Unreal City (11 page)

My unbalanced behavior elicited a reply at last: “He drowned!”

FROM THAT MOMENT
until I woke up hours later in the Student Health Center with a pounding headache, my memory is blank. Disoriented, I cried out, and a nurse came by to inform me that I had fainted. I tried to get my bearings, and noticed with horror there was an IV drip in my arm.

“Did you drug me?” I demanded.

“Just something to calm you. When they brought you in, they said you were pretty frantic. Now could you answer these questions for me, sweetie?”

She went on, exploring my health history, asking personal questions and recommending I speak with the mental health counselor. I didn’t pay attention. My thoughts were haunted by the memories of the drowned boy. He’d been found in the middle of campus. Miles away from any bodies of water. Just the way Lea had been left.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to call or who to talk to. Should I alert the police? Wouldn’t they connect the cases? How could this be happening here, of all places? Sure, Monterey was close, but it was too much of a coincidence. It sickened me to entertain the thought that I was somehow connected.

After I’d passed the gauntlet of paperwork and prying queries, I requested to be released on the basis that I was not ill, and the staff complied with obvious reluctance. I fled the health center, finding myself wanting to talk to Felix more than anyone else. Perhaps because he was my own imaginary friend, and being completely insane himself, I knew he wouldn’t judge me. Or abandon me. I still don’t know why that thought comforted me that night.

Students were hanging out in the hall, but went silent as I trudged by, my head down and hood up. I couldn’t get the image of the dead flesh of the boy out of my mind. It was stuck there, following me like the moon follows a traveler making his way down the road in the night.

Lea probably looked like that when they found her. Just like that. Black. Yellow. Blue.
I tried my best not to apply that condition to the memory of my sister’s face.

I burst into my dorm room and shut the door behind me to find Felix sitting placidly on my bed, staring at a corner of the ceiling. I was about to speak when something about that corner caught my attention, too. The longer I looked at it, the dizzier I felt, though there was nothing there to be seen. I felt a rising sense of anxiety—a feeling of something buried, something trapped. I shook this off and brought my attention back to the matter at hand.

“Felix. Someone on campus died today. They were murdered. In the same way my sister was,” I informed him. I don’t know what I expected from him, but he only blinked.

“Terrible news. I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and sounded like he almost meant it.

My breathing grew agitated, and I fiddled with my necklace in frustration. I was pacing now, back and forth across the small space between the desks and the bunk beds.

“Does this feel like it’s connected to you? ‘Cause it does to me,” I cried, unable to articulate the core of what I was feeling but trying to get some sort of ball rolling in my mind.

“Could be. I can’t say for sure. I wasn’t there,” Felix said, and I glared at him.

“Are you always this goddamn vague?” I retorted and his needle-lined grin widened, pleased by my aggravation.

“Constantly and without exception,” he cooed.

I sighed and tried to think of what and how to ask him, remembering Mama Stella’s warnings about the familiar spirits. After a moment of going over her words in my head, something echoed at the back of my mind:
It’s what the man in the library call it, so most of us Cunning Folk come to call it that too
.

“Felix, who did Mama Stella mean when she talked about the ‘man at the library?’”

Felix perked up. “One of the Cunning Folk. His garden looks like a library and he seems to be well-connected with the others,” he told me. “He’s not very friendly, but he never turns down a conversation with one of the Cunning Folk. He seems to want to study you people.”

“And if I told this man what was happening to me, do you think he might be able to help me?” It was a shot in the dark, but at least it was a shot.

“Perhaps, if he’s in. He seems to be around most of the time, though, so chances are pretty good.” Felix’s whine was starting to sound hopeful, and he studied my hair with wide eyes.

I was about to give it to him when another thought occurred to me. “Can—can I die in Unreal City?”

“No. Not your body, anyway,” Felix said and I raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean? Tell me everything I need to know to stay safe there,” I commanded, hoping that wording was proper enough to get a straight answer out of him.

“You cannot be physically harmed there, but when you are in another garden, you are under the complete control of the one who owns it. Should the person catch you and hold you there, and should they be a particularly unsavory person, they could submit you to any number of awful things. And they will all seem real. And you will remember them as real. If they are especially creative, you could lose your mind. Whatever psychological stress your consciousness endures there will remain when you return to this side of reality,” he explained and the pit that was sinking in my stomach plunged deeper.

“But that’s rare, right? That hardly happens, I’m sure?” That might’ve been the reason the boy who’d wandered into my garden had run when he first saw me. He had no idea who I was or if I could be trusted.

“Not as rare as you’d think. That City does strange things to people’s minds. The combination of human nature and unchecked power generally produces disaster,” Felix said, delighted at the notion.

