Authors: A. M. Hudson
“
Yes, so, with that in mind,” David said, pointing at Mike and my Guard. “I want you five to be extra vigilant.”
“
What about me?” I asked.
“
You don’t need vigilance. You have me.”
I sat back, rolling my eyes. If he kept up this high-and-mighty behaviour,
he’d
be the one needing vigilance.
I no longer feared the Enchanted Forest. All those tales I’d been told about the trees imprisoning anyone who dared walk below their bows at the hour of dawn must have been lies. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. But the rumour did afford me a kind of privacy at this hour I couldn’t get anywhere else, which gave me a chance to think about things I couldn’t dare think of at the manor.
A bright orange orb glowed through the trunks up ahead at a distance, the dawn rising around the forest like a warm greeting. I reached out and touched the base of each tree I passed, a kind of unspoken good morning, and each one responded with a gentle tingle against my fingertips. The ground beneath my bare feet was covered in dry, summer leaves, cushioning my steps while the energy of the forest rose up from the platform of nature, electrifying every nerve within me. I felt alive out here. More alive than anywhere else I’d ever been. There was no loneliness in this forest—not like when I visited the Garden of Lilith. No, out here I had the company of something not found within the border of the manor. It was as if Nature had given up on that place—given up on the grounds, the people, even my garden. But ever since the day I swore in my own blood to protect the Stone and everything under its rule, the need to feel the buzz of life around me had become like my need for oxygen. If a day went by where I didn’t come here, didn’t strip down to nakedness, or at least leave my shoes behind out of respect for those things living under my feet, it almost felt like I was trapped in a coffin. And with all the pain I’d suffered these passing years, the last thing I needed was to feel buried as well.
I walked on toward the openness up ahead, in search of the space and breath I knew I’d find above the valley. I could breathe out here, but I could not escape the emptiness I brought with me. Something was missing. Some vital part of my mind or maybe soul had disconnected somehow, and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the time or place in my memory that it first occurred. But I knew something wasn’t right, and I knew that the bad dreams, the memory loss and this hollowness inside me was connected and that, somehow, it had something to do with Jase. Maybe it was as simple as my denied heart wanting him as a friend, or maybe it went deeper. I wasn’t sure. But I had to figure it out, whatever it was, for David’s sake and mine.
As I reached the clearing at the Stone of Truth, the energy in the forest surged and raced toward me along veins under the ground, gathering and collecting in this one place, rising up through my feet to wake my sleeping cells, then trickling away again and returning to the Stone.
I closed my eyes and held my arms out, angling my face to the sky, while the whispers of Nature filled the silence, making all the tiny hairs on my body stand on end. I could hear the wind kiss the thin edges of every leaf, could feel the small droplets of sunlight sneaking through the canopy, dancing intermittently on the bark around my toes, could hear the smallest insects crawling beneath the soil, and hear even the brush of a bird’s wing on the sky. This was my song. This was where I could plug myself in to all that I was, and just exist, for no other reason than to be a part of something greater. Here, I could think clearly.
Here, I could focus on something other than the suffocating dread I had that something was missing.
Here, I could quieten my mind long enough to see the answers beneath all the questions.
“
Auress?” a child called.
I slowly opened my eyes and lowered my arms, but as my gaze went to the Stone, a flash of gold hair caught my eye. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
A child’s face showed around a tree trunk; her cheeky smile challenging.
“
What are you doing?” I called, but she ducked out of sight again—her high giggles echoing off everything around me. “Eve, is that you?”
She ran to the next tree, her hair trailing behind her like gold ribbons, but when I came upon her, she was gone again.
“
Eve?” I called. “Please come out.”
I waited.
“
Eve?”
She giggled again, this time appearing further away. I ran after her, my limbs opening up as I broke into a fast, human sprint, feeling the air expand my lungs like a breath I’d forgotten to take. I followed her all the way out to the clearing by the lighthouse, glad I’d decided not to walk naked today, and stopped dead.
“
What the—?”
Trees had grown up overnight like blossoming buds in a time-lapse film, their luscious leaves casting shadows over the long grass, where the scent of apples and rotting cider wafted on the early fog, making sweet perfume in the air. I walked cautiously between the columns of trees, pinching the leaves on a few branches as I went to see if they were real. And as I came to a stop at the giant oak tree, centre to the orchard, I knew then that the child I saw must have been Evangeline.
“
Auress,” she said, and my gaze went up the trunk to the tiny child sitting on the longest branch—one leg dangling down, her finger twirling a lock of hair into a curl.
“
What are you doing up there?” I stepped closer.
She smiled and reached up to pluck something from between two branches, holding it out in her open palm after.
“
Come down, Eve?” I offered my hand. “Please?”
She smiled, but shook her head.
“
Why? Why won’t you come down?”
The smile grew, her eyes darting from my face to something behind me.
And a hand came down on my shoulder. I spun around and shielded my eyes, blinded suddenly by the high sun, seeing only a silhouette of a man there.
