next thing I knew she had her small arms wrapped around me
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pulling me into a fierce hug.
“What are you doing?” I whispered fiercely. I didn’t return
her hug. I didn’t feel any connection to her to do so.
She looked up at me with her sad eyes and let me out of the
embrace. Turning her back to me she walked toward the window
and stood there gazing out into the sunset.
“Sparrow,” she whispered in a slightly raspy voice.
“What?” I asked confused.
“You once drew a picture of a sparrow for me. Don’t you
remember me?” she turned slightly and I noticed as she spoke her
words were labored as if speaking was a challenge for her.
Immediately I knew who she was. I never dreamed that the
Other was a female. I thought it would’ve been a male like me.
Was I the only male that London had ever created? It didn’t really matter at that moment because the one I had made an internal
vow to rescue had found me. But why? Had London sent her to
kill me as well?
“I miss the pictures you would draw for me, three two five
seven,” she said sitting on my bed. “It was nice to have someone
to communicate with, but when you escaped, Mother took away
all the drawings you made for me. She was so angry she even
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took some of us apart and threw them into a fire pit,’ she said
bitterly.
“My name isn’t three two five seven anymore," I said quietly.
She turned completely and looked curiously at me, "Did
Mother name you before you left?"
"She's not my mother, nor is she yours. Her name is London
please address her as such," I said through clenched teeth. "And no, she would never do such a kindness. To any of us. What's
your number?"
"She did name some of us. My number is one one zero six."
"So you were started before me then?" I asked curiously.
"I don't think our numbers have anything to do with the order they made us in," she said.
"They? Did you say they?" I crossed the room and grabbed her by her shoulders tightly. "Who else? Who else has done this?"
"I don't know. Mother --"
"London," I corrected her.
"London was babbling the night you left how she knew she
shouldn't have tried to finish you because you were always the
defiant son."
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I stared at one one zero six. So London thinks I'm a defiant
son. I know Cassara was sent to destroy me and it made me
wonder if the pale little beauty with the sky colored hair was
dispatched for the same purpose.
"I can see the question in your eyes. And the answer is yes,
but I won't do what London asks. If I had escaped first, I would've come back for you and I know you would've come back for me
eventually. I won't harm you. I promise," she said adjusting the scarf on her neck.
I couldn't help but think of the scarlet pool when she touched
her scarf. She was very beautiful and the scarf made her skin look even paler than what I assume it would normally look like. There
were no words I could think of to describe her true beauty but if I were ever to say I've seen an angel it would be her. With her blue hair she looked just like a glorious winter morning which gave me
an idea.
"Your name is Winter. Never address yourself as a number
ever again," I said.
She smiled and took a few steps toward me, her scarf
billowing in the soft breeze that was now passing through the
room. I wondered what she was hiding behind that thin piece of
material.
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"Winter," I began cautiously, "Why do you wear that?"
"This?" she asked fingering her scarf. I nodded. I hoped I wasn't being too personal but I really wanted to know.
"Moth-- London spent a lot of time trying to give me the
perfect voice. When she felt she had found it, she would become
disenchanted with the way I sounded rather quickly and would
take out my vocal chords and give me new ones. I have many
horrible scars on my throat, so I hide them behind this."
I looked away. I too bore scars of London's experiments and I
too hid mine away. I knew what Winter felt every time she looked
in the mirror and had to see those. I also knew that Edison could
probably help her as he had helped me.
"If you'll permit him too, my friend Edison should be able to help with those scars," I said to her.
"Do you think he would?" she asked hopefully. Before I could answer her, I heard Edison's door open.
"Caelum? Who are you talking to? I hear voices in there," he called through the door.
A look of sheer panic struck Winter across the face and she
sprung into action. She firmly covered my mouth with her hand
and started to pull me toward the window. I tried my best to pull
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away from her but she seemed to be just as strong as I was. After
a few more tense attempts, I was able to pull myself free from her.
"What are you doing?" I asked in a fierce whisper.
"We have to leave. Now," she said as she began to push me toward the window. I braced myself against the window frame
and dug my feet into the floor. "That's Edison, he can help you," I said.
"I don't want his help. I don't want it. I don't! Go out the
window. Please, please, please," she said sounding completely frantic.
We both looked at the door as Edison tried the doorknob. He
wouldn't be able to enter the room, because of what I had shoved
in front of it earlier. I heard his good-natured laugh as realized the door was blocked.
