Magic and Shadows: A Collection of YA Fantasy and Paranormal Romances

by T. M. Franklin

  “That’s what the lady who is helping you is called. I’m a doctor and she is a nurse.”

  “Oh, okay. Thank you, Doctor.”

  He nodded his head and mumbled to himself as he left. The nurse lady came back a bit later with a tray of food and I ate every last piece of the odd foods. She brought me more and I ate most of that as well. The rest of the night, she and Doctor asked me lots of questions to see what I did and didn’t know. It was boring and tiring and made me feel frustrated and overwhelmed.

  The next morning, Stevens came back with a worried expression. “Well we couldn’t find your fingerprints in the database and you don’t match any of the missing persons’ reports.”

  “What does that all mean?” I asked.

  “It means that you’re essentially a Jane Doe, except that you know your first name,” he said with a sigh.

  “What are you going to do?”

  He sat down and looked me in the eyes. “Do you remember anything else about yourself?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been trying to remember anything, but I can’t.”

  “Well, normally they would just release you from the hospital,” he said.

  “But I have no place to live,” I whispered sadly. I didn’t know where to go or where to get food.

  Doctor walked in and smiled at us. “Hello, how are you today, Alys?”

  “Not good,” I whispered, “I don’t have a home to go to or food out there. I don’t want to live in the mountains.”

  “Well the good news is that your blood tests came back clean.”

  “You tested my blood? For what?”

  “Yes, we had to make sure that you weren’t using drugs.”

  “What are drugs?”

  “Have you ever encountered a case like this before?” Stevens asked Doctor with a serious frown on his face.

  He shook his head. “No, I haven’t encountered a case myself, but there was a man who didn’t remember anything about himself once. Normally people forget things after a certain point and can’t retain those memories, not this way. And it’s even more odd that she knows her name and age.”

  “Is it scary outside?” I asked Doctor and Stevens.

  “Scary?” Doctor asked, “What do you mean?”

  “You know, out there? Are there a lot of animals that could hurt me? Or bad people? Is there somewhere I could find trees with fruits or something to eat?”

  “It doesn’t exactly work like that here,” Stevens said sadly.

  “What do you mean?” This was so confusing.

  “You can’t just take fruit from trees because they probably belong to someone,” he explained.

  “Someone owns the trees?!” I asked in shock. How could someone own trees?

  “I’ve got to make my rounds,” Doctor explained and then left me alone with Stevens.

  “You can’t remember anything else?” he asked me softly.

  “No,” I whispered. “I’m trying, but I don’t remember anything else.”

  “I have to leave,” he told me.

  I didn’t want him to leave. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt better when he was with me. “Oh, okay. Will I see you again?”

  He nodded his head. “Hopefully, I will have good news for you when I see you again.”

  He opened the door and turned back one last time. “Bye, Alys.”

  “Bye, Stevens.”

  He let the door shut and I relaxed on the bed. What had happened to me? What was going to happen to me? I couldn’t imagine finding food if people owned the trees. Did they own the animals too? What a strange place!

  I slept on and off most of the day with the nurse checking on me periodically and giving me strange things to eat and drink. The sun set and I was incredibly bored. I screamed into my hands and the door to my room opened.

  “Are you okay?” Stevens asked me with pinched eyebrows and a frown.

  “Oh, hi,” I said in shock.

  He walked in and I realized he wasn’t wearing the same shirt with the gold thing. “Are you in pain?” he asked.

  “No, just bored,” I admitted.

  He smiled and then laughed lightly. “Oh, good. I was worried.” He was worried about me? “I thought you might be bored and that you could use some company…Would you like me to keep you company?”

  His body was stiff and he hadn’t moved away from the door. Why was he nervous? “You want to keep me company?” I asked softly.

  “Yeah, I brought some stuff to entertain us,” he said, “If you want to, that is.”

  “That sounds great!” I said with a broad smile.

  His shoulders relaxed and he walked to the side of my bed and sat in the chair there. “I wasn’t sure what you liked so I brought a few different things.” He took the bag off his shoulder and opened it. Inside were brightly colored packages and some cans. He opened one of the packages and handed it to me. I took one of the items out and ate it. It was crunchy and salty.

  “That’s good,” I said and got a smile in return.

  He lifted a little piece of the can and it made a strange sound and opened a small oval hole. “Here, try this.”

  I took the can from him. “Oh, it’s cold,” I commented in shock. I tilted the can to get the liquid out and swallowed it. “Whoa, sugary.”

  “Do you remember what that’s called?” he asked me. I shook my head. “Soda.”

  “Soda.”

  I folded my legs under me to give us more room and he took out several other items and we put the open bags in the middle of the bed on top of the sheets. He sat down on the other end of my bed with the food between us and ate with me. “What’s your favorite?” he asked me after I’d sampled everything.

  “This and this,” I said and pointed at two items.

  “Those are chocolate and called M&Ms and those are chips and called Doritos.”

  “Doritos are really good,” I said around another chip.

  “You should try Doritos nachos. That is amazing,” he told me with a smirk.

