by A. B. Bloom
I wasn’t sure what he was telling me to do, but I recalled the focus I'd used that morning to create my outfit. You had to want it, will it, feel it until it couldn’t be anything else but what you wanted.
I shut my eyes and concentrated on the cloud, sensing the shape and density of them, searching underneath them. When I opened my eyes, that’s when I saw it. The shadow of darkness that wasn’t mist at all. “Is the sky purple or am I imaging it?”
“I would go more for eggplant, but whatever floats your boat.”
“Wow.” I stared through the cloud. The sky was swollen with a luminous colour that was more eggplant, just the way Connor described it, rather than purple. Streaks of gold and bronze scored the darkness, creating a tapestry of rich hues. “Is it only like this here?” I muttered, my attention distracted.
“Nope. Everywhere.”
“And the mist?”
“Not unique to Cornwall, Sweetheart.”
“What does it mean?” I watched his reaction, the rise and fall of his shoulders and the frown that creased between his eyes. “So are you not going to talk either?” Clenching my fists, I tried to calm my breathing. “Is secrets the way you guys function?”
Connor's eyes caught mine and I saw a flicker deep within their depths. “No. Not always.”
“But the last star child was supposed to have the deciding vote.” I frowned, scrunching my eyes as I tried to unlayer the problem in my head. “I thought that was written in your destiny?”
His shoulders shrugged again. “I don't think destiny knows what she wants anymore.” He raised his eyes and studied the looming, swollen sky. “There are two of you now, so I guess the scales are teetering.”
At last! Someone would talk.
“Teetering how?”
He paused for a moment. “Well, you'd want one thing but she may want the other.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “How do you know what she'd want?”
His eyes bored into mine, the purple hue of the sky deepening the vibrant blue to that of a winter morning dawn. “How do you know what you want?”
This made me pause. “Well . . .” I trailed off.
“See. Nothing is what it should be.” His eyes searched me one last time. “Nothing.”
He sprung from the bench, causing me to jump with his movement. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Why? We were in the middle of a conversation.”
“Believe me, I do.” And before my eyes, he evaporated into thin air. Hm. I wondered if that was a skill I’d ever utilise.
“Hey,” I spun around at Nick’s greeting. He stepped from behind a hedge, his hands deep in his pockets.
“Oh, hey.” I hadn’t been doing anything wrong, but I didn't want Nick knowing I’d been spending time with Connor. It would make him even more stressed. And Nick looked stressed enough as it was. His face was taut, his cheeks fuzzed with a dark shadow. He also still had no shoes on. “You really are rocking the sock look today.” He wiggled his damp sock covered toes and looked at them absently like he'd forgotten he might need shoes to go out.
As he settled on the bench, his thigh pressed against mine and I breathed a sigh of relief. Electricity zapped across my skin. It felt that if we could still make a connection then whatever was going on wouldn’t be too bad.
“Good time with Connor?” he asked.
“It’s nothing for you to be jealous of.” I watched the sea with the same intensity that Connor had given it. It rolled and swelled, full, dark, murky waves moving beneath the swollen sky.
“I know.” His fingers grasped mine and I looked at our joined hands expecting the way the dark of his olive skin clashed with my own snow pale tone. “Listen Bronte. I’m not trying to be an idiot. It’s just so hard for me to talk about.”
My body moved towards him, angling, reaching, positioning so I could see all of him. The heat of his skin against mine spread through the material of our jeans. “What’s hard?”
He laughed low, it sounded like far distant bells. “Everything.”
“In what way?” I was sure he would tell me there'd been a terrible mistake somewhere along the way. That maybe he wasn't meant to be fated to me. My stomach tightened into an uncomfortable knot.
Pulling my hands onto his lap he looked down through long lashes. “You’ve never known anything before. Before, we’d meet, we’d fall in love, well you’d fall in love with me.” I opened my mouth to protest but he didn’t give me time. “I’m always in love with you.” He flashed a smile but it didn’t reach his eyes.
