Flutter (The Discover Series)

by Andrea, Melissa

  I shivered when I felt the wind whispering against the back of my neck, stirring up the little hairs. I pulled the blanket up higher around me, sheltering what I could of my exposed skin. I could feel my eyes lids drooping, and I swear I could feel every time the temperature dropped half a degree. I didn’t seem to adjust as well to the cold up here as I had when I was actually frozen inside ice. That didn’t make any sense to me, but then what did?

  My head felt extremely heavy, and I reached up to touch my hair. I regretted that instantly. Cold air snuck past the confines of my blanket and wetsuit, leaving a burst of goosebumps over every inch of skin it touched, and another shiver followed. When I could focus again, I felt around my head. My hair was cold and slightly frozen in places, making it hard and brittle. Not being able to bear the shooting pain along my scalp any longer, I reached up with my other hand, letting the blanket slide away. I gritted my teeth against the cold that attacked me and tried to finish my task quickly.

  Another degree, I thought.

  I felt around until I found what I was looking for. After a few tugs I could feel the trapped strands loosen. A shooting pain ran through the sensitive nerves of my roots as I un-wrapped my stiff hair. The ache was bittersweet as the last of my hair came undone. It hung awkwardly down my back, and I rubbed my scalp soothingly, trying to melt the frost that stuck to the strands. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I reached for the blanket again until I was snuggled into it, blocking out the cold. My head felt ten times better, and I felt like I could focus again.

  It hadn’t taken me more then five minutes to mess with my hair, but in that small amount of time I could tell the sky was half a shade darker, and a half a degree colder.

  I looked at Andres, hoping he was closer to whatever it was that he was trying to come to terms with. He had his back to me and he was staring at the huge mountain that loomed over us. I didn’t want to be the one to point out the obvious, but seeing as how no one else was here, I was going to have to be the one to tell him that it was getting darker and colder by the second. Unlike me, he seemed completely unaware of the cold.

  I wanted to ask him what we were going to do next, but he started talking to me –or himself, I wasn’t sure exactly - before I could.

  “We can’t stay here,” he finally said. He was looking at the sky when he continued. “Nightfall will be here before we reach the mountain if we don’t leave now.”

  He was right, but I still couldn’t help but ask, “Then what? We don’t know where we are, or where we are going. We don’t know if anyone lives anywhere near us. We won’t survive the night without shelter from this storm coming in.” I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the approaching storm.

  “That’s all true, but we have to try. What other choice do we have?”

  None

  I got up, and without another word, I followed him.

  Andres

  I turned around to look behind me, for the millionth time since we had started moving.

  Sara treaded along behind me, keeping almost perfect pace with me under the conditions. She was still wrapped in the blanket, and only seemed to have a small amount of difficulty with the limited movement it allowed her, but it was better then trying to suffer through the cold. I had never been awake this early and the weather was considerably colder. I could handle it, but I worried about her, so for the millionth and one time, I looked back at her.

  “You don’t have to keep checking on me,” she said teasingly. “You couldn’t lose me if you tried. I know you want to get there as soon as we can, so we should probably walk as fast as we can before we lose all the light.”

  I exhaled and picked up the pace a little. I looked over my shoulder at her –for what I swore would be the last time, at least for a while-and smiled at her. “It’s shouldn’t be too much longer now.” I realized my mistake as soon as I said it, and I held my breath waiting for her to question my statement, but she just nodded. When she didn’t say anything, I figured she probably thought I meant to comfort her, and she didn’t find anything out of place in my words.

  We had been walking for about an hour now and we still had at least another hour to go before we got to the shed, darkness would beat us there.

  “D-d-d-do you t-t-think we’ll f-f-find something s-s-soon?” She asked, her teeth chattering over every other word, and because I couldn’t help it I looked back at her again.

  It was getting too dark for me to make out her face clearly, but there was no mistaking the tremble in her jaw or the spasms of shivers that shook her entire body and made her stumble. I gritted my teeth and cursed. It was irritatingly obvious that this was not done by a Light Fighter who had experience with defrosting. He was very powerful sure -I could tell that the minute I had seen Sara bathing in the hand delivered sun light- but power or not, the job was sloppy.

  I had thought by now that I would have been able to sense the other light fighter. With the mess he had made of almost letting Sara drown, and barely getting her out alive, I didn’t think it would have taken this long before he slipped up and gave away his position. I assumed he wasn’t trying to hide from me, but he seemed to be timing his presence for some reason.

  The handprint Sara had pointed out to me belonged to someone else entirely. When I had touched the ice, there wasn’t a trace of energy from our kind, but there had been something else.

  I could feel the intense Flutter emanating off of Sara, I hadn’t wanted to admit it was the same current as before, but after touching the ice I knew he was here too. I didn’t know what made Sara respond to him so strongly, but there was no mistaking the feeling. I wasn’t sure if she was aware of the sensation, and I couldn’t ask her, but if she was she had no idea what it meant.