  The nurse walked in, but stopped when she saw Stevens. “Officer Stevens,” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Just keeping Alys company,” he explained, but his shoulders were tense again and he was frowning.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said and smiled, but she didn’t look happy. She checked the machines around me and asked me, “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “No headaches?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Well, have fun,” she told us and left the room. As she was closing the door, I saw her shake her head. What was her problem? Why didn’t she like Stevens being here?

  “Are you tired?” Stevens asked me.

  “No. I slept a lot today since there wasn’t really anything else to do.”

  “Do you like to draw?” he asked.

  “Draw?”

  “Draw or color? I know it’s probably childish, but it’s something I do occasionally.”

  “Maybe, I’d like to try.”

  He pulled out a book and a box and set them between us. He flipped the book open and it was a blank sheet of paper. He opened the box and it was filled with sticks of different colors. He took one of the colors and made a design on the page with it. “I’m not a great artist, but sometimes it’s relaxing and helps time go by,” he told me as he continued to draw. When he stopped, I stared in shock at the pretty butterfly.

  “That’s pretty,” I told him. I didn’t think I could do something like that. He handed me the stick and I made a couple practice marks on the page and started drawing. I traded colors out and then after I was done I leaned back to look at it.

  “What is it?” he asked me as he examined it.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just felt right to draw it.” The design was some type of symbol. I wasn’t sure what, though.

  “Can I take this with me when I leave tonight?” he asked.

  “You want it?” I asked in shock. He nodded h
is head. “Sure.”

  He tore the page out, folded the paper and put it in his bag. “Do you want to learn to play tick-tack-toe, if you don’t remember?” he asked me.

  I nodded my head. “I would like to learn.”

  He drew some lines on the page and then drew a circle in the center one. “So, I’m o’s and your x’s. The goal is to get three of your marks in a row, this way, this way, or this way,” he explained while showing the directions. “You get to make one mark at a time. So, since I went, now you go.”

  I put my x in the top right corner and then he drew his next one beside his. I put mine next to mine and then he drew a third circle next to his and drew a line through it.

  “I won.”

  “What?”

  “You should have put your x here,” he put an x through where his third circle was, “if you had done that you would have blocked me so that I couldn’t win.”

  “Oh, I think I get it now,” I told him.

  He drew a new set of lines and we went again. We filled the boxes up and no one got three in a row. “That’s called a ‘Cat’s Game’ because no one won.”

  “Why does the cat get it?” I asked curiously.

  He chuckled. “It’s just the name. I’m not really sure where it came from.”

  “Oh…again?” I requested.

  I lost track of time and of how many games we played, but Stevens was yawning and my eyelids were growing heavier. “Time for me to head home,” he said and stretched his arms up over his head. He was really handsome and incredibly nice for doing this for me.

  I helped him pack up his bag, but kept the book and the coloring sticks. We stood up and I said, “Thank you for keeping me company and for the food and for the drawing stuff.”

  He smiled and said, “You’re welcome, Alys.”

  I fidgeted with the ugly weird gown I was wearing and asked, “Could you come tomorrow?”

  He nodded his head. “I’ll be by tomorrow before they discharge you. Hopefully, someone who knows you will have contacted us by then.”

  I suddenly felt sad and alone. I looked at the floor and whispered, “I don’t think anyone will.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “We’ll figure everything out tomorrow, okay?”

  I nodded and watched him leave. At least there was one nice person in this place.

  I hardly slept and to keep my boredom at bay, I continued drawing. I wasn’t sure what the things I was drawing were, but I felt compelled to draw them. I found another drawing utensil in my room that the nurse or Doctor had left and used that to try to draw. It worked better for drawing faces and as I was finishing a drawing of Stevens he came in.

  “What are you drawing?” he asked me with a smile.

  I closed the book so he couldn’t see the picture, feeling embarrassed that he would catch me drawing him. “Nothing.”

  “Come on, let me see,” he begged.

  I slowly held out the book to him. He flipped through the pages and was frowning when he got to my first drawings of men I didn’t know and then he froze when he got to the last picture, his.

  “It’s not good and I’m sorry. I was just drawing whatever came to mind and, well, um, you did.” I felt my cheeks grow hot and looked down at my hands so I wouldn’t have to see his expression anymore.

  “It’s really good,” he told me.

  I looked up at him in shock. “Really?”

  He nodded his head while staring at the page. “It is.”

  “Are you mad?” I asked.

  He looked at me with wide eyes. “No. Why would I be mad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know these other people that you drew?” he asked and showed me the pictures again.

  I shook my head. “No.” They weren’t complete, some of their features missing like their noses or the eyes mostly erased because it didn’t feel right, but I just couldn’t finish them for some reason.

  “Did anyone claim me?” I asked.

  He set the book down on the bed and sat on the end of it. “No, but we’re still checking into some things. We’re spreading your picture around all over in hopes of finding someone.”

  “What if no one does?” I asked him nervously and felt fear growing in me. “What if I don’t know anyone? Will I have to be homeless? Or will I have to live with strangers I don’t know?” What if someone tried to hurt me in a new home?

