by Tara Brown
“And you thought you might meddle in my life?”
“Yeah.” I have nothing else.
“Well don't. And stay away from me. Get out of my aunt’s yard!” He points at the driveway beside him.
I walk by him, giving him a wide berth. He sighs and slumps, going back to the front door as I leave. When I clear the hedge, I wink to my place, to the closet in case my mom figures me out.
Everything I just did suddenly feels wrong.
If God gave humans freewill, he wouldn’t send someone like me to mess with that.
I’ve completely screwed up, again.
Chapter 16
Loss of love
Years pass.
How many, I don’t know.
Time is a tricky mistress.
My sister is married to some guy she met at college, at Stanford. She never ended up at MIT. They have a kid and it’s uneventful. Her life is uneventful. It’s the life I always wanted. I can’t hate her for having it. The way I see it, finally after so long, she is living for us both. She is a little of me and a little of her. She and our parents are close, way closer than they were when I was around. I never realized how much she needed more from them. My not being there to take some of the limelight and attention meant she got it all. I realize it now, they’re all better off without me. It stings but the satisfaction of seeing them all happy is worth more than my own.
Blake got hired by NASA after completing robotics software engineering at MIT. He’s married to his job and possibly still a virgin. But again, he’s happy. He found himself in his work and likeminded people. He has goals, his parents’ inheritance, and a cat named Chuck. When I sit outside his apartment sometimes, staring in the window, I smile when he sniffs the cat. He’s so strange.
Giselle never became a police officer. She is married to a rich man and has two boys and they’re completely bad. She’s a terrible mom and having an affair. Giselle needs me. She is the only one who, after all this time, needs an honest friend. She and Alise barely speak, catching up on Facebook when one knows more gossip than the other. It makes me sad to see her so wrapped up in material things.
My parents sold the house when Alise moved to the city and now live on a boat. They travel and explore and spend all their time with each other. I’ve learned more about love from them since I became this than I ever did when I was their daughter. They’re not the best grandparents, but they love life and being a good example must count for something.
Shane is exactly where Ophelia saw him all those years ago. He’s married to a girl from our home town, one I don’t know. She’s younger than us by a couple of years. She was in a car accident, and he was the police officer on scene. They have a girl and a boy, and Shane is as happy as Shane gets.
I go home a lot, to my old house. I lie in the backyard and stare at the sky, talking to Dorian.
The house has sold three times in the last ten years, haunted they say.
It is haunted, by me.
Haunting has always been my thing.
I go to the garden a lot, to where the gates are. I see the gates, the spot where it starts. It’s a forest, a mirage in the middle of the desert. I get a glimpse and then it’s gone.
I tell myself that Ari, Luke, Ben, old Alise, Luna, and Terra are there. I tell myself their life is peaceful and beautiful.
I have to. The alternative, the one where they don’t even exist because the fae never came out of the garden, isn’t something I want to imagine. A world without Ari is a world I can’t live in.
I spend my time reading, learning languages, traveling and seeing the world. I volunteer, never too often at the same place, and I try to find someone like me. Someone who is immortal.
The old religions have nothing.
The ancient cities no longer hold mysteries and whispers.
The ghost stories are just that, stories.
I wink to Alise’s house, staying out in the woods and watching like the creeper I am.
She and her daughter are in the backyard, gazing through an old telescope. It’s vaguely familiar, like the one I had once.
We don’t look alike anymore, she and I. Alise has aged, she’s thirty-seven. She’s got small wrinkles and wisdom in her eyes. Maybe the appearance of wisdom. She still makes crazy choices and her room is still a pigsty. Her husband does the cooking and more cleaning than she does. But she’s a wonderful mom.
My eyes well every time I come here and watch her living her life.
It’s a view I take in regularly.
When she goes to bed, I wink to the Nærøyfjord and lie back, next to Aleks. I sigh and stare up at the stars.
“Dorian,” I whisper. “I miss you.”
The stars twinkle and I tell myself he’s there. He’s watching me. He never left me. In my mind, it’s like some old ancient Greek curse, something the gods did to punish someone. I’m down here, stuck. And he’s up there, stuck. And forever we will see each other but never touch or talk, just watch.
“I think I’m going to go to Australia. I heard there are these caves with some wicked stalactites and stalagmites. I haven’t ever gone into the earth, just over it. So, I thought why not?” I speak to him like he’s right here. “I’m not excited about the bugs and spiders. Last time I went to Australia I saw a snake eat a kangaroo.” I shudder.
A shooting star crosses the sky at that moment. I smile back, assuming so many things about the response.
I close my eyes and sleep this way most clear nights.
It’s like we’re together. Sometimes I think I dream we are. I wake up disappointed that he’s left already, like I expect him to come back in with coffee and a smirk.
Times passes, people age, everyone moves on in their lives.
Everyone but me.
Sometimes I cry, frustrated with the loneliness of this. Most of the time I pretend not to notice how upset I am.
Time blends. It’s fluid and only the people make me notice its changes. My father and mother are old. My sister’s kid has a kid. Giselle’s son is married and her other son has a baby. Shane’s wife dies of cancer.
