Twice, if necessary.
Whatever it took to get back to the normalthe world is a little bit worse because she’s in itfeelings instead of these newI need to remove her clothes with my teethfeelings.
I’d miscalculated Courtney. No matter how much I tried to push her away, she kept popping back up, the herpes of my heart, ready to ruin my life.
The concept of no-strings-attached sex was foreign to me, but it was the only solution that made sense. Touch a lot so we could never touch again. Perfect. Never mind how that hug had ripped my heart from my chest. Never mind how, for the first time, during one afternoon with Courtney by my side and genuine, familial love surrounding me, I’d felt wanted.
Unfortunately, in the dark, we couldn’t find our way back to the courtyard where we’d first appeared. Tired and frustrated, we decided to wash our sorrows away at a pub.
When we walked in, no one seated at the candlelit rows of tables along the walls looked up. They kept talking and drinking, silverware clanking and laughter booming. The man behind the bar at the end of the room gave us the stink eye.
We found a seat toward the back, recessed in the shadows. Courtney slammed an open hand on the table, and I jumped. “Bar wench,” she said to no one in particular. “Your finest ale, if you please.”
Those seated closest to us turned to give us dirty looks. Many a large burly man occupied the tables. “If you start a bar fight,” I said solemnly, “I want you to know I don’t have your back.”
I shifted as I thought about that very back pressed against my chest, her swiveling hips, and the filthy sounds she made when I—
A shadow dropped over us. Craning my neck, I looked up. The barman was bigger close-up, and he didn’t lookthe mosthappy with being called a bar wench.
“?’Ere.” He slammed two mugs on the sticky wooden table and waited expectantly, holding out a hand for payment.
“Oh, I’m the Chosen One,” Courtney said with an inspiring amount of unearned confidence that would likely get us killed. She flashed the royal crest embroidered on her jacket like she was whipping out a VIP fast pass at Disney World.
The barman grunted. I imagined it was close to the same sort of grunt a rhino made right before it impaled you.
“I’ve got this,” I tried, digging around in my pocket, which was extraordinarily empty.
Luckily, our situation was interrupted as the front door of the bar opened with a mighty crash, and Winston of all people tumbled through. Everyone stopped what they were doing, murmuring his name in shocked voices as he stood there panting inthe doorway. My heart pounded in my chest. Maybe this was when he’d confess he’d just run away for a few days, and there wasn’t actually an Evil One on the loose. Of course, that wouldn’t explain General Thimblepop’s disappearance, but maybe there was a normal explanation for that too. Maybe things weren’t as dire as they felt.
“Winston!” the barman bellowed. “Where have you been?”
Winston slid into the nearest chair, which happened to be at the end of our table. The patrons of the bar quickly crowded around until we found ourselves in the midst of a large group.
If Winston thought about the fact that several of the people in the crowd had likely thrown tomatoes at him a few days ago, he didn’t seem to mind. Instead, his eyes fairly glowed as he basked in all the attention directed his way.
“There I was in prison.” He launched into his tale with relish. “I’d never felt lower in my life, and I thought to myself,Winston, things need to be different after this. It doesn’t matter how tempting it might be when chickens step into your path, just asking to be snatched or eaten, they don’t belong to you, and you must cease this life of crime.”
“That’s what you promise every time after a shaming,” someone in the crowd called out.
“Aye,” Winston agreed, leaning in. “But this time, things went differently. I was waiting for me mum to fetch me from prison when everything went dark, like I’d nodded off to sleep. I found out later, I must have been poisoned or spelled, for when I woke up and found myself out on the streets, someone told me I’d been missing for days. I still had rope about my wrists when I came to my senses. I must have found a way to escape whoever took me, despite my delirium.”
“You have no memory of who took you or where they kept you?” Courtney asked, and a few people turned our way, as if they’d forgotten we were here.
“Ah, Chosen Ones!” Winston took off his dusty hat and tucked it under his arms. “Apologies. I didn’t see you there.”
“Please continue.” I slid him my untouched drink, hoping to encourage him to keep talking.
Winston took a whiff of the beverage. “Oh, good. I was afraid it was mulberry ale. Stories say the last Chosen One, Edna, all but forced that rubbish down our gizzards.” He blushed, looking a little surprised at himself for bad-mouthing a former hero. “Pardon me saying so. I don’t quite know what came over me. I seem to have lost my manners.”
“You were saying you have no memory of who took you?” Courtney prompted, seeming to share my thoughts that the last Chosen One’s questionable propensity for fruit beers was the least of our problems.
“No, indeed,” said Winston. “But something must have happened, because after I woke up, several chickens clucked their way right up to me boots, and I didn’t feel the slightest inclination to harm a single one.”
“I guess your experience was the scare you needed to start making better choices,” I said.
“Or…” Winston leaned across the table even farther and dropped his voice. “Whoever captured me did something to me that changed me very nature.”
The crowd gasped, and I resisted the urge to sigh as Winston proceeded to ham it up, his theories about what had been done to him growing more and more preposterous, fueled by the way everyone held on to his every word.