I had a problem with this, but I buttoned in my question and gave him the space he needed to talk.
“And then you’d die again.” He chewed on his bottom lip, his eyes in a distant land recalling a memory that I couldn’t access. “And then I’d wait for you to come back, but every time you did I could never tell you what I was, or explain anything to you.”
“Why?”
He took a deep breath and as he exhaled, I heard the air shake and tremor as it left his lips. “Because in truth, I don’t know the rules. I don’t know how much I can tell you.”
“Because?”
“Because what would happen if you knew too much and weren’t allowed to?”
This wasn’t making huge sense but he was talking, so I just listened to his words as they rushed into the breeze. I concentrated hard, trying to make as much sense as I could of his abstract thoughts. “What could happen?” I prompted, keeping my words as soft as butterfly kisses.
“What if you didn’t come back because you knew too much. What if that was my final punishment?”
“Punishment for what?”
His face tore in two, an undecipherable gash of pain marring his beautiful face. “For loving you.”
With a bravery I wasn’t expecting, I clambered onto his lap, pulling his face up to mine with my fingertips. I placed my lips against his, breathing in the scent of him as it mixed with the fresh autumnal air. His hands slid down my back, anchoring me tight to his body. The chain wound tighter, until it felt like moving away would be impossible. Like I would be tethered to him for all time.
Our mouths moved together and my heart swelled with this intense sensation of ownership. I wondered if that was how the other me’s had felt over the years—that they’d hit a jackpot when he'd walked into their lives.
I slowed my kiss to light touches that brushed against his lips. “We can work this out, I know we can.” Opening my eyes, I found startling violets pinned on me. “Together.”
He smiled, his lips curving against my mouth. “We can.”
We both sat there smiling, his hands firmly resting on my hips. My fingers lifted and toyed with his dark hair. Before the events of the moor, he’d always hidden under a cap. “I like you without a cap.”
He chuckled and moved forward, skimming his lips against my neck. “I’m not sure any of the other you’s have been quite so obsessed with hats.”
“Maybe you didn’t need to hide under one back then?” I tilted my head.
“True, very true.”
My thumb traced around the arch of his eyebrow. His skin was smooth under my touch, and his extraordinary eyes, fluttered beneath dark lashes. He was beautiful, and to be fair, I hadn’t even got to his body yet which I could feel was firm beneath me. I reached down with my mouth and teased my lips against his. His hands held me a little harder and a burning heat spread along my skin. “Do you need a moment to control yourself?” He raised an eyebrow and tilted one side of his mouth into a teasing smile.
I groaned. “You seriously need to stop reading my thoughts.”
“You need to stop thinking so loud.”
Chuckling, I kissed along his cheek. “Some thoughts are hard to contain.”
His eyes flashed, “So it seems.”
I wanted so badly to ask questions but I didn’t want to push him. I wanted to know everything we’d ever been with a burning desire I’d never experienced be
fore. I wanted to know if we’d been like this before? If it was always the same with the electricity and the scorching heat and the damn chain that never stopped tugging and pulling. I wanted to know everything.
His lips curved higher. He muttered low words under his breath before lifting a hand to my face, his fingers cradled my cheek. “We can only try, right?”
“Try what?” Heat flashed through me as I considered all the various things we could try that I hadn’t allowed myself to contemplate. He chuckled.
“Steady on, Bronte.”
Steady on? My heart was thudding in my throat with such intensity it felt like my heart was attempting to claw out of my chest.
“I meant we can try this.” He leaned in closer. “Close your eyes.”
I did, without hesitation. Inside my head images swirled, a kaleidoscope of unfamiliar memories. They weren’t mine, they were Nick’s. The rotation of pictures flickered at a blurring rate until they settled on one.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am.” He leaned down and snatched a slip of white off the pavement. “I think you dropped this.” Smiling, he offered the monogrammed handkerchief to her. It was a man’s and well starched, crips edges that had been through a hard press to smooth the cotton. A Navy embroidered O. C dominated one corner of the starched linen. “He’s a lucky guy.”
