The Forest of Adventures (#1 of The Knight Trilogy) (4 page)

“Oh, I’m sorry, you probably
have to be somewhere after class. It was rude of me to assume you
didn’t have other commitments.”

He turned to move away and as
he did, I was grabbed by an extreme sense of panic. The moment was
about to slip through my fingers, “No!” I blurted out rather too
loudly. “I mean, no, I don’t have anywhere to be after class.” My
stomach lurched.

Blake smiled at me holding out
his hand for his coat which I realised with yet more embarrassment,
I’d been hugging tightly to my chest. We made our way out of the
side gate walking side by side with the tantalising understanding
that it would have been natural for us to reach out and take each
others hand but knowing it was wildly off limits. It was only when
we were half-way down the road that I realised all of this had
happened outside the window of Sam’s Maths class, giving him a ring
side view.

Blake and I walked most of the
way into town in silence and I wondered if Blake was truly aware of
the enormity of what I was doing. I shifted my thoughts to more
abstract things, like the feel of my leather gloves, the snow
flakes on my velvet jacket, the crunch of the snow underfoot, the
flash of red from a robin. Things that were delicious but harmless
and somehow in Blake’s presence they all seemed more delicious than
I’d ever noticed.

*

I was brought back to reality
by the quaint ring of the brass bell above the bookshop door. Blake
pushed the door open, striding backwards so that I could go through
first. His old world charm struck me as out of place and it made me
smile in a way which he’d probably not intended it to.

We made our way to the back of
the shop and ordered two mugs of creamy hot chocolate, with
marshmallows on top for me and nutmeg for him, before settling down
into a sofa each. At last the tension caused the silence to
break.

“I’ve got a bit of a confession
to make,” he said looking slightly uneasy, “there’s a reason I
asked you to come here with me and it’s going to sound like a
really embarrassing cliché so I apologise in advance.” He smiled a
wry smile and took a deep breath. “Here goes; I’m certain that I’ve
met you before but I don’t know where or how?”

“You’re right, that was lame.”
I laughed. “I’m positive that we haven’t met before,” I replied,
certain I’d have remembered.

“But you see, we must have
done,” he said with an odd certainty.

“No, really…” I nodded. “You’re
confusing me with someone else.”

“No, I don’t think so…” he
coughed with embarrassment, “You see I must have met you before
because for the past three years I’ve dreamt of you.” He blushed
and took refuge in his hot chocolate.

Laughter burst out of me before
I had a chance to stop it and I saw from Blake’s reaction that he
was being deadly serious. My laughter turned to confusion, “I’m
sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I did warn you I was about to
make a fool of myself and I wasn’t going to say anything, but I
need to know - I need to know how it’s possible that you - and it
is you
-
have been in my dreams for three years when both of
us are convinced that we first met only a couple of days ago. If it
helps, I do know this sounds crazy so that’s good because it means
I’m not
actually
crazy,” he said with a nervous laugh.

I looked over to the counter,
embarrassed by the intensity of his gaze. “If it helps I’ve a
special – um - I mean strange feeling about you too. Oh god, did I
say that - that came out wrong. I mean it’s not as if I think
you’re odd or weird or ...” I blushed realising I’d fallen into a
tangle of words that wouldn’t unravel no matter how many words I
now desperately threw at it.

He smiled, “So Mina, how do we
go on from here?”

5. CRASH

It was obvious when Sam arrived
home in the afternoon that he’d seen me leaving with Blake that
morning. He poorly disguised the fact that he was packing his
things by trying to convince me he was going to Matt’s to work on
some coursework. He moved around me like I’d become a part of the
furniture; trying not to make eye contact, trying not to get caught
up in a conversation because he knew that it might end up being
that
conversation. Before he left, he stopped at the door
and turned as if he was about to say something but in the end all
he could manage was a forced smile.

After Sam left, I sat at my
desk in the quiet. I thought about the future plans Sam and I’d
made. We’d never had reason to doubt that that our future would be
travelled together. Sam was good and I knew that his love was a
precious thing. I loved him; he was part of my home, part of my
future.
Had been part of my future.