  I wasn’t sure why he had come alone, but he was here and he had made contact with Sara. That changed everything now, Sara would only continue to draw him closer, and he would be unwilling to resist the pull. Boundaries had been placed for between them for a reason and he had crossed them.

  It was clear, whatever the grounds, this mission had been planned. Thoughtfully? No. Half assed? Yes. But planned out? Definitely.

  Inexperienced fools!

  “Andres?” She asked, reminding me that I hadn’t answered her question.

  “I’m sure we will. Just keeping moving, it helps to keep the blood flowing.”

  I looked up the hill and pushed myself harder.

  I wanted to tell her about the shed, to give her some kind of peace of mind that we weren’t just walking blindly through the wilderness, hoping that we would find something. But that would mean I would have to tell her how I knew it was going to be there, which would then lead to when had I been there before, and finally why I had lie to her. I just wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her yet. I didn’t even know how I was going to explain this to her.

  Obviously seventeen years hadn’t been enough time to come up with a plan.

  I built the shed the first year Sara and I did the Freeze. She turned five that year, and her powers were getting stronger every day. It was amazing watching her grow, seeing her influences develop, and using them without even meaning too. It came effortless to her, she was strong, a natural. Since she was a baby, she had been very powerful. It wasn’t until after she turned four, that she was using them more and more. When she turned five it was second nature to her, and that was when I knew it was time to start Freezing. It would have only been a matter of time before they would have found her if I hadn’t

  I developed a flawless system, and up until now it had worked perfectly. Each year after thanksgiving, just like clockwork, I followed the same routine. For everyone in our town’s knowledge, it was a vacation we took every year to some place warmer. For Sara, it was a sickness she thought she endured; an illusion I created, a way to leave an imprint of a memory she could hold on to when she woke up. She would sleep most of the way on the private airplane I rented to bring us up here each year, never remembering anything about the trip.
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  Each time she would feel well enough to change into her swimsuit, and sit on the beach with me; but her strength didn’t last long. She would return to our bungalow feeling exhausted and sick. When I was sure she was asleep, I would slip her wetsuit on over her swimsuit, wrap her hair up, and place her water shoes on. I would carry her from the shed, a bungalow to her, to the lake. It had been a whole lot easier to carry her when she was a little girl, but I worked out to make sure I could still carry her where she no longer weighed ninety pounds.

  She would sleep most of the walk, waking up once or twice but she was usually incoherent. Once we reached the lake it was a smooth process. The lake wasn’t entirely frozen over by then, so I had to give it a little help. Stepping to the end of the lake, I would tap the surface of the water, once with my foot, and watch as the water quickly transformed into a solid block of ice a pathway leading to the middle of the lake.

  After a few minutes, once I knew the ice would be firm enough for me to walk on; I would take Sara out to the middle. Using the clips I had put on her wetsuit, I secured her arms to her chest so her hands would be in front of her, just in case. Taking a deep breath, I would drop her feet first into the ice cold water and watch as the ice froze before she hit the bottom of the lake. Knowing she was secure, I would take my spot and jump in next.

  I had been doing this long enough that I had no longer noticed the icy sting, as my body collided with the water. Freezing wasn’t really something that could be described in full detail. Once we hit the water and the rush of the water encased in a frozen mold, you weren’t aware of anything else. Our bodies went into shock, the breath was knocked from you, and any thought requirement was gone. The brief spurt of amnesia when we woke was the result of that.

  After each Freeze she used her abilities less and less frequently, and that made them weaker, until finally they stopped altogether. She was as normal as someone like her could be. I had worried endlessly about her at first; that I was damaging her mind, diminishing her powers, but I knew I was just feeling guilty at having to deceive her year after year. I had a lot of experience with Freezing, and there were never any signs of long term or permanent impairment to us. It was in our nature to do this and survive.

  This was the first year that things had not gone as planned.

  I had been shocked to see her waiting on the ice. I had expected to have to tunnel her out myself. I knew she was strong and she could have easily called on the sun without even knowing it, but too many clues had quickly diminished the idea that she had used her powers: The sun being lower, the fact that the ice had been melted from the surface down rather than from below, and then her uncertain confession of seeing someone, had been enough for me to be sure. Using her abilities would have definitely freaked her out, but her mind would have reasoned with her that she had made it all up in her head, like it did with the Illusion she had created. This only increased my certainty that she was still as strong as ever.

  It didn’t surprise me that she had sub-consciously used the sun as a means to escape. Nor did it surprise me that her Illusion had been so vivid, so strong – that was only a fraction of what she was capable of. It took most of our kind years to create Illusions that advanced. It was amazing that it was so effortless for her. She had never produced Illusions as a child, but I knew she had possessed the strength to do it.

  I had been there the first time she had ever done it.

  That was the night she saved us.

  That memory left an emptiness inside of me that I didn’t want to feel right now, so I pushed it out of my mind.

  Bringing myself back to reality, I listened to Sara’s sluggish footsteps. The longer we walked, the more tired she got.

  “Como te va sobrina?”

