Fable of Happiness (Fable 1)

Vaguely, I recalled the shopkeeper giving me a lesson on it when I’d bought it years ago. He said it was a one-way street. The signal would be sent out, but no acknowledgment of it being received would be sent back.

The anxiety that granted wasn’t fair.

Had it worked?

Will they come for me?

All I knew was I had to keep it serviced, check the batteries regularly, and be prepared to wait a few days for rescue. Satellites needed to make two passes minimum to confirm my location, and that was only if it had direct access to the starry sky.

Who knew if GPS could track me down here, in a stone basement in the middle of nowhere? The not knowing and lack of confirmation were the worst torments imaginable as hours ticked onward and the chill in my bones solidified to ice crystals.

I felt like I’d shatter from stress and shivering.

I rocked against the wall. I crawled around the perimeter until I found a blanket that itched and prickled. I bundled myself up and did my best not to slip deeper into fear.

Tears prickled my hazy stare as the bright lightbulb flickered above me, bringing my jumpy attention back to the present. The bulb seemed to glow brighter, glinting off the antenna of the PLB, mocking me.

Will someone come?

Or am I on my own?

Pressure built in my already sore throat. My pulse shot skyward, sending blood to pound in my fingertips and toes.

Why had the lights come on?

Was he coming?

What is he going to do?

My mother was wrong.

I wasn’t blessed.

Not anymore.

I’d made a stupid, stupid choice. A choice that’d totally derailed my safety and success and left me alone, in pain, and—

The door clanged as if something heavy bashed against it, followed by the screech of metal pulling through metal.

Stand up.

Stand up!

Scurrying to my feet, swaying as light-headedness caught me, I blinked in panic.

The door opened.

I braced myself against the wall, tilting my chin and balling my hands. My knees quaked, and nausea bubbled in my belly. I was weak and lost and dreadfully afraid.

I’d always thought I’d be brave when faced with danger. I’d never shied away from risk and received praise from my self-defense teacher. I even remembered bragging to my good friend Katie, from my local bouldering gym, that I would beat up any man before he could touch me. If I could master stone, I could master men.

How wrong I’d been.

How stupidly, awfully wrong.

This wasn’t just a man. He wasn’t some overweight jerk on the street. He wasn’t some nerd from an online dating site. He was...feral.

Don’t be weak, Gem.

Get ready to fight.

I held my breath as he stalked into the small cell, his bare feet whispering over dank concrete. Unlike when I’d first seen him, he wasn’t naked. The shirt he wore looked as if he’d crawled through caves and gotten into a fight with thorns, and his slacks weren’t much better. The cuffs were torn around his ankles, ragged and discolored with dirt. His long hair had been scraped back to his nape, and his skin once again glittered with scars.

Thick ones, fine ones, crisscross ones, and ones that looked like round pennies along his jaw. Each wound had lost the redness of healing and turned silvery with age. His pain wasn’t recent. Whatever he’d lived through was in the past, but it’d scarred his soul as well as his body.

Needing oxygen, I sucked in a shaky breath as he closed the door behind him. He didn’t have a common scent. Once again, a faint whisper of rivers and woods entered my nose. He seemed to have adopted the earthiness, the ivy sharpness, and the fragrant subtleness of the valley’s neglected wildflowers.

He made a show of inserting a key into his pocket before crossing the small space and stopping a few feet from me.

He didn’t speak.

I didn’t speak.

I hated that my fight had fled before I’d even tried. That curse words and shouted slurs for my freedom remained stubbornly out of reach. If he hadn’t talked to me when he’d strangled me, I would’ve been adamant he wouldn’t understand me.

It wasn’t that he looked uneducated or not smart enough to converse, more like he was above such practices. The way he watched me spoke of an undomesticated creature who didn’t use words often. His wildness and aura of viciousness hinted that he hadn’t been around another human in a very, very long time. Perhaps so long, he’d forgotten he was human himself.

It’s just shock, Gem.

Stop making him scarier than he is.

He’s just a man.

He’s a hermit with bad clothes and overgrown hair.

A nudist most likely who lives in a cult.

Oh, God.

That thought brought a trailer load of other worries. Maybe I had it all wrong, and this place wasn’t just his, after all. Maybe it was some secret coven that was hidden for a reason. What if I’d stumbled onto something I was never meant to see?