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49
When the teachers thunder down from the castle, their black hooded cloaks fluttering dramatically behind them, a small hush falls over the grounds. My stomach squeezes in memory of what happened last year, and as though he senses my nerves, Rory slides his hand around mine in comfort.
Baxter stands at the brazier to the left of us. She holds the same cane as last year, the one with the grotesque shriveled head hooked onto it. What is it Danny had called it? Aneep. It still looks God-awful and hideous, but at least this time I’m not scared. I’m not scared anymore, I realize, as I stare at its crooked grimace of a mouth and pointed eye-slits. Nervous, yes, almost palpably so. But not because of Baxter. Not because of black cloaks and carved turnips. Not because of the things I can see and comprehend.
But if I’m to enter that forest again — well, I’ve done it once before and survived just about. To do so again, and to succeed this time, seems like destiny.
Again, we’re instructed to dance around the braziers. Although I’d been bleary with whisky last year, as Li rightly noted, I still manage to recall the act as though it were yesterday. As though I’d been anything but achingly sober with clarity running through my veins. I take Finlay’s hand and Rory’s, with Luke on Rory’s other side, protected from the rest of the students by Danny’s thick paws. All chiefs, linked together. The brazier spits fire at us, crackling and popping the faster we dance. It had been in this exact place that my broken leg had miraculously been healed. Had it truly been magic? Because it’s the only explanation I have now.
The words of the Lochkelvin school song sweep across the grounds and into the ancient woodlands. Beside me, Rory’s rich baritone indulges every word like an enchantment, and its mournful melody seems to carry with it the wishes of tonight. I gaze through the sparking brazier and across to the impenetrable depths of the forest below. The dance seems endless, a constant movement as the world spins mockingly slower than us, catches of fire illuminating the wicked gleam of viridian snakeskin.
As the music speeds and the dance grows wilder, I await the pull, the deepened tug which had yanked at my soul and ejected me from the circle last year. I’d felt like an interloper, the unwanted, cast aside from the school I’d pinned my heart on. But maybe I always will be a strange, ill-fitting puzzle piece. To face a barrage of animals and to be but yourself… thereispower in that. There is power in one’s contentment, in fearlessly swimming against the crowd, and too often it can’t help but scare others. There is peace to be found in self-acceptance.
I mull this over, the world turning, the stars streaking above, the orange glow in front of us growing hotter and more lethal by the minute. The air is bitterly cold and yet we’re all melting. I feel the sweat of Finlay’s palm, the tight grip of Rory’s fingers. I’d believe him to be holding me in place out of sheer, brutal will, to stop me from being chosen the way he suspects that I will.
“Who shall serve us tonight?” comes the voice, as severe and monstrous as before, and Finlay’s hand clings to mine. I’d forgotten this part. The demands. The unearthliness. It had been eerie back then, enough to make one believe in rituals, but I’m not afraid anymore.
In answer to the booming question, two things happen at that moment:
I stop dancing. It occurs as instantly as if I’d crashed into an invisible barrier, and the whole circle lurches to an abrupt, unforgiving halt.
And pushed out of the circle, shoved deep toward the black depths of the forest as though by an enemy insurgent… is Luke.
“I knew it,” he mutters softly to himself, meeting our astonished faces, and I swallow down my shock because Luke had never once expressed an inkling that he’d expected to be picked. “I knew it’d be me.”
Despite the suddenness of the push, Luke’s gold crown remains positioned on his head, though at a jauntier angle than before.
As grave as the ritual is, it doesn’t stop some of the students from snickering at the result, and wolf whistles break through the thick, confused silence. Rory shoots them a severe look, but even he seems betrayed by this result.
“He can’t go alone,” Rory declares adamantly, as though to contemplate the alternative would be madness. And it would be — last year, it had been Benji who’d been lurking beyond the forest, eagerly waiting to spook the unwitting student forced into the forest. I felt sick enough then — picturing Luke in the same position, alone in the woods and loathed by the majority of the country, is a million times worse.
“I’ll go,” I say, stepping away from the circle.
“Little saint, no,” Rory says in a worried tone. “Last year was bad enough.”
“Last year was a fluke,” I say, calmer than I have any right to be. “I know what to do now. I’ve been down there before.” I meet his gold eagle eyes and, with resolve, add, “Please.”
We’re the only circle not dancing, instead gathered in a confused throng.
“If the sassenach’s goin’,” Finlay begins righteously, but trails off at Rory’s sharp look.
“We’re notallgoing down there,” Rory snaps. “The idea of two people doing the ritual is bad enough — it’s never been done before—”
“If two people are going, why not five?” Danny asks, and it occurs to me then that he’s also bravely offering to step into the forest with us.
“Because this stuff is volatile!” Rory runs an irate palm down his face but then his shoulders slump. “I’d thought everything could be fixed,” he mutters, turning away from us. “I’d thought I could control it, keep Luke protected…” His gold eyes meet mine again reluctantly. “Little saint…”
“I’ll go,” I tell him, already moving toward Luke. “Luke and I will be enough.”
Rory looks like he doesn’t believe this but he nods slowly.
Spoken in a more contentious tone, in a voice I identify at that moment as less mysterious and otherworldly and more like Baxter on the verge of dishing out detention, comes again the query, “Who shall serve us tonight?”
I loop my arm inside Luke’s. His warm hand strokes mine in gratitude. As we set off into the forest together, the remaining chiefs watch us anxiously and I try not to note the doubt behind the concern.
“Redo what was supposed to happen last time,” Rory calls out, his jaw tight with tension. With a sense of an urgent, exhausted plea, he says, “Make the ritualwork.”
* * *
