Everworld #12

  Entertain The End

  K.A. Applegate

  Chapter

  I

  Seven of us. Seven survivors. AH that were left of the horror.

  Standing on a hilltop overlooking what was left of Merlinshire. Merlin the Magnificent had led us there, out of the castle through a tunnel that led from the keep and under the moat. Merlin. A powerful wizard but chastened now, and worried. Like all of us, unable to ignore the grim reality of what we had just witnessed.

  The almost total annihilation of Loki’s forces — Loki, the Norse god of destruction. The swift and sure murder of his son, the giant wolf, Fenrir. And the almost total destruction of King Camulos’s forces. His murder. The triumph of weapons’

  technology over bows and arrows, over the brute force of the trolls and the impossible size of a mythological creature, which, in Everworld, was real.

  Standing slightly behind Merlin were Etain, the half-elfin Irish princess, and her elfin mother, the queen, Goewynne.

  Homeless, driven from their kingdom, from Merlinshire. Father and husband. King Camulos, dead.

  Etain. Red hair, blue eyes, lovely skin, dressed like a fairy-tale Irish princess in a long and low-cut dress, now badly torn and bloodstained. Etain was genuine Irish-maiden charming but so much more. She was smart and curious and savvy and politically aware, definitely the daughter of the king. Now the daughter of a dead king. An exile.

  And Goewynne, who was until that morning the benign and powerful co-ruler of Merlinshire. Goewynne might remind you of a society lady but without the pretentiousness, just the sophistication and graciousness, the deep awareness of her place. She was physically beautiful, with long, shiny black hair and pale blue eyes that now looked gray with sadness.

  Goewynne had been devoted to her husband.

  Now Goewynne was a widow, face swollen and bruised from a Sennite’s blow. Still, somehow, she managed to retain an air of royalty. I couldn’t imagine the effort it must have taken for her to stand so tall when the ordered, peaceful society of Merlinshire had been destroyed, crushed by the technology of a more advanced and civilized society. That was a sad and sick irony. Merlinshire had been a lovely port town of Ireland, at least the Everworld version of Ireland. Picturesque wharf, a park, houses built of limestone with thatch or slate roofs. Cobblestone streets, busy little shops, even a cable car system. Now it was all gone. All gutted and burned, its citizens tortured, murdered, driven from their homes.

  Ireland. It was the nicest place we’d visited in Everworld so far. Home of the Tuatha De Danaan, sacred isle of the Daghdha. Except now the Daghdha was dead, killed by Ka Anor.

  Still, even without the Father God, Everworld Ireland had thrived for two hundred and nine years in peace. Ever since the Peace Council had met at the Magh Tuireadh. Ever since the residents had chosen to follow Merlin’s Way.

  Ireland had thrived for more than two hundred years until we showed up. Four kids from the old world. Followed by Senna and her insane tribe, bringing weapons unlike any Everworld had ever seen and turning them against Ireland’s people.

  Four kids from a suburb north of Chicago, Illinois. Dressed in a bizarre and filthy assortment of clothing that had long since ceased to resemble anything from the Gap or Tommy Hilfiger.

  There was David, our leader because he needed to be, because we needed him to be. The responsible one. The hero.

  The one still in possession of Sir Galahad’s sword. Beaten and bloody and bruised but standing.

  Jalil, our scientist, the voice of reason. The smartest. Brave, too. Ruthless, unsentimental, and self-serving when he had to be

  — but utterly trustworthy. He’d saved my life on more than one occasion, at no small risk to himself. Now, his spirit was broken by the public humiliation Senna had cruelly sentenced him to suffer. He stood stoically, staring directly in front of him.

  And there was Christopher. He’d carried Etain from the castle, through the dark, dank stone tunnel and released her only when we’d reached the hilltop. Only moments before Christopher had been under Senna’s spell, ready to betray us all, his gun aimed at my head. But he was free of Senna now.

  He was wounded and discouraged, but one of us again.