She blushed, her cheeks flooding with pale pink heat. With one hand she held her hat onto her head as she reached gloved fingers out for the discarded handkerchief. “Oh. No.” Screwing the offending piece of material in her hand, she pushed it into the recesses of her handbag and she shook her head. “It’s my fathers. I, uh,” she seemed to lose her words. “I’ve lost all of my own.”
He grinned. “You’ve lost all your handkerchiefs, every one you’ve ever owned?” This made him chuckle, although her face remained a split combination of surprised and embarrassed.
“I don’t know what happens to them, they seem to disappear.” She lifted a hand to her hair and smoothed the pin curl that was springing up from behind her ear. She was oblivious to the glow of violet that surrounded her, nor the way it reached for him, only a short foot away.
“Well then, I’m glad I retrieved that one for you.” He flashed her a grin that made her blush a hotter shade of pink. “I consider it my civic duty.”
Her eyes narrowed. “A lot of boys have died for their civic duty of late.” She was referring to the war that had ended only two years before. He couldn’t help but grimace. He’d missed it, although he knew from Connor’s memories it was not a pretty affair, but then what war was? He’d been involved in human wars before, he just hadn’t been around for this one. He’d been waiting for her instead.
“That’s very true.” He nodded sagely. “Well anyway, Ma’am." He tilted his head. "You can return your father’s handkerchief and he will be none the wiser. We can keep you rifling through his belongs and using his linen for your ablutions as our secret." He grinned, he couldn't help it.
“That’s very bold, Sir, to assume that I would be rifling through my father’s belongings without his agreement.”
He grinned. It was bold, but then he knew her well. Knew her as well as he knew anything else in existence. “May I be so bold as to walk you to your destination?” He held out an arm but she looked at it with scorn. “Believe me, Sir, I do not need escorting anywhere.” Her nose lifted in the air and she smoothed the skirt that skimmed her things before giving way to a small flare.
“But what if you drop your father’s handkerchief again, you can’t be sure that others would be so honourable to return it as I?”
She bit on her bottom lip, holding in a smile. “It’s a risk I am willing to take.”
He glanced to clouds and her eyes followed suit. “Well, I’m heading . . .” He took a wild stab in the dark. “This way.”
Her lips twitched at a smile. “And so am I, it seems.”
“Well, in that case.” He held out the crook of his elbow again and this time with a sigh, she threaded her arm through it.
“This is highly irregular,” she muttered.
“That it is.” He laughed as they stepped out along the rain splattered streets. “It always is.”
“What’s that?” She glanced at him, her eyes flashing with curiosity and something else. The same look he saw every time. Recognition. But never enough.
“Nothing,” he assured her. “I’m Nicolas.”
She smiled and looked up into his eyes. “I’m Rose.”
“Guys, we need to head back in.” Celeste’s voice dragged me back from the recess of Nick’s memory and it felt rather like being ejected from the womb. I blinked, unable to ground myself in the present. I wanted to go back, to see what happened next, to see who I was, who he was then. I saw the way I looked at him and I knew it must have been the same every time. I just couldn’t remember it for myself. “Whoa, what have I walked into here?” Celeste covered her eyes with her palms, her mouth falling open when she sees how I’m sat. I’d been so immersed in the memory I’d forgotten the position we were in.
“Don’t come sneaking out from behind bushes and you won’t see things you don’t want to.” He held his hands firmly on my hips even though I was straining to get off and reposition myself more suitably.
“Just be glad it was me, not Kale.” Celeste scrunched her face. “I think that,” she waved at us again, “might be a step too far.”
I pulled out of his grasp. “Well, I don’t think Kale can involve himself in matters of parenting.” I bridled at the mere thought of it.
