The Bride Hunt of Elk Mountain by Lumen Reese

Author:Lumen Reese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, adventure, young adult, competition, dystopian, southern gothic, sapphic, diverse, new adult, fairytale retelling
Publisher: Lumen Reese

Chapter Thirteen

When Dan does not see Griffin at breakfast or lunch the next day, it doesn’t concern him. But at dinner time, the men do usually sit together and so he makes his way up the stairs, taps on the closed door.

“Piss off,” he hears from inside, and the wood dulls the sound, but the voice seems wrong, somehow.

“…Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Piss off, Daniel!”

Even though a pit forms in Dan’s stomach at the thought of barging into the room, worrying about Griffin all night is worse. He tries the knob, but it is locked.

“Are you deaf!? Piss off!”

The shout is so hateful that it makes Dan flinch. “Are you going to be able to go to Rob’s, tomorrow?”

“I said I’d be there.” But he sounds weak.

Dan rests his forehead against the rough wood. Of course. Of course Griffin had to get sick mere days before the bride hunt. Just standing in the hallway of the inn’s second floor, with the inevitability of the bride hunt drawing closer and the possibility that Griffin will not be well enough to follow through with their deal, Dan starts to feel woozy. His brain throbs inside his skull, blood rushes to his legs which prickle, knees wobble, he feels like he weighs twice as much as he moves to his own door.

Part of him felt sure it would come down to this, or something like it. As soon as he decided to come back to the Marlow farm, wasn’t his old fate waiting for him, there? Every responsibility he shirked, every bit of love he had ever betrayed, and every moment’s guilt weighed against redemption. He couldn’t do it for Julia, but for Lizzie and Beck and Nellie?

No. It’s stupid to even think it. He collapsed into bed, curls up in the dark. He would be no good to anyone. He is scrawny, and cowardly, and not made for life on the mountain.

Waking with a dull ache in his neck from the way that he slept, Dan blinks in the grey morning light. He feels more hopeful than he did last night. Really he hardly recognizes the sorrow he tapped into, and he thinks about what a difference a few hours can make. He goes and knocks on Griffin’s door.

There is no reply. It starts to make his heart beat quicker in his chest, and his head starts to spin toward inevitable shame or even death inside the ritual at the hands of Alden May. But then the door swings open.

Griffin stinks of sweat and mildew and there is a smell of sickness coming from further in the room that he eases out of, shuts the door. His breathing comes a bit ragged, he is unstable on his feet, but he is standing.

“Good to see you up,” Dan says. “Are you going to be able to do this?”

“Of course. It’s just going to be a rough day or two.”

“Two is all you’ve got.”

They are due at Rob’s for their last session with the girls, and then they’ll all go on to the harvest festival in town.

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