Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (9 page)

. . . and an abomination.

Seth jolted up, spitting blood and flesh to the dirt, and launched his body onto Eli’s back. Grabbing Eli’s arm, Seth twisted it at an almost-impossible angle, then held it against Eli’s back while he grunted and groaned beneath Seth. Eli grappled at the dirt with his free hand, finally managing to grab a handful and somehow throw it back into Seth’s face.

Wilt thou also destroy the righteous . . .

Momentarily blinded, Seth dropped Eli’s arm, and Eli bucked Seth off his back, rising to all fours. Seth, on all fours across from Eli, had raised his hand to wipe his eyes when he felt a fierce punch to his temple. His knees collapsed, and his chest hit the ground hard. Eli rolled him over, straddling his chest with his considerable girth and landed two more punches on Seth’s face, the crack of bone alerting Seth to the likelihood of another cheek fracture.

. . . with the wicked?

He grunted from the pain, sliding his arms through the backs of Eli’s sweaty knees and pinching him hard under the thigh. Eli shrieked with surprise, garnering a loud laugh from the bystanders, and Seth used the advantage to wriggle out from underneath him.

Are you whole or broken, Holden?

Scooting back on his ass, his face on fire and blood blurring his vision, Seth drew his leg back, then shoved it forward, catching Eli in the center of the chest and knocking the wind out of him as he fell back. Seth crawled the short way to Eli, punching him hard in the balls before straddling his chest. Eli groaned with pain, his body trying unsuccessfully to jackknife as Seth whaled on his face indiscriminately with his fists, over and over and over again, until his knuckles were covered with blood, slick and slimy, and he heard the wet choke of Eli trying to gasp for breath.

I’m broken, Gris. I’m finally broken.

“Seth! Seth! It’s done! Seth! Stop! It’s over!”

Through a feverish haze of vicious anger, he heard Clinton’s voice directly above him. His fists stilled, and he leaned back, sucking down a raspy boatload of air and staring up at the starry sky.

Over?

No way.

It’ll never be over.

Struggling to his feet, Seth swayed, staring down at his opponent, whose face looked like a mask—misshapen and covered with a thick slick of reddish-black blood. Sliding his glance to Eli’s chest, he noted that it still swelled and fell with breath, so he wasn’t dead.

Clinton put his hand on Seth’s arm, and Seth turned to him. Through one swollen eye and one blurry from blood, he looked at his friend.

“It’s done, Seth. You win.”

Clinton held up Seth’s arm, and the crowd went wild, chanting, screaming, cheering, and jumping into the ring to celebrate.

“Good,” mumbled Seth.

He shook off Clinton and started across the ring toward Quint, who beamed back at him, his triumphant fists in the air. But Seth was suddenly distracted. Behind Quint—just behind him and to the side—he saw long, strawberry-blonde hair. The girl’s back was to Seth, but her hair fell past her shoulders, in soft, beautiful waves. The amber color was painfully familiar, and he dropped his eyes to her tight waist and the gentle swell of her hips in blue jeans. Sliding his eyes slowly back up her body, he noticed that her hands were on her hips, and it appeared as though she was yelling at the taller of the two college boys because her posture was rigid and the boy was laughing at her. She shook her head before turning away from the guy next to Quint, giving him her back as a gesture of anger, and pivoting to face the ring.

And suddenly all of the air—every last particle of oxygen—was sucked out of that field.

Unable to breathe, frozen in place, Seth’s eyes widened, and his whole body started to tremble. He tried to blink because—
holy fuck!—
this had to be a hallucination or a head injury, or maybe he was dead and this was heaven. Because standing there beside Quint, arms crossed angrily over her chest, was a girl who was the spitting image of Griselda. She was ten years older, but her amber hair flowed free around her shoulders, and her blue eyes flashed with an expression so familiar it made his heart race and ache at the same time.

The college boy put his hand on her shoulder, turning her around partway with a jerk so that her profile faced Seth, and he felt it again, like a shot to the gut: she was familiar. She was so goddamned familiar, he felt like this was a trick, or he was in a movie, or like maybe that hit to his cheek had somehow fucked up his brain. Because—
oh my God
—this girl looked so much like Gris, he could almost believe it was . . . and there wasn’t a force on earth that could have stopped him from moving closer.

Plowing through well-wishers, he pushed his way across the ring as he kept his eyes glued on the girl, who was arguing furiously with the college boy now. She was so distracted, he had a perfect view of her profile as he drew closer, and his knees buckled in an awe that was so huge it frightened him. Weak and shocked, confused and crazy, he still staggered forward, examining her features with every step closer.

It can’t be her.

She’s dead.

You’re hallucinating.

