Although Lucien was still thirsty, unfed, and drooping as he stomped over the hills, the horsemen, having dismounted and left their better halves behind them, were fully armored, half-hearted, and no-brained, and he escaped by nothing but persistence. If the soldiers wanted him more than they disliked their work, he might have been caught, for he was a tired eleven-year old boy, ignorant of Alsantian woods, lacking in confidence, and too uncertain even for prayer, when the maker of this violent world might hear.
Which is not to say that Lucien did not lead a difficult chase, taking advantage of his near-nakedness to scramble up, over and into places they could not, although the tree trunks, thickets, and bramble chaffed, scratched and pricked him; and, by the time they plodded halfway through a waist-deep stream in soaked armor and sodden clothes, he had nimbly streaked across, only to splash back to the road. That was the last he saw of the horsemen.
Although the wagon wheel rims had gouged muddy trails, Lucien did not know if these tracks were ten minutes old or two hours. Moreover, whether the Marquessa doubled back or continued in the same direction mattered not, for without a map,
he had a fifty-fifty chance of following his friends or going the opposite direction.
Considering those were better odds than his zero percent knowledge of Alsantia, he continued alongside the wet tracks. While he might be recaptured, he also might free his friends, or follow them to the Marquessa's, where he could hide nearby, rather than on the other side of another world.
Although this arduous foot journey soon blistered his heels, soles, toes, and even the space between his toes, the more his raw feet ached, the harder he ran, until leaden exhaustion forced him to drop to a half-jog, then a fast walk.
When he noticed the wagon tracks were drying, he realized he was going in the opposite direction. If they were going the same way, the tracks should still be wet.
Having heard the fancily dressed man order his capture or death, Lucien feared turning back, and running into his pursuers, so he dropped to a walk, and kept moving away, not only from the probability of capture, but from the faces who knew him best on any world.
He sniffled for a minute, then cut it off, not from bravery, but from no longer having the breath to spare.
As he continued his offroad journey, Lucien jogged through a copse of titanic trees he found oddly familiar, an absurd feeling he repressed, either having never been to Alsantia, or, if Aito had not lied, having been there at a tender age before the point where his memories began.
As he shook his deja vu, another irrational feeling glommed on--the impression that he was being watched, which chomped him with more than a steadfast bite. Although he turned this way and that, he glimpsed only a strange, angular bird, pointedly turned away from him toward its hungry chicks.
Towards sunset, he found a fruit tree laden with overripe fruit--a furred blue rind plump with juice. While its stringy pulp stuck to the pit, and he could only gnaw slivers of fruit, each was so loaded with juice that his thirst was quenched, and though his stomach still roared, new energy brightened his eyes and calmed his shaking limbs.
Lucien was leaning against the tree, next to a pile of gnawed cores, when he heard the music. Somehow it sounded both nearby and far away, like loud headphones. Lucien peered around both sides of the tree, dreading that the horsemen--one of whom had a musical ear and a penchant for humming--had caught up. Not only were there no horsemen in any direction, there was no sign of life.
Remembering Alsantian fables, and having heard his cat talk and transform into a boy,Lucien's attention turned to branches, tree roots, bramble, and anywhere else a talking, singing animal might lurk.
As the sun steeped into a deep orange and reddened the shadows of the leafy canopies, the tree trunks were dipped in an inky blue evening, so that when he first glimpsed the oddity, Lucien assumed twilight was playing tricks on his eyes, until the branches snapped back from the floating passage of the horizontal figure, who laid, like one borne on a stretcher, on gigantic hovering fronds. As Lucien lurked in hiding, the reclining shadow creeped closer, circled by bright motes bobbing like fireflies.
As his moment of hesitation was drawn out, the evening progressed by shades from orange to burgundy and blue to violet, then both fell to a starry black pregnant with the Alsantian moons. The coppery moon waxed smoother and sleeker than satin, eclipsing the silver moon to a bright-edged crescent.
The body drifted very near before Lucien realized the lightning bugs were tiny people, and their gleam was moonlight glittering on irridescent wings. As his eyes were drawn to the fairies, the sleeper passed under his nose before he realized with a start who it was.
"Conrad!" While Lucien intended a hiss, it came out as a blurt, and in answer, a gigantic furball barreled under the leafy palanquin to pin Lucien to the grass.
