Blood
Chapter 10: Mallory

A hand clutching the front of my shirt pulls me from sleep. My eyelids flutter open and closed again, and then open. I recoil slightly at the close proximity of my brother’s face.

“Where the hell were you?” he screams.

“What?” I ask, my voice heavy with sleep.

My brother shoves my back against a wall. It hurts, but not enough to elicit a response.

“Where were you?”

I blink in response this time, a little better, I guess.

Justin lets go and regards me with a scowl.

I slip to the floor and bang my spine against the windowsill.

Then Justin’s fist smashes into my jaw.

“Ow,” I say in a dry voice.

I wonder vaguely why my brother would want to hit me. All I’d been doing was sleeping. And dreaming.

Justin strikes out at me with his foot and makes contact just below my ribs.

“Christ!” I cry as I gasp for air.

“What did you just say?”

I stare at the ground and mumble, “I don’t know.”

What is wrong with you? I think.

Justin’s eyes go wide, “Who are you?”

You are a who, Mallory Fionn, and it would do you well to remember that.

It was a dream, right? A dream. Not a truth. Then again, what makes reality truth and a dream a lie?

I look down at my hands, which I’ve unconsciously balled into fists. I unclench my fingers and feel a small, sharp tug as each nail pulls free off my palm. Where the nails had dug into my skin, small red beads appear on the filthy skin.

My hands are blackened with dirt or flame. Why are my hands blackened? I was just sleeping, wasn’t I?

I think about my brother yelling at me only seconds ago. Where the hell were you?

Where was I? I think. And then answer it with, don’t bullshit yourself.

It’s not possible.

“Justin?” I look up, but my brother’s not there.

“Mallory?”

The almost-closed door creaks as my father pushes it open. Then he appears where before had been white-painted wood. He stares at me as though I’m a ghost. Or a Sro.

It had to be a dream. Nothing else made sense…

“You’re here,” says my father in a voice conveying more awe than I thought he was capable of.

“Was I not?” I ask in a way that sounds rather insolent, although I didn’t mean for it to.

I grab the windowsill that had recently tried to destroy my spine, and use it to pull myself to my feet.

The lines racing across my father’s face seem deeper than they had the last time I saw him, and his complexion grayer, as though it felt out of place among the endless gray of our home.

“You should be dead,” he comments with more than a little disgruntlement.

Probably a dream…

I look up at the ceiling, suddenly aware of the rigidity of my t-shirt against my skin. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Christ, Mallory. You can’t just take off like that. I thought you knew that.”

I smash the heel of my hand into my eye and ask, “How long was I gone for?”

“What?” He’s past worry and moved straight on to anger, which is unsurprising, but I still don’t understand what I’ve done.

Maybe a dream…

“Humour me, please.”

I can feel my face starting to swell where my brother’s fist had made contact, but it doesn’t really hurt like you’d expect it to.

“Two weeks, Mallory,” says my father, being both quiet and angry at the same time.

Not a dream.

“Oh. I’m…sorry…” my voice trails off.

The muscles in my father’s jaw go taunt, and he looks down at the floor. Gray wood planks, of course. “You were in the Wood.”

I wish it were a question, and one that I could honestly say no to, at that. But it isn’t and I can’t. “Yes. But I thought—I thought it couldn’t have been more than a day.”

Tim shakes his head and presses his fist against the doorframe at his side. “How? What would make you do something so incredibly stupid? Why, Mallory?” My father is yelling. I’m not fond of his yelling.

You could tell him a half truth, I think, but I don’t. To my surprise I say, “My mother asked me to,”

My father bites his lip and turns, likely to get away from me, but he stops for long enough to tell me I need a shower.

“Okay…” I say to myself.

So, this is the lovely mess I’ve gotten myself into. The only people that seem to remotely care about me are beyond angry, possibly permanently.

I never try to piss people off, or hurt them. I guess I’m just a born jackass. Seems about right. After all, a jackass is the product of a pony and an ass, though I couldn’t tell you who is what.

Actually, I don’t like the idea of being any more animal than I already am, and the part about my dad was unfair.

Or was it?

I had really been in the Wood. The honest truth. No denying it. Meaning that I’d really walked along side my mother, I’d really spoken to her. Thinking back, she’d said she hadn’t named me Mallory. Which isn’t really condemning evidence for my father being an ass, but he’d always said he hadn’t named me Mallory.

Of course, the sidhe could have easily been lying, but why would she? She could have just pretended to not hear the part about my hatred for my name.

And all of that was a result of Maeve hearing my thoughts, which was weird. Really weird.

I wish I could head to the cliffs, but I don’t think Tim would let me come back if I went anywhere in the foreseeable future. So I guess a shower is the closest I’d be getting to any water.

