by Carol Oates
the extraordinary heat that passed over my skin every time I touched him. His eyes opened again, hooded and filled with a renewed intensity. They darted to my mouth, to where his thumb carefully ghosted across the plump flesh. The warmth inside me turned volcanic.
I leapt to my feet, startled, and took several unsteady steps back. “I need a minute.”
Regan went to stand.
“Wait.” I held my hands up and cut off his movement. “I’m not going to run away. I swear I will be right back. I just need…” My words trailed off because I wasn’t sure what I needed any longer.
“A minute?” he finished for me with a smile that made my stomach constrict and my fingers tremble to reach out to him. He sat again, clearly too exhausted to do anything else.
I wanted answers, although I was terrified I had already known those answers all my life. In my head, I argued that the salt didn’t affect me and so it couldn’t be true. I argued back that it was too much coincidence for this to happen after all the nights my father told me the summer prince would come for me. My pulse rang in my ears. Regan scared me, but I wasn’t sure it was for the same reasons he scared me just a few hours ago. The loudest thought floating around my head scared me more than anything — I didn’t want to run from him anymore.
I turned from him and headed toward the sound of water. As I neared the cave entrance, the ground became less rocky and gradually transformed to soft golden sand. My feet sank in with each step, and the warm grains enveloped my toes. It sparkled like jewels, reflecting the pinkish light with a rainbow of colors. I emerged in a cove and caught my breath at the exquisite vista before me.
The cave was set into a lofty sheer cliff face of white marble threaded with black and golden veins. The top edge was covered with lush grass, and some kind of vine, with large cupped leaves that I had never seen before, grew downward. The sand glimmered here, the same as inside the mouth of the cave, and sapphire water lapped against it lazily. I could have sworn I heard the sand purr in contentment.
A warm glow of light illuminated the area, and the horizon was streaked with the magenta, violet, scarlet, and amber of sunset despite there being no sun that I could see. It was magical and calming. My heart and my breathing began to settle. I took in the marvelously fresh, salty air through my nose and out through my mouth several times before venturing closer to the water, stopping where the wet sand met dry. There I sat to take my shoes off, placing my feet just far enough into the damp sand for the water to rush forward and cover my curling toes. Not surprisingly, it was the perfect temperature, and each wave drained away a little of the tension gripping my body.
I stayed out there longer than I should have because I knew Regan wouldn’t follow me. The colors of the sky never changed; it never brightened or darkened. This place appeared to be in a perpetual state of twilight.
My thirst eventually drove me in search of fresh water. Luckily I didn’t have to go far, because there was a steady stream trickling from where a tangle of vine leaves had clustered around a crack in the rock-face.
I dipped my fingers into the cool water and tentatively touched them to my tongue, hoping that my guess was right and it wasn’t salt water. It was refreshing, cool, and clear. I caught some in my palm and slurped it back greedily. It felt so good that I splashed more on my face and the back of my neck. I imagined Regan must be wondering what was keeping me. Maybe he was too ill to come looking or maybe he was gone. I turned on my heels and rushed back into the cave, alarmed that while I had been relaxing, I’d never stopped to think I could have been left here alone.
Regan had moved to one of the side walls and was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle. I breathed out a sigh of relief. It didn’t last long.
He said he would get better, but he didn’t look better. His complexion had taken on a grayish pallor, and his eyes were closed but moving beneath his eyelids as if he was dreaming. I ran back out to the streaming water and looked around to find something I could use to carry it in. The most obvious choice was the cupped leaves. I carefully rinsed two, making sure I removed any traces of sand or salt that may have attached themselves, and brought two others back inside. Sitting beside Regan, I curled my legs beneath me, and he woke with a start. His eyes were bloodshot and ferocious. It took a moment for him to remember where he was. His clammy hand was threaded with blue veins clearly visible below the surface. Blood pulsed thickly through the artery in his neck, and his breathing was definitely shallower than when I left.
“Here, drink this.” I placed one of the cupped leaves on the ground beside me carefully and lifted the other to his lips.
