"You're Late, My Dear."
Hallow stood just outside the large ring of strange mushrooms, purple in their colour. Her face had lost its anger, lost its playfulness. It was passive and empty, perhaps 'stony'. Her bright eyes trained on the figure on the opposite side of the ring.
"I'm here, aren't I? Let's just get this over with." Her voice was sharp, cutting through the air and drawing laughter out of whoever it was she was speaking to. Shadows began shifting around them, slowly becoming sharper and more focused. More creatures.
"So you can return to your new fascination. Yes, little one, we know of your new friend. The one you call 'Winter Prince'" Hallow's face remained passive. She wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. The person stepped further into the light to reveal a woman…of sorts at least.
Long black hair sat in complicated braids, threaded with yellow witch-hazel down to her feet. Twisted and piled around a face that seemed to shift from youthful to elderly to a child to an old crone…never seeming to stay as one person. In forest green robes and a crown of thorns, thistles and black orchids she stood, mouth twisting into a smile at Hallow. Around the two, creatures with leathery skin began crawling forward, bodies twisted and contorted as they moved with actions no human could make. They climbed over the trees and grass, faces stretched and distorted, lipless mouths opening to reveal shark-like teeth as they hissed and shrieked, crawling towards the two only to leap back as though burned. They were sickening; some of them stretching the thin, leather-looking wings behind them with creaking joints while their muscles and bodies twisted in that strange parody of movement. Disgusting. Hallow paid no attention to them.
"I'm here now. And that means I'm keeping my end of the bargain. Did you keep yours?" her words were harsh, and the woman tilted her head at her,
"You are hardly in a position to be worrying about that. Your land is still standing, is it not? Now come, enough time wasting. Your power." A hand with talon-like fingers stretched towards Hallow, motioning to the ring between the two. The young girl took a deep breath and released it slowly, glaring at the ring of Fae toadstools.
"For the record, we both know there are easier ways to do this." The woman mouth simply stretched in a grin as sharp as her teeth. Hallow closed her eyes.
She stepped inside.
The effect was almost instantaneous. With a hissing noise (laughter, maybe?) from the creatures surrounding her, thick, thorny branches tore the ground inside the circle to pieces, twisting around her skin, piercing her flesh and dragging out her blood. All the while the woman only watched as Hallow shrieked. Shrieked, but never writhed. As though her body had become used to the treatment. As though it knew not to move, lest the thick thorns cut deeper through her flesh.
They tore at her arms and wrists, cut through her legs and torso, curling tightly and ripping at her neck and shoulders, her pretty clothes were torn to shreds. Blood pooled at her feet and trickled like rivers over her arms to drip from her fingertips. The thick thorns seemed to be trying to burrow below her skin, tearing gashes in the snowy flesh that just became a path for more blood. She could feels them, ripping nerves, slicing veins, barely missing anything that was vital. Still the screaming didn't stop.
After what seemed like much too long, much, much too long to be healthy, the thorns retracted. Hallow fell to the ground, panting painfully hard and gripping the bloody ground beneath her in tight fists. After a moment, as the bloody puncture wounds and messy gashes began to slowly clot and heal, she looked up.
"Y…your payment. As agreed." The woman simply watched her a little longer, watching more blood hit the ground with an almost crazed look in her eyes. Eventually, she nodded. Two of the inhuman creatures shot forward into the circle, grabbing at her in a strangely gentle manner that didn't stop her wincing. The woman waved them off, her eyes focused almost hungrily on the blood left on the ground,
"Take her back to her castle." As the two sprites raised her into the air, the woman's human mask seemed to fall away. The ever-changing features gave way to stretched, bony, hollow features, sharp teeth and sunken eyes, arms becoming long claws as whatever this banshee-like creature was staked forward. The flowers in her hair and crown turned rotten, and she fell upon the ground covered in Hallow's blood with the fervour of a starved person offered a feast.
Jack gagged at the sight. Hallow froze. Not at the creature though. Instead her head turned to stare directly at the spot Jack's scrying mirror was looking from. The last thing Jack saw as the image faded, were harsh yellow eyes and bloody flesh.