I bend down and flip over a basket that had likely been knocked off my bed. Beneath the over-turned basket is a small pile of clean-enough clothes. I sort through until I have enough clothes to appear decent, and head out of my room.

I make my way across the house to the bathroom without meeting my father, which is a small relief, although I’m not quite sure why.

Our bathroom is relatively small, like I assume most are, and the only room in the house that isn’t oppressively gray, since the tile floor and the walls are white. Which isn’t a huge difference, but it’s something.

Other than the whiteness of the room, there’s also a shower, a toilet and a sink with a mirror hanging over it.

I glance at my reflection, or only mean to glance at it, and end up staring, and then stepping closer so that I’m right in front of the mirror.

There’s something off, but I can’t tell what.

It’s not the swell that’s overrun half of my face, because I’ve had a lot worse. It’s not the dirt, because, again, I’ve been worse before. I just can’t place it.

The skin is tight across my cheekbone on the left as it always is, making my cheek look hollow and my jaw tight, and then there’s the purplish bruise spreading across my cheek. My eyes are as mad as ever, and my nose slightly crooked.

A chill breeze bursts through the open window, high on the wall, lifting the air off my forehead long enough for me to see something strange. I push back my hair, and there, scratched into my forehead, is the mark of Lucifer, and since it’s still there, it was done with an iron blade.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, remembering when I first tried to pull my knife on my mother.

I laugh quietly and turn away from the mirror wondering if the fey even have anything to do with the Devil, and then deciding not.

I turn on the shower and then take off my clothes before stepping into the frigid water. For some unfathomable reason, we don’t have a hot water tank, nor does my father seem to see any reason to get one.

Whenever I finally leave, that’s going to be the first thing I check for in my house, hot water. Or not. I don’t know. Chances are I’ll never leave.

I mean, what would I do without the cattle? I don’t fancy the idea of going off to work on the docks, or the mine, and my dad really can’t do all of the work here on his own. The worst part is, he’d give me the cattle if I asked for them and just buy himself some more, or give me money to head off to the mainland and pick my own. Really, he’d give me the money to go and never come back if I asked for it, and he’d do the same for Justin.

Of all the similarities and differences between me and my brother, I think that’s the biggest, other than him being human. If our father offered us money to leave and never come back, Justin would take it without a second thought if that was what he wanted, but I could never do something like that. Even if my dad was just giving me a handful of heifers, I couldn’t take them without giving him anything in return. And I don’t have anything to give him.

I don’t know why, but I always think about stuff like that whenever I take a shower or bathe or really anything with water.

Wait, no. That’s horrible, that’s not what I meant. I meant, like, serious stuff, not my family.

I have to laugh for a second, only a little, at the perversion in that sentence, and it’s not like that. Ever. Never.

I don’t think I can ever bathe again.

My father and brother are talking quietly about something when I walk into the kitchen.

It feels unbelievably—nice, maybe?—to have clean clothes covering my clean skin. I wish I could have cut my hair as well, but I’d rather at least try to hide my mother’s “gift”.

Mind you, Justin and Tim seem much too involved in whatever they’re talking about to notice a little Devil’s sign.

I stand in the doorway to keep from disturbing them, which doesn’t do much anyway since my brother still notices me. Both he and my father look troubled, which is rare for the first, but not the second.

“Sorry about your face,” says my brother.

I shrug and say, “I deserved it.”

My brother frowns further. “Yeah, you did, but I still shouldn’t have done it.”

He makes his way past me, into the hall. A few seconds later the door slams for a second time.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

My father sits down at the table and glances at his hands the exact way I do when I feel guilty or ashamed. “Justin’s headed over to George’s, they’re saying his sister’s on her death bed.”

I feel my eyes widen with shock. “Her what?”

The last time I’d seen Lorna Owens she’d been smiling at her young lad. Well, not her young lad, but I’m sure, with the way I’ve heard George and Justin talk, Sean—I think his name’s Sean—might as well be her son instead of her brother.

Really, the last time I’d seen Lorna she’d been smiling at me. Though I doubt she meant to.

Either way, she’d seemed rather alive. Not sickly in the slightest.

My father’s said something, and I’ve missed it. “I’m sorry?”

Tim shakes his head, and I can tell he’s angry with me, but instead he just says, “I’m sure she’s no concern of yours. Wouldn’t want to bore you.”

“No. I’m sorry. I…” really, Lorna Owens wasn’t one of my concerns, but I still wanted to know. I don’t really know why. “I mean, did she fall or…”

I try to think of another reason she could be dying, but I can’t come up with any.

“She’s sick, I know that much. Wasn’t sick for long, neither. No, only came down with it a couple weeks ago…”

He continues, but I get lost within my mind.

