The Keeper's Heart

by Catherine Stovall

  Anthony, looking much better without a constant drip of blood oozing from his eye, spoke up, “We were sort of hoping you could help us with that. I mean—” He let the words hang in the air and nodded toward General Jones.

  Clapping her hands together with a muted pat, Mabel smiled her genuinely bright smile. “Oh, I think I have an idea. Just leave everything to me, children.”

  They sat in the grass, like kids in a classroom, watching Mabel as she strolled up and down a small patch of sidewalk in front of them. The woman talked in rapid clips and excited claps as she planned out their entire story and subsequent escape in a matter of minutes.

  Though they fired off questions, she only nodded, fluffed her curly hair, and continued as if they hadn’t spoken at all. They only time she truly paused was to examine the general for a moment. Appraising him with a keen eye, she murmured, “This one is a divine creature. You can see the intelligence in those glaring, gray eyes.”

  Giving his hang-dog cheek a pat, she turned back to pacing and scheming as if she was the leader of a troop of girl scouts heading out on a cookie mission. The sight of the overly proper dressed woman buzzing around in a world, that quite literally stood still, should have been funny. Instead, given the situation, it only added to the severity of what they were facing.

  Ten minutes later, she checked the dainty golden watch on her wrist and exclaimed, “Oh, look at the time. Okay, children, back to where you were. Now remember, no matter what happens, stick to the plan. You all know your parts.”

  They sat back down in a row on the curb, looking up at the frozen figure of General Jones. Amara had to stiffen a giggle when her mind wandered down an unfamiliar path. The thought about tying the man’s shoe laces together, so that he would trip when unfrozen, was something she would have never considered entertaining as a Keeper. She had seen it done on an old television show while watching over her wards one night, and suddenly it was a delightful vision in her head.

  The choked sound that escaped her, earned a very serious glare from Mabel and questioning looks from Marcus, Desiree, and Anthony. She shrugged her shoulders and attempted to mold her face back into the scared half to death expression it had surely held before their mysterious benefactor had arrived.

  Blowing them a kiss, Mabel disappeared, and time ticked forward as if the entire incident had never happened. General Jones stuttered, as if he had forgotten what he was saying, and shook his head as if he couldn’t quite figure out how he had come to be standing in front of them.

  Desiree was the first to speak, proving that she could be a major asset in tough situations. “General Jones, I have already called my mother. She is on her way. Anthony’s car is that pretty black one there in the driveway, and he has called his mother as well. I really don’t see the need to call the police. Other than a few bruises and scrapes, we are really okay.”

  “A few bruises and scrapes? Are you kidding me? These people broke into your friend’s house, tried to kidnap two little girls, and beat the crap out of all of you. Don’t tell me this is no big deal! I heard those gunshots, and I saw those creeps’ faces. They were wearing some pretty screwy looking masks! You kids in a gang? Is that why you don’t want me to phone the police?”

  Exhausted by his rant, General Jones sat down on the street across from Amara and Marcus, who continuously peeked over his shoulder to look at the shattered window of his home. Amara couldn’t help but wonder if the sight of violence brought back memories of his childhood.

  “No sir, we are not in a gang,” Anthony’s voice shook a little as he reined in his temper. “This is entirely my fault. I got involved with the wrong people. I made a deal to help a guy in order to earn some quick cash. I screwed up the deal, but I made it right. The guy said we were cool, but I guess this proves we’re not.” The truth in his words was obvious. Though it hadn’t been why the Apollumi attacked, it was why they were all in trouble.

  “What the hell were you doing getting hooked up in a mess like that, boy?” General Jones looked genuinely concerned.

  Anthony’s cheeks burned red, as he dropped his head and mumbled the words, “I did it to buy Desiree a ring.”

  Just in time to save Anthony from the general’s lecture and the pout over the lost ring that was working its way to Desiree’s lips, a horn blared and a blue and white Plymouth Roadrunner pulled up to the curb. Mabel, still dressed as a fifties throwback, jumped from the vehicle and ran to them. Squishing Desiree’s face between her hands, she began the most unsubtle motherly act that anyone had ever seen.

