Elise’s spine protruded from her back. I wanted to scream and thought she was dying. Elise back was bent, and she was on her knees. It was as if thorns were coming out of her back, adorning the spine that wandered out of her body. A cloud of luminous smoke hung above her head, and it seemed to seep out of her panting throat.
Elise didn’t look at me, probably because she didn’t hear me enter. The sound of her exhaling was far louder than my footsteps. I walked slowly toward her, and she turned around. Her eyes were even redder than they had been by the trees, bloody red.
My eyes grew wide, and I felt as if colonies of ants crawled under my skin. I shivered, and she looked like she was crying. I was afraid of coming closer to her, but I did. I put my hand on her thorny shoulders, and suddenly her spine fell back into her body and her eyes found the green again. She fell on the floor, her eyes closed.
The scream I had suppressed finally escaped. Matilda ran in and saw Elise, unconscious in my arms. She took her away, put her in the room, and left the meat and bread next to her. Mother spent the rest of the night making soup for her. She said she had a fever, and I didn’t believe that.
When Elise woke up, I was sitting next to her, singing to her a lullaby that was our first secret. I jumped out of my position when her eyes opened and began frantically trying to form words.
“Sh,” she whispered to me. “I don’t want her to hear us.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.
“The secret,” she whispered. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about what you saw.”
“Your back,” I said in hesitation. “It was like a branch of a tree sticking out of the bark.”
“Sh,” she asserted. “She’ll hear you.” She looked around and lifted her back off the bed and got closer to my face. “I’m scared.”
“You can’t be scared—you shouldn’t be scared. I can protect you from anything, Elise. I can even kill King Harold if he tries to hurt you,” I said with conviction, not in my powers but in the inspiration she gave me.
“I’m not scared of the king. I’m scared of myself,” she said, and a tear rolled down on her cheeks.
“But you’re beautiful. What is there that anyone could fear about you?” I asked, still not understanding the scene I had witnessed.
“I’ll tell you the secret, but you have to promise not to say a word to anyone, ever.”
“I promise,” I instantly replied.
I was amazed by what she told me next. It was one thing to know how different you are from everyone else, but it was a unique and rare thing to know how you became different.
That day, Elise told me that her mother used to read, too. She also told me that her mother taught her how to read, and I understood how Elise read most of my mother’s books. She said she read because she wanted to understand why she was the way she was, and she succeeded.
“Remember when Matilda told us about the war?” she asked me.
“Yes, the nuclear war. The one that made the world die.”
“Well, I read a book that talked about the war, and it said that something called radiation killed a lot of the people who survived the war. The writer said that there are three kinds of people: the blessed, the dead, and the cursed. The blessed are those who died in the war, the dead are those who lived to see the world after it, and the cursed are the ones who can turn into beasts. You’ll see a lot of those people who he called dead out there. Look outside and you’ll see the faces of everyone in this village. They’re dead because they have no purpose, no ambition, and no will to change that. But the beasts are the ones with the power to give ambition to everyone. However, they misuse their power to be kings.”
“Beasts? What do you mean?” I asked in wonder.
“I’m cursed, Theo,” Elise said, and a stream of tears exited her eyes.
“How so?” I asked.
“I can turn into a beast. Today, if you hadn’t come into the bathroom, I would have probably turned into a beast and hurt you or Matilda,” she said with a weeping face and a trembling voice.
Matilda walked in after Elise uttered these words.
“It’s time to sleep, Theo,” she told me.
My hands held Elise’s hands. My fingers slipped away, and I couldn’t have possibly imagined it would be years until I touched those fingers again.
Chapter Four
Elise
The world wasn’t OK. As simple as a blue sky, the picture was clear. The earth was sick, and so was everybody living on it. But still there was a speck of light in that dark room. Theo and I held that speck of light and wandered the land holding it in our hands and never letting it go.
He was everything to me. A partner, a friend, and sometimes, when the wisdom crawled outside his locked lips and showed its tiny face, a brother. But even more, he was the cure to the sickness in this world. At least that was what he was to me.
Things were beautiful for a long time. I felt at home, a part of that warm collectiveness of Theo’s life. The valleys were our places of adventure, the mountaintops our fear, and what was beyond was our dream.
I held onto every single moment I had with Theo, always remembering to smile. Who knew that such a simple act of hope would make a boy forever love the girl who smiled more often than the sun shed its light over the mountains?
But I had to leave. I couldn’t control the changes that were happening to me. My body was beyond my control and so was the rage that was building inside of me. It was as if that moment when I saw my mother being dragged away came back from the darkness and prickled my mind until my body started to turn.
At first I didn’t know what it was. When Matilda asked me why I ran to the bathroom at times and stayed there for a long time, I lied to her. I had never lied to her before, but I couldn’t be honest with this one. I was scared she would hate me or would think that I was some sort of freak or a danger to her and Theo.
“What’s happening, Elise?” she asked from behind the bathroom door.
“I’ll tell you when I’m out,” I said.
“Are you OK?” she said.
“It’s the bleeding, down there,” I lied.
