Borrowed Heart

by Linda Lamberson

  Instantly, I heard Madame Sasha’s words resonate in my head: “I’ve never seen an aura like this before … It’s so strange … It seems as though your fate is shifting—changing—right before my very eyes.”

  “Your fate was forever changed about the same time you met Madame Sasha,” Peter offered, obviously having read my mind.

  * * *

  “Please, listen to me.” Madame Sasha’s words resonated in my memory. I could still see the pity in her eyes. “I might be of some help,” she said in her thick accent.

  “What? Are you going to tell me that if I give you more money you can show me how to prevent this … this … so-called Curse from happening?” I sneered.

  “No—I’m sorry. I don’t know how to stop the Curse of Three. But I can tell you what I see. Maybe that will help you. Please … sit down.”

  I don’t know what came over me, but I did as Madame Sasha requested.

  “The first incident will happen due to an illness—in a hospital perhaps—some time before your eighteenth birthday. The second incident will involve an accident—wait, yes—a car accident. You will survive both … barely. But the third incident …” Madame Sasha strained with closed eyes, rubbing her temples. “I don’t know. I see a bright flash of light, but I cannot see its point of origin. All I can tell you is that the third incident will be sudden and unexpected.” She opened her eyes and solemnly dropped her hands to her sides. “That’s it. That is the last thing I can make out. I’m sorry, but I see no future for you after that.”

  “You’re wrong,” I snarled. She had to be wrong. I refused to believe what I was hearing.

  “My readings may not always be exact, but I’m rarely wrong,” she announced proudly.

  “Being rarely wrong is a far cry from being never wrong,” I criticized. “How could you possibly know what fate has in store for me? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow or I could live to be one hundred. Nothing is written in stone,” I hissed between gritted teeth. I wasn’t about to listen to any more of this crap. Glaring at Madame Sasha, I bolted up out of my seat and grabbed my bag, but she caught me by the arm before I could storm out of the room.

  “I’m sorry to have upset you so, my dear. Really, I am. Please understand—I just couldn’t let you leave without knowing your destiny. I wish I could have given you better news. Here … please take this.” She held out the necklace she had been wearing around her neck. “The charm—it is of the patron saint Andrew Avellino; he will help protect you.”

  Her offering enraged me further. I snubbed her gift, but Madame Sasha pushed the necklace into the palm of my hand and curled my fingers around it anyway.

  “Please … take it. I insist. Wear it always,” she added. “And good luck to you, Eve.”

  I just stood there, stunned, as she opened the door for me to leave. And, just like that, it was over.

  I followed Emma outside of the house, still in shock. I stared blankly at the charm in my hand and shoved it in my pocket before Emma spotted it. She was beaming from ear to ear. Clearly, Madame Sasha had told Emma something very different about her destiny than what the psychic had told me about mine.

  The entire drive home I was silent. Emma, however, went on and on about how she and her boyfriend Derek were destined to be a part of each other’s lives forever. Madame Sasha had also told Emma that she and Derek would be living together in Michigan some time within the next two years. I laughed at the idea in my head. I knew Derek had no intention of staying in Michigan when he graduated in a couple of months; he had said it a thousand times. In fact, Derek had received a scholarship to a college out East. Emma, on the other hand, was a hometown girl through and through. She never imagined living more than twenty minutes away from her family. I was convinced that Emma’s reading was just further evidence that Madame Sasha was a full of it. Only a miracle would keep Emma and Derek together.

  * * *

  “A miracle, indeed,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, some miracle,” I scoffed. “Emma and Derek got pregnant three months later—almost to the day.” I looked up at Peter. “You know, the strangest thing about going to see Madame Sasha was that after a week or so, I never thought about her or my reading again—not until Emma got pregnant. I mean, when someone tells you that you have less than three years to live—joking or not—that should bother you for a while, right?” I looked at Peter for confirmation, but his face was devoid of any expression.