They don’t know it but I’m there.
When he cries on the back steps, sobbing to no one because even God has left us at this point, I am there. When his heart breaks and he hugs his kids, I am there. I sneak into Shane’s room at night, hugging him in his sleep so he doesn’t feel so alone.
When my mother dies, I do the same for my father.
I am there.
I never leave them.
When my sister’s family loses a grandchild, I am there.
Their lives are full of everything, the good and the bad, making mine full too.
They have love and loss and happiness and pain. They’re the magic in the world—people. They start so shallow and single-minded, not realizing what they have until something threatens it, love being the most important thing they have. But once the threat has passed, they appreciate it.
When my father gets sick, I sense it before I see him—a crack in my chest. I find him and stay by his side in the hospital.
He opens an eye one night when I’m watching him, turning his head and smiling. “Aimee?”
“Dad?” I lift my head, answering before I think.
“You here to take me home?” he asks so peacefully.
“Yeah,” I lie. I’ve gotten so much better at it.
“Is your mother waiting for me?”
“She is.” I get up and take his weathered old hand in mine, tearing up as the warmth of human touch melts into me. No one has intentionally touched me in so long.
I forgot how it felt.
I squeeze his hand back, savoring the feeling of having someone.
“I thought you’d be a little girl maybe, still young.”
“I’ll always be your little girl.”
Tears well in his eyes. “My little girl. I have never felt hurt the way I did when you died. I never got over that. I think it made me a better dad for your sister. I gave
her all the love I wanted to give you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I lift his hand and kiss the back of it. His is covered in age spots. I don’t know how old he is but if I had to guess, I’d say ninety. “I’m glad she had a good life. I’m glad you all did.” I’m there, holding his hand when he dies. I kiss his cheek and sense the spirit, the warmth in him, leave. I whisper, “Tell Mom I love her.”
Slowly, as time fades, I lose my anger at God.
I lose my obsession with seeing the world and learning.
I lose my interest in humans as the ones I love die.
I say goodbye to everyone who was ever important to me and I wait some more.
Chapter 17
Redemption
It’s a cold day. I don’t know the year but the world doesn’t look the same. There’s more snow in the Nærøyfjord than ever before. I come and clean the graves off, ensuring our families always have clear headstones. I made new ones for them a while back. My entire family is here also, buried overlooking the Nærøyfjord. Shane and Blake and Giselle are too. I didn’t bring their families. They’re all dead, so what do they care where they’re buried? I’m the only one who sees them, ever.
A stick crunches behind me, drawing my eyes back. I don’t fear things, not in a long time. Death would be a welcome friend.
But it isn’t death lingering in the woods near me. It’s a huge white stag. His fur glistens with the snow falling on him. He isn’t afraid of me. He walks straight for me, his dark eyes meeting mine with bravery.
I smile as though I am greeting an old friend. Nature and I have never been friends, except for some wolves but even they never wanted to be petted.
This stag does though. He comes right to my reaching fingers and brushes his cold nose.
Steam fills the air around my hand as he snorts and moves his head in little jerks.
I pat him softly, slightly scratching his nose, and then reach back and brush the snow off him.
He doesn’t move.
His fur is so pure white, I can’t tell when all the snow is off him. He’s softer than I thought a deer would be. Silky even.
We stay like this for several moments before he lifts his head. His eyes meet mine. The look he gives me speaks to me, but I can’t understand the language.
He rears up and throws back his head.
I hold my hands in the air, not sure where this is going. I glance around, searching for what has startled him.
As I turn, a sharp pain hits my side. I gag as the pain gets worse.
I glance down to see where the stag’s horn has gone right through my chest from the back. Black blood drips down the front of me.
“Asshole,” I mutter as the blood drips onto the graves of my family.
He stabs a bit farther, making a grunt rip from my lips, and then he pulls back hard, causing me to fall to my knees. I hold a hand to the hole in my chest, bleeding onto the snow.
The contrast of black blood and white snow is intense. The stag walks slowly to the front of me, lowering his face again like I might pet him after he’s stabbed me. I reach for him, trying to hold myself up, when he lowers his head and rushes at me again, running me through. His head hits my stomach as his horns go all the way through me.
All the air in my body spews out in a gasp as I grip him, feeling the blood pouring from me and onto him. He pulls back sharply, again leaving me to fall.
As I sit back on my knees, coughing the blood into my mouth again, red speckles dot his face. He comes closer, his eyes still piercing mine.
I realize the red dots are my blood. I lift a blackened hand to my mouth and cough onto the inky liquid, speckling it red.
“You’re killing me,” I whisper as I fall forward onto the snow.
It’s cold, colder than I’ve ever felt.
I’m lying on top of my mother’s and father’s graves, bleeding out, when I hear the stag walk away. My vision blurs and everything gets brighter, like the whiteness of the snow intensifies.
I squint against it, hearing only the sound of my rattled breath.
My body is dying.
I’m scared maybe of where I’ll go after this, but not scared to die. I’ve never been readier than I am.
