Black Knight

by Svetlana Ivanova

  "It's too late, don't you think?" I said, "We're running out of time. I can feel it in my bones. Something is going to tear us apart. And I've been subconsciously thinking about it. How long will we hold onto this tiny sliver of hope? Perhaps I shouldn't stand in your way anymore."

  Allecra stared at me for a long stretching moment. Her mouth opened in shock.

  "Nina, are you breaking up with me?” she asked softly.

  "It's the only way..."

  "No!" She got up from her chair and walked over to me purposely. Getting down on the floor, she took my hands in hers, making me looking into her glistening bright eyes.

  "Why do you do this?" she asked, her voice faltered a little with emotions. "We can work it out together. We can bring everything back the way it was, the joy, the happiness."

  I reached my hand to her cheek and caressed her soft skin gently.

  "You'll get all of that, but with someone else," I said, "And you are right, Allecra. You can't free me. I have to free myself."

  She stared deep into my eyes, her face blank, a kind of blank that was full of anxiety, nervousness, and fear.

  "Are you not in love with me anymore?"

  "I love you with everything I am, and I will always love you that way," I said, "but I've always felt like I was going to lose you, like two planets obit towards different directions. Maybe we just fell in love at the wrong time. I can't move on if you're still standing there. Maybe it's best for you and me to let it go."

  "No! I won't allow it!" Allecra said, shaking her head in disbelief and desperation. "After all the things we have been through, how could you do that to me?... Please don't, Nina, I'm not letting you go!"

  To my amazement and heart-brokenness, fine crystalline tears rolled down Allecra's face. She kept wiping them away roughly with her hand as if she was not used to them. My heart stuttered into pieces seeing her cry.

  "Allecra, shh...it's okay," I said and wiped her smooth cheeks gently with my thumbs. When she calmed down a little, I cupped her face in my hands and leaned in to kiss her lips. "Listen to me, you have to fulfill your destiny. Your people are counting on you to save their hope and dream. Please don't let me hold you back from doing what is more important."

  Allecra shook her head back disapprovingly.

  "Stop it, please," she begged, her body trembling. "I'm so sorry I broke your heart but don't push me away like that. I'd do anything, whatever it takes to make you forgive me. Please just let me stay with you for the rest of my life. I don't want anything anymore, just you and me."

  Then she pressed her face to my breasts and held me in her arms. I stroked her head. My longing hands went over to her slender shoulders, squeezing the taut muscles that looked as though they would snap at the mounting misery. I could feel her growing frustration and despair as they coursed through her feverish body like heat-waves. But my heart had turned cold and dark, mostly hopeless, I couldn't even tell if it was beating or bleeding.

  "It has nothing to do with what happened. I understand perfectly why you did what you did," I said and smoothed her hair like I'd done hundreds of times before. "If anything, it only made me realize that our relationship isn't a fairytale. It seemed like one, but without the predictable happy-ending. And the most unfortunate thing is it has reached a dead end for us now. We have to accept the truth."

  "If we're not together, Nina, how the hell do you expect me to live my life when I can't even find the shattered pieces that make me whole again?" She said as she looked up at me with tearful eyes. Those clear galaxies ablaze with pain and desperation were too heart-wrenching to see.

  Looking at her distraught face caused the anguish to bubble up like boiling lava inside my chest. I turned my head away for a moment to collect my bearing. Then with a deep shaky breath, I spoke again.

  "There will be dark emptiness for both of us, but it won't last forever," I said, "and I hope one day you find a love that can fill the void with all the things ours couldn't be."

  This time, Allecra let out a dry humorless laugh amidst her tears.

  "This hope of yours will be in vain, Nina," she said in a grim voice, faint and bleak with emotions. "Living will be a slow suicide for me if I go back. Even if they sent me to the alternate universe, thinking I could have loved another you, in another body, in different time and space, and surely you would have loved me back, but the thing is, that person wouldn't have been the real you — the only Nina I want this with."

  I bit my lips from breaking down and took another deep breath.

