Wisps

When Brendon returns with the latest child, shivering from the cold in her thin pale nightdress, Carrie watches him from the top of the stairwell, crouched amongst the leaves of the great fern.

He always tells her not to look whenever he comes back with a Wisp, to save her from her guilt, but sometimes she just can’t stop herself from taking a peek.

Tonight, she feels worse than ever not only because this is already the fifth Wisp this week, but also because this one looks particularly tiny. Less than eight, surely. No signs of blood or a struggle on her little body, currently being carried by Brendon to the thick iron door at the end of the hall. Her lack of visible wounds somehow makes it all the worse.

“Some of them, surely, must be harmless,” Carrie had argued with him the day before. Or was it the day before that? Or last week?

All of their conversations are so similar that they’ve started to stitch themselves together, unique words or turns of phrase melting into the same ones that Carrie always uses.

Brendon had sighed. “We can’t go based on your feelings, Care. Whatever instincts you have about them can be muddled to suit their own agendas. It’s what the Wisps do!” At this point, all of Brendon’s words and sighs and facial expressions have melted together too. This is the only line he has.

“You’re right,” Carrie always agrees.

“I know,” Brendon always sighs.

“I’m sorry,” Carrie always says.

Brendon always lets out a heavier sigh. “I know.”

But now, watching him do what he’s done hundreds of times before, unlocking the metal door and disappearing into the darkness with the little female Wisp tucked under his arm like a lamb, Carrie has the strange instinct to follow.

That one has never come to her before.

Carrie creeps down the stairs, and when she reaches the landing at the bottom, she has two options: go left to the metal door that Brendon and the Wisp have gone through, or go right to the kitchen to bring the Wisp dinner.

So Carrie, gliding along the wind of her instinct, lets herself be carried away to the kitchen, where her long fingers begin pulling jams and cheeses and meats from the cupboards to make a sparse meal.

She works quietly and efficiently, not knowing when Brendon will return. He’s never been gone in the chamber for more than thirty minutes, and surely that minute mark must be upon her any minute now.

But she finishes just then, the tray laden with tiny sandwiches that Carrie has shaped into butterflies. Perhaps it will bring a smile to the little Wisp’s face.

Carrie scoops the tray up and glides out of the kitchen on the same instinct that carried her into it, pulling up short to the metal door.

A shimmering golden keypad glitters beside the heavy bolt of iron, the carved metallic buttons on the pad glowing with a jumbled mess of letters and numbers and symbols.

Brendon never tells her the code because he knows her instinct will carry her anywhere it wishes her to follow, and he’s worried that one day her instinct will carry her here. Just as it did now. And Carrie, always powerless to stop it, hesitates for only a moment.

But that moment is all she needs.

The door shudders open, and Brendon finds her there, tray in hand, blinking her wide dark eyes up at him.

Brendon sighs. He’s always doing that.

“Was the instinct to feed her or set her free?” He asks. “Or both?”

As quickly as it swept Carrie up, the instinct now deserts her, and as it flees, it knocks the tray from her hand.

Brendon and Carrie both reach out to catch it, but it slips through Carrie’s fingers, landing solely in Brendon’s.

She smiles at him. “Thank you.”

Instead of saying anything in return, Brendon leans down and kisses her, steady and solid and firm, bringing Carrie back to herself even more.

This time, when Carrie smiles at him, Brendon smiles back.

✵✵✵

Later, once the moon has ascended her throne in the sky, her stars littering her feet, and the mists have rolled across the grounds of Carrie and Brendon’s garden, the whispers start.

Carrie hears them but Brendon does not, his massive form still beside her in bed, blankets tucked loosely around his hips.

“Bren?” Carrie whispers to the night.

Nothing.

“Brendon?” Carrie tries again.

Brendon usually wakes before Carrie does, earlier than all, and so when he sleeps, he sleeps. Not a soul can wake him. Not Carrie, not Knight, their wickedly clever cat, not even, apparently, the Wisps.

And Carrie is sure that those whispers belong to the Wisps, held tight under lock and key in the chamber, two levels below their bedroom.

As Carrie slides out of bed, nightdress rippling about her knees, Knight shoots her a glare, black tail twitching, golden eyes gleaming, ready to leap off the dresser and herd her back to bed.

He’s like Brendon, Carrie has always thought. Watchful, clever, always seeming to anticipate her moves before she makes them. She’s sure that if she were to play a match of chess against Knight, he would always win in the same way Brendon does.

And so it’s not the least bit strange when Knight does leap off the dresser to circle Carrie’s ankles, but it is strange that when she manages to disentangle herself from him, he doesn’t move to follow.

He isn’t guided by the same instinct Carrie is, of course, and so she can’t afford to glance back at him as she hurries down the stairs, drifting closer and closer to the metal door with its weighty deadbolt.

