“No one can wield it but you, Hope. Have I mentioned how much I approve of your human name? It is so fitting for our need for you, now more than ever.”
I looked down at the key, remembering that I had been the only one to ever play with it, or even touch it. Why was that?
“Where did this come from, anyway? My parents couldn’t ever explain, they just said it had always been mine.”
Time for questions of my own, real questions that should bring some sort of clarification to Declan’s crazy claims.
He hung his head for a few moments, then lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes were glimmering with anger and I almost took a step back, away from him.
“She must have left it for you, but I can’t see why. One of her sick games, perhaps so she could laugh all these years at the idea that she had given you the key to your own kingdom, but that you would never know what it was.”
So much for gaining any insight by asking him questions. Now he had brought someone new into the picture, a she, as well as a kingdom that was mine. The only kingdom I belonged to was the gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free, egg-free club, and I’d be glad to relinquish my membership at any time.
He shook his head, but obviously noticing my confusion, put a hand to his forehead and apologized.
“I’m sorry, there’s so much to explain and just not enough time. I’ll tell you more on the way, once we’ve returned.”
Returned? I’d never been anywhere but Castle Heights.
“Okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t know you, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nothing you’ve said today makes any sense.”
I lowered my arm and enfolded the key and chain back into my hand as it rested by my side. Declan watched the movement, then quickly, almost unnervingly, came closer to me, his face inches from mine.
He was just as gorgeous close up as he was from a distance, with perfectly clear skin and those stunningly icy eyes.
“In the woods just now . . . you felt that, truly, did you not? That’s how you’ll feel all the time in Faerie. It’s how you’re meant to feel, with all the beauty and clarity of the realm at your fingertips.”
He had a point, a really good one. There was no way to explain what had happened to me in the woods, not from a logical or physical standpoint. How I wanted it to be my reality, though. I had always been sick and weak, and that small taste of health and strength was an unfair tease if I never had the chance to feel that way again.
But he was now telling me that I did have that chance, if I went to this faerie place he kept talking about, which was exactly where?
“And your dreams? Your visions? Gone. All of that is your mind’s reaction to your unnatural placement in this world.”
Now he had gone too far, and there was no way for him to know so much about me to have my darkest secret at his disposal to use against me to get his way.
I pointed a finger at his chest, nearly touching his shirt but stopping before I made contact. I didn’t need to see that field and those trees again, or hear his sad voice as I followed him. Did he know about that, too?
“Why do you know so much about me? Have you been spying on me? Why?”
The pendulum of emotions I had felt all day, but especially over the last hour or so, was wearing me out. The thrill of the experience in the woods, Declan’s frustrating revelations and comments, along with his refusal to explain what he was talking about, and now, the truth of how much he truly knew about me.
“I have been looking for you for years, although I myself have no memory of how I was assigned to find you. Others of our kind have been trapped in the human realm before, and the physical and psychological reactions are the same as yours.”
He closed his eyes.
“All my dreams have been of finding you and bringing you back. I can’t begin to tell you what it means to finally have you, and the key, in my sights.”
I wanted him to tell me exactly what it meant, but he continued without explaining.
“There’s trouble in Faerie, and you’re our great hope.”
He smiled, and without thinking, my lips mimicked the gesture. That’s what he had been saying about my name. I almost laughed at how goofy it all sounded.
“Uh, I don’t think I’m up for solving any trouble, or whatever you want to call it. I have homework and two parents who would freak out if I wasn’t here when they got home from work.”
Declan’s laugh was relaxed and reassuring, as if he just expected me to go along with his plan. What if I said no?
Did I really want to?
“As a dreamseer, you know that you can foretell the future. What did you envision when I caught you in the cafeteria today?”
His quick subject changes weren’t helping my train of thought, and I couldn’t contain my annoyance. He was completely disregarding what I had said.
“What does that have to do with anything? I’ve never even heard of a dreamseer, and my problem is that I can’t go somewhere with a complete stranger when my parents are expecting me to be here.”
He smiled, which only angered me further. I turned away and stomped a few steps, which did little to vent my frustration.
“Dreamseers are few, and only those who are changelings have the potential to be one.”
While dreamseer was an unfamiliar word to me, changeling was not. Like every other little girl I knew, I had read fairy tales, some with creepy themes and endings.
One of the creatures that had stuck in my memory was the changeling, which was vaguely different depending on the story, but always a being that had been left in the place of a human child that was stolen.
Wait, what was Declan telling me, exactly?
As I began to piece the words and his comments together, Declan stood quietly behind me, like he knew I needed the space to connect the dots in my head.
“A dreamseer has visions of the future, right?”
He answered immediately.
“Yes, usually through touch. Whoever the dreamseer comes into contact with, that is the person whose future is foretold.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Stories of horrible ugly beasts with twisted limbs and pointy teeth crept into my thoughts, as I recalled the changelings of childhood stories.