So if I did go see the man at the library, I’d have to hope he was of the sane and merciful variety, and if I did choose to create a shade that looked like my sister, I’d have to hope it wouldn’t be the first step down the road to total insanity. I sank into the computer chair, tormented by the possibilities of these dangers.

But I had come this far. Stopping now seemed impossible.

“All right, Felix,” I said, reaching for the scissors in my desk drawer. “Let’s go back.”

GETTING THERE WAS
easier this time. I didn’t get stuck on my way up. The brief period of blankness separating the two sides of reality faded without delay and I awoke in the autumnal forest I’d created during my last visit to Unreal City. The heightened perception flooded back into my mind, and I flexed my fingers, shuddering at the unlimited possibilities. As I looked around the clearing with its whispering shower of red and orange leaves, I itched to start weaving different fantasies, but held off for now. I didn’t know how much time I had, so they would have to wait until I saw the man at the library. Lea would have to wait.

I ran my fingers over the lock of shortened hair I’d clipped. Felix trotted to my side, a spring in his step. He’d swallowed it up so voraciously, almost nipping my fingertip in the process. I stepped in the direction of the lane, stopping when I saw Felix bristle. His eyes grew wide.

“Someone’s coming. Someone knows you’ve just arrived,” he told me, and I looked wildly around, waiting for my visitor to become visible.

“Who is it? Can you tell?” I asked, creeping closer to Felix. “Felix, can you fight? Can you hurt people?”

“I can, but only if you order me to. In this world I can trap or trick, and in the other I can injure or kill,” he explained, his confidence mixed with the nonchalant willingness to take a life both reassuring me and making my blood run cold. “But we won’t need to, right now. It’s Angus.”

The face of the boy I’d seen before appeared over the top of the hill, his warm brown eyes studying me. We looked each other over until Felix broke the silence.

“Hello, Aodh,” Felix called into the woods. The boy looked over his shoulder, a little panicked, but something he saw caused his shoulders to relax.

“Hello, Pan. Or is it still Aoife?” asked a deep, resonating voice from the trees.

“My name is Felix now, old friend,” my familiar spirit said to the trees. “I have a new master.”

“Yes, Stella told us about you,” the boy said, and I was surprised to hear his accent was Scottish. “She said your name is Sarah. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” I said, still defensive. “And you’re Angus.”

“I am,” he said, sliding closer to me, his body language revealing he did not trust me.

It struck me as peculiar how careful he was being. I wondered if I looked like the type of person who would try to harm a stranger. Looking past the boy, I realized who Felix had been talking to. On the trunks of the trees, a face had appeared in the wrinkles on the wood. It looked like a warping of the wood, but I could sense a palpable knot of energy humming around it. The expression in the tree was one of melancholy, but not quite pain; if it were a human face it would have looked thousands of years old. Hanging from the branches on either side of the face, two glass lanterns had appeared, both alight with a dancing blue flame.

Angus looked as if he was trying to say something, but just couldn’t get it out. My annoyance threshold had been surpassed.

“You know, I’m not a psychopath, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you, so you can nut up and stop quivering like a child already.”

He started a little at my verbal assault. “You’re definitely not what I expected,” he stammered, running his fingers through his shaggy hair.

I raised an eyebrow, refusing to let up on him. “And what is that supposed to mean?” I hated people who got under my skin, and he was definitely doing that. I hate letting them get away with ruffling my feathers unless I’ve given them a suitable ruffling in return.

“I-I don’t know, I really can’t say. I’m sorry for running off the other day. I just—this place. Got to be careful, you ken what I mean?” he tried to appeal to me.

When his defensive look faded away, he was quite handsome, in a rugged way. That irked me even more, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

“No, I don’t
ken
what you mean,” I shot back, guessing very well from the context what he was trying to say, but wanting to give him a hard time regardless. He stared at me for a moment.

“So it’s true what they say about Americans, then?”

“What?”

“That you’re all soft in the head?” His smile was devilish, and irritation shuddered through me.

“Ah, nothing says ‘trust me’ like good old fashioned bigotry.” I turned on my heel and walked toward the end of my garden. “Now, laddie, if ye dinnae mind, I’ll be off!” I mocked in a poor attempt to ridicule his accent.

He laughed it off and followed me. I gave him a sidelong glance and kept going.

“God, you are a feisty one, aren’tcha?” His laugh was loud and clear. “Don’t get upset. I’m only teasing. Where are you off to?”

“To see someone in another garden. A man at a library,” I said, not slowing my walk.

He whistled. “Going to see creepy Arthur? Hoo! And alone, too? Well, if anyone’s got answers, it’ll be him,
but,
well, I guess we all make mistakes when we first get here. Though I’m surprised it’s taken you so little time to go wandering. Usually people stay and enjoy themselves a bit longer before they go roving. What’s the rush, eh?”

Something about his interest suggested an ulterior motive, and I wondered whether I should be honest with him.