XXV
The room was dimly lit, but Amelia recognized it. She would know it by scent, by the heaviness of the air. Her senses would, alone or in tandem, work to identify it, and come to the same haunting conclusion each time, as every inch of her fought for freedom.
Water-drenched coals and the cloying scent of a recent fire stirred her. It was the only aroma in this place that did not send her into a dizzying tailspin of fear. Even so, she knew it was the smell of whatever had come before her. Whomever. Their fate could not have fared any better than the dead fire.
Amelia’s wrists burned with the flinching pain of flayed skin. The full weight of her dangled from the injustice, her toes only occasionally grazing the surface of the uneven floor as she swayed from the ceiling hook.
A tinge of fresh blood, and the coppery taste, washed down her throat with every pained swallow, yet her face had suffered the least of the injuries. The rest of her…
Oh, please, not again. Please, God! Goddess!
Heavy footfalls from the other end of the small cabin struck her heart into a frenzy. Her momentum threw her into full protest, and the rope attached to her wrists and the hook creaked with mercy from the sudden action.
The seat upon which Jacob had sat lay empty. Fear turned to panic as she strained to see in the hazy darkness. No, no, the only thing worse than him seeing her like this was him disappearing without confirmation of his safety. Had he fled as she’d pleaded with him to do? Or, had Baldur done something to him, to punish her?
Jacob!
In her agitation, time passed at an abnormal rate. The steps were behind her now. She thought she had more time. Every second was an eternity in this cabin of suffering, but that provided at least some measure of relief when Baldur stepped away.
He lay a finger against her back, running it in a lazy line down her spine, his other fingers following one by one like a waterfall. The tenderness of the gesture was worse than all the cuts and punches. He could not have this, too!
“Your love is pure. One-half of our future must spring forth from this eternity.”
The words didn’t come from Baldur. Amelia knew the voice. It was less a matter of recognition and more an intrinsic sort of knowledge, like knowing your own mother. But with every trace of the finger, every inch of her Baldur claimed, she began to lose the part of herself that could still connect to anything of importance.
“One day, your time on this Earth will end.”
His hands came to rest at the small of her back, spreading to each side as they reached her hips, gently. Baldur’s breath burned her back as it traveled the same path his hands had, settling in the same place. The monster’s lips pressed into that hollow above her tailbone and did not move.
“You will be born again knowing who you are. You will come into this world again, remembering my words, and what you were tasked to do.”
Her assailant laid his head against her lower back. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn she felt his tears against her sore skin and the sound of a sob from the back of his throat. Please, Goddess. Let this be over. This is worse, so much worse.
“The cycle will repeat for many centuries. A boon I give you, a special wisdom. A bond you will need when the time comes for you to be reborn into a troubled world, and to return to me no longer full of knowledge, but instead filled with trust.”
Amelia wished the voice would stop. It should be a comfort to her. She knew at least that much, but it wasn’t. The words were a reminder of some degree of hope she had, once upon a time, that she would make it out of this situation alive, and as the same person.
Her attacker ran his lips around the outside of her hips and up her side, along her ribcage. The pain of earlier, when he had kicked her ribs, disappeared entirely as his mouth came upon it, like a healing wand. Why are you doing this to me? Was everything else I endured not enough? Did I not already give you everything?
“The time will come when your memories fade and your hearts grow weary.”
“Please stop talking,” Amelia whispered. Tears fell into her mouth, mixing with the blood. “Please, it isn’t helping. You can’t help me.”
His face eased up around her sternum, still trailing kisses across the surface of her skin, healing her, ostensibly so he could hurt her all over again. Again and again.
The soothing voice continued in tandem with the healing caresses of her assailant. “It is then I shall turn my hope to you and pray my wisdom and faith holds as true as yours has.”
“I know who you are,” Amelia cried out, to the voice, though she was also beginning to understand something about the creature who had bound her here, as well. “And you were wrong, Goddess. Wrong, wrong, wrong, all this time. I am not the one!”
“The time will come when your cycle of rebirth will cease,” the calming voice of the goddess went on. “When the life you enter will be your final, yet eternal, one.”
“Your words meant nothing,” Amelia accused, turning her head as the attacker’s mouth came upon her neck with especial tenderness. “We trusted you… both of us… and now we’re here.”
Amelia shut her eyes tight as his hands rested against the sides of her face, healing the last of her wounds from the assault. She would never thank him and refused to look at him, even if he peeled back her eyelids.
“Cerridwen,” the goddess sighed in her mind.
“No. Not anymore,” Amelia answered, eyes squeezed tight despite the patience of the creature standing before her.
“Open your eyes.”
“I can’t!”
“Remember my words.”
“They were all wrong!”
“Only at the hour of culmination will the veil of shadows be lifted.”
Amelia didn’t know if it was obedience or resignation that made her do it. She only knew in one moment she was blocking out the last of her attack, and in the next, she was face to face with her heart’s only true mate.
