The Knight

by Kayla Eshbaugh

  “Have you?”

  “I believe—” I started, but Lamont cut me off.

  “Sometimes, we get a second chance in life. The ancients and I are giving you that second chance. I wouldn’t have asked you this if I didn’t think it would bring you great happiness. We are here, stuck on Earth, and we might as well be happy. You are the truest and best friend that I have ever had, Rykerian Dallard.”

  “I thank you; I do not deserve your friendship.”

  “Yes, you do.” He turned to look at me then, and I wondered, not for the first time, how an ancient heir could regard me so highly. “You are more a brother to me than Tarick ever was,” he smirked.

  I laughed.

  “What? It is true, isn't it? That idiot tried to kill me.”

  “I thank you, Lamont,” I said, bowing my head; he slapped a hand on my back and smiled.

  “All will be well again, Kerian; you shall see. We can be happy here.” As the memory of that night faded, I heard Emma’s melody as loud and as pure as ever also fade into that long-ago night.

  AS THE BELL RANG OUT, I packed up my backpack and raced from my last class. I walked down the hallway to meet Emma out front. The sight of prince Shad and Emma together made me sick, but I tried to endure it for her sake. I knew she was growing fond of him, and whatever he had done to weasel his way into her life was working, and it was making her happy. I did not want to be the bad guy who didn’t want her to have other friends and act all jealous—or at least, I tried really hard not to be that guy. That was an Earthling thing to do, after all.

  “Have any plans this weekend?” I heard Shad ask as I waited outside their classroom. I was partly hidden by a beam, for which I was then thanking the ancients.

  “Yeah, I’m hanging out with Ryker this weekend. You?” She asked, and I smiled so wide. That was probably not the answer he was hoping for. I wanted to unshield my melody in order to hear his feelings at that moment, but I didn’t want to risk him sensing my melody. I may have been able to do it undetected, but I didn't want to risk it, especially with my emotions being heightened as they were at that moment.

  “Hanging out with Keil, then work. Have a good weekend. See you on Monday,” Shad said.

  It was silent for a bit, and I moved from behind the pillar and walked up to Emma. Shad was long gone, just another shape in the crowd of students on their way home from school. I was smiling like the biggest earthling idiot.

  “Ready?” I asked, moving to her side. I chuckled as she jumped, surprised that I was there.

  “Yep,” she said.

  I took her hand, her warmth flooding my insides and led us through the mass of students in the parking lot. We usually walked home. I didn’t drive a car to school as our homes were minutes away by foot. Shad, of course, had a car because—well, he was annoying. But for me? I wasn’t as pretentious as he was. He was a prince after all, and princes just think—I paused in my thinking—well there was one prince who didn’t think he was the ruler of the worlds—Lamont. I tried to swallow that thought down without wanting to cry. I was too soft. Earth was making me way too soft—and different. “So, my parents aren't home, so we have some privacy.”

  “Okay, yeah. I heard you at lunch, but why do we need privacy?” She looked at me, raising her eyebrows.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen you in a while?” I shrugged. Honestly, I just wanted to kiss her, but I couldn't do that, not then. I mean, I could have, but the ramifications would have been too costly. It wasn't the right time—as much as I wanted it to be.

  “Okay, so what are we going to do?” she asked.

  I tried hard not to be like the earthlings on my football team—I think they were rubbing off on me because I just thought again about kissing her, and holding her in my arms—I needed to cool it.

  “Watch a movie?” I said, trying to keep the thoughts contained.

  “Another movie, really—don’t you get tired of that? That is what we did for two weeks nonstop right after you got home from your trip,” Emma whined.

  “What? I thought you liked watching movies with me.” I gave her a frown. I loved watching movies with her. She always sat so close to me, leaned her head on my shoulder. And—the couple of times when she fell asleep in my arms—that was heaven, as they said on earth.

  Her shoulder brushed mine, and I smiled like an idiot. “No, I tolerate watching movies with you because I love you.” The words struck me to my core. I had known her all her life. All her life, I had lived beside her, and those words directed at me, never before had come out of her mouth. She thought those words plenty of times when, on occasion, her soul had been unshielded, but never out loud before. I felt like I was soaring.

  “What?” she asked, looking up at me, confusion in her pretty, green eyes.

  I shook my head and smiled, “Thanks, Em. I love you, too.” My words came out as a whisper, and I found myself remembering, remembering a past moment with Emma—

  “YOU KNOW, THAT ISN't very nice,” she said, moving away from me with a glare.

  “What?” I said, teasing and walking past her down the trail.

  “You know what I thought—that you—that we, would—”

  “Kiss—right this moment?” I turned back to her and tried to let my feelings calm down so as to not alarm her. I would have been lying if I had said that I had not thought about it, but I wanted it sometime in the distant future. Not right then; she was too young.

  “Of course,” She shrugged, as if it were the easiest conversation to have in all the worlds.

  “I—ah—don’t think it’s a good idea right now, Em.”

  “But I need it to be you. Ry, I need my first kiss to be important, you know?” I watched as she sat down, defeated, in the dirt.

  “Emma, I am sure your first kiss will mean something. I am sure it will be earth-shattering.”

