The Unfairfolk (Valenbound Book 1) Read online

  The Unfairfolk

  Valenbound Book 1

  Sara Wolf

  Contents

  Disclaimer/Content Warnings

  Dedication

  Map

  1. The Shadow (Or, How two boys discovered magic)

  Nine Years Later

  2. The Before (Or, How things are never just once upon a time)

  3. The Man (Or, How one girl found the devil)

  4. The Journey (Or, How life is never fair to you most of all)

  5. The School (Or, How you’ve always felt older than everyone, older than time, and in every crowd you look for someone like you)

  6. The Beginning (Or, How a boy prepares for a battle he can’t win)

  7. The Fight (Or, How dangerous first impressions are in the right hands of the wrong people)

  8. The Touch (Or, How each finger is both the arrow and the apple)

  9. The Missing (Or, How you sometimes think death is just God sweeping out the bed crumbs so he can sleep)

  10. The Bridge (Or, How magic is the only thing that matters anymore)

  11. The Dinner (Or, How being evil is easy)

  12. The Forest (Or, How many steps you can count between you and the person you want to be)

  13. The Drawing (Or, How no one believes you until it’s too late)

  14. The Regret (Or, How a moment comes and goes and leaves you behind forever)

  15. The Duel (Or, How deeply a sword has to cut for it to be dangerous)

  16. The Word (Or, How five letters can ruin it all)

  17. The Moonlight (Or, How they’ll try to steal your light, all the good parts of you, and you will not let them.)

  18. The Candle (Or, How you want to run like a river, riotously, uncaring whether you’re clean or dirty)

  19. The Mother (Or, How you learned to build your armor piece by piece as you were fleeing)

  20. The Interrogation (Or, How being young feels like being a ghost)

  21. The Blood Promise (Or, How everything means nothing to some people)

  22. The Nightrose (Or, How a girl breaks the devil)

  23. The Story (Or, How you waited so long, alone, for no one to save you)

  24. The Picnic (Or, How being a person is the hardest thing you’ll ever do)

  25. The Wondering (Or, How a laugh can chew you up and spit you out again)

  26. The Whisper (Or, How impossible is a word we invented to spare ourselves)

  27. The Church (Or, How they love to bless you with their scorn)

  28. The Deer (Or, How many times you can tolerate being called prey)

  29. The Pool (Or, How the pain will always be ready for you to come home)

  30. The Camera (Or, How many medals you should have by now for still being here)

  31. The Family (Or, how to be satisfied with just the trees, with just the rain)

  32. The Fairy Ring (Or, How none of it feels real when it’s happening, because only in the quiet dark does reality hurt)

  33. The Dream (Or, How ‘probably’ has never been good enough for you)

  34. The Exam (Or, How they like to say getting over yourself is easier with booze)

  35. The Shadows (Or, How even as you sleep, yours gets longer)

  36. The End (Or, How many times you have to die to move on)

  37. The Teeth (Or, How words are the claws of the mouth, and some people never bite)

  To Be Continued

  Acknowledgments

  Disclaimer/Content Warnings

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Sara Wolf. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary right, please contact the agent at [email protected]

  Want to follow Sara Wolf on social media? We got you:

  INSTAGRAM: @authorsarawolf

  TWITTER: @Sara_Wolf1

  WEBSITE: www.authorsarawolf.com

  ****PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING FOR CONTENT WARNINGS****

  This book contains mentions of a car/train crash, heavy mention of parental abuse, domestic violence, sexual harassment, alcohol, drugs and drug use, nicotine use, self-harm, and heavy mention of blood.

  Dedication

  In memoriam, for the you you used to be, and in celebration, for the you you will be.

  1

  The Shadow (Or, How two boys discovered magic)

  SWITZERLAND

  “This way, this way!”

  Two young boys ran full-tilt over the vivid green grass of summer, shouting merrily at each in French. The velvet blue peaks of the Alps rose all around them, cradling the cheery noontime sun. The boys made quite the pair - one with a head of golden hair, and the other’s so dark it absorbed all light. They were opposites in spirit, too; the golden-haired boy tearing through the grass in a carefree way, and the dark-haired boy trailing after him, hesitant, mincing.

  “What if we get in trouble?” The dark-haired boy called.

  “Don’t worry! We’ll be back before dinner,” His friend shouted.

  The boy swallowed his nerves and pushed on. He didn’t want to look scared - he knew his friend hated cowards. But he couldn’t help worrying about the consequences of going so far away from the adults; his mother would be furious. His skin ached with phantom bruises at the mere thought.

  “Alistair!” The blonde boy called. “C’mon! Through the trees!”

  Alistair pulled down his sleeves to make sure his friend couldn’t see, and then plucked himself a new piece of bravery from a nearby wildflower bush, little fist clenched around the stem. He ran into the forest and quickly caught up with his friend - even in the shadows of the woods, it was hard to lose sight of the glint of his solid gold hair.

  “Okay,” His friend grinned at him. “We’re far enough, now. Let’s have a race.”

