by Oxford, Rain
“Not as long as you also get the beast.” At least he had a sense of humor… somewhere in him.
The rain was pouring harder now and the lightning came more often, though it stayed in the sky. The moon was hidden by the thick clouds, but the lightning and the light pollution from the city illuminated the sky.
The creature approached cautiously. I assumed it would do something to throw us off so I was surprised when it treaded out of the woods directly in front of us. Edward picked up his bag and handed it to me. I shuddered as the cat’s eyes focused on it; obviously the beast knew where the books were. I had a target pressed against my chest. When Edward took a few steps forward, the cat started walking to the side. It was circling.
The street light crackled, but the glow of the city-lit sky made it all too easy to see the cat’s sparkling teeth. The instant the street light went out, the cat sprang. It ran more like a feline than the other two and was twice as fast. Somehow the cat seemed to appear to the sides, like it was running from side to side, before it disappeared completely. The ground exploded upward and the cat reappeared beside it, clearly having stumbled over the debris.
It kept running. Though slower than before, it was still coming too fast to even try the lightning trick. It stumbled again, this time stopping cold with its head and back forced down. There was no time to question Edward. I imagined the lightning striking the cat just like I had before… Nothing happened.
“Kill it!” Edward demanded.
“I’m trying!” There was a loud crack and the cat was suddenly running again. Once again, I found myself in the mud with a monstrous alien cat above me and just barely enough time to put one arm up to protect myself. The ground exploded beside me as it bit my arm like the other had. Better my arm than my throat.
Then the cat was off me. Edward had his hands wrapped firmly around its neck for a few seconds before the cat was on top and its teeth were snapping mere inches from Edward’s face. Its snout was as big as his face, and its body was longer than his.
My mind felt disconnected, lost in so much fear that I couldn’t form complete thoughts. I didn’t realize what the blinding light meant, or the sound of the cat’s shriek. I did understand the pain I felt, like every inch of my body was being ripped apart and burned, and I understood the numbness that followed. I was struck by lightning.
* * *
I hurt so badly, but I knew that was wrong. I shouldn’t hurt. I always figured dead people didn’t feel pain. Suddenly, it was clear to me, and my stomach turned over: I was in Hell. Mother was right? No! I’ll never hear the end of this!
But I heard heavy breathing.
That was odd.
I opened my eyes. It was dark, but I saw Edward crouched over me. He’d been giving me CPR. What a horrible person to bring me back to the broken thing that used to be my body.
He sat back, panting. “You are very fragile for someone with so much raw power.”
“The cat!” I choked. I started coughing and couldn’t stop.
“You killed it. You didn’t even merely knock it out like the other one; you killed it instantly and fried yourself. But the good news is that you didn’t fry me.”
“I thought I was supposed to be immortal!”
“Immortal in a sense. That just means you will never age and are really difficult to kill. There are different levels of immortality, and we are hardly indestructible. We will not die of age or sickness. That’s pretty much it.
I started laughing in between my coughs, but that just made the coughing hurt worse, so I plopped down in the cool, muddy grass. The coughing settled and I looked up at the clear sky.
Hadn’t it just been storming? “How long was I out?”
“You were dead for about a minute,” he answered. I realized he was lying next to me when he sat up and climbed to his feet. “We should go now.” He took my uninjured arm and pulled me to a sitting position, then stopped when I involuntarily yelled. My entire body hurt so badly.
“I need water. I need to go to a hospital,” I said.
“No, that would take too long and there would be too many questions.” He pulled out his book and put his leadless pencil in my hand. I really tried to sign it, but my hand wouldn’t work and I could barely feel the pencil.
“I can’t,” I said. The pencil and book disappeared and he was pulling me to my feet. I shouted again before my vision blurred.
“Hush. We mustn’t stay here, for there was much noise and someone may come to investigate.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure about what. My mind and body didn’t seem to be connected and everything was spinning. When the ringing in my ears started, I knew I was going to pass out. Edward held me up and forced me to walk. He was mostly dragging me, which I was fine with. I wasn’t sure how long it was before he sat me up against a tree. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Don’t be. You did very well. Are you about to black out? You’re sweating and very pale.” Without waiting for an answer, he pressed a small bottle to my lips. “Drink,” he ordered.
I did, and nearly gagged. It was thick like medicine and tasted like extremely sweet spinach. The instant the liquid hit my stomach, my head stopped pounding, my temperature regulated, and the nausea and ringing stopped.
“Better?”
“God, yes.”
He pulled my sleeve up on my injured arm to reveal big welts of blood. “It would be a bad idea to splint this before we jump worlds.” My eyes closed and I bit my lip until I tasted blood when he felt for breaks. “Your bone’s broken in two places and cracked in three.”
I couldn’t look until I felt my arm become numb with cold. He was putting a mint-colored paste on my arm. “What is that?”
“A mixture of plants from my world.” He finished and sealed a jar next to him. “This will hurt,” he warned.
I covered my mouth with my free hand as he took a white gauze out of his bag and wrapped it around my arm. When he tied it off, I gritted my teeth, but the pain faded quickly. Whatever the medicinal paste was, it was pretty fantastic.
