The Elm tree at her window fluttered gently in a warm Montana breeze. An art project, this time involving her step-mother’s Gospel CD collection, the microwave, and twine, threw rainbows around her room. She liked how the CD’s crackled with lightning in the microwave, creating fractals across their surface. It was beautiful.
The memory changed.
She fell backwards onto her bed. Jarred’s words she’d overheard at school that day echoed in her head. “Shawna? Hot? Sure, if I liked guys.” Why did he have to be so mean and good looking at the same time? Why did she like him so much anyway? She closed her eyes to stop the tears.
In a flash it changed once again.
It was dark. Tree tops were visible against the stars. Someone was talking. Shawna moved her pudgy little arms and wailed. The arms she lay in rocked her, and she calmed down.
“…In fifteen years everything will align,” a familiar woman’s voice was saying. “I will then be able to open the doorway to our worlds once more.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Fifteen?” said a man’s voice. “Then you’ll come back? For her? And give us everything you promised?”
Some distant part of Shawna, the one watching this memory, understood and recognized the voices. Where had she heard the man’s voice before? Everything felt foggy and distant.
“Yes. Do not fail me, and I will not fail you.”
She recognized the voice. The same frigid arrogant voice that had demanded her from her father right before falling, falling, falling from those protective arms.
More silence. Then a different female voice broke the forest symphony of crickets and frogs.
“Are you an angel?”
Shawna finally recognized the voice as Mary’s and knew the male voice must be John’s.
“An angel of your salvation, but my power wanes here. I must leave. I will return for her when she is sixteen.”
“We will keep her for you,” said Mary, practically in tears as she spoke to the apparition.
“Pray for my return,” said the being that called itself an angel. “And you shall be rewarded for your services.”
But the words were surrounded by snares.