by Aleo, Cyndy
“Did I do something wrong?” he asks.
“No, it's just … I'm not … you're not … I'm a mess, but …”
“You aren't a mess.”
“Don't interrupt me. I don't know what we are, and here you are putting me on your lap and holding me and kissing me and combing my hair and all sorts of things, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or how I'm supposed to act.
“Yesterday, you were my constantly forgetting best friend I was half in l— having feelings for, and today, you're this hundred-some-odd-years-old, non-human guy who may or may not be my bo— I might be in a — I don't even know what.”
He’s supposed to answer her with words. Logically, he knows this. But they’ve spent the entire morning talking in circles and explaining and running away and explaining more. So he walks her backward until they’re in the family room again and her legs are against the ratty old couch she loves so much.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
He gives her a gentle push until she's sitting down, then he sits next to her, leaning into her until her back is forced against the well-padded armrest and the bank of brightly colored pillows his mother always rearranges, and he whispers against her lips.
"You know what we are. You’ve felt it even when I couldn't remember your name. You’ve held onto it even when I’ve forgotten what the skip in my heartbeat means when I see you at the door, what my feelings for you are, have always been.”
And as he feels her melt under him, shifting back from fragile crystal about to shatter if he applied the slightest pressure to fluid silk, he allows himself to dip down and taste her lips, and they are lost together.
The rest of the questions can wait.
20: Floating
This is a dream; it has to be. Donovan remembers kissing him last night, but that was nothing compared to this, like teens experimenting with their first make-out. She feels Vance — Jakub — fully on top of her and this, this, power he has is moving over her. It’s like he’s surrounding them both in its skin, protecting her and pulling her closer at the same time. She wants to stay here, like this, under him, his mouth brushing there, under her jaw, forever.
“Dee, I —“
She shushes him, pulling him back to her lips. She sighs when his fingers skim her collarbone, then flick the first button of her jacket open. His hand brushes against her skin, and that same charge of his power flows over her like a warm wave. She needs to ask him what it is, what it means, but the moment is broken by the sound of wood slams against wood: the front door bashing into a bookcase.
He leaps off her and tries to comb his disheveled hair with his fingers while she sits up and tries to right her clothing, but Grace mentions nothing about their combined rumpled state; she's in no better condition herself. Donovan notices that Grace is soaking wet, her hair and clothes dripping onto the slate floor, leaves caught in her hair, which looks like seaweed in its current state.
“They know. They will come.”
Her words are staccato, like she’s panting, but Donovan notes Grace isn't at all out of breath. She looks to Va— Jakub for his reaction; she assumes “they” are the sisters he spoke of.
“Of course they will come,” he says. “Of course they know. They would have known from the first surge of my returning power. The question is, Matka, what do you want to do? Do you want to run? Do you want to hide again? Shall I go upstairs and do it all over again? Or shall we finally go home?”
Donovan turns to see Grace staring at her son like he’s a stranger. She doesn’t reply to him, so Donovan asks the obvious question.
“Where is home, Jakub?”
“Puszcza Niepołomicka,” he says. “A forest near Kraków. If we meet them here, we have the advantage of being more familiar with humans and the sisters having to be circumspect about what they are. But if we meet them there …”
“His power will probably be strongest,” Grace says.
“Which is better?” Donovan asks.
“We don't know,” Grace says to her. “We have always run. We have always hidden. I have only had to think of one thing: keeping him safe. I cannot do that if we fight. Then none of us are safe.”
“We’re not safe no matter what,” he says. “We’ve run and we’ve risked my life again and again with the drugs and the archaic methods of erasing my mind and hiding what I am. That isn't living. Hiding isn't living. You’ve lived half a life this way. I’ve lived nothing of one.
“I say we go back.”
“Nothing is the same,” Grace says. “I am not sure I will know my way. So much was destroyed in the War.”
“I will know the way,” he says. “I will know everything when we get there. Everything will be clear.”
Donovan hears the confidence in his voice, but she also hears the fear in Grace's. This is so far outside the realm of what she knows that she isn't sure which of them to put her faith in: the mother with experience or the son so sure of his inexplicable power? Yesterday her life was relatively normal aside from a best friend who kept forgetting who she was. Today it’s the stuff of fiction.
She watches as Jakub locks eyes with his mother: a battle of wills taking place with no words being exchanged. The only sound in the room is the relentless dripping from Grace's hair and clothing and Jakub's harsh breathing. At some point, the standoff ends with Grace looking down and away. The mother is no longer the leader, and the son has taken over as decision-maker.
“We leave as soon as we can make arrangements. You still have a passport?”
He directs the question to Donovan, referring to a high school trip to Quebec. She nods, still afraid to speak.
“She is not coming,” Grace says.
“She is. You think I'd leave her here, in case they divide themselves, hoping to catch us unaware, or worse, they all come here? We have no idea what they know, but they have to assume I’d go home, to be where I can fight them best.”
