Chapter 16: Decisions

The walk back home was quiet and brisk, Violet mulling over the events of the night, and the realizations that had come with the dawn.

It still felt strange to truly contemplate leaving, though she knew it would have to be done. The route the cat had chosen to deliver her back into the village didn’t take them anywhere near the river, but Violet still found herself thinking of its flow and then the great unknown beyond.

And then the Glow. Past even the threatening darkness of the forest was the Glow.

She’d cross the river, march due north for a few days, being very careful as she did so, and that would be it.

This was a gross oversimplification, but it made her feel slightly more relaxed all the same.

They reached the edge of the woods just as the sunrise hit its peak. Scattered clouds in the sky turned abruptly to splashes of fire, lit orange and blood red by the rising sun. Standing between two trees, her back garden just barely within view, Violet turned to the cat.

“I’ll….” She wanted to say she’d decide on when to leave soon enough, but the words stuck in her throat. “I’ll see you later?” She asked instead, though it wasn’t much of a question. She already knew the answer.

The cat smiled.

“I’ll be around.” It said casually, then stepped behind a patch of shadow and was gone.

Violet hurried across her back garden and through her bedroom window, moving as stealthily as she could. The rest of the house was silent beyond her bedroom door and Violet breathed a great sigh of relief. Her mother didn’t seem to be up yet. Taking her rucksack, she stuffed it into the very back of her closet and then changed out of her dirty, forest rumpled clothes.

She’d just barely finished straightening a fresh skirt, this one blue and only slightly patched, when a knock came her door. The noise was gentle and Violet knew immediately that it was only her mother, but she still jumped and hurriedly shuffled her dirty clothes under her bed.

“Dear?” Her mother asked through the door. “Are you up?”

“Yes, mum.” Violet answered, and supposed that her mother had heard her moving around.

She went and opened the door. Her mother was neatly dressed and looked ready to face the day. She was even wearing her good hat, a black one with a wide brim to protect against the sun. There was a happiness to her as well, quiet and natural. It drew Violet like iron filings to a magnet.

“You look tired.” Her mother noted, and leaned in to smooth a patch of rumpled hair behind Violet’s left ear. “Did you sleep alright?”

Violet didn’t answer, only hugged her mother as tightly as she could, face buried into her blouse.

Thoughts were coming into her mind now, factors she hadn’t considered before. If she was to leave….

Again the urge rose to tell her everything, intense beyond belief…and again it fell, crushed by the realization that nothing good would come from it, even if the secrecy in of itself was still bad.

“Violet?” Her mother’s voice came from what felt like a long ways off, but though there was concern there Violet could not focus on it.

She had to leave. Had to, or else the demons would pour in from across the river and everything would end. But if she left then she would hurt her mother. And her mother was well at last for the first time in weeks. The mere idea of causing her such worry, even if it would only be temporary, filled Violet with a suffocating tide of guilt.

If she left immediately then her mother would collapse again, plunged right back down into the lightless depths of herself, beyond anyone’s reach. …But maybe that would be better than the alternative, better than if she left while her mother was already low.

Her mother as she was now would be afraid and worried. Her mother afflicted might….

“Did you have a bad dream?” Violet heard her mother ask.

“I don’t know.” She mumbled into her mother’s blouse, voice small and muffled.

For a time her mother simply held her, and rocked gently in place, and hummed a little wordless lullaby as Violet’s thoughts continued to go in ever tightening circles.

“Maybe we could go on a walk after breakfast,” her mother suggested in the moments after her lullaby ended. “It’s been a while since we’ve done that.”

Violet nodded listlessly, and so they went.

Their stroll took them through the center of town and across the empty market square, then up and around to the village’s edge. Along the way neighbors drifted over and Violet paused alongside her mother to listen as shallow inquiries were made and little conversations started.

She found herself looking for the places where she’d drawn her sigil, but invariably they had been scoured clean, sometimes so vigorously that the paint had been stripped from walls and fences.