  She thanked General Jones profusely, promising that she would immediately take the children to the police station. Something about her presence seemed to lock the older man in a hypnotized state as he watched her flutter and chatter and scold. Within minutes, she had the girls into the cab of the car and the boys ushered to the Fairlane.

  Amara sat in the front seat of the car, still stunned by how smoothly and efficiently Mabel had herded everyone, even General Jones, to where she wanted them to be. The connection of who or what the woman was hung on the rough edges of her mind, but she couldn’t seem to place it. The warring remains of her Keeper-self was too washed out by her newer, human-self.

  They drove several blocks in silence, the Fairlane following the Roadrunner, until they reached a small gas station. As they pulled to a stop next to each other, Amara opened the door to step out, but then paused. Looking beyond Desiree at Mabel, she said, “I don’t know how to repay you for getting us out of that mess back there. That old guy was going to call the cops for sure. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why did you help us?”

  Mabel smiled. “Now, dear, none of those questions will get you anywhere. That’s the problem with young Keepers and humans these days, always asking the wrong things. You are very welcome for the assistance, but isn’t there anything else that you would like to ask? Something that might be of more importance than little old me?”

  Amara stared at her for a long moment, making Desiree squirm, uncomfortable to be stuck between the two not-quite humans. The only thing she could think of was their destination. “Do you know where the door to the Weaver’s lair is?”

  Mabel clapped her gloved hands together, as she was prone to do. “That’s the one, my girl. I don’t happen to know where the Weaver’s lair is. However, the answers you seek lay on an island, hidden behind magic and human lies, in the waters of the mighty river that has carved these lands since the time of the Keepers’ beginning.”

  Desiree, unable to keep quiet, piped in, “But how do we find a hidden island?”

  Mabel shook her head as if exasperated. “Well, that is what you have a seer for, now isn’t it? Now, shoo. Both of you go join your boyos. I have dallied here too long already.”

  Desiree opened her mouth to ask another question, but Amara understood the protocol of being dismissed. Grabbing Desiree’s hand, she slid from the car and tugged the girl behind her. Ducking down, she thanked Mabel once again, and watched the mysterious woman drive away.

  Chapter 8

  Hide and Seek

  Piling into the Fairlane once more, Anthony and Desiree took the front seat, while Amara and Marcus slid into the back. The four of them wore identical grimaces of fatigue and concern, their bruised bodies hurting. Their journey so far had been a continuous strain, resulting in more unanswered questions than solutions to their problem.

  “Where the hell do we go now?” Anthony asked as he glanced into the rearview mirror.

  Marcus, Amara, and Desiree all began to talk at once, their voices becoming a cacophony over the top of “Who Wants to Live Forever” by Breaking Benjamin. A weird, and slightly eerie, coincidence that stuck in Amara’s mind as their voices fell silent. She couldn’t help but wonder if the soulful ballad was a sign that their time was running out. In her mind, the song was some trick of The Fates, to tell her that she was failing her one and only great stand.

  Desiree couldn’t help her excitement. Switching off the radi
o, she blurted, “Okay, we know where we need to go, but not how to get there. Mabel told us that the answers we seek are on an island hidden by magic somewhere on the river. We can only hope she means the Mississippi, or else we are screwed.”

  Amara nodded, but remained silent as she watched Marcus. A light film of sweat beads formed on his forehead, and his full lips turned down into a deep scowl. He braced his hands against the back of Desiree’s seat as if he were attempting to keep himself upright. His body trembled ever so slightly, not a seizure as he had experienced in his kitchen, but enough to cause the others to be concerned.

  Amara reached out slowly and laid her hand on his shoulder, certain that he could not see her, though his blank eyes stared unblinkingly at her face. “Marcus, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  He sputtered. His lips moved, but only the softest, incomprehensible sounds escaped. As he struggled against whatever force held him in its grip, his deep, sapphire eyes grew impossibly wide. Fingers digging into the leather seat until the knuckles turned a purplish-gray, he finally gasped as if his lungs had been constricted. Slumping backward, Marcus’s head lolled against the backseat.