  "I'm sure you love me more, Allecra, but I will love you longer. When this is over, you will have the same passion for another girl who deserves it. And I will still be here, loving you just the same."

  Allecra stared at me for the longest time, as if she'd lost the power of speech. But when she spoke, her words were slow and lifeless like echoes from a cave.

  "I was cognitive enough to know that this love would be my ruin, but I chose to let it consume me anyway," she said nostalgically, "Because I realized that the thing I was afraid the most was the thing that set me free. And now you want to shove me back to the prison I built for myself, leaving me to rot in the cell of my guilt and loneliness. Is that what you want for me, Nina?"

  I was gripped by shock hearing Allecra's bitter words. Her pain reached through to me like a thousand needles piercing into my own heart. Suddenly the desire to hold her and caress her strike me, but she already got up and stepped away from my grasp. Her face hardened and her stare seemed far away.

  I rose from my chair to grab her tightly clenched fists, trying to uncurl them and lace our fingers together, telling her wordlessly how much I was hurting too, but she would not let me. In the midst of intense hopelessness, I pulled her stiff body into my arms and cried with my face buried into her chest. The exquisite scent of her skin filled my lungs with familiarity and sweet memories of us.

  We stood like that for what seemed like an eternity.

  Then all of a sudden, there were strong gusts of wind wagging around the house. The air grew thin with statics like it was before a thunderstorm.

  Allecra looked around us in confusion. It wasn't her own doing, I realized, but after a second we seemed to understand what was happening.

  I used to be excited about this phenomenon, but this time, it felt different. My intuition told me that something was wrong. Sparks of electricity formed and danced about us. The walls of the room were peeled away one by one. Our little utopian reality sank like the water of a giant fishbowl had been drained out.

  "They've found us," she whispered, causing my heart to drop a little farther downward.

  The house and its lovely garden and everything else I thought would be permanent were swept clean by the Spindle machine.

  A burst of blinding light drenched us harshly. I felt Allecra's strong arms curled around my waist and gathered me to herself. Breathing through sobs, I had a sickeningly feeling that this was the last time we would be embracing each other. Our grip was desperate. And even after everything stopped, we still held on tightly like we would break, not like that of glass that still with pieces remained. This brokenness left nothing for it was of the heart. I felt as if we were in a shipwreck, clinging to the wreckage of ourselves.

  We were now returned to the laboratory back in Allecra's house, and we weren't alone.

  "About time you come back," Xenon's sharp voice startled me. "You think we couldn't find you, little sister?"

  Allecra and I turned around to find her and Triton standing before us.

  "Xenon," Allecra said even she seemed to be aware of their being here already.

  Her eyes were still tearing after the effect of our conversation. Her sister came forward. Allecra pulled me to stand behind her.

  "We're leaving Earth today," she said.

  "What?" Allecra said in surprise.

  "It's an order from Arzuria," Xenon told her, and her face turned to me. "Earth has offered us nothing but disappointment and false hope."<
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  "No!" Allecra protested, "I won't leave with you."

  "Stop being a fool with this human girl," her sister snapped back, "You know she's not the one. We all knew it from the start."

  "I don't care if she's the one or not. If you want to take me back, you will have to kill me and bring my body to Arzuria."

  Xenon was taken aback by this fierce threat from her sister.

  "Allecra..." I whispered in alarm. My hand tugged at her hand, but she ignored me.

  Triton looked between us as he stayed guarded behind. His chiseled face was not like the one I'd known. There was no expression or twinkle in his dark eyes anymore.

  "We just learned that another Elder has died, Allecra," Xenon muttered through her teeth, "How long does it take for you to wake up and stop this stupid delusion? We can't afford to wait for nothing anymore. You're not one of them. How could you sit back and watch our entire race disappear from the face of the universe? You can speak human language, be with them and dress like them, but there's still Arzurian blood in your veins. You have a responsibility to fulfill, Allecra. You bear our people's wish. And now you want to let a girl shutter it and destroy what our people have worked so hard for?"

  Allecra snickered darkly.

