The first few pages were familiar. There were the drawings Corbin remembered Quinn sketching as she sat on the rock and he posed on branches above her. He remembered the days when she first came and how he would tentatively approach until she shared her food with him. The way she would pinch off the crusty pieces of bread that were easier for him to grab with his beak, the way she would look at him while she sketched for hours, right at him like he was special. Corbin huffed a bitter laugh to himself, special enough to forget completely about, he thought.
To be honest, he was surprised there was no blood on the pages. After all, she had been drawing in it when the familiar had come. She had been drawing on it when the branch had hit her. He hadn’t even remembered grabbing her things at all in the chaos of the moment. Who knows, maybe someone had gone back for them later, or maybe the old man had taken care of it, maybe even Miss Benny. Corbin loved her as a mother, but he still didn’t have her figured all the way out. She was some kind of special.
He flipped the page on the last of the familiar drawings that took up the first quarter of the book. The next page was completely blank. No drawings, no pencil marks, not even a smudged fingerprint. The page after that, however, was a Goddamn nightmare.
A literal nightmare, as if someone had just opened the book, taken a charcoal pencil, and scribbled angry circles all over the white background. There were black pinholes in the paper where it looked like the artist had pressed so firmly that it tore straight through and there was barely even any white left of the page to be seen. It looked like an angry kindergartener scribble. The next page was the same, and the page after that. A few pages later shapes began to emerge, like silhouettes. There was a shadow sketch of a raven flying, a man standing, and there were some words scrawled over the page in large spidery letters:
Where are you???
The pages continued in the same fashion, fewer scribbles and more silhouettes but there was always a raven. Sometimes the words changed. Sometimes they were angry looking words
Where are you??
I called for you.
Why don’t you come?
Sometimes they were tiny letters cramped into the corner of a page almost as if they were hiding:
Who are you?
Who are you and who am I?
Do you know me?
Do you know medoyouknowme?
About two-thirds through the sketchbook the ramblings stopped, and there was another blank page. Corbin’s hand trembled again, and he had to force himself to flip the page and see what was next. It was becoming clear to him that things were not as he knew them. These pages were full of Quinn’s suffering and confusion, and it hurt his heart to look at them, but he couldn’t stop. Studying her sketchbook was his only way to know her, to see the girl that he had been missing for so long. The next page split into two sections, and something broke inside of Corbin as he gazed upon the contents. Gracing the right side of the page was the most meticulous and beautiful drawing of an ink splatter raven. It was perfectly solid and black, as if someone had spilled ink onto the paper and it had magically taken the form of a bird in flight. It was masterfully done and clearly a labor of love and patience. If Corbin had any reservations about the identity of the Rorschach raven on the page, the words written neatly to the left of the drawing annihilated them.
I close my eyes, and it all goes away
All of the colors are fading to gray.
Out of the shadow, your wings are gone
You carried me I think, maybe I’m wrong.
But weren’t you real? I saw you, I swear.
Your copper eyes and your onyx hair?
I’m supposed to stop talking about the “before.”
I won’t let them put flowers in my room anymore.
I don’t remember your face or your name
I think I love you – do you feel the same?
Are you just a story? Maybe you are.
Even so, I still gave you my heart.
Hands shaking, Corbin slowly sank to his knees and, head bowed over the notebook, hugged it tightly to his chest. There was something very wrong with her, something inside her had shattered, and the notebook told a story of ten years where she had tried desperately to fix herself and couldn’t. One thing Corbin was very sure of, though; Quinn had remembered him. Maybe not correctly, and perhaps not in the way that he would have liked, but when the broken parts of her soul were crying out, she was crying out for him. The hot tears ran down his face and dripped onto the collar of his t-shirt, but he was too emotional to care. His anger was lifted straight from his shoulders, and he felt 100 lbs lighter without the weight, but instead, he was drowning in sorrow for the girl that owned that sketchbook. She remembered him. She loved him. She said it right there on the paper. She couldn’t remember who he was, but she remembered enough. He could work with that little bit. He could help her. She was his, and she remembered. He would never let her go again. Never. He would fix this.
Quinn was going to kill him.
He had looked her right in the eyes and lied to her. He had stared her down when she had laid herself bare and vulnerable and told her that he did not know her.
LIAR.
Instead of going to the lodge, Quinn had gone straight to her car and drove it back to the cabin so that it would be close to her if she needed it. She could always go into the lodge later, and Miss Benny had left food next to the note on the table in her cabin. Quinn hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and food was the number one priority of the moment. She had come back to the cabin prepared to eat and then would go to the grocery store, and, after THAT, she would go to see Miss Benny and Rose. That was the plan, but instead of following the plan, she was going to have to give that man a piece of her mind because he was a dirty, dirty liar.
She had been standing in the kitchen of cabin twelve for almost five minutes now, watching him rock back and forth on his knees hugging her book.
HER BOOK.
That was her sketchbook that she had kept all these years and it had all of the broken pieces of her soul in it, and here he was pawing through it like he had any right to read her secrets. No way.
“Get out.”
