The Book of Briars-Audiobook-Fiction
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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Chapter 19 Magic The moment the letter was free from Ed's skin, it was real. No longer freckled and made of flesh, no longer faded in outlined in ink. It was paper no bigger than a postage stamp folded in half. Alistair turned it over, found the flap on the back and peeled it open. Inside was an even smaller sheet of paper with microscopic riding on it. Impossible to read. Alistair felt like exploding. She just seemed magic, whatever else she doubted about herself. About the monarch papers. About Ed. It was all blown away. She was pulled from her trance by Ed tapping the table with a finger. She looked up and saw he had rolled his sleeves down again. He was telling her to put the letter down. She did. He picked up his glass of water down 3/4 of it. Then put the glass on top of the letter. It was like a magnifying glass. Ed took her hand holding it tight, She gripped his in turn for security. For fear that if she didn't hold on, she would slide off the world. She leaned forward and looked down through the glass to the letter. Only you can open this. It's how the magic that made it works. It's bound to you. Please forgive me for everything. I am not your enemy, neither is the Silver. The true enemy is what hides among the threats of the tapestry everywhere and nowhere binding the world. Always listening. Even here now PS one go there, bolden is waiting where they can't hear you. Alistair had no intention of going to PS one down on Henry Street after the diner. She found she was rattled, shaken in a way she had never been before, not even her slips into the dark had made her feel quite this way. At least what she saw in the dark was nothing but visions, illusions. The letter she pulled out of Ed's arm that was real, which meant the rest of the world and all the boring, mundane things in it. Those were the lies. She had so many questions she wanted to ask Ed, but he had made it clear that someone somewhere was listening to everything they said, he finished his stake, asked her to consider what he'd said, how the silver had changed and to reach out to him if and when she was ready now Alistair was standing outside. Lucky Golden walk trying to force herself to go inside and hide back in her box like iris. Just go to sleep and forget. But PS one and Henry Street were only 10 blocks west, just past her favorite library. She felt so naive, so common magic was real. But Alistair had a favorite library, how quaint It was almost nine p.m. when she got to the school She wasn't sure if it was but PS one definitely looked like the first school in Manhattan. It was a block wide wall of gray stone pocked with windows reaching up four stories too tall, ornate dormers in a copper roof. The plaque above one of the two entrances. Red 18 97. Both entrances were locked. There were no lights on inside and every window was barred. Alistair hoped to find bold and waiting for her on a park bench, but she was mostly alone on the quiet stretch of Henry street. She could barely even remember baldin and ousters memory. Bolden was nothing more than a brown sleek triangle of hair with foggy bits of verbose but kind grown up underneath. So alister probably wouldn't recognize her unless she walked up and introduced herself. Alistair followed the sidewalk around the school, searching for any sign of bolden. Now looking at every passer by when skipped leave or dark corner as potentially supernatural. Her phone buzzed and she cringed, realizing she hadn't followed up with Xev since she texted him at the diner. He was probably worried out of his mind. She dug her phone out of her coat pocket and found that it wasn't a text waiting for her but a call with no number which was already connected. She lifted the phone to her ear. Hello? Hello, Alistair dr bolden inside the school. Quick as you can. It's locked. I checked silence on the other end. Alistair checked the screen. The call had been disconnected. She looked back down the block to the front facade of the school. One of the entrances was now standing open and the light above it was glowing. **** was all Alistair could say. The front hall of the school followed the outer perimeter of windows before turning a corner into darkness. The diffused light from outside reflected on the highly polished tile floor, making it look like glassy water. Another hall led deeper into the dim center of the school. From the entrance, Alistair could make out the edge of a flight of stairs near the back of the second hall. The school was quiet and felt eerily frozen in time. The drawings pinned to the bulletin board by the front door didn't flutter in the breeze from outside the clock above the entrance didn't take only the sound of a small clique behind her as the front door of the school closed on its own and closing her in the dark. Her phone bust again. She checked another automatically connected. Call Alistair raised the phone to her ear. Are you here in a sense? No one can hear us right now. It's safe. Where are you? I hope to see you soon. But for now I need to know about your last episode at the house. Did you use the mantra? I taught you. I did. Did it work? No, of course not. Those memories have only grown more potent while they waited down in the dark. I tried to help you dampen or suppress them with tools like the mantra, but in doing so I think I failed you. No, you didn't. You're the only person who ever helped. I didn't help you. I placated you. That mantra was meant to remind you that the ephemera hiding in your mind was a lie. But it wasn't. It isn't. It's real. What you see in the darkness really happened. And you know it, Alice Alice. That's right. Alistair had created the concept of the alternate Alistair during their sessions. That's where it had come from. The name, the persona, the true Alistair that she sometimes fantasized about. Bolden was reminding her of Alice. What if we could take that ephemera? All the imagery that blocks you from the truth. And instead of pushing the fragments back into the dark, we drag them into the