While the boys had shared a bedroom in the mansion, and Lucien had both wrestled and been wrestled by other boys, the four paws colliding with his chest were backed by such an enormous beast that he was surprised when the snarling, spitting face topping the great weight making his ribs creak was that of a raccoon, and not a Saint Bernard. It leaned closer, nearly scraping his nose with its own wet snout, then bounded backwards onto its hind paws.
Lucien had been so startled that he hadn't noticed he couldn't breathe until the gasping intake of wind that followed the removal of the raccoon's weight from his chest.
"Sorry, whelp," said the raccoon most unapologetically, "I didn't know you were friends."
While Lucien was full of angry words, he sat up, struggled for breath, and realized his voice was also knocked out of him by the enormous raccoon. In his indignation, he spoke before he was ready, and it emerged as a high, hoarse wheeze, like a squeaking, spurting balloon. Then he tried again. "Didn't you hear me say Conrad?"
"Yes."
"Why wouldn't you think I knew him?"
"The people pursuing us know him as well."
"You thought I'm with them? Do I look half-wolf?"
The raccoon sighed. "If you boys weren't so quick to shed your second skins, I might have recognized you both sooner."
"You mean our vestments. You're the raccoon from the Mansion."
"If you mean your disappointing Earth hovel, I did grace that establishment. You may call me Jgorga."
"I'm Lucien. Didn't you know me from there, Jgorga?"
"Egotistical human," sniffed the raccoon. "Could you tell two raccoons apart? No? I didn't think so. I apologized, Lucien. Now come along--the Gertunfelk is no place for a baby human."
"I'm not a baby."
"You tawdle like a baby and complain louder than a baby, so for now you're the baby. Try to keep up, baby." As the raccoon turned to follow the leafy litter floating Conrad over the thicket, he crashed through the overgrowth.
Not only were Lucien and Conrad not the best of friends, he had gotten off on the wrong foot with Jgorga, and the combination of unconscious bully and prickly raccoon nearly drove Lucien back to the road. That said, Conrad's was the only familiar face, not only in sight, but for miles, as his friends rolled to an unknown, dangerous destination. He tucked his head and trudged after them, hoping the animal's personality would rub off over time.
"What happened to Conrad?"
"It looks bad, doesn't it? While I'd like to say he got this way by fighting bravely, your idiot friend was tranquilized by our allies."
"Will he be ok?"
"When he wakes up, he'll be better than ok. He'll be a prince on the isle of Gaona."
"Where is that? Is that part of Alsantia?"
"No, Gaona's a free kingdom, at least for as long as this uneasy truce. Among other things, it's one of the few human kingdoms left that doesn't eat talking animals."
"Wait," said Lucien. "Alsantians eat talking meat?"
"Talking meat?" snorted the raccoon. "That's insulting, human. If I ate your kind, I wouldn't have the indecency to call you human meat."
"But I don't eat animals." Although, Lucien admitted to himself, he could take no credit for this, for it was the way he was raised in the brownstone commune, in which he was curious of the savory restaurant commercials on its only TV. Still, he felt pangs of guilt as the raccoon confronted his insensitivity; it was as if an Elderlich berated him for not knowing better. Which made the raccoon's next remark all the more surprising:
"I do. Don't make this something it's not, human."
While Lucien knew Jgorga wasn't insinuating that he would eat Lucien, he couldn't help the irrational wave of fear. As each piece of the puzzle came together, this third world Narnia seemed more political horror than storybook fantasy. His desire to leave was so strong that for a moment, he left mentally; he sat on the light green couch in the Mansion of the Shining Prince, eating popcorn and watching talk shows, having rewound time and memory until he was once again only sarcastically guessing that he lived in a cult commune.
"You don't eat talking animals, right?" Lucien knew that this was one of the talking animals' talking points, but there was an angry raccoon in front of him, and he couldn't help asking.
"Of course not," scoffed Jgorga. "What do you think I am?" After a few dozen paces, the raccoon continued, "but I'll admit it's a line drawn in sand. Maybe we're not so different from other raccoons. If there's the slightest possibility that they could speak, whether tomorrow, or in a hundred thousand years, they shouldn't be eaten either."
"While speech can be learned, and raccoons have hands, other animals don't, and I don't see how talking animals could learn hands. Or how you learned thumbs, for that matter."
Jgorga chuckled. "That's a good point. If I wanted to argue it, like Queen Suvani and her demagogues, mythologists, and historians, I could say after we learned human speech, we learned human spells, then changed our bodies."
