CHAPTER 11
They rode for several more hours, right up until the sun began to set. When Shield Maiden slowed the bike to a stop for the day, she seemed to be considering the area they were in carefully, as though they were close to their destination.
“Are you going to tell me when we get there?” asked Malcolm.
She shrugged. “I don’t know exactly where ‘there’ is. Rose was last seen in this general area, but it was days ago. She could be waiting just down the road, or a hundred miles in another direction.”
Malcolm frowned. He glanced across the relatively flat plains. There were a couple of farms in the distance, all of them abandoned and overgrown with weeds. The sun was an orange torch on the horizon, but there wasn’t anything else nearby that grabbed his attention.
“So… what?” he asked. “We look until we start to run out of gas, and then turn back?”
Shield Maiden smiled sadly and gave a slow nod.
“You can give up if you want,” she said. “You do have that choice.”
“Never.” Malcolm swallowed his doubts, knowing that she was right.
The motorcycle’s saddlebags were loaded with supplies for the night. Malcolm set about collecting loose boards from an abandoned farm to start a fire, while Shield Maiden set up a pop-tent.
They only had travel rations for dinner, but it was still better than what Malcolm had grown used to over months of scraping by in his Vanderbrook hovel. He managed to get his tinder bundle to catch spark, and slowly fed the fire as the last rays of sunlight disappeared over the horizon.
“You love her,” said Shield Maiden. “Don’t you?”
Malcolm smiled. Shield Maiden was not one for small talk. She always jumped straight to the point.
“I do,” he said. “And I have to find her. Even if it takes years.”
“It’s not easy to lose someone you love,” said Shield Maiden. “Especially when the world is in chaos.”
Malcolm chewed his lower lip, deciding how to approach the fact that had been hanging in the air over them. He’d killed Rain Dancer, the man Shield Maiden had loved. He didn’t know what to say, but he knew he had to say something.
“I’m sorry,” he finally managed. “About… Rain Dancer. I’m sorry that things happened the way that they did.”
Shield Maiden’s eyes locked onto his. Her face was so strange looking, pretty, but totally foreign in both color and pattern. But her eyes… they spoke to him as anyone’s would. He saw the pain, the loss… and the acceptance.
“How else could things have played out?” she asked, after a long while. “I cared for Rain Dancer. But I knew him as he was, not as he wanted to be or could have been. He was ambitious. He held grudges. And he… well, he was who he was.”
Malcolm didn’t say anything. Even though he’d been the one to bring the conversation in the direction of Rain Dancer, he now felt like the silence belonged to Shield Maiden.
“I cared for him… so much,” she whispered. “In some ways, it was like experiencing first love over again. I don’t have many memories left from the time before I became a spryte, so each touch, each kiss… every date. It was all new to me.”
Malcolm wanted to ask her for more details, but knew it would have the opposite effect. He stayed silent.
“He took me to an amusement park once.” Shield Maiden brushed her hair out of her face and smiled. “In the middle of the night, when there was nobody there. The rides were all shut off, but that wasn’t an obstacle to him. He took my hand, and asked me which one I wanted to try, and then he used his powers to bring it to life, and we had it all to ourselves”
Her smile faded.
“I think that was what he wanted, in the end,” she said. “Not peace, not really. He wanted to have a part of the world just for himself, to share with those he cared about.” Shield Maiden cleared her throat. “When the security guards showed up to the amusement park… he killed them.”
She said no more.
That’s probably as good of a place for a story to end as any.
The two of them sat watching the fire, both thinking their own thoughts. A sound in the distance drew Malcolm’s attention. He looked up, frowning as he scanned the landscape around them.
They were far enough out from Vanderbrook and Halter City and the light pollution for the night sky to provide the only illumination. The view made what Malcolm was looking at all the more unusual. A splotch of unnatural darkness was growing wider on the horizon, approaching them at high speed.
“Rose!” Malcolm stood up and took a step forward. Shield Maiden seized him by the shirt and pulled him back.
“Stay near the fire!” she hissed. “Stay in the light!”
The hairs on Malcolm’s neck stood up, even as his heart pounded with anticipation. The darkness resolved into the shape of a figure, one that slowly moved toward the edge of the fire’s reach.
It was the first time Malcolm had seen Rose since they’d fallen into Multi’s trap months earlier. Her skin was pale purple, lacking the healthy color he remembered. Her hair was tangled, long, and unkempt.
She’d lost weight, and it was most apparent in the gauntness of her face and sharpness of her cheek bones. Her clothes were ragged, shredded almost to the point of being lewd. Shadows moved about her arms and legs, sliding along her body like tribal tattoos come to life.
“Rose…” Malcolm said. He lifted his hand and extended it toward her. “It’s me. I’m here.”
Her eyes were dark pits, but they seemed to blaze as they met his. Shield Maiden pulled back on his shoulder and let out a cry as Rose’s shadow tendrils shot forward, coming within a hair of slicing into Malcolm’s chest.
He almost tripped backward into the fire, rolling to the side at the last instant. Rose seemed to hover over the ground, rather than walking, as she approached them. Shield Maiden roughly pulled Malcolm further away from her. She lifted a hand, preparing to encase Rose in a shield bubble, more for their protection than for hers.
Rose let out a scream that sounded more animal than human and swiped at Shield Maiden with a shadow. The blow struck the spryte in the chest with the force of a club swung by a giant. Shield Maiden flew a dozen or so feet in the air and landed in a crumpled pile.
“Rose!” cried Malcolm. “Stop! It’s me and Shield Maiden! You know us!”
She did know us, once upon a time. Does she not remember?
Shadows shot forward, wrapping around Malcolm’s arms and legs and lifting him into the air. His stomach twisted in panic. Even back when he’d had his wind manipulation, Malcolm had been outmatched by Rose in terms of pure power.
“Rose!” He screamed as he felt her begin to pull, stretching his limbs like a curious child might torture a spider. “No!”
She hesitated, holding him where he was for a moment. Slowly, Rose drew him in closer, until she held Malcolm no more than a foot away from her.
“It’s me…” he managed. “Malcolm.”
There was no sign of recognition in her eyes.
“Your little pet champion,” he said, feeling his heart ache for the time when she’d used those words.
Rose furrowed her brow and blinked. Her shoulders relaxed, and she lowered Malcolm to the ground.
“You… Do you know who I am?” she asked.
“Rose,” said Malcolm. “Rosalina. You’re a spryte, and a friend of mine.”
“Do you… know Brenden?” she asked.
The question struck Malcolm like a punch to the gut. Brenden had been her former fiancé, and the two of them had shared a life together up until the day that Rose had become a spryte.
“No,” said Malcolm. “It’s me. Malcolm. Your… friend.”
Rose slowly shook her head, her eyes showing no recognition.
She remembers Brenden… But not me?