“She'll distract you.”
“She'll distract me more if I’m thinking about her being here alone, unprotected.”
“She'll die.”
Donovan closes her eyes and wishes she had a way to close her ears as well, to not hear the argument.
“Then I will know to die with her.”
She gasps, and he pulls her off the couch and into his arms.
“I need you with me,” he says to her. “I need to see you and know you are safe. And I need to end this — for me and for my mother as well. Will you come?”
She ducks her head into his shoulder, hiding the fear she knows will show on her face, but she nods. How could she refuse him?
21: Preparation
Jakub has left her in charge of making the flight arrangements and hotel accommodations. Grace wonders how he thinks they will vanish from a hotel into the forests with no one noticing, but he appears confident, and she can’t think of a better way.
She wonders if his powers have become greater than she and her sisters could have imagined. Perhaps this is what they have always known, what they have feared from the very beginning of time, and why all the males were killed.
She stops for a moment to decide whether or not she should fear her own son.
Idly, she searches airlines using online tools. Normally, this should be Jakub's job. He is the Internet expert, but he is on the couch in the family room with Donovan again, whispering into her ear and stroking her hair, trying to soothe her.
Donovan is having what Grace supposes must be a panic attack: her breathing uneven, her heartbeat racing. Tears fall from the girl's eyes though she doesn't realize it. Grace has come to care for Donovan, but seeing her fall to pieces like this confirms what she’d guessed: that the brash exterior hid someone without much self-confidence. It also serves to convince her that they should not be bringing her along. She will be nothing more than a distraction when they need one the least.
Still, she keys in the option for three adults on every travel site, looking for seats on flights leavi
ng the next day. Jakub has forbidden her from buying first class seats, saying they will be too conspicuous, especially with Grace's height and unnatural movement.
Instead, she will be forced into cramped coach seats, prowling the aisles like a caged jungle cat. With some luck, perhaps she will have a blood clot like a human and die instantly on the plane when it reached her lungs, gasping for air like the human girl on the couch.
“I hear your thoughts, Matka,” Jakub says under his breath. “They are both unkind and unlike you. We have turned her world upside down in under 12 hours. Can you say you felt differently when you fled the forest and entered the human world all those years ago?”
She jumps in her seat at his words. While she and her sisters often sensed each others' moods, they had never in her memory been privy to each others' thoughts. How violating it feels to have someone access your very being in such a way.
“I wasn't trying to hear you,” he continues. “You were just thinking those things very loudly, and I couldn't help but hear them, shouted as they were. It's important to me that she be there. Please try to remember what it was like to learn that nothing is as you know it to be and give her some time.”
Grace returns to her task, keying in airport codes and focusing on nothing more than inhaling and exhaling. Eventually, his words creep back into her thoughts and it becomes clear that his concern is primarily for Donovan.
He made no note of Grace’s fears of his power, nor her contemplation of the reasoning behind the old ways. Just as he wants her to give Donovan time to process all that has changed, so is he giving her that same privilege. The lesson is not lost on her.
“There is a very inexpensive flight,” she says quietly, hoping he can hear her, “but the return trip comes through Ottawa with many stops.”
“It's fine,” he says. “Book that one. We won't be returning.”
Grace has already carefully entered the credit card information and taken down the confirmation number before she truly hears the last part of what he says. How can he say they will not be returning? Surely he does not mean to live there? In the forest? In Poland?
“The visas …”
“We have no need of visas,” he says. “It’s my home. You’ll see. What time will we leave?”
“The flight departs at ten before six. We arrive in Kraków around half-past eight the next morning.”
“Dziękuje bardzo, matka. If you'll excuse us, Donovan is sleeping, and I'd like to take her upstairs.
“Pack —” He has carried the girl to the doorway of the kitchen, and he hesitates there. "Pack what you think you’ll need for a while. We'll close up the house for a time, but I'm sure you'll want to come back to see to your plants, eventually.”
Grace watches him walk away, then listens to his careful footsteps on the stairs. He's so gentle with the girl and so careless with her. She should see to packing, but she goes instead to the glass door to her greenhouse. It's there, among her plants, the only things she truly understands anymore, where she finally breaks down.
~
Perhaps Edyta should be allowed to have the power she so clearly desires. Matka knows it would be easier on Bożena if she did. Then Bożena could sit back, relax, float in the pond, sneak out to see Tadeusz, and be done with the lot of them.
She’d told them she thought it best to wait, to see if he and his traitorous mother returned here as the stories have foretold. Edyta argued that they should be doing more to keep the prophesied occurrence from happening in the first place.
She reminded Edyta that they would be conspicuous traveling again. That a large group of overly tall women who looked uncomfortable in clothing would have to pile into a cramped metal tube to get there.
Edyta argued that the very existence of their race was at stake, and humans could stare all they liked.
