by Amanda Boone
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Of course.” I thought of something just then. “I’ll be right back.” Before she could say anything, I was walking quickly toward the window, which I swiftly jumped out of. I heard her gasp in fear. I landed gracefully on the ground and went about searching for what I was after.
Scanning the dark, wooded area outside of her home, I spotted one. I walked over to the pile of wood that was piled by a chopping block and selected a log. I looked back up at her bedroom window, considering how to get back up. I didn’t want to change into my fae form and frighten her away. I would withhold that information a little bit longer.
I looked at the tall tree that towered over her house. That would have to do. I swiftly climbed it and shimmied across the branch closest to her window (which was still open). I jumped effortlessly inside, startling Isla. Her mouth formed a surprised ‘oh,’ presumably at how quickly I had returned. I ignored her confusion—we didn’t have time for questions. “Did you find your slippers?” I asked.
She nodded, swallowing. “I’m not dressed . . .” She looked down at her night chemise, which was draped delectably over her petite frame, cinching at the waist.
I walked toward her and touched her face again. “You look beautiful.” She flushed. I removed my hand from her and walked the log over to her bed, touching it with my fingertips until it glowed gold. When I let go, it faded back to its gray, wooden appearance. I pulled the covers over it and turned back to Isla who was regarding me quizzically, but said nothing. “Come,” I grabbed her hand again and began pulling her toward the window.
She looked down at the ground with wide eyes. “How . . .” she started.
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
She cocked her head at me, her lips parted to show her front teeth. “What?”
“Do you trust me?” I repeated, holding out my hand to her again.
She blinked. “Yes,” her tone was firm. She grabbed my hand, she was sure.
I swiftly scooped her up so she was cradled in my arms. I hopped up onto the windowsill and paused. “Hold on.” She threw her arms around my neck and buried her face into my chest, whimpering softly. I kissed the top of her head. “Don’t scream,” I warned. I stepped off the ledge and quickly descended to the ground, landing softly.
Isla’s arms had tightened around my neck during the descent. She slowly lifted her head from my chest, her face ghostly white. I frowned. I didn’t want to scare her. “Do you want me to carry you, or do you want to walk for now? It’s going to be a long walk.” It wasn’t that long of a trip when I flew, but that wasn’t an option for her.
“I’ll walk,” she answered, her voice shaky from the fall. I carefully put her down, holding onto her until I was sure her knees weren’t going to buckle. She smiled up at me, breathless.
I grasped her hand in mine and started walking forward, trying to get her as far away from this place as quickly as I could. “Don’t look back,” I instructed. She squeezed my hand to let me know that she understood.
ISLA
I followed him in a semi-trance-like state. None of this felt real, which was partially why I was going through with it. I suspected any minute, Morna would be rapping on my bedroom door, bellowing for me to wake up.
I had convinced myself so many time in my head that he, Finn—assigning him an actual identity still felt so foreign to me—was just a figment of my imagination, a way for my brain to cope with the loss of my father. To have him here, now, leading me by the hand through the dark woods in the middle of the night was more than surreal. I felt that he could lead me anywhere right now, to the ends of the earth, even, and I would gladly follow him.
Ever since I told him about my impending marriage, he had been moving so quickly, acting so rashly. It was very unlike the boy who visited me at night who was usually careful and rational. He was pulling me through the thickets of trees rapidly; I had to almost run to keep up with him. Our arms were fully extended between us.
I tried to look down at my feet to keep from falling and could swear that I saw shimmering gold dust fly up from beneath Finn’s feet. I looked up and acted like I hadn’t seen anything.
“Slow down,” I begged. He stopped immediately, and I crashed into him. “Oomph!” He grabbed the sides of both of my arms to steady me.
“Sorry,” he took a deep breath as if to try to slow himself down. “I just want to get you . . . Are you sure you don’t want me to carry you?”
I was panting, and I felt a painful stitch forming in my side. He was so much taller than me and generally faster. We were also basically wandering around in pure darkness. I nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled, and I melted, simultaneously a little bitter that he had been keeping that smile from me for all these years. He leaned down and scooped me up swiftly. I wrapped my arms around his neck and nuzzled my face into the crook of his neck.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see when we get there,” he said playfully. He was evading the question, something I’d witnessed him doing countless times. I wasn’t sure why he was doing it now. Surely, there couldn’t be many more secrets between us . . . besides what he was.
It had been obvious early on in my friendship with Finn that he wasn’t a normal boy. A normal boy wouldn’t be able to sneak out in the middle of the night and climb up a to my second floor bedroom with ease. He wouldn’t be able to jump out my window without injury or walk at the speed that he was currently walking. This was all without the factor that I hadn’t laid eyes on him until tonight—though I had often tried to find him in the darkness of my room. Normal boys weren’t invisible, and they didn’t disappear at the blink of an eye.
I kept calling him a boy, though I knew that wasn’t what he was. I knew he was twenty years old—two years older than I was. I also didn’t know if that’s what they called adolescents in whatever he was.