"The Alsantian Queen says that? Is it true?"
"Human, I reserve true and false for things I've seen, heard, and smelled, and good and bad for things I've tasted. We're talking about such ancient events that, regardless of the integrity of those who first recorded them, may have been altered along the way by dozens of Suvanis and Vemuluses. Vemuli?" Jgorga snickered.
"What's a Vemuli?"
"Vemulus is the Queen's twin brother, born a few minutes after Suvani. If our singers and storytellers speak true, and your people mimicked ours, then Vemulus is cut from the same cloth as those primordial thieves and copycats."
"You speak as if Vemulus is worse than Suvani."
"Noooo..." Jgorga held the note on the Os to drag out the emphasis of his negative. "Suvani is ten times worse than Vemulus. While she's not much older than you, Lucien, she's responsible for everything bad that's happened. However, as her brother wields no true power, and envies his sister the throne, he's desperate to prove himself, and begs on every pretext for war."
"How can the Queen be not that much older? I'm only eleven."
Jgorga looked at him appraisingly. "You're big for your age."
"You should talk about big! My ribs still squeak where you landed."
"She's somewhat older then—seventeen or eighteen, I think. Vemulus is only sixteen."
After another hour of silent wandering, during which huge, glowing beetles veered around Jgorga and the moaning boy on the floating litter to chomp Lucien, the fairies flitted to a grassy spot under a gigantic, oddly familiar tree. When he saw slithering orchids creeping along its branches, he realized this was the woods he visited in his first, brief trip to Alsantia.
"I was here before."
"You were? I reckon you came through the gate."
"We called it the Holy Foyer."
Jgorga laughed. "I suppose you did."
"Where are we going?"
Jgorga shuffled under a gargantuan tree root, curled into a furry ball, and closed his eyes. "Here's the thing, Lucien. While you're welcome to come along, I can't speak of my mission. Even your friend knows only what he needed to hear."
"Is it something to do with Gaona?"
"I can't say. You're a good listener, Lucien. Please don't ask anything else. You never know who might be listening."
When Lucien again had the eerie sensation of being watched,
he told himself it was only the raccoon's suggestion.
How far and long Lucien had walked settled upon him like a thunderclap. He had not only journeyed to another world, but covered a lot of ground in both Earth and Alsantia, having escaped bus wreckage, jogged through a desert and up hoodoo stairs to the top of a mesa on Earth, fled down the cliffs of its Alsantian mirror image, ducked into an underground road to the dwarven kingdom where he was captured and hustled—first by his captors then by his equally relentless rescuers—to a mountain pass, then escaped their double-crossers for the gruelling freedom of the open road.
Lucien was not only exhausted, he was blasted by a barging raccoon, half-naked and chilled in the cold night, and scraped, scratched, and bitten by the unforgiving Alsantian woodlands. Despite being cold and itchy, Lucien was so weary that he should have fallen asleep instantly, but he could not shake the feeling of being watched.
"Jgorga? Is anyone out there?"
When the raccoon snored, as if on cue, Lucien repeated his question, but when the slumbering raccoon proved insensible, Lucien settled in for a sleepless night. While his exhaustion may have imagined the strange glimmer, he riveted his eyes to the spot as if he could glare through to the flip side. But when the fairies swiftly layered him with the roomy leaves of the titanic tree, merging the foliage so carefully that it proved a warm blanket against the night air, Lucien drifted into slumber.
When Lucien awoke, Conrad sat crosslegged, rummaging through heaped berries and nuts. The mannish boy peered at the fairies through sunken, bleary eyes as he groped the rolling, scattering breakfast, but they avoided his lumpish gaze and chattered in their high-pitched chirruping language. If Lucien had not heard their peeps, he might have thought the huddling fairies--whose wings were fanned, to shield themselves from being eavesdropped--were flowers set fluttering by the morning breeze.
One fairy sat apart, rubbing arrow-points in a torn, purplish-red berry. If the mottled flesh of the fruit did not scream poison, there was menace in his long, mournful chin and dour, glowering eyes.
"Give them space, Conrad."
"I'm not doing anything."
"Fine. Do what you want."
"I always do."
While Lucien's heart thumped on awaking, and he still scrambled for the pillow and comforter that were a world away, even waking from a drugged sleep hadn't phased Conrad's smugness.
