“Look!” he demanded. “Just look. Do you see a familiar face?”
Sofie grabbed the book and paused, slowly lowering her eyes. The face that stared back at her was as familiar as the one she saw in the mirror every day. The picture was a grainy black and white, but there was no denying those eyes. She would know them anywhere.
Her hands began to shake. “Will?”
“Yes, Sofie. That is me. And that,” he pointed to a stern looking man standing next to him. “That is my father. I am sitting on a fence I just finished mending, and he had just come from the house.”
Tears burned behind Sofie’s eyes as she fought to keep them from falling.
She brought her eyes up to look at him again, comparing the face in front of her to the one in the book though she knew they were the same. As much as she tried to convince herself that this was a several times great grandfather and that Will was playing some sort of strange, cruel joke.
The book slipped from Sofie’s hands and she turned to walk quickly away. Will grabbed her wrist and turned her back to face him before she could get far.
“Sofie, please,” he begged. “Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” she yelled. “That you’re a ghost or something? There’s not exactly much of a future with a ghost.”
Will grabbed her hand, pulling her closer to him and putting her hand on his chest over his heart.
“Does this feel real to you?” he demanded.
She looked to where her hand rested. She could feel his heart beating frantically beneath his shirt. She closed her eyes, and let each beat pulse through her, her heart beating to perfectly match his. His fingers brushed her cheek as he tucked her hair behind her ear, as he had a dozen times since she’d met him. He placed his palm on her cheek, and she breathed deep, inhaling the sweet scent of him.
The tears in her eyes couldn’t be held back anymore, and they began to run, pooling where his hand rested on her face. He pulled his thumb across her cheek and wiped the tears away. Her eyes met his again.
Her eyes closed and she took deep breaths, letting them out slowly until she calmed. She tapped her finger against his chest in rhythm to his heart. She took one more breath and opened her eyes.
“Okay,” her voice came out quivering. She cleared her throat and continued. “Okay, so let me try to understand this. Try. You’re not a ghost?”
He shook his head slowly.
“So obviously you’re not dead. And you’re not a dream?”
Again, he shook his head slowly.
“That leaves,” she paused, unable to make the words come out of her mouth. “That means… time travel?”
He nodded twice, his hand lightening on Sofie’s over his heart.
Sofie took another deep breath, putting coherent thoughts together in her head. None of them made sense, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that Will was lying to her. Why would he, especially something as unbelievable as this?
“Okay,” she said shakily. “time travel. Um, who knew it was a thing. Cool, right?”
She was starting to ramble, her nerves refusing to be reined in. She pulled her hand free of his, not really wanting to but unable to hold up her arm anymore. Her knees gave way and she fell to the ground, landing on a tree root. The book sat next to her where he had dropped it, still open to the page with the picture that set her world topsy turvy.
Will knelt down carefully, as if fearing that if he moved too fast she would disappear quicker than a startled rabbit.
“How much do you want to know?” he asked
“Just give me the Cliff Notes.”
His brow knit together, and he stared at her, his mouth opening and closing like he wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say.
Realization hit her. “Just give me the shortened version.”
Will took a deep breath, not sure what she would want to hear first. “My wife’s mother did not accept Charlotte’s death, blamed me for everything. And rightly so.”
The guilt and sadness on his face made Sofie want to reach out to him, to take his hand and soothe his worries. But she resisted, insisting on knowing the whole story before she decided how she was going to handle anything having to do with the future.
“There was something about Elizabeth, Charlotte’s mother, that I was unaware of,” Will continued. “Apparently, among her other talents, Elizabeth was a witch. She believed that Charlotte’s soul still lived between this world and the next, and it was her plan to curse me to wherever Charlotte was so that I could retrieve her soul and restore her daughter to her. However, I had other plans. I ran, which apparently surprised Elizabeth, so instead of sending me to purgatory she sent me forward in time.”
Her mind tried to wrap itself around what her ears were hearing. But what she was hearing was impossible. Witches and spells and non-dead two hundred and forty three year old men. These things just didn’t exist.
“But I do exist, Sofie,” he said in response to her thought.
“So, you can read minds, too.” In spite of herself, she laughed. “Does that come with the whole non-dead thing or is it a special talent?” She might not have been able to comprehend what her ears were hearing, but she knew what her heart was saying. And it was telling her that she loved William McKay, no matter who or what he was.
He paused, looking into her eyes. Then he lifted one corner of his mouth in a lopsided smirk. “Of course not. But I can read your face. You are not as good at hiding your thoughts and feelings as you like to believe.”
“Really? I thought I was getting the hang of it.”
Another tear ran unchecked down her cheek.
Pulling himself closer to her, he pressed her hands against his chest again, a desperation in his eyes turning them almost grey, his face turning pale and his hands beginning to shake.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Um, I think so. I have to say this is a new one on me, so I’m not quite that sure of the proper response. But I think I’m coming around.”
“So, what do you want to do now? Now that you know this about me?”
Sofie thought, what an excellent question. She was obviously a part of his future, but was he really meant to be part of hers. She thought about walking away, about waking up tomorrow and continuing on like she had never met him. The thought of him not being around anymore made her realize, he most definitely was a part of her future.
