Chapter 9
Jesse Aarons awoke with a start. It took him a few minutes before he got his bearings and realized where he was. Looking around, he saw that he was in his bed. As he rubbed his eyes, he also saw that May Belle wasn't in hers. Jess suspected that she was in the bathroom and he dearly hoped that she wasn't throwing-up; he desperately didn't want to have to go through that when he eventually caught whatever it was she had.
As he stood up, Jess felt a pain in the back of his head. It felt like someone had hit him with a baseball bat—not that Jess had ever been hit with a baseball bat, but if he ever was, he imagined that it would probably feel at a little something like he did just then.
When Jess looked down, he noticed something peculiar: he was still wearing his day- clothes. Throwing the covers off himself, he went downstairs to see if anyone else was up. What he saw when he got there, he never would have expected.
May Belle was awake; and she was helping their mother flip pancakes! Whatever she had been suffering from must have passed or their mother would have never let her anywhere near the food. Jess was just glad that she wasn't puking all over the place.
"Hey, Jess, look," May Belle said, "Mom's helping me flip pancakes!"
Mother smiled and gently took the spatula from her daughter, telling her to be careful and to just watch them while they cooked, before coming over and kneeling down in front of Jess.
She pressed her hand to his forehead, and then to the sides of his face. Seeing that he was alright, she sighed and stood back up. Jess was about to ask what was wrong when his mother ask him an unusual question. "What happened to you last night, Jess?"
May Belle gave him a concerned look, before adding, "Mom thought that maybe you were dead."
Jess didn't understand what she meant, but then he remembered what had transpired the night before. Some of it was a blank, but he still thought that he could recall most of it.
It was raining. The wind was picking up and a storm was coming in. He had been on his way home with a handful of May Belle's flowers when he had reached the Bridge.
Someone was there, on the bridge; someone who didn't belong in Terabithia.
Jess remembered confronting the person, and the stranger mentioning something about losing her parents. He didn't really know if the 'someone' he had met was a girl; her voice was so hoarse, that it sounded as if a frog were speaking to him.
Jess had understood well the pain of losing someone special, having dealt with it himself, not long ago. He had thought to help comfort the stranger, maybe offer some words of advice. As she turned around to face him, the lightning had flashed and then…
He remembered that he had seen her face in the sudden light, but he couldn't remember anything else. He figured he must have been hurt or something at that point, that maybe a tree-branch had hit him in the head. That would certainly explain the pain he now felt.
But it wouldn't explain the stranger or what she had been doing there, on his bridge.
Jess remembered well the day he had built the Bridge to Terabithia.
Leslie had died and he had been trying to find a way to honor her memory.
Remembering what Leslie's father had taught him, Jess had set to "working hard at work worth doing."
He had needed to borrow some tools from his father, and the lumber from the Burke's yard, but he had insisted on doing all the work himself. Not that anyone else had offered to help him, since he never told anyone what he was up to; he had wanted the bridge to be a surprise.
And it was.
May Belle had been overjoyed when he had first taken her across the enchanted bridge to Terabithia.
Declaring her a princess, Jess had taken her by the hand and led her into a magical world of wonder and life: the very same world of magic and wonder into which Leslie had brought Jess, before she died on her way back to that beautiful place.
It had been almost three full months since Leslie's death, and although Jess had learned to embrace the idea of a life without her, it still seemed strange to him that she was gone.
Not a day went by that he didn't miss his old friend; her voice, her free spirit, her sense of adventure. Jess still had those qualities within himself, of course; he just wished that Leslie was still with him so that they could enjoy those qualities of life, together.
His mother's voice brought him back to the present, detailing the events that followed his injury. Jess' parents had gone out looking for him when the storm had started. After thirty minutes of bellowing and hollering, they had finally found his limp body on the bridge to Terabithia.
Nobody knew exactly what had happened, but he seemed okay when they brought him home and put him to bed. Then his mother told him something he didn't entirely expect.
"Jess, you were mumbling in your sleep the whole way home," she confessed and by the way she was wringing the dish towel in her fists, Jess surmised that there was something more to this then she was willing to tell him. He guessed that it wasn't good.