  She looked up at me in disbelief.

  “Ry, please?” she begged, looking up at me with those beautiful eyes that made it hard to focus. My nickname, on her lips, was carried from her breath and made alive in the air. She had a way of making everything seem so simple, like breathing. Only she could break me down to just my basic self, with one basic syllable: Ry.

  “Not right now. Em; not right now. Let’s go; let's not waste the day.” I held out my hand to her, and she took it. The warmth flooded between us, and I raised my hand to cup her cheek. I had given her a simple nickname, after she had made up mine. One just for her, just from me: Em. She stared at me as if I were the entire world, her melody swirling within mine, and I had never felt more at home in my entire life. I wanted to kiss her. I wished sometimes that I had kissed her back then, but I hadn’t. Was I a coward? Probably, but what was done was done, and that day was long gone.

  “OKAY, FINE, RY—I WILL watch a movie with you, just as long as it’s not a horror movie,” Emma said, smiling at me.

  “Yeah, no, of course,” I agreed as I started walking again, still stunned with the new revelation mixed with the past memory.

  Chapter 13

  WE WALKED THROUGH THE front door of my house and down the hall. I nervously grabbed the door handle to my bedroom and turned to Emma. “I just want to warn you a little that, well—” I stopped and ran a hand across my face. The nervousness about sharing it with her was making my body shake. How would she take the news? How would she take the news that I thought her parents had been murdered? “I’ve been doing some research, and don’t think that I am crazy, okay?” I needed to be ready for what I was about to show her, and how Emma was going to take it.

  “Okay. What class of yours already has a project? Are we watching the movie in your room? You’re acting weird,” Emma went on. She tended to ramble a bit when she was confused or nervous. I didn’t dare unshield my melody to check because I was barely holding it together as I prepared to show her my research.

  I nodded, not answering her questions and opened the door. Emma walked inside. As I approached her, I watched as she took in m
y room— watched as her eyes roamed over every single thing I owned on Earth. We had been in that room so many times together. I wondered if she had any memories of that. She wasn’t the same person on that day as she had been when we were young. I continued to watch as her gaze wandered over the wall behind my desk. I knew it was a sight to see. Papers and research taped up and charted out.

  I could sense her confusion and a little fear. Murderer rose up in her thoughts, and then she had memories of movies. I didn’t catch it all; it happened too fast, but she was confused and possibly thought that I was insane—or a murderer. I needed to clear that up first.

  “Okay, so I know it is a bit much, but there is something about having all of my research in one place and being able to always see it.”

  She nodded and walked over to a piece of paper with all the dates I had found of suspicious behavior, from the man who caused Emma so much pain, who killed Lamont and Ara. “What is this?” She asked, pointing to the paper.

  “I was mapping out any previous attempts.”

  “Attempts?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I looked at my feet and shuffled.

  “What is this, Ry?” Emma asked, moving down the wall to news clippings of car crashes. She stopped when she reached the news clippings from the night Lamont and Ara were murdered. I watched as her body became rigid, and blackness seemed to coat her soul, much like it had in the hospital and right before I had left for the summer. It made me sick to think of the pain that she was experiencing, and I was worried about the corruption that was entering her soul.

  “Are you okay, Em?” I asked, supporting her quickly as she began to wobble. I wasn’t sure if she was going to pass out or not.

  “Ry, what is this—” Her voice was shaking.

  “I know your parents were murdered, Em,” I said, looking into her eyes, pleading within her melody for her to listen to me, to not run away. I felt the horror that she was experiencing as it radiated from her melody, and I wanted to take it all away, remove all of the bad things from her life.

  “What?” She finally spoke again after a long silence. Her eyes held so many questions, and I wanted to answer every single one of them; I wanted to tell her everything.

  “It doesn’t make sense—what happened, how it happened,” I ran my fingers through my hair as I shook my head.

  Emma looked the entire wall over as if searching for all of the answers that she didn’t even know that she had. “Did you talk to the police?” she asked as she sat down on my desk chair. I knew that she was trying to unravel what it all meant, what it all meant for her.

  “Yes, I started with them first, and it was weird. They couldn’t say what happened.” I pulled out a notebook and turned to the page with the sketch of the man. I held it up to show her in the light. I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction she would have to it, but I needed to know as much as I could about that man before I left to search for him again. I didn't know if she remembered yet that she had seen that man, or that she had actually described him to the police, and that the sketch was made from her own descriptions. Her memories were still a bit fuzzy. I knew that; I knew that she was having trouble remembering anything at all about that night. She often had dreams of that night, nightmares—had she seen him in one of those nightmares? Would she remember the details of that night yet? I wondered.

  “Emma?” I asked, moving closer to her. Her eyes locked onto mine, and I could feel peace radiate inside of her. That surprised me.

  She remembered him. I could feel it inside of her.

  “Ryker, this man didn’t kill my parents. He saved my life.”

  “One of the policemen saw him flee the scene and tried to call out to him, but he drove off,” I questioned.

  “He helped me. He didn’t do it,” she insisted as she pushed the picture away.

  “But that night—in the hospital, you told me you saw someone, someone who maybe hit your car.” I found myself thinking back to that night.

