Baelfire, once again, almost wished he hadnât asked because the sight of Fox â broken Fox, Fox with fear in his eyes and knots in his throat and that quiver in his usually soft voice â was close to unbearable to the boy. It pulled at his heartstrings, tugging at his ribcage, making him want to wince despite the fact that he held it in â he wanted to be strong, he wanted to be the anchor his friend usually was for him. He didnât want to let him down.
Fox needed him.
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Even that slight pressure on his arm, gently guiding him towards one of their usual corners, made Fox balk. He nearly stopped dead in his tracks, unwilling to be taken anywhere else, even if it was by Baelfire, even if it was only a few steps with the destination in sight. He did not want to be guided, he just wanted to goâ but there was nowhere to run if not to Felix, nowhere else better to be.
Because Bae was right â he always was â Fox was injured, rendered even more useless than usual by the blood that had dried on his skin, staining it red like a map of the world; he was crippled by the hope that had drained from withing, set loose to flit through the stifling air of the island.
In the back of his mind a memory surfaced as they sometimes did, a random story tossed into the realm of his attention like long-buried fossils bubbling up from a tar pit. Someone â not his mother, certainly â probably the elderly lady who lived at the edge of the village, who used to give the children treats and water from her well on hot days, had once told them a story about a foolish girl and her gift from the gods.
The girl (Fox had long since forgotten her name) had been given a box, the old woman told them, full of all sorts of awful things: monsters, the plague, fear, death, evil itself; but at the very bottom of that box lay Hope. It was the only thing that kept the darkness at bay, held safe within the box. But the girl -- that foolish foolish girl -- hadn't been able to resist her own curiosity. She opened the box, letting it's contents fly free throughout the whole world. She was responsible for the curses of the living, for the fate of the dead. But she slammed the lid shut before Hope could escape, holding onto that last ray of light. She kept Hope, and kept hope for humanity.
The old lady had meant it as a moral tale, warning her wide-eyed audience what sort of trouble inquisitive children got into. Don't play with the tiger's tail, she told them, her bony finger wagging at them in the dim light of her dying fireplace, not unless you're ready for its bite. She hadn't told them what to do if you were the mouse, trapped in the tiger's cage.
Fox hadn't thought about that story for years. He had heard many stories, in a town where tales flowed like water. Here, they seemed as rare as pixie dust. When your whole life is a twisted fairy tale, you don't go often looking for more.
But he was like that girl, like that box, in one. The ghosts of the past swirled around, plucking restlessly at his hair; they had been a part of all of them, once. Neverland pulled the evil out of people, gave it form and substance. Fox had believed he could keep that tenuous hold on Hope, keep that flickering flame alive in a land that ached to snuff out any trace of light. A foolish thought, the idea that he could lock up his chest tight enough to contain it forever, and he cursed himself inwardly for not realizing it sooner. The escape of Hope was inevitable, as the escape of his own shortcomings must have been -- some of the shadows that haunted the island were his own, he knew. And in the absence of lost Hope, they were threatening to rush back in and fill the cavity left behind.
And Bae was still speaking, truths that Fox didn't want to hear tumbling out. The last thing Felix had wanted was for Fox to escape only to fall into harm's way again -- but how could he know that the damage had already be done? Hope's former roost ached, because he knew Bae was right but it was still somehow wrong, to leave his savior at the mercy of his captors.
Fox walked. He walked alongside his friend, following where he was guided, simply because he didn't know what else to do. Baelfire would take him somewhere safe. He trusted him. But as they moved, details he hadn't noticed before came into sudden sharp detail: Bae was limping. He had shadows under his eyes, like faded bruises smudged against his skin. When Fox looked down, he could see that fabric around his friend's ankle was shredded, a blood-spotted bandage stark above the top of his shoe.
"So are you." His tone came out almost accusatory, but it was not meant to be aimed at Baelfire. The loathing he had kept locked up alongside Hope had burst out alongside it, unleashing everything he had kept bottled up. No, the accusation was for himself; he hadn't been there, and look what had happened.
Resentment burned his veins like acid, but he was no longer able to tell who it was meant for -- the gods, if there were any, for saddling them with this burden, as horrible as any carried by the girl from the story? Felix and Baelfire were the heroes here; didn't they deserve something better than this? It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.