"You kept mumbling something about Leslie," May Belle said.
Mother was obviously uncomfortable with telling Jess about what he had been saying the night before and he guessed that she didn't want to bring up painful memories of events long since past.
Jess wasn't too surprised by this news; May Belle often said that he mumbled in his sleep, usually about Leslie. It kept May Belle awake some nights, although she was too kind to ever complain about it. Jess was grateful for the courtesy and wished he could return the favor by not mumbling in his sleep, even if it was about his old friend.
Jess noticed that his mother looked worried; as if the nightmare that had once seized her young son's heart would suddenly reappear, like a phantom coming out of the darkness to snatch at his very soul. She was still wringing the dish towel in her fists.
"Are you alright, Jess?" his mother asked, anxiously.
Jess yawned. This was all very pointless to him. There was nothing to those nightmares anymore. Leslie was gone. Painful as her passing had been, he had accepted it and he had moved on. In his mind, there was nothing more to discuss—not about Leslie anyway.
"I'm fine," he said, in response to her earnest question. "Nothing's wrong anymore. Like I told you, I'm over it." His tone said that he expected her to leave it at that.
His mother sighed and relaxed a bit, but she still appeared to Jess to be more than a bit apprehensive. "Mother's worry too much," Jess thought, ruefully.
Jess decided that there was 'no use in beating a dead horse' as his father would say, so instead of trying to convince his mother that he really was okay, he simply excused himself and headed back upstairs to take a shower and put on some clean clothes.
Mother was about to stop him to talk more, when May Belle shouted that the pancakes were "burning up!" and she had to rush over with the spatula to rescue them.
"May Belle did something useful, for once," Jess mused to himself as he used the distraction to slip out of the clutches of the evil Mom-Lady and make good his escape.
"Nothing worse than an overprotective mother and a pain-in-the-butt sister," he thought as he reached the bathroom and got undressed.
As he looked into the mirror, his thoughts turned unexpectedly to Leslie and he realized something else he didn't like.
"Except maybe the death of a good friend,"he said, to no one in particular.
As he came downstairs, fresh in his clean clothes, Jess discovered that what his nose had already told him was true: breakfast was ruined. A quick chat with May Belle confirmed the rest of his suspicions. She was no Wolfgang Puck.
In spite of their mother's valiant efforts, the pancakes had been lost as casualties in the great stove-top war of 2007 and were declared legally dead at 10:00 a.m. Jess's mother had already switched to her "emergency rations" in the form of her homemade oatmeal.
Jess groaned as he sat down at the table. He hated oatmeal.
As he poured himself some orange-juice and tried not to think about the miserable prison gruel he would soon be shoveling down, Jess again considered the events of the previous night. He wondered about the mysterious stranger on the bridge and why he couldn't seem to remember her face. May Belle had her nose stuck in the book that Jess had given to her to read over the summer, so he was left to ponder the mystery in peace.
Something about the encounter on the bridge seemed so familiar to him, but he was certain that he had never experienced anything like that before. He guessed that he was just feeling anxious about the upcoming school year.
Jess was stirred from his thoughts when his mother placed his oatmeal in front of him.
As she withdrew her hand, she looked into his eyes and asked him one more time if he really was alright.
Jess wanted to scream that he was fine, but he held his anger in check. Taking a deep breath and sighing heavily, he rolled his eyes and told her that he really was 'fine' before starting in on his gruel, so as not to have to answer her again.
As Jess swallowed the grainy mush, he noticed that May Belle was eating her oatmeal with gusto. Jess never understood what May Belle found so appealing about the powdered oat-bran mush they were stuck with, and he silently wondered if his little sister hadn't staged the pancake-burning incident on purpose, just to get a change in the menu.
Their mother paused, then, in the middle of washing the dishes, to say the most unexpected thing. "Jess, hurry up and finish your oatmeal so we can get ready for school."
Before Jess could ask what she meant by that, May Belle answered around a mouthful of oatmeal. "Mom's taking us shopping for back-to-school supplies."
"Great," Jess muttered. "The oppression begins."
Summer wasn't even over and already school was beginning to steal away his free time.
