Worldwielder, p.9
Worldwielder, page 9
So Melissa put up flyers at school. She eavesdropped on conversations. She rode her bike into strange and frightening places, for no other reason than to satisfy the nagging hope that she might find Kyle if she just checked one more street corner. She found nothing.
She took to staking out Kyle's old house from behind a bush across the street, and would spend the day trailing anyone who glanced at the place for more than a second. This behavior got her caught on more than one occasion, whereupon she was dragged before the firing squad of her parents. Discipline was administered. Bikes and phones and chess sets were confiscated. Any and all ability to find Kyle was taken from her. She was left only with the feeble strand of hope that he might yet return or contact her.
As the weeks passed, her hope withered and died. She never once considered that he'd chosen not to contact her, for it was a thought too horrible to bear. Rather, she tried to avoid thinking about him entirely. Once she lasted almost two weeks, before the excavation of her under-bed junk turned up a box of things he'd given her. The day was ruined, needless to say, and the box found its way promptly into the trash.
Life went on. Melissa tried to. But since the moment Kyle left, she hadn't once turned Pineapple.
She sat on the mossy ground of the swamp and wondered if her parents had been right after all. Maybe they'd just been looking out for her in their own peculiar way. Maybe they'd been trying to stop her from doing just what she'd gone and done now—ruin her life for a boy.
She didn't move until her thirst became unbearable, a gnawing agony that made it impossible to think about anything else. Then she stood on weak legs, shouldered her backpack, and set off through the swamp, hopping from marshy patch of ground to marshy patch of ground, getting herself thoroughly muddy in the process.
The bog soon ended, opening into a flat desert plane. It was a grim sight. There wasn't a drop of palatable water for at least a dozen miles. She was about to turn and try the other direction when she noticed the structures. If they were structures.
All she could make out was a cluster of tiny dark shapes barely visible on the horizon, shimmering and deforming from the heat haze. It could be a mirage. If she walked all that way to find out it was, there'd be no hope of returning here before she was done for. I'm done for anyway, she thought, and set out across the desert.
***
As it happened, they were structures. A dozen of them. Wooden teardrops the size of small houses set atop narrow stilts some thirty feet high, held together by bits of rusty metal. They swayed and creaked in the light wind, threatening to topple over at any second.
As Melissa approached, she began to sense the presence of people inside them, most collected in the nearest of the structures. She faltered. Despite her thirst, the prospect of going near strangers in a strange world wasn't enticing. And she hadn't forgotten about the pull. If there were worlds whose pulls made people tell the truth or forget things, there must also be worlds that made people violent or selfish or angry. What did Kagu do to the mind?
Then there was the matter of the ladders. Rickety didn't even begin to describe them. Perilous, more like. They were composed of rotting wooden planks nailed between a pair of frayed ropes, and functioned as the only means to reach each structure's door.
But thirst overcame all her objections, and she took hold of the ropes and stepped onto the bottommost wooden plank. I'm going to regret this, she thought as she climbed. The rope wobbled. The planks rotted. The whole structure groaned and lurched. Yet somehow she survived to the top.
She paused to catch her breath on a ledge outside the door. Her eyes drifted over the desert, and she caught sight of a lone figure far in the distance, silhouetted against darkening clouds. She couldn't be sure, but it seemed this person was watching her.
Great. On top of everything else, I've got some kind of stalker. Eager to escape their view, she tried the door—unlocked—and stepped inside.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. In the meantime, she was assailed by the pungent scent of sweat and moldy vegetables. Then she saw the room was filled with tables and chairs, all set around a counter in the center. A tavern, perhaps. Just what she needed.
What she didn't need, much less want, were the stares. The room was full of men, most of them young, all of them in varying states of disrepair, dismemberment, and dishevelment. Every bloodshot eye had pivoted towards her the moment she stepped inside. Every mind had turned orange. All conversation had ceased. Even the structure seemed to have taken a break from creaking and swaying. Silence.