“And dreamseers are, by definition, changelings.”
Declan’s deep sigh followed my statement, which wasn’t actually a question. His reaction validated the terrifying reality of the connection between my curse and my nature.
Chapter Nineteen
All of this went only as far as I chose to believe it, of course, and the way my head had started to throb again after the experience in the woods, I knew I had to at least grab a couple of ibuprofen and a glass of cold water before digesting more of Declan’s words.
Without looking back at him, I wandered to the kitchen and took a clean glass from the cabinet above the dishwasher. Declan moved quietly behind me, but I could sense that he was following me, giving me a little distance ahead.
“My friend Corrie gave me this souvenir glass after she went to Niagara Falls with her family.”
I tilted the glass, which had an etched painting of a waterfall on it, towards him so he could look at it if he wished.
“That’s where I am right now, going right after that waterfall.”
It was a silly sort of thing to say but totally true. Either I could play along with everything that had been said and done today, or tell him to get lost. Or maybe just tell him that I didn’t believe him, but would still like to be friends with him.
Or that I’d love to be more than friends, but the whole touching thing would be a problem when it came to our first kiss.
“I don’t know this Niagara Falls, but we have waterfalls similar to this painting but much larger, with mists that carry for miles,” he looked up with a tiny smile, his eyes following an image in the air that only he could see. How did someone not know about Niagara Falls?
I turned the faucet on and let the water run into th
e sink for a few seconds so it could get really cold before holding the glass underneath it. Declan watched my every move, and I glanced at him, mystified by his interest in my simple actions.
“Let me guess. You don’t have plumbing in Faerie?”
He shook his head slowly.
“I know of it, obviously, but it’s still an amazing concept. When I went to the restroom today . . . well, I suppose there’s no need to share that.”
Not really, I thought, but the idea of him trying to figure out what to do with the urinals in the boys’ room was amusing. What wasn’t so amusing was my sudden wonder over how they handled that sort of thing in Faerie, and how it could not be gross.
My head was working through all of this as if I was accepting, at the very least, that there was a real place called Faerie, a place where Declan belonged and wanted to return. As far as my role in his wishes, that was something I wasn’t quite sure about.
I opened another cabinet door and pulled out a small bottle of generic ibuprofen, set aside with the other over the counter medicine and vitamins. On the shelf above them sat my many supplements and prescription bottles, some of which I hadn’t used on a regular basis for awhile.
For every pill that seemed to work, there were side effects that made the help more trouble than it was worth. One day, I hoped, I would either start to grow out of some of my inexplicable weakness and allergies, or I would stumble onto a doctor who could actually help me rather than treat me like a lab experiment.
“All of these? You’ve been subjected to these chemicals?”
Declan was suddenly at my side, pushing the cabinet door further open, and staring, his eyes wide and horrified. Subjected to? They were all given with the thought that they might help me, although none of them had. He shook his head, as if he could read my thoughts.
“I am so sorry I didn’t find you sooner. Even if I had realized what you might be going through, I don’t know if I could have done so, even with that incentive.”
Either he was slightly insane, believing in his story completely, or he was telling the truth.
Whatever had happened in the woods, though, had involved both of us, so if he was losing his mind, I was absolutely along for the ride. The temptation to throw myself into whatever plans he had for us next was motivated entirely by those incredible physical sensations, unknown to me until those moments.
Could I really experience them again, as Declan promised?
“In the woods . . . it was unbelievable. You said we were betwixt somewhere? How did that happen?”
Shifting the subject from his reaction to my pharmaceutical collection was the right move, as his face lit up with a broad smile. Those nearly clear blue eyes of his were uncanny, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone else with them ever before.
“I can shift us Betwixt, but no further. I’m counting on you to trust me when I say we need you to use the key to unlock the door back into Faerie.”
That didn’t really explain Betwixt much, but I could guess from the name that it was somewhere between here and Faerie. Wherever it was, and whatever it was, there was no denying how much more alive I felt while we were there.
And what was up with Declan kneeling before me during that time, holding my hand? How was it that I didn’t see anything except him, right then, with his forehead pressed against the back of my hand?
I flipped the childproof cap off the bottle of ibuprofen and tilted a couple of pills into my hand as Declan frowned. Without answering him, I slipped them into my mouth and swallowed some water.
“You had a vision, I know, in the cafeteria today.”
His words had hardly left his lips when I started to choke. I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t spit out the pills and closed my eyes, focusing on breathing in a way that wouldn’t keep me gagging over his question.
Our futures were entwined, at least through those unknown woods and the field, at least until we had reached a point where he was utterly sad and possibly sorry he had brought me there.
