Fenridge: The Escape

The fentrolls. We’d finally figured them out. They hide until you are bubbling with joy, then they sneak up and yank you down by the ankle into the mud, where you fall with a squelching splash and a cry of rage. It’s the worst sort of cruelty to sniff out happiness and then snatch it away it with one swift all-encompassing movement. But we learned to never show it. Contentment at most, joy never. No one ever told you those were the rules, but it was made clear all the same.

Katharine stood at the edge of the swamp, loose tendrils of her her hair plastered to her face by the rain. She paused and looked back towards me, putting her finger to her lips in a gesture of quiet and tip-toed into the twisting mass of vines and trees. We both knew dark things lurked there, and to awaken them was a potentially fatal throw of the dice. I stared after her as she crept into a dark tunnel between two trees. I supposed I had to follow, but I honestly wished we could just go around. I pulled the elastic cords on the hood of my raincoat to tighten it further and took another squishy step in the direction of the swamp. How I was supposed to be quiet was a mystery to me. I could only hope the drumming of the rain on the canopy of leaves above would drown the sounds of my muddy footfalls.

Katharine made good time in front of me and I had to hustle to keep up. I loved my older sister, but she and I were never attuned to the same bio-rhythms. If I was hungry, she was tired, when I was tired, she was bursting with energy. Now, she bristled with an adrenaline-driven acuity that seemed to guide her path almost preternaturally. She must have been thinking if we hurried, we could beat them. But I knew we could not, in all likelihood they already had drones as the far side of this godforsaken bog that would catch sight of us immediately upon our exit. In the meantime we risked what exactly, to avoid their notice? We weren’t sure. Something large and dark seemed to creep through the swamp, only disappearing when you turned your head to look at it. Slithering things glided through my peripherals.

Even we had first set out, I’d scarcely hoped we’d find the road to Glentree, fearing that running would accomplish nothing. Before long, they’d have found us and we’d be back at the castle, debugging code for Jaime with all the other residents, which honestly hadn’t bothered me when Michael was there. When he was there, I was content to placidly stare at the screen all day and retire to my bunk at night, as long as I could hear him snoring through the wall. I wasn’t happy, but I was never ambitious.

But yesterday I sat down in my pod and turned on my monitor only to find that all my work from the day before had been deleted and so had everyone else’s. We whispered to each other, something must have gone wrong with the system. What would they do? we muttered. Ian began to stride down the corridor from the server room. He stopped at Michael’s empty pod next to mine and examined the keymat. As I watched him, a faint unresolved horror stretched its icy fingers around my stomach. Ian rounded on me, his steely blue eyes bored into my skull. “Where’s 10?” How would I would have any way of knowing the answer to such a question? I stared at him in dumb confusion. He rolled his eyes in disgust and turned to the other side of Michael’s cubicle where Katharine sat. “Did he come in this morning?” Katharine shook her head in defiant silence. Ian turned away but he caught a glimpse of a faint smile that played across Katharine’s lips. Turning back he growled, “ does that amuse you, missy?” She shook her head in a firm negative. “I think you should come with me.” He jerked her out of her chair by her elbow. “And, 9, you too,” he spat at me over his shoulder.

As if in a dream, I rose from my chair and followed them down the long corridor towards the white door at the end of the hall, I could feel the prying eyes fixed on us as we passed, chairs swiveling quietly under each rear to allow its owner to catch a better view. I’d been through this door only once, when I first came to Fenridge Castle, five years earlier. “And the rest of you get back to work at once,” Ian barked at the room. The sound of many chairs swiveling into place and hands whispering across keymats suddenly filled the air. Ian held the heavy, white, glass door open for me and Katharine and closed it firmly behind us. “Go straight through. Jaime is waiting.”

Jaime had many questions, but we had very few answers. The last time we’d seen Michael was the evening before at dinner. Katharine and I had both gone out to the fens for recreation time after dinner and when we returned, the door to his bunk was already closed. We hadn’t seen him at breakfast or this morning. What I didn’t say was that I hadn’t heard his snores all night and I hadn’t slept for worrying, that at dinner his manner had been quiet, and that before I went to recreation, he had caught my hand and squeezed it affectionately, pressing his thumb into my palm with significance, before turning to walk away in a determined silence, or that his disappearance today had shattered the brittle construction of contentment I’d finally erected for myself.