Two weeks, I think. And then I remember when Lorna Owens got lost in the Wood, years ago. But more recently, the way she’d looked at Wanderer’s Wood. I reckon it was rather similar to the way I do.

Two weeks…

I glance down at my father, who’s stopped talking, and is back to staring at his hands.

“I…have to go,” I say to my father.

He stares up at me, and then the anger comes, “Mallory—”

“I’ll swear to any gods you want me to that I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“I don’t think—” he starts.

“I should waste any time if I’m to be back soon, couldn’t agree more.”

And then I’m off, away from the kitchen, down the grey hall, through the front door, and upon seeing the snow and feeling the December chill, step back inside and grabbing my jacket from the hook on the wall and putting on my work boots. All the while being yelled a by my father.

The thin layer of snow crunches beneath my weight as I cross it to the fence rail, which I duck, and then continue on towards the Wood. Probably not one of my smartest ideas, but how can I not try to save somebody when it comes at such a small cost. Lorna Owens may not mean much to me, but I know she has to mean something to at least some of her family.

Wouldn’t Tim want somebody to do the same for me? Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Would he? Says that cruel voice in the back of my head.

“Shut up,” I say under my breath.

It doesn’t take long for me to reach the base of the Wood, but I happen to have the misfortune of turning around. My father is leaning against the fence rail, and even though I can’t make out his face from here, I know what it says. If I go in the Wood, he doesn’t want me to come back.

Screw it, I’ll explain later, if I actually can.

I don’t even know how I have the faintest idea of what I’m doing, but I do. I just have these memories, like dreams, from when I was in the faerie halls, after the valley of the dead. I just seem to…know all these things…even though I never learnt them.

I step into the shade of the great gnarled trees, and instantly find myself in another world.

I glance around for the little blue lilies, and find one to my right, beginning to fall and transform. When its little head appears, it smiles, showing me all of its little teeth.

“Hello,” I say, not fully aware of how to conduct myself.

The little sidhe doesn’t say anything, but it opens and clothes its mouth, and then spins around in a little circle.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find some clover.”

The little faerie laughs, and then grabs at the bottom of its lily skirts. From within, it retrieves a little bundle of three and four leaf clovers, and then holds them out in its tiny hand.

When I don’t take it immediately, the little faerie glides forward and sticks the clovers in my jacket’s left pocket.

“Take,” it says in a small voice.

“Thank you…” I say, not quite sure how you’re supposed to react when a little faerie gives you something from beneath their skirt. Actually, I don’t know how to react to anyone doing that.

“For help you,” it says, confirming that it has a very small grasp on the English language, which is better than none at all.

The little sidhe laughs again and then glides back up into the branches of a near tree, which swats at it before letting the little flower-being rest upon its limbs.

I watch the little flower for longer than I should before turning back to the world of the Sakrot.

Wanderer’s Wood is named as such for its ability to confuse men beyond reason, leaving them to wander until the fey can collect them, but for me, it is the same as any wood.

Back in the cold of the human world, my father is still leaning against the fence post, watching, meaning an hour is the longest I could have been gone for.

I glance around before leaving the shelter of the trees, and don’t see my cows about, so they’re likely across the road, which makes me feel guilty for not being there to help, not that it matters right now.

I run back up towards the house, and have to stop at the rail in front of my father.

His face is the exact same as I thought it would be. He looks like he hates me. Like he’s about to quite literally disown me.

I kind of hope he’s too angry for words, that he’ll just beat me and be through with it so I can get on with my business. Saving lives and such.

This likely seems insane, and if I were my father, I wouldn’t get it either, but when a faerie as powerful as Maeve passes into our world, it takes something to compensate, so sometimes people related to the Wood get sick with it, which is what happened to Justin’s mum, I figure.

I move to the side and duck the fence.

“Hey, do we have any velvet?” I ask cheerily.

“Any…Ma—”

“Never mind, I think there’s some purple cloth in a drawer.”

I head back up to the house, trying to figure out what I could be high on.

Maybe it’s just on the prospect of being able to decide if somebody lives or dies, and that frightens me beyond belief. People aren’t supposed to be like that. At least not the decent ones.

I stop to grab a handful of snow and then smash it into my face, feeling the shock of the cold, trying to bring myself back to my senses.

I step up the porch stairs and then fling open the screen door before stepping inside. Because trying to walk through the screen door would have been really stupid.

I walk through the open double doors into the living room.

Like the rest of the house, it’s grey, but it has enough deep wooden furniture to offset it. I cross the room to the largest furnishing, a large dark-wood wardrobe.

Upon opening one of the big doors, I see the little pile I seek in the bottom corner. I bend down and go through the little squares of fabric, finally finding one of a deep purple. I grab the little piece, and then head for the kitchen, where I know I’ll find coarse salt which I’ll need as well if this is to work.

And here’s to hoping it would work.

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