Page 13 of Wanted: A Roommate Who Isn't Evil

The girl startled him by drawing the spear to life from its handle. She stood and turned in one motion.

Dranian was almost too far gone in his fit to acknowledge that she collided with the hogbeast, shoving the tip of his spear into its throat like a hunter. The loud hog squeals filled the woods.

Dranian couldn’t remember much after that, but he was vaguely aware of collapsing and feeling her sit in the mud beside him with splashed hogbeast blood up her arms. “Dream now,” she soothed, dropping his spear handle into the mud. “I’ll help you.”

She placed a hand upon his forehead, and his body filled with tiredness. For several seconds he tried to fight it. But it was no use.

He passed out against his will, the spinning forces of his mind slowing, the chaotic torrent of noise and madness that became too much to bear, that had always ruined everything, that had made his own father think him worth nothing, meeting sudden rest.

A soft voice, a young one, entered his dream.

“Don’t worry. I’m here,”she said.“You don’t have to let me in. I’ll just stay on the outer rim of your dream for a while to keepnightmares at bay. I can’t say anything important from the outer rim though; the rules of dreams are immovable on that. But I’ll do my best to ensure you sleep well.”

Dranian was about to respond to her in his mind, to ask who she was and how she was doing such a thing, but she cut him off.

“Don’t speak,”she warned.“Don’t ever respond to a voice that enters your dreams. Not unless you want a stranger to take control of your slumbers. Not every dreamslipper is trustworthy—most will hurt you for their own gain if they get control.”

Her voice was remarkably soft, and he had to admit, lovely. It reminded him of delicate flowers, and a cool wind on a hot day, and warm baths in the snowy seasons. Because of this, Dranian found himself sleeping soundly for quite some time.

When he awoke, the stars were high in the sky. Moonbugs crawled along the shore, and his spear was missing from the mud beside him. He calculated the time by counting the stars and examining the night shadows.

Fifteen hours had passed.

The childling girl without a name was nowhere in sight.

Dranian spent three days searching for her. He looked for her on the forest paths, he kept an eye out for her on the village roads. He even took an extra trip to the blacksmithshop, even though rumour had it the place had been closed down for years. He wondered if he should give up trying to find her, if perhaps she had left the village.

Maybe the hogbeast had eaten her.

Dranian’s stomach dropped as he considered that. He wasn’t sure what he had truly seen when he was crumbling in panic—if he’d fabricated the vision of her slaying the beast. He hadn’t thought to look around for traces of fairy remains when he woke up, and there was no rotting hogbeast body either.

He could not stop rubbing his head. It was as though something was inside it that shouldn’t be there. An itch he could not satisfy by scratching. He’d had the strangest dream on the mud shore, and for a reason he couldn’t determine, he felt like only she might have an explanation.

Also, she’d stolen his spear.

He finally came upon her at a village-wide dance in the forest hall. Dranian rarely went to such things, but he was too afraid of his father’s retaliation if he did not show up this time. He’d already suffered the man’s wrath for missing an entire day of work on the docks while he’d been sleeping in the mud.

Dranian was the youngest one of his seven siblings, and the only one forced to stay away from the house all day, seven days a week. The only one his family wished would just not come home at all.

The forest hall was made of spindly branches woven with braids of ivy and glass blossoms, giving off the deep aroma offreshly cut wood and spring grass. Fiddles and harps lined the far wall where musicians joined in the song at will that would only burn out at sunrise. Fairies grabbed unsuspecting partners by the hands and dragged them into the middle to dance, each couple clothed in white with tassels and lace, shifting into forms of forest animals and mimicking the long poses of tree branches to praise the favour of the sky deities on the village.

Most ignored the childling girl when she entered, but Dranian’s gaze shot up from across the room like he sensed her arrival. He lowered his wooden cup of syrup water without taking a drink, watching as villagers made a wide space around the girl wherever she went. For the most part, she kept to the edge of the forest hall. She seemed uninterested in dancing.

Dranian set down his cup and rounded the table to go after her before she could escape again. She was so easily lost in the crowd with her slenderness and awareness of how the folk around her shifted. It was like she was practiced at blending in, at making people forget she was present.

Just like him.

Dranian caught her by the wrist before she could slip out of sight, before she could disappear for three more days and leave him wondering. Two fairies pushed into his path, meeting up and laughing about something together, cutting him off from the girl apart from the grip he had on her dainty wrist between them. And so, he tugged her to him. She flew right between thefairy pair and into his chest where he caught her, flexing so they would not topple over.

He was hit by the brightness of her eyes all over again when she blinked up at him. She was slightly taller than he expected, and her mouth hovered rather close to his, putting an odd flutter in his ribs. He swallowed and tried to come up with words appropriate for a situation where he’d just grabbed a female without justification and yanked her to him.

“I shall explain,” he promised, but that was it. He had no actual explanation for his behaviour.

“What are they doing?” a fairy to his left asked, loudly enough to turn heads. Dranian looked over, spotting several of his father’s forever-friends present. Fairies who would report him for being this close to the dangerous village girl with no name and bringing further shame to his family. Dranian’s chest deflated. He thought about running away before he could feel the fear of it, before it dawned on him that he would be in trouble and he might fall into a “fit.”

Two hands came against his stomach and shoved him backward.

Dranian sailed four steps away from the girl. He looked back at her in alarm, questioning why she’d thrust him so abruptly, but as soon as the gap was wide between them, the onlooking fairies lost interest, and the tightness left his chest.

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