The whole thing felt like ancient history, she could hardly believe she’d lived it.

But though the incident was touched upon in conversation once or twice, nobody’s gaze flickered to her, she heard no inquiries or demands that she explain where she’d been that day.

The exchanges between people remained light and normal, and while Violet could sense a definite tension lingering in the air, it wasn’t overwhelming. Her neighbors had not descended into a frenzy attempting to uncover a culprit…and perhaps it was better that they had not caught anyone. To have a continually existing threat would better allow the village to maintain its paralyzing fear of the unknown.

It was a remarkably uncharitable thought and Violet was shocked at herself for having let such an observation cross her mind. She went over the things the cat had said about her village. At the time she’d been outraged, and a part of her still was, but her experiences since then had cast shades of gray across everything.

Standing there with her mother upon familiar streets, speaking to people with familiar faces, Violet felt strangely removed, made into an other by the knowledge she held.

And then they were alone, passing shabby, crumbling houses that that had known no occupants for as long as Violet had been alive. Her mother was beginning to tire, Violet could see hectic splashes of color beginning to light her pale cheeks, and so she slowed down and then pulled to a stop.

The two of them gazed due north, across a huddled, half collapsed ruin that had once been a house, and into the trees beyond. Pale throngs of purply morning glories had bloomed all across the rubble, their petals glittering with the last of the dew.

“I knew the people who lived here, back when I was your age.” Violet’s mother said.

“What happened to them?”

Her mother considered the house for a time, then sighed.

“We live in cursed times.” She said, and Violet could feel an old bleakness curling in over the words. A shiver rolled down her spine and she cast about for something to say, pointing half hesitantly to the flowers blanketing the old ruin.

“You can eat morning glories.” Violet said at last, trying to sound cheerful.

Her mother blinked and suddenly seemed remorseful.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “…Maybe we should talk about something else.”

They walked onwards but Violet said nothing more. The question of what to do about her imminent departure weighed heavily on her mind.

When she heard a familiar humming drifting through the morning air, directionless but lively, Violet couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved. They were drawing near to Maud’s house, and sure enough the other girl was seated upon her faded cushion, staring distractedly down at a half finished chalk sketch. Her front walkway had been washed clean at some point, for all of the old drawings Violet had seen the last time she’d been over were gone.

“This must be your little friend.” Violet’s mother said, following her gaze.

Violet nodded.

“Maud,” she said, then waved to the girl on the other side of the fence. “Hi Maud.” She said.

“Hi Violet.” Maud answered, sunlight glinting from the lenses of her mismatched glasses.

Violet could see her mother trying very hard not to look at Maud’s legs.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Maud,” she said after a moment, putting on a close mouthed smile. “Violet’s told me all about you.”

Maud smiled but seemed faintly overwhelmed all the same.

“It’s nice to meet you.” She said, and then there was an awkward silence.

At last Violet heard her mother take a breath, then she was turning to face her more fully.

“You can visit with Maud if you’d like. Just be home in time for lunch.” She said.

The terms were generous and Violet agreed, watching her mother depart before coming in through the gate. Maud was rolling a slender stick of white chalk between two fingers, staring critically down at her sketch. It looked a bit like a can or maybe a drinking glass.

“I think I misplaced a few pieces of chalk the other day.” Maud said as Violet sat down opposite her, on the other side of the walkway.

Violet blinked, suddenly remembering the cat’s theft, but thankfully Maud was moving on, one hand dipping into her shirt pocket.

“But look what I found in the yard when I was searching for them.” The other girl continued, then opened her hand. There in the center of her palm was a corroded metallic lump, vaguely cylindrical and about the size of Violet’s thumb. Faint lightning bolt symbols raced up its sides, barely visible beneath the rust and grime.

It took Violet a moment to recognize the odd item as a battery.