“Hm.” Nick and Celeste both said at once.
“What?” I asked, but they both affected the straight mouthed expression they perfected so well. I knew there was no point asking more.
“Come on, we’d best get back.” Nick sighed and pulled me from the bench.
I hated the fact we’d been disturbed when for the first time it felt like the barriers between us were coming down. I threw a bitter glance at Celeste which rolled off her like water off a duck's back. “Why?”
Nick glanced at the purple sky. “Because it’s time for us to go to war.”
The only furniture left in the lounge was a lone table, covered in papers. Some looked ancient. Others looked like the road map you could pick up from the local gas station. Kesh and Kale were leaning over a leather-bound volume, Kesh’s index finger sliding down the printed page.
“Found them,” Celeste sing-songed, she was about to say more but Nick elbowed her hard in the ribs. Kale frowned up at us.
“Good, you’re here,” he said, his words snapping in the air like an elastic band.
“Jeez. We were only in the garden,” I said. There were a few raised eyebrows around the room but Kale ignored my response.
I glanced about. I still didn’t know everyone’s names. It was hard to grasp the fluid flexibility the Star’s came and went with. I was sure the tall man in the corner, with the light brown hair and speckled eyes was Able, I just wasn’t sure. We’d never had time for introductions and it looked like we weren’t going to have time for them now either.
Kale clapped his hands and a reverberating bang echoed around the room. “Right. We’ve made decisions.”
I cast my eyes over to Kesh who was leant against the opposite wall. Nick was scrutinising the room and I wondered if he was reading the thoughts of those around him. I might have imagined it but I was sure he gave an imperceptible nod of his head.
Everyone looked at Kale expectantly. I should have been waiting for the plans like everyone else. Instead, I was eyeing Kale and wondering if I would ever see him as a real father. I didn’t think so.
“So as we can tell, the darkness is indeed looming again." Kale's hand gestured to the patio doors as the purple sky loomed through the double-glazed glass. I tutted. Nothing like stating the obvious for an opening gambit.
“Why?” I asked.
His eyes flicked to my face, one eyebrow lifted and his lips pursed. “We need to move quickly to keep the upper h
and.”
Did I not speak?
Nick caught hold of my finger and gave a firm tug.
More than anything, I wished I could read the thoughts or feelings in the room like him.
You can. Celeste’s voice blasted into my head using her exceptional Star ability of speaking directly into others minds.
My eye roll quota was off the scale the last couple of days, but in the circumstances, I could hardly open a discussion, so I sent her one of my finest.
Think of your mind as a sponge. I caught her lips curving in a smile. A really big sponge.
My brain is a sponge, I thought back. Nick’s lips ghosted a smile as he focused on Kale’s words. With hindsight, I probably should have been listening. Instead, I tried to imagine my brain like a sponge, filling with water, as it dipped into the shallow waters of the bath tub.
Okay. We don’t have time for full scale envisioning here. Celeste’s voice in my mind interrupted my process but like the slam of a door I could block her, the way I'd blocked Kesh the other day and start reimagining my sponge.
The sponge was purple. I don’t know what this said about me.
From across the room I sensed a steady hum. This wasn’t an appropriate time for singing. Kale was organising the room, I had a feeling he wouldn't take kindly to someone humming through his plans.
Forgetting the sponge, I tried to find the humming culprit. When I refocused on the room was deathly silent, everyone was watching Kale intently. Everyone apart from me, that is.
That’s weird.
Re-visualising my purple bath sponge, I tested the density of the sponge's substance, and the humming began again.
My eyes widened although I was quick to hide any evidence that I wasn’t listening to our plan of action. I could hear something.
I focused harder, allowing the sponge to drink up more and more of the imagined water, what I guess was the energy in the room. Then I heard it. Cutting through the hum were words. Lots of words, a kaleidoscope of fragmented thoughts. They ran like trains in and out of a packed train station through my head. Snippets and abstract words.