“Until you.”
“Until me.”
“How did you manage it?” I wondered aloud.
“I found you because I—” he stopped midstream, faltering on his words. “You’re in my heart,” he finished.
“What does that mean?” I whispered, gripping the torch a little tighter and letting the beam dip back down towards the plywood.
Oscar rested his hand in the spotlight on the floor. He said nothing.
He didn’t have to say anything. I already knew how he felt because I felt the same. He was in my heart, too.
I brought my hand into the spotlight and touched my fingertips to Oscar’s.
We stayed silent for a moment. A course of electricity flowed through his fingers into mine, travelling through my hand and along my arm until it reached my heart.
“I know you,” Oscar spoke tentatively. “I know you better than you think.”
I cast my mind back to our conversation in the attic. “Through my dreams?”
“Yes,” he reflected. “But it runs deeper than that. When I first saw you in your dream, I was…” he took a moment to contemplate his wording, “elated,” he concluded. “It was as though I’d been waiting my whole life for you, and you’d finally been returned to me. There’s something in your eyes that’s so familiar to me…”
“I know that feeling,” I told him quietly.
“The thing is, Rose,” he continued, “eyes give away more about a person than anything else. People say that the eyes are the embodiment of the soul.” He paused, a little unsure of himself, then cleared his throat. “I’ve never told anyone this, not even Caicus, but I have this weird feeling about you. I thought… I think… that you and I might be soulmates.”
Bam. Everything suddenly became clear to me. It was as though a heavy fog had been lifted from my sight. I had met Oscar before—only not in this lifetime.
“I bet you think that’s dumb,” he said, smiling carefully at me.
“No,” I replied in all honesty. “In fact, I think it’s the one thing that actually makes sense.”
He exhaled, then smiled to himself again.
There was a moment of quiet contemplation before he spoke. “That must be why I dream of you,” he said at last. “Just as you were born into the prophecy, I was, too. I was born to find you.”
“And to save me?” I added, naively optimistic.
He didn’t respond.
I moved on. “So how did you know where to find me?”
“That’s my power. Well, my personal power. You see, we all have heightened aspects: speed, strength, hearing, et cetera. My personal power is the ability to track anything, so long as it has a place in my heart.”
“The chess pieces!” I exclaimed. “That’s how you found them.” I turned the torch on him so as to watch his expression.
“Yes,” he grinned. “I told you, chess is important to me.”
“And that’s how you found me in Hutton Ridge?”
“I can always find you. It doesn’t matter where you are.”
“And Caicus?” I asked. “What’s his power?”
That was an enigma that I’d been desperately trying to solve.
“His power is in his eyes. He’s able to spellbind humans, to charm them into agreeing with everything he says.”
“I knew it! That’s why my aunt and uncle let you stay.”
“Yes.”
I frowned. “Why doesn’t it work on me?”
Oscar fidgeted. “Well… you know… the thing.”
I didn’t need him to clarify, I had deciphered it for myself. “Because I’m not human.”
“Something like that.” He laughed nervously.
I laughed a little bit too, though I have no idea why.
Out of the blue, Oscar shuffled around to sit beside me.
“It’ll be okay,” he promised. But a distinct waver in his voice gave away a not-so-concealed uncertainty.
“I don’t see how,” I murmured.
I moved an inch or two nearer to him until our shoulders were touching. The heat of his body somehow percolated through the material of my clothes, like a furnace warming my blood as it swam through my veins.
“Can I?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what he was asking, but I said yes anyway.
Then his arm wrapped around me, embracing me closer.
And I was okay again.
THE GIRL WALKED ACROSS THE bleak terrain. She moved heavily, as though she were weighed down with lead. Beneath her feet, the desiccated amber ground was rough and unyielding, and the sky above was as thick as crude oil.
She was alone. But she sensed that he was there, somewhere.
In the silence of the barren land, her shallow breathing was deafening. The thud of her heart and the click of her footsteps fell into sync, composing the beat of a swan song.
Then something was different. There was someone else.
She couldn’t turn her head to see him, nor could she hear him, but she knew he was there, reverently walking behind her. Instinctively she knew who it was.
“Oscar?” she whispered. The opaque air stole her voice away before it even passed her lips.
But he had heard her.
“Not this time,” he replied, in a voice smooth and familiar. “My name is Oliver Sadler.”
“Where are we going?” the girl tried to shout, but her question simply evaporated into the dense atmosphere.
“I’m following you,” he told her. “You know the way.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know the way.”
“You will.”
“I don’t want this!” She grew frantic now, and yet her stride remained steady, moving forward like the constant motion of a river.
And then she saw it. The crooked form hunched on the ground, shrouded beneath a black cloak.
She stopped walking.
“He’s waking!” she cried.
“I know,” Oliver responded calmly.
“Help me!”
“Go back.”
She tried to turn her head to look at him, but her eyes refused to leave the demon.
Pulsating like an erupting volcano, the malignant form began to lurch towards her. A swarm of hornets circled him, their entirety appearing as a solid mass.