“I felt a lump that was almost like a stick of chalk, so I picked it up,” Maud explained, eyes glittering with self satisfied delight. “Neat, huh?”

Violet examined the battery very carefully. Its construction was sleek beneath the dirt and corrosion layering it and she supposed that it had to be very old. Not many things in the village ran on batteries anymore, and those that did were almost always silent and still.

At that moment something occurred to Violet and she stood up.

“I’ve got something to show you too,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

With that she zipped out of Maud’s front garden and hurried home, the fading soreness from her night in the woods nearly forgotten. She ran through the alleyway bordering her house, gravel crunching beneath her feet, then edged carefully past the bricked up drainpipe. The trapped demon made a noise that almost sounded like words, then she was too far away to hear it anymore.

It didn’t take her long to recover the hard plastic case from where she’d stashed it under her bed. Moving quietly, not wanting her mother to know what she was doing, Violet tiptoed back to her bedroom window and slipped stealthily out. Feeling strangely pleased with her own stealthiness, Violet trotted back to Maud’s house, taking the alleyways as she went.

“What is that?” Maud asked as Violet proudly opened the case, showing the other girl her find. The machine within sat there as it always had, its glass screen dull and dark. Maud cautiously pressed a couple of the buttons but they elicited no response.

“I don’t know,” Violet said. “I found it in my shed. It runs on batteries.”

Maud looked doubtfully down to the battery she’d dug up.

“I don’t think this one works anymore.” She said.

For a moment they both stared down at the machine and its mysterious buttons, the faded symbol on the bottom and the attached wand, somehow made mysterious by its very dullness.

“What do you think it does?” Maud asked at last.

Violet nudged one of the cracked glass vials that flanked the machine in its plastic case. It would be no fun to simply admit ignorance but her mind remained blank.

Noting her silence, Maud took a breath.

“I bet it’s for recording sounds,” she said. “Like, for the radio.” She picked the machine up, handling it gingerly, and took the wand in one hand, aiming it at Violet’s face.

“I’d speak into that thing?” Violet asked, just a little skeptical.

Maud shrugged.

“Maybe. I think these buttons might have been labeled a long time ago, but they’re all faded now.”

Violet watched the other girl examine the machine for a time, then found her gaze drifting to where she knew the forest would be. Everything kept circling back around to her inevitable departure….

“Maud?” Violet asked.

The other girl looked up from where she was fiddling with the rubber coated wire connecting the wand (the microphone?) to the machine.

Violet hesitated, unsure if she really wanted to ask the question that rose to mind, then forced the words out before they could bother her any longer.

“What would you do if…um…let’s say you had to go and do something dangerous, but nobody around you could know. How could you make sure everyone wasn’t worried when you went off to do that big dangerous thing?” Violet’s eyes had gone to the ground as she spoke, her insides squirming. This was risky.

Yet when she looked back up there was no dawning realization in Maud’s eyes, no expression of horror as she put together what Violet was trying to say. Instead, the other girl only pursed her lips, suddenly contemplative.

“Like an adventure,” she said, breaking the silence. “Like a…well, you do know what always happens, right?”

Slowly, Violet shook her head. She didn’t.

“The hero goes off alone to face the villain, because he doesn’t want his friends to get hurt. He’s always really sneaky about it, but the next time he glances back his friends are all right there…and then they’ll say something like, ‘you didn’t think we’d let you have all the fun, did you?’ but really it’s because they care.” A strange, almost wistful tone had clouded Maud’s words and her eyes, magnified behind the mismatched lenses of her glasses, drifted down to the concrete of her walkway, empty but for the battery and her little chalk sketch of it.

“Oh.” Violet said quietly, and it sank in, truly this time, just how deeply lonely Maud had to be, her world limited to the front garden and what slivers of the village she could see through the gaps in her picket fence.