Melissa couldn't have looked more out of place here if she'd tried. Her bright green hair, soft skin, and multicolored clothing stood in stark contrast to everything about these people. And she was a woman. The brief glimpse she'd gotten of Kagu's painting, a woman being pulled at by ten men, came to mind.
Her stomach knotted. Run.
I can't. I need water.
Run!
I hate everything.
Doing her best to hide the tremors in her limbs, she slinked towards the bar. Behind it was a man with an eyepatch and a face half-mangled by burns. He gave her a thin smile.
“What'n I do for ye, missss?” the barman said, his eye appraising her. She was surprised to hear him speak English. Since arriving in the Gallery, she hadn't heard anyone speak anything but English, which seemed odd.
“Water,” she croaked.
The man's smile widened. “Water, ye says. An wat…er ye gon trrrrade?”
She gulped. Of course. He would want something. She unslung her backpack and dropped it onto the counter. “It's all I have.”
Without so much as glancing at it, the barman brushed her pack off the counter. It landed with a thud on the floor, and the entire room burst into laughter. She felt nauseous. The shaking grew worse.
The man's eye bored into her. “No. Ye got suttum more, I sayssss.” From beneath the counter, he withdrew a jug and cup, and poured a clear liquid from one to the other. Water. When he finished, he didn't push the cup towards her. A taunt.
Then she saw, in the far corner of the room behind the bar, the only other woman in the place. Like the men, she was young, dirty, and clothed in rags.
Unlike the men, she was shackled to a table.
Melissa couldn't move or hear anything above her own thundering heartbeat. By now, she was fairly certain she knew what the pull here did, and it didn’t seem real. It was so far beyond horrifying it was almost comical, in a twisted sort of way. Out of all the millions of worlds, I had to end up in this one.
Seeing her repelled expression, the barman erupted in amused howls, soon joined by everyone else in the room. Except the shackled woman.
Then, abruptly, the laughter ceased, and the room became as quiet as when Melissa had walked in. At first she had no idea why, but she followed the line of the barman's eyes, a line leading to the door, and saw the reason.
Standing there, framed against the burnt orange sky, was a silhouette she recognized, having seen it only minutes ago from atop the ladder. It stepped forward, shut the door, and in the dim light was revealed to be a man. But a man unlike the others here. For one thing, he was older, his great bushy beard and long hair composed of as many gray hairs as black, and for another, he wasn't wearing rags, but a long gray coat that looked to have been weaved from rock. Most striking was his size—and bulk. His arms were the width of small tree trunks. He looked like he could take on every man in this room in a fight, all at once, and win handily.
Judging by the green shade many of the men's minds had turned, they thought so too.
The muscled stranger seemed oblivious to the reaction he'd aroused, and, his gaze weary, his pace languid, he moseyed on over to the bar, leaning against it to Melissa's left. Once again, every eye tracked the new arrival as though to look away would spell instant death.
From a pocket in his coat, the stranger withdrew a cigarette and a match. The latter he struck on his coat and brought to the former in his mouth. He drew in a long breath, and when he exhaled, the smoke was blue.
The barman was shifting from foot to foot uneasily. “What'n I do for ye, frrrriend?”
The stranger didn't reply immediately. He took another long puff on his cigarette and looked Melissa over. But his gaze wasn't nosy or lewd, as that of everyone else here had been. It was simply curious.
“Water,” he said, his voice little more than a mumble with the timbre of thunder. He produced a pouch from another coat pocket, tossing it on the counter.
Satisfied with the pouch's contents, the barman slid the cup of water to the stranger, who picked it up and… set it in front of Melissa. She didn't wonder why he did this, not yet. She was too desperate for fluid to wonder anything of the sort until she'd downed every last drop in the cup and checked for stragglers. Twice. Her thirst wasn't sated, but its edge had been dulled.
Now she did question why he'd given her the water. He couldn't possibly be trying to help her. That would make no sense whatsoever. He had to have another reason. She looked him over again, thinking for a moment that she'd see his face before. But no, she couldn't have.