From this interrogation, all I could glean was that something had happened to the servers, and it was likely Michael who had caused it. But where he had gone or why, I doubted I should ever know. I wondered if perhaps Katharine knew more than I did and an evil stab of jealousy shot through my gut when I pondered why that might be. Had Michael confided in her?

After nearly an hour of answering the same questions the same way, Jaime grew tired of our blank, emotionless faces, and vaguely polite, but indifferent ignorance. He smiled at each of us pleasantly, said there was nothing to worry about and we should please return to our duties.

After dinner Katharine grabbed her rain jacket and told me I had better get mine. She said since it looked like rain and we needed to get our exercise that evening. At first, I couldn’t understand why she was so insistent. Most evenings she reveled in the evening gentle mists that could hardly be classified as rain. Then I slipped on my coat and reached my hands into my pockets for warmth, where I found a slippery bag of plastic enclosing some sort of protein nuggets. Startled I looked up, but only saw the back of Katharine’s head as she filed out of the dining room, swathed in a hood of innocent gray. Was it from her? Or Michael? As we passed out of the gates, I closed my hand around the bag of nuggets, trembling in fear lest the dogs smell them, but we shuffled past them and out onto grass without incident.

Gathering in groups of three or four, talking and stretching their legs, the residents’ voices were low. An occasional sarcastic laugh would bubble up, followed by hushed tones of admonishment. Fentrolls… the word flickered in the air, like a salty wind, gently warning you of its presence before it slapped you in the face. If you felt happiness, you must never laugh. But allow it to bubble inwards, filling your heart and guts with warmth. You could tell your friends what you meant with your eyes and possibly the touch of a hand, though never an embrace. Your words were a mask of innocence, mundanity, a pattern to be broken, if necessary, in rare cases.

My sister grabbed my hand and guided me towards the long wall that encircled the great open yard. It was about 6 feet tall, too tall to climb over without attracting attention, but not so tall it was impossible. She reached out and touched the mossy stones with her right hand as we walked, her fingers feeling for something and finding four small tracks in the moss where someone, someone taller, had clawed a path. Withdrawing her hand, she quickened her pace almost imperceptibly when we realized our path would be barred by the small river that cut through the yard and fed the small lake outside the walls. As we approached it, my heart began battering my rib cage. What is happening? Where are we going? Does this have anything to do with Michael? I wanted to ask, but I knew the answer couldn’t be spoken, no more than could my questions.

Katharine paused at the river’s edge and peered into the dark, whispering water and listened. We heard no one. Dusk was beginning to fall and it would soon be time to make our way back to the gates. Katherine turned towards the wall and touched a small circle carved into the moss with four vertical lines dividing it. She picked the remaining moss away with her fingers, obliterating the pattern and she took my hand. I looked into her eyes with a question and she nodded. We waded into the cold water.

Under the surface, set into the stone wall, we saw the grate from Michael’s etching. (I don’t know if it was his, but I wanted to believe it was). A metal circle that had once been divided with four metal bars. They were gone, now merely rusty jagged teeth in a yawning black mouth. Katharine, as usual, swam through first. I felt a small wave of panic as she disappeared, the rubber soles of her shoes pushing off the other side of the grate to propel her forward into darkness. I followed, willing my mind to stay empty and calm. I swam underwater as long as I could until finally, my lungs on fire, I slipped to the surface and took a deep breath of cool air. It was almost dark now and the inky water stretched out in front of us. Behind us the stone wall cut across the meadow, still barring any view of the castle. I could see my sister’s form slipping along in front of me in some kind of silent breast stroke.

On the far bank, she crawled out of the water in exhaustion and lay still for a moment. I finally pulled myself onto the muddy verge and looked at her. It was dark, but in the moonlight I saw that her chest had stopped heaving and she steadied her breath. Sitting up, she slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out her own bag of protein nuggets. Tearing the bag open with her teeth, she extracted a morsel and chewed on it thoughtfully. She folded the bag over itself and replaced it in her pocket. “You ready?” She broke the silence with a low, gentle murmur. “Do you know where Michael is?” I asked her. She shook her head no. “But we have to get away.” “Get away…” my voice trailed away. “Get away to where?” “Siva, do you think it was going to stop after one interrogation? No, Jaime has ways of being more… persuasive.” She paused and edged her voice in determination. “We need to get to Glentree. Father’s sister Hilda still lives there. She will help us.” “Glentree.” I scoffed. “We’ll never make it. Jaime’s drones will track us before we’ve gone 10 miles. I thought you had a plan.” “I do. We’re going to cross the fen here and cut through the swamp at Maulkey — ” “Maulkey!” “Yes, at Maulkey and meet up with the road to Glentree. We have food, it was all I could get, but it should see us through, if we are careful.” “Sure, if we don’t get lost or if we don’t get eaten ourselves in the swamp at Maulkey. Then it won’t matter at all, will it?” “Siva!” I heard her draw in a deep breath. I knew I was being petulant, but I was scared and cold and didn’t fancy the idea of being caught escaping. It would also be a lie to to say I wasn’t bitterly disappointed that Michael hadn’t been waiting for us on the edge of the lake.

