by S. L. Naeole
My body, still warm from Robert’s kisses, began to heat up again. It wasn’t an uncomfortable heat at first, but the level of discomfort quickly increased when my clothes began to grow damp as it wicked away the moisture that formed against my skin.
The parts of me that touched Robert were heating up at a rapid pace, the burn on my leg making it feel like it had been doused in lighter fluid and set ablaze, but I did not scream because despite the pain, I did not feel the urge to. It was as though the pain was an afterthought, a distraction from my true goal.
I became aware that the vibrations that had seemingly been surrounding me were actually coming from within me, the humming I had believed to be coming from Robert, actually coming from deep inside of me, numbing me. As the vibrations increased in speed, the humming did so in pitch until the sound was deafening, a high, piercing sound that dug at my mind like nails on a blackboard.
My eyes began to strain as the light in the room started to grow increasingly brighter. I winced at the combination of sensory attacks and squinted when I realized that the dome lights that were perched in the wall were now becoming dark spots in the immense, white glare that blocked out everything—like a curtain being pulled over my eyes—I couldn’t even see Robert anymore.
As if there was no Robert.
Gasping, I realized that my arms were empty, my hands reaching out in the middle of a vast white emptiness to grasp at nothing but air.
The vibrations had stopped, the humming disappearing along with it.
“Robert?” I called out, flinching as my voice returned to me in a screechy echo, perverting the name that meant the world to me.
“Robert?” I said again, this time my voice firmer, the resulting echo that bounced back sounding weaker, sillier.
“Well, isn’t this just great,” I mumbled to myself as I turned around, the view never changing no matter where I looked.
“So you’ve chosen to turn after all.”
A jolt ran through my body at the voice.
“You know you’re only doing this because you want to save Graham.”
I spun around on my heels, wanting to catch the person who was speaking to me in this room full of nothing.
“Would you have made the same choice had none of this happened?”
I covered my ears with my hands and began to sing loudly, trying to drown out the voice that still found its way inside of my thoughts,
Would he have made the same choice for you?
“Ugh—would you stop it already?” I shouted into the endless light.
“Well…would he?”
She stood in front me, her face exactly the same as it had been the last time she had come to me this way. Her thick, black hair hung loose around her shoulders, and she wore a simple white cotton dress. She smiled and nodded towards me. I looked down and groaned inwardly.
“Did I need to wear one, too?”
“Do you not like it? It looks just like mine—a matching mother-daughter set.”
“Look, you haven’t exactly been around the past eleven years so you don’t really know, but I don’t like dresses. I don’t think I ever did. And if this is a dream, and if this is my dream, then I think I should be wearing what I normally wear.”
She waved her hand at me with little care. “Girls should wear dresses. It’s not feminine to wear jeans and t-shirts all of the time.”
“Mom, I’ll wear what I want, okay? Besides, you’re just a figment of my imagination.”
“Am I?”
I looked around and nodded. “The last time you came to me like this, I was passed out cold on the ground. What else could you be but the workings of an overstressed mind?”
She approached me with her hands on her hips, a bemused smile glued to her face. “Did you not forget what happened the last time? Was that the result of me being a figment of your imagination, or am I more than that?”
How could I forget about what had happened the last time? It was the beginning of the end for me. I just didn’t know it.
“I told you to make a choice, then, didn’t I? I told you to be careful about your decision, that it would affect generations to come.”
I nodded, unable to look away from the disappointed expression that began to take shape in her forehead, pinching her brows together, turning the corners of her mouth down.
“You did not make the right decision, Grace.”
“What do you mean I didn’t make the right decision? What decision was I supposed to make? You didn’t tell me that, you just said to be careful.”
“Because I thought you would have chosen to follow your heart. Instead you chose to follow your stubborn pride. You wasted so much time being angry and resentful and what did that gain you? You’re about to give up everything you’ve fought for, everything you’ve ever wanted, and for what?”
I looked at her, incredulous that she did not know.
“For love. I love Robert. I love him in ways that seem impossible to me, but I do. And I don’t, for one second, believe that I made the wrong choice. If I had simply forgiven him and forgotten everything, I would still be ignorant today about the sacrifices he’s made for me, and I’d end up losing him. I can’t do that, don’t you see? I can’t live without him. It took me leaving him to realize that, to realize that the reason for that is because I wasn’t meant to be here to love him..
“That’s the one thing that I cannot ignore above everything else. I’m supposed to have died with you. Everything that has happened since that night is a result of one colossal screw-up, and I can’t let Dad, or Graham, or Robert, or anyone else die because of it. I love them too much.”
Her eyes rolled in annoyance and I was taken aback by the gesture. “You’ve squandered precious time with Robert, and now that you have the opportunity to be with him in the way you want, you once again waste it, and for what? To turn? What does that accomplish? You’ll live forever…until you let Sam kill you. It all seems pointless to me.”