  “We have to go back to my house. The visions. I know. I know how to find the island.” His words were breathy sighs of pain, the effort to hold on to his gift more than his body could take.

  Amara smoothed her hand across his face, once again overtaken by the human need to comfort. “Tell me what it is, Marcus. I will go. You need to rest.”

  He struggled to sit up, protesting, “No. This. Is. My. Destiny.” His words were clearer, despite being separated by gasps of air.

  Amara could not argue. She nodded to Anthony to make his way back to Marcus’s house. She knew all too well how he felt. She had gone against all she had ever known to save Anthony and Desiree, her only reason being she felt she had no other choice. She could never deny Marcus his path. The Apollumi were unlikely to return, but there was no promise that General Jones hadn’t called the police.

  As Anthony pulled the car to a stop on the street that ran parallel behind Marcus’s house, the tension in the car hung like thick smog. Amara searched the surrounding area, hoping she could catch some subtle difference in the few people milling about. She questioned herself relentlessly on rather they were Apollumi in disguise or not. The two children playing in the yard across from them could be deadly warriors for all she knew.

  After a few long moments, she finally exhaled. “Go now. Be quick and keep your eyes peeled for trouble. Get your butt back here as fast as you can. Okay?”

  Marcus, still looking sickly pale, smiled. “I got this, kid.”

  Before Amara could launch into a tirade of how she was literally three hundred years older than the rest of the vehicle’s occupants, Marcus was off. He jogged across the yards, dodging children’s bicycles and barking dogs. Only a slight hitch in his gait showed he was still suffering from the effects of his visions.

  Amara watched, with her hand on the door knob and her face pressed to the glass, as Marcus disappeared into the rear of his home. The seconds ticked by so slowly it seemed as if hours passed. Once a guardian of time, Amara found that suddenly the very thing she once yielded easily had become her enemy.

  When she couldn’t bear the wait any longer, and was prepared to go in search of him, Marcus appeared. Running with more ease, he sped across the distance, cradling an object in his hands as if it were the most precious thing in the world. For all Amara knew, it was.

  Sliding into the back seat, Marcus grinned madly. “Head north on the interstate, we are going to Crimson Cove Island.”

  Desiree looked confused. “What? What for? No, no way, nu-huh! I’m not going out there. That place is creepy!”

  Marcus held up the object he had collected. “Mabel told Amara to go to an island, and my vision showed me this. It was my great-grandma’s prized possession. It came from that Keeper she messed with. She left it to my granny, who would have left it to my mom, but…. Anyway, she would never let me touch it. She told me that great-grandma said it could be used to find the Keeper who was her father if she ever wanted to. Grandma never did. She didn’t want nothing to do with him, or his kind. But she left this to me, said it was just in case.”

  In his hand, rested what looked like a regular snow globe. Inside the glass dome, they could see a tiny, white house with wrap-around porches, arched openings, and stairs leading up to a second-floor promenade that was surrounded by a balustrade. The lawn was dappled with tall pine trees and covered in fake snow. The detail was so perfectly crafted, it almost looked as if a person could step inside and be greeted by the owner.

  On the black base of the globe, etched into a gold plate, was the name, Crimson Cove. Amara had no idea why Desiree seemed so afraid. The image called to her, it whispered of a place familiar yet strange. A feeling of sadness enveloped her heart and a single tear traced down her soft cheek as her lips quivered. She wanted to go home, back into the mist. She wanted to be where the feelings and confusion didn’t constantly well up and threaten to pull her under like the river’s current that edged away at the island’s banks.

  Amara hadn’t realized how out of touch she had been, until Marcus’s voice broke through her stupor. “Amara! Earth to Keeper Girl! Do you got a plan?”

  “Plan A: Get to the island, find the lair, and save our lives. Plan B: Die.” Her voice was flat and monotone.