When she reaches that shimmering golden keypad, whispers guide her fingers to hit the right letters, numbers and symbols. The instinct is so strong now that Carrie questions nothing, does nothing but stand unnaturally straight as the door clicks open with a hiss, mist slithering out over her bare feet to open up to the darkness beyond.

She thinks she hears a concerned meow from up above, but up above might as well be light-years away, and so she pays it no heed as she begins her downward descent.

And down.

And down.

And down some more.

When she reaches the ancient chamber of cells, eerie greenish torch light casts dancing, dangerous shadows over the pale brown sandstone walls; it is only then that something is able to break through the heady thickness of her instinct.

Fear.

She has never been down here before. Not once.

Brendon has always said it’s too dangerous for her, and now she knows why.

The whispers of the Wisps are maddening, the voices of the damned children overlapping with one another to create a cacophony of frightened pleas, snarling demands, and achingly sorrowful cries, all fighting for dominance in the muddled field of Carrie’s mind.

It’s too much. Far too much.

The cold of stone beneath Carrie’s bare feet makes its way to her knees as she crashes to the ground, the pain from the impact a distant foreign thing compared to the chaos of her mind.

“Stop!” Carrie cries to the Wisps, to those hungry faces who crowd the bars of their cells, eager to at last meet another who speaks their language.

Then, more forcefully,

“STOP!”

This time Carrie’s voice is a scream, riddled with her own aching sorrow and snarling fear.

“I can’t help any of you if you don’t stop! I can’t focus on all of you at once. It’s…it’s too much for me.”

The Wisps heed her, and all at once it stops.

The whispers in Carrie’s mind cease, not so much as a single breath daring to take up any more space. The Wisps have never seen someone like Carrie before. And, like Carrie, they have instincts of their own.

“We are sorry for your distress,” one Wisp says, aloud, stepping as far forward as she can to the bars of her cage. The farther forward she steps, the farther backwards the other Wisps fall. “It is only…we did not know for sure if you would be able to hear us.”

Carrie has recovered enough to look up through her curtain of golden-brown hair at the Wisp. On her knees and still panting, she struggles to stand, to make out which of the cells the voice is trapped inside.

There.

Near the back.

Carrie dares a step forward, the cold fear she gathered on her way down here settling around her shoulders like a heavy cloak.

It does nothing to slow her steps as she continues onward, the hungry little faces of all the other Wisps eagerly watching as she comes before the cage bars of the Wisp who spoke.

It’s the same dark-haired one that Brendon came back with this morning.

Though she is the smallest, she stands the straightest, the proudest. Her wide black eyes focus on nothing else but Carrie as she approaches, stopping before the cell bars.

The Wisp smiles, pointy little teeth peeking through her lips.

“I was going to bring you sandwiches,” Carrie rasps, only half sure that the Wisp isn’t going to reach her fingers through the bars to grab hold of her wrist.

Everything Carrie has ever been warned about the Wisps flies through her head at impossible speeds, flashes of information coming and going, second after second, in the voice of her father, in the voice of Brendon…

“Their innocence is a front to cover their wickedness; you can see it in the eyes, the teeth…”

“They are sirens, capable of worming their way into the hearts and minds of even the steadiest men…”

“One look at you Care, and they’ll kill you. They’ll turn your kindness into their weapon…”

Carrie is lost, fighting against what she knows and what she sees right in front of her.

“Ooh, I love sandwiches,” the Wisp licks her lips, points flashing again. “Why have you not brought them? We are starved.”

“They’re upstairs…” Carrie knows something is astray, and it’s not just her heart. “I can go get them…I—I can go right now…”

“No!” The Wisp cries, thin bony fingers curling around the bars. “That is alright. I—we can wait. Can we not?”

She smiles again, and Carrie’s stomach turns. The other Wisps all around them nod their agreement, murmur that they’re not even really that hungry. What’s a few minutes more?

Get out.

Get out of here now.

Carrie’s mind is screaming again, and this time it sounds entirely like Brendon.

“It’s no trouble,” Carrie begins to draw away from the Wisp girl’s cage, a tremble starting in her hands. “I’ll be right back with them. I—I promise.”

“Promise?” The little Wisp tilts her head to the side, latching on to the word. “Well, come back here then and we will seal it the proper way!”

Confusion paired with fear are the only two dominating emotions in Carrie’s head for a second.

But only for a second.

Then she’s gliding back to the Wisp, nightdress fluttering behind her like a dove’s tail feathers.

“What do you mean ‘seal it the proper way’?” Carrie asks, her mouth disconnected from the words, stuffed with dandelion wisps.

The Wisp giggles like Carrie is the stupidest woman in the world.

“Like this!” The Wisp thrusts her gangly arm through the cage bars, wincing at the pain from passing the invisible electrical barrier, then daintily sticks out her pinky finger.

It stays there, perfectly still in the dim lighting, the only focus in Carrie’s entire world. It hovers in mid-air, waiting for the end that was always going to come.

Adult Wisps like Carrie never last very long.

