by Kristal Lim
"Where the bloody hell is she?!"
A sharp pain jolted him awake and Trevor realized that he had been hurled off his bed during his sleep. Then he hit his head against the wall. Stunned, he opened his eyes and saw only darkness for a second before his vision adjusted to the dim light and he noticed that there was a shadow hulking over him. The little illumination coming through the open window was just enough to allow him to make out some details about the stranger in his bedroom.
The stranger was huge, dark, and feathered. Trevor saw a terrifyingly inhuman face with a sharp beak and burning eyes, and he opened his mouth to let out a yell, but the creature suddenly picked him up with hands that were more like talons and slammed him against the wall again. His panicked mind then tried to tell him that he must be having some kind of nightmare. He wasn't really being held in the grip of a monstrous bird-like creature with the rough voice of a man. He was only dreaming. This was all a nightmare. It had to be.
But then the creature brought its face very close to his until Trevor could peer deep into its glowing gold eyes and smell its hot, moist breath. And it was then he had the thought that he had looked into those eyes before. He wasn’t able to make any sound though because the thing spoke first.
"Where is she?" it growled out through a throat that was not meant for human speech. "She was not in the Prince's Court and I followed her scent and I smelled you! You found her. But where is she now?"
"What–are you talking about?" Trevor managed to choke out the words through the tight grip the monster had on his throat.
It sniffed at him then snarled like something ravenous and threw him to the floor. Its entire body seemed to throb and it grew leaner while its feathers fluttered and shifted into different shapes until the creature was wearing a tattered-looking coat and punkish clothes. Its face changed form, too, as the black feathers retracted and sank underneath the pores of its pale skin while its beak grew shorter and shorter until the whole thing disappeared and all its features reformed into a handsome face that Trevor immediately remembered seeing quite recently.
"You!" It was the weird young man who had bumped into him in the park. How the hell did he get here inside Trevor's house? "Who are you? What are you?" Trevor demanded.
The young man shot Trevor a very annoyed look. "Oh, shut up," he snapped. "You're lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I would have done it, but then I caught the barest whiff of my mother's stink on you. Of course, I should have known that she'd be meddling in this. She's waited seven years to do so." After saying that, which did not make any sense to Trevor at all, the stranger sat down on the floor and took out a shiny silver cup that should not have been able to fit in his coat pocket without a huge bulge. He spat into it and, to Trevor’s disbelieving eyes, it began to fill with a sparkling liquid. He then moved the cup in a circle until the liquid swirled around it and began to cast a pale glow that brightened the room. He looked into its contents for a long while, frowning in concentration as he did so, and he made an angry noise at one point before he snorted and put the cup back into his pocket, liquid and all. Then he stood up, snapped his fingers, and light flooded the room.
"Well," he gave Trevor a measuring look, "it seems we have both been caught up in this stupidity again. Damn Benwyr. And double damn my mother for not just leaving things be! I told her time and again I wanted nothing to do with the Kingdom. But she just will not listen and would have things her way at all cost!"
Slowly, Trevor got to his feet while massaging his throat, moving very warily. He still wasn't convinced that he wasn't dreaming. "Who the hell are you?" he asked the stranger again. He was beginning to lose his fear and he was getting angry now.
"Oh," the young man who had been a monster just minutes ago shrugged and looked completely unconcerned. "I had forgotten. You've got that spell still working on you. Of course, you don't remember a thing." He then busied himself by brushing off imaginary dirt from his clothes without bothering to even answer Trevor’s oft-repeated question.
"What are you talking about?" Trevor exclaimed. Right now, he was completely convinced that he was still dreaming, so he decided to just go with it. Or maybe he had gone insane. Either way, he was not going to panic over how weird all of this was.
"The spell of forgetting the Princess agreed to in order to save your life," the guy explained, which just made Trevor more confused. At the completely baffled look on the mortal’s face, the stranger sighed. "All right then. Here is what's going on. You, my friend, have been under a spell these past seven years that has repressed all memories you have of a certain young lady who is currently the Princess of Silverhaven. Unfortunately, I can't restore those memories to you because it wasn't my spell that got rid of them. Now we all would have gone on living our lives without any of the tiresome intrigues of the Courts if my mother had not influenced events to make the two of us come back here. But, here we are."
Trevor frowned and shook his head. "That still didn't make any sense at all."
The stranger huffed. "I'll try explaining it all again. Later," he promised. "For now, you will take me to Meran."
"Who?" Trevor knew he was speaking in English, but he really had no idea what the hell the other guy was saying.