  The mists of time were calling her. The Sisters may have made her human in form, but it seemed nothing could change her soul. As one who held no destiny, she belonged to time itself, and no one could take that away from her. Not even those who controlled, manipulated, and rendered time’s end could strip that part of her away.

  “Amara, you okay?” Desiree sounded quiet and frightened.

  When Amara looked up, shaking off the abysmal depression that hovered very near to her, she saw fear in the young girl’s eyes. “Yeah, Des, I’m fine. I’m just, I don’t know. I just feel like I can’t go on, but I know I have to.”

  Desiree giggled. “I think I know what’s wrong. Amara, when you were…the way you were before, did you have to eat or sleep?”

  The blatant simplicity of the idea that she could just be tired and hungry was ridiculous, but accurate. “No. No I didn’t. Sometimes I ate or drank human sustenance for the sheer pleasure of doing so, but it wasn’t something I had to do to survive. I guess those things apply now.”

  Everyone in the car laughed. In all of the strangeness that had overtaken their lives in such a short time, they had forgotten that any of it was abnormal. In the larger scheme of things, the fact that Amara had been a non-human hours before had been accepted and forgotten.

  “Well, I guess Plan A now includes a pit stop for food and a nap for Amara,” Anthony chuckled as he hugged Desiree tight against him.

  A quick stop in the drive-thru of a fast food place rewarded Amara with a cheeseburger, fries, and a coke. Once she’d devoured every bite with a mix of enthusiasm and careful inspection, her nerves settled. Curling her legs into the seat, she laid her head against the window and drifted off into sleep as she watched the world go by.

  Chapter 9

  An Enemy in the Mind

  Morta’s voice sounded as if it were muffled beneath a heavy layer of gauze, “You have done well, but be wary, the Apollumi are coming.”

  Amara turned her head from side to side, but there was no sign of her mentor within the dregs of the thick, gray mists. “Where? Where are they and where are you? Morta, why are you hiding?”

  The dark and sinister voice that answered was not that of the sister. A whisper that came too close to her ear held a promise of menace, and it made Amara think of death and fear.

  “She does not answer, because she is not here. You are all alone, Amara. No one to save you now.”

  She screamed, and the sound echoed in the silence of the mist, piercing the sanctuary like a knife. Searching for whatever or whoever had drawn so near to her, she whipped her head
around. Nothing but billowing fog met Amara’s gaze. Only emptiness, and the feeling of being watched by a predator greater than she, existed in a place that had once offered her comfort.

  “Who are you? What do you want? Why can’t you leave us alone? I know I broke the rules! I know what I did was wrong! But don’t they deserve to live and love? Out of the thousands, do these two not have the right? Please, tell me why you can’t just let us go. ”

  The voice came again, further away, but still too near. “Hate me. Fear me. Beg me. Curse me so I might fall into the bowels of Sheol. It matters not what you do, or say. I am the darkness of the shadow that never fades. The forlorn whisper in the wind that chills your body to its very bones. The footstep behind you on a deserted street and the emptiness when you turn and realize nothing is there. I am the raven, the wolf, the serpent. I am the black dog demon waiting for when your step shall falter. I am…Death. Your death.”

  Amara’s lips quivered, her voice stuck in her throat as if her vocal chords had suddenly frozen. She had never learned to fear death before becoming a Keeper. Her immortality had come long before she had ever learned the value of life and the ease in which it could be lost. Faced with her own end, she felt panic and fear. The myriad of emotions erupting inside her mind felt as if it were caving in around itself.

  A long, pale hand came out of the mists, reaching out to grab her, but she couldn’t move. Terror set into her muscles like rigor mortis, locking her in place despite her desire to flee. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she choked on the large lump forming from her own wails. No matter how wide she opened her mouth, or how hard she tried to push air through her lungs, only a strangled sort of whimper escaped.

  The hand seized her, violently shaking her by the arm. “Amara. Hey! Wake up,” Marcus yelled at her until her eyes flew open, wide with panic and fear.