When he was about ten feet away, the college boy shifted his eyes to Seth, and after a moment, her neck twisted to see what her boyfriend was looking at. Her lips parted, her eyes locking on Seth’s. She cringed, searching his face as her blue eyes widened in revulsion, not recognition. If Eli’s face looked like burger, there was a good chance his did too. She didn’t recognize him, but fuck if he didn’t recognize her.

Gris.
It’s you.

“Is it you?” he rasped, his heart thundering, his lungs barely able to fill, and his head increasingly whirling.

Like the sweetest sweet dream, or the most delusional insanity, she stood before him once again, resurrected from the dead. His Gris. Dead and yet alive. Was it possible? Was it possible that she had somehow survived? Dug herself out of that grave and survived?

No. Dead people do not come back to life.

I’m seein’ dead people. I’ve gone crazy
, he thought, laughing to himself, which hurt like fuck. Even with the same-colored hair and similar blue eyes, it couldn’t be Gris. She was dead. He’d seen the grave. He’d visited it again the same day he returned to West Virginia, and there wasn’t a trace of her body left, ravaged by wild animals and dragged away in the night. She was gone. Gone, gone, gone. And yet . . . and yet, if he could just get a little closer to this girl, maybe he could reach for her, look into her eyes . . . just to make certain.

He shook his head violently, blood and spit flying in both directions as he tried to block out the congratulations and cheering, forcibly pushing away someone who got in his path. When he was about five feet away, he swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, then looked back at her, his chest constricting and his heart stopping as he dropped his eyes, half afraid, to her chin. And there, in the crease under her lip, was a two-inch scar.

His eyes jerked back up to hers, and his heart thundered in his ears, blocking out the noise of the crowd around him. Feeling her name on his tongue for the first time in ten years, it bubbled up from a lost and almost-forgotten place.

The knife pierced his side a first, second, and third time,
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,
and he felt the slices—the sharp, foreign pain of blade to flesh—but still he didn’t stop.

Without dropping her eyes, he pushed someone else out of his path, shrugging off someone who tried to put an arm around his shoulders.
Whoosh
again, as a fourth stab cut through his skin, making him twist slightly and gasp in pain. But still he wouldn’t release her eyes. He couldn’t let her go. It was impossible that she was alive, and yet somehow . . . he flicked his eyes to the scar again for reassurance, and there it was.

He was almost there. Two more steps and he’d be over the bales. He’d reach out his hands and fall into her arms. Bracing one foot on the hay bale before him, he gathered his strength to step over. Quint was yelling something, leaning toward Seth and yelling something, but Seth used all his draining strength to stay focused on her.

“G-G-Gris?” he sobbed, and her eyes widened, just before her face was suddenly whipped sharply to the side. Her body seemed to go limp, falling into the man she’d been fighting with, and Seth screamed, “G-G-Griiiiiiiiiis!”

Lurching forward, he was reaching for her when a blow to the back of his head knocked him out cold. His unconscious body fell, slumping over the hay bales between them, soaking the pale yellow strands with his blood.

Griselda

It was pitch-dark, like every other night, but it was getting cold again. Griselda guessed that it was late September or early October, which meant that they’d been living in the Man’s cellar for a year and three months. A couple more months and she’d be twelve.

The Man had come down an hour before, giving them each a bowl of watery oatmeal, which they ate on a bench as he read from the Bible. As soon as they were finished eating, he’d locked Griselda back in her room. She’d listened for his feet going back up the basement stairs, for the closing of the door, for the turn of the lock. About thirty minutes later, she heard the engine of his truck as he pulled out of the driveway.

For now—for the next couple of hours—there would be peace, but chances were, he’d be back with a vengeance later, whiskey on his breath, two pails of hot water and bleach in his hands as he demanded that they scrub the cellar floor until dawn.

Idle hands are the devil’s playground! And you are the devil’s child, Ruth!

Her cracked hands ached from gardening all day, and she wished they had more than chainsaw bar oil to soften them and heal the cracks. She thought of taking a little and rubbing it into her hands, but there was only half a container left, and they were lucky they’d found it among the things on his tool bench. Don’t waste it, she thought. Better to wait until tomorrow. By tomorrow, after her hands had essentially soaked in bleach all night, they’d be on fire.

She crawled through the panel and sat on the floor by Holden’s bed, leaning her shoulders against the rusted metal bed frame behind her.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

“W-w-want to lie down?”

“Nah,” she said, staying on the floor.

Sometimes when she got in bed next to Holden, she felt so warm and so safe for a little while she could almost trick herself into believing they weren’t being held captive in a cellar. It hurt all the more when she had to go back to her own bed.

Holden rolled as close as possible to the edge, near her head, so that when he exhaled, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her ear, and it made her shiver in a good way.

“T-t-tell me a story, Gris.”

“A story?”

“Yeah. You f-f-finished that one about the city cat and the c-c-country mouse today.”

