Dreams Of Fame
1.33 - Final Sacrifice
Zoe looked up at the Goth mansion, biting her lip. The dark, tall building loomed over her. It was an intimidating sight, even to Zoe, who’d managed to build a mansion of her own.
All the same, she steeled herself, and pushed open the front gate. She rang the doorbell, which seemed to echo beyond the front door, then waited. Minutes passed, and Zoe felt herself growing impatient, but still, she waited.
Eventually, after five minutes, the door just barely creaked open.
“Yes? Who is it?” a male voice croaked out.
“I’m, uh, Zoe Presley? You might have heard of me, author of-“
“Come in, come in,” the voice muttered, cutting Zoe off.
Zoe nodded to herself, and squeezed through the tiny opening between the door and the wall, as whoever was behind it still refused to open it any further.
The door was quickly shut behind her, and she turned to face a man who could only be Mortimer Goth.
“Nice to meet you, Zoe,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you. And I presume you’ve heard a lot about me?”
Zoe nodded. “Of course! Mortimer Goth, husband of Bella Goth, descendant of the Goth family that founded Willow Creek, and so on.”
Mortimer smiled. “I’m glad you’re already well acquainted.”
“Mortimer darling, is that a guest?” a voice called out from the living room.
Mortimer gestured for Zoe to follow him, and the two headed into the living room, which was just off the entrance to the mansion.
“Zoe Presley!” Bella exclaimed, standing up once Zoe walked into the room. “It’s so nice to finally meet you!”
“Great to meet you too,” Zoe smiled.
“Please, sit down,” Bella said, gesturing towards the couches. “I’ll go prepare us a pot of tea-“
“Actually, don’t. This is kind of urgent,” Zoe said nervously.
“Are- are you certain?” Bella stammered, clearly not used to anyone ever turning her down.
Zoe nodded.
Bella stood there, lost for a moment, then quickly regained her bearings and sat down next to Mortimer.
“Well? Speak up, Zoe,” Mortimer said.
“Oh, yes! Of course. You see, a friend of mine just fell ill. Unnaturally ill. We believe it has something to do with Sylvan Glade. You see, she passed out there a few months ago, and the tree- uh, I’ve heard that it’s easy to anger the forest there. So, we thought that out of anyone, the Goth family would know the way out of this…”
Bella looked at her, mouth agape. “Well, of course, I’ve heard of Sylvan Glade. I thought it was nothing more than a legend… Mortimer’s great great grandfather, Samuel Goth, wrote about it in his journal, which I’ve read through… Mortimer, dear, do you have any more knowledge?”
Mortimer shook his head. “You’ve always been the one more interested in the family history, Bella.”
Bella frowned. “I believe we still have it on a bookshelf somewhere in this room…”
Bella got up, and walked over to the bookshelves on the far side of the room. After combing through them for a few minutes, she finally pulled free a dusty leather journal. She opened it up, and rapidly started to flip through the pages.
“Aha!” Bella exclaimed.
Zoe and Mortimer looked at her curiously.
“It says here that Samuel’s daughter in law, Gretle, wandered into the place, and tried to pick flowers… then, within a year, she started to age, and very rapidly too… says… she became an old woman practically overnight… does that sound similar to what’s happening to your friend, Zoe?”
Zoe nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly it!”
Bella flipped through a few more pages. “Okay… a few days later, it says that his wife, Olivia, went to Sylvan Glade, and begged the forest to take her instead… the forest… it… it didn’t. Gretle was dead the very next day.”
Bella closed the journal, and gave Zoe a sad look. “I’m sorry, darling, but that’s all the knowledge we have.”
“Oh. Well, uh, thanks for trying, I guess,” Zoe said standing up.
“If we think of anything, we’ll let you know,” Bella promised.
“Definitely,” Mortimer agreed. “We’ll visit you personally.”
Zoe started to head out of the room, dejected.
“Are you sure you don’t want any tea?” Bella called out after her.
“No thank you!” Zoe said back.
She left the house, and as she walked down the sidewalk, she thought about how painful it was going to be to tell everyone that the Goth family had nothing that could help them. Everyone would be so disappointed. The one time Travis actually asked her to do something… she let them all down.
It wasn’t like it was anything new either. Zoe had been awful to them since practically the day she met them. Giovanna was never going to recover from being locked in the basement, she’d gotten the whole family into trouble with the government when she forced Travis to funnel funds. That’d definitely ruined some of his purity. And that whole fiasco resulted in José telling the news about Beatrice, was likely a factor in him ending his relationship with Summer, which forced Liberty and Beatrice to spend way too much time on Sixam. Clara and Jacob were growing up with Summer for a mother. And now, she was still dealing the the fallout from that, with Summer facing death, all because José broke her heart after they erased Cassandra’s memory.
All of it came down to one thing. Zoe had caused those issues. It wasn’t something Zoe liked to think about, it only made her hate herself. So, instead, she regularly relied on the sunny disposition she’d received from the hypnotherapist. But now? Zoe was convinced that she had to atone for her mistakes. She’d find a way to save Summer, no matter what.
Up on Sixam, Beatrice had finally received Liberty’s message about Summer’s sudden illness.
Liberty,
I’m not sure exactly what is wrong with your friend Summer, but
That was all she’d typed out so far.
Beatrice just felt like she should be able to say something more. With all of her knowledge as an ambassador from Sixam, Beatrice felt like she needed to know something. Anything. She just wasn’t satisfied.
As Beatrice went on staring at the screen, wracking her brain for information that wasn’t there, she was startled by a sudden pounding on the front door of the research base.
Beatrice nervously walked over to a part of the base where she could see the front door, and looked down. Outside, she saw someone she never thought she’d see again. Xanther. The Prince of Sixam and founder of the ambassadors program.
