did she sometimes give Elise such... peculiar looks? She wondered, for the first time, if it all went back to the very start. When Dorothy didn't want to talk to her, all those many, many times ago, had that been the moment it began? And since then all that running...