Reaching over, Violet delicately plucked a stick of orange chalk from Maud’s bucket and began to draw, shuffling over to the other girl’s side so the two of them would share the same perspective. Curious wolf spiders and ambling daddy long-legs skirted across the edges of the growing picture, their legs dusted with streaks of orange.

Violet drew trees and then the winding swell of the river. She drew herons, crook necked and hunched, and after them came a swirling cyclone of bees. Her stick of chalk traced the shape of the cat’s face, its ears and nose, but then she thought better and left the rest undrawn. The space beyond her depiction of the river was marked with an uneasy squiggle that almost resembled a question mark.

Maud watched all of this with keen interest, but behind her eyes Violet could see the other girl’s mind working away, trying to put everything together.

“Is that what the forest looks like from your house?” She asked.

Violet nodded. Maud studied the drawing for a little longer, then sat back.

“I thought it would be darker,” she said. “Scarier.”

Violet opened her mouth to say that it was, that the canopy was thick and the forest floor suspended in a dimness that seemed as murky as the bottom of the ocean, but she caught herself and simply shrugged.

“I don’t know.” She mumbled.

“And are those…what are they?” Maud traced the outline of a heron with one gentle finger.

Violet told her. It felt strange to be sharing this knowledge in such a vague, disaffected way, like she herself hadn’t peered into the night drenched reeds and slowly pieced together the unknown.

“I wish I could see all of this for myself.” Maud said.

“You will.” Violet said, and found herself wishing, with a sudden fierceness, that she could bring Maud in on everything, that she could even take Maud across the river with her. But even as she entertained that impossible notion, Violet felt a strange sinking sensation within her. What she truly wanted, she realized, was a good excuse to delay her journey and make herself feel safer for it.

Even if Maud’s legs weren’t twisted, even if she proved eager to meet the cat and learn the sigils and explore the woods…all of that would take time.

She sighed, suddenly feeling guilty, though for what she didn’t entirely know.

“…We should probably erase this,” Maud said after a silent moment, a faint reluctance in her voice. “Before anyone sees.”

Violet glanced over, momentarily unsure what Maud was talking about, then surveyed her sketch anew and nodded slightly. The other girl was right, it probably wouldn’t look good to be openly displaying images of the forest on her front walkway.

Once the plants and the herons and the bees were all scrubbed into an orangey blur, the two of them were quiet for a while.

“It looks like a sunset.” Maud observed.

Violet agreed, then was silent again. She could feel Maud’s gaze on the side of her face but didn’t look over. Suddenly she felt rather melancholic, a great big shapeless conundrum pressing down upon the world, crushing the color out of everything.

“I guess….” Maud hesitated before continuing. “I guess when people care about you, you can’t really get them to stop. Does that make sense?”

It did.

“Thanks for showing me your battery…and for letting me draw with you.” Violet said.

Maud seemed to sense that she was about to depart and offered a smile that was only slightly sad.

“If you ever find batteries for that machine, maybe you could bring it over again,” she said. “We could record a song.”

Violet smiled and gathered her things back up, replacing the orange stick of chalk before standing. The soles of her feet sang with pins and needles.

“I’ll see you later.” She said, and went out through the gate, leaving Maud behind.

Her mind felt numb as she walked home, passing through alleyways and avoiding her neighbors almost instinctively, as though they might be able to see past her eyes and glean the forbidden nature of what she was truly thinking. The thoughts that did come felt strangely static, like the path forward was already decided, no matter how many issues she had with it.

There was still some time before lunch, but her mother was already working on it, putting together the framework of what promised to be an overly ambitious meal. Violet put the machine's case away, then accidentally scared her mother, who hadn’t heard her enter the house.

It was a bit like how the cat kept scaring her, Violet thought, but couldn’t wring any amusement from the observation.

“You’re home already,” Violet’s mother said. “…And covered in chalk.”

She sent Violet to wash her hands, which Violet diligently did before wandering to the pantry and opening the door. Her mother, busy cubing potatoes and peeling carrots, didn’t seem to notice. She’d begun humming a song, something slow and pleasant that wasn’t quite a lullaby.

