The Lighter That Shone Like A Star (Story of The South) (20 page)

Footsteps echoed through the darkness, a shadow slowly growing bigger in the flickering torchlight. The door to her cell clanged open, a familiar figure standing before her. It had been a few days since Max had personally paid his prisoner a visit.

Anne-Alicia was perched on the edge of her bed, if you could call it that, and waited for her best friend’s boyfriend to sit on the dusty chair opposite. She fiddled absent-mindedly with the bracelet on her wrist.

“Hi, Anne-Alicia,” greeted Max.

“Hi,
Clemari,
” she drooled, her voice ice cold.

“Look, I’m going to be completely honest with you. I don’t know what’s going on. No idea. I’m actually a bit confused with everything. All I know is that you and Matthew were taken by Eimaj’s army,
then you suddenly walk into my castle unnoticed, and announce that my friend –
our
friend – was dead. I just need an explanation, some answers…” Max said.

Anne-Alicia looked up at her old friend. His lips trembled slightly as he spoke, the corners of his mouth pointing downwards, which was unusual for him. Around his eyes were dark circles, and he seemed to have picked up a habit of rubbing his forehead with the back of his left hand. In that moment, she felt sorry for him.

“Max, I don’t know what to say,” she began. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Matthew, and I’m sorry that I didn’t talk earlier. But I was just so shocked. How could you throw me in jail?! I’m your friend, I’m your girlfriend’s
best friend
and I came to you for help!” She had not planned to shout, but everything she had been mulling over for the last week was exploding through her and she had lost control.

“Why didn’t you talk to me when I first arrived, and ask me questions then?
As a friend?”

Max sighed, and looked at his feet.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m here now, and all of them are in danger. Our friends, our families… The whole of The South. Please,
please
, tell me what happened when you were taken.”

She wanted to scream at him, slap him,
refuse to say anything. But she knew she could not. Anne-Alicia was caught between two sides, and she had to make her decision now. But with so much at stake, she was terrified.

Lowering her voice to a barely audible whisper, she tried to explain.

“I had to lie. To get here, I had to lie. Promise me that you’ll protect me.”

Max shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and vowed to protect his friend.

Anne-Alicia told him all that she could. During the commotion at the Light on the Landing gig, she had been dragged across the floor by a man in a grey cloak and pinned against a wall.

“Where is Max?” He spat at her. “Where is Freddie?”

She denied any knowledge of the two boys that he was after, but he knew she was lying.

“TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!” he yelled at her, driving his fist forcefully into her stomach.

She coughed and spluttered, “No.”

The man said no more and let her go, the girl dropping painfully to the ground. She thought for a fleeting instant that he was going to let her go, but instead he grabbed her wrist and the chaotic room around them disappeared.

When Anne-Alicia woke up, she was in a cell not unlike the one she was in now, her arms above her head, chained to the wall. She squinted through the darkness and could see somebody opposite her, in the exact same position.

“Hello?” She called tentatively.

“Anne-Alicia, is that you?” a boy’s voice echoed back.

“Matthew! Where are we?”

“N…
Naegis.”

When she had heard Matthew say the name of the mythological land, she thought he must have been beaten badly. But he explained how he had been awake for a while and overheard some of the guards talking, and they had definitely said Naegis.

The prisoners’ voices must have echoed through the dungeons, and soon two guards arrived. They took Matthew away and interrogated him. He returned a long while after with blood trickling down his face, both his eyes forced closed by heavy bruising. Then they took Anne-Alicia.

She was tied to a wooden chair, her arms and legs completely locked into an uncomfortable position. A woman stood before her. She was tall, much taller than any other woman Anne-Alicia had seen, and she seemed to fill the entire room. Even the guards cowered before her.

Eimaj’s hair was pure white, curling down her shoulders eventually stopping just above her waist. She wore a black dress, corseted around her middle and then flowing outward waist down. It had reminded Anne-Alicia of her cousin’s wedding dress, only in black and with astonishingly intricate patterns sewn into the material, glistening silver in the dim light.

Anne-Alicia was only half-sure that Eimaj wore silver lipstick; there was every possibility that her lips were actually silver. Her eyes were violet, her nose pointed, and her cheekbones could surely cut through glass. To say she was intimidating would have been an understatement.

And Eimaj was powerful. Anne-Alicia gave her no answers, but Eimaj took them all anyway. The woman in black placed the forefinger of her right hand on her prisoner’s forehead and lightly closed her eyes. The girl could feel it. She could feel her mind being
explored, she could sense her memories being watched, and she squirmed as Eimaj extracted all the answers she needed.

And only then did she speak.

“We should have started with you. Your little friend didn’t want to tell us anything.” Anne-Alicia furrowed her sweaty brow.

“Neither did
I,” she protested.

“Oh, but you did. That was too easy. Your friend put up a fight, I struggled for over an hour to dig deeper and deeper into his mind.
To break him. Then again, he has some secrets that he wouldn’t want people to know. Not you, though. You’re an open book. You want to be found out. You
enjoy
people knowing your business.”

“That’s not true,” spat Anne-Alicia.

“Don’t lie,” snarled Eimaj. “We could use you.”

“Use me?”

“You could join us, help us.”

“And why should I, exactly?”

Eimaj smirked, her face growing even more petrifying as her eyes gleamed. She looked towards her guards, the smallest of which hurried to her side carrying a small object. A ScribblePad.

“You think this is the first time we have spoken,” she said. “But it isn’t. We have been speaking for weeks.”

“But… No!” Anne-Alicia was horrified.