She didn’t whisper the words, but she didn’t scream them either. She just enunciated perfectly and projected them with a cold fury that invited no debate as to their meaning. Typically a timid girl, she was feeling pretty damn brave right now. Maybe it was the fresh mountain air, perhaps it just being here in the place it all started, or maybe it was just her abundant rage at the lying liar pants who had his nose pressed in her most intimate thoughts.
He whipped his head around to stare at her, the wetness of his tears magnified the copper coil in his eyes, and for a moment, Quinn was frozen, trapped in his gaze. Those eyes, Quinn thought, those beautiful eyes. Then recognition hit, and her shock mixed with fury. She knew those eyes with that metallic ring. He was such a dirty liar!
Screw getting him out of her cabin, Quinn needed to get out, get away, get anywhere. The air was too thick, and she couldn’t breathe. She was choking on the swirl of emotions inside of her. All of these years she had thought he was a figment of her imagination. All of the medications taken to make her forget about the boy with the copper eyes… The raven… Had the raven even existed? Was it always just a boy? Quinn couldn’t remember and trying was making her head hurt. Her head and her heart hurt.
Turning to escape out the kitchen door, she made it less than five steps before a hand closed around her wrist and spun her around, crushing her against a broad chest. He was impossibly warm and his charcoal t-shirt soft against her cheek. She struggled for a moment but was held firmly in place, one hand on her lower back and one hand gently stroking her hair until she was still.
“I have to say something to you, and I need you to listen really carefully. Can you do that?” the dark-haired man asked. Quinn could only tremble and nod slightly. She was furious, yet his touch was calming in a way she couldn’t explain.
Still holding her close to his chest, he bent his head low so that his mouth was close to her ear, his breath warm on her neck. His voice was deep and even, and he spoke slowly so as not to spook her anymore.
“My name is Corbin; you never knew that because I was given my name after you left. Before, I was just a raven, and then I met you and became more. Those pictures in your book are of me; I am the bird and the boy. I have been here all this time, waiting. I’ve missed you so damn much. Where have you been?” He didn’t wait for her to answer; it must have been rhetorical question because he took a steadying breath and kept right on going.
“Your name is Quinn. You were here long ago. You were hurt very badly. I know how because I was there. Your name is Quinn, and I DO know you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
It was the last I’m sorry that did her in, along with the whispered response given in the same disjointed tone of her original question from the night before. The sobs that ripped out of her through cut through the air like rusty knives as Quinn audibly released ten years of tension.
Did she dare believe the things he had said? That he was a man and a bird? Could she discount his words as lunatic ramblings when she had been medicated for thinking something very similar? Could she discount that something so fantastical could have happened when she had her own seemingly magic curse as well? She gripped his arms so tightly that the knuckles on her fingers turned white, and she turned her face to the ceiling and screamed. She buried her face in his t-shirt and bawled into the cotton, letting it soak up ten years of misery, ten years of the pain of not knowing. He laid his face atop her hair, held her tightly, and did the same.
Quinn wasn’t sure how long they stood in the kitchen clinging together, two familiar strangers grappling with feelings that had twisted them over the years. She should have felt embarrassed and apprehensive hanging on to someone she had just met and crying into his chest like an infant. There were no words to explain the calm of his touch, the comforting weight of his arms around her, and how the pain lessened in her chest as she felt his heart beating against her cheek through his now tear soaked shirt. She couldn’t care overly much about it though; she was too busy basking in the euphoria of a good cry and the knowledge that maybe the situation she found herself in was crazy, but not her. Quinn was most certainly not crazy.
She stood up and grabbed Corbin’s hand, leading him to the small brown couch opposite the one that still held her open suitcase. It was intimate, but she needed the closeness now. She might not know him completely, but there was no denying the bond that tied them together, the inarguable feeling that in his embrace was exactly where she needed to be. He didn’t speak but let her lead him silently, Corbin needing closeness as much as she did. They sat next to each other, denim thighs touching, both bodies turned slightly towards each other. Corbin grabbed her hand and laced his fingers in with hers, like he couldn’t be calm unless at least this part of their bodies was woven together. Quinn felt stronger sitting next to him on that little couch, one sparkly sandaled foot tucked under her bottom and her hand being held by the familiar stranger next to her. She thought that maybe now she could get her thoughts out, say the things out loud that she had held inside for so long thinking she was nuts. There were a million questions she wanted to ask, needed to ask, but one was more important than the rest.
“What am I? Do you know?”
He paused for a moment thinking carefully, trying to choose the right words.
“You are special.” Corbin ran his hands through his dark hair and Quinn watched his jaw work as he formed the words. “You are magic. What did you think you were?”
“Broken,” she choked on the word, and two more tears escaped from the corner of her eyes to trickle down her cheeks. This time Corbin didn’t let them fall but caught them with his thumbs and gently brushed them away. Lowering his head, he pressed his lips to hers softly and stayed there for a minute, connected with just the barest touch. There was so much communication in the soft pressure, telling Quinn without words just how precious she was to him. It was a wholly strange, but welcome feeling, and she didn’t want it to end. Just when she wondered if she was supposed to do something next, he pulled away and rested his forehead on hers. He had made fun of her shoes, lied to her face, broken into her cabin, and called her special. Then he had kissed her, and it was the most tender moment Quinn could ever remember sharing with another soul. He was fantastic.