  Finally, there was me. April O’Brien. Led from the castle by Goewynne, taken by the hand like a person in a trance, a person stunned and in shock. Led to the hillside, away from the scene of the crime.

  April O’Brien. Pretty decent citizen, good in one world.

  Murderer in another.

  There were only four of us now because Senna was dead.

  I had killed her.

  Chapter

  II

  We stood, the seven of us, transfixed, up on a hilltop, up by the windmills, looking down on the charred ruin of Merlinshire.

  We were responsible for introducing electricity to Everworld. We were also responsible for introducing the notion of gunpowder to this place of bows and arrows and magic.

  But Senna alone was responsible for this ultimate devastation.

  We looked down at the damaged walls of the once magnificent castle, a structure right out of a medieval tale.

  At the remains of Fenrir’s carcass. The impossibly large wolf with the power to draw the four of us and Senna into Everworld.

  With no great effort he had been shot dead by a gang of real-world sociopaths.

  We watched the fleeing trolls, Loki’s soldiers, most of whom had panicked and run as soon as they saw Fenrir fall.

  We noted the bodies we could see and those we could only imagine. Among them. Senna’s. And the burned body of the Sennite follower she’d killed as an example of her might.

  And where was Loki? Had he run, abandoned his troops, saved his own butt? Loki was a coward. All along he’d wanted to run away from Ka Anor, back into the real world. Close the gateway after him.

  Actually, maybe Loki wasn’t a coward after all. Maybe he was just really smart.

  He wanted out of Everworld.

  And so did I…

  Everworld.

  After all the time I’ve been here and I still don’t know how to describe or explain it. It was a universe unto itself but parallel with the real world. A place of myth and story, where thousand-year-old legends walked and talked and sometimes died.

  Where gods of every culture known in the real world — ancient Greek and Roman, African, Aztec, European — cavorted and fought and fiddled with human lives. Where humans lived alongside elves who traded with dwarfs who avoided trolls who were strange but not half as strange as satyrs.

  Everworld was a physical landscape that made no sense in relation to our real-world understanding of geography and ecosystems. A landscape stitched together like a patchwork quilt, deserts jutting against brown northern European fields on one side and lush Mediterranean seascapes on the other.

  Everworld was a universe that supported all sorts of life-forms, humans and gods and all varieties of real-world creatures, as well as those from other planets. Ka Anor and his Hetwan followers. The Coo-Hatch. Probably many others.

  It was a world where time passed on a whim. Sometimes too fast. Sometimes too slow. This was a place where up was usually down and down was up — or sideways. Where dragons far too large to fly flapped their tiny wings and floated away.

  And now the reason for our being here in Everworld, in this open-air lunatic asylum, was no more. The person responsible for our being dragged across the barrier between universes was dead.

  And we were still here.

  Chapter

  III

  We were a sad and silent troupe. None of us had spoken since we’d left the castle. What was left to say?

  We walked and I was alone with my thoughts I had committed a murder. It had taken place in the context of battle, but that didn’t make the fact any easier to bear. It didn’t make me any less guilty. Or afraid.

  Senna was dead and nothing was the same. But now it’s the way you wanted it to be, April, right? my brain taunted. This is what you’ve always wanted Senna gone, Senna out of the house, out of your life.

  It was true. I had wanted Senna dead. I had hated her beyond reason. Oh, I had a long list of actual reasons for hating Senna, but none of those could really justify wanting her dead.

  Or could they?

  An eye for an eye. A life for a life. I should be dead, too.

  Someone should take my life in exchange for Senna’s.

  But there was no one to avenge Senna’s death. No one had cared for her enough to seek justice for her murder. Keith and the other Sennites? They were too damaged for true devotion. Senna, their leader, was gone. Fine. She was weird, man, anyway, a seriously scary chick. They’d go on raping and pillaging and playing target practice with anything that moved.

  No loss.