Bożena pointed out that Grażyna and her son would be more at home in their own environment, that they were more familiar with how humans live in ways the sisters are not, and never will be.
Edyta argued that they should strike where they live, where they may have their guard down, rather than let them come in on the offensive.
Bożena at this point has given up. She’s made noises about sending one of the younger sisters out to make arrangements, to find out how much of their seldom-used money will be necessary to travel. She asks another sister to take a poll, to see which sisters will want to go, and which will want to stay.
And if she keeps the thoughts to herself that she’s doing nothing more but stalling for time, to allow Grażyna the time to get here, to give her and her son the best chance at survival, well, that’s no one else’s business. Edyta will only argue about that as well.
Kraków: Donovan
She can no longer differentiate between up and down, reality and dream. She exists in a state of with him or without him, touching him or separated from him. Vague recollections stir in her consciousness that give her somewhat of an idea where she is in time and space: He’s touching her hair; he’s gone, but his scent remains on a pillow; he’s holding her in his arms and asking her questions while someone else holds up pieces of her clothing.
She’s supposed to be deciding on something — the clothes? — but she isn’t sure what. She tries with nods and shakes of her head to do what he asks, but she feels — no, she knows — she’s letting him down. She’s failing before she even begins.
There’s a large, white space and questions she answers yes and no to like an automaton. She knows the answers and can recite them by rote; in some time and place she has answered them before. She takes small comfort in their familiarity.
Then there’s a podium and a woman in a uniform who takes things out of her hand and hands them back though she’s not sure where they came from in the first place. More people ask her to hand things over: her laptop, her phone, her shoes, her belt. She raises her hands and walks and stands on command: a puppet walking, standing, sitting. They pat her down, run a wand over her face and nod knowingly before telling her she can move on.
Finally, he’s next to her again, and his arms are around her, and his lips are in her hair. He guides her gently, carefully, like she’s spun glass, to a seat, carrying her bag that’s growing heavier by the second along with his own.
She’s asked if she’s hungry, thirsty, does she need to use the ladies' room? But she can only shake her head. If she nods, she’s afraid he’ll leave her once again, and everything is strange and frightening when she can’t feel him and touch him.
At some point, a warm paper cup is thrust into her hands, and he urges her to sip. Warm, silky chocolate topped with cool, sweet cream meets her lips, but she gags and can’t swallow. He groans beside her, and she utters the first words she can summon in hours: “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
He strokes her hair and shushes her, telling her to hold the cup to warm her hands at least, and then there is a loud voice above them, and he lifts her from the seat, keeping her in his arms, and they shuffle along in a line of people. She hears the loud roar of engines and the murmur of other people, but she sees nothing, smells nothing but him, burying her face in his chest.
He nudges her along in front of him, stowing her bag and gently guiding her until she’s seated. He takes the seat next to her, fastening her seat belt as if she’s a small child. She leans as far into him as she can with a metal armrest between them, and he sings to her softly, a lullaby in a language she doesn't understand but thinks she’s heard somewhere before.
There’s a roll and a pitch and she realizes they must now be on a plane. She remembers they were supposed to be flying somewhere, but she can't remember where. Somewhere with trees, she thinks, but that can't be right, because planes can't fly into trees. He keeps singing to her, repeating the same lullaby until there’s a pinging sound, and finally, the metal bar moves and he can gather her closer to him. She feels safe like this, when she can touch more of him.
He has two names, she remembers. The name that came before is
Vance, and that name wasn't safe. That name means something familiar, but it also means someone who can’t keep her safe. The name he has now is Jakub, and Jakub is powerful. Jakub loves her. Jakub will keep her safe.
She presses her lips against his neck and sleeps.
III: Supplanting
22: Homecoming
Jakub knows the second the plane's tires are about to touch the runway. It’s a split second, a moment his entire being becomes aware that he’s home. The other passengers are now aware as well, he thinks, because he’s unable to stop whatever surges through him at the reconnection with his home.
He had no idea it would feel like this, and therefore, has no thought to rein it in. Judging by the reactions of the other passengers, however, it isn't unwelcome. A few of the females appear to reach orgasm based on the sounds he hears around him. Donovan stirs and gasps at his side and his mother turns and gives him a wry smile.
Home. Polska. Matka.
Temptation begs him to leave both his mother and Donovan right here while he runs from the plane. His forest is a mere twelve miles from Kraków; he can see it in his mind. He can run the whole way without Donovan slowing him down or holding him back. She’ll be safe with his mother. He can run there and kill all the Dziwozony and free his mother and return for Donovan and they’ll live here happily. All safe.
His plan — what there is of it — is foolproof. It doesn't matter how many of them there are; there could be thousands and he can slay them all. He can feel how powerful he is now with this reconnection. All he needs to do is get out of this seat. The rest of the passengers are still stunned by the power he sent through the cabin. He can be to the front of first class in no time, out the door, sprinting through the airport before anyone realizes he’s off the plane.