The worst part was that the months had seemed to pass by so quickly; he hadn't gotten to do even half the things that he had planned on doing, though not for lack of trying.
Jess and May Belle had spent countless hours in Terabithia. They had very often times come home so late that they had narrowly avoided getting into trouble, on more than one occasion. Those fun times of freedom were coming to an end, he knew, for Jess was soon to trade the magical kingdom of Terabithia for the dark, stinking dungeons of Lark Creek Elementary School. He could practically taste the terror; or maybe it was just the oatmeal.
Already, images of dozens of prisoners just like him being led through the hallways flooded into his mind. They were all being led in chains to the torture chambers better known as classrooms; where worked the pain administers better known as 'teachers.'
Jess had more than once escaped from that fortress of evil and had more than once been recaptured. He knew how hopeless their plight was. There would be no lasting escape from their educational torment until after death; or winter break, whichever came first.
Jess smiled at May Belle. At least he could spend some time with her during recess.
Unfortunately, his new friend Janice Avery would not be there for she had graduated to a much larger and far more dangerous prison known as 'high school.' Jess knew it had to be a terrible place with an inescapable dungeon, because while many children went there when they became too large to be housed at his prison, not one of them ever returned.
After polishing off the last of his prison gruel, Jess silently handed the bowl to his mother; a prisoner doing as ordered.
Lifting his empty book-bag onto his shoulders, Jess savored its light weight; it would soon enough be weighted down by the mass of heavy books that he would be forced to carry around, like a pack mule. They would be the iron ball to his chains. His shoulders were already aching at the thought of his future workload.
As he put on his shoes and headed for the door, at his mother's insistent instruction, he thought about Leslie and how much he missed her. It occurred to him that she would probably have been looking forward to going back to school by now, if she hadn't died.
Jess wondered if she was happy in heaven.
He realized then, as he reached the door, that he was actually a little jealous of his old friend, because while he was about to be shipped off to rot in some dank, dark dungeon, she was doubtlessly in paradise, having the time of her life.
Anna the frog-girl sniffed the air. The morning was cold and wet, as most had been. It was autumn and she knew that it was to be expected, but Anna suspected that the chill running through her was not because of the weather; it was because of the strange transformation that were taking place throughout her body.
As she glanced around, Anna realized that she was alone. She had been alone for a while now, she knew, and while she missed having someone to talk to, she was relieved that no one had found her. As hideous as she had become, she earnestly hoped that nobody ever would.
Anna rib-bitted. She had once been so beautiful. Not that she had thought so, but Tom had often told her how pretty she was and how very soon she would have countless young boys lining up to ask her out to dances and such.
Whenever he would say such things, Anna would blush and giggle. He would then gibe that she "looked better in red", a comment which would make her get even redder. She often wished that her face wouldn't get so red when she talked to Tom. Now she found herself wishing that it was red--or purple or blue, anything but the horrible shade of green that it had become.
It seemed that the transformation was occurring more rapidly than she had thought it would.
Almost over-night, Anna had gone from a girl who looked like a frog, to a frog that looked like a girl. Her hands were turning a sickening shade of green; they were also webbed with sticky balls at the end of her fingers. Her feet were the same and they had become so large that she had needed to take off her shoes. Not wanting to leave them behind, Anna had taken to tying the laces together and draping them around her bull-frog neck.
Anna had found that her tongue had grown to more than twice the length of her body, and more than once she had needed to resist the urge to snatch a few dragonflies as they had flown past in the evening air the previous night.
Sometimes, Anna found that she couldn't resist.
The whole nightmare was made worse by the fact that she knew how to end it, but wasn't sure of what method to apply to her unique situation.
Having lived in the Witch's home for several weeks, Anna had found a key to a room the Witch had kept locked—a room containing the Witch's most powerful spell-books.
Although Anna knew that she couldn't use any of the spells that she read about, because she didn't have the training, she at least understood how to undo some of them.
This one was a difficult one to break, requiring something called 'love's true delight'.
Anna didn't know what that was, but she guessed that it had something to do with the "kiss of true love" that she had read about in other spell-books.
