Chapter 9

Lucy

It's still not dawn, and Lucy shivers and pulls the thin jacket closer around her. The park lies deserted and has done so the whole night. She’s not sure where in the city she is; she never saw where she was running as she fled from Gullvi’s house.

The air is still, and she’s doing her best not to let her tired mind linger on what happened last night. Whatever it was, it was real, that much she knows. Even now, when her eyes are closed, she can see hands reaching out for her. Black hands that claw from the darkness. She shakes her head, trying to dispel the vision.

She doesn’t want to think about it. And not about Milady, either. She doesn’t know who she is, but she’s not the person she’s said she was. Just like the job she said they would do wasn’t real either. It was something else, and Gullvi must have been part of it. Her mind is too tired to stray any deeper. She just knows she wants to leave it as far behind as possible.

Something rustles behind her, and she quickly turns, but it’s only a rat finding its way through the dry leaves. She goes back to staring at the dark ground. She should cry, but the tiredness and the numbness from the night stop it, and she’s left huddling on the bench. What shall she do now? She can’t go back home, even though she wants to. She can’t explain what has happened, won’t be able to tell her parents about this. But she doesn’t know what else. None of the movies she’s watched have ended like this.

She sits there until the first rays of sunlight find their way over the grass. She’s just about to pick up her backpack and leave for town when she hears,

“There you are.”

She turns. Milady is coming towards her, and Lucy grabs her backpack and runs.

“Wait!”

She hears Milady’s footsteps quickening behind her, and soon she has caught up with her, and she grabs her arm.

“Wait, Lucy…”

Panting, Milady leans forward, resting her hands on her knees.

“Are… you okay? I didn’t see you leaving.”

“Leave me alone!”

Lucy pulls away and takes off.

“No, wait! Lucy!”

Milady runs after her, and Lucy’s all weak from the night, and she stumbles and falls, grazing her knee. She still lies on the ground as Milady comes up to her.

“Lucy, wait.. Please.”

“Leave me alone.”

She’s too tired to get up.

“Lucy, I’m sorry..”

“We were friends!”

She takes a handful of dirt and throws it at Milady but misses. She backs away anyway.

“Lucy, I’m sorry. Please, come with me. You’re not safe here. These things will come after you. “

“No, we were friends! You don’t do that to friends!”

And then the tiredness and the shock and the evening catch up with her, and she starts to cry.

“We were friends! What did you do to me? Who are you?”

The rest of her speech becomes a blur as she sobs on the ground.

“Lucy, please. Come with me, I’ll explain. But you can’t stay here.”

“Leave me alone.”

Milady sighs.

“I… just needed someone. And you were there.”

“But we were friends! What was that?”

Milady shifts where she stands.

“It’s magic, okay? Real magic. But it went wrong. “

Lucy glares at her.

“Magic?”

“Yes.”

She’s seen movies with magic in them. Somehow, she believes Milady. She knows what she saw last night, and she knows she didn’t dream it.

“And what about me?”

“I… I bought you. I saw you with Rat, and I knew what he would do to you. So I bought you. And you were meant to play a role, but it didn’t go as we expected. “

“Bought me?”

“Yeah.. “

So they weren’t even friends.. All along, Milady had been planning this whole thing.

“Lucy, you need to come with me. They will come after you."

“I'm not coming with you. You bought me. You wanted to use me! “

Lucy slowly stands up and clutches her backpack to her chest.

"Lucy… I know I screwed up, okay? But please, you need to come with me.”

Lucy looks away. She should leave. But then the hands will appear again when she closes her eyes. And if this really is magic, what if they won’t go away? What if something really is after her? She doesn’t know anyone else than Milady who could help her.

“Come with me. You will be the safest with me. I know you don't trust me. But I'm the one who knows how to get us out of here.”

Lucy stares at the ground. She can’t go back; she can’t tell her mum and dad about this. And what else? Shall she just sit on a bench until Rat finds her? She doesn’t think she’ll survive long on the street, not after everything she’s seen of it. She nods faintly, and Milady sighs in relief.

“We’re not far from home. You can sleep there, you must be tired. “

Milady buys her a burrito on their way home, and Lucy gobbles it down, only then realizing how hungry she is. Once back at Milady’s place, she doesn’t even undress but slips underneath the blanket and is asleep before she’s even put her head on the pillow. It doesn’t take long until the first nightmare comes. Dark hands reach out and try to grab her, and she runs, but there is nowhere to go, and she stumbles and wakes up with a scream. A door opens, and Milady steps out from another room,

“Are you okay? What happened?”