"Do you want them to shoot you again? Floating on your back may be a restful way to travel, but it can't be good for your brain. Wait--I forgot my audience."
Conrad scowled, then smiled. "You should hear about the day I had, Lucien."
"It can't beat ours."
"Ours? Where are the others?"
"Miles away."
When Lucien narrated the previous day's adventures, Conrad interrupted with many questions, mostly about Chiyo. "Did you say her eye? Is she OK? What do you mean, 'what do I think?' How does it look? Both--the injury and the new eye. Will she be pretty?" Conrad's selfishly pointed questions, touching mainly his girlfriend's appearance and not her suffering, frustrated Lucien so severely that he started throwing his pile of walnut shells.
"Hey! Don't tell me you haven't thought it!" Conrad's self-aggrandizing insinuation that Lucien shared his abominable self-interest so irked Lucien that he threw the stone he used to crack the walnuts. When it struck Conrad's elbow, the older boy yelped, drew the flinching limb to his chest, then roared, charged, and pinned Lucien with his other three limbs.
If Lucien had any worries about hurting Conrad (they were the furthest thing from his mind), they would have been dispelled when the babied arm landed two blows--one thrashing his ribs, and another his chin--before the slumbering raccoon rolled to his hind legs and pulled Conrad off of Lucien.
"Let me go! He threw a rock at me!"
"So what?" growled Jgorga. "You kind of deserved it."
"I deserved to be stoned? Wait! You were listening! You let him do it!"
"Should I have egged him on? Shepherding a prince--who grew into the full bloom of entitlement a world away from his birthright--is not as amusing as I would have liked. I'll take any entertainment I can."
"Entertainment!" Conrad fumed, clenched his fists, and crouched so near the raccoon that even Lucien, whose piled-up animosity had toppled into a heap of loathing, feared for the rude boy.
"If you won't give the raccoon some room, Conrad, at least give yourself some running space."
Jgorga tapped his clawed finger to Conrad's nose. "I don't know what you've done to deserve such a good friend, but you might have more if you listened to this one. You and I were halfway there until you punched the Architects' son."
"Lucien? He doesn't have parents." Conrad snorted, brushed the grass back until he found the stone, then began savagely hammering the obdurate walnut that so far had resisted both boys' attempts.
"Of course he does, Conrad. Even a lopsided, cockeyed ogre has parents." While Jgorga had the decency to look away so that this cruel slight would not land on Conrad directly, when the boy glared at the raccoon's back, the flailing stone came down on his hand, so that he yowled and again drew that bruised limb to his chest.
When Lucien couldn't smother his laugh, he turned around and pretended to take an interest in the fairies. This pretended interest soon became real interest, for in the daylight fluttering through the leafy canopies, the fairies were different creatures. With the fading of their moonlit irridescence, their wings were a grayish blue, and their eyes no longer shining ebony but flat black pools impenetrable to sunlight. Tiny talons slipped in and out, as regularly as eyelids, on the tip of six long, articulate fingers radiating in a half-circle around their palms, so that each finger might serve as a thumb, and they were either all fingers, or all thumbs, depending on your point of view. Since their feet also demonstrated this splayed structure, they didn't stand so much as perch, gripping branches or grass in their curled toes, and you could say they planted their feet without stretching the truth.
While Lucien became increasingly self-conscious of his gawking, the fairies seemed not to mind. When one flitted over and alighted on his forearm by crimping its feet, Lucien ignored its prickling toes and gave it—for he knew not whether it was male or female—his best smile.
When the fairy chirped and smiled, Lucien could only say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak fairy."
"Eldryn."
Lucien turned to Jgorga, who continued. "They're Eldryn. While even I call them fairies now and then, they don't like that word."
"What did it say?"
"He. I can tell you what to look for..."
"No, that's ok," said Lucien hastily. "What did he say?"
"Gub said they're ready."
"Gub?"
"No, Gub."
Conrad looked at Lucien. "It sounds like you're saying Gub."
"Gub! Can't you hear the difference?"
"Are you joking? All I hear is Gub."
Jgorga snorted. "Of course I'm kidding--I just wanted to hear you say Gub. I know the human ear is only for ornament. To you, ten Eldryn syllables zip by so fast that they're one syllable. Gub!" Jgorga could no longer restrain his pent-up squeals of laughter. "Gub!"
"It's not that funny, Jgorga."