And so Carrie is practically powerless to stop it as her trembling fingers reach towards the Wisp’s, whose wicked little smile grows ever wider the closer Carrie’s hand moves towards hers, pinky finger unfurling like the petals of a daisy, arching to hook around the Wisp’s—

“CARRIE!” Brendon roars from the other end of the chamber.

Like a sunflower drawn to the sun, Carrie’s head can’t help but turn towards the sound of Brendon’s voice. But he is not enough to save her.

She catches one glimpse of him and Knight, Brendon’s shirt still only half on in his rush down here—and then everything explodes outwards, shards of this scene flying in all directions.

✵✵✵

Carrie doesn’t know exactly what happened, she only has a fuzzy feeling, a strange ice-cold touch lingering on her pinky finger as her back slams into stone and her head cracks on hard-packed dirt. She goes tumbling, flung away from the chamber and into the night beyond.

The world swirls in strange colours, makes funny sounds as it sings Carrie to sleep, but she fights against it, her instinct to stand, find Brendon, stronger than the pain.

When she does finally blink her eyes open after an agonizing eternity, she feels the dread before the sounds and smells and the sight opens itself up to her.

The chamber that she was standing in not ten minutes ago looks like it’s been torn in half, cracked right down the middle and exposed to the unforgiving night and the fog that slowly begins to creep through the wreckage.

It’s the cool wind that pushes Carrie to her knees, her mind still trying to process what she is seeing.

The home that she and Brendon had built for themselves is gone. In its place, only ruin.

And the small Wisp, who is standing in the centre of it.

“What have you done?” Carrie whispers, fear curling around her heart when she realizes she can’t see Brendon amongst the ruin. Or Knight.

“Blood traitor!” Is the girl’s answer, anger flashing in her pitch eyes. “You would cower here with them, content only to please, as our kind fight for survival?”

Her words make a flicker of anger streak through Carrie. "You do not know me, or Brendon—"

The Wisp girl laughs, an ugly, too high-pitched sound. “I have broken the chains you yourself have so eagerly put on! That husband of yours has been abducting us for years and you stood by and let him, you traitorous bitch.” The words are harsh, spitting from her mouth.

But they only contribute to Carrie’s anger. She stands, and despite the swaying grass beneath her, she manages a step or two in the Wisp’s direction.

“Brendon is making you harder to detect, easier to hide…” Carrie trails off, once more searching for Brendon amidst the ruins. Looking for a wink of his pale hair, his serious eyes, but she sees only the darkness and the fog, creeping ever closer to her ankles.

She struggles against it, against the heavy accusation in the Wisp’s eyes. She’s only a child, just a girl really. Does her anger not have a right to exist, the way Carrie’s does?

She finds she cannot begrudge the girl this, but she does want her to understand. She needs her to understand. Otherwise, everything she and Brendon did was for nothing.

“I know…how this…looks,” Carrie fights the embrace of the fog, now on both knees. “I know…you are scared. I was…scared…too, once.”

“No,” the girl snaps. “You do not get to do that. Do not act innocent when you are not.”

“I am…far from innocent,” Carrie rasps. “But I am…not so…guilty either.

“You are just as bad as the humans,” the Wisp seethes. “Perhaps more so. And in any case, it does not matter. The others have already escaped, and now I will too. I tire of speaking to witch-like liars.”

This is all wrong.

Carrie has said the wrong thing, failed to make the girl understand, and now she’s going to die here. She feels her time running out with each advance of the fog over her body.

“You are only living so long because you are caging us,” the Wisp girl continues, sneering. Oh how wrong she is. How right. “I do not know how, but I think that for so long as we live, you will too. Except you get to live in that cozy home with that husband, and we have to live in the darkness. In the damp.”

“It would…not have…been forever.” Carrie presses one hand to the cool earth beneath her palm, nearly sprawling out upon the grass. Perhaps it would be alright to rest her head on the ground…her instinct tells her it will be okay.

The girl makes a disgusted sound, turns to go. But she hesitates, only for a moment, her angry eyes still searching Carrie’s. And now, worse than her anger, there is sorrow too.

“If you were able to live for this long, then you should have helped us,” the girl whispers. “You should have helped us live too. Not just survive.”

Wait! Carrie wants to call. Help me now and I can help you too! I will explain it all.

But Carrie cannot. Her vocal cords no longer work, for the fog has covered her throat, covered nearly all of her.

She did end up resting her head on the ground after all. When had that happened?

Carrie can do nothing but watch the Wisp girl walk away, her small figure disappearing into the dark and into hiding once more.

Brendon will find the Wisp again. She knows he will. But this time, she can only hope that he will finally finish what they started. After all, she won’t be there to set the girl free.

The last thing that Carrie sees before she closes her eyes, before the fog takes her forever, is the moon and stars above, laughing at her. Her instinct urges her to stand, to defy the heavens once more.

For the first time ever, Carrie doesn’t listen to it.