Page 41 of The Other Side

“What’s wrong?”

“No lights. They should be on.” He moved between Drum and the door. “Get in your car,” he said quietly.

“Why?”

“I just have a bad feeling.”

But it was Drum who strode forward and opened the door of the cottage and Drum who gasped the loudest. “What the hell?”

Even without light, he could see the place was a wreck. “Where’s all your stuff? Your furniture? Your plants? Why is everything wrong?”

“I used glamour to make it a place I could live in for a month. Let me try again and bring it back.”

A few moments later, Osian groaned. “I can’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come and stay with me. Look, there’s a bag over there and the T-shirt you tried to give me. That hasn’t disappeared.”

“No, because I brought those over with me.” Osian picked up a few items and his violin, then returned to Drum. “We need to leave. Now.”

Drum didn’t argue and as soon as Osian was in the vehicle, he set off. When they’d reached the main road, Osian exhaled.

“Who are you frightened of?” Drum asked

“Belem. Not for what he’d do to me but what he might do to you.”

Drum slid his hand onto Osian’s shoulder. “It’s us again now.”

“Us,” Osian whispered. “Oh gods, I can’t believe you remember.”

“I remember the bad things too. The cruelty. The night my parents sent me away. I begged, pleaded to at least say goodbye to you but they wouldn’t let me. I was gagged, tied up and put in a sack.” His throat closed up as he thought about it. Maybe it was better he’d not remembered that part until now. “Why did they hate me so much? I tried so fucking hard.”

“I don’t know. They were good at pretending to care when others were around.”

Drum shot Osian a glance. “You said they were alive. Are they still in the same place?”

“Yes.”

“Did they have more children.”

“No.”

“Hmm. I don’t think that’s the gate I was taken through. There was no outcrop of rock. I’d been taken out of the sack. I went to sleep and when I opened my eyes, I was at the edge of a wood and could hear water. I wasn’t tied up anymore. I pulled the gag from my mouth and walked until I found a settlement. I didn’t know who I was. Not my name, my age or where I’d come from. But I could understand what people were saying. Mostly. Not every word. Though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t speaking Fae to them. Can I now? You are my best friend.” He gasped.

Osian smiled. “Seems you can.”

“Then I found that piece of paper in my pocket. How did you know to put that there?”

“When we came home from school the day before you disappeared, my mother told me to give you a big hug and tell you to try and always remember the fun you had as a child. There was something in the way she said it that made me think something was going to happen. She denied it later, but… She can sometimes see things in the future. That was why I put the blue paper in your pocket. What happened when you got here?”

“After they accepted I wasn’t pretending not to know who I was, I was taken into care. I didn’t know this world. I’d never seen a TV or a car or a phone. Or a plane.”

He chuckled. “I freaked out when I saw one in the sky. The authorities assumed I’d been held somewhere in isolation, cut off from society, maybe since birth. They couldn’t link me to anyone who was missing a child. I think I was such an enigma, they stopped looking, stopped worrying. I was quiet and I tried hard to please, but they thought I was odd. I was moved around a lot and ended up in a children’s home. Not a nice one. There was a lot of catching up to do at school. I picked up reading and writing quickly. I was good at maths but I knew nothing else. No geography, history, science. I was like a sponge. I worked hard. I wanted to know everything. Once I started to ask questions, I couldn’t stop. That made me unpopular with my peers and popular with the teachers.”

“No friend to distract you?”