Is she asking for my life? If she is, I would give it for a way to save Wyatt. It’s my life that should be ending right now, and not his. Wyatt shouldn’t have to pay this price for being my friend.
“Yes, take my life if that’s what you want, just please heal Wyatt!” I’m shouting, but her expression remains unchanged.
“I won’t take your life, unless that’s the decision you make after hearing everything I need to tell you – I won’t force you down that path.. I think you will find me a friend, Lucky.” She says with a smile, but there’s something a little off. It looks like she’s somehow out of practice – like smiling doesn’t come naturally to her, or she hasn’t done it in a very long time. It isn’t scary in any way, it’s just slightly odd.
“I’ll give you anything! Please just fix him!” Her lack of urgency is starting to make me feel like my grip on reality is at risk.
“I want to give you something actually. Information.” She smiles at me again in her weird way.
“Fine, just fix him!” I can barely see her anymore through the stream of tears pouring out of my eyes.
“Okay,” she says, but it sounds more like ‘I’m sorry’. She stands and grabs at the air just above Wyatt’s chest like she’s picking up invisible handles, then she gently lifts up. Wyatt floats just an inch above the ground but he’s still rigid like he’s being supported from underneath. I’m still on my knees, so I’m completely unprepared to follow when she starts walking away with him.
She holds her arm out to the side like she’s carrying a bag of dog poop that she doesn’t want to get too close to. Wyatt moves along the ground following her pace exactly. She isn’t treating him badly, but she isn’t showing the care that I or someone else who loved him would. Her warmth towards me is obviously not extended to Wyatt. It reminds me of how you might pick up the dirty socks of a family member – you do it because you care about the person you’re doing it for, but it doesn’t mean that you aren’t grossed out.
I scramble to get up and she looks back and holds out a hand to stop me from coming with her.
“You need to be here when time restarts. No one can know that Wyatt was really here, and they can’t know that I exist either. You need to pretend that all the young Druid’s daggers somehow missed you. Once time restarts, you must act like it was never stopped. I will go back to your friend’s apartment and heal him. I will see you there, later.” She doesn’t stop to make sure that I’m going to follow her instructions. She must know the leverage she has over me. I stand up and watch her walk away with Wyatt who is still like a statue hovering just above the ground. She walks back toward the hole in the fence and waves her hand at it, causing the hole to open up wider, allowing her and Wyatt to pass through without altering their path in the slightest.
I look back toward Dorian and Coan. The silence is even more eerie now that there’s no other moving being nearby. Dorian’s face is still twisted in the mask of pity and horror he had as he saw Wyatt lying at my feet. Even with that pained expression, his face is the most handsome one I’ve ever seen, but it doesn’t even compare to the beauty inside him. If I allow myself to think about the possibility of never seeing him again after this, I’ll never be able to get through this charade and pretend that everything is okay.
I curl my arms around my head in the same position I had them held in before I saw Wyatt, and I wait. If I’m lucky, maybe Dorian will just think that his eyes played a trick – that Wyatt was never here. Maybe Coan couldn’t see anything in the first place with his head still held captive by the vines. When time restarts, I notice the background noises that I didn’t even realize were there before. The buzz of a car driving by on the road past the fence. The scraping of branches rubbing together and the gentle wush of the breeze that was still dying down from the ending storm.
“NO!” I hear Dorian yell, and I peek around my hands to see him.
He’s blinking like he can’t believe his eyes, and I can see the moment that relief washes through him. He runs toward me, and I take the moment to sneak a glance at Coan.
Coan looks a little surprised, but he doesn’t look suspicious, so I take it as a win – maybe I was just out of his view.
Even if I did get lucky with what they saw, there’s no way I’m going to be able to act normal knowing that Wyatt is fighting for his life right now, and I can’t be with him.
Hopefully Coan and Dorian will attribute any weirdness to the stress of the events that they know about.
Dorian barely slows down before he runs into me and grabs me up into a giant hug. – just like Wyatt would do. No, I can’t think about that now.