“
Jeeze, Ara, I’m sorry,” Jason said, helping me stand from the folded position I took. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“
You didn’t,” I said, feeling silly. “It’s just the light. It blinded me for a sec.”
He laughed. “What were . . . what were you doing?”
I looked back at the oak tree. Eve was gone. “I was. . .”
“
You have no idea, do you?” he asked, taking a step back from me.
I stood with my mouth open for a second. “I . . . no. Not really.”
He laughed again. “You were talking to someone.”
“
Was I?”
“
Yes.”
“
What was I saying?”
“
I don’t know. It wasn’t in English.”
I felt my face pale. “It wasn’t?”
“
No.”
My jaw angled slightly away from him then, my gaze drifting inconspicuously to the field. The apple trees were gone—the fog and the cool and the scent of the orchard fading with it. I rubbed my head. “I must have been sleepwalking.”
Jase nodded, thoughtful.
“
What are you doing out here, anyway?” I asked. “It’s very early.”
“
Early?” He looked up at the sky, then into the distance where the manor sat, its cream fascia rising up over the Enchanted Forest like a castle. “It’s after midday, Ara.”
“
Oh. Um. Really?” I rubbed my head.
“
Yes.” He drew both hands from his jeans pockets and walked over to sit under the old oak’s leafy bows. “Are you okay, Ara?”
“
Yeah,” I said wistfully, my toes parting the long grass with each step, the temperature of the soil beneath it cool and moist as if the morning were new. I tucked my dress under my bottom and sat down beside Jase. “I guess I’ve just got a lot going on.”
He nodded casually, reaching between us to pluck a blade of grass from its roots. “Wanna talk about it?”
“
Yes,” I said, but didn’t talk.
“
You know—” He leaned forward, resting his arm over a bended knee, wrapping the grass around his fingertip like a green ring. “I was thinking about you before I ran into you.”
“
You were?”
“
Yeah.”
“
All good thoughts, I hope.”
He lay back, crossing his hands under his head, his feet flat on the ground just by my leg. “I was just thinking how amazing it is that we’re both still here, you and I—that we can be friends—sit side by side this way after everything you’ve been through.”
“
You mean after everything evil you did to me,” I joked, gently slapping his bony knee.
He lifted his head a bit and offered a sweet smile, that soft, Jason smile that radiated the kindness in his soul. “Yes, and that takes an unbelievable amount of strength, Ara, which is as scary as it is incredible.”
“
Scary? How?”
“
Because I can't even begin to imagine what it must have taken for you to survive what I did to you—both times. And yet you came out of that. Your scars healed, your heart healed and, somehow, you found the strength to not only move on, but forgive me,” his voice broke.
“
Wow, you’re really cut up about all this,” I said, still making light of things.
“
Do you know why?”
“
Why?” I sat back against the barky trunk.
“
It’s because you are capable of more than you possibly realise, Ara. Yet you don’t know that, and it breaks my heart.”
“
Aw.” I tilted my head bashfully to one side.
“
No, I mean it. You . . . you're like those fake columns in the Throne Room.”
I pictured the stone pillars marking the aisles of the Throne Room, sitting proudly as beams of support, despite baring no actual weight at all. “How do you know they're fake?”
“
I hear you think of them a lot.” He shrugged against the grass. “And I think that’s because you know you’re just the same.”
“
How so?”
“
You might not feel like the pillar of strength, Ara, but if that roof ever does cave in, you’ll be the one left standing, still holding everything together.”
I scoffed, crossing my legs under me. “I doubt that.”
“
I don’t. I mean, if you think about it, you always have been.”
“
Me? No way. You’re thinking of David.”
“
No. He’s the hammer that nails the coffin, so to speak. No one would ever mess with him. But you’re the one they look to for strength, Ara. Because you exude it in every breath you take, and everyone I speak to says the same thing: they have
no
idea how you’ve come to survive what you’ve suffered.”
I lay down in the grass too, my toes against his shoes, bodies facing opposite directions. “Well, with you saying nice things like that to me, maybe I’ll start to believe it all one day.”
He crawled over and landed on his side next to me, smiling at the corner of my mouth. “Sweet girl, you already do.”
I smiled, too, reaching down to scratch the itchy rash on my hip. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe I believe that, but I don't think I’ve found any backbone yet to support my own opinions.”
He knocked my hand gently away from my skin. “I don't know about that. I saw you make your own ruling in your very first session of Court.”
“
Yeah.” I thought back to that day. “Guess I kinda did. But I got in trouble after.”
“
So what? As long as you thought it was the right thing to do.” He turned my face until I looked into his eyes. “Be the spoilt queen if you have to. Make your own decisions and know that we will back you
one hundred per cent
.”
“
Some
of you will,” I said flatly, thinking about David.
“
No,” he said sternly. “
All
of us will.”
I looked up at the blue through the dancing leaves above us, trying hard to believe that. “But what if I put my foot down about something, and I'm wrong?”
“
Then we back you on that, too.” He lay back again. “But, you won't be wrong. You’re a smart girl. You just have to trust yourself.”