Jack pulled away from the ice and gasped, running for the castle. He needed to make sure she was okay, he needed…
He needed to know what the hell he'd just witnessed.
She'd said it was an agreement. Why would she make an agreement that put her through something like that? What was the agreement for? What was she putting herself through here? She'd said she was late…did she suffer this every year? More than anything though, Jack felt anger. Anger at the other guardians who had as good as abandoned her here, where it was now obvious, with additional evidence, that she was suffering. Anger that they wouldn't even try and come and just SEE! She was a kid like any other.
He was back at her castle before he realised, running up the hill as the leather-winged creatures flew away from the high tower. The spirits leapt out of his way as he ran, just running through them if they weren't fast enough, until he was outside the heavy oak door, pushing it open and scanning the room.
Hallow's bloody form lay on her bed, eyes closed and breathing shallow. Sally sat next to her, holding her wrist gently and running over each wound with a cloth smelling strongly of what Jack identified as antiseptic. She placed a finger to her lips in a shushing motion before returning to swiping away the slowly congealing blood from her arms. The young child looked even paler now, nothing moving but the subtle rise and fall of her chest with each shallow breath. As Sally moved to clean the blood from her legs, she spoke softly,
"She'll be fine after she sleeps…this happens every year" Jack could tell his expression was grim,
"What exactly is 'this'?" Sally's eyes turned sad, moving Hallow's shirt up to reach a thick gash on the soft flesh of her stomach, taking up a needle and thread to sew it shut,
"I…I don't know for certain. It's an agreement she holds with the Fae, and it's what keeps this world running. I'm afraid that's all I know. She never speaks to us about it." Jack almost gagged as he watched the flesh being pulled back together with Sally's nimble fingers. The stench of blood lay thick in the air by now. If this happened every year, it was a wonder he hadn't smelled it when he first arrived.
Every year…for five hundred years…Jack looked away from her, "How does she survive it?" Sally tied off the wound before moving to the other side of the bed and beginning to wash down from her shoulders,
"She's more likely to tell you than us." Jack was fairly certain he jerked at that,
"What?" Sally looked up from cleaning Hallow's palm,
"You haven't noticed? She has the power to throw you out of here without batting an eyelid. She's played with you, she's talked to you…she likes you enough to let you stay here. Don't you see?" A smile stretched the sewn mouth, "remember when you arrived? I said I'd wondered when you'd be here. I have…visions, Jack. I saw you would be coming, which means you're either going to be something good to Hallow or something terrible. And in truth, I can't see anything more terrible than the existence she has here."
"This place is amazing though. So many people, I don't get it, how is living here terrible?" Jack's arms motioned to the room around them, before looking at Hallow's limp form again. Sally gave a soft sigh,
"She is surrounded by the dead here, Jack. Family members, friends from her own time, friends she might have made through the years…all of them come here eventually. And she hates it, because she cannot save any of them. For many, she cannot even let them out of the spirit world. The friendships she once had crumble and break around her when they die and see that she has been around them the whole time. She has to watch them grow old. Watch them be murdered. Watch them take their own life. Would you like to live forever, surrounded by the dead? Dead can never leave you?"
Jack…Jack hadn't thought of it that way. Sally was right. Everyone here was dead. Hallow's brother hadn't seemed bothered about it, but his secretiveness towards the other one…and her parents or friends…what about that little girl she'd died saving? Was she here too? Did she live surrounded by all these people?
Jack thought about his sister. Was she here? Did Hallow watch her die? Could Jack do that? Watch Jamie and the others leave him, only to never have them really gone. To never be able to do anything for them…never give them their families back, never give them their LIVES back…
He couldn't do it. He didn't see how Hallow did it. Looking at the cut-up corpse on the blooded sheets, he though about just how remarkable she really was. If Sally believed he could help her, he was going to do it. He was going to give it everything he had. She deserved at least that much.
This chapter was a little rushed because I know I've kept you all waiting so long. But I'm trying to show you that Hallow isn't just an child, she has more responsibilities and more to her than most first think. As for the lateness of this chapter: I've been sick, revising for exams, suffering headaches again, going through college interviews and various other issues related to normal life. Everything should calm down soon though, so bear with me.