“Yes. All that time you spoke to a ‘friend’ you had met on Scribbler. ‘Oh, Rebecca, I love Max so much but Sofia has taken him.’” She mimicked the girl before her, laughing as she did.

“’Oh Rebecca, I haven’t seen Sofia properly for ages because she spends all her time with Max.’ ‘Rebecca, I love you! I was late for school because I was talking to you. Ha. Ha. Ha.’”

Eimaj’s voice had grown less comical and more serious, until she was spitting each word. “’Rebecca, I wish you lived in Pipton.’ ‘Rebecca, Sofia knew I liked Max. I hate them both.’ ‘Rebecca, shall I just leave them all and we can be best friends?’” Eimaj laughed maniacally, her face distorted and horrifying.

“All that time you spent on your ScribblePad speaking to oh-so-perfect Rebecca. But it was me. I know you, Anne-Alicia. I know everything about you. And I know what you want. Work with me, with us, and we’ll see that Max and Sofia, and everyone else, get what they deserve. Because
you
are the special one. You deserve happiness, not them with their
perfect
little lives. You.” Eimaj was now standing directly in front of her prisoner, her warm hand resting on Anne-Alicia’s freezing wrist.

And Anne-Alicia believed her. She could not help it, but Eimaj had spoken to every part of her soul and had known exactly what words to use. Of course, Anne-Alicia had never believed for a moment that she might kill Max or Sofia or anybody else.

The planning began. Anne-Alicia needed to find out if Max really was the rightful Clemari, or if Freddie owned that title. And so they, Eimaj and Anne-Alicia, planned out every detail.

Eimaj had known that Joz would not wait to crown Max, and she had known when the inauguration would be. She wanted Anne-Alicia to make a dramatic entrance, to announce Matthew’s death. That way, Max would want to ask her everything and she could speak to her friend – find out everything that had happened since they had last seen each other. Maybe she would even see him perform magic and confirm himself as Naegean.

The following day, Anne-Alicia arrived at the castle.

“But how?” Max interrupted, needing to find out how his friend had crossed the wall.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there is no way around that wall. No way through it, above it, or below it. How did you get from the East to the West?”

“The wall?” asked Anne-Alicia.

“Yeah. You know, that enormous, sky-high, impenetrable barrier that separates the two sides of Naegis? The wall that is all I can see from my bedroom window. The wall that is in the last fairytale…”

“I… I didn’t come across a wall. I just went through a forest. Eimaj told me to follow a path and I came out at the bottom of a hill, your castle straight ahead.”

Max was baffled; it did not take a mind-reader to work that out. Of course, Anne-Alicia was lying.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I arrived and then you threw me in jail before I could even do what she had asked. And I’ve had a week to think… a week to think about how stupid I’ve been. I would never want to hurt you and Sofia. And I know I’ve just told you everything, so you probably won’t believe me after all the things I said, but it is the truth.”

Max did not speak for a few minutes. He had just been given a lot of information to digest, so Anne-Alicia let him contemplate his options

Finally, he spoke.

“I have a few questions.”

“Hit me,” she replied.

“First, how did Matthew die?”

Anne-Alicia was confused, and then she realised.

“Oh! Max I’m so sorry! I didn’t tell you! Matthew isn’t really dead, they freed him. It was my only condition to help Eimaj. They let him go.”

Max smiled, but there was doubt flickering behind his eyes. Anne-Alicia could not blame him. After all, she was dubious herself. She could not be one hundred percent sure that they had spared Matthew’s life; she could only trust what they had told her. And she did not feel too comfortable placing her trust in Eimaj.

“Thank everything good and bad!” he exclaimed. “Any idea where he is?”

“No, but he can’t be too far! Maybe he’ll find his way here.”

“We’ll find him. Right, another question: what have you told Eimaj since being here?”

The girl hesitated. “I’ve told her that you’ve locked me away and that I’m angry.”

“Good, we will let her believe that you’re still doing her bidding.”

Anne-Alicia agreed that this was best, especially because Eimaj would surely kill her if she found out that Max now knew the truth.

“Why didn’t you tell me you liked me? I thought you hated me.”

This question surprised Anne-Alicia. How could he focus on something so trivial at a time like this?

“I… Me and Sofia agreed that we’d just let fate decide.”

“Oh. Well, let me tell you, I used to believe in fate and destiny. But I’ve been here for a little while now and something tells me that they don’t exist.” Max smiled at Anne-Alicia, all tension in the room finally cleared.

“Max, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you do what Eimaj did? You know, read my mind,” she asked. Grateful that he did not choose that path.

“Well, to be honest I’m not very good at it,” Max confessed.

“Oh,” muttered Anne-Alicia, deflated by his response.

“But anyway, even if I could have, I wouldn’t,” he added.

“Why?”

“Because I know I can trust you. You’re my friend and I need you. And you need me.”

“I
need
you?” mocked Anne-Alicia.

“Ha. Ha. You know what I mean.”

The friends laughed, grinning at each other.

“Okay, is there anything else I need to know before we go?”

“We?” she repeated, hopefully.

“Of course, you can’t stay here any longer.”

“Thank you,” Anne-Alicia smiled, before something else suddenly came to her. “And yes, one more thing. ScribblePads.”

“ScribblePads?
What about them?”

“Well I was only there for a day, albeit the longest day of my life, but I heard Eimaj talking about ScribblePads. She seemed to think that there was a way to use them to find you and Freddie.”

Max looked like he was about to vomit. His head suddenly fell into his arms.

“Max? Are you okay?” Anne-Alicia asked.