"Caelum, just let me know you're okay and I'll go back to my
room," he said.
As I opened my mouth to respond, once again Winter clasped
her hand over it to keep my silent. It was obvious she was afraid
of Edison and I knew why. This was another one of us bred by
London to only feel fear. It must have been one of her favorite
emotions to give to most of us. With one hard shove, Winter
knocked me out the window and jumped out after me. Grabbing
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me and throwing me onto her back, she ran as quickly as the wind
disappearing into the snow covered wonderland far away from
Edison's cabin.
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Eleven
I never saw Edison after that night. I also never got an answer
from Winter as why she was so insistent that we leave. There
would be times that I would sit in Winter's underground little
village that she had managed to construct in her time away from
London and her mansion of torture.
For the first month I was useless. I would lay around on the
hardest stones I could find in her secret wonderland of stone and
pools of ice to punish myself for letting go of Edison so easily. I lost a lot of will being away from him but Winter made sure that I would never lose focus. She knew that her only hope as living as
normal a life as possible would be if I killed London. She would
come to me every night and lay next to me with her arms wrapped
tightly around me, sleeping on the makeshift beds of stone. It
wasn'
t until the second month that I finally held her. She was so
small and fragile with such hope in her eyes when she would lay
with me, that I felt I had to be the strong one and hold her close to let her know I would kill London for her. I had lost the drive to
kill London for myself, now it was for my tiny companion who
would care for me nightly and patiently wait for me day to day to
see if I would finally rise off of the stones and let her help me.
The morning that I had awoken without feeling the weight of
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Winter's head against my chest caused me to finally come out of
my depression. I sat up and looked around the cavern finally
taking in how hard she had worked on it. There were carvings of
forests on the walls that seemed to have leaves of emeralds and
tree bark of smoky topaz. The flowers she carved out of the stone
and placed throughout looked as if they were filled with sapphires for Columbines, pearls for Lily of the Valleys, amethyst for sprigs of Lavender, yellow agate for the smattering of Dandelions, and
all matters of jewels. There were small lanterns hanging from the
trees illuminating the cavern and making it look like a fairytale.
The little blankets of grass in the garden of flowery jewels
seemed to be made completely of emeralds. She had even
somehow managed to carve a little home out of stone which made
me wonder why she would spend her time outside of it and sleep
on the stones with me.
I smiled because Winter fit in perfectly here. She herself
looked like a pixie so it would make sense that this was
something that she would want to live in.
I walked down the small rocky hill toward the center of the
cavern looking around to see if I could spot her. I wanted to thank her for giving me a reason to follow through on what I had
promised myself long ago and her as well.
It took me a moment to see in the pool of ice a wave of blue
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hair swaying beneath it back and forth like a flower blooming
then closing again. I panicked and ran out onto it without thinking.
I slipped and fell down hard on the surface of ice and landed on
my back. The thud of me hitting the ice was loud and enough to
start a small series of cracks over the frozen water.
I'm going to fall in, I realized frantically. Getting to my knees
I decided that before I fell in, I might be able to pull her out.
Slowly I made my way toward the fan of hair that was shown so
brilliantly under the ice. I was about fifteen feet away from her, when she burst through the ice with her bare back to me.
"Hello Caelum," she said as she smoothed her wet hair back turning to look at me.
I turned my face away not because Winter was naked, but
because I could now see the scars on her neck and I knew how
personal they were. I hated when Morrison and Edison saw my
scars so I was sure that Winter would hate for me to stare at hers.
"You don't have to look away," she said in her raspy voice.
"I ... your scars. I can see them," I explained still looking away.
"It's okay. It doesn't bother me if you see them," she replied.
"Why were you in there?" I asked glancing at her for a
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moment, " I thought you were going to die."
She smiled as she bobbed in the ice water, "I preserve my skin by submerging myself into the ice. I don't know how else to do
it."
"I stayed away from the sunlight as often as I could," I mumbled. Something about Winter being naked in the ice was
making me feel different. It was something I hadn't felt before but it was something that was making me want to be with her. I could
tell I was looking at her the way Edison had looked at me and I
turned my face away again.
I felt ashamed. I couldn't do that to him; not knowing how
much he loved me and wanted to be with me the way I wanted to
be with Winter at that moment. Edison had been the first to lay
his lips against mine and I couldn't betray his love like this.