With nothing else to do, I gazed at what I could make out around me. The trees this deep in the woods were wild. The roots of each tree tangled with its neighbors’, visible above ground. Because I couldn’t see very far ahead of me and because of the abundance of trees, our journey seemed endless. Pools of water littered our path, visible when the light from the moon bounced off the smooth, dark surface. I shivered, now cold since I wasn’t keeping my body warm from trying to keep up with Finn.
“Cold? I nodded. He kissed me on the forehead. “We’ll be there soon.”
“I still don’t know where we’re going.”
“Isn’t it more fun this way?”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Tons of fun.”
“We’re going to where I live,” he revealed.
My heart quickened, thinking I was finally going to get some details. “Which is . . .?”
“Still a wee way’s off.” I scowled. He laughed. Could he see my face clearly in the dark?
I looked around me again, suddenly realizing that we were no longer under a canopy of trees. We were in an open clearing covered in rocky hills and more pools of water. It looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where we were in the dark.
I heard the gentle, steady rushing of water. We approached a very large body of water that had a U-shaped arch surrounding part of the perimeter. Parts of the water seemed to be glowing a luminous blueish-green color in the dark. In the middle of that arch was a large waterfall.
“It’s beautiful,” I mused, looking up at Finn to gauge his reaction. He seemed unfazed—like a place like this was an everyday feature for him.
He stopped at the edge of the water, I assumed to admire the view. “We’re going to have to get in.”
I looked up at him in alarm. “In the water?”
He nodded, and I tensed. “I’m sorry, it’s the only way to get there.”
“I can’t swim,” I admitted, unsure.
“It’s not deep.” He carried me across the pond, the water only going up as high as his knees. We neared the waterfall, and I c
ould see that there was a small hole behind it. “I have to set you down, we have to crawl through the hole.” He gave me an apologetic half smile.
I gaped at him in horror, and he squeezed my hand. “Trust me.” I nodded, and he gently set me down.
I squealed as the frigid water drenched the bottom of my nightgown and flooded my slippers. “It’s-s s-so cold.”
He grabbed my hand again, which caused me to warm right up. He led me behind the waterfall, the mist catching in my hair in little beads. I looked down in the hole we were supposed to go through. It was dark. “Watch your head when you go through. The top is very low and sharp.”
My eyes widened. “Aren’t you going in first?”
He shook his head. “I’m going in behind you, so I can keep an eye on you. You just have to go straight.”
I hesitated. “It’s dark.”
He pulled me forward and pressed his lips against mine again. “I’ll be right behind you. I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured against my mouth. The implications of his words covered more than this tiny cave.
I sunk down to my knees, the moving water coming from the hole rushing down the front of my nightgown. It whapped me in the face and I sputtered, swallowing some. I coughed.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he whispered, ushering me forward.
I began crawling through the tiny hole, which was too narrow to move anywhere but straight. I raised my head slightly, and I hit the rocky ceiling of the cave. “Ow,” I cried.
“Keep your head down,” Finn warned from right behind me.
I was sure the top of my head was bleeding, but I kept moving forward, the palms of my hands and my knees getting scrapped up from the bottom of the cave. I could feel parts of my gown ripping away from getting caught on rocks and from brushing up against the sides of the narrow cave. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, willing myself to move forward as quickly as I could. It would all be over soon.
I snapped my eyes open when I felt something stringy and damp between my fingers. Grass. I looked up and was met with a brightly lit forest encapsulated inside the confines of a tall cavern. The light was coming from a large bonfire that stood about fifty feet away. I shimmied the rest of the way out of the cave onto the grassy knoll and stood up, still staring up. I felt Finn exit the cave behind me, but I didn’t look back. My eyes were experiencing a sensory overload.
Dozens of people dressed in green attire were dancing, laughing, and running around the forest and fire. Looking up, I could see that in the rows of trees were little houses perched between the mighty branches. Wooden bridges crisscrossed from one tree to the other over each other like a roadway in the sky. Large, sparkling, gold fireflies swirled through the trees.
“What is this place?” I asked, in awe. I looked over at Finn who was standing beside me with his jaw clenched, deep in thought. He seemed nervous. His hair looked bronze in the light, and his eyes were emerald.
“It’s my home.”
He grabbed my hand again and pulled me forward, garnering the attention of some of the revelers. They regarded me with equal parts curiosity and apprehension. I suddenly became very aware of my appearance. I was soaking wet, cut up, and my white chemise was ripped and covered in mud. I bowed my head, avoiding the gaze of these strangers.
Finn seemed to have a destination in mind, because he was guiding me with a purpose. We approached a large home at the foot of the biggest, widest tree I had seen yet. A fairly young couple, ornately dressed in green garb, stood outside, looking confused.
Finn stopped in front of them and stepped to the side like he was presenting me. I blushed. “Aunt Fenella, Uncle Alastair, this is Isla,” he beamed at me despite his previous apprehension a few moments ago.
I shriveled at the horrified looks coming from Fin’s aunt and uncle. His uncle was turning bright red like he was getting ready to yell. His aunt was still shocked, her mouth hanging agape, looking ghostly white. “Finley,” she finally rasped out. “What have you done?”
Finn squeezed my hand tightly, painfully. Looking up at him, he looked furious.