I hug him back, but I can feel tears running from my eyes at the thought of my injured best friend.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs with joy in my ear. “I thought those spikes … and then, I thought I saw…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but my thoughts go to the image of what did happen. I can’t stop the sudden jerk of my shoulders from an escaping sob, and he pulls back to look at me. “Are you okay?” he says, now with concern.
“Yeah,” I say trying to brush it off.
“What were you doing here? You could have been hurt!” He doesn’t know how right he could have been, if not for Wyatt. Dorian pulls me back into his embrace and gently squeezes.
I’ve got to get out of here fast. If I stay too long, he’s going to be able to tell that I’m keeping something from him. I need to leave before the realization that this could be our last embrace cripples me.
Coan, in his viney cage shouts over to us. “I’m still stuck over here!”
This is it, the break in Dorian’s attention on me that I need. He’s got to go let Coan free, so I need to make sure that I figure out how to go the other way, back to Wyatt and whatever fate has for me.
Dorian looks over at his friend and releases me from his arms. He takes a step toward Coan, but not before he encircles my hand with his. We hold hands so much when we’re together that it’s just a natural part of what it means for us to be in the same place. He obviously expects that I’m going to follow him. Under any other circumstances, I would.
I stand my ground, and the resistance of my hand makes him stop and look at me.
“I have to get back,” I say, gesturing with my free thumb back toward the hole in the fence, back toward Wyatt. I can hear the choppiness of my voice, and I pray that he can’t figure out its meaning.
I can tell that he suspects something is up. I’ve never been a very convincing liar.
“Okay,” he says, stretching out the word into a question.
I turn to walk away quickly before he can ask a real question, and before the gravity of what I’m doing sinks in.
As I walk toward the fence, I hear him yell out to me. “I’ll pick you up tonight at 6.”
I gasp at his words, and I almost stop when I think about him arriving to pick me up and not finding me there. If only I could save him from the pain and worry, but I can’t risk Wyatt, so the truth of what’s going on is something I can’t afford to share. I wish there was some other thing I could come up with to say – something that would make it easier for him. If only I had more time to figure this out.
“I would love that,” is all I come up with and the truth of those words stabs deeply at my heart. I know that I let too much emotion leek into my words, so I look back at him to give a smile and hopefully keep him from coming after me.
I can see that he has more questions for me, but I can’t afford to pause for a second or I might not get away. I need to focus – I need to get out of here as fast as I can – I need to turn around and start walking. I walk quickly straight to the fence and say goodbye in my head to Dorian – the only person I was certain I wouldn’t leave. I had just spent last night trying to fix the things in my life that I would regret if I had to leave, but it had never even occurred to me that there was a scenario where I would leave without Dorian by my side– it just didn’t seem like something that could happen.
If it was anyone but Wyatt, if it wasn’t my fault, if I had a choice, I would go back to Dorian right now. I know that Dorian’s curse will take more lives without me there to counteract it, but even that isn’t enough to give up Wyatt’s life for. It’s irrational to choose Wyatt’s life above countless others, but love can make choices which aren’t easy to explain rationally.
Tears run down my cheeks in branching streams. I check behind me a few times to make sure that Dorian isn’t following, and the world looks like a tilted wet watercolor painting – no objects can be clearly distinguished, and the colors sag and run together. I hope that Dorian will understand that there was nothing he could do, and I hope that I can find some way to come back after this.
I make it back to Wyatt’s apartment and stumble through the door expecting to see Wyatt being worked over by the odd blond woman who said she’d be here doing just that, but I don’t see her or Wyatt anywhere.
A movement by the fridge catches my eye and I see the woman standing in the open door of the fridge holding an open mayonnaise jar and liking her fingers.
When our eyes connect, the corners of her mouth pull up in that odd way she smiles and she says, “Ready to go?”
“No,” I cry out at her, “Where’s Wyatt?”
“Oh, he’s sleeping,” she points toward the bedroom, but from where I stand, I can see that nothing looks different from when I left. The bed is empty, and all the sheets are wadded up on one side where I left them. I rush forward to look for him and once I get past the door jam, I can see him lying on the ground, half covered by the sleeping bag he used last night.
