Page 78 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth

“Em?” I croak, but my voice is only a hoarse whisper.

“Alex?” Emily’s voice calls out, clear and loud. “Where are you? It’s over.”

It’s over. It’s finally over. Salty tears pour down my cheeks.

Still clutching the firearm, I drag myself across the bedroom. She comes into view in the foyer. Blood dots her hands and arms. Her face is a white sheet, her hair a tangled mess around her face. But she’s alive.

I’m alive.

We’re alive.

She jerks her chin at the gun. “You saved us. The gunshot distracted him long enough for me to—. It’s over.”

I see in her face what she’s not saying.

“How? The knife?”

She shakes her head. “Piece of broken glass.”

I crack a weak smile. “You dug your way out of the tower.”

Another shake of her head, her red hair bobbing. “We dug our way out.”

She steps over the threshold and sinks to the floor beside me. I grip her icy hand with my good one. That’s how the first responders find us. Huddled together on the floor, holding hands.

Part IV. Happily Never After

The tower in which Maid Maleen had been imprisoned remained standing for a long time, and when the children passed by it they sang,

“Kling, klang, gloria.

Who sits within this tower?

A King’s daughter, she sits within,

A sight of her I cannot win,

The wall it will not break,

The stone cannot be pierced.”

—Maid Maleen, as retold by the Brothers Grimm

* * *

Maleen and Ruth crawled out of the rubble of the tower and blinked up at the bright sky, so long hidden from them. The gardens outside lay dead and dry, wilted brown sticks where flowers once grew.

“The trees are silent,” Ruth whispered. “No birds sing.”

The entire world was silent, Maleen thought. The earth was scarred and parched. The fields were bare. The cobblestone streets outside the wall were empty.

Ruth’s face fell. “It seems we’ve escaped to a new horror, Mae.”

Maleen squeezed her friend’s hand with her own bruised and bloodied fingers. “Then we’ll escape this one, too. We have our knives, after all?”

She raised the knife, now coated in dirt and bent from the impact of the stones.

Ruth smiled, a faint, tired smile that slowly bloomed into a true grin, lighting her face.