Quinn was smitten.
“I’m broken, too,” he said sadly, with no more explanation. That was all that was said for the next few moments as they sat next to each other on the loveseat in silence, just absorbing each other’s energy. There was so much to be said, but neither of them even knew where to begin; what part of the last ten years should they start with? When Corbin did speak, his words came as a surprise.
“I’m sorry I lied, but to be honest, I was angry you didn’t remember me. I’ve been here all this time, waiting. I didn’t know why you left, why you didn’t come back. It didn’t even occur to me that you didn’t know or that you didn’t remember.”
“It’s not that I didn’t remember exactly,” Quinn said, her words were slow and thoughtful. “I just spent so much time with doctors that told me I was hallucinating and what I was remembering wasn’t real. Since those were the only memories I had, I figured I had forgotten what actually happened. Every time I would have the dreams, they would either increase my dose or change my medication. The pills made me dead inside, Corbin.” She said his name carefully, tasting the letters as they rolled around in her mouth. “The medication made me not feel much of anything, but it also kept me from dreaming and from having…incidents.” She said the word incidents like it made her skin crawl and it did. Corbin frowned and grabbed both of her hands, bringing them to his mouth and kissing them, then nuzzling her knuckles with his face. Quinn’s cheeks burned over such intimate touching with a stranger; she should be afraid. She wasn’t afraid though, just nervous and excited. She liked that he touched her like that without a shred of embarrassment, like it was completely natural to want to be close to her. Quinn couldn’t remember anyone who wanted to be close to her like that. Such gentle caresses, like she was important.
It had been so long since Quinn had felt any feelings at all besides fear. The rapid beating of her heart and the warmth in her chest was all so new to her. The words bubbled up out of her mouth before she could stop them and she rambled nonsensically, the sentence coming out all in one breath.
“Is it ok to feel happy right now? I think that is what I feel. I am warm and tingly all over, and I like that you touched my hands to your face, and I would like to touch you more, and you kissed me. Oh! I haven’t had a kiss in…it’s been a really long time!”
Corbin frowned at her outburst, and Quinn’s heart sank. Had she said something wrong? Had she rambled? Was she saying things she shouldn’t say? But he kissed her and was holding her hands, and she had missed him so much. Now that she knew he was real and not someone she’d made up, she could openly admit that she had missed him. She needed him. On some basic level, something she couldn’t explain, he was a part of her, and she thought she was a part of him too. Maybe she had it wrong?
Corbin let go of her hands and crossed his arms over his chest. “How many people have you kissed?”
Quinn had not been prepared for that particular line of questioning. She had just had a cry fest in his lap, admitted to being on what amounted to a ten-year drugged bender, shared one of the most touching moments in her entire life, and he was getting grumpy about how many people she had kissed? Was this even real life?
“I said it had been a while, not that I had never done it.” Quinn pulled back and looked at him smugly. “I’ve kissed tons. I’m probably a professional at it. I’m just saying, kissing isn’t an issue right? I mean you just kissed me, and it was no big deal.” Quinn fibbed as if her life depended on it, miffed that he had thought to question her like it was any of his business.
Before she could blink, he had pulled her into his lap, knees on either side of him. Instead of leaning into her, he plastered her forward against his chest, arms pinned by his as they circled her, crushing her to him. Quinn gasped at the contact, but couldn’t move away because his mouth was doing things to hers. His lips moved over hers with bruising force, and the slight pain was intoxicating. Common sense told her to pull away. Ladies didn’t kiss men they had met mere moments before, but Quinn didn’t want to be a lady. Quinn wanted to get closer to the heat of his body, the dominance of his mouth. Her legs trembled, and she adjusted them wider, so she could feel him pressed against her in the most intimate way possible, every nerve ending on fire. His tongue swept through her mouth, and she had no choice but to open wider for him as he took complete possession of her entire body through this one passion filled kiss. Quinn vaguely heard someone whimpering, and then realized it was her making those mewling noises, but she didn’t care. She had never felt anything even remotely like this. She knew she lived a secluded life, but this kind of feeling, this sort of all-encompassing electricity that coursed through her whole body, she never knew was possible. And from a kiss? What would happen to her if he took his shirt off for goodness sake? He ended his velvet assault on her mouth by sucking on her lower lip and letting it go with a light smacking noise, pulling away slightly. Quinn could still feel him hovering above her face, and when she opened her eyes, she realized that she had both hands tangled in his hair. Wrapped around him like a starving octopus, Quinn had trapped him, and Corbin looked one hundred percent pleased to be caught. She couldn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed by her wanton behavior, as it was very evident by the rock hard warmth pressed between her thighs that he enjoyed her closeness immensely.
Northwoods Magic (Northwoods Fairy Tales Book 1) Page 7