There was quite a lot of food in the house, the cans she’d gotten from the Trade Master sharing space with carrots and potatoes and jars of honey and preserves. Wrapped in a cloth, Violet could see the leftover biscuits she’d helped her mother make. There weren’t too many left, only three or four.

Violet closed the pantry back up and wandered from the kitchen. She had a notion of going to her room and lying in bed, but rather than doing that she opened her window and slipped out into the back garden, almost by force of habit.

Her thoughts were still going in circles, the mental numbness worse than ever. It almost felt like being very tired, but with this there was no real desire to rest, only perpetually dwell on the same intractable problem.

Violet came to a stop next to the garden shed and sat down, placing her back to the rough, splintery siding. From where she was she could see into the forest, barely ten meters away.

It was strange to think that there had been a time not very long ago when doing such a thing might have frightened her. Now Violet felt nothing.

Ahead of her, as though it had been summoned, the cat slipped from behind the nearest rail in her garden fence and trotted over, silvery eyes flashing in the late morning sun.

“You look worried about something.” It observed, settling into the grass by her side.

“My mother will be scared sick if I leave.” Violet said.

“I expect she’ll get over it.” The cat said breezily, admiring the fur of his own front paws.

Violet sighed and looked away. The cat, catching onto the seriousness of her mood, straightened up, tail twitching.

“If I were in your place, and equipped with a handy set of opposable thumbs, I would leave a note explaining everything. Tell your mother you’ve gone across the river to solve the demon problem and will be back shortly. Easy.”

“That’s not….” Violet trailed off. A note explaining things would probably help, but it wouldn’t solve the problem completely. If she went across the river then her absence in of itself would cause a panic. Nobody had ever left the village for as long as Violet had been alive, and she doubted leaving a cheery insistence that she’d soon return would do much to mitigate her neighbors’s fear.

Maud’s words came back to her. The other girl had been completely right, it wasn’t like people’s emotions could be turned off by even the most logical appeal or explanation.

Violet ducked her head, newly miserable.

“I really don’t want to go across the river.” She mumbled.

“How come?” The cat asked, but there was no pressure in its voice, no insistence that she answer. This wasn’t the start to an argument, only a simple question.

Even then, Violet didn’t know how to respond, how to summarize the entirety of the dread and worry she felt into something could be concisely expressed. It felt impossible, yet somehow the words came, forming on her tongue.

“I’m afraid,” she said. “…And I don’t even know if this will do anything. It’s like you said, what if I get there and the Glow doesn’t even notice me?”

At this the cat’s gaze faltered and it looked away, expression kept carefully neutral.

“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.” It said, sidestepping the rest of her words. “Fear can be healthy, if you’re not afraid of anything then you won’t know when to run away. If you’re afraid of everything then you’ll never stop running away, or you’ll hunker into a hole and starve to death. It’s fine to be afraid, just so long as you don’t let yourself become paralyzed by it.”

“I’m not…wrong to be afraid of this, am I?”

“No,” the cat assured her. “You’re not. The other side of the river is going to be very dangerous for someone like you. But since you’ve got your sigils, and since you’ve got me, I think you’ll make it to where you need to go.”

Violet took a deep breath and made herself examine the worries she felt. There was a dreadful inevitability to all of them, but somehow that very fact seemed almost liberating when viewed from a different angle. The people she cared about would be worried, but that would always be the case. The demons and monsters on the other side of the river posed a grave threat, but they never wouldn’t. Her journey across the river would be dangerous, but there wasn’t a thing she could do to change that besides getting the whole thing over with.

She looked to the cat and slowly exhaled, gathering her thoughts and forcing herself to seem collected and perfectly at ease.

“We’ll leave tomorrow.” Violet said.

The cat nodded slowly, getting used to the idea, then offered her a very sharp toothed grin.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” It said, and then was gone.