With the arrival of Blake
Beldevier, all plans were now suspended. Suspended - not terminated
- because although Blake was the tall, dark and handsome stranger,
there was something about him that wasn’t right, something about
him that was dangerous, maybe even bad. I’d seen something in his
eyes, in the way that he looked at me that made me think he knew a
secret, a dark secret that nobody else in the world knew. But even
with all of this, with every instinct telling me to run, a
delicious swell of desire surrounded every thought I had of him and
I realised that even if he turned out to be the darkest force on
the earth, I was already under a spell that I wasn’t sure I wanted
to be broken.

To fill the time and distract
myself, I powered up my laptop and logged onto Facebook in the hope
that I’d successfully waste the evening. I clicked on to Uncle
Josef and sent him a cheeky message, telling him to get down to
some proper work and to stop loafing around. He was the closest
thing I had to a dad and although he lived in London, working for a
flash architect firm which paid him a fortune just because he was a
genius, we were close, speaking with each other nearly
everyday.

A message pinged back straight
away telling me not to be rude to my elders. The irony of his swift
response proving me right wouldn’t have escaped him. When I fired
back the question as to what he was doing I hadn’t expected the
response,

On the phone. Travelling by
train. Blasted public transport. Be a poppet and put the kettle
on.

I skipped down the stairs,
cheered by the news of Josef’s visit. It had been a long time since
he had been to visit us and typical of Uncle Magic, he couldn’t
have timed it better. It was as I was raiding the fridge thinking
about organising supper, that I heard Mum crash through the front
door and call out to me with an alarming call,

“Mina! Mina where are you? Are
you home? Are you here?”

Her voice had a sickening edge
of hysteria. “Please God let you be home.”

“Mum, I’m here. What’s the
matter?”

She flew towards me, wrapping
me up in a tight hug as if I might slip away from her at any
moment.

“Thank God baby, thank God.”
She shuddered, large tears streaming down her cheeks.

Her eyes implored me to
understand something that was too painful for her to say and when
telepathy failed her, her words tumbled out hysterically, “Baby,
it’s Sam. His car. The police have shut off the road. There’s a
fire engine. I thought you were with him. Baby it’s bad. We need to
go to the hospital. We need to find out what’s happened.”

Her face was contorted, twisted
by anxiety and the anticipation of grief. She pulled back from me,
stroking my cheek. I stood rooted to the spot; a coldness
spreading, flooding my brain with a perishing whiteness.

Mum’s voice lowered to a soft
whisper, “Mina, darling, we have to go. Go and get your coat. Mina,
baby, get your coat.”

I looked out through eyes that
suddenly belonged to somebody else and I saw the figure of Mum,
small, softly rounded, her hair pulled out in wildness, her face in
a contortion of concern.

“An accident? Sam?” I managed
to grab hold of these two connected bits of information from
somewhere inside my head.

“Yes Mina - and we have to go
to the hospital
now.
Do you understand what I am saying?
Now!”

Mum dashed off with purpose. I
heard her rummaging in the hall and within seconds she returned
with my coat in her arms. I felt her lift my limp arms and stuff
them into the sleeves of my jacket just like she’d done when I was
a small child.

I felt her hand in mine.

6. SLEEP

Sam’s body lay on a bed of a
softly lit cell. By the side of his bed, a nurse closed his folder
of notes and padded out. As she closed the door behind her, she
looked right into me and offered me a weak smile nodding consent
for me to go in.

I stood still and silent by his
bedside. His face was covered in a net of small cuts; the result of
glass from the windscreen having raced towards the softness of his
flesh. His nose was swollen, broken by his impact with the steering
wheel. It was this impact that had broken his consciousness too.
Wires and tubes trailed all over his battered and beaten body so
that he looked more like a weird and fascinating science experiment
rather than a healing human. The deafening silence of the room was
interrupted only by the rhythmic bleeping of the heart monitor.