light. We accept that they are real. But they're just harmless. Broken. Pieces of some forgotten thing like the pages in the box you made for me. What if I could help you learn to look at them and realize they can't hurt you because you can shape them into something else. Something useful. Make them links in a chain that reaches back to who you truly are. I don't want to go back there. Alistair stammered. It isn't going back Alister. It's going forward. Don't you want that? I don't know what I want. I just wanted to talk to you again. I don't, No, no, no. You want more than that Bolden's voice was fierce, impassioned Alistair was overwhelmed. But she was also touched that this woman was still so determined to help her. You want the truth about your life, about the night you came back, you want to know how this is all connected, don't you? How can I do that with me? By your side? By repurposing your pain to help you instead of haunt you? Don't you want that? Yes, She wanted out of the dark. Then it's time to begin. It's time to go upstairs. Alistair looked toward the edge of the stairs in the dark center of the school. What's up there? The next step on your path? I'm with you, Alistair stalled. Then took a deep breath, walked to the stairs and ascended into the dark. The stairs, reached up into a four story void of black. Alistair took the steps one x 1 as Bolden, continued to talk to her over the years. I've come to believe that memory is a kind of magic or perhaps a part of magic. It's what connects everything. It fills the emptiness. When someone holds an object and remembers something, it isn't just chemicals in their brain stirring. It's the remnant of that memory reconnecting, traveling from that object back to the person. It belongs to memory is all around us, reaching out to us. But most people are blind to it and if they do somehow stumble upon it, they only see their own memories. But you see more. You sense more, you hear its call how we don't know. But this school is a well and I think you're sensitive to deep places. I believe it's why you sometimes see manifestations of your guilt, the fox or while you have resurgent memories of the cold night in the woods and the snow. I know this is difficult. It took me decades to open my mind enough to let it in. But this is the work I want to do now with the resources the silver provides. I want to help you. Why, Alice Stock? Alistair is blood ran cold? The voice was emboldened. The urgent whisper called from somewhere else, deeper in the dark school. What are you doing, Alistair asked, turning in all directions and found she was no longer on the stairs. She had stepped off onto one of the higher floors without realizing and was now standing in an empty classroom one she couldn't quite remember entering. It's not me. I only told you to go upstairs. But look, you found your way to that room to that desk. Alistair turned and found a single desk behind her. Click click click. No alister muttered. She turned away, fear radiating out from her chest to her extremities. Why would you do this to me, Alistair whispered. It was the only way to show you please, please. I don't want click click click. Let me help you open the desk Alice and look inside. It's the way through. It's the path out of the dark, take control of your past, Take control of your power. Alistair felt as if she was being torn apart at an atomic level half of her wanting to run the other half trying desperately to get to and look inside the desk. She turned and took step. After begrudging step across the room, she slowly placed her hand on the hinged desktop, teeth gritted. She watched as her hand reached to lift the lid until it locked in place. Then it reached inside. She was a puppet on strings. She bowed over the desk, eyes closed as she felt her fingers wrap around the sheet of paper inside her fist, crumpling it as she pulled it out. Open your hand Alice. Alistair tried to fight back, but her fingers unwound, and although she tried to look away through the windows into the Black Knight, she couldn't resist looking down. She was holding a drawing done with colored pencils, a line of trees, a forest, and six Children standing bravely on the edge of it, holding staves and sticks and swords, iris with her bow and in the woods, a creature, a beast towering in the treetops. It's red, orange eyes burning, looking down on them. Alistair whispered a word to herself, barely audible timber. A wave of disorientation raged through her like the school had been flipped upside down. She collapsed onto the slick floor. Alistair pulled herself toward the door, unable to look up the nausea overwhelming. Behind her click click, click The harbinger fox Alice, listen to me, Let my voice be your anchor. I can help you through it. Tell me what you see. Alistair took deep gulps of air as the room continued to spin out of control, she realized she could still hear bolden, even though her phone was at her side. More magic. A cold wind began to blow through the outer hall and into the classroom, chilling Alistair and dampening bolden's voice behind her. The click, click, click, and in the corner of her eye the fox was there. Alistair scrambled to her feet, slamming into the door frame, calling at it to stay upright, muffled, bolden called to her. You have to go through the dark to the other side. You have to face it first. I can't Alistair raced out of the classroom trying to find the stairs, trying to outrun what she knew was coming. What she felt reaching for the back of her neck. The cold! The fox, the thing that follows tree boughs now lined the black hallway as if they had just burst through the walls. The walls were coated in patches of scaly bark and snow lay in deep drifts in the corners. The school was now a maze of consumed wooded corridors, turning darker, more dangerous. The floors creaked and wind whipped like a storm from some cold place. She turned another corner and the fox was waiting for her. She slid against a wall half hiding behind a snow covered water fountain, A C. P. A photograph of an old graduating class hung on the wall across from where she crouched. It had been torn open