  "What do we have in our own world of perfection and superiority?" She asked. "Besides our noble and intelligent race that can't be touched or broken with emotions? Now I only hear their withdrawn heartbeats and melancholy breaths, drifting in a darkened plain of space. Maybe that is the reason we can't create life because we don't create love. When was the last time any of our kind know how to love deeply and helplessly like the humans? We are the superior race who forgot to live ordinarily. Do you even notice there's dew on the grass in the morning?"

  "What?" Xenon said, staring at her sister in confusion.

  "Tell me Xenon, have you ever wanted to walk through a tunnel of trees just to feel it, or run through a field of poppies and notice a moving snail and say 'oh she's probably set sail to China'?" Allecra said. "Do you giggle when you blow on a dandelion and think they drift in the air like tiny white parachutes? Because these are the joy and wonders Nina has taught me to feel."

  "This is stupid!" her sister growled, her face squeezed itself out of shape with anger.

  "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?" Allecra said sarcastically. Then she turned her face to me again, making our eyes lock amidst the tension. "That's what happens when the love on Earth lights up your whole being, blowing your mind with colors and sounds and sensations, and all you have to do is gazing into the other person's eyes and seeing not only constellations but an entire galaxy of everything you've ever wanted and needed. I've tripped and fallen into a depth like no other, a black hole in itself. I have fallen in love with her, Xenon, and you can never bring me back from it."

  The whole time, I was staring unblinkingly at Allecra. From the corner of my eye, Xenon looked as stunned as I was.

  "But does she feel the same for you?" Xenon said. The very question snapped us back to reality. It was the question Allecra had no clear answer to. "You have heard what she said, haven't you? She wants you out of her life. Her love is just a good for nothing emotion that weakens you. It's just a sweet illusion. Maybe she doesn't even love you at all. She only wanted you because you're exciting, even exotic to her dark desire, a mere curiosity to her human mind."

  I shook my head vigorously, trying to tell Allecra that it wasn't true, but everything Xenon said was too convincing that I lost hope in trying to deny it. But given what had transpired our tempestuous breakup, Allecra might as well believe every word. Perhaps, it was better for her to think of me this way. I loved her so dearly, but she deserved better than a ridiculously difficult girl like me.

  "Our mother ship is waiting for us behind the moon," Xenon spoke again, "Like it or not, you have to leave Earth now."

  Then she motioned with her hand to Triton.

  Triton seemed hesitated to obey Xenon's order. Allecra pushed me out of the way and moved forward. At the same time, her eyes went ablaze, glowing like fire in a bright turquoise light.

  "Triton!" Xenon yelled. "Get her!"

  Finally, the tall alien man shifted his feet, but before he could even take a step forward, his knees buckled and his bulky body dropped to the floor with a thud. I muffled a gasp with my hand. Triton didn't move. His eyes froze like a dead fish's.

  "Now you turn yourself against us because of her?" Xenon hissed.

  "You made me do it, Xenon," Allecra sneered back, causing her sister's topaz eyes to glow in fury. Instead of lashing out, Xenon turned her stare in my direction. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain piercing through my head, freezing every nerve in my body. I screamed and my legs gave out from under me. Allecra's startled face turned around and found me lying paralyzed on the floor.

  "Nina!" she cried and came to me. With a combination of telepathy and hypnosis, my body had lost its function. My eyes were blinking with tears of fear and confusion as all words died on my lips.

  Allecra picked me up from the floor and held my limp body into her chest. She wiped the tears from my cheeks frantically. From the corner of my eyes, Xenon awoke Triton again and gave him an order with her pointed stare, and this time, the tall guy moved obediently and swiftly to Allecra. When his hands found her shoulders, she gave him an elbow to his stomach and tossed her brother like a sandbag to the floor once again.

  Another burst of pain erupted in my head. I screamed again.

  "Nina!"

  "If you don't come with us, Allecra, I'll make sure she will never be the same girl you so cherish ever again," Xenon said.

  Allecra's face seemed to be seized by fear as she was staring at me helplessly.

  "Don't you dare harm her, Xenon," Allecra muttered fiercely.