"Not much chance of that," Anna thought, bitterly. "Who could ever love an ugly little frog girl like me, enough to wan to kiss me… and be happy about it?"
Anna watched as a pair of dragonflies flitted past and she had to stop herself from acquiring breakfast, just then. She hopped off the rock she had been sitting on to find something more suitable to her human tastes, while she still had them.
Reaching under the old log that was her hiding place, Anna was pleased to find that what she had placed there the night before was still waiting for her; no one had yet found her hidden treasure-stash.
Pulling the lid off of the cookie jar, Anna noticed that there weren't as many cookies as there had previously been. No one had taken them, other than her, she knew, and she realized that she would probably soon run-out. She also realized that getting more food would be next to impossible, at this point.
After having slain the King of Terabithia with her 'spiteful glance', Anna had returned to his tree-castle to loot the royal treasury: A jar of cookies, a box of ding dongs, and two six packs of juice- boxes.
Anna had figured that since she had already killed the king she might as well rob his palace.
"In for a penny in for a pound" she had thought as she took that which she knew didn't belong to her. May Belle would have a harder time finding her if she didn't have the treasures to pay informants for their information, Anna figured, so there was another benefit to her thievery.
Although she knew that she was only trying to appease her conscience, Anna realized that she had to do something to survive; frog-girls can't live off of dragonflies alone.
Taking a couple of cookies and a juice box, she replaced the remaining treasures back under the log. She knew that those provisions wouldn't last much longer, and Anna considered going home for a food-gathering visit. She would have to be extremely careful so as not to be caught, for fear of hurting anyone else.
She also feared that she would have to endure teasing jokes from Tom for the rest of her life if he ever saw her like this.
As Anna sat down on the log and ate her now stale cookie-breakfast, she realized that she must not have sealed the cookie-jar as tightly as she should have. She also realized just how much she missed Ann Marie's pancakes.
As Anna sat on the log eating the stale cookies and drinking her warm fruit-juice, she idly wondered if it was going to be her last meal. She knew that it was only a matter of time before she would be caught and made to answer for her crimes against this place.
It seemed to Anna that every snap of a twig, every rustle of a bush, every bending of a tree branch was a signal that the Tera-soldiers were closing in on her.
Anna rib-bitted. She was just being paranoid, she knew.
Finishing off the last of her ding-dong breakfast, Anna drank a sip of juice and figured it would be safe enough to sing a verse her old freedom song, since no one was attacking by now.
Got a fifty-seven Chevy, she's low sleek and black,
Someday I'll put her on the interstate and never look back
Someday, I'm finally gonna let go,
I know there's a better way,
I wanna know what's over that rainbow
I'm gonna get outta here someday…
Someday…
As Anna continued her song, she thought about the images it conjured in her mind: memories of the boy-king that she had never known until she came to this place.
She thought about how her life had changed since the day she had discovered his magical kingdom. She thought about how it had changed again when she had killed him with a single look. She thought about her current predicament and what she could do to change it.
"On the run, can't go home, alone and cursed, with no memory of who I am," Anna thought, smiling to herself at the folly of it all.
"I guess life couldn't get much sweeter," she thought sarcastically.
Jess tossed his newly filled book-bag on his bed with a sigh. The notebooks he had filled it with during the shopping trip had added considerable weight to his prison-bag.
As he flopped down onto his prison-bed, Jess tried not to think of the extra weight that was still to be added. He casually glanced out the window. The day was more than half gone. May Belle wanted to go out to Terabithia as soon as they got home, but Jess was worn-out from all the running around they had done that day; he just wanted to stay home and rest.
Of course, May Belle wouldn't have it and she immediately grabbed Jess' arm and started pulling him up as soon as she had finished putting away her school supplies.
"C'mon, Jess, c'mon!" May Belle shouted, as she tried with all her might to drag Jess to his feet. He remembered when Leslie used to call to him like that, although she wasn't nearly as annoying, as far as he could remember.
"You promised we could go back today!" she whined. He knew that she wasn't going to let this promise go.
Sighing heavily and groaning with exaggerated effort, Jess got to his feet and let his little-sister-princess drag him out the door.
Within moments they were both on their way back to Terabithia.