“And you’re already wanting another?” she teased, letting her eyes flutter closed as he breathed in, then out.

“P-p-please, Gris.”

“Okay,” she said, relenting, as she always did, and smiling into the darkness because it felt good to be needed. “A story. About what?”

“How about a happy ending?”

“Mmm,” she sighed. “A happy ending. Those are your favorite, Holden.”

“Sure are.”

“Okay. Let me think for a minute.”

She thought about the fairy tales she’d read before the Man had kidnapped them and locked them in his cellar, letting different characters and story themes mesh together until they became something original.

“Once upon a time, there was a princess. Princess . . .”

“Griselda?” offered Holden, who, she noticed, rarely stammered when she was telling stories, almost like he forgot to for a while.

“No, silly. I’m not a princess. Princess . . . Sunshine. Princess Sunshine was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. She had hair so white it shined like silver, and eyes so blue they were like a summer sky. Her heart was warm and true, and it belonged to Prince . . .”

“Holden.”

She giggled. “Nope. Prince . . . Twilight.”

“T-twilight?”

“Yes. She’s the bright sun. and he’s the quiet end of day.”

She knew Holden was smiling at the back of her head, even though she couldn’t see his face, and she smiled too.

“Anyway, there was an evil princess who was jealous of Princess Sunshine. She was Sunshine’s sister, called Princess Stormcloud, with jet-black hair and dark gray eyes, and she was in love with Prince Twilight too.”

“B-b-but he loved Sunshine.”

“He did,” said Griselda.

“One night, Princess Stormcloud put poison in Princess Sunshine’s soda goblet, and when Princess Sunshine drank it, she fell off her chair and looked dead.”

“B-b-but was she?”

“She sure looked like it.”

“Then what?”

“Princess Stormcloud dragged her sister to a shed and locked her inside. Princess Stormcloud told the whole kingdom that her stupid sister who she always hated was dead. And Prince Twilight was supersad when he heard the news. But he wasn’t like a crybaby sad. He was angry sad.”

“A fighter,” said Holden, with respect.

“Uh-huh. A fighter,” confirmed Griselda, grinning. “So he had to go see what had happened for himself and maybe kill Princess Stormcloud for revenge. He rode his horse up to the castle, and Princess Stormcloud did her makeup all perfect so she was real pretty, but he could see her cold and false heart and demanded to see her dead sister. Princess Stormcloud felt mad about that and offered him some soda from Princess Sunshine’s goblet.”

“He didn’t drink it!”

“He did. He was tired from riding that horse all afternoon.”

“And then?”

“He fell over too. So Princess Stormcloud decided to drag him out to the shed too, until she could figure out what to do with the two dead people on her property. Meanwhile, Princess Sunshine and Prince Twilight were dumped in the shed, but the way Princess Stormcloud had dragged them there, they were dead face-to-face.”

“This one’s sad, Gris,” said Holden, propping himself up on his elbow.

“Don’t you have any faith in me?”

“I guess,” he said, lying back down again.

“So that night, the kingdom had its one hundredth earthquake, and nobody knew it, but that was a special earthquake for two reasons: one, it released a whole bunch of fairy pixie dust that could bring two special people back to life, but only if they kissed; and two, the earthquake jostled Princess Sunshine and Prince Twilight enough that their lips pressed together in that shed. And guess what?”

“They came back from the, uh, the d-d-dead?”

“Yep! They came back from the dead! Prince Twilight broke down the door of that shed and picked up Princess Sunshine off the dirt floor, and they walked outside. And even though there was some damage from the earthquake, it was still their kingdom, so they hired people to fix stuff.”

“And P-P-Princess Stormcloud?”

“The same fairy pixie dust that brought the prince and princess back to life sent her to the everlasting fires of hell,” she said, borrowing one of the phrases the Man used every day.

“Good.”

“And she never bothered nobody again.”

“The end,” said Holden.

“The end.”

“G-g-good one, Gris.”

She leaned her head back against the mattress, and the top of her head brushed into his chest. After a moment, she felt one of his hands drop to her head, moving gently across her hair, following the woven lines of one of her braids.

“That’s so nice,” she murmured, closing her eyes, and he did it again, more confidently this time. Griselda wiggled backward a little, twisting her neck until her cheek lay against the mattress.

His hand moved back to her crown, his warm, rough fingers caressing her forehead before drawing back, over her scalp to the braid, which he followed to her neck, his fingers lingering on her skin for a moment before lighting back to her crown once again.

***

The sun in her eyes was blinding as she blinked to open them. She bolted upright, scrambling against the headboard of the bed, disoriented and confused. Hugging her knees to her chest, she looked down to see Jonah snoring beside her. She was wearing a T-shirt and panties, but she had no memory of coming home, getting changed for bed, going to sleep. She had no memory except . . .