The barman, who'd taken to frowning at the stranger, spoke again. “Ye don' get to—”
“The girl's coming with me.” His mumble was matter-of-fact, as confident and casual as if he'd been stating the time.
So that's why. He's the same as the rest of them. Melissa began to inch away, preparing herself for a mad dash out of here, but a quick glance in the direction of the door put rest to that idea. She'd have to pass a dozen tables to get there. Two dozen hands could reach out and snatch her up along the way. And even if she did get to the exit unimpeded, she had the ladder to contend with. Her descent was sure to be glacial. They'd catch up to her in seconds.
She gripped the edge of the bar counter and wished she'd stayed in the swamp to die.
The barman had begun chuckling at the stranger's last comment. “Don' get greedy. We're all frrriends 'ere. We'n all 'ave a turrrrn.”
The stranger waited an awkward interval, then shook his head. “No turns.”
The barman's smile dried up and shriveled like a raisin in the sun, replaced with an angry scowl. One of his hands began creeping beneath the bar counter, reaching for something. If the stranger noticed this, he didn't show it. He remained cool and detached, inhaling another long breath from his cigarette. But when Melissa looked to his other hand, she saw it was compacted into a white-knuckled fist. He may as well have been hefting a bludgeon. His intent was clear. She stiffened, bracing herself for the sensory onslaught of brutality.
A second later, it came. The barman's hand whipped into view, a crude rifle in his grip, but before he could level it on the stranger, a fist as big as a head had taken hold of its barrel and bent it all the way back on itself, forming a U. This happened so fast the barman hadn't even registered it by the time he pulled the trigger.
The rifle exploded in his face, throwing him to the floor.
Melissa gasped and dropped to her knees as a roomful of minds turned red. Most of the men were on their feet in a second, rage hemorrhaging from them as they hurtled toward the stranger. He was still calmer than any mortal had a right to be, taking a moment to toss his cigarette on the floor and step on it. Then the attackers were upon him.
What ensued was the most violent thing Melissa had ever seen, a fight of lurid barbarism. But it wasn't really a fight, because there was no contest. Not even for a moment. The stranger, true to Melissa's first impression of him, was more than a match for the entire population of the bar. He moved with lumbering, battering-ram force, compensating for what he lacked in speed with raw power, his blows leaving ruined faces and shattered bones in their wake. Within minutes, he'd made a bloody, groaning mess of the place.
Melissa could have fled during this time, but she’d been frozen in terror. Watching the stranger fight was like watching some great beast of yore exert its utter dominance over anything in its path.
Knocking aside his final assailant, the stranger glanced around the room. The shackled girl was crouched below her table, quaking from fear. The men were scattered across the floor, excepting only the eyepatched barman, who, by the look of things, was going to need a second eyepatch when all was said and done. He'd just stood, clutching the bar for support, and was stumbling towards the stranger.
With a single, savage blow to the stomach, the stranger sent him to the floor. But the barman was still moving. The stranger raised his boot, tensed, and—
Melissa wasn't even aware of her shriek until the stranger froze mid-stomp and shot his eyes in her direction. The look, more of surprise than anything, restarted her senses, and she sprang to her feet, snatched her backpack, and dashed for the door.
After only a few strides, her foot caught on a mangled arm, sending her sailing face-first into a pile of moaning almost-corpses. Blood—their blood—went everywhere.
She gasped and tried to stand. The stranger, his ending of the barman abandoned, was at her side in an instant. He scooped her up with one hand and deposited her on his back, grasping her hands in front of his neck to ensure she didn't tumble off.
Then he was out the door and climbing down the ladder, and Melissa knew that even if she could free herself from him, there would be no escape. She was too weak to run. Too dizzy to walk. Too shocked to stand. She was, once again, a prisoner.
Despite everything she'd already endured, misfortune wasn't through with her for the day, and in the next moment, her eyes landed on the scar. A tear in the stranger's coat had fallen open, exposing his right shoulder and the dark line of mended flesh wrapping around it. A mark from when his arm had been reattached.