  “But it didn’t,” I continued. “A week after my reading, it was like I had never heard of Madame Sasha. Emma was the same way, and she was the one who had the fairy-tale reading … or so she originally thought.”

  I flashed back to the day Emma brought up Madame Sasha’s name. It was a couple of weeks after she found out she was pregnant and just a few days after Derek did the “responsible” thing and asked Emma to marry him. I wasn’t at all surprised when Emma accepted his proposal. With a wife and a baby on the way, college would have to wait. Derek joined his family’s local business, indefinitely postponing his dreams to move to the East Coast.

  “When Madame Sasha said Derek and I would be together,” I remembered Emma saying, “I didn’t imagine it would turn out like this. Some Cinderella story, huh?” Her voice was riddled with self-pity, but I couldn’t comfort her. The instant I heard Emma mention Madame Sasha’s name, my mind was ambushed by the psychic’s tale of what was in store for my future.

  Six weeks later, I was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. I slipped into a coma after having an adverse reaction to the general anesthesia, only to wake up a few days later to find my parents hovering over me with tear-stained faces. When they explained what had happened, the smell of floral incense and Pine-Sol hit me like a ton of bricks.

  “The first incident will happen due to an illness—in a hospital perhaps—some time before your eighteenth birthday.” I remembered the fear creeping into my body as I heard Madame Sasha’s thick accent in my head. Never before had I considered wearing the silver charm that she had insisted I take. But the same day I was discharged from the hospital, I dug the necklace out of the bottom of my jewelry box and put it around my neck. I’d never been a day without it since—that was until now. The day I came home from the hospital was also the first day I began to give credence to the inner voice warning me of bad things to come … the monster that lurked deep within the pit of my stomach.

  * * *

  “Did Madame Sasha change my fate?” I asked Peter.

  “No. She just noticed that your destiny was altered. We believe that you threatened the Servants, or more appropriately, their plans, so they manipulated your fate in order to eliminate you.”

  “The Servants?” I asked, confused.

  “Demons. A sect of very powerful demons.”

  “Demons?” I burst out laughing. “You expect me to believe that demons changed my fate? That demons are responsible for my death?” This truly was the icing on the cake.

  “Eve, make no mistake about it. Demons walk amongst the humans—as do we. We maintain a truce with most clans in a mutual effort to maintain the balance between the greater good and evil. In other words, we stay out of their way and they stay out of ours. But we have been and will remain eternal enemies with one particular clan, the Servants. In fact, our very existence came about because of them. When they were created eight centuries ago, so were we. The Servants’ purpose is to tip the balance of evil in their favor, and our purpose is to help stop them from achieving that goal. They’ve since grown in strength and number, making them increasingly problematic for us all.”

  “So just how did the … Servants,” I had trouble uttering the word without snickering, “change my fate?”

  “We’re still trying to piece that together. Whenever we learn that the Servants have targeted a mortal by manipulating his or her destiny, the process of untangling that human’s twisted threads of fate begins immediately. But it’s a long and complex procedure, during which time the human is vulnerabl
e and can become the victim of his or her redirected destiny at any moment. That’s where we come in; Shepherds protect those humans whose fates have been altered by the Servants. By guarding these targeted humans, we buy them more time, hopefully during which the Servants’ meddlesome misdeeds can be discovered and reversed. Most of the time we are successful, but sometimes … sometimes we are not.” Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  They didn’t save me in time, I realized.

  “Which brings us back to your original question,” Peter said, changing the subject. “Why were you chosen to be a Shepherd?” Peter cleared his throat. “Well, just because a mortal has met the first prerequisite of becoming a Shepherd doesn’t mean he or she has what it takes to be a Shepherd. But those in the Order of the Realms, the ultimate powers-that-be so to speak, were curious about you. It’s not often we encounter a case like yours where the fate of a human has been manipulated so radically in such a short period of time. The Servants can mask subtle changes to a human’s fate, making it difficult to find their signs of interference. But when your destiny was changed, sirens and alarms went off—metaphorically speaking, of course. We don’t … really … have sirens and alarms.”