  Even David, poor David, he had loved Senna, but even David knew that in some way it was better she was gone. He would never admit that to himself, but he knew. He wouldn’t retaliate against me for what I had done. If he did anything it would probably be to himself. He’d berate himself for not having saved her, protected her, rescued her from her own dark fate. Everything was always David’s fault. In his own mind, anyway.

  Christopher and Jalil? Merlin? Etain and Goewynne? They weren’t sorry Senna was dead. Maybe they even admired me for killing her. They weren’t cold-blooded, any of them; they also must have felt some pity for me, some sympathy. Senna’s half sister had been forced to kill her.

  It’s weird. When Senna and I were growing up, there had been no frame of reference to help me understand her. To feel any sympathy or love. She was so different from me. So different from most people. In ways I can name and in too many I can’t.

  Yes, we lived in the same house for years. Yes, we shared a biological father. Yes, we were almost the same age.

  But all that didn’t really mean anything. Senna and I weren’t really sisters. And we weren’t friends.

  Senna was a stranger who wound up living in my home, sit ing across from me at the dinner table, next to me in church, a stranger who shared the backseat of the car when we went on vacations. Why? I don’t know. I wanted to ask my mother. But I couldn’t I knew she hated Senna as much as I did. And she was as helpless as I was to resist the power of Senna’s discomfiting presence.

  I could ask my father, I decided once. I Could ask him because his guilt had made him vulnerable.

  No longer the incorruptible, hero father, now he was just a man. ”Why is Senna here, Daddy?”

  ”Because it’s the right thing to do, April. I thought your mother and I explained that to you. It’s our — my —

  responsibility.”

  Well, how could I argue with that? And then — just like now — I went around in circles. Trying to figure it all out. Trying to figure how my feelings got me to this point.

  No one had made me kill Senna. I did it because I’d wanted to. Because I believed it had to be done. I still believed that. And yet with every passing moment, with every step I took, the guilt became nearly overwhelming.

  Oh, please god, I just wanted out of Everworld. There was no place for me here. Go back home and forget it all happened. That was my impossible dream. Because in the real world it would never be okay that I killed Senna. In Everworld, it had been necessary.

  Chapter

  IV

  We came to a stream. But before I could use my hands as a cup they had to be cleaned. Silently I stuck my bloodstained fingers into the icy water. Watched, fascinated, as the blood softened and slicked away.

  Beside me, Jalil knelt. Held his own stained fingers under the water’s surface until they were free of blood. Then he bent over and splashed his face with the cold water. He held his hands there, over his eyes and nose and mouth, for what seemed like a long time.

  “We should rest for a few minutes,” Merlin said. His voice startled me. No one had spoken for so long. No one questioned him now.

  After I’d drunk my fill, I walked back from the stream and sat down, head on my knees, arms wrapped around myself. I tried to rest, but my brain was wired too tight, every nerve stretched too thin for peace.

  I lifted my head and saw David standing, facing back toward Merlinshire. His face betrayed his disbelief. It also betrayed the fact that he knew some of the answers.

  I wanted to reach out to him, offer comfort, and yes, take what comfort he could give me. But David was too far gone, too far away to be touched right now. Least of all by me.

  “We should have brought the body with us,” David said.

  “We should have buried her someplace. We shouldn’t have left her there with those idiots….”

  I felt someone put an arm around my shoulders. I turned my head. It was Christopher, crouched at my side. Ordinarily, I’d be wary of such a gesture on his part. Christopher was not above trying to cop a feel, even in a moment of sadness. Well, the old Christopher, anyway. He’d changed. We all had. But somehow the changes in Christopher seemed more obvious than those the rest of us had undergone.

  He proved this now by giving my shoulders a gentle squeeze and singing, softly, ironically, “So no one told you life was going to be this way…”

  He made me laugh. But, it came out to be more of a sob.

  I looked over at Jalil, sitting close to the stream. The blood was gone but his face was still darkened by long, deep scratches. His own doing. Because Senna had made him attack himself.