“Go back,” Oliver urged again.
“I can’t go back,” she wept. “I can’t move.”
The creature was now so close that she could smell the decay on his putrefied bones. He reared up, growing to twice her size. The crevices of his skull teemed with maggots, and two sinister black eyes hungrily glistened with malice.
“Go back,” Oliver pleaded.
The demon reached out, closer than he had ever been before. His contorted ivory fingers gripped her arms, holding her in place.
To her horror, the demon’s claws penetrated her skin. And in front of her very eyes, the bony fingers grew a layer of tawny scales.
He was coming back to life.
“Goodbye,” Oliver murmured remorsefully.
And he was gone.
Only two remained.
The demon’s mouth parted and he inhaled.
Under his control, the girl felt her own lips part and her breath was drawn from her lungs.
With each breath stolen she grew weaker, until she could no longer hold herself upright. Only his toxic grip kept her on her feet.
And then, she was falling…
MY EYES FLASHED OPEN TO complete darkness.
“No,” I cried, still lost in the limbo between reality and the dream world—not that there was much difference any more.
I felt a pair of hands grasp my shoulders.
“No!” I screamed.
“Shh, shh.” The sound of Oscar’s voice instantly soothed me. “It’s okay. It’s me.”
“Oscar.” I choked for air, frantically detaching myself from the nightmare.
“Yes, it’s me. It’s me,” he repeated.
I couldn’t see him in the darknes
s, but he was at my side. I leaned into his body and buried my face in his shoulder.
“It’s so dark,” I shivered, squeezing my eyes shut because at least that made my blindness seem intentional.
“The torch died a while ago,” Oscar explained. His arms moved around me and the breath carrying his voice warmed my temple.
As my mind slowly caught up with itself, I registered that we were still in the tree house. I must have fallen asleep.
“Did you have a vision?” Oscar asked, twining his fingers through my hair.
“Nightmare,” I replied, still clinging to him as though my life depended on it—which I suppose it did.
“You’re trembling.”
“He took my life,” I stammered.
My statement couldn’t have been more accurate. The fact was he’d stolen my breath right from out of my body. He literally took my life.
“Were you there?” I asked, remembering Oliver, who had been everything Oscar was, right down to the smell of his skin.
“No. I’ve been awake.”
“There was someone else there. He called himself Oliver, but it was you.” I rested my cheek against Oscar’s chest, listening to his steady heartbeat and slowly relaxing in the refuge of his company. “Oliver kept telling me to go back.”
Oscar’s shoulders tensed like a steel wall. “Go back to where?” he asked, his voice suddenly rigid.
“I don’t know. Go back the way I’d come, I guess. I couldn’t move, though.”
It was a dozen or so seconds before Oscar let out a breath. And a dozen or so more before his shoulders relaxed.
“It’s okay. You’re safe now,” he said, his tone restored to its soothing lull. He lightly trailed his hand along my back. “You’re safe.”
Having come through the initial shock, I cautiously opened my eyes. Everything was pitch black, but I was close enough to Oscar to make out the curve of his shoulder and the outline of his face.
“I don’t remember falling asleep,” I murmured, in what seemed to be quite a distant voice.
“How convenient,” Oscar teased lightly. “I recall it was about mid-way through my life story.”
I smiled to myself. “Oops. Sorry.”
“Nah. You picked a good time to take a nap. Things got a bit uneventful during the pre-teen years. It’s sixteen, seventeen and eighteen that you’ve got to stay awake for.”
“I’ll try,” I laughed quietly. “Anyway, I don’t plan on sleeping ever again. I can’t take another nightmare.”
“Don’t worry,” Oscar reassured me. “There won’t be many more.”
Wait. Not many more?
That didn’t sound good.
Pledge Your Allegiance
A STRIP OF DUSTY PINK slunk into the tree house. Dawn had caught up with us.
I could see Rose now, lit by the blush of sunrise. Perhaps it was the ethereal lighting, or perhaps I was impaired by the newly formed bond between us, but somehow at that moment, she was more beautiful than anything else on this earth. Akin to an angel in its purest form.
I toyed with a loose thread on the patchwork beanbag.
“Why did you stop?” Rose asked me.
Oh. Right. I hadn’t even realised that I’d stopped talking.
“Sorry,” I said. “So, where was I?”
“The other Valero witches.”
“Right. They’re family. Not in the biological sense, but in the animalistic sense—”
“Like a pack of wolves?”
I laughed. “Actually, yes.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Valero witches? I’d say fifty. Maybe more. Most of them are elders. Caicus and I are the only ones of our age. That’s why we’re so close; we’ve only ever really had each other.”
I felt a pang in my heart speaking about Caicus, with the knowledge that I would be responsible for his death.
“He’s not only my brother, he’s also my best friend.”
“There are no other teenagers?”
“No. There’s a few near, you know, their mid-twenties, that kind of thing. But they’re pompous, jumped-up tools. I don’t have time for that.”
She laughed softly.