"You should hear yourself. Wait--you can't!" This again set off the raccoon's hilarity.
"How did you even learn their language?"
"My ears have a wider range. And from what I've observed, raccoons are more patient than humans."
After packing the remnants of breakfast, they continued their journey.
When they left the shadow of the titanic trees for a broad field of short, dry grass lit lime green by the glaring sun embedded in a cloudless blue sky, the Eldryn fluttered back, alighting on Conrad's shoulders.
"Jgorga," Conrad grumbled. "Get them off of me."
"They carried you for a day, Conrad. You can carry them for a few hours."
"Uggh. How long?"
"Either sundown or the other edge of the Luskveld, which continues on the other side of the manor."
"Is this your home?" asked Lucien.
While the raccoon laughed, it was tinged with sadness. "Sometimes. Not for a while. You know raccoons don't live in manors, right, Lucien?"
"I didn't grow up in Alsantia."
"Things may be different here, but common sense grows in Alsantian soil too. If I told you talking elephants operated a circus here, would you believe me?"
"Maybe."
"How about talking cows running a barbecue?"
"I guess not."
"Trust your common sense, Lucien. Raccoons don't live in manors. You already know--" The raccoon's voice was stopped by the scorched and blackened skeleton of the manor. As its hulk was a foul stench of not only burned wood and baked paint, but a moldering and rotting interior exposed to rainfall, dew, and moss, fire and time claimed it long ago.
"Lucien, Conrad." The raccoon's voice raised. "Help me look."
"For what?" said Conrad.
"Survivors."
"This didn't happen today, Jgorga. It didn't even happen yesterday." Even more than last night Lucien had a sudden and persuasively powerful sensation of being watched. Although he turned here and there—slowly, so as not to cause alarm—his observers proved as mythical as Jgorga's survivors, but this common sense did not abate his uncommon sense of being desperately and fervently observed. Nor did it ease the heartache he felt when Jgorga turned his outraged, pained eyes on Lucien. "I'm sorry, Jgroga. I'll help you look." Although Lucien felt that it wasn't very sensible to look for survivors in crispy wreckage blackened with soot and smoke, greened with moss, and blued with mold, he knew that it was the right thing to do.
While most of the bushes that once trimmed the outer wall were blackened to the roots, one had not only persisted, but branched inside to block the entryway and the stairwell, and as Jgorga rended it with his paws, his growls and the shredding of the green wood clashed in the echoing interior.
Unable to bear Jgorga's desperate gouging and tearing of the bush, Lucien pretended interest in the faint reddish hue remaining in the browning wallpaper, then the grass growing in the breaks of the cracked floor.
"We're also looking for those that didn't."
"Who? Didn't what?" asked Conrad.
"Survive. Six months ago, this was a...while I won't call it a happy home because of the tragedy they endured, my lady managed to quiet their sorrows and brighten their halls for the sake of her daughters."
"Surely they fled the fire," said Lucien hopefully.
"If they're alive." Conrad looked away from the raccoon's enraged face.
"Or Suvani has them," seethed Jgorga. "It's a big house, but we must rule everything out, so I know whether to revenge them or mount a rescue."
"What if it was an accident?" asked Lucien.
Jgorga scowled. "This was no accident." As the raccoon's chirps were snarled, the restful Eldryn were slow to stir, but after peeping back and forth they flitting up the darkened stairwell.
"We'll take the downstairs," grumbled Jgorga. "We shouldn't trust the upstairs ceilings."
Lucien found the first in a sitting room. As acrid mold clung to its shaggy, soot-black curtains, his eyes watered, and his first glimpse inside was also his best, as he squinted, leaned on the sagging wall and felt his way around blasted bookshelves and fire-shadowed chair frames.
Picking his way blind through the deathly ruins, he counted his strong memory as a mixed blessing, for while it was a blessing to get so far on one glance, it was a curse to stumble over the dessicated skeleton crawling with ants and centipedes. While his eyes flew open only to squeeze out the stinging, moldy air, he would never forget that split second, in which insects trudged under tiny shingles of dry skin flaking in tatters and strips from the gaunt bones.
"Jgorga!" he called. "Jgorga!" Though he only yelled twice, his throat felt hoarse from the moldy, scratchy air. When he heard the scamper in the hall, he backed out, leaned against the creaking outer wall, and rubbed his eyes. He did not see the raccoon go in, but he blearily saw him come out, reddened by his irritated eyesight, so that the raccoon seemed a fiery ghost.