and inside the photograph was another world black with stars in the darkness and snow blowing in from it, Alistair started mumbling her mantra to herself. A whisper that grew louder as the wind howled. The black brimmed at the edge of the photograph frame then poured over the dark, consumed the hall, eating the walls and tree branches. Those weren't stars. Beyond the photograph there was nothing in the black but the glimmer of countless animals eyes and there was something larger perched just on the other side of the frame, looking down at her preparing to emerge. The thing she hadn't seen in years. The thing that always followed the fox, The thing with the alabaster clause, Alistair scrambled to her feet, rushing past the photograph. She took the steps two at a time, then spilled onto the floor at the bottom of the stairs, lost for a moment before finding her bearings and racing for the exit, she threw the door open and charged through, finding herself not outside, but in the school's cavernous auditorium, she had gotten turned around the door behind her was now an inky void that grew up the walls of the room, spreading twinkling eyes in the black click click click. There was something else in the sound of the howling wind bolden. You have to face it Alice. Bolden's disconnected voice echoed above the wind. Whatever it is in the dark, you have to face it, tree branches ripped through the walls of the auditorium, the heavy crimson stage curtains billowed in the hail of snow and wind. Alistair stepped away from the expanding portal where the door once was. The darkness grew closer, filling her vision like horror filled oblivion. She stumbled backwards through the narrow rows of seating. Holden's voice was distant, now fading. It's a coming, but not gone. Not yet. Alistair. I'm here. What do you see? Dark? It's all dark, was all she could muster. Look into the dark. Look through it. It's there, it's in there. You have to face it, Alice in the void, Something bigger, darker than the black was approaching. The thing from the photograph had made its way down to her strands of gray hair like spiderwebs whipped out from the black and white claws perched on the edge of the dark. My name is Alistair. I am 26. The only thing that's real is whatever I can feel nothing more. Nothing much. No, Alice. No, it's real. It's all real. You have to see it. No. My name is Alice. Alistair stopped her desperate re citation, her eyes clenched shut. She was willing herself to open them, her face contorted body, shivering as she fought her every instinct to finally face the thing in the dark. She opened her eyes Alistair. She whipped turned and found the fox staring back at her from a wooded path at the end of the row of chairs, all whiskers and cracked glasses. It's okay. Come with me! It spoke. The fox spoke. What? Come with me this way? The voice was small, but sure, like a clever little child. Everything's going to be okay. I found the way out follow me. The fox tilted its head, motioning her to follow as it sped off down the path. It was dim, but inviting, warm, lined with trees so densely packed together they looked like walls. The leaves were still in glistening, untouched by the void of wind howling at her back. She didn't know how but something in her was sure it was the way out Alistair followed, but the thing in the dark was behind her. Reaching now Alistair felt it's cold claws hovering above her shoulder. The darkness closed in and the howling reached a fever pitch. The claws took hold. Then it all stopped. Alistair fell to her knees. It had her and she was helpless to fight it. Ma'am. A man barely squeezed into a security guard uniform was standing over her almost as scared as she was the fox, the snow, the thing in the dark all gone. Are you okay, ma'am Alistair sat in the tub in the corner of her room for an hour trying to drain the cold from her body until the hot water ran out and she felt limp from crying. She had faced the dark and it almost dragged her down with it, her mind was fragmented and fluttering worse than any post episode she'd ever had. She dried off, slid into a t shirt and shorts and slumped into bed. She couldn't do it, she couldn't fix herself. She couldn't look into the dark and change like Golden swore she could. She wasn't strong enough, bolden, hadn't called back even she knew it. Alistair was too weak to get better to hollow. Even the security guard at the school had pitied her, helping her out of the building instead of calling the police follow me alister shuddered at the knock on her door. She wiped her eyes, staying silent. Danny Chen had come to complain about her using all the hot water. Another knock. Who is it? She asked in a broken whisper. Alistair, Xev open up. Something rang out in her when she herds EVs harried voice, she leapt to her feet, stumbling over the coat and shoes she dumped on the floor. She unlocked the door and let the light of the stairwell in. Zev was waiting on the other side, disheveled and stressed. He saw her tears, her shaking body. Are you okay? You didn't text back and I thought the look on his face, the tenderness, the caring worry. It was more than Alistair could stand. She bowed her head and laid it against his chest. A heave of fresh tears shuttering through her. He grabbed her instantly, his arms holding her to him, holding her up. It's okay. It's okay, whatever it is. Whatever happened, I'm here, I'm not leaving. She felt his stubbled chin against her head as he whispered to her, then felt his lips kiss her forehead. She wiped her tears against his rumpled sweater and looked at him, their eyes meeting in the half light between her room and the world beyond. Then they kissed. She didn't know who kissed whom, but it felt like the electric culmination of years of wanting, waiting and never being able to connect, then finally letting go once, twice again and again tenderly at first. Then overwhelming. Wait, Zef tried to pull back. Should we take a breath. She yanked him into her room and without protest he kicked the door closed behind them. They stumbled over her coat, but he caught her as they both fell. They never made it to the bed.