"The girl. The one you met last night."
"The one who looked like she had been held hostage?" He was suddenly wary again. What did this stranger want with that poor girl?
"Yes. I could not free her from the Prince's spell, but at least I made sure she'd be safe from the enchantments of other Lords when I left Silverhaven’s Court. However, I've recently learned that the Prince found other ways to amuse himself and his friends with her, but now she has been released from his spell, no doubt due to something my mother did, and she's wandering around somewhere probably asking why everyone's older and no one seems to remember her. You will take me to her."
"And then what?" Trevor was still wary, and very confused. He must have hit his head really hard. "What do you intend to do to her?"
"Help her, of course!" the young man snapped. "Haven't you been paying attention to anything I've said?"
"But why do you even need me to help you find her? You found me!" he pointed out.
"I never said I needed you to help me find her!" he exclaimed, looking totally exasperated as if Trevor was being deliberately obtuse. "I said I want you to take me to her. No doubt, she's surrounded by other mortals and, though I can just bring her to me, that requires a use of power that I'd rather not expend, or my mother will get wind of it. So we'll do this the human way as much as possible unless I really have to start throwing magic around. Which is likely how it's going to end up, if I know my luck," he finished darkly.
"All right. Whatever you say. But it's the middle of the night. No human would let us into a hospital at this hour just to walk away with a patient. Plus, I don't even know which hospital she's in exactly." Trevor could not believe that he was agreeing to help this weird guy. Nothing made any sense in dreams.
The stranger nodded. "That's fine. If that's how it has to be done, then that's how we'll do it. I'll wake you up when it's daylight and we can go then." He then crossed his arms and went very still, his bright unblinking eyes fixed on Trevor.
"Uh, what are you doing?" Trevor asked suspiciously.
"Waiting for daylight," he replied. "You may go to sleep if you wish."
"While you just stand there watching me?"
He blinked at that. "Of course."
"No!" Trevor exclaimed. "That is all sorts of creepy, and weird. There is no way I can sleep when I know you're just there looking at me." Honestly, this insanity had gone on long enough. Trevor was incredibly sleepy and tired, but this whatever-it-was was keeping him from getting the rest he wanted. "You get out of my room!" He pointed at the door. "Squat anywhere else in the house if you like, but you never come into my room again. Now leave!"
The black-haired stranger looked at Trevor for a moment like he was incredulous that a mere man would dare to talk to him in that
way. Then he huffed and sort of threw up his hands in annoyance. In a split second, he disappeared from view.
"Hello?" Trevor looked around wildly for him. Where had he gone off to? What if he had just turned invisible but was actually still in the room? What the hell was going on in this incredibly strange dream?
There was a pounding on the wall from the room beside his. "I'm right here waiting!" He heard the guy yell through the wall. "Satisfied?"
"Yes!" He yelled back. When the guy didn't say anything more and there was total silence for several minutes, Trevor decided to get back to bed. What a very odd little dream. He hoped he would remember it in the morning. As soon as he laid his head on his pillow, he closed his eyes.
And woke up to see daylight flooding his room. And a face peering down at him.
"Holy crap!" He screamed and frantically scrambled out of bed. It was all real. The strange dream of last night was actually real because the evidence was staring right at him looking irritated. Or was it real? Maybe he was still dreaming. He couldn't be sure of anything anymore.
"Well, are you sufficiently rested now?" the man demanded. He even tapped his left foot impatiently. "Can we please go fetch Meran today before my mother decides to put her under another spell just to get to me?"
Trevor stared at him while still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the guy was really in front of him and very real. Which meant that the strange, frightening creature he saw last night–
"Stay back!" He moved as far away from the intruder as he could. For the first time, he wished he kept a gun in the house, or took karate lessons, anything that would help him protect himself from this possible ax murderer. "If you go away now, I won't call the police," Trevor promised, then mentally added, not right away anyway.
The man’s expression looked very annoyed now and he rolled his eyes. "I am honestly getting tired of having to deal with all this human skepticism." He took a step towards Trevor and Trevor backed up in an almost panic against the wall. His gaze traveled to his bedroom window and, for a mad moment, he considered jumping out of it so he could get away from this guy. But then he’d probably only break a leg and that would not help him at all.
"Would you please be still?" the man snapped right before Trevor realized that he had come closer while he was still considering his escape options. Before he could let out a yell of fear and try to avoid him, the stranger’s right hand reached out and his fingers touched the very center of Trevor’s forehead. Then it felt like his brain caught on fire.