Xanther looked up, and saw her. He said something inaudible to the bodyguard he’d brought with him, and she, somehow, started banging on the front door even harder.
Beatrice ran back over to the contact device Liberty had set up, and deleted what she’d typed out already.
Liberty,
I don’t know how much longer I have. The Sixam Royalty are here. They’re about to get in. It’s likely that by the time you receive this, I’ll have been put to death. Please,
Beatrice was interrupted by the door to the room she was in opening, and Xanther and his bodyguard entering.
“Beatrice,” Xanther said, smiling sadly. “I wish we didn’t have to meet again on these terms.”
“Please Xanther, just let me be,” Beatrice begged.
Xanther shook his head. “No, Xayri. You knew the rules. And, all the same, you broke them.”
“But I’m not doing anything wrong now, Xanther. Please. As your friend-“
“The law is the law, Beatrice. I’m sure you always knew it would come to this.”
Beatrice nodded slowly. “What Xanthippe decrees is what is done…”
“Seize her,” Xanther said, nodding to the bodyguard.
The bodyguard did as she asked, and escorted her out of the room. Xanther gave one sad look to the room, then followed the pair out. The message Beatrice had been typing sat there. Unsent.
Zoe stepped through the tree, and entered Sylvan Glade once again. The very air felt tense, full of energy. She was sure that had something to do with Summer.
“Trees, or… forces of Sylvan Glade… please. Listen to my plea,” Zoe said, removing her shoes and jewelry as a sign of respect for the forest.
Even if it’d failed for Olivia Goth… Zoe had to try. She owed it to Summer. She owed it to all of them. Especially Giovanna. They’d all be better off without her, anyway.
“A few months ago, a woman by the name of Summer Holiday fell asleep in this hallowed place. I swear to you, it wasn’t her intention to desecrate these grounds. Her actions those nights were all due to my mistakes. The blame should fall on me. Instead of taking Summer’s life… take mine instead.”
“What do you think could be taking Zoe so long?” Liberty asked. “It can’t take that long to talk to the Goths, right?”
“Maybe Cassandra talked to them about how awful we were to her before we erased her memory the second time she came around,” Travis suggested.
José shook his head. “From what I’ve heard, she hasn’t had the best relationship with her parents for awhile now. I doubt that.”
“Maybe she got lost,” Liberty shrugged. “I mean, it is Zoe, after all.”
“Give her a shot, Liberty,” Travis said. “She’d been a lot more than the ditzy woman she became after Summer went her to the hypnotherapist as of late.”
“Do you think it could be wearing off?”
José shook his head. “No. I just think she’s finally learning to live as the decent person the hypnotherapist made her into now.”
“I love Zoe!” Giovanna chimed in.
“Just a little bit longer,” Travis went on. “I feel like we just have to wait a bit longer… then, we’ll receive our news… hopefully good news, but bad news is better than no news.”
“José?” Jo said nervously, from where she was taking her turn watching Summer. “Something’s happening.”
Everyone got up from the kitchen table, and hurried over to the couch Summer was laying on. Before their eyes, Summer got younger, decades dropping from her face in seconds.
When she finally opened her eyes, she almost seemed younger than she’d been before she fell asleep. But, the first words out of her mouth surprised everyone. “Sylvan Glade. Something’s been done.”
She got up effortlessly, as if she hadn’t been collapsed for an entire day.
Everyone wordlessly followed her out the front door. Summer lead them over to the tree that housed Sylvan Glade, and spoke to it in a strange language none of them had ever heard before.
Liberty, Travis, and Jo took a step back in surprise as a passage suddenly appeared in the trunk.
José and Giovanna were unfazed.
Summer led them in, and after a series of twists and turns that definitely shouldn’t have fit inside the trunk of that tree, the group emerged into Sylvan Glade.
Summer seemed to return to herself, blinking a few times. “What… what happened?” she muttered.
But, by that point, no one’s attention was on Summer. Everyone’s attention was on Zoe, who was levitating in the air across the glade.
“Zoe!” Travis called out. His voice was quickly joined by everyone else’s.
A great peace seemed to spread across Zoe’s face as she heard her friends, her family, calling for her.
But on her left, she saw three others. Her dad, and Travis’s parents, Charlie and Catherine.
The three of them smiled, and Zoe smiled back at them.
Then, her body crashed to the ground.
Liberty, Travis, Summer, José, Giovanna, and Jo all ran over to her side.
“Zoe?” Summer said, shaking her shoulder. “Zoe! What just happened! What did you do?”
The six of them were startled by a new voice from across the glade. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Bella and Mortimer Goth stepped out of the shadows of the tree.
“She gave her life. For you, Mrs. Summer,” Mortimer said.
“But… why?” Summer whispered, looking back at Zoe’s lifeless body.
“We told her it wasn’t possible.” Bella said. "Once the Glade has its eyes on you, it’s over. The curse is cast. There’s no escaping it. Or, at least, that’s what was written,” Bella said. “But Zoe here… she went against that. Even though it wasn’t supposed to be possible… Zoe still tried. And succeeded. A life for a life. For some reason, the Glade thought she was an honest trade for Summer.”
“Zoe would do that… for me? I… I tried to change who she was… I sent her to a hypnotherapist, because I couldn’t stand her… why?” Summer said quietly.
“I think… I think there’s a lot about Zoe we didn’t understand, Summer,” José said.
“I…” Summer whispered to Zoe. “Thank you.”
“It’s probably best we get out of here,” Liberty frowned. “Before this happens again.”
Travis nodded, and picked up Zoe in his arms.
“We can’t let this happen again. We can’t let anyone else come here,” José said, looking around Sylvan Glade.
“For Zoe,” Giovanna said, not smiling for once.
“For Zoe,” everyone agreed.