Feeling overwhelmed and light-headed, I looked to my side just as a large firefly buzzed past me. It landed to the right of me on a tree stump. That’s when I saw that it wasn’t a firefly at all. It was a tiny woman, no larger than five inches tall. She had translucent wings sprouting from her back. Her hands were on her hips, and she seemed irritated. “Finn, who is this?”
Everything went black from there.
THE END
Started from the Bottom
One Woman’s Journey from the Block to the Top
BWWM Romance
Started from the Bottom
Chapter 1
You're not supposed to make it out of my hood. Those who do are called "survivors".
I didn't want to be a statistic. I had seen too many of my family and friends leave my neighborhood in squad cars or body bags. I had seen that, on the rare occasions that they did make it onto the news, their fates weren't treated as the tragedies I knew them to be. They were treated as numbers, just one or two more brown people succumbing to the expected.
It would be nice to say that my mother or father taught me to be better. That they taught me to find my own way, to fight against the odds. Unfortunately, the truth is less romantic and more typical. My father was not in the picture. He was simple. I had met him once or twice, usually on special occasions when I was young. As an adult, I still saw him now and then, down at the corner store. We would nod to one another. That was enough, or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.
Unlike the stranger who was my father, I knew my mother well enough to call her complicated. She was strong, as all single mothers are. As all black girls who grow to be black women are. She worked hard as a grocery clerk for me, her only daughter, so that I could eat and go to school. She was also selfish, though. Her weakness was not booze or gambling. It was men. I still don't really know how many of the "uncles" who stayed at our apartment were actually related to me. I couldn't fault her for wanting to feel loved and supported, and I still admire her optimism in keeping up her search for the right man. A casting call for husbands can confuse a girl though, and I grew up with complicated ideas about what a relationship was supposed to look like. As an adult, I started putting pieces together, and I eventually accepted that my mother must have been a prostitute for at least some of my youth. It isn’t definitive, but that scenario would answer many of the questions I’d been dealing with for years.
My brother, Sean, was my only sibling. He was older by three years, born to a different father, and for most of my formative years, he was a model of all that I aspired to be. He was cool, he was confident, and to my young eyes, he was successful. With maturity, I grew to realize how much of his persona was tied into Hollywood's version of a thug. He was slinging dope and packing heat the whole time. While it would be easy to fault him for being reckless, for endangering his mother and younger sister, his lifestyle was really the only way a young man could make something of himself in our hood. Make an honest living? Easier said than done.
Ultimately, I lived long enough to see clearly just how much more difficult their choices made their lives. I made a promise to myself that I would not follow the path of least resistance. That I wouldn't start dealing, or hooking, or relying on an unreliable man. I would find work that I enjoyed, however unglamorous and for whatever modest pay.
I didn't want an exciting life. But I got one anyway.
Chapter 2
Graduating high school was the first thing I did to find my own path. Neither my mother nor my brother had made it through their senior year before getting lured into the street life. I was able to land a job at a local bookstore called Harold’s. It was in poor repair and was not well attended by the locals, but I liked being around the books, and I liked the quiet. There were a few neighborhood kids who came in pretty frequently, mostly latchkey kids who got bored at home and wanted to chill with me for an hour or
two. It seemed like a good way to keep a couple more kids educated and off the street.
A few of the kids would come from the nearby group home. Lucy, who had been my best friend from childhood, worked as a Care Specialist (i.e., mother-for-hire) for the children. She grew up in the same group home after being left at the hospital by her birth mother. She and I graduated high school together. We’d both grown sick of the culture in our neighborhood. It prioritized money over people, and the only people profiting were drug cartels and the prison system.
Of course, we ourselves weren’t totally innocent. Our teenage years, like most, featured promiscuity and drug experimentation. The catch was, in our area, those features of teenage recklessness were more likely to get you killed than in most of America’s cities. Harder drugs and a pervasive lack of respect for women meant that you never quite knew what you were getting yourself into when you wanted to do something a little wild. We got out by the skin of our teeth, and barely a day went by in our adult years when we wouldn’t see another young sister nearing the edge of the cliff for herself. Sadly, there wasn’t really anything we could do for a girl who thought she had it all figured out. Ultimately, seeing those young ladies make those destructive decisions on a regular basis made us all the more grateful for having survived.
But surviving childhood didn’t guarantee surviving adulthood.
Chapter 3
Harold didn’t stop by the store much anymore. He was old, and there wasn’t that much he could help with anyway. We barely got any foot-traffic, and there was never enough money coming in to even prompt a trip to the bank. Harold’s generous store-credit policy allowed people to bring in their old books and trade them for the ones in our store. It was a cool system, and our customers were loyal, but it certainly couldn’t guarantee anyone a paycheck.
I was Harold’s only employee, and I’d been there for five years. He was open about leaving the store to me in his will, and the thought had thrilled me at 18. At 23, though, the store seemed like more of a liability than an asset. It was the only bookstore in our neighborhood, and the only independently-owned one in the state. I hated the thought of losing it. I hated the thought of leaving the kids without a safe place to read, but I also feared being racked with debt, struggling to keep a sinking ship afloat.
