was the first I’ve been able to form anything in a long, long time. It’s going to take some time to recuperate.”
“How long have you…felt it?”
“For two weeks,” Dove said softly. “I’ve been coming out here every night for the past two weeks. I could feel it, Emery. Inside of me, wanting to get out. And it’s…wonderful. It feels like I’m alive. I don’t feel so weak, so powerless anymore. It’s as if a piece of my soul was restored.”
I was embraced so quickly it didn’t register. But soon, Dove’s familiar warmth and her smell…soap, a hint of cat fur (Butterball really adored Dove), and flowers…came barreling into my senses, causing even more tears to leak out, and I wrapped my arms around her—the first time in the past couple of weeks—and bawled like a baby.
After we stopped crying, we huddled together on the back steps, our shoulders touching. Needless to say we were both too excited to sleep, but Dove was clearly exhausted just after a minute of practicing her newly awakened alchemy, so we just sat there, watching the stars in silence.
She surprised me when she blurted out another apologize.
“For what?” I asked.
She shook her head. “When you asked me…about the day Guinevere disappeared. I snapped at you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
I smiled. “It’s fine. We all have our bad days.”
“But…” she shook her head. “When you asked me that question, it was stuck inside of my head all day. And the thing is…I can’t remember.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t remember much a bout that day, at the Sun and Moon Library,” she went on. “Whenever I try to picture that last day…the details start to get strangely fuzzy. I can’t even clearly see Guinevere’s own face. It’s all a blur. And sometimes, I see you…and there’s a fire…”
My stomach turned. “Maybe you’re remembering when we snuck into the Library, only a month ago?”
“It…could be…” she sighed. “Something is wrong with my head, but I’ve been too scared to say anything. I thought I just needed to rest and regain my strength, but it’s already been two weeks. Something just doesn’t feel right.”
I bit my lip. What if when Leon/Ivan stabbed Dove, it did something crazy to her memories? Or being in a coma so long caused memory relapse?
“Do you want to remember?” A voice from behind us called, startling us both so badly we knocked heads together. Chrys stood at the door, with Butterball cradled in her hands like a little baby.
She gave an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you…and I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but a certain kitty cat woke me up,
and I found the two of you gone, so…”
Dove was the first to speak up, giving Chrys a sweet smile. “It’s alright.”
I got up from my spot, brushing dirt off my rear. “What do you mean, Chrys?” I asked, referring to her earlier question.
Chrys bit her lip, and Butterball gave a howl of protest and jumped from her hands, landing like jello on the ground before he waltzed away to burrow under the shed. “I’ve…been practicing. Really hard.” She twisted her hands together, and I saw them shake. “It’s easy for me to go into someone’s dreams…but I think I can go even farther.”
Nobody said anything. The wind picked up, whistling through the trees, and I suddenly felt cold and hot at the same time.
“You mean you can find out why my memories are all hazy?”
Dove inquired.
Chrys nodded. “I think I can. What do you say? Want to give it a try?”
CHAPTER 7
We all huddle together back in our shared room. The cat shaped clock on the wall pointed past two in the morning. I expressed concern that it may be too early (or too late?) for Chrys to attempt her alchemy, but she was adamant that she’d be fine.
Even after some more protesting on my part—I couldn’t risk her getting hurt because of this—she sent me a poisonous glare, one I was all too familiar with. It was a glare she specially reserved for people who constantly babied her.
“Why do people assume that just ‘cause my eye is made of glass the rest of me is?”
After loosing the argument, she asked me to lock the door and double check that the windows were locked, too, and to shut the curtains. Dove was on the bed, clearly nervous by the way she couldn’t stop fidgeting, only for Chrys to scold her. “We can’t work if you don’t relax and fall asleep!”
“Are you sure this will work?”
“I…I don’t know,” Chrys fumbled. “I’m not very strong, but I
promise that I will try. But only if you want me to.”
Dove nodded her head, a wave of determination washed over her face. “I’m sure. Just don’t stress yourself, alright?”
My heart swelled. Even now, Dove always tried to put others first.
After a triple lock check, Chrys and I laid back down on the sofa bed and waited. Dove’s breathing was shallow—it was clear she wouldn’t be falling asleep for a while. I kept my tired eyes on the clock, watching it inch closer to three, then a half hour past that, when Dove’s breathing seem to ease. I gently called out to her twice, but she didn’t stir.
I looked over at Chrys, startled to see that she was wide awake, too. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“The BC has been teaching me ways to tap into my alchemy without me physically being asleep,” Chrys confessed, fiddling with a curl of her strawberry blonde hair. A nervous tick. “True, I need to be in deep concentration, but I don’t need to be in deep sleep or anything…”
She glanced over at me, her one cobalt blue eye shining, as well as her milky glass one. She had taken off her eye patch, revealing where her Runes were: her right eye. The eye was pure blank white, but if you looked closely you could see thin, silvery lines on her eye, that also cascaded down the side of her face. Luckily she could hide the Runes from public with her hair and just a touch of makeup.