“Cianán?” she whispered, sagging further in her bindings. Her wrists shrieked in agony at the added weight. That he would do this to her…
“I leave you now with one final wisdom,” the goddess said, whispering the last of her words. “Nothing is ever asked of us that exceeds our capacity. Even when circumstances seem beyond possibility, you must grasp the courage to push through whatever barriers your mind or heart construct.”
“Yes,” Cianán said back. His own tears blinded him. “I would see you healed, Cerridwen. I would give every one of my lifetimes to undo this.”
“I don’t understand. Why am I here, then? Why would you do these things?”
“I cannot change what happened to you,” he said with great sadness. “But I can provide you a memory of love that will, perhaps with time, replace the one filled with so much evil.”
Amelia understood now why she hadn’t seen Jacob. This was not that cruel night in Ireland, but something else entirely. A new memory, or a dream, or some construct of her imagination sent to shield her.
“I will always protect you,” Cianán vowed. “As you have protected me. But it is time now to listen to the goddess. You were born into this lifetime not knowing, and you have learned so many things in a short span of time. But you have one final message to learn, my love.”
“If the lesson is so important, why will no one just tell me what I need to know? I’m so tired of seeking signs and wondering if every word said to me, or everything I see, is something significant!”
Cianán smiled. He reached above her and unhooked her from the ceiling, gently cupping her in his arms as she released. “This truth has been before you for days. Síoraíocht, Mo mhíle stór. Wake now, and allow your heart to witness what your eyes see.”
Amelia shot upright in the small bed, and straight into a set of strong, steadying arms. She gasped, leaning up and back, her arms flying, searching for her bearings.
Victor stared back at her.
No, not Victor…
…Cianán.
“You have seen,” Victor whispered, brushing her matted hair back off her face. Tears pooled at his lids, ones of apparent joy. “Please tell me you have seen.”
Amelia’s breath caught in her throat as the blood rushed forth violently in her scramble back toward the wall. He inched toward her and wrapped her in his arms, burying her sobs into his chest as he held her and rocked her closer to the realization she’d been building on since they’d arrived.
“That’s impossible. I would’ve known. There’s no way. I would have known,” she repeated, sucking in tiny bursts of air. Her resistance slowly disappeared, fading into a new reality. Allow your heart to witness what your eyes see.
“A part of you did,” Victor assured her, smoothing her hair with his palm. “A part of you knew the moment our eyes met in the ballroom. How I wanted to tell you! But, remember the words of the goddess. In this life, you were born not knowing, and had to find your way to Cianán.”
“Then how did you know?”
“I am not your Cianán, but the Cianán of the Cerridwen who came before you,” he explained patiently. “Your turn backward in time created the unlikely scenario of meeting a different version of your own Cianán.”
“But Jacob…”
“Is your Cianán. I was the last before him, and he will be the final, now that the culmination of the prophecy is imminent.”
Amelia pulled back. She couldn’t stop gawking at him, examining him, seeing him through this fresh lens of truth. Silence filled the room for several moments as she took him in. Her mind relived flashes of every conversation they’d had in the past days. “Then there must be a Cerridwen of this generation too. Where is she? Is that what you meant about your choice to take the blood being a regret?”
Victor’s expression darkened. “Her story is not mine to tell. I’m sorry, Amelia.”
“But who is she? It’s not your wife, or you wouldn’t have talked about your marriage the way you did. Surely you wouldn’t abandon Cerridwen in any lifetime, so where is she?”
“Amelia.” Victor sighed. He reached out to touch her hair again, but his hand hung in midair when her stare stopped him. She craved his touch. She loathed it. “I can’t.”
“At least, now I know why you’ve been stalking me,” she asserted, swiping her hands over the tears still forming. It wouldn’t help her at all to continue to deny this, but it didn’t mean she was okay with it either. “Are you responsible for that dream, too, then?”
“I have played the moment through my mind a thousand times,” Victor said with a sad shake of his head. Every inch of him radiated powerful sadness. “And I had hoped eventually my version of events would find its way to you.”
“But how did you know those details? How could you have understood any of it?”
“Because I have watched you, your whole life. This gift of the blood came with one real benefit, and that was being able to observe you throughout the years. No, not always in person, my dear. Had I been in that cabin… but no, I saw that in my mind’s eye. I could not react quickly enough to save you.”
“Watching me,” she repeated, unable to decide if the idea of him standing sentry over the last thirty years of her life made her feel safer or more exposed. “And what are the odds you would be here upon my arrival?”
“You were always meant to return,” Victor answered simply, maddeningly. “That factor was an element of your fate. Just as mine has been to watch Cerridwen with another reincarnation of my soul.”
“But I wasn’t in the original version of this history, so how can that be?”
Victor drew in a deep breath and watched her. “You ask me to speak of the paradox of time travel with an authority I simply do not possess. You cannot change the past, Amelia. You know this. But you can learn from it.”
“And what am I here to learn, then? All this trip has given me is more confusion! To look at you is… its… I’m not supposed to feel this way!” She jumped to her feet, searching for the shawl she’d worn earlier. Her shoes. Where the hell did everything go? “I have to go find Jacob. My God, I shouldn’t be here with you.”