“I’ll help you with that,” she said.
“No!” the shout came from the rage that I couldn’t control. “I want to do it alone.”
Matilda was quiet, and I heard her leave the door. I sighed in relief.
It happened several times after that, and I had to keep hiding it. But it made me think, and the endless thinking made me realize that I had to leave. It was hard for me as a child to decide to leave the home that I loved and the boy who shared with me the promise of spending a lifetime with one another.
Still, I knew it was the right thing to do, and when Theo came close to understanding what was wrong with me, I freaked out and immediately decided to leave the next morning.
But my goodbye was one with the hope of not being forever. I wanted him to find me someday, even though I didn’t know how. I thought maybe I would find my way back when I learned what was happening to me and was able to control it. Or maybe when Theo was old enough to not fear me and understand my changes, he would come and find me.
Who could had known that I was too engulfed in myself to realize that Theo too was exactly like me, that I wasn’t the only one who was turning into a beast?
But when I told him about it, he didn’t understand. As if I were telling him something quite unbelievable, the last glimpse of his eyes revealed nothing but confusion and a hint of fear.
Chapter Five
Theo
Before Elise left, I woke several times at night to find my feet carrying me to where she slept. Her face was hidden in the rough pillow, her hair dangling from the side of the bed. I could tell that she rolled around in bed a lot. Perhaps nightmares made her sleep uneasy. In the many times that I woke up to check on her, she was always in a different position.
It was like a dream that kept repeating itself several times with minor alterations
. But like many dreams, it started with a nightmare and ended with one.
It was a little before the sun began to rise that I found myself asleep by the door of her room. I opened my eyes and smelled decaying animal skin seeping in from the window. There was another distinct smell in the air—it was rosy. I shrugged and leaped off the floor, and a purple rose fell to the ground. It landed on my shoulder.
I remembered seeing the rose near the willow tree with the swing. I also remembered Elise’s eyes studying the heart of the roses.
I picked up the flower and held it gently in my hand as I pushed the door of her room open. It wouldn’t budge. There was something behind it that made a creak with the wooden planks. I pushed harder until there was an opening for my figure.
She wasn’t there. Elise was gone, and the window was open. Her smell was still there, however, and it remained in the room until the smell of the animal skin overtook it days after.
At first, I thought Elise was probably with Matilda. Maybe they were picking peaches from the peach trees that grew behind our home. But when I smelled the eggs burning, I knew they had to be together in the kitchen.
I found Matilda crying alone near the stove. Somehow, my little heart knew that Elise was no longer around. I held my mother’s shoulders as I kept trying to drag the answers out of her, but there were none. Elise was gone.
It took me a long while to be able to live with that. I didn’t play by the valleys, and the swing by the willow tree was removed by the king’s Hawks. The things that gave life to our memories disappeared one by one until I only had that wilted, purple rose.
***
I met Bernard a few years after Elise left. I had begun working for the king, and his Hawks had begun to recognize me from a distance—not because my face was distinct but because I always hid my six fingered hands behind my back.
Once a week, I visited that willow tree, holding back tears about Elise. But those tears weren’t the only tears inside of me. I had others. The other tears were tears of anger I used up working for the king.
“Hey, kiddo.” I heard his shout from a distance behind me. “Why you alone?”
I was scared. I had a piece of paper in my hands that Elise had left before she abandoned our home. If the Hawks found it with me, they would kill me immediately. I hid the piece of paper under my foot and wiped my eyes.
“Nothing. I’m waiting for the king’s orders,” I lied.
“You think I’m a fool, kid?” Bernard approached me and slapped the back of my head.
I trembled.
“You’re Matilda’s kid, aren’t you?” he asked as he bent to his knees.
“Please don’t hurt my mother,” I begged him, trying to grab a hold of his foot to kiss it.
He pushed me away and smacked my head again, this time harder. I thought I was about to die and hoped my mother wouldn’t follow. I saw a wooden branch dangling from the ancient bark of the willow tree. I reached to grab it as Bernard cornered me at the tree.
“Yes, grab the branch, kiddo. Fight for your life. That’s the only way you’ll survive here,” he shouted.
“Screw you, and screw your bloody king,” I uttered the words that I knew would bring me death.
Suddenly, the pressure he forced on my back ceased. I grabbed the branch immediately and was about to smack him with it, but I saw his smile. He was laughing too.
“Damn, you’re one brave idiot,” Bernard said between laughter. “Did you think I was a Hawk or something?”
“Aren’t you?”
“You’d sure be dead if I were,” he said leaning back on his knees and dusting his ragged, black shirt.
“Who are you?” I asked him, finally realizing I was safe.
“Bernard, the king’s blacksmith.” He shook my trembling hand.
“Theo,” I said, seeing that his eyes were scanning my sixth finger.
“That’s one hell of a finger you got there,” he laughed.
I was silent. My mind flew off to that day when Elise laughed at my hands. The dark-skinned, broad-shouldered man on his knees before me didn’t exist. My mind was elsewhere, locked in its own reminiscence, and that man was invading my moment of remembrance.
