The Pledge
an excerpt

A couple of storeys above her, a window was opened by an invisible occupant, the shutters creaking. Laura looked up warily, but saw no further movement. Behind her, a bell jingled and she heard the same giggle she had heard at the soccer game. She spun around. “Hello?” she said and in reply heard another laugh, high pitched and childish, a little farther ahead.
She could still see nothing, but took a few steps forward towards the voice. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye in a bush on the side of the path. She jogged around the circumference of the bush, yelling “Hello?” again, but nothing seemed to be there. Inside it, then, Laura thought, just as she heard another giggle. Without a moment of hesitation, she walked back to the path and approached the shrub, using her hands, which were balled up inside the sleeves of her sweater, to pry apart the leaves of the plant.
Surprisingly, they came apart easily, allowing her to make a space big enough to stick her entire torso in, and she carefully brought her head down to look inside the shrub. Suddenly, from inside the depths of the plant, an explosion of golden dust flew into Laura’s face, and she began to cough, letting go of the plant in order to cover her mouth.
From behind her she felt something push, and Laura fell forward from her crouching position with a yelp. Sheer instinct told her to roll, and as she curled up quickly, expecting to be cut up by twigs and thorns, she instead hit the ground and rolled forward, landing right on her back in the middle of a forest that looked nothing like anywhere on campus.
Leafs crinkled underneath her as she got to her feet, and her eyes widened as she took a closer look at her surroundings. Though the moon had been only a sliver before now, it was suddenly a bright shining orb which lent a golden gleam to everything around her. The air was filled with what looked like fireflies, looping through the air in elaborate patterns.
The trees were not the half-dead, half-dying end of autumn tress on campus, but majestic oaks covered in fiery red and orange leafs, all of which seemed to glow from within. Even the leafs under her feet seemed like they were not dead but relocated, spreading beauty on the ground. Impulsively, Laura picked up a bright orange leaf and put it in her hair. The fireflies rearranged themselves as she moved, circling but not touching her.
On her right, the giggling resumed, and Laura wheeled around, this time determined to find the cause. She ran for the tree it seemed to be coming from, then to the next, then to the next, following a trail of noise through the unfamiliar surroundings. Just as she seemed to grow close to the source of the noise, it would come again from somewhere completely different, but there was a method to the madness. She was being led somewhere.
Laura followed, dashing back and forth between the glowing trees. She no longer felt cold. If anything, she wanted to take off her sweater and feel the glow of the fireflies against her skin. Instead, she continued running, turning in a wide arc as the giggling switched directions again.
“Stop!” she said, “Who are you, what are you doing?”
Rustling. Giggling. She ran off after it without hesitation. A breeze had picked up, buffeting her hair around and making the leaves rise off the ground in a complicated dance between the fireflies. Laura’s eyes felt assaulted by all of it, and still she could hear the giggling from some far-off location to her right. She felt heavy, thirty, stupid. She felt drugged, and she was starting to doubt that she was actually seeing any of this.
If only I could have something to- she thought, whirling around to once again follow the giggles,-drink, her thought finished, just as she saw in front of her a tree stump, on which there lay a wooden bowl filled with what seemed to be water. Laura walked up to it, looking down. From the bowl rose a smell of citrus and flowers, of hot chocolate on a winter morning, of blood, of music. It was the most beautiful thing Laura had ever smelled.
She dropped to her knees, hastily bringing the bowl to her lips, and drank. She drank in big, gasping gulps, letting the drink flood into her throat until she was almost drowning in it. The water (or whatever it was, for she wasn’t quite sure anymore, it tasted sweeter than sugar and at the same time clear and pure as cellophane) dribbled down her chin, wetting her sweater and her jeans. Still she drank, choking and not caring that she was choking. The liquid went down her throat sweetly, burning but filling her with euphoria.
She drank until it seemed she would burst, and the liquid kept on coming, as if the bowl were refilling itself. She drank, and drank, and drank, until she was feeling so much that she couldn’t stand it. Her entire body seemed to be on fire, and there was a roaring in her ears that nearly blocked out the giggling that had doubled as she drank. Sitting there, her clothing soaked through, Laura felt tears roll down her cheeks, though she couldn’t imagine what she was possibly crying about, she felt so happy.
She stood, letting the sensations wash over her as she left the bowl. There was somewhere she needed to be, she knew suddenly, though she didn’t yet know where. The familiar sound of bells and laughter no longer seemed menacing to her, and she followed the sound gladly, walking bouncily after the voice. “I’m going to find you,” she said out loud.
The voice spoke, “Dash thinks you wooon’t,” it sing-songed, sounding farther and farther away. Laura laughed and ran after the voice, her feet slipping on the leaves as she ran, the trees seeming more and more blurry and confusing, the world seeming wonderful.
“I’m going to find you!” she said again, running this way and then that, the world spinning around her even as she ran straight.
The voice she was following began to sing, starting a verse here and picking it up there. It almost seemed to Laura that there were two voices, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around anything but the simple thought Follow. So she ran, and ran, her legs treacherously weakening from time to time so she was off balance.
The world seemed to be wavering around her, and she was becoming increasingly more unsteady as she ran, until finally she tripped over seemingly nothing in particular and grabbed onto a tree for balance. The world seemed to roll dangerously for a moment, and then there was a sound. It was a groan, to be exact, which brought everything to a crashing halt. The world seemed to right itself through the groan, wrapping itself around the sound tenderly. The euphoria was shattered. Laura’s eyes flew open at the sound.
“Hello?” she said. There was no answer. Laura pushed herself off of the tree, finding that she was suddenly able to walk, and even compelled to walk toward that sound. This time, she was sure she would find what she was looking for. One foot in front of the other, and she found herself in the middle of a large clearing in the forest. On the other end of it, not conscious of the world around them, lay… him.
“Oh,” Laura exhaled, bringing her arm to her heart. And then again, “Oh,” with extreme feeling. If she had ever felt more wonderful than that moment, she couldn’t remember it. Her legs buckled under her once again, and she dropped on her knees, then completely down. The last thing she could see as her vision began to blur and go dark was the fireflies settling down on her sprawled out arm. That and the figure… him. “My love…” she murmured, before losing consciousness altogether.