The Duchess Cannot Sleep || ONC 2021

13 | The Game, Part II

The Mandy Reel, as Reide and his brother had called it, was on the other side of the town, past the district where the houses formed walls around the street and further into the wilderness outside the busier part of Korsa, into the forest and the unbeaten mountain paths and the waist-high foliage. Andreya held her skirts up to her knees and soundlessly thanked whoever designed Isantadi dresses for including thick pantaloons beneath.

"Should be just around this turn." Tariben kicked a root before stepping over it, using his cane a little more carefully. He disappeared behind the trees ahead of them and an "Aha!" sounded right after. Reide and Andreya followed the boy's tracks and Andreya's heart leapt to her throat.

"This is it!" Reide chirped, skidding down the steep trail ahead. Tariben was somehow already at the bottom and beckoning them both to join him.

The trail atop of which Andreya stood became a steep, rocky slope downward twenty feet, ending in a crater the size of a lake. There, two dozen or so boys and girls and men and women anywhere from academy age to mid-twenties noticed the brothers and lit up like matches and echoed shouts Andreya had been listening to for days, all some variant of "Reide, is that you? Haven't seen you in ages!"

Everyone knew Reide Hafiless, after all.

What kept Andreya stiff at the top of the trail wasn't the people, though, but the twenty-foot drop to get there, and the fact that Reide was already joining Tariben at the bottom. Tariben, who was blind, had magically found himself down there unharmed, slapping the backs of boys who looked like friends of his and holding conversations she could hardly hear among everyone else's voices.

Reide, surrounded by rowdy teenagers, finally seemed to notice her absence from the group. Peering up at her from so far below, he had the audacity to wave. "Would you like some help, Miss Dreya?"

She cursed under her breath and clutched the tree at her side. "And how in the world would you manage that?" she called down to him. "Your dust is not savory, Hafiless, do make sure not to smother me in it next time you decide to abandon me!"

Several of his friends burst out laughing and asked who she was. Instead of answering, Reide dropped his things and climbed all the way back up the trail and extended a hand to her. It took a full two and a half minutes for them both to scale their way back down, Andreya's every step shaking.

Seeing the crater walls as they descended made it seem less like a dried lake than a gargantuan bowl, three separate alcoves dug into the sides in three separate locations. When they reached the bottom, a bombardment of questions and introductions and new faces were waiting there to greet her. Or attack her, rather. Andreya jerked when someone touched her braid—a young girl no older than fifteen with sparkling eyes and ragged clothes, trousers and no skirt.

"Wow! You've got some nice hair, Dreya!" She addressed Andreya as if she'd known her for years. "Got any hobbies? Have you ever played the Mandy Reel before?"

Andreya could do no more than stare dumbly in response as another teen flocked to her other side and introduced herself and asked Andreya more questions she didn't know how to answer. No one else in the group found it unusual, though, chatting and joking and carrying on as... well, as was the Isantadi definition of "usual." Some small part of Andreya was actually becoming accustomed to it.

"Well, I think we have enough people now!" a young man the same age but twice as tan and freckled as Reide stepped into the center of the group, hands on the hips of his peasant's garb and gaze flicking around the group. "Adej on blue team, Marah on yellow. You back to leading red, Reide? This'll be good."

Reide was grinning back, an expression Andreya had learned almost always meant unpleasant things. "You bet, Vilo."

"Great." Vilo clapped his hands together, talking fast and casual, which, combined with his Isantadi accent, made him nearly unintelligible to Andreya. "Recap of the rules: Three teams—red, yellow, blue—and three Mandies hidden in the forest. Each team has to climb out of the Reel to get their Mandy, then steal the Mandies from the other two teams and bring them all back to base. First team to get all three back to base wins, a team has to find their own Mandy before anyone else can steal it from them, and if you injure anyone, you're out. Any questions?"

Andreya was too overwhelmed to say.

"Alright, Reide." Vilo stepped back. "You're up."

Reide took over the group as if by natural order, calling everyone by first name and assigning them to teams and asking if anyone had hidden the Mandies yet. "Caza, Felia, and Jasset on red team. Gid and Dessa, yellow team. Are you with me, Dreya?" He swiveled to her from their surrounding teammates, offering his hand again out of habit. A few of his friends whistled and tittered.

Reide flushed bright red and shot them a sharp look. Then his gaze followed along that path to Tariben, whom he assigned to blue team, and the next time he got around to her, he didn't phrase her assignment to his team as a question.

The teams split off to their respective alcoves, leaving Andreya surrounded by four other people whose introductions she didn't remember, and Reide. It occurred to her that flustered was a good look on him.

On Reide, though, everything was a good look.

Andreya nearly gasped at the effrontery of her own thoughts and Reide pointed at two boys a few years younger than him. "Lan and Caza, are you still my scouts?"

They nodded.

He moved to the two others, a younger teen boy and an older girl. "Jasset and Felia, defense or offense?"

"Defense," Jasset piped, and the girl shrugged.

Then Reide finally turned to Andreya, a sort of excitement emanating from him. "Would you like to be on offense, Dreya? We get to steal Mandies from the other teams."

It was then Andreya realized she hadn't been paying attention at all.

"Looks like you spooked her, Reide," Lan teased.

Reide took Andreya's silence as a positive, ignoring Lan, and addressed the group again. "Jasset and Felia are defense, me and Dreya will be offense." He spun to the rest of the crater and the other two groups scattered across it. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Red team ready!" before beckoning them all toward the empty base—the one belonging to their team, apparently.

They all waited under the diffused shadow of the alcove. Andreya struggled to word her questions and stamp down her intrusive thoughts just as another shout resounded from across the crater. "Yellow team ready!"

She tugged on Reide's sleeve. "What is a Mandy? Reide?"

"You weren't told?" He acted as if she'd actually asked how to play. "It's a metal ball painted the colors of the teams. Ours is red, you can't miss it."

"And you call this place the Reel?" she asked.

"The one and only Mandy Reel." He lifted his chin proudly.

"One more thing," Andreya said lowly, embarrassed that everyone else somehow already knew. Once again, though, everyone was absorbed in one conversation or another. "What was this about not injuring one another? Is injury common in this—"

"Blue team ready!" The last cry echoed across the expanse of packed dirt between the three teams.

Silence fell over the group along with a physical tension as if they all were jack-in-the-boxes wound up and ready to pounce. Andreya bristled and glanced back to Reide to ask what was going on when—

"Begin!"

The pair of scout boys blew past them out of the alcove and Reide tapped Andreya's arm. "You ready? We have to get into the forest to find the other team's scouts."

Andreya couldn't tell him she would never really be ready. The first thing on her mind was the tingle of his touch, then the voices of the defense pair behind her telling them to go. Everything else was panic.

Perhaps Reide's disposition was contagious, though, because suddenly the prospect of panic was exciting.

Panic was exciting. An incredulous laugh escaped her.

"I don't know what we're doing," she said, "but sure, I'm ready."

──── ❉ ❉ ❉ ────

Hey, there! Any thoughts so far? (This chapter is kind of not very well-rounded yet, so I'd not be surprised at all if it still needs a good old quality check lol.) Lemme know in the comments and don't forget to vote if you enjoyed! <3