  Stevens studied me a moment and then asked, “What would you say if I offered for you to come live with me?”

  “Live. With you?” I asked him nervously.

  He nodded his head. “I hate the idea of you living on the streets. A pretty girl like you could get into a lot of trouble out there.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden,” I whispered as I looked down at my clasped hands. He had called me pretty!

  “I live alone and I work a lot, but I have an extra bedroom with a bed and cable and you could stay with me until we figure out where you’re from.”

  “Really?” I asked him as tears fell down my face.

  He smiled at me and said, “Really.”

  “You’re very nice.”

  He laughed nervously. “Thank you. I’m going to talk to the doctor about you getting discharged.”

  I nodded even though I didn’t know what discharged meant, and watched him leave. Was everyone as nice as him? No, because Doctor and the nurse didn’t offer for me to live with them.

  What if he was a bad guy? I shook my head. He didn’t seem like a bad guy. Surely if he was so important and Doctor and the nurse deferred to him then he couldn’t be bad. And what bad guy would bring a stranger snacks and drawing things? I sat alone for a bit longer and then the nurse came in with a couple more women in the same outfits. “Hi,” I greeted them since that was what you were supposed to do when someone came to see you. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I knew that was right.

  “We brought you some extra clothes we had, since the ones you were wearing were ruined and you don’t have any others,” the nurse said as she and the women all smiled at me.

  I looked at the weird colored clothes in her hands and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

  She set the clothes on the chair beside my bed and said, “We weren’t sure your bra size so we don’t have that for you, but you don’t really need a bra with how you’re built.”

  “What’s a bra?” I asked as I held up a shirt with a large animal’s face with its mouth open on it.

  “It holds up your…” one of the women said and then put her hands under her breasts and made them move up and down.

  “Oh.” Why would you need them held up? I wondered.

  “You better be good to Stevens,” one of the women said bitterly, “he’s a great guy and he doesn’t need someone hurting him.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I said in shock.

  “Nancy, that’s enough,” the nurse snapped at the woman who had spoken.

  Nancy looked down at her feet and red blossomed on her cheeks.

  “Well, we will let you get dressed,” the nurse said.

  “Thank you for this generosity,” I said to them with a bright smile.

  “You’re welcome, dear.”

  As soon as they left I took off the stupid gown I had been wearing since I woke up. The dumb thing wasn’t even sewn together all the way and had to be tied to stay together. I set it on the bed and then examined all of the clothes before putting them on in what I hoped to be the right order judging by the clothes the others had worn.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” I called as I examined the last piece of clothing I had that I couldn’t figure out what to do with.

  “The doctor said…Oh, uh, did you need a moment?” Stevens asked with a blush on his face.

  “No, I just don’t know what this is for,” I murmured as I examined the piece of clothing that had two oval openings of one size and then a third oval of a larger size.

  “Those are called underwear,” he
informed me.

  I glanced over at him and asked, “Where does it go? Are you supposed to wear it? I don’t see you with it?”

  He laughed and said, “They go on under your pants.”

  Under the pants? Why would you wear something under your pants? Why wear pants if you wore the underwear? “Odd,” I whispered.

  “I’ll just step out so you can put them on,” he said as he turned around.

  “No, I don’t want to wear them,” I informed him.

  He stopped with a perfectly stunned expression on his face. “Alys, you really should put them on. It’s considered weird not to wear them.”

  “Why do you wear pants if you have these under them?” I asked in frustration.

  “It’s just what our culture does.” He said as he rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

  I sighed. “Fine.” He walked out and I took off the pants, put the underwear on, and then put the pants back on. “Okay, you can come in.”

  He came back in and smiled. “Alright, are you ready to leave?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes, please!”

  “I spoke to my Chief and he gave me the rest of the day off so that I could take you to my house and show you everything.”

  Chief? “Are you in an army?” I asked him as we walked out of the room into a hallway with lots of people walking around in the outfits like the nurse and Doctor.

  “No, I’m a police officer,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I protect people and arrest bad guys and take them to jail,” he said and pushed open a door for me to walk through.

  “What’s jail?” I asked and stepped out into sunlight. I stopped as soon as I was outside and stared at the world before me.

  The ground was made of a weird stone and there were, um, I knew the word…cars! There were cars everywhere! There was also so much noise that my ears hurt. I clamped my hands over my ears and asked, “How can you stand the noise?!”

  He smiled sweetly and pulled my hands down. “You’ll get used to it soon.”

  “How long will it take to walk to your house?” I asked him. He walked down stairs towards a black vehicle.

  “We’re not walking. We’re going to drive.”

  I stared at the car nervously. “In that?!”

  “Don’t worry, it’s safe.” He pulled open a piece of the car and waved at me to come over. I climbed into it and sat on an oddly-shaped chair. Stevens walked around, opened another section, and sat down. “Okay, shut your door.” I looked at the piece that was hanging open, grabbed it and pulled it towards me. It slammed closed with an odd metal click. “Put your seatbelt on.”