  I heard her footsteps halt for two beats before continuing, taking her steps one at a time. The snow crunched slowly beneath her tentative footsteps.

  I smiled to myself, glad we had the diversion of the Spanish language to keep us from realizing the last of the light was disappearing with each step we took. I had never taught her, her native language; I hadn’t wanted to take any chances. But she had taken a Spanish class in school and had picked it up better than most of the students in her class. She knew enough to answer a few of my questions, but it had never interested her enough to speak it fluently. She had never questioned how I knew it or why she didn’t. By the time she was old enough to realize that I spoke it, trying to pick up another language was not on her list of teen-age priorities.

  “How am I doing?” She asked

  I smiled. “La sobrina de muy buena.”

  “Thanks, and to answer your question: I’m doing okay…for now.”

  I didn’t want to focus on the last part, we still had about forty-five minutes before we reached the shed and darkness had finally settled.

  Suddenly, I didn’t have to think about anything, because Sara was screaming.

  Adan

  I had gone back to pacing.

  It seemed to be the only thing that calmed my nerves and right now they were buzzing. I was having a hard time focusing on one specific thought at a time. They were swirling around in my head, each one trying to push its way through to the front. Standing still only gave them the power to take over, so I kept pacing so I could try to keep some kind of control inside my head.

  It didn’t quite seem to work out the way I wanted though.

  So many things had happened tonight, it was almost impossible to focus my attention on just one event, but I tried anyway. I couldn’t get the image of Sara laying there on the ice, alone, out of my head. I hadn’t wanted to leave her there unconscious. I had wanted to stay there until I saw her beautiful eyes open. I wanted her to see me. I wanted to see if she felt for me, what I felt for her, as strongly as I felt it for her. I wanted it more than I wanted to breathe.

  I was there for a reason though, and that reason made me get up and walk slowly away from her. I knew her Watcher would be there any time, and things would get a lot more complicated than they needed to be. I couldn’t help what I felt for her. In all these years I couldn’t change what was beyond my control, and that complicated things. I didn’t want to admit to myself that leaving her before she had woken, was my coward way of not having to face the possibility that she wouldn’t feel the same way I did.

  I had watched her from the woods, wanting to stay there until she wasn’t alone anymore, but knew I couldn’t afford to. Her Watcher shouldn’t have been able to sense me, but if Aaron could, the Watcher might be able to as well, and I couldn’t chance that. I watched her long enough to see her to catch sight of the hole she had been tunneled out of. I saw the fear in her entire body as she realized where she had been. I wanted to be there with her, but that would have freaked her out more.

  I could see her concentrating while she looked at something on the ice and then she reached out to touch it. At the same time as I watched her hand snap back, I felt the shock run through my entire body. It was like an electric energy. When I looked up I found her staring at me, well in my direction, but I pretended it was at me. I held my breath for the longest time. I didn’t want to break the connection. She was the first one to look away. I heard the sound too, so I turned around and sprinted through the trees.

  I hadn’t gotten far before I heard her scream. I came to an abrupt stand still, my stomach twisted and I kicked myself for leaving her there. As I slowed down I could feel the muscles in my legs, like they were on fire. I was a fast runner, but I had never pushed myself like this before. I had gotten half way back when I could hear their voices. As I listened to the conversation I knew why she had screamed.

  The Watcher was out.

  I waited until my heart resumed its normal pace, listening to the conversation that was taking place between them. Her voice was loud and clear inside my head. The sound of her voice was soothing, it calmed my nerves, and I didn’t mind it in my head like the others of my kind. It was possible to tune out the others, but I didn’t want
to tune hers out.

  My hearing was impeccable and I could hear The Watcher’s voice just as clearly as hers. It was kind of weird, hearing them that way: Sara’s voice in my head, her Watchers with my ears. I waited there listening to them talk, I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I was also curious to the answers to her questions.

  She remembered him, and being sick, really sick. I listened to her thoughts, but they sounded remote. I closed my eyes trying to focus on what she was thinking, but something else happened altogether.

  I could see her memories.

  She was remembering being sick and I could see exactly what she saw. She was lying in bed –her bed. It was faint, blurry, but I was able to make her out. Her hair was a black, tangled mess that framed her face; standing out against her green pillow. I might have smiled at her tousled hair, if it weren’t for the fact that the strands around her face stuck to her damp skin.

  Sweat from her fever beaded across her forehead, and made the caramel skin of her neck and shoulders glistened. The nightgown she wore was dark green and clung to her damp skin. Her blankets had been pushed down the bed and tangled around her bare legs. Her eyes were closed and her beautiful face was masked in a frown. She tossed and turned, while little moans escaped her slightly parted lips. I hated seeing her like that, but something felt odd about the memory….

  Then there was nothing. The memory, her thoughts, her voice…everything was gone. I focused harder, but I couldn’t bring any of it back. I frowned and listened with my ears. The conversation continued, but I no longer heard anything inside my head. I didn’t have time to try and understand something that should have never happened in the first place. Turning in the other direction, I fled from them, up the mountain to the camp where Aaron was waiting.