Regan measured me with suspicion, and his lips locked together as if I might have been trying to poison him. Maybe I would have a few hours ago in the forest — if I had thought of it. Right now I was acutely aware that I needed him. But it wasn’t just that. Something deep inside needled away at my subconscious, telling me it was more than that. I felt it when he touched me, by the scorching prickles on my skin. I felt it when he kissed me, and I felt it when I was away from him. A part of me recognized and craved this strange boy. Part of me wanted to take care of him and keep him safe.
I slipped my hand around the back of his neck and supported his head as I touched the leaf to his lip and allowed the tiniest dribble of water to roll over it.
“It’s fresh…I promise.”
Keeping me in his fierce gaze, he parted his lips enough to peek his tongue out and swipe it over his bottom lip. In a blur of motion, both his hands seized mine and he drained the water.
“There’s more,” I said, reaching for the other leaf and lifting that to his lips too. This time his hands were lighter, and when he finished I saw a significant improvement in him. “We should go. This place is making you ill.”
“Soon,” he replied, keeping my hand in his. “I’m okay for now.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. Regan was being stubborn and difficult. Bizarrely, I knew that was just like him.
From nowhere, I recalled a day by a sparkling lake when he held my hand, just like now, before he tied a piece of cord around our wrists and promised me we would be together again. My heart skipped a beat, and I gasped, yanking my hand away from him. I scurried backward, panting, although he had no reaction.
“It’s true, isn’t it? It’s all true. The faery tale? The spring princess…it’s me.”
He nodded, unperturbed by my outburst. “You had a memory?”
“We were saying goodbye…and…and we were performing a ceremony.”
Simmering heat suddenly flared in the air between us, drawing me nearer to him. I wanted to resist because I didn’t know him, but at the same time I was overwhelmed by memories of the two of us together, laughing, swimming in the same lake where we had bound ourselves to each other, running through a forest I didn’t recognize, dancing at celebrations that I was sure I never attended, alive with twinkling lights and flowers. I remembered the silken texture of his hair and the smile reserved for when he was up to mischief. I remembered that same kindness he had shown me here, and I remembered that feeling of tightness and heat in my chest. Except in my memory it was a volcano. I remembered loving Regan. But it wasn’t me. None of it was really me. It was some other girl…and me at the same time.
I understood now. Regan hadn’t been creeping in like ivy. It was the ivy keeping him out. It was those roots and tentacles of my new life that had attached themselves to my old memories so thoroughly and kept me from remembering who he was and who I was. Now I felt those memories as if the network of vines holding them in some secret place was dying; they were finally clearing and allowing Regan back in.
“Do I love you?” I asked, tears scratching at my eyes.
His answering smile was brilliant. “Oh yes…and I love you.”
“You don’t know me,” I bit back. I didn’t mean it to be so cutting. His smile faded, and I brought my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. “Tell me the story.”
> His eyebrows drew down sharply in disappointment. Clearly he expected me to be more excited. I needed to reconcile myself to this girl he loved. I wasn’t convinced she and I were the same person.
“You know the story.”
“Tell me again. I want to hear it from you,” I explained.
He leaned his head back, turned his face to me, and swallowed hard. I was captivated by his every movement. It stirred another vague memory, like smoke that I couldn’t quite grasp.
“By the time I was born, my sister, Morgana, was already fifty-seven years old. My mother, the summer queen, never expected to have a son. Tradition says the Seelie court is passed through the male bloodline. The only way Morgana could guarantee her crown was if I never had a queen to carry it on, meaning I couldn’t take the crown. Two weeks later you were born, the spring princess.
“A seer foretold we would fall in love.”
I pressed my lips together while trying to recall the story in my mind, but it was impossible to know if it came from a memory of my previous life or what I had been told by my father. Something I did remember with crystal clarity was an ache in my heart, as if someone had forced their hand through my chest wall and squeezed. It was a feeling of hopeless loss and inevitability. “Morgana was livid.”
I shifted uncomfortably and pulled my