The doctor’s words whirled
round my head. Sam’s father couldn’t be contacted and I knew that
he was probably slumped in his chair, pissed and out of it. Martha
had lied to the receptionist, telling them that Sam and I were
engaged to be married. Even as she’d said it, I was filled with a
horror that maybe this would now never be possible.

Dr. Morris explained slowly and
as gently as she could, that Sam was critically ill and that there
was a serious chance he wouldn’t make it through the night. She
told us to prepare ourselves for the worst and hope for the best.
Apparently it wasn’t in our interest to give us false hope.

Sam was in a deep coma and the
hospital staff were locked in a tug-of-war just to keep him from
slipping across the invisible line between life and death. Even if
they managed to pull him over to the living side, for which they
didn’t seem to hold out much hope, then it would be likely that
part of Sam’s brain would be left behind.

Another doctor came briskly
into the room, picked up Sam’s file, tapped his pen and looked over
at him. At first I hadn’t thought that he’d noticed me. I supposed
to him, all of this was quite normal.
Another day at the
office.

“Hello.” My voice came out like
the voice of a shy child. “Is he alright? I mean I know he’s not
alright but …. I suppose what I mean is, is he any worse?”

He didn’t make eye contact; he
was busy with his monitor readout.

“You need to understand Miss
Singer, that Samuel’s very unwell. He’s undergone serious trauma
and you must prepare yourself. We’re doing everything we can and we
promise you he’s not in pain.”

His beeper went. He checked it
and then flashing me a well-practiced and tired smile he left the
room. It seemed that there was nothing left to say.

It was late by the time we left
the hospital. Fairy lights forgotten, the path to our house was a
dark and slimy route. Uncle Josef had let himself in. Mum must have
phoned him whilst we were at the hospital and we arrived home to
find him sprawled over the sofa, half a bottle of wine by his side,
his signature red braces dangling by his side.

Once, when I had been small
enough to find such things curious, I’d asked him why he wore them.
He’d told me that he had a secret life as a clown but it was tops
and I mustn’t tell anyone. As I got older and wiser he told me that
he wore them to be ironic. I suspected he wore them because they
reminded him of good times and made him still feel young at heart
if not in body so in a way the clown secret hadn’t been a lie.

It wasn’t our family style to
show great physical affection but as I walked by, he grabbed my
hand and held it for just a moment, giving it a gentle squeeze. It
was all he needed to do to show me how much he loved me and how he
truly expected things to turn out. He poured us both a glass of
wine and topped up his own. We sat down without talking. The
television was on in the corner and it gave us an excuse to pretend
we were watching it. In truth we were all lost in our own thoughts.
When the credits came up, I made my excuse and left for bed. I
could hear Mum and Josef’s muted conversation through the
floorboards of my room. It was clear that Mum, like the doctor,
didn’t expect Sam to make it through the night.

Impossibly, the smell of
hyacinths still lingered in my room and I shuddered as I recalled
how hyacinths were the symbol of a youthful death. It’s wasn’t the
sort of thing that Sam would’ve known when he brought them.

Gagging, I dashed to the
bathroom making it just in time to throw up into the toilet. Ever
since being a small child, being sick had caused me to go into a
full panic-attack so with the feeling of being drowned in boiling
waters, I threw my head under the shower, the setting on cold,
hoping to bring myself back into my own body. It worked, the
sickness faded.

I slipped my naked, shivering
body between the cold white sheets of my bed. The thought of Sam
seeing me leave the school with Blake refused to stop worming its
way through my head and I knew that somehow it was all connected;
as if his broken body was perverse reflection of the damage I’d
done to our relationship. I’d stood by Sam’s bed at the hospital
willing him to wake up so that I could explain myself, so that I
could tell him that Blake was no threat to us. And as much as I
wanted him to believe it, I wanted to believe it myself. But Sam
was unlikely to wake up soon, if at all and I knew that I’d have to
carry a level of responsibility for whatever the outcome was.

No matter how many times I
tried to reason that the accident was a fluke result of the
weather, I knew there was something more to it. Sam was always such
a careful driver and although it had been snowing, the road was
gritted and clear. Something must have caused him to spin out of
control and all I could hope for was that it wasn’t me.