  “Of course,” I said in a mocking tone.

  “Anyway,” Peter continued, ignoring me, “you were unfortunate enough to be given a death sentence in just under two years. Such a drastic change in a human’s fate is nearly impossible to hide. We suspected you must have presented quite a credible threat to the Servants for them to risk so much exposure. So I suppose the Order of the Realms wanted to keep you close by after you died to see if they could figure out just how formidable a threat you posed to the Servants.

  “I also suspect that the Order believed you could handle the job. At age sixteen, you were given this strange gift—this knowledge about your ill-fated future. And you handled the news quite well under the circumstances, even when you realized what Madame Sasha told you was more likely true than not. Even when you believed your days were numbered, you faced your future head on; you maintained your focus, your direction, and your inner-strength.”

  Yeah, right, I thought, I hadn’t faced my destiny as much as I tried to ignore it.

  “Eve, you give yourself too little credit.” Peter paused for a moment, looked at his watch and then up at me. “Well, I’m sure you have many more questions, but the time has come for you to undergo your transformation and begin your formal training. Rest assured, your questions about your future as an immortal will be answered then. But now the time has come to say good-bye to the old you. It’s time to forget your past and accept your new existence as a Shepherd … Congratulations, Eve, your transition is over.”

  I was overwhelmed by feelings of dread, grief, and anxiety. I wasn’t ready. How could I ever be ready to forget my life? Although it wasn’t really my life anymore, was it? I took a deep breath and sighed.

  “Peter, can I have a few minutes first—to collect my thoughts? You know, to make peace with my past—with myself?”

  “Of course,” he replied without hesitation.

  Instantly, I found myself walking on the beach just outside my house. It was my favorite place to be. The blustery cold wind whipped through my hair and it felt good. I took a few deep breaths, taking in the fresh air. The sound of the waves crashing into the peaks and valleys of frozen water that lined the shore for miles on either side of me, the smell of the beach in winter, the feel of the cold sand and ice crunching under my feet—it all felt so real. It was my home, and I would miss it.

  I thought about summers on the beach with my parents. My dad taught me how to swim in this water. We would build huge sand castles together, complete with moats and bridges. My mom and I would sit under a huge beach umbrella for hours, playing checkers and reading books. She’d always wear the same wide-brimmed straw hat and huge old-Hollywood sunglasses.

  When I was older, I hung out on this beach with my friends. We would have bonfires at night, roast marshmallows, sing songs, take late night dips in the lake, and just goof around. I met Ryan on this beach …

  Ryan. I wondered how he felt about my death? Did he feel responsible? Part of me wanted him to feel guilty. After all, I wouldn’t have been on the road that night if I hadn’t caught him cheating on me.

  I shook my head in self-disgust. It was wrong of me to blame Ryan for my death or to even hope he blamed himself. In all fairness, I wouldn’t have been on the road that night if I hadn’t kissed another guy. Besides, even if the events of that horrid evening had unfolded differently, even if I had left on Sunday like I originally had hoped, I knew the outcome would’ve been the same. I was never supposed to make it back to Bloomington. My time had come. It was as simple as that.

  I was dead … and soon I was going to forget everything about myself—my parents, my friends—every memory I ever had … gone. Refusing to waste my last few minutes on Ryan, I turned my attention to the expansive landscape before me.

  The sky was perfectly clear and the sun was just beginning to set. The seasons had changed and now the fresh smell of spring permeated the air. I could make out parts of the Chicago skyline across Lake Michigan. I watched the sky ignite with fiery yellows, oranges, and reds as the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, just behind the dark outlines of the buildings so far away. The skyscrapers looked like tiny fingers reaching out towards the giant ball of fire, hoping to grasp one last bit of warmth before the moon and the stars came out to play. It was truly an amazing sight, and I was glad I got to see it one more time as me.