  Jalil. He’d known what I was going to do, almost at the same moment I discovered my own intention. He’d thrust Excalibur into my hand, his Swiss Army knife outfitted with Coo-Hatch steel. Superb metal, able to easily cut any substance. Jalil had ripped through a wall with that knife, that tiny blade.

  Ripping into flesh was far easier. For the knife, anyway.

  I put my head back down on my knees and sighed. What had I felt in that moment, that moment when the blade penetrated Senna’s flesh? I didn’t remember, maybe couldn’t.

  Maybe it was better not to remember but a part of me wanted to know. Was I exalted with a sense of divine duty? Was I crazy with rage, was it a crime of passion? Was I clearheaded and sure or panicked and doubtful?

  And, I remembered wondering, for a split second, calmly, curiously, if Senna’s blood would kill me the way it had killed the patches of grass in Africa. Remembered Thorolf affirming that, yes, a witch’s blood was poisonous. We had threatened to use Senna’s blood to destroy the sacred tree that united the two halves of the African Everworld.

  But nothing had happened to me. The blood had covered my hand, a witch’s blood, my half sister’s blood. I had watched it slick and dark against my pale skin. And I’d lived.

  Suddenly, sitting there on the banks of that little stream, I remembered a million little facts about Senna. A million little details I’d never bothered to list and review. Why should I when she was always there? Now that she wasn’t I couldn’t seem to stop the torrent of facts that comprised the person named Senna Wales. How she drank coffee black. How when she sneezed she always sneezed at least three times in a row. How when she was twelve she wore her hair in a loose pony-tail straight down her back and made it look sophisticated. How for a while she wore a small silver star on a black cord around her neck. How one day, it was gone.

  Hundreds of insignificant details, details that belonged to Senna alone. It was like learning all you could about a character you were going to play on stage. Almost as if gathering every seemingly arbitrary detail could finally put a person together.

  But it didn’t work. I couldn’t construct a person out of my memories of Senna. At least not a person I could understand.

  Her personality, her character, her motives and dreams and emotions — nothing.

  In life, Senna was an enigma. In death, she remained an enigma. At least to me. And I guessed to everyone. Especially David.

  Chapter

  V

  We rested by the stream for a while, then set off again.

  Sheep and stone fences and rocky fields. A harsh Celtic landscape, not far from the cold gray sea. When we came across a dolmen, an ancient place of burial that was marked by three large rocks — one resting horizontally across two standing vertically — Merlin and Goewynne created an illusion they promised would camouflage our temporary campsite from the roving bands of Sennites.

  We were hungry, cold, and tired. Three conditions far too common in Everworld. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten or slept. I’d have probably given my right arm for a bowl of hot soup.

  It was pretty obvious that we were all ready to talk. About some things, anyway. David called a meeting. I couldn’t imagine a meeting undertaken with less enthusiasm and such a strong sense of despair and defeat.

  No one mentioned what I had done to Senna. No one.

  “This is what we do now,” David said, his voice harsh, words slightly garbled by a swollen lip. “We made a promise to Athena. Nothing’s changed. We go back to figuring out a way to defend Olympus against Ka Anor’s Hetwan.”

  “Maybe we should take a nap first,” Christopher muttered.

  “A very long one.”

  “Maybe not just a nap, but some time out.”

  They were the first words Jalil had spoken since we’d fled Merlinshire. The first time he’d lifted his head, met any one of us in the eye. Now he spoke to David.

  We’d always wondered what lay at the core of Jalil’s relationship to Senna. What hold she had had on him, before he’d somehow broken away, infuriated her with his independence.

  Now we knew. Senna had shown us in the most cruel and crude way. She’d publically humiliated Jalil, shown his enemies and his friends that he was a victim of his own mind, a prisoner of his own head. She’d laughed and pointed while Jalil had obsessively, compulsively pantomimed washing his hands.

 

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