The stranger was none other than the fugitive who'd topped the Gs' wanted list, the murderer of six men, the most wanted man in the entire universe, as far as Melissa knew.
Ringo Slade.
TWELVE
This time, the horrendousness of everything was too much to bear, and Melissa fainted. Her mind was sent off to a deep, dreamless place where there were no such things as dehydration or murderers or worlds or pulls on the mind. It would have been relaxing, had she been conscious to enjoy it.
When she awoke, the desert had been exchanged for a canyon, and evening had been exchanged for dusk. Ringo, moving at a brisk trot, was descending a trail in the canyon's side, heading towards what looked like a giant golf ball. It was metal, as wide as a school bus, its honeycomb-paneled surface interrupted only by a solitary windowed hatch. He opened it with a loud hiss, stepping inside and setting Melissa down on a chair. By now, she was conscious enough to resume her earlier fright, but not strong enough to think about running.
She looked around the room. There was an upside-down bedroom above her, a sideways kitchen to her left, and a sideways sitting room to her right. Then she realized that every inch of the inside of the sphere was the floor. There were no walls. Somehow, this structure had its own gravity, one that pulled outward at every angle. In the center of the space, a glowing orb, the room's only light source, floated untethered.
Ringo poured a glass of water, handed it to Melissa, then busied himself on the opposite side of the room, such that he was oriented upside-down to her. He said nothing. She downed the liquid, feeling her vigor return with every mouthful. She knew she had to get out of here. There was no telling what sick motives had prompted Ringo to decimate an entire roomful of men to capture her, and she didn't intend to find out.
She waited a handful of minutes, watching him rummage through a stack of crates. Perhaps he was looking for a torture implement, though what he might need in addition to his fists, she couldn't fathom. She spared occasional glances out the window of the golf ball, observing the brewing darkness. It was full-on night now, and night meant concealment. In the canyon, she wouldn't have to get far to find a hiding place. She could wait there until he stopped looking for her, and then… and then what?
She swallowed back the question. She'd have time to worry about then then.
When she was sure Ringo was sufficiently absorbed in his crate-searching, she jumped to her feet and made for the hatch. Ringo didn't look up until she'd wrenched it open and was darting through.
“Wait—” he started to say.
Not a chance, buddy. She dropped to the canyon floor. Before she could take another step, a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream. Another wrestled her hands behind her back, squeezing her wrists so hard she thought they would shatter.
Then she saw them. Or rather, they let her see them, stepping into view from around the sides of the golf ball and igniting their torches. There were a dozen, at least, all bearing wooden cudgels and sinister smirks. None were injured. They weren't the same men from the bar, except…
The barman, blackened face melted like wax, hobbled into view, his arms supported on the shoulders of two other men. His smirk was the worst of all, a cragged line separating seared sections of flesh, pent-up depravity oozing from it. His mind was orange.
Melissa writhed in her captor's grip, wishing to all that was good that she hadn't interrupted Ringo's final blow earlier. Wishing even more that she hadn't run from the golf ball without pausing so much as a moment to listen to her mental sense.
Out of sight behind her, she could sense the minds of the horses the men had used to get here so quickly. The horses they would use to carry her out of here, no doubt in chains. If she lived that long.
But she still had some hope. Ringo was here. He'd saved her from them once. He could do it again, and she wouldn't repeat her mistake of sticking around to watch. In a moment, he'd follow her outside and set to work pulveri—
Nope. She heard him jumping from the hatch behind her, and she heard just as well the rapid succession of cracks from the cudgels striking his head. Once. Twice. Three times. His body hit the ground. His mind told her he was still alive, but he wouldn't be waking any time soon.
She was alone with the barman, his goons, and whatever intentions they'd brought with them. She couldn't scream, and even if she could, no one would hear her. She couldn’t run, and even if she could, there was nowhere to run. She couldn't fight, and even if she could, she'd lose. It was over.