“What about you?” I turned the question around. “You’ve spoken about Mary, and Roger, and even the kid, but what about your family? Your parents?”
“I’ve got parents,” she said evasively. “They’re… somewhere.” She swept a stray strand of hair from her face. Her fingertips were just visible from within the oversized sleeves of my jacket.
“They’re somewhere?” I pried.
“Away,” she clarified. “They work a lot.”
I heard a remote sadness in her voice and my stomach knotted.
“Secret agents?” I said, trying to break the tension.
Apparently it worked, because she laughed again.
“Photographers,” she replied.
“And they’re away at the moment?”
“Yep. Africa.”
I wondered how long it would take for me to run to Africa. Probably a hell of a lot longer than it took me to get to Hutton Ridge.
“So you often come to Millwood?” I guessed.
“Yeah. Every summer. And some Christmases. The rest of the time I’m at boarding school.”
“Boarding school?” I repeated, intrigued. “That sounds fun. Well, that’s coming from a person who’s only ever been around one peer.” I smiled sardonically. “Not that I’m overly keen on befriending a bunch of angst-ridden humans. Present company excluded.”
“Hey!” she gasped in mock horror. “I’m not angst ridden!”
“Eh,” I shrugged indifferently. “You’re up and down.”
She swatted at me and I laughed.
“But for the record,” she added, “it’s not fun. It’s school.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t go to school?”
“I’ve never needed to. I’m a witch. I take my knowledge from books and the wisdom of elders.”
“Lucky you.”
“Not really,” I disagreed. “I’m only taught what a witch needs to know. My education is in prophecies and incantations. Sometimes I wish I could just learn…” Hmm, what was it that they taught in schools? “Calculus.”
“If you can say that, then you’ve obviously never had to sit through a maths lesson,” Rose jibed. “But I think I can understand. When I found out about Lathiaus and the prophecy thing, I wished I could just go back to my normal, boring, maths-lessons life.”
My heart ached for her. “You deserve a boring life.”
Huh. That had sounded better in my head.
“Thanks,” she grinned. “But it’s kind of okay, because if I hadn’t been doomed to the prophecy, then I never would have found you. So it all worked out in the end.”
I felt a smile form on my lips, but I said nothing.
“Can I ask you a question?” she ventured.
“Don’t let the cold light of day stop you,” I smirked.
“If you could change, would you? If you could give up your life as a witch and just be normal” —she made speech quotes around the word normal—“would you?”
Interesting. Nobody had ever asked me that before. I wasn’t sure if I even knew the answer.
“Hell, no,” I replied, the certainty of my conviction surprising both of us.
“Good,” she murmured. “I like you just the way you are.”
Then I hope I don’t let you down, I thought.
I cleared my throat. “Right. We should get back to the manor before the others start to wake up.”
Rose groaned. “My aunt would have a fit if she knew I’d stayed out all night.”
“Who, Mary?” I raised my eyebrow dubiously. “I’d hardly call her an authoritarian.”
“No. She just worries about me.”
“Can’t be a bad thing,” I reasoned.
“Not usually. But with this prophecy…??
? she trailed off.
Naturally, I had hoped that Rose wouldn’t tell her aunt and uncle about Lathiaus. For starters, humans who knew nothing about demons were categorically useless when it came to dealing with—you’ve guessed it—demons. And in my experience, the fewer humans who knew about our business, the better. Too many cooks.
What concerned me most, though, was that she might ‘out’ us as witches. In other words, Caicus’s power would be null and void, and I imagined all hell would break loose.
But I was officially done with influencing Rose. I’d lost control of this situation the moment I’d admitted to being a witch. Jeeze, lucky I wasn’t responsible for guarding an imperative secret or anything like that.
Rose’s voice broke through my reverie. “I’m not going to tell her,” she said. “Mary, I mean.”
Uncanny. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she’d dipped right into my mind.
I nodded my head. “Thanks.”
“Will they be in any danger?” There was a selflessness in her eyes, like an obscured whirlpool brewing in a deep green ocean. I found it admirable.
“They won’t be in danger,” I assured her. “On the day of the awakening, we’ll make sure your family is away from Millwood.”
Rose’s complexion grew ashen. “How?”
I shrugged. “Caicus will think of something. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
She stared at her hands.
“Come on,” I said abruptly, “let’s go.” Believe me, I didn’t want to go. What I wanted to do was stay in that tree house forever. Just me and Rose. But the real world kept plodding on, and sooner or later, we’d have to join it.
Rose moved first. I watched her climb through the hatch and lower herself down the frayed rope ladder. Once she was back on solid ground, I dropped through the hatch myself.
The forest was shimmering with the first light of day. It painted the most mystical picture. Rows of evergreens cast silken shadows across the dull orange and purple of dawn. A gentle mist, conjured by the brimming sun’s heat amalgamating with last night’s lingering dew, graced the ground.
As we trod through the mist, it licked at our feet and parted with our strides. It was like nature’s red carpet, laid out for two united beings. We walked side by side, content in a reflective silence.