  “But w-what if we get lost in the woods, Ciel?” Alistair wrinkled his nose.

  Ciel thoughtfully searched the horizon, and then pointed at a square of light. “There! That’s where the trees stop. Head that way, okay? Three, two, one -”

  Without even waiting for an agreement Ciel darted ahead, a gleam in his gray eyes. Alistair trailed after him, leaping over roots and around stones. Ciel was faster than him, but Alistair was bigger, and soon his legs caught up with his friend. The woods were so dark and deep, and Alistair found himself growing uneasy at how far they were going. This wasn’t a well-lit backstreet of Tokyo, or a park in Brussels. He was used to those. Used to being shuffled between those, back and forth. Summer, then winter. Orderly. But this? This was trees and nature, unpredictable and chaotic and…hungry.

  Suddenly, there was a crack of a branch, and Alistair whipped his head around just in time to see Ciel go tumbling down a slope. No! He dashed over, shouting.

  “Ciel!”

  He slid down the slope to reach his friend. All of Alistair’s worries evaporated - to be replaced by irritation when Ciel came up laughing, his face flushed.

  “That was so much fun!”

  Alistair scowled. “You could’ve gotten seriously hurt!”

  “I’m fine. God, you’re such a worrywart.” Ciel stood up, brushing his pants off.

  Alistair flinched. “No I’m not!”

  “Yes you are! It’s all you ever do. Worry worry worry.”

  Alistair swallowed the sting. He had to worry. How else could he avoid the hurt? How else could he protect his baby sister Rose? He had to worry a lot, before everyone else, or bad things would happen.


  Feeling equally betrayed, the two boys scaled the slope slowly. Alistair offered his hand to Ciel once, but he batted it away impatiently. Finally, when they were at the top, they took a moment to huff and puff, completely out of breath.

  It was then, through the dark woods, that the terrified squeal resounded.

  Both boys immediately straightened and looked at each other, all resentment forgotten as cold fear took over.

  “What was that?” Ciel whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Alistair murmured back. “It came from over there.”

  “We…we should go see,” Ciel said. “Just in case someone’s in trouble.”

  “Y-Yeah.”

  The boys picked carefully over the floor of the forest, and the sound of rustling became apparent ahead of them. Ciel’s hand found Alistair’s and Alistair squeezed back, trying to reassure him like he always reassured Rose when Mother started breaking things. The rustling became louder, and they crested the last rise with fearful trepidation, one shaking footstep at a time.

  They first saw gleaming white against the forest floor - a ring of white things, small and compact. Alistair squinted - mushrooms. A fairy ring. He remembered Father reading him a story, once, that called a ring of mushrooms a fairy ring. But in the story, there was no blood.

  In the story there was no white deer torn open, with its spilled organs flecking the mushrooms red.

  And definitely, most definitely, there was no thick, writhing shadow looming over the white deer, with unnaturally long limbs and glowing red eyes like two embers in ashes.

  The shadow thing - man or beast, Alistair couldn’t decide - snapped its ember eyes to the boys, interrupted in its meal. It felt like a slash of fire across his face, down to his bones. Next to him he felt Ciel’s body go stock still. A whimper escaped Alistair’s throat that didn’t feel like his own. They could run. They should run.

  But would it chase them?

  The hairs on the back of Alistair’s neck stood, warning him of danger in a practiced way. The air was heavy, and he knew this air - it lingered in the house just before Mother changed. Before every storm, came a calm.

  And so too was the calm here.

  The shadow’s face split into a smile, hundreds of shark teeth thin and long and dripping saliva.

  Alistair put his arms around Ciel, shielding him. It was an instinct - put himself around the smaller one, between the danger and the smaller one. It didn’t work sometimes - Rose screaming and twisting out of his grip - but he’d learned to hold fast. And he did now, as Ciel squirmed and tried to fight out of his arms.

  Alistair braced for the pain, ready for it. Expecting it. Used to it.

  But it never came.

  The shadow thing’s pure red eyes burned into the two of them one second, and in the next it was gone. The white deer went with it - disappearing into nothing. Thin air. There one moment, and gone the next, leaving only bloodstained leaves and bloodstained tufts of white fur behind.

  The two boys waited a still moment, waited for the thing to come back. For their eyes to fix themselves, for the dream to end. But the sun shafted through the trees, illuminating the bloodstained fairy ring. The empty fairy ring. It had been a blink, but the pale deer and the monster had truly been there, and truly vanished.

  “Magic,” Ciel whispered, fevered and shaking. Alistair looked down to see the blonde boy flushed and smiling, ear-to-ear. “Real magic.”

  It would be some time - nine years, in fact - before Alistair realized the reason he was shaking wasn’t because of the shadow, but because of Ciel’s smile.

  NINE YEARS LATER

  2

  The Before (Or, How things are never just once upon a time)

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  IF - and I say this hypothetically - IF my mother got remarried, I wouldn’t be mad.