I stopped coughing as he waited for me to respond, and I wondered what, if anything, I should tell him about the vision. If I told him everything, maybe he wouldn’t want to go on this crazy trip to Faerie, or wherever we would end up.
“I understand your desire to keep the experience to yourself, but whatever it was, I would really like to know. Forewarned is always better than unaware.”
Maybe it was better if I asked him about some of the details first, and then I could have a better understanding of what actually had happened in the vision, aside from the obvious.
Wiping my face with a dish towel that had been hanging from the oven door, I silently went over what I remembered Declan saying as he turned to me, dispelling the calm I felt as I walked through the pleasant and refreshing meadow.
“Who do you know that would want to kill us?”
The words slipped out just as I thought them, wondering about the most important part of my vision. He stood up straighter and lifted his chin.
“Did you see her? Did she try to harm you?”
He shook his head violently.
“No, no . . . wait. Your vision should have been about my future, not yours. By us, I am guessing you mean that you were there with me?”
I held up the key and he calmed down, his eyes shifting to the dull yet finely wrought object.
“Will this key take us to a place with a forest and meadow, somewhere a woman who wants to kill us both lives?” I spoke carefully, forcing myself to remain calm enough for the both of us.
Did he really expect me to want to go someplace where I was already marked for death, even though I had never been there before?
Patience was eluding me, and I didn’t give him more than a few seconds to answer before I continued, tossing the dish towel down on the counter.
“You forgot to mention this death threat while you’ve been trying to convince me to go to Faerie with you. I’m thinking that it wasn’t an accident.”
Declan’s eyes were fixated on the key as I lifted the chain over my head, sliding the key down it so it rested just below my collarbone over my shirt.
“What if I use this key, as you say, to open a door into Faerie, and you go there. I can stay here, you and I won’t be together, and that future won’t happen.”
Finally, his head turned quickly towards me, his eyes wide.
“Absolutely not. I came here for you, and no matter what you saw in that vision, I will leave with you and restore you to your rightful place in Faerie.”
Chapter Twenty
As far as I knew, my rightful place was in my bed taking a nap before my dad got home. Declan’s voice was clear and serious, though, and I had to admit that he was drawing me in further the more he revealed.
If this was all fake, he was suffering from delusions of a magnitude I had never imagined before, and if it was true . . .
I wasn’t sure how to go down that road, not in my head.
There was a crunching sound at the side of the house and I snapped my head around to look out into the hallway, which didn’t help me see out of the living room window any better. My instinctive movement did nothing but bring me a crick in my neck, and my immediate fear was validated by the sound of car tires in the driveway, no visual confirmation necessary.
“My dad’s home!”
I whispered fiercely, turning my head back to face Declan and nearly banging his head with my own.
“Let’s go, then. I promise they’ll never know you were gone.”
That made no sense.
“But I will be gone, and my mom knows that I’m here, so my dad will be expecting to see me.”
Declan glanced down at my lips, which were dry and itchy again. I couldn’t help but compare the feeling, as I bit down on my bottom lip, to that of them soft and plump between my teeth back in the woods. Would following him really lead me somewhere that I didn’t have to return to this sad, sick physical state again?
“With the key, it will take
us only minutes to find a lock into Faerie, and I’ll be able to explain more to you once we’re in.”
But if my dad came in before then, he didn’t continue but meant all the same, we’d have a different kind of explaining to do, and maybe a more difficult time leaving. I doubted that my father would approve of me leaving to places unknown with a boy he had never met before, even if Declan and I made up a story about studying at the library.
Wasn’t that what most teenagers said they were going to do before trouble started?
“Back door.”
I pointed towards the living room even as my dad’s car door slammed shut. He would take a moment to retrieve his briefcase from the trunk, and then head for the connecting door that led into the house through the small den attached to the living room.
Whoever had designed this house made absolutely no sense, but I was thankful to him or her now for making his entry far from my exit path.
Declan started to run back through the living room, taking the only route that didn’t go in the direction my father would be coming. My room and my parents’ room were on the opposite side of the hall from the wall of the den, and the hall ended with a small room where my mother did our laundry, and a tiny screened porch where our wet clothes sometimes hung to dry.
It was a natural progression to continue out of the house from there, but Declan stopped to let me catch up. I hadn’t realized that I was out of breath until I nearly collided with him, and he held his hands up so we wouldn’t touch.
“It has to be you. I can’t lure or entice you, but you have to want to go of your own free will. The key won’t work otherwise.”
The door was unlocked, so I wasn’t sure what he meant. I didn’t have to use the key on this door, and he could open it just as easily as I could.
Maybe he was giving me a chance to change my mind, which was odd considering that he had been pushing me to accept his bizarre story. Hadn’t he said that my name was appropriate, since this faerie world had hope in me?
Was he putting his own interests and that of the faerie world he claimed as his own second to my desires?
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