The Fairytale Life of Doris McQueen [#1] ✓

THIRTEEN

Chapter 13

The darkness cleared away to a blinding white light and slowly she could make out shapes. She blinked and a garden came into light. Long reed grass was slightly waving in the breeze. A bamboo wood contraption was rhythmically pumping water and its sound was like a drumbeat going in tune with the sound that the waving grass was making. The sun shone like it does in winter. Clear and pleasant.

The place was beautiful but Doris was worried. Wahl could be behind them. As her mind remembered more and more, her sudden burst of power (which had by now vanished, leaving an aching hole in her stomach) and impaling PointyBeard flashed through her brain. Something cold spread over her as she realised that she might have killed him.

No, she thought. It was impossible. She wasn't a killer. She never hurt anyone. It was strange but on one hand she was afraid that PointyBeard was still alive and would come after them while on the other hand she wished he wasn't dead.

Death is one of the scariest things not to those who die but to those who live to see it. Doris had thought she was unemotional and the only thing that could have ever bothered her was failure but she was proved wrong. There was nothing worse than the knowledge of having killed someone, not even the fact that it was in defence of a friend who would have surely died.

"Where are we?" Adam's groan made Doris forget her worries temporarily. With numerous bruises and a swollen eye, he must have looked a mess but to Doris he'd never looked better.

"You're alive?" Doris hugged him.

"Is that disappointment I hear?" Adam grimaced.

Doris smiled, "No, idiot." She looked at him sadly, "You look really beaten up."

"Yeah, Wahl didn't exactly ask me for tea during our little combat," Adam winced. "But I'm impressed! You can teleport now?"

Doris looked confused, "This? I didn't do it!"

"Then who?"

"Ouch! I'm sore all over," Gemima complained.

"Aunt!" Doris helped her up while Adam looked around.

"Madeleine and Uncle Pierre are here too!" Adam called from behind a stone bench.

Doris and Gemima walked behind the bench where Madeleine was rubbing Pierre's palms and trying to wake him up.

"Did you bring us here?" Gemima asked in a displeased voice.

"Yes, I had no choice but this. All of us would have died in that swamp otherwise," Madeleine glared at Gemima clearly thinking that it had been Gemima's responsibility to help escape. "Anyway, its Pierre that we need to worry about right now."

"Wait, where's Jasper?" Doris asked.

"Jasper?" Adam shouted.

Doris turned towards Madeleine with suspicion, "You didn't bring him with us, did you?"

Madeleine looked away, "I-I didn't know he was a friend. I acted as quickly as I could."

Doris turned away, not wanting everyone to see her moist eyes. Jasper must be slowly and slowly drowning in the mud or maybe Wahl had already killed him. All because Jasper had tried to help her. It was always like this. Mom left her when she was three. Dad was in trouble because of her. Gemima was suffering because she was helping her. Adam nearly died because of her. Pierre was most probably going to die because he was kind to her. And now, Jasper was dead because he tried to keep them alive.

She was bad luck. People should stay away from her. Maybe Dad had known about this all long and this was the reason why he had kept he was so careful with her. He didn't like her going out of the house and he had been against her going to a school. He had been right to fear and now everything was going wrong.