Just an hour.
Wink said that’s how long it would take. At least an hour, to kill a monster. We went to the hayloft and she gave me a cup of Earl Grey and read the leaves after I’d sipped it all. She held the cup in her hands, elbows sticking out, and said my leaves spoke of witches and beasts and princes.
It started raining, soft at first, then harder and harder, thunder snapping across the sky.
I asked Wink about what she’d said, when she’d been tied up. About the hungry unforgivables and the lapping up the blood and the popping open Poppy’s brain.
“Where did you come up with all that, Wink? I believed it. I was scared of you. I was.”
Wink smiled, and her ears popped out. “Sometimes I put on plays with the Orphans. Hops and Moon love madmen. They want all our plays to have madmen in them, so I usually play a character that’s wandering a barren moor or locked up and screaming in a dungeon, or a tower, or an attic. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Mim says we shouldn’t pretend to be mad people, she thinks it draws bad spirits . . .”
Wink shrugged, then pointed up at the ceiling. “I string up a curtain between the beams here in the hayloft to make a stage. Peach wants to play all the roles and Bee Lee doesn’t want to play any and Hops and Moon laugh right through all their lines. It’s fun.”
I sighed, my arms beneath my head, my body feeling heavy in the hay.
I tried not to think about her. Poppy. Out there in the house. Alone. Scared.
I was here with Wink in the hayloft. Exactly where I wanted to be.
As if she could read my mind, Wink came over and cuddled hard into my side. She started talking about Thief. About how he wasn’t just another boy with a sword on a journey. She talked about how he walked through the Hill Creeps, and didn’t go insane, and only the bravest could do such a thing. She talked about the first time he saw Trill, how she was running from the black Witch Wolves, long white veil streaming behind her, bare feet making small dents in the snow.
Wink put her hand up the back of my shirt, and ran it up my spine, up and down, up and down, up and down, softly, softly, slowly, slowly, and it was making me sleepy . . .
I stretched in the hay and sighed.
I kept an eye on the hayloft opening, on the night sky, trying to tell time by the moon like you do with the sun . . .
Poppy screaming. Poppy crying. Pulling at the rope, wrists bleeding, Roman Luck standing next to her, looking lost, Martin Lind collapsed on the floor, groaning about his children, rats running over his body, Wink opening the book, The Thing in the Deep, showing it to me, showing me how Thief had changed, how he looked different now, how he had shifty eyes, and slouched shoulders, and straggly hair . . .
I opened my eyes.
Closed them.
Open. Close. Open.
I’d fallen asleep.
I’d fallen asleep.
“How long has it been, Wink? How long since we left her?”
Wink yawned. Her head was under my chin and her arms nestled into my chest. “I don’t know. I fell asleep too.”
I looked outside.
It was still dark, but dawn was coming. I could see it on the horizon, clawing at the night.
WINK PULLED AN apple out of one of her deep pockets and we shared it on the way there. I didn’t feel like eating, but I just kept taking bites, hoping the crisp, familiar taste would make me feel normal again.
The path was wet from the storm, and my shoes sunk into mud and old pine needles.
I wanted to run to Poppy, run like something was chasing me, like one of Wink’s Witch Wolves had its teeth at my heels, heart thudding, sweating, panting, wind on my cheeks.
Why wasn’t I running?
I wanted to cut her free, and tell her I was sorry, so, so sorry. I wanted it so much I could feel my fingers on the rope, the cold metal of my knife, her messy blond hair, her look of relief . . .
But my steps got slower and slower, the closer we got.
The apple was tart and juicy and this felt real.
This.
Walking with Wink, the apple, the fresh air.
Not before, in the house, with the scurrying sounds and Wink’s unforgivables and Poppy, oh Poppy . . .
The Roman Luck mansard roof. There it was suddenly, peeking out between branches and leaves.
I stopped walking.
“Did I dream it?” I asked Wink. “Did I just dream it all up, what we did?”
She looked at me and shook her head. “No, Midnight.” She took the apple, one last bite, and then threw it into the trees.
I couldn’t go in. I stood on the broken, splintered steps, and couldn’t go in.
It was lighter already. The sky was gray, not black.
I wondered how long Poppy had screamed before finally giving up.
I’d never get the sound of her screams out of my head, or my heart.
Is this what it meant to be the hero? Is this what Wink thought it meant?
I wondered if Poppy tried to chew her way through the rope. I wondered if she pulled at it until her wrists bled, like in my nightmare.
I wondered what kind of person she would be now.