AllFreeNovel
Share Us
52
If I hadn’t been forced to believe in magic so far tonight, this —this— would be anyone’s breaking point.
The two of us stand in stunned silence, tightly holding each other’s hands, both our mouths drooping as we stare. Because all we can do is stare. The world is a blast of unnatural color, light energy waving and pulsating as though a miniature aurora borealis were trapped inside every object our eyes land on.
“Just to check — are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Luke mutters, and slowly I nod, fixated on the dazzling stones. He releases a low breath. “Okay. Right. …Wow.”
“There’s a boat!” I gasp, pointing to the left, where a small wooden rowboat lies tied to a stake. There’s something odd about it — the fact that it exists at all — but also the way that it looks. It seems innocent, too innocent, to the point that hair prickles up the back of my neck and the little rowboat seems altogether eerie. “Why is there a boat?”
“The other side…” Luke squints through a kind of mist that hovers above the loch. “There’s land across the water. That way’s north so it’ll lead to the Lochkelvin estate.”
I remember from the times when I’d been brave enough to dance by the banks of the loch, there’d always been a stretch of land across the way which had seemed impenetrable and mysterious, usually cloaked in fog. I think of the map above Rory’s bed in Edinburgh, the one protruding with the land mass of all that he will come to inherit, the loch that snaked thickly between school and the estate.
The loch in which I lost my virginity, while held by Rory and Finlay.
The same one that now stands in front of us, a bright beautiful blue.
“Are we supposed to sail in it?” I ask, looking nervously at the boat, all too aware that I’ve never been inside a boat in my life.
“No. I don’t know why it’s there. That’s never been part of the ritual.” Instead, Luke stoops low and examines the strange, multicolored stones by his feet. They’re so bright as to be neon, shimmering like small glittery kaleidoscope patterns. With tentative fingers, he picks one up and straightens, lifting the bright sun-yellow stone to his eye. “My favorite color,” he murmurs, turning it dubiously between his fingers as he inspects the breadth of the loch in front of him. “How hard can this be…?”
He pulls his arm back and launches the stone into the water.
It happens instantly. The stone lands with a clunk instead of a splash, and both of us watch with growing awe as it skates down the loch as though the water were ice. When it hits a large gray rock jutting out from the fast-moving loch, the stone seemingly turns into a pinball and careers at an impossible angle toward us.
“Fucking hell!” I snap, ducking as the large yellow stone soars straight above my head. I turn open-mouthed to Luke, who stands frozen and scared.
“This is… this is… what is this?” he babbles, his dark eyes like saucers.
The thing about magic is, once you know it exists, you expect to see it everywhere. At least I do. Luke, on the other hand… well, I’m not afraid. I’mannoyed. I’m annoyed that this has to be another struggle, that things can’t just be easy, that Lochkelvin has to play games with us even when we’re winning.
I nudge the gleaming stones with the toe of my shoe. “Maybe we have to pick a certain one.”
Luke goggles at me, gesturing to the huge expanse of stones stretched out in front of us. “Then we’d be here formonths. That’sifwe both survive the brain damage from flying killer pebbles!”
“Okay, okay,” I say, trying to keep us both calm. “Let’s try another, just to make sure. We know what might happen this time.”
Luke gives me a skeptical glance but bends down once again, this time picking up a shiny red stone. “Myleastfavorite color,” he notes in a clipped tone, “for variety.” He turns to me, gesturing for me to hide behind his tall body, which I do. This time he doesn’t throw the stone into the water as hard — he tosses it into the loch with the kind of lightness of hand that would naturally result in a gentle plop. But again comes a hard, impossible clunk, and the stone comes flying back toward Luke, who ducks instantly, and hauls me down to ensure that I do as well.
“I don’t believe that worked particularly well,” Luke remarks darkly as the stone ricochets into the trees behind us and lands with a thud.
We try everything we can think of. Luke throws stones of each color and shape. When we get bored with ducking for our lives, he touches the stones, trying to find if one of them feels inherentlyright. But rightness is a difficult concept, particularly when we’re both tired and antsy and wanting this stupid ritual to be over with, and Luke begins to deceive himself with the idea until the quality of rightness exists, phantom-like, seemingly with every other stone. Maybe at the start we appreciated the breathtaking majesty of the bright blue loch and the astonishing colored stones, but the novelty quickly wears off and becomes a challenge, a nuisance, when it fails to work with us. The innate brightness of everything surrounding us is a struggle, too, as we’re illuminated in the dead of night by a thousand colored spotlights.
“Students who’ve done the ritual before… they came back with stones like this?”
At my query, Luke frowns and shakes his head. “No. They’ve just been ordinary stones.”
I don’t get it. None of this makes sense.
As we try to figure out this puzzle, Luke and I bond in ways we never have before. After more rejection from the loch, he comments that we need riot gear. I murmur, “The boat,” and he nods like he knows what I’m thinking, approaching it with a grimly determined expression. He unties the eerily neat rope from its stake and hauls the wooden rowboat up across the stones. I take a moment to appreciate the sheer muscle behind the gesture, as he hoists the boat against an avalanche of infuriating little pebbles, before he pushes the rowboat onto its side, its curved hull angled toward the loch.
We crouch behind our new shelter — and Luke lets loose. Stone after stone is thrown to the loch, and while his offerings are rejected at every turn, at least this time we have a sturdy shield. The wooden rowboat is pelted with stones but despite the ferocity of their attacks, they don’t make any impact. My job is to take the used stones and put them into the reject pile, as we work together under the impression that we’ll need to comb the entire shore for the right one.
“This isn’t working,” Luke says, what must be half an hour later if not more. He examines the pile of rejected stones, which has grown to a not insignificant heap to rival the many that remain untouched. He massages his right shoulder, looking unconvinced. “This can’t be it. There’s something we’re missing.”
We take a break, lying on the shimmering stones and staring up at the cloudless, ink-black sky. Luke’s eyes are lined with sheer exhaustion. We’ve been at this ritual for hours, wading through a nightmare forest to end up at an impossible, dreamlike puzzle. Using one of the stones to perform a blood sacrifice is starting to sound tempting at this point. It’s what Rory had been doing in secret, after all, in his desperation.
“Rory,” I murmur, concentrating hard as I stare at the tiny pinpricks of stars above, blocked by the glow of the moon. “His blood… An offering.”