“It’s not pointless,” I argued. “It’s not pointless because this means a lot to Robert. It’ll also allow us to be together without risking his life. If I had listened to you, if I had somehow convinced him to forget the rules, he would have died.”
“And you think that simply turning makes it okay? Did you forget what else was required of you, what Robert’s mother told you that you needed to do in order to keep the wrath of the elders from coming down on the two of you?”
I sorted through the thoughts in my head and searched for the answer, a hopeless moan coming from deep within me when I found it.
“I have to commit to him, commit my life to him.”
“And what does that mean, exactly?”
“It means I promise him to love him forever. I’m giving up my life for him; I think I’ve done the commitment thing, don’t you?”
“You promise to love him forever. You’re vowing to share the rest of your existence with him, vowing to love only him until death do you part. Does that sound familiar to you?”
I felt my face turn cold as the blood drained away. “No…it’s not…no.”
She nodded triumphantly upon my realization.
“But I haven’t done that,” I whispered.
“And it would be wrong.”
I looked at her, flustered by her response. “Why would it be wrong?”
“Because you’d only be doing it to have sex, which is the worst reason possible. And because I don’t approve of him as a son-in-law. He’s put your life in danger, lied to you, and now you’re planning on handing your life over to save his. The man who deserves your hand should be willing to face the fire for you.”
“But he’s doing that right now. He’s been risking his life from the moment he met me,” I cried. “How can you not see that? He’s risked everything for me.”
“Has he? Has he really risked everything for you?”
I glared at her and nodded my head vigorously, her attack on Robert’s integrity bringing on a defensive mood within m
e. “I don’t doubt it for a second.”
“But you did.”
My mouth opened to refute her statement, but I couldn’t. “That was different.”
“Why? Because you didn’t know about the true nature of his call? What’s changed since then? Did the fact that he lied to you simply erase itself? No, it didn’t.”
“Why are you doing this? You’re the one who wanted me to sleep with him. Why is it that when he was lying to me, you wanted me to jump his bones, but now that the truth is finally out and I’ve made up my mind about everything, he’s suddenly not good enough?”
She grabbed my arms with a strength that contradicted her diminutive size. “Because he exists only to kill you. You are not supposed to die. You cannot die, do you understand that?”
The look in her eyes was crazed. I wanted to pull away from her, to tell her that she was being ridiculous, but she was too strong. She began to shake me, my head wobbling back and forth from the violence.
“Let Robert die, let him sacrifice himself so that you may live. Another angel will take his place, just like he did. You’re the one who is irreplaceable. Don’t do this, Grace. Don’t give in to dying. Don’t give in to Death!”
With a ragged cry, I tore myself away from her, staggering away and falling in a heap onto the white floor. I could see myself reflected back at me in the shiny surface. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
“I can’t let him die. I don’t know why, but I can’t. I can’t lose him—just the idea of it feels like I’m suffocating.” My tears began to pool in my eyes, threatening to spill over at any moment. I wiped them away angrily as I threw an accusatory glance at her, her expression surly, her posture careless and apathetic. “You’re supposed to be my mother; you’re supposed to want to keep me from being hurt.”
“And so in order to prove that to you, I’m supposed to tell you it’s okay for you to commit suicide?”
“You’re supposed to support me and trust my decisions. I’m not doing this because I’m some stupid, headstrong teenager who does everything based on how I’m feeling at the moment. If I were, I’d have been dead a long time ago and this entire conversation wouldn’t be happening. None of this would be happening at all if it weren’t for Robert.”
My mother’s lip curled back in a surprising snarl, anger marring her features, distorting them into something more frightening than real.
“And what has he given you except a delayed death sentence?”
I raised my chin defiantly, unwilling to let her break down my reasoning. “He’s given me time.”
“Time? What good is that when you now stand to lose everything?”
“It means everything! I got to make things right with Dad, and with Graham. I got to meet my baby brother, go on a date, and fall in love. You ask me what good is time—I wouldn’t have anything to lose at all if I hadn’t had any time to begin with.”
I couldn’t look at her anymore, her face rigid with obvious distaste at my argument. I stared down at the ground again, my heart heavy with the burden of knowing that my time was running out and I was stuck somewhere in my own subconscious arguing with my mother instead of being with Robert.
“I thought that seeing you again, being able to speak to you again would reassure me about what I was doing, that I was making the right choice,” I said to her, my voice barely audible.
“Well, I’m glad that you’ve come to your senses and see that you aren’t,” she said behind me, her body looming over mine, casting no shadow.
I closed my eyes and sighed. “That’s just it. You did, just not in the way that I thought. I stupidly imagined some kind of special, mother-daughter moment between us, but I forgot that you’re not really my mother. You’re just the last spark of a memory that died eleven years ago. I can’t rely on you to help me through this because you’re not real.”
“How can you believe in angels and erlkings and other monsters but not your own mother? What is wrong with you?” Her hands grabbed at my shoulders to drag me up and my eyes flew open at the assault.