Lucy is already crying, and as Milady sits down on the bed, she throws her arms around her, clinging to the only safety she has. In between sobs, she manages to tell her about the nightmares, and Milady disentangles herself and says,

“It’s nothing dangerous. They can’t reach you through the dreams.”

But Lucy clutches to her even harder, and Milady says,

“Tomorrow, we’ll find a way, but for now, try to go to sleep.”

“Can you stay?", Lucy whimpers.

“I know it's scary, but the dreams can’t do you anything. Try to go to sleep now.”

Milady gets up and walks back to her room and closes the door. Lucy lies down, but whenever she closes her eyes, the hands are waiting for her, and in the end, she gets up and huddles on the sofa, making sure her eyes won’t close.

She still sits there as Milady gets up the next morning. She mixes instant coffee into a cup of cold water, downs it and says,

“We need to go to Gullvi. “

Lucy doesn’t care. Sometime in the night, she’s given up and is willing to follow Milady wherever she tells her to. She can’t go home, and she doesn’t know what else to do, and she wants the nightmares to disappear. She gets up without a word and follows Milady out.

Gullvi has gone to the hospital, Milady tells her as they walk down the street. By the morning, she had been strong enough to stand, and they’d agreed that she would go to get checked. She would complain about feeling ill, being old and all. Lucy only nods in reply.

They take the elevator to the third floor. Gullvi is sitting in her bed, and Milady hurries over to her. Lucy slips unnoticed to stand in the corner.

“How are you feeling?", Milady asks Gullvi, taking her hand.

“I’m better, I will get out today."

“Oh, that’s good..”

“So, what have you found?”

Milady shifts.

“I think I need to go to the Wizard.”

Gullvi gasps and drops Milady’s hands.

“The Wizard? You can’t do that!”

“What else? Do you know how to get out of this?”

“No, but the Wizard.. We don’t even know who he is or if he even exists. “

“But I can’t see any other options.”

Gullvi goes quiet, staring out the window.

“I assume you’ve gone through the list of every other single adept around?”

“Of course. None of them would know. “

Gullvi nods slowly, and Milady continues,

“I’ve looked through every single event again, and I can’t figure out what went wrong. We did everything according to the books, and the price wasn’t the issue in the end. We passed; they let us through. We got tricked; that’s the only thing I can see. It was a trap set up by the Shadow Man, maybe even the Guardians. “

“And we still don’t know what they want?”

“No idea. I just know that 'he will come', but it’s not like I’m looking forward to that happening. “

Lucy doesn’t understand what they speak about, only that it has to do with what went wrong. After a while, Gullvi says,

“And you think that the Wizard would be able to help us?”

“If not him, who else?”

Gullvi nods.

“I’ll come with you, then.”

“No.”

Milady puts a hand on Gullvi’s.

“Stay here. I need to do this.”

“Nonsense, I’ll come with you.”

“No, you’re too weak. Go home and rest, I’ll get back, and I’ll tell you everything. “

Gullvi sighs.

“Okay, at least I’ll see if I can find something when you’re gone.”

Milady glances at Lucy.

“I think it’s better she comes with me", she says to Gullvi. "She’s seen the Shadow Man too, so maybe the Wizard can tell us something about it.”

Gullvi nods, and Lucy shrugs. It doesn’t matter any longer. She’s staying with Milady, so she might as well follow her around.

“We’ll leave tomorrow. “

They leave after that and return to Milady’s basement. The journey to see this Wizard is quite long, Milady tells her as they climb through the window. She knows the town he’s rumoured to live in, and it’s two days by train. That’s when Lucy realizes they were never short of money either. That was just another lie.

Milady makes them a cup of tea, even heating the water for it, and hands her a cup.

“He’s a legend among priestesses", she says as she sits down on the sofa. "No one has seen him, or at least no one that I know of. There are quite a lot of stories about him, some say he’s old, over 300 years old and has found a way to have eternal life. Others just say that he’s simply crazy. In any case, no one knows as much about magic as him. “

Lucy doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even know if it’s true what Milady says. But she can’t go back now. Milady is her only option, and Lucy simply sits on the sofa until it’s time to go to bed.

You can listen to the Audiobook version on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@maratellsstories