“Is that better?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I pulled myself up to sit a little straighter and coughed a little. My lungs felt raw, which was ironic because they were actually cooked. “Before we leave… can you help me get to my apartment? I need to pick up a few things and I want to call Vivian.”
“We can’t stay for long and the less time we take, the better.” But he helped me up anyway. “I don’t advise this.”
“I value your advice.” I just value clean underwear more. “We can’t go until I get control back into my hand, so we might as well take care of a few things.”
The walk home was nearly unbearable and when we finally got there, Edward had to unlock the door because my hands still weren’t cooperating. Luckily, none of my neighbors cared enough about me to check if everything was all right.
After getting Edward and myself towels to dry off with, I opened my dresser and started to shuffle through papers. I didn’t need financial records or school papers, but it was safer not to leave my social security card and birth record behind. I collected my favorite clothing and headed back into the living room, where Edward stood at the edge of my couch, petting my cat.
“That’s Dorian. Can we take him?”
“Not unless he can sign my book. Besides, it’d be difficult for him to adapt to Duran.”
I nodded. It was just one more goodbye. I picked him up with my unbroken arm, ignoring the pain, and looked him in the face. “You were there to help me through college. Maybe Vivian will find a good home for you.” I set him down and he flounced away, annoyed I didn’t pet him.
I stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed the phone above the sink. It took several tries to stab the correct digits with my stinging fingers. I put it to my ear and it rang several times before someone picked up.
“Hello? You have the wrong number.”
I recognized the four-year-old’s voice. “Hanna, is Viv
ian there?” I asked Vivian’s little sister.
“No, she’s in her room.”
“Can you take the phone to her room, please?” I heard Hanna climb up the stairs, a door open, and then Vivian’s loud protests about Hanna entering without knocking.
“Hello?” Her sweet voice was seeping exhaustion.
“It’s me. How’s the studying doing?” I heard her sit on the bed.
“Terrible. I haven’t even been able to start yet. I have a paper due tomorrow that Mr. Brian swears he told us about two weeks ago. He’s lying through his brown dentures, of course. And Dr. Doom wants me to go over his ten-page speech. I guess that you don’t need to be able to spell as a lawyer; you just have to get a good secretary.”
I was a little disappointed that the last time I would be able to talk to her was when she was in a bad mood. I glanced into the living room at Edward, who was paying me no attention. “How was the movie with Chelsi last weekend?”
She paused for a second. “Awesome. Guess who we saw there.” And she went on and on, telling me about her day. Five minutes later, she took a breath and I was able to jump in.
“Sounds like you had a fun day. Listen, you know Mother’s new boyfriend?”
“Yeah?” She sounded startled that I had brought my mother and her idiot boyfriend into our conversation. “What about him? He’s not back bothering you again, is he? I can probably pull a restraining order.”
“No, no. He’s… Well, he had an accident. He’s in a hospital in Dallas and I need to be there for Mother. I’m leaving tonight and I won’t be back for about a week. I’m going to let Dorian run free. I haven’t gotten my check from work yet. If you’ll pick it up, you can have it. It’ll just go to waste otherwise. My apartment’s a mess and I’m going to have them bug bomb it sometime, so you definitely shouldn’t go in until I get back.”
“Okay… Well… I’ll see you when you get back then. Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Yeah. It will be. I have to get going now. Bye.” I hung up the phone, sighed, turned around, and jumped back, just barely holding back an unmanly shriek. Edward was standing a foot away. “Jesus! Don’t do that! You look like a freakin vampire!”
Edward smirked. “No, I don’t. I’ll point out a real vampire to you one of these days.”
“There is no such thing,” I told the alien. I dragged myself back into the living room and gathered my stuff into a plastic bag. It was pretty sad that everything that was important to me could fit in a grocery store sack, and even sadder that it was almost all clothes.
“It’s not necessary for you to bring so much. You needn’t bring any clothes; we will have to go to Anoshii to get some things. I can lend you something of mine since it would be unwise for you to walk around in such odd clothing; people cannot know you’re from another world. Why did you tell your girlfriend you will be gone for a week?”
“If I didn’t, she’d come looking for me by tomorrow. My apartment will still smell like me tomorrow, and I assume it’ll smell like the book, too. It’ll be as bad as her being with me.”
Edward nodded. “Very clever of you. Do you think you’re ready to sign the book?”
“Maybe.” He pulled it and his pencil out. I was able to clumsily wrap my fingers around it. He opened the book to the third page and there was a small blank spot in the middle. I signed my name very slowly and it turned out pretty good. If it was going to represent me eternally, I wanted it to be good. “There. Wasn’t so hard.” My uninjured arm twitched and the skin near my shoulder grew cold. It didn’t hurt, thankfully. I rolled my sleeve all the way up and examined a new mark. It was in red, like an old wound, and was the same that Edward had on him. It faded very quickly with the cold and was gone.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
I opened my door to let Dorian out, shut and locked it, and then grabbed my papers, my toothbrush, toothpaste, and two outfits. “As ready as I can be. How do we do this?”
“Can you remember the symbol on your arm?”
“Yeah. Surprisingly, yeah.”