  I suddenly realized I was no longer alone.

  “Beautiful isn’t it?” I asked Peter.

  “Always,” he responded. Standing side-by-side, we silently watched the last traces of the sun drop below the horizon.

  I took a huge breath and sighed. “Okay, I’m ready,” I said shakily. Peter grabbed my hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

  “Don’t worry, Eve,” he said. “Once you wake up, you will feel completely at ease. In fact, you’ll never question why you’re a Shepherd. It won’t occur to you to do so, just like it never occurred to you to question why you were a human.”

  I tried to relax, but inside I felt far from calm. The beach, the lake, the horizon—all of it started to fade away before my very eyes like a sidewalk chalk drawing in the rain. I took another deep breath.

  “Let’s do this,” I said unsurely.

  “Go ahead, Eve—close your eyes.”

  10. Time Keeps Moving On

  “Eve?” I heard my name being called.

  “Eve?” the voice called out again.

  I groaned. I felt groggy, as if I was coming out of a deep slumber.

  “Eve.” I felt someone nudging me gently. “It’s Peter.”

  I slowly opened my eyes and saw a blurry figure hovering over me. As my eyes gradually began to focus, I recognized Peter. I looked around. I was in a huge library of sorts, and I was lying on top of a long wooden reading table. I didn’t think I’d ever been here before, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Where am I?” I asked, still dazed. “How did I get here?” I was struggling to remember, but I couldn’t. Actually, I could remember only three things. First, my name was Eve. Just Eve. If I had a last name, I couldn’t recall it. Second, I was a Shepherd—not that I knew what that entailed exactly. And third, I knew Peter. He was here to teach me what I needed to know about being a Shepherd. Despite the fact that I was armed with only these few tidbits of information, and that I had absolutely no idea where I was, I was peculiarly at ease with my circumstances.

  “Welcome to the Archives. This is where we live when we’re not on assignment.” Peter chuckled at his own joke.

  “On assignment?” I asked.

  “We’re on assignment when we are protecting a mortal whose fate has been—”

  “Manipulated,” I said, completing Peter’s explanation. My mind began filtering in more and more information.

  “Yes, that’s right. Very good,” he sa
id, smiling. “I hoped I had been careful enough when completing your transformation to leave in place at least some of the fundamentals we had discussed.” Peter seemed very pleased with himself. “Tell me, what else do you remember?”

  “About what?”

  “Well, about whatever comes to mind.”

  “I remember little bits and pieces of information, but it’s all jumbled.” I crinkled up my forehead, straining to make sense of whatever I could. “I know my name is Eve, and I’m a Shepherd.”

  “Okay—good. And what do you know about Shepherds?” Peter inquired.

  “Well, I know you’re a Shepherd. I know that I died recently—suddenly, I think—and then I became a Shepherd. And our job is to guard humans whose destinies have been manipulated … by the … the …” I was struggling to remember the wrongdoers’ names.

  “The clan of demons called the Servants,” Peter assisted.

  “Right—the Servants.” My mind was trying to wrap itself around all of this. Servants and Shepherds. Demons and …

  “So,” I asked, “what are we exactly? I mean, why are we called Shepherds? Why not just call us guardian angels?” I asked the question and then wondered if maybe there were no such things as guardian angels. Maybe we were the only protectors out there.

  “Guardian angels are different. Every human is assigned one at birth. Guardian angels watch over their humans, or their charges, throughout the course of the humans’ lives, subtly guiding their charges with respect to their beliefs, choices, and other matters relating their humans’ physical, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being.

  “Shepherds, on the other hand, are assigned to watch over humans only if and when we realize they have been targeted by the Servants.”

  “Okay, so once you realized that my fate had been manipulated by the Servants, you—what—stepped in and took over for my guardian angel? He wasn’t up for the job anymore?” I asked.