"It wasn't them, Lucien." The raccoon's voice was warm, but breaking, as if the ashes of his former attitude.
"What do you mean? It was somebody."
"You're right, Lucien. My grief makes me cold. While I'm relieved that we haven't found my lady or her daughters, I should better respect Rudrick, their footman, who always served my meat raw and my wine mulled. He was a good man, and I'll mourn for him properly later. They were all good people, Lucien. They've been dead for months, and I've been none the wiser."
Conrad entered the hall so abruptly that Lucien would have guessed he had lingered by the corner, had the snoop not exposed his eavesdropping by blurting, "did they know my parents?"
As tears leaking through his fingers soaked the sobbing raccoon's paws, Lucien hissed, "what do you think, Conrad?"
"I know you think I'm this heartless bully, Lucien, but you can be a bully too."
While Lucien fell silent, it was mostly astonishment, for he couldn't believe what he was about to say. "You're right, Conrad. I'm sorry."
"I know he's upset, but we need answers. Don't you want to get home?"
"Wherever home is."
"Home is home, Lucien. Home is Earth, with a microwave and television. Even though I could never enjoy Earth in the Mansion, I liked what I saw, and what I saw made me want more. When I get home, I'm getting a cheeseburger."
"Gross."
"But you don't know, Lucien. Neither of us ever had one."
"And I never will. If there's one thing that Alsantia has taught me, it's that animals communicate. All animals, whether or not they talk."
"Amen, Lucien." Jgorga raised a heavy-hearted but courageous smile. "Although I'm pro-cheeseburger. If it's—what do humans call bloody meat—rare."
After the fairies flitted down, they conferred in clicks, peeps and twirps with Jgorga. "A few more died, but not my lady and her family. They're not here."
"They know them?" Conrad sounded doubtful.
"Everyone knew them, Conrad. Like I said, they're good people. Even before Suvani's tyrrany inspired all sorts to make friends, the Fafahites were on friendly terms with the Eldryn."
"But they couldn't talk to each other."
"You should work on your imagination if you mean to be king, Conrad."
"Weren't you listening? Right now, I want a cheeseburger more than I want to be king."
"You could be coronated with a cheeseburger for all I care, though your parents may prefer an old-fashioned crown."
Conrad scoffed. "Even if they made me, they're not my parents. They sent me away when I needed them most, and now I don't need anyone."
"Really?" The raccoon's eyes opened so wide that if his eyebrows were distinguishable from his fur, they might have raised in incredulity. "Seeing as you're in the woods on another world, right now you need me."
Conrad scoffed. "Like I need this burned out building--which you dragged me inside. You go on ahead. Lucien and I will find our way back."
"Back where? The woods? The ogress? Maybe you want to crawl back in the apple," snickered Jgorga.
"Back to Earth. If coming here is so easy, it can't be hard to get back."
"That will never happen," said Jgorga. "so long as you're my responsibility. While I look forward to handing you off—no offense—for the time being, we're fast friends." Looking skyward, the raccoon breathed, "please let it be very fast." When he chirruped to the Eldryn, the fairies flitted toward the entrance. "Follow me."
On the way out, Lucien shielded his eyes. While his memory would forever hold a house deadened by fire and the dry bones of a loyal ghost, he saw no need to stock it with every ghastly sight. Though he walked out in fear of the dead, the watcher did not return until late morning, when the invisible eyes fluttered so near and so fiercely it was as if they had doubled.
Jgorga pointed to a distant grove. "We'll lunch there, but quickly, so that we can enter the Western Luskveld by nightfall." As they approached, the fairies scurried ahead in a flurrying cloud, which circled the grove in buzzing excitement.
Perhaps because ghosts were on his mind, and the saintly, enraptured faces of the Eldryn darted in the air; perhaps because the grove was greyed by white trunks in leafy shadows and fallen leaves fluttering over luxurious roots; or, perhaps because the silky threads of some Alsantian insect cluttered the treetops, dangling white wisps to tickle their faces; but when the pale girl with flowing ash-blonde hair ran forward to hug him, his heart stomped hard. Though her warm cheek pressed his fear-numbed skin, and she squeezed his ribs, he shook.
It might have been completely irrational, but in that moment, Lucien felt that he was captured by a ghost.