“Good. Focus on that. Forget about everything else and focus on the symbol. I don’t have the time to teach you how to travel on your own yet, so I will do it for the both of us.” He took the bag from me.
I nodded and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, I was able to clear everything from my mind except for the symbol. The fact that I was completely exhausted actually helped.
Then I felt like I was light as air, but also that I was falling. There was no wind, but I couldn’t breathe, as if a great wind was blowing in my face. I hated the feeling of falling, so it was surprising that the overall sensation felt rather nice. My body didn’t ache so badly and I didn’t even lose my stomach like the falling sense has made me do. I wasn’t tired anymore.
Then it ended. The pain, the exhaustion, and a whole new level of feeling like lead came over me with a rush. I hit ground all at once and entirely too hard. It took a minute before I realized I could breathe, and even then it was like I was breathing in half water, but the cool humidity helped the pain in my lungs.
Edward turned me over onto my back, but it was dark and I could barely see him. I was outside in the soft, wet grass. “Come on, you should get in and dry off.” I tried to sit up; I was just too heavy and too tired. At this point, I felt worse than when I accidentally consumed hemlock. Edward sighed. “All right then. Just sleep.” That I could do. Edward picked me up and I heard a door shut with a creak as I passed out.
Chapter 3
I woke up. What a stupid thing to do. My heart was in my head, my stomach was a shriveled up pea, my body was aching, and my arm was itching. Is it Monday already? Did I fall asleep in Luis’s class again?
A cold wet cloth on my forehead gently eased my headache as I slowly remembered where I was and what happened. I sat up and immediately flopped back down. It was harder than it should have been to merely raise my hand and pull the cloth off my face. Gentle morning light filled the room and unfamiliar birds sung in the distance.
The room was small and dusky, but a two-foot by three-foot window high in the wall let in plenty of light. It was simplistic with sparse furniture and unpainted stone walls, but reasonably cozier than a basement. I was in a twin sized bed with light brown covers that were made of something between wool and short fur. The bed was very plush and pliant; not made with springs. A matching bed sat empty across the room. Next to my bed was a small ebony dresser with three drawers, about three feet tall. Beside the other bed was an identical dresser in a red mahogany color. There were wooden stairs that led to a trap door, starting about five feet from the foot of my bed. Against the middle of the wall, opposite of the two dressers, was a large mocha-colored wooden bookshelf.
I sat up again, prepared for my new heaviness. It wasn’t so difficult after a few seconds when the vertigo faded. Although there was a tan bandage around my arm, it didn’t hurt any more than the rest of my body; it was more of an ache than an injury. My clothes were gone, probably ruined by the sheer amount of blood I had shed, but a t-shirt and jeans were folded up at the foot of my bed. My muscles protested every movement as I carefully dressed.
I pulled myself to my feet, wobbled for a minute, and headed up the stairs. Pushing the door up was a struggle that left me out of breath. The air itself felt thick and wet, but definitely not short of oxygen.
I entered a picture perfect cabin, both simplistic and comfortable. The floor, walls, ceiling, and door were all made with dark brown wood. It wasn’t a tall or a wide cabin, only about twelve-by-twelve. On the far wall to my left was a heavy door with a brass knob. On the left side of the door was a large window with durable shutters on the outside. To the right of the door was a large, empty cage.
In front of the trapdoor I was standing in was a dark wooden table, four foot across, with three matching wooden chairs around it and a strange brass lamp in the center. Across from the table was a wood-burning stove. Against the wall to my right was a collection
of shelves and cabinets.
Beside the stove was a large chair that had the general shape of an easy chair with dark red velvet cushioning. On the other side of that was another bookshelf, full of old books and small jars. One clear jar displayed an assortment of small bones.
Where is the bathroom? Aliens have to go to the bathroom, don’t they? I forced myself to stand relatively straight as I staggered slowly to the door and opened it. I groaned at the bright light, stumbled out onto the fair-sized porch, and took my first look at the foreign world I would be living on.
The cabin was in a massive forest. And when I say massive, I mean rainforest massive. The trees were huge and the branches were high. Most of them had leaves that were different shades of green and bark that was shades of brown, but one tree was completely silver. It was very beautiful.
The grass in the forest was taller than the grass in the clearing, about a foot in height, and was darker and bluer than normal. The sky was cerulean in color and the sun was just as bright and warm as the one on Earth. The weather was warm and clear, and though the air was strange, it did feel nice in my lungs. Or maybe my poor lungs were just happy to have oxygen again.
About four meters to my left was Edward, wearing an outfit identical to the one he wore when I met him. He was chopping wood logs, which in itself, wasn’t odd. What made me pause was that while the logs had dark brown bark, the insides were bright green.
He stopped chopping to examine me. His eyes didn’t look so cold, or even as dark brown as before. Whether it was the light of day or the fact that he was at his home, he appeared a great deal friendlier, which was a definite relief seeing as how I would have to live with him for several years.
“How long was I out?” I asked. My voice was raw and I thought I would have to say it again.
“Two days. I’m surprised to see you standing.” He regarded me with concern when I made my way slowly down the stone steps to stand in front of him.