Katharine started again, “Siva, I’m sorry Michael left. But I honestly don’t know where he’s gone. I just know he knew the way out and said he would leave a path for us if we needed to leave. After he’d gone. In case we were unsafe.” I dug in the dirt with the toe of my sopping wet shoe but remained silent. Her voice hardened into steel again. “Let’s go. We need to put some distance between us and Jaime now.” She turned and started to pick her way carefully through the calf-high grass. I followed her in a sullen silence.

We hiked through the night, carefully shuffling through the grass to avoid turning an ankle in a rabbit hole. It must have been close to three in the morning when we spied a small copse of trees and some thick shrubs that would provide us adequate shelter. Taking her coat off, Katharine laid it on the ground and gestured for me to remove mine. We lay on her coat with mine as a cover, close together for warmth. I turned my back to her and clutched my arms to my chest. Sleep overtook me, but it couldn’t hold me. I was running, running from it, when suddenly I paused at the edge of a cliff, and my father’s voice was in my ears. Siva, don’t fall, he cautioned. I won’t, I scorned his worries, but when I turned to look at him, he was gone, and I only saw Ian, his eyes looked into mine and he said I was a liar. Of course you’ll fall. On purpose too. And then I was lying next to Katharine as light crept into the sky and I felt the lead weight of worry re-descend upon my chest. We’ll never get away.

I stretched myself and gnawed on a protein nugget, waiting for Katharine to finish her business behind a tree. It was well past dawn when we started to move again, though the sun was obscured by a thick and menacing band of gray clouds and within a hour the rain started in earnest. It was pouring and we were shivering, but we could not, dared not stop.

When we finally reached the edge of the swamp, I was relieved for a moment at the thought of a shelter from the downpour, but peering into its dark mass, all my original trepidations returned. Dodge the drones? We might. But would that dark creature that dwelled there swallow us whole? Or did it really have the razor sharp teeth they spoke of in the legend?

Creeping through the swamp, with the utmost care not to disturb any vines or bushes, we were like two gray ghosts, reaching out towards the road to Glentree and our only hope now. At least, I thought to myself, my father would be relieved we were together. After everything, he hoped if we could stay together we would keep each other safe. After three hours, we could feel the swamp thinning and I felt a tiny surge of hope. Perhaps the inhabitant of the swamp had slept through our intrusion after all, or maybe it had simply decided we were too small to make a satisfactory meal. Then a I saw a long, dark form curling around a tree in front of me and terror surged through me. A huge, black snakelike creature raised its head with vicious eyes that glared right at us and a mouth full of razor sharp teeth. “Run!” screamed Katharine. We tore through the trees, heedless of our footfalls now, and the creature twined itself along the branches next to us, like an evil black stream, flowing from tree to tree . Suddenly, the wods parted and in front of us we saw the swollen, rushing river of Glenraikes and 100 yards away was a small footbridge to the Glentree road. We made for the bridge but the creature was keeping pace with us. My lungs were burning and I could feel the monster’s tongue lashing my calf muscles in a flick of anticipation. We won’t make it, I thought. With one last backward glance at the creature, Katharine jumped into the angry current 10 feet below, instantly swallowed by the foamy waters, and once more I followed her, without another thought.

And I was pummeled and tossed and then suddenly I was sinking, then floating, embryo-like in the icy, purple water, the turgid currents above my head thundered in my ears. I felt at peace, all would be well. I felt warm and sleepy. Why hadn’t I realized this was the solution all along? My father’s voice thudded in my ears. Siva, Siva, Siva. I was happy, I thought. Not content. But happy, finally, for the first time since I’d last seen his face.

An arm encircled my neck and I was ripped from my feelings of placidity into the burning cold wind. Coughing and spluttering on the bank, my mind reeled in confusion. Why couldn’t they just let me be? I looked up into the eyes of my rescuer and saw the icy blue eyes of Ian boring into mine. I coughed water into his face.