Ruin - By N.M. Martinez Page 0,39

going, through an open field of long grass and toward a thick copse of trees.

Brandon smiles as I glance behind us surprised at the clear line between the forest and the flat grass land. The line is so clear that it can't be natural.

He shakes his head. “We're pretty sure they planted the trees as a barrier. C'mon, you'll see.”

The forest is so thick we have to pick our way through the closely grown trees and overgrown bush. There is a worn path, small and mostly covered in long blades of wild grass and branches from lower plants. We have to walk carefully, one person following the other, and since this is a path he's walked before, Brandon is in the lead. My fingers brush against rough bark as we make our way. Plants reach out for my feet, their thorns catching on my pant legs.

It seems crazy to make this trek. If this was planted as a barrier, then why would anyone try to get past it?

Brandon laughs in front of me even as he ducks a branch. “Careful. Thorns in that one. You'll see why we do this in a minute.”

The climb through the forest does turn out to be short. Probably no more than fifteen minutes, though it feels longer. The path is hard to see unless you know what you're looking for, and it's clear Brandon has walked this path before more than once. At the very end there is an old crumbly wall that's at least ten feet tall and covered in vines and a green moss. Brandon has us squeeze alongside it and then he bends down and disappears.

I blink a couple of times and cautiously follow him. There's a hole in the wall large enough for a person to climb through, but hidden by a large and apparently harmless bush. I crawl after Brandon mostly on my hands and knees, my eyes down watching the hard packed dirt littered with pine needles and dead leaves give way to coarse sand and dry plants.

When I arrive on the other side of the fence, Brandon reaches a hand down and I accept it without even looking at him. A strong wind pushes me, shoving hair across my face and stinging my nose and cheeks with grains of sand as we stand on a hill made of light colored sand.

There is water from the bottom of the hill all the way on to the horizon. It surrounds us. At the bottom of the sandy hill, large rocks piled together on the sand. Water splashes against them, foaming as it works its way up. Brandon starts towards it and I stop, frozen in place. We aren't supposed to be here.

Brandon reaches back for me, offering his hand at first, but then laying it on my arm when I don't reach out and take it. “It'll be okay. Trust me.”

I catch his eye and give a nod. I have to trust someone, and it may as well be Brandon even if I don't know everything there is to know about him. The two of us walk side by side down to the water.

There was this story that all the kids used to share on the playground at school to explain why there were huge barriers between us and the water around the Neutral Territory. There were two brothers who had powers, and they couldn't stand each other. They fought so much that they destroyed the entire world except for us. Somehow they completely missed us. Now they sleep under the water. If they were ever to wake and find us, they would destroy the world all over again.

Brandon rolls his eyes. “That story? You don't honestly believe that, do you?”

We stop at the bottom of the sandy hill. My feet sink into the loose sand, and my mouth falls open. It surprises me that he knows that story, especially if it was just school yard tales like the adults usually insisted on. "You know that story?"

Brandon shrugs and turns towards the water. "Yeah. Who doesn't?"

I look at the ground and lift my feet, watching the sand fall away from my toes. "My teachers said it wasn't real. That it was just something a bunch of kids made up one year to scare the younger kids, but the story stuck around."

He seems taken aback, his hands fall on his hips and he looks at me. "And you believed that?"

"Well, not really. Because," I pause at the memory. "Mom told