Victor came up behind her, steadying her shaking arms. “Cerridwen. You have done nothing wrong.”
“Nothing except follow you out here, alone,” she answered, snatching her stole off a small corner chaise. She pulled it around her, but it fell to the ground. When he reached for it, she shoved Victor back and snatched the wrap toward her, tight to her chest. “Nothing except dream of you, with your lips all over me. Jesus!”
“Healing you,” he whispered, brushing a strand of hair off her ear.
“I don’t need you to heal me!”
“Cerridwen—”
“Stop. Don’t you dare. Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that.” She whipped her head around the room, frantic. Her shoes… goddammit! Where were they? “You think you’ve earned the right because of who you are?”
“You may not be mine, and we know you belong to another Cianán, but it does not mean I cannot love you and wish to see you whole.”
“Stop saying that, Victor!”
Victor dropped his hands to his side in surrender. “I promised you the truth, Amelia.”
“You’re confusing an already terribly troubling situation!” she screamed, backing toward the door. She hit the wall and staggered sideways, looking for purchase. Forget shoes. She had to get out of there, away, far, far away.
“I never meant to add more complexities to your life,” he said helplessly. “I only wanted you to possess the truth of who you are. Who I am.”
“What was knowing who you are supposed to accomplish for me except tearing my heart in half?”
More of Victor’s words followed her as she ran from the room, down the hall, and back up the ladder to the deck. He didn’t follow her, but as she tripped onto the dock and stumbled over fresh debris toward the levee, she feared what was ahead as much as what she’d left behind.
Brigitte awaited her at the front door. A knowing smile rested upon her cruel face.
As if she had known.
As if she understood everything.
DAY
SIX
XXVI
Jean woke first. He gave Jacob a short punch on the arm to rouse him and mumbled something about the carriage being ready. Jacob wondered if last night had made the young man feel bested or more determined to drive Jacob and Amelia out of their lives.
Likely both.
He feeds off the dominance of his mother. Without her, he’s a sniveling little bully without any real power of his own. He could only maintain it for so long without her. Once we return to the plantation, he’ll go hide under her skirts and be back to his usual, shitty self, as if the power dynamic between us had never shifted at all.
However Jean felt about the events of last night was inconsequential to Jacob when compared with what they ignited in him, instinct and emotions he had tried to bury deep, for the sake of being a better man.
Maybe he didn’t need to be better. If that meant losing a part of who he was, then better was also responsible, at least in part, for what happened that night in the cabin.
Neutering himself did not make him anything but different. Resentful. Ignoring the fight within had caused him to lose so much more as a result.
Now that he knew this and understood it, he could change it.
Jacob was relieved to see Jacques appear rested as the man helped them into the carriage. While Jean situated himself, Jacob threw his new friend a wink. He could not change Jacques’ situation—just as they could not amend anything in this past they’d infiltrated—but he could, hopefully, leave the man with a memory of kindness.
Jacques hid a smile and closed the carriage door.
The return to Ophélie was long but quiet. Remnants of the previous day’s storm added an extra hour to the journey as Jacques had to dodge debris from fallen limbs, farm implements, and other detritus carried from the passing plantations. Flash floods had also carved new rut
s in the dirt road, and Jacques, three times, had to stop the momentum to rock the carriage back onto solid ground.
Jean said nothing to either of them, but he radiated with the energy of anticipation. He wanted to be home as much as Jacob, though for entirely different reasons.
They can’t hurt us, Jacob reminded himself. We can’t change the past, so they can’t alter the future, either.
Right?
Not for the first time, he realized how impulsively foolish their decision to leap into the past had been. He’d been given only a handful of words about what time dancing even meant. Surely, there were many more rules to discover and caveats to the ones he already knew.
Jacob was a scientist, but nowhere in any of his studies had this subject ever garnered serious discussion. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was about as far as they dipped into that pond. The basic precept, as it related to time travel, was that time increases or slows down depending on your own speed in relation to something else, which, at light speed or quicker, would result in the bending of gravity. In theory, possible, but in practice, improbable.
All information he had obtained about the implications of time travel—moral and actual—had come from his favorite science fiction novels and movies. From comics. Chronos, Timecop, X-Men, Terminator, Doctor Who, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes. Stories that explored the time paradox, and the string theory, bending them to their own narrative purpose.
And even if he had learned more in college, certainly those rules might not even apply. Nothing about the Deschanels matched his scientific learnings, so why should this?
Safety was a shifting target as long as they remained here, unprotected. He couldn’t force Amelia into revelation, but he could, maybe, find a way back in. The two of them had always been at their strongest when facing an obstacle together, and perhaps his presence in the discovery had been what was missing all along. He had watched, and even judged, her choice to be alone and solve the unknown riddle by herself while not entirely realizing he had done nothing to help. Jacob had inadvertently shifted the responsibility fully to her, turning to her for the answers, when they came here together. He and Amelia had made this leap of faith as a team.
The Secrets Amongst the Cypress Page 19