Winter pulled herself out of the opening in the ice and I saw
more of her scars. There weren't as many as mine or as angry
looking, but she had one long prominent scar that seemed to wrap
it's way from her hip all around her body up to her shoulder.
Almost as if she had been sown by a ballroom dancer. Her body
was exquisite regardless of her scars. She looked to have the
shape of an hourglass.
She approached me and reached a hand down to help me off
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the ice. As she did I pushed her hand away. I had to make these
odd feelings go away and touching her right now wouldn't help.
The smile fell from her face but she waited for me to get up
before she walked past me back onto the cavern floor. I let my
eyes follow her body as her hips swayed from side to side. I
closed my eyes as I stood there forcing myself to not look any
further.
"Caelum, it's okay. I'm covered," she said after a few
moments.
I opened my eyes partially and saw that she had slid on a pitch
black robe of some sort over her body. Letting out a sigh of relief, I carefully made my way back to the cavern floor and looked
down at her little pixie face which bore a mischievous smile.
"That was your first test. You passed though for a moment
there I was afraid you wouldn't," she said as she retrieved her scarlet scarf from a pocket in the robe.
"Test?" I asked confused.
"London will use beautiful things to distract you Caelum. I
am not the only one that was made, you know this because you
are not the only one that was made. I saw some of them when I
escaped and they are breathtaking. More beautiful than anything
you can imagine and he will use them to her advantage if you let
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her," she said seriously.
"How many did you see?" I asked feeling myself becoming
angry.
"Two. One with hair that looked like cotton candy and the
other had hair the color of ivory. London was screaming at the
both of them. I think at the cotton candy one because she hadn't
left to find you yet and at the ivory haired one for not responding to her."
So that's why Cassara looked so angry when she first saw me,
I thought to myself. "Cassara was the one with the pink hair. I don't think she's a threat anymore."
"There was someone else," she said quietly. "One that wasn't like us. I think he was human."
"He?" I asked raising an eyebrow.
She nodded. "I couldn't see his face, but London responded to him. When she was screaming at the one with the ivory hair, he
put an arm around her shoulders and whispered something to her
that calmed her down. Then after that he turned to the other one
and said, 'Xandy, go back to your rest.' And she listened to him.
She wouldn't even listen to London, but she listened to him. "
"And you're sure you didn't get to see his face?" I asked 146
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curiously.
"I'm certain of it. I ran the moment Xandy looked at me as I
stood there watching. She was on her way back to the fireplace
which is where I assu
me she rests and as soon as she reached it
she looked over at me and stared for a moment before laying
down in the ashes of others like us that London had burned to
death. I could see partial arms and legs in the fireplace, Caelum. It was as if she had no quarrels disposing of them. Like it didn't
matter that they were alive at one point."
She turned her face away and even though I felt horrible for
her having to see what she saw, I still wondered who could
possibly be able to tame London. I thought that the nights she
would sit with me and be a normal mother were nights that she
had her mania under control. Now I wondered if he had been
there the whole time.
I didn't let myself dwell on it; there was no point. I somehow
felt a small amount of gratuity to whomever it was for the very
few nights of peace I would have because of him.
"Caelum, when London first brought me into a lifelike state I had only one thing in my mind and that was to destroy three two
five seven, I would bet anything that's how the other's were
created. I think because I remembered your scent from the
pictures you slide into my room I lost all desire to kill you.
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London never showed me the slightest bit of kindness and I could
never hurt the one being that had."
My hand went to the left side of my face and I immediately
thought of Jared. He had been the first to do me an actual act of
kindness and even in London's own twisted way he had done me
another act of kindness by giving me the gift of actual sight. I
knew how Winter felt because Jared would always be a piece of
me now.
"I understand," was all I could say.
"Then let's talk about something pleasant now," she said as she walked over to one of the stone seats she had carved and sat
down, her legs crossed. "By looking at the color of your skin I'd say you don't have much want to live. I can tell by the way you
speak of her that you're on a quest to kill London and I promise to do everything I can to help you, but honestly Caelum, I don't
know if it can be done. Besides that, I can't prepare you any other way than mentally and I will push your mind to its limits to get
you to see things as London does. There will be times when you
will feel like you're mind is going to just break down on you but
please know now that I do it for your well being.
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