Except the fighter in the ring last night, staring at her, stumbling toward her. He was her last memory. The eyes in his swollen, bruised, and bloody face had locked on hers as he staggered across the ring, and she couldn’t force herself to look away, no matter how strange it felt. He kept moving toward her, as though fascinated, as though transfixed. And then, just as he got close enough to reach out to her . . . darkness.

She took a deep breath, turning to look down at Jonah again, and realized that her head was throbbing with pain. Wincing, she slid her hand into her hair and felt a welt the size of a golf ball.

“What the hell?”

“You took an elbow to the head,” mumbled Jonah, eyes slitted open, looking up at her.

“An . . . an elbow?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What happened?”

“That big fucker who lost the fight had a knife, apparently. He got the winner—um, Seth? Yeah, he got Seth two or three times in the gut from behind before sucker punching him in the back of the head. Dude was headed toward us across the ring. Quint saw it happen and jumped his ass over the ring to grab the knife from the other guy, and you caught Quint’s elbow in the head.”

“Quint elbowed me in the head?”

Jonah yawned. “Yeah.”

“Then what?”

“Well, you and Seth were both knocked out cold, and that’s when the whole fucking place explodes. I mean, crazy shit. Everyone from one town hitting everyone from the other town. Just an all-out ugly brawl. Um, so . . . oh yeah, so Quint and Clinton dragged Seth back to their truck. The cuts didn’t look too deep, but he was bleeding all over the place and shit, and I was carrying you over my shoulder. Quint put an old horse blanket down in the back of the truck, and Shawn helped them get Seth lying down back there, and I put you down next to him for five minutes ’cause Quint had a few beers left over, and we thought you would wake up. But you didn’t, so Shawn helped me get you in his car, and I think they took Seth to a clinic or something to be sure he was okay. I knew you’d be fine. You’re tough, Zelda.”

It was strange having an entire chunk of her life retold to her. She had almost no memory of anything Jonah described . . . but her dream came back to her suddenly. She jumped out of bed and looked in the mirror, and there, on the crown of her head were bloody fingerprints, as if the injured fighter had run his fingers over her hair.

“How’d I get blood in my hair?”

Jonah sat up, scrubbing his hands over his sleepy face and shrugging. “I don’t know. Probably brushed up against Seth when you fell . . . or maybe when we put you next to him in the back of the truck for a few minutes.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and wished she had some Advil. “What happened to him?”

“Seth?” Jonah shook his head. “Fuck if I know. He needed a few stitches. Pretty sure of that.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m taking a shower. Want to join me?”

She shook her head, covering the welt with her palm. “Not right now.”

He nodded, circling the bed and closing the bathroom door behind him.

Griselda’s memories of last night, after leaving Rosie’s, were not great. Like many children who’d suffered cumulative physical abuse, the three years of regular, sustained trauma at Caleb Foster’s hands meant that her memory was not top-notch. Add another concussion like last night’s to the pile and it meant a significant blackout.

Not totally sure why she felt such a strong need to remember the events of last night in better detail, she concentrated hard, trying to put together what had happened after leaving Rosie’s.

She remembered sitting beside Jonah in Shawn’s car and driving out to the field. She remembered parking the car and walking to the hay bales, but her stomach turned over when she realized that Quint and Clinton were probably recognizing her from abduction posters. Coupled with her distress over the fighter’s name and Jonah almost getting into it with Clinton, she’d let Tina guide her away from the ring. They’d found a hay bale on its own a little way away from the roar of the crowd and sat down together, drinking much-too-sweet wine and talking about what asses men could be.

When the fight began, some real rowdiness followed, and she remembered two guys approaching her and Tina. They got a little fresh, offering the girls whiskey before the smaller one reached out and groped Tina’s chest. She hauled off and smacked him, and he smacked her back. Griselda stood up quickly, kicked the bigger one in the balls as a distraction, grabbed Tina’s arm, and ran back to Jonah and Shawn. As soon as she found them, she lit into Jonah, screaming about what had happened and insisting that they leave immediately.

Just about then, the crowd around the ring exploded. The fight was already over. Jonah, who was half laughing about not being able to hear her, pissed her off, and she gave him her back.

That’s when she saw him: the fighter. Seth.

He was bare-chested, covered with sinew of muscle, maybe thirty years old, with a torso and arms covered with tattoos, and a thick head of light brown hair. His face was barely human, covered in blood, his lips puffy and bloody, one eye swollen shut, the other narrow and slitted as blood ran from a gash in his forehead. His nose appeared broken, but it was hard to tell behind the blood. His wounds were so grotesque, she gasped and stared as he approached her. But once his eyes locked on hers, she found it impossible to look away. She didn’t know him, didn’t recognize him, and yet she felt an incredible connection to him. It was as though the noise of the ring and craziness of the event had ceased around them and they were the only two people who existed in the whole world.