“Let me go!” I twisted away from her and fell, hard, onto my chest, my chin hitting the floor. I felt the metallic bite of blood filling my mouth, my tongue throbbing from having bitten it. Crimson drops fell onto the white, glossy surface and my hand came up to lips, swiping away what was left that threatened to join the others.
My hand stilled when I saw my reflection.
I was staring down at myself, recognizing the awkward face that looked back. But the reflection of the woman who stood beside me was anything but…
The ebony hair was gone, in its stead a halo of gold locks, perfectly draped over a masculine shoulder. The umber eyes had vanished, replaced now with golden plates that sparkled with the joy of seeing my blood spilled once more.
“No,” I breathed, not wanting to believe it. “It’s not possible.”
“What’s not possible, Grace?”
My mother’s voice. It was still her voice, though it was Sam’s lips that spoke, and I turned to look at her, fighting against the fear that was multiplying within me.
“You didn’t answer me, Grace. What’s not possible?”
My eyes widened, and I closed my mouth which had fallen open at the realization that he could not read my thoughts, not here in the deep recesses of my own subconscious.
It had been months since I had even bothered trying to keep my thoughts locked away from Robert or Lark, so to know that I was still able to protect myself in this manner reassured me, a small comfort but one that I clung to as I stared at the person who stood in front of me. My mother, formed from the few memories I had left of her that had not been lost to me, was nothing more than the gloss that covered the poisonous apple.
“I have to go,” I said hurriedly, pushing myself to my feet, my hand smearing the blood on the floor, the deep red stain standing out like a warning.
“No! You can’t leave yet. You have to promise me that you won’t give yourself to Sam. Promise me, Grace!”
I looked into my mother’s eyes and felt a twisting in my stomach as the golden flecks that danced in the warm chocolate of one eye began to increase in size, drowning out the deep brown until only it remained, hinting at what else lay just beneath the surface. How I could have missed such a thing? I only knew that to promise such a thing to this monster was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.
“I’m not going to do that,” I said defiantly. “I’ve already made a promise to myself that I’d make things right, and I will, whatever it takes.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing here, Grace,” she said to me with a growing rage in her voice.
“I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m fixing your mistake.”
I felt a pull against me, like an invisible line that had been connected to me was being reeled in, and I waved as the light began to fade, the image of my mother’s face with Sam’s eyes becoming dimmer.
The pulling continued as the walls around me changed, and the weight of a chin pressed against the top of my head could be felt. My arms were still wrapped around Robert’s waist, his chest still absorbing the unnaturally rapid pounding of my heart.
“Robert?” I whispered, noticing that the humming had not returned, nor the vibrations.
“Grace? Are you okay?”
“How long have I been out?”
I felt his head lift off of mine and he pulled away from me slightly so he could look down at me, his eyes filled with confusion at my question. “What do you mean?”
“I mean how long have I been unconscious? Is it over? Is it done? Because if it is, I have to tell you something.”
“We haven’t even begun, Grace. I appreciate these distractions, I do, but if you keep talking, I’ll never be able to turn you.”
I looked at him in shock. “What do you mean? I passed out. You were humming and this whole place was shaking and-”
He shook his head, the confusion spreading to his forehead and mouth. “Grace, I just told
you that we haven’t even started. Nothing that you described happened. What’s going on?”
His hands clasped around my lower arms and pulled them away from his waist. He took my palms into his own and then looked at me with genuine concern. “Your hands are clammy, and your heart rate is dangerously fast. You’re either about to faint or-”
I cut him off. “I told you, I already did. It feels like it’s been hours…but, that can’t be…can it?”
“What happened? Tell me everything,” he insisted.
And so I did.
And then things went from bad to worse.
THE ELEGANCE OF EMPTINESS
“You have to be absolutely certain about this, Grace.”
“I’m positive. For whatever reason, Sam’s pretending to be my mother. I don’t know why I didn’t see it that first time—my mother’s eyes aren’t that light, and she’d never have encouraged me to do the things that she did—but this time, everything was different.”
Robert paced the floor, one hand scratching his head, the other hanging limply at his side, seemingly useless as he went over everything that I had told him, everything that I had showed him.
“If Sam’s truly taken on the form of your mother in your mind, and he’s now telling you to not give yourself over to him, then something has changed.”
He stopped at the end of the small room, a small shiver running down the length of his wings, rainbows of colors shimmering off of the black feathers. He raised his limp arm, his elbow swinging back before the entire arm launched forward, embedding itself into the soft, malleable soil.
Water began to trickle in around his forearm, turning the dirt floor to mud very quickly.
“We need to get back to the house—I need to speak to my mother. This has all gone too far.”
He closed his eyes and the shadow of movement beneath his lids told me he was speaking to someone. I just didn’t know who.
The trees began to vibrate with a tremendous amount of energy, leaves and twigs raining down on us with each rattle. Robert grabbed my hand and half-pulled, half-dragged me out of tiny forest, my feet stumbling to catch up and never quite managing to do so before they were no longer on the ground.