  EMMA WAS PASSED OUT on the bed, and Mary let me go in first. The beeping of the hospital monitors, along with the sterile odor of antiseptic and chemicals, made me want to vomit. There she lay, cuts and bruises visible on her face, arms, and neck. Her right leg was bandaged. As I approached her, I could feel her melody swirling free, for it was then uninhibited because of the loss of Lamont and Ara. It was the most beautiful thing, and yet the most tragically heart-wrenching thing, that I had ever heard. She looked clean; she had changed from whatever she had been wearing into a teal blue hospital gown. A needle and tube were stuck in her arm. There was also something on her finger that made the monitors beep, keeping perfect time with her heart.

  I walked over to her. I remembered holding my breath as I reached her side. I knew that I needed to start the process of shielding her soul right away, but I was weak. After losing Lamont and Ara, I wanted to feel her, feel her soul and melody. I stood there for a few minutes before I placed one hand over her eyes and the other hand over her heart. A mind and soul became one through a melody. This was thought by our people to be in the chest and the eyes on the body. She did not move as I started the process of shielding her soul. Soon I was done, and I stood back. Her melody was still strong, not completely shielded, but I knew it wouldn’t attract people from great distances anymore like it would have only a few moments earlier. Her eyes opened. I stepped back in shock as she sat up.

  “Ryker, he said—he—killed them. I saw someone hit our car. He stopped and helped, but he did it. Please find him, please.” Tears were running down her face like small trickling waterfalls, bursting without a dam to keep them in place. I held her to me.

  “Emma, we will find who did this, and they will pay. I swear it.”

  She cried and cried in my arms, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn't crying, too, right alongside her.

  “They are dead, Ryker,” she moaned into my shirt, clutching her arms around me for strength. And within me, like always being her knight, the strength emerged just when she needed it, because I was her guardian knight, and that was what she needed.

  EMMA, OF COURSE, MUST not have remembered that conversation. She must not have remembered the moment later, either, when Mary also had placed her hands on her and shielded her, too, as best she could. I looked into her eyes, concerned as her melody swirled, and so many thoughts darted this way and then that way, through her emotions.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  “Yes. I remembered. I had a flashback; my therapist says that can happen.”

  “Emma, I am so sorry.” I moved then to sit on the desk.

  “So what are you going to do now?” she asked as if she were trying to be brave by asking like she really didn’t want to know., but I knew deep down that she did want to know, and that she did want the murderer found, just like she had pleaded with me in the hospital.

  “I need to find him—figure out who he is, exactly.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’ve talked to some friends about it. Even if it wasn’t this man, maybe this guy saw someone else. He is the best lead, and he was there first.”

  “Friends?” she asked, moving a stray hair from her cheek.

  “Private investigator—and stuff—don't worry about it. The point is that I will figure out who he is, and I will give your parents justice.”

  She nodded.

  I motioned for Emma to sit on the bed, and I was grateful when she followed me. She seemed so off balance; I didn’t want her to fall to the floor.

  “Thank you, Ry,” she said, falling back against the bed. I laid beside her on the mattress. She turned to me, and it only took me a moment to tuck her into my side, stroking her back. She laid her head onto my chest, and I didn’t think as I bent down and touched my lips to her head, not a kiss, but the pull I had for her wanted it to be one. She lifted her face up to look at me.

  “You sure you are okay? I feel like a horrible person for just springing that on you. I didn’t mean to make you sad,�
� I whispered.

  “I don't know if I will ever be okay.” Her eyes told me the truth of her words, and so did her soul.

  After Emma fell asleep during the movie, I watched her as she slept, cradled against me in my arms. I would have been happy to stay there for all of eternity.

  Then my father, who wasn't really my father at all, or even a person, really, came into my room. It was interesting just how powerful the ancient magic was. That illusion of a father figure had haunted me for sixteen years up to that point in time. Lamont said that I needed to look like a normal earthling person with a family, and one day, he was just here, pretending to be a person, pretending to be my father. I didn't understand the ancient powers fully, and I didn’t try to understand. He only came around when Emma was at my house, or when Lamont, Ara, Emma and I were pretending to be on family vacations. It was odd, like a ghost trailing behind me. How it could fool Emma and other earthlings, I had no idea. I clearly saw through the facade, but then again, I knew the truth, and I knew about the ancients.

  I tried to get him to leave—whatever it was, but it wasn’t working, and Emma was embarrassed to be found asleep in my bed with me. I just smiled and couldn't help but joke with her a little as she had overreacted. I smiled wide as I walked down the stairs with her, and my “father” disappeared again.

  Mary wasn’t home yet, and I knew that I wasn’t going to leave Emma alone. I stayed there while she slept, watching senseless television shows. I was clicking through channels aimlessly when Emma started thrashing on the other couch. I walked over to her and touched her shoulders. She cried out, pushing me away.

  “Emma, Emma. It's me, Ryker. You are dreaming.”

  She opened her eyes, and her eyes locked onto mine as she started to cry.

  “It’s him, Ryker. I saw him—that night. He kept me alive on purpose. He only wanted them dead.”