He was seeing things, images rushed past his eyes. It took a while before he realized they were memories, and they were about a younger him. He was looking through someone else's eyes at his gangly teenaged self while he talked to a pretty girl in his old high school. She looked familiar, but he couldn't quite remember who she was. Then the scene shifted and he was in the old Ballroom where he used to work after school. Only it didn't really look like the Ballroom much because it seemed bigger and grander, and he was standing on a balcony overlooking a lake that he was sure should not have been there. The same girl from the earlier memory was there, too, and she looked very beautiful and very confused as she stared at him. Then the black-haired guy who had broken into his house appeared and led her away, and the scene changed again. He was standing with the girl in a black ballroom and everyone seemed to be looking at the two of them. A pale guy with white hair was talking to the girl, calling her Rosamund, and she looked scared and angry. Then he saw his younger self reach out and take her hand as silvery light suddenly flashed and the two of them disappeared. In the next memory, he was with the girl in the woods then something felt like it flipped the world on its ends and he was looking on as the black-haired guy and the girl were talking. He could not clearly hear their words but he understood exactly what they were talking about. The stranger was telling her a story about something that happened a long time ago, and Trevor understood that it was their story, and he watched as the events came to life around him and he finally learned the secret of the mystery that enveloped them. Then it was just him and the girl again and they were in his stepfather’s house somehow, and he was staring at them through the window as the younger him held the girl close and kissed her. And though he still could not remember these things happening to him, he saw the look on his younger self's face when a sweet, haunting tune started playing and the girl began to disappear in his arms. When he cried out her name, Trevor cried out too and then he looked on as he was spirited away by something black and feathered, and they were all back in the black ballroom. The white-haired man was talking to the girl again and she was looking stubborn, but then the man pointed her attention to something behind a curtain and, suddenly, he saw the young him holding a knife against the throat of a younger-looking George. That seemed to finally break the girl and he wanted to scream at her and beg her to run away when he saw her take the hand of the white-haired man, and then they were dancing round and round the ballroom while the girl looked more and more lost until, at last, there was only blackness and he didn't have to see her eyes anymore.
When the flood of memories stopped, he realized that he was gasping and on his knees. He looked up at Raven, because that was the name the stranger had been called in the memories, and he seemed pretty shaken, too.
He grimaced when he saw Trevor looking at him. "I hate doing that," he complained. "Sharing memories always makes me feel like my thoughts have been violated."
"But you did something like this before, when you told–" he stumbled over saying her name, "–Aline about how all of this started."
"Those weren't my memories," Raven pointed out. "They were hers, though they became free for the taking once she lost them in the lake. Of course, all of this nonsense could have been ended years ago if only there was a way to restore the memories taken by the lake to their rightful owners, then Rosamund would still be in love with Benwyr and I wouldn't have to deal with any of the Prince's sentimental foolishness."
"Sentimental foolishness?" Trevor echoed. "Try sexual and psychological abuse. That Prince of yours coerced and brainwashed a young girl into staying with him by threatening the people she cared about. And, good God, she's been with him all these years?" He was horrified at all the implications of that fact.
Raven only shrugged. "Princes do as they will among my people. But, anyway, are you now more willing to help me get Meran?"
"Meran? What about Aline?" Trevor demanded. "Aren't you going to help her, too?"
"Why should I?" Raven looked genuinely puzzled by the question. "Only Meran is under my protection."
Trevor crossed his arms and glared at Raven. "I'm not helping you do anything unless you promise to help me get Aline back as well."
"W-what?" Raven sputtered. "Why? You don't even really remember her. I only shared those memories with you so you would better understand your part in all of this, and that is as a nonentity. You are out of all this melodrama. Your precious Aline made sure of that. So after you help me get Meran, you'll never have to deal with anything magic again. I'll hide you from my mother so she won't try to drag you into our affairs once more. What more could you wish for?"
"I want to save the girl who saved me," Trevor told Raven in his most determined tone. "She sacrificed herself for me and for her father, and she's suffered because of it. She doesn't deserve any of it." He was surprised at himself. He wondered where this sudden courage had come from and why he felt so strongly compelled to rescue someone he did not even know. It was as if an unseen hand was moving him, and Trevor could do nothing but allow himself to be pulled wherever it wanted to take him. He fixed Raven with a stubborn stare. "I will find a way to free her from the Prince's spell because that's only the right thing to do. And I owe it to her father, as well. So, are you going to help me or not?"
~~~
Chapter 20