I drop to my knees at his side, and start pressing my hand to his arm, to his chest, to his neck, to each spot that had a crystal shard embedded the last time I saw him.
He’s perfect.
Healed.
There’s no evidence that an injury was ever there.
He’s breathing, and his cheeks are pink and his hair is messy, just like it always is in the morning.
Every feeling in me is suddenly eclipsed by a profound wave of relief. My lungs can work again, my face can smile without effort, the excessive tension in my body is gone.
“Don’t wake him up!” I hear the warning coming from behind. The bliss I was experiencing is short lived as I remember the price I agreed to pay for Wyatt’s safety.
“Will he remember?” I ask sadly, hoping that he wouldn’t need to be burdened.
“Everything that happened after the first time he woke up will only be a dream to him. Now, let’s go.” She still seems to be trying her best to be kind to me, but it’s also obvious that she’s in a hurry to get out of here. She sets down the jar of mayo on Wyatt’s nightstand and gestures for me to get up.
I look from the mayo and then back to her and she answers my unasked question.
“I don’t get around here much, so I like to try the local specialties when I do, now let’s go.” Mayonnaise, a local specialty? Everything about her seems bizarre, but I can’t shake this feeling that she’s still somehow benevolent.
I say a simple “goodbye” to Wyatt, knowing that it’s the only real goodbye I’m going to be able to make to anyone. I stand up and reach over to move the jar of mayo. I know it’s silly, but I seem to be focusing on all kinds of insignificant details now, so what’s one more. I don’t want the mayo to leave a water ring on the nightstand that Wyatt made. I wouldn’t want him to think that I left it there and wrecked his beautiful piece of work – that shouldn’t be the last memory of me that he would have.
I look at my own hand reaching to wrap around the jar, and I see the ring that Coan put on my finger.
“Wait, if he could remember things that happened, even as a dream, is he still in danger from the spells protecting Druids? Will it make a hole in his mind?” Fear for his safety creeps back over me.
“No,” she says like it should be obvious. “When I offered to heal him, it was from all harm. I didn’t leave the damage from those Druids.” The way her voice lingered in disgust on the last word reminds me of how Coan’s voice would ring with disgust each time he mentioned the word Witch. At least I can rule out her being a Druid.
With a circular wave of her hand, a round pool of water forms on Wyatt’s floor. It bubbles up and becomes translucent, revealing a deep pool with stone walls whose top just happens to be at the same level as Wyatt’s carpet. It’s deep enough that the bottom fades and blackens. It’s only a few inches away from my toes, and it’s wide enough that I couldn’t jump over it.
“Go on,” she says and gestures to the water like she expects me to jump in.
“Where are we going?”
“To the other side of a wishing well.” She gestures again impatiently.
Apparently, that’s all the explanation I’m going to get. I said I would go with her, but I was sort of expecting a car ride or something along those lines. This seems much more intimidating, but it appears I have no choice.
Thinking of it as a wishing well triggers me to think of all my wishes.
I wish that my friends and family won’t spend too much time searching for me if I don’t come back, that they’ll be able to move on and have happy lives even if I can’t give them closure.
I wish that I hadn’t wasted so much time with Dorian. I shouldn’t have been so worried about making a fool of myself and just asked him out right away. If I’d been stronger, we wouldn’t have missed out on having a first date, or a first kiss. I shouldn’t have spent so much time worrying about money or gifts – I should have just enjoyed my time with him.
I wish for him to find a true cure for his curse so that he can be happy like I know he deserves to be.
I wish for Coan to find happiness too. We had our differences, but if I had the chance I would tell him how much I like and respect him.
I wish I was a better swimmer.
Her hand is flat against the middle of my back, and I feel the push that makes me fall.
Please continue reading Dorian and Lucky’s story in the sequel to this novel, Destined, The Dorian Gray Novels Book 2. This book is due to publish in 2020, so please be patient. Until then, please consider leaving an online review of this book – I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you to all the fans of the Dorian Gray Novels for your time, love and support. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first book and that you will continue with me through the series.
~F. E. Bradley
Lucky: Dorian Gray Novels Book 1 Page 22