I close my eyes but the light stays with me, blinding me behind the lids.
“Aimee,” a voice whispers.
“Mom?” I whisper back, the snow moving with my lips.
“Aimee, wake up. You’re running out of time.” She says something I swear I’ve heard her say before. I blink and the white of the blinding light comes to a head, getting brighter before it fades.
I’m facedown in the snow, still in the Nærøyfjord, but I’m not.
The feeling is different. I blink and I’m in the pillar hallway I was in before, when I came to see Lorri.
I stand up, noting the softness of the concrete. It’s even kind of warm. It doesn’t feel like concrete at all.
“Aimee,” a voice calls me again.
“Mom?” I spin, searching for her.
Smoke drifts along the ground, slithering to me. “Aimee.”
The voice isn’t my mom’s. It’s not a woman’s or a man’s. It’s somewhere in the middle.
“God?” I have a terrible notion that I’m dreaming.
“No, dumb ass.”
I spin to find the sardonic grin of Lorri. The smoke slithers past me and her, out into the light of the entrance to the building we’re standing in.
“Lorri!” I jump into her arms. I sigh and then sob. Everything releases all at once. Decades spent alone.
“You made it,” she whispers into my neck. “Finally.”
I can’t speak. I don’t know what to say. I just sob until I can’t cry anymore. I continue clinging to her well past that point, terrified to let go. Scared this is a dream and I’m going to wake up alone and cold, overlooking the most beautiful valley in the world.
When I finally get it together, we walk. I cling to her, certain I will make her come with me if I get banished or if God figures out I shouldn’t be here.
“Where is he?” I ask her as we stroll in a garden I suspect she thought up.
“Who?” She’s seriously playing after all this time?
“It’s been hundreds of years. I don’t want to play games. Where is Dorian?”
The expression on her face slices me like the stag’s horns did. “He chose the life of a star. He sacrificed himself, I told you. When he came here to get an audience with our creator, he got one. He chose to sacrifice himself so we could all go back and help.”
“He’s still a star?” My voice cracks. “Can I see him?”
“No.” She furrows her brow, trying to be firm, but her eyes are filled with remorse. “He is there and you are here. That’s it.”
“Where is here, exactly?”
“Home. It’s whatever you think of. If you want someone, a soul, you think of them and they appear. You want a setting, you think it and it comes to life. You can have whatever you want.” She sounds like she’s trying to sell it to me.
“Is the garden safe? Is Ari still there?”
“I don’t know. I assume it is. But I don’t know.” Lorri’s expression softens. “I’m sorry, Aimes, I miss him too.” She slings an arm over my shoulder. “There are some people who want to see you though.”
“Okay.” I sigh.
She covers my eyes and when she takes her hands down there’s a crowd in front of my face, one I didn’t expect to see. It’s everyone.
My friends. My family. The Roses Academy. I rush them, getting sucked up in a whirlwind of affection.
They remember me.
They see me past all the magic and bullshit.
They kiss and hug and I tell myself it has to be enough.
It has to be.
Even if a large part of us is missing.
After everyone hugs me and tears are wiped away, the group goes quiet. I turn, seeing the pinched face Lorri’s making and follow her gaze to where the Roses p
art, allowing someone to walk through.
I blink slowly a couple of times, certain I’m not seeing what I think I am. He grins and I break into a run, leaping into his arms. “Sam!”
He smothers me in kisses and hugs, cracking my back even with the intensity. “You’re here.”
We cling to one another, both trembling.
“You’re here,” he repeats himself.
“So are you.” I pull back, shaking my head. “But how?”
“You and Ari. You saved me. You cleaned out the old demon. God knew I was polluted from Lillith, not of my own doing.”
“Tell me she isn’t here.”
“I haven’t seen her. Or Ari. I heard her and Luke and Ben are still in the garden.” He sighs. “I can’t believe you finally made it. How did it happen?”
“We realized what went wrong with our plan when we got here,” Aleks offers.
“Someone had to stay behind.” I say it like it was nothing, but there is madness in me that Heaven might not cure. And Dorian not being here isn’t helping with that.
“I thought maybe you went to the garden with your sister and the baby.” Aleks sounds saddened by it all.
“You sacrificed yourself for everyone.” Hanna’s eyes water.
“You died saving us all,” I reply back. “We all played a part in this.” My eyes dart to Anthony. “Even you. I’m glad you’re back to being a man again though.”
“Me too.” He cracks a smile but it doesn’t last. “I’m sorry about Dorian.”
“Me too.” I know how much they loved each other. Dorian never told me, but he didn’t have to.
Blake slings an arm around my shoulders. “You were there for me, you tried to help me.” His eyes flash on Alise for a second. “I see it now. I remember Terra and Alise, the other Alise. Were they okay when you left them?”
“They were great. Alise has all the kids and Ari and Ben and Luke. They’re happy.” I didn't know it for sure, but I believed it.
“Aimes, your whole life was spent watching us and being there for us. And no one was there for you.” Giselle says the second smartest thing I’ve ever heard her say.