The leaves of the willow began moving, a strong breeze starting to pick up.
Sofie glanced around, suddenly nervous. “Why is it always doing that?”
She looked back at Will, his expression lost somewhere between wanting to tell her and afraid of telling her.
“Elizabeth,” he said simply, his eyes never leaving Sofie’s.
Sofie’s eyes grew wide. “Elizabeth? Your mother-in-law is the one bringing up all this storm stuff? Why?”
“She’s trying to scare you off,” he admitted.
“Oh, is she now?” Sofie said defensively. “Her kid can’t have you so nobody can have you? Is that it? Well, I’m sorry, but this bitch is going to have to try harder than a little bit of wind.”
Sofie stood and pushed her way through the branches, looking around for she wasn’t sure what. The sky had gone dark, storm clouds gathering, lightning flashing.
Will charged through after her, grabbing her arm like he was trying to keep her from blowing away.
“Sofie, come. Please.” He tried pulling her back to the cover of the tree, but Sofie pulled her arm out of his grasp.
“No, Will,” she said firmly. “She wants me, she can come and get me.”
The wind calmed, but the sky stayed dark.
You have found a courageous one here, William.
Elizabeth’s voice resounded in both Will’s and Sofie’s heads.
“Oh no, bitch. You want to talk to me; you talk to me. Show your ass,” Sofie yelled into the air.
After what seemed like forever, Elizabeth finally began to appear.
The air in front of Sofie shimmered, a grey white cloud producing itself in front of her. It flickered and morphed until Sofie could slowly see the shape of a human begin to come through.
“Hello, Sofie Morgan,” the blob said, sounding a little more than a bit arrogant.
“Elizabeth? Can’t you do a little better than a shapeless mass of dense fog?”
Elizabeth made a sound that Sofie took to be a laugh, but Sofie wasn’t finding the humor.
Sofie turned to look at Will standing behind her, his face a mask of concern. But to his credit he made no move to stop Sofie from doing anything. She had to admit, she was impressed. After all of the books she read, she was expecting him to charge ahead and try to rescue the damsel.
“I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted that you’re not trying to do anything here,” she said flatly, a hint of a smile to her lips.
“Sofie, I have not known you long, but what I do know is that you do not need rescuing. Although I do have to admit, this is clashing significantly with my eighteen hundreds upbringing.”
Sofie’s smile widened and she winked. “Well, I’m glad that you’ve gotten with the twenty first century sensibilities.”
“I do hope I’m not interrupting,” Elizabeth interjected.
Sofie turned back to her, the smile melting off her face, her eyes turning hard.
“Oh, you’re doing a whole lot more than interrupting. More like disrupting. What is your issue?”
“My issue?” Elizabeth became more solid with each word she spoke. “If you mean, what about you upsets me so, I can honestly say that I do not have an issue, as you say, with you personally.”
“Really? Then what’s with all the drama?” Elizabeth asked, opening her arms wide, motioning to the trees and sky.
Elizabeth looked past Sofie to peer at William, who had stepped forward toward Sofie.
“It’s not you specifically, dear Sofie. Your choice of love doesn’t make me entirely happy, but William is the one I have the issue with.”
Sofie stiffened at the sound of William’s name, her hands flexing at her sides as she worked to keep calm.
“He didn’t do as I asked,” Elizabeth stated dismissively. “He knows what he’s done, and he knows what I wanted to him to do to fix it. It’s not my fault he decided to try and run from me. All he had to do was…”
“Let you kill me,” William finished.
Elizabeth spoke like an abusive parent, a playground bully. There was no denying the pain Elizabeth must have felt in losing her child, and it was a pain that no mother should have to live with. But William did not kill Elizabeth’s child. Will would have done everything he could to have prevented the deaths of his wife and his child. The fact that he hadn’t was a guilt that he had carried around with him for over two hundred years but which Elizabeth would never allow him to let go.
Sofie couldn’t stand still any longer, she had to move. Turning to the side, she took a couple of weary steps. Will straightened as if to follow her, but Sofie looked into his eyes and put up her hand to stop him. Will’s gaze followed her, his body tense and ready to protect.
The adrenaline coursing through Sofie’s veins was making her shake, the simple rhythm of walking in a circle helping to keep her thoughts straight and her knees from buckling. Elizabeth turned in time with Sofie, like the dancer pirouetting in the center of a jewelry box.
“So, your plan to send him to some unknown level of purgatory to fetch back your daughter, who may or may not have been waiting in that particular level,” Sofie began to reason. “So that plan fails, through no fault of his, and you figure instead you’ll just toy with him like a mouse for a couple of centuries?”
Reasoning with a long dead ghost to fight for the love of a two hundred year old time traveler was doing little to convince Sofie that she hadn’t gone mad. She rolled her eyes from one side to the other, quickly trying to see if anyone was witnessing her little dance, but she saw no one.
“You catch on quick,” Elizabeth admitted. “You have picked a smart one this time, dear William.”