  "I will let her go only if you agree to return to Arzuria."

  There was a long agonizing silence. Allecra looked as though she was debating with herself, but another sharp burning pain seemed to crawl from every neuron in my brain like insects. I gasped and cried out. My skull tightened like it was going to slit open. Tears burst out from my eyes to the sheering agony.

  "No!" Allecra cried. "Stop!"

  "Give her up, Allecra."

  "I can't..." she sobbed helplessly.

  "Yes, you can, or I'm going to rip apart all her memories of you, everything she's ever known will go up in a smoke," Xenon said. "She can even be brain-dead if I see fit."

  "NO!" Allecra cried. Rage clouded her mind, filling her eyes with fire. Allecra rose up and turned to Xenon, intending to lunge at her, but before she could reach her sister, Allecra keeled over onto her knees.

  "You think they created me to protect you without giving me the power to control you, Allecra?" Xenon said. "Maybe I should take away your memories of her instead."

  "No..." I said faintly, trying to crawl my way towards Allecra. The pain in my head was gone as soon as Xenon's attention focused on her sister. Allecra was motionless, completely lost in a state of unconsciousness.

  Her sister walked over to her and put her fingers to Allecra's temples. The glow of their eyes intensified like miniature suns. I heard Allecra screamed in pain. My hand outstretched in protest.

  "No!" I cried.

  In just a short moment, I watched her body lolled and dropped to the floor. My mouth gaped and eyes widened in shock. I quickly crawled over to her feeble body. My hands gently pulled her into my embrace. Her face was ashen like a pale moon. Her breath went in and out faintly like the fluttering of a dying butterfly's wings. I touched her cold cheek as my tears flowed incessantly.

  Xenon stood, looking over us in silence.

  "If you love her, let her go," she said. "Allecra is better off without you as a burden. She will find a new home and everything that happened on Earth is no longer her concern. She isn't yours to claim. She belongs to us. Don't make everything even more difficult than it already is. I know it's hard for you, but you must leave the room and this house and li
ve a new life. We won't be your problem anymore."

  I was still sobbing quietly to the unresponsive girl in my arms. Though I always had an inkling of how it might end, I just didn't think I would lose her so soon. It was the saddest thing that life was full of sudden goodbyes.

  Now I understood when star-crossed lovers die, there is a parting swan song. Perhaps it was the greatest grief known to man, to be left on earth when another was gone. My hand was ceaseless now, stroking and tracing the elegant base of that slender neck, drew softly across the pulse and down to her beating heart. I would miss this the most. This, this and this. Her eyes, her lips, her hands and everywhere.

  In a tremendous surge of sorrow and loss, I held Allecra close to my broken-heart. I kissed her soft lips and whispered a soft goodbye.

  Xenon called for Triton, who had recovered and was now standing beside us. His face as empty as ever, but there was a dull glint of sadness in his eyes as he stared at me.

  "Get rid of everything before we leave, Triton," Xenon ordered him, "We don't want any trace of us left behind."

  Triton nodded and then turned to all the ultramodern equipment and computer system around the lab. He spread his hands wide, like a music conductor about to start the first bar of notes. His fingers moved like the way he talked to me, but whatever he projected made everything in the room tremble and hiss with mechanical noises. Then all things went dead and slowly fell apart, becoming loose piece by piece, atom by atom. It was as if they demolecularized themselves into tiny grains of black sand flooding to the floor. Soon what was left was crumbled meaningless heaps of black dust. The only thing remained was the Spindle. It needed no power to run but the force of the mind.

  "It's time," Xenon's voice said. "Take her away."

  Triton wordlessly and apologetically lifted Allecra from my arms. I was reluctant to let her go, yet I had no strength left to protest. My mind was numb with pain. My body was empty and hollow and as light as a feather. Allecra's form curled limply to her brother's broad chest, and I watched them slowly turned to walk away, taking the last glimpse of her face with them.

  When they reached the giant machine, Xenon's head drifted back to me again. Through my tears, I saw a flash of mild concern ignited in her eyes.