  Because of course people want to be together. We’re social animals! We came into this world as packs of semi-hairless monkeys all grooming each other, and of course we wanna go out the same way. Of course we wanna eat dinners with someone and hold hands and talk about death and taxes and hard stuff and make omelets in the morning and all that jazz - because doing all that stuff alone sucks hot shit.

  Love is something everyone wants. Except me.

  Anyway, I’ve decided.

  “Mom,” I announce at the breakfast table around a mouthful of my peanut butter toast. “If you wanna start banging a guy again, you have my blessing.”

  Mom nearly drops the jam knife. “W-What?”

  I sigh and rummage around in my backpack before pulling out a vial of water. “There. My blessing. And before you ask, yes, it is holy water and yes, I stole it from the church down the street. But it was sitting out in the open in front of a sign that said ‘WELCOME’, all caps, so I can hardly be held accountable for my actions.”

  “Lilith,” Mom finds her voice somewhere beneath her smeared 12-hour-shift work makeup and unicorn-print nurse fatigues. “How dare you -”

  “God’ll forgive me,” I button up my flannel shirt. “That was, like, Jesus’s whole deal, right?”

  Mom’s face - that always-slightly-worried face with warm blue eyes - lights up from the inside. “ - how dare you ruin the surprise, young lady!”

  “What surprise? Did you finally bang Ryan Reynolds?”

  “Please, Lilith. Stop saying ‘bang’.”

  “Ooookay,” I raise an eyebrow and put on a posh accent, donning a napkin on my head like a bonnet. “Pray tell whomst art thou courting, milady?”

  “Oh no. I’m not going to blab. You’ll get to meet him, soon enough.”

  I’m quiet for a generous three seconds. “Um, hello?! How long have you been dating? How old is he? Spill the beans!”

  “That’s right,” Mom muses thoughtfully at the cupboard. “We are out of beans.”

  “This is hell,” I groan. “I’m in hell.”

  “Well you certainly came prepared,” Mom gets up from the table and snatches the holy water from my hand. “I’ll tell the pastor you’re very sorry.”

  “Sorry I’m so fucking cool,” I flip on a pair of sunglasses that’ve just been permanently lying on the table since summer vacation. We were planning to go to the Santa Monica boardwalk, but Mom’s shifts never cleared up. She graciously ignores my f-word and washes her toast plate.

  “Speaking of dating, when are you going to get around to it?” She asks in that fake-innocent Mom-who-doesn’t-know-anything-about-being-young voice.

  “When I’m dead and buried in the ground,” I grunt.

  She laughs. Mom takes all my jokes in stride - I got my dark humor from her. Working in the hospital in the ICU is killer on her mind and body, and sometimes she sees things so horrible and sad the only way to make it lighter is to fling jokes around like they’re liferings near a sinking ship.

  “Who’s going to date you in the ground?” Mom asks lightly.

  “My boyfriend the worm.”

  “Very handsome worm, I imagine.”

  “You don’t even know. Huge abs, huge cheekbones, huge…GPA. Thinks I’m super cute.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “In theory,” I mumble. Mom turns off the water and looks over her shoulder sternly at me, though not all that sternly considering both her hands are covered in soap bubbles.

  “Lilith Elizabeth Pierce, you are very cute! And don’t let me catch you insinuating otherwise!”

  “You’re the only one I’d ever let catch me,” I stand up and kiss her on the cheek, grab my backpack, and book it. I get to our beat-up welcome mat before I lean backwards and peer at her over the doorframe.

  “Please tell me you aren’t dating a cop. They’re trained to be complicit in racist profiling and also I haven’t even smoked weed yet.”

  Mom perks up, an offspring of the 70’s and ever ready to ease me into my first ‘dangerous’ experiences safely. “Do you want to?”

  “God no. Love you.”

  She laughs and shak
es her head. “Love you too.”

  This is the part where I tell you that when I was six, my dad shoved me down a flight of stairs.

  No, wait. That’s later. When I’m looking into a pool of water and being deep and introspective, or some shit. Right now, as I’m walking to school down the molten California-in-September sidewalk, this is the part where I tell you about my goals and dreams and like, how much I want to be an English teacher, or how I’ve already decided I’m going to culinary school or how bad I wanna travel the world after I graduate. Or something. Something about my future, and what I have planned for it.

  Because, surprise! I’ve got absolutely zero planned for it. Everyone else in my class is already making plans for Yale and UCLA or the local community college or a job in a restaurant. It happened overnight in that bizarrely silent way important changes do - May of sophomore year we’re all talking about renting an ironic bouncy castle for someone’s birthday, and three months later in September when junior year started, we’re suddenly talking about ‘scholarships’ and ‘early applications’ and ‘resumes’. Everyone got ‘part time jobs’ - just saying the words feels stiff. Grown-up. Real. Everyone else is driven and ready to take on the world. And then there’s me, stealing holy water from churches. Negative sixty ambition, in a society that pretty much values only that. I want to do two things with my life; eat, and play videogames. And not ever be touched.