Sofie didn’t miss the words this time, but considering the battle she had just entered she decided to tuck that away for when all this was done. Apparently, Will had made a few stops along his way to the twenty-first century.
“Yeah, I’m pretty smart. But tell me something, Elizabeth,” Sofie said, stopping dead where she stood. “What exactly do you plan to do now? You can’t have him.”
A maniacal grumbling sounded from the trees, and for a brief moment Sofie wondered if Elizabeth’s talents extended to the ability to bring inanimate objects to life. Was she animating the trees to attack? After peering around and not seeing even a trembling leaf, Sofie realized that Elizabeth was laughing.
“Oh, but I can have him, my dear. This is my favorite part of the game.”
Sofie’s eyes narrowed, her mind racing, trying to remember what Will had told her about Elizabeth and this little thing they did. He hadn’t told her about any rules or at least not any that Sofie could bring to mind at the moment.
“You see,” Elizabeth said, softer, as her misty shapelessness solidified and the outline of a woman in a thick brown dress with tightly tied bodice and voluminous petticoats began to appear. Elizabeth was a woman now, though still translucent, giving Sofie the idea that she was going to grab Will and disappear any second. Sofie was not about to let him go, so she took a step sideways again and began completing her circle, to be back where Will stood and between him and Elizabeth.
“William didn’t come straight to this place,” Elizabeth said slowly. “He made a few stops along the way, as you were saying.”
Sofie opened her mouth to protest that she never said any such thing, until she remembered that while she didn’t voice it, that thought was in her head.
“And in each place, I allowed him to stay only long enough to fall in love. And for his chosen to fall in love with him. And then I ripped them apart, so that they both would know the pain of losing someone so valuable, so precious.”
“Well, that’s pretty rude.”
“Yes, well,” Elizabeth chuckled. “For him it was a punishment; for her it was a lesson. You would have thought that after the first hundred years or so he would have stopped trying. But William is a romantic fool. He can’t live without love.”
William’s head hung low, his eyes half lidded. Elizabeth’s word were said with as much as venom bathed in honey as she could muster. They stung, and William was not prepared.
“Ah, but now it is time for him to take his punishment again. And for you to learn your lesson. Trust no man, especially where l’affair d’coeur is concerned. He will hurt you in the end, and you will lose.”
Elizabeth became mist again, her shape morphing to an undistinguished mass of cloud. The cloud moved toward William, who stood frozen to the spot as he prepared for his fate. He kept his eyes open, staring at Sofie, the pain in them excruciating and the tears running unbidden and unashamedly. I love you, he mouthed to her as his hands balled into fists at his side.
“No!” Sofie screamed and she lunged at William, falling into him and knocking him to the ground just as Elizabeth began enveloping him.
His arms came up around involuntarily around Sofie’s waist, but they had no time for that. Sofie jumped off of him, grabbing his hand and pulling him up with her. She ran back into the cover of the willow tree and out the other side, William running behind her.
“Where are we going?” he yelled, his breath labored with the exertion of the pace they were keeping.
“At the moment? Forward,” she answered, her labored breath matching his.
Sofie risked a glance behind them but she saw no ethereal apparitions chasing them anymore. She slowed to more of a jog but didn’t stop altogether. William caught up to her and slowed his pace as well. They were side by side now, and as they rounded a large evergreen Sofie suddenly stopped. She leaned her back against the trunk of the tree and worked to calm her breathin
g, taking measured breaths until her heart was no longer threatening to pound out of her chest.
“Are you two okay?” and old gravely voice appeared out of nowhere. Sofie stood frozen, her breathing speeding up again. There was another voice she could hear in her head, but who was it this time.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” A pair of pale brown eyes looked at her. His skin was brown and leathery, and small strands of thin white hair peeked out from under his bolo hat.
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I just don’t usually see too many people out in this part of the, ah, woods.” Sofie’s breath started slowing again and she doubled over to stop the dizziness from threatening to make her faint.
He looked at her straight, his eyes crinkling in the corner as he smiled. Then, he turned to Will.
“It’s nice to see you again, my boy. I see you have made a new friend since the last time we spoke.”
Sofie’s breath caught mid-inhale.
Will looked over at her sideways, taking a deep breath as he stepped toward the new visitor with his hand extended. He didn’t need to be able to read her mind to know that she was thinking this was another secret he was going to have to explain to her.
“It’s good to see you again, Damien,” Will said kindly. Damien took Will’s hand and shook it slightly.
“It’s good to see you as well, my boy. And who is this beautiful young lady?”
Damien released Will’s hand and turned toward Sofie, bending slightly at his waist in a polite bow, removing his hat from him head and holding it over his heart.
“I am sorry to have startled you,” Damien apologized. “I am Damien, a friend of William’s. We met, you could say, a few years back.”
Sofie stepped forward and held her hand out, just as Will had done. Damien straightened and took her offered hand, turning it over and kissing the back of it with a bare brush of his lips. He reminded her slightly of Will, his manners and proper way of speaking.
“Nice to meet you, Damien. I’m Sofie.”
Damien straightened and turned to Will, Sofie’s hand still resting in his though he was no longer holding it.
Destined ~ A Time Travel Anthology Page 8