Thinking of Elise made me remember the note. My foot wasn’t stepping on it anymore. A slight breeze blew, and I could see the sand carried by the brief winds. I looked in the distance and saw the yellowish paper on the edge of the cliff.
Bernard was staring at me in wonder, but I was focused elsewhere. I ran to the edge of the cliff, and I leaped right before I reached the edge. I jumped forward, and my fingers brushed the paper. The depths of the valleys was beneath me. Next thing I knew, I hung from the ledge with my arms in Bernard’s hands.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell was that?” he screamed at me and pushed me away from the cliff.
He noticed I was trying to hide the piece of paper behind my back and pulled me toward him and snatched the note from my hands.
“Give it back,” I demanded.
“You know what could happen to you if they saw you with something like this? You would wish I didn’t save you from falling off the cliff.” He blew the words in my face and gave the note back to me.
“What do you want from me?” I shouted back.
“Oh, I’m leaving, but do you want to tell me what you’re doing here in the first place?”
“No, I don’t,” I turned around and stared at the purple roses around the tree.
“You were crying, weren’t you?” he asked, and chills rose up my spine.
“I wasn’t crying. I’m a man,” I said.
“Yeah, you weren’t crying. You were weeping, kiddo.”
“My name is Theo, not kiddo.”
“Goddamn,” he said with sudden anger.
All of a sudden he rushed toward me, held me by the back of my neck, and marched me toward the cliff. I screamed. He put his hand over my mouth to shut me up. He stood by the edge and let my body dangle. I saw the distance of the valley and for the first time in my life felt an alien emotion.
“Can you tell me what you’re feeling?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” I replied with tears falling to the valley.
“Well, think as you fall,” he said and dropped me but grabbed me again.
“Fear!” I screamed. “I’m afraid. I’m scared.”
“That’s one thing. We’re getting somewhere,” Bernard said. “What else?”
“I don’t know. Anger?”
“Exactly. You’re a smart one, Theo,” he said and pulled me back up and threw me on the ground. “Cry as much as you want. Weep if you have to, and never dread a fear that you have.”
“But Matilda says that the world would be better if there were no fear at all,” I argued.
He shook his head and put his both his hands on my shoulders.
“Matilda is a wise one, kiddo, and yes, it would be better if there were no fear, but that’s only because we are afraid of fear. Don’t fear it. It’s as much a part of you as your longing for that girl of yours. Look, know this—if you add the right amount of anger as a response to any emotion, you will save this world from those who create fear or run away from it. If you are never angry or always angry, you’ll become one of them.”
My eyes closed, and suddenly I felt a strong wave of heat engulf my hands. My spine began to feel heavier, and my elbows were beginning to sink into the ground. I looked at him, and I saw that he was startled by something. I looked at my hands again and they were glowing red.
“My arms hurt,” I said.
“I should’ve guessed it. You’re like him,” Bernard said vaguely.
Chapter Six
Theo
A few years later, my whole life had changed completely. Matilda grew tired and began to do less. I started to go to the mountain ranges with the rest of the village’s youth, continuing to work for the king. The meat had suddenly become less cooked, but there was more of it, because Matilda ate so much less than befor
e. The only thing that she started doing more of was reading. She never told me where she got her books from, and I knew it was because she feared I would try to get books.
I learned how to read, a little from her and a little from Bernard. The fact that Bernard was the only other person in the village who knew how to read made me wonder and eventually helped me put the pieces together.
Bernard knew my mother very well, and for some time, I had thought he was my long-lost father. But when I asked Matilda, she told me that he wasn’t and that it was nearly impossible for a man with dark skin to be the father of someone who had my light skin.
It seemed to make sense, but it meant that Bernard gave my mother the books. One day, both talked to me about the same thing they had read in a book. It was about power.
Bernard explained that even though the world had been destroyed, it was like pressing the reset button and that the hunger for power never died, even when it had nearly led to the world’s death. My mother said it in a slightly different way. She said that people don’t change and that it was innate in us to want to be powerful, to want to be like gods.
It all made me think of King Harold and how the villagers thought of him as some divine god. We couldn’t speak of him unless it was to praise him. The Hawks made sure no one had his name nor mentioned it.
I always avoided the Hawks. Bernard told me that it wasn’t a bad kind of fear but a healthy one.
“If the fear protects you, it’s rational. If it harms you, it’s irrational and you should use your anger to fight it,” he would say.
His words always remained in the back of my mind. They made more sense through the years and even more sense when I began to change.
Bernard helped me through my changes. One day I was sitting by the willow tree, thinking of Elise. My memory of her was vague. I was older, and even though her image was carved into the core of my memories, there was a blur where her eyes were.
I began shouting her name, and it echoed through the range of the mountains. I knew that if I had continued, the Hawks would find me and would have their fun with me. Anger rose, and I took out the rage on the willow tree. I punched the tree until my knuckles started bleeding.
Mated by The Alpha Dragon: The Exalted Dragons (Book 3) Page 2