Our Runes were pretty strange. It only made E-Alchemist that
much more intriguing, because only Blood-Borne alchemist have Runes on their skin. Normally, they appear over time after training, but in our case they basically popped up when we were “revived”. Chrys hides hers behind an eye patch, but it doesn’t at all take away from her cuteness.
Oliver also had Runes, located on his throat. They were a copper color, a little lighter than Dove’s own, and he usually wore turtlenecks or scarves to hide them.
Mine was right over my heart. Easy to hide, though I’d have to be careful in the summer. They took the shape of the face of an old grandfather clock, with intricate gears and grinds that almost seemed to move in motion whenever I activated my alchemy. After my brush of death last Christmas—during a movement where Dove thinks that I had
“become one” with my alchemic core, when I woke up from the hospital to see that the Runes had expanded and moved and stretched over my chest and a little past my shoulders.
“Do you want to come?”
I balked. “What?”
She extended a hand. “I want to push my limits. I want to see if I can be strong, where I don’t have to be the one always protected anymore. I want to help too. I want to be able to defend myself, even if my alchemy really isn’t all that useful. I think, if I can willingly use my alchemy—sort of like…projecting myself—into a person’s dream or
subconscious, I can bring someone out of theirs, too.”
“But it might be too much,” I protested, “We’ve only been in serious training for a couple of weeks. Do you think it’s enough?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel sure,” Chrys shot back. “I want you to come. And if it gets too much, we’ll stop. Promise.”
I was hesitant, but a pang of curiosity sparked inside of me, and I grasped Chrys’s hand tightly and squeezed my eyes tight.
I counted the seconds that passed…five hundred and twenty seven…before I felt myself sink into the sweet bliss of sleep…
And I’m in the
dreamscape with Chrys.
It felt like an out-of-body experience. Is this how Chrys always felt when she searched for me in my own dreams? Like she was flying?
I was surprised when my feet touched the ground and we were back in my dorm room—the very first one I had when I came to St. Mary’s. It was a single dorm, a little run down because it was in the oldest building on campus, but it was exactly like stepping into a snapshot. My bed was made nice and neat, my uniform was hung up in perfect on the closet door—though I felt an irk of irritation when I spotted a wrinkle in the coat—and the familiar fluffy purple pillows were set perfectly, from biggest to smallest, on the window set.
And there, nestled between the pillows, was Dove, staring at us both with a look of awe and curiosity. She was even dressed in the exact
same clothes that I saw her on the first day of school: a long sleeved sweater and denim shorts and black, sturdy boots. Her hair, however, was the same length it was now, barely reaching her shoulders.
“Emery?” Dove blinked, rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought her along,” Chrys answered in my place, “To help.”
“Oh…” Dove blinked again, as if she were waking up from a deep slumber, or in the middle of a medicated state. It was like she was talking to herself. “Well, I’m glad.”
I was lost in her memory, of the day we met. It was so achingly nostalgic, and my heart felt painfully tight. I wanted to relive all of these good, peaceful moments with her and Leon again.
And we will , I thought fiercely, I’ll make it happen soon.
“Hmm…” Chrys glanced around the room. It was started to shift, like the static of a television. “We need to go back a little farther. Before all of this. Are you ready, Dove?”
Dove nodded, and reached out to take Chrys’s other free hand, and the scene shifted and blended together, melting into different sets like a kaleidoscope of memories. I saw a the glimpse of a familiar woods…an iron fence…faces came and went…most belonging to Leon, and even just looking at them made my heart twist as if it were wrapped tightly in barbed wire.
Then we were at the Sun and Moon Library. It looked exactly the same as when I saw it from the first time Chrys had warned me through the dreamscape, and again when Dove and I snuck in to save her.
Dove was pale and shaking, and I told Chrys to stop, but Dove shook her head, gritting her teeth. Beads of sweat bloomed on her paled face. My grip tightened instinctively on Chrys’s. I wanted to jump in, to tell her not to push herself, but I know—God did I know—how it felt when you absolutely needed to do something, to find the answers you’ve been looking for, even if it isn’t easy.
“I need to do this. Keep going.”
But no matter how much Chrys tried to push, the scene didn’t change. Nothing showed up, nothing moved. It was as if we were frozen. I tried to step forward and my hand bumped into an invisible wall. No matter how much I shoved it wouldn’t budge an inch. This must be the memory block.
“You can do it!” Chrys encouraged, squeezing Dove’s hand tightly. “You can…”
Words fading, Chrys swayed on her feet and both she and Dove collapsed to their knees. The silvery glow that had enveloped Chrys was starting to fade a little, pulsing with every breath she tried to take.
Dove had fallen, her grip on Chrys lost, and it looked as if she
were going to sink into the floor. Chrys couldn’t keep her hold on Dove’s memories anymore—we were both starting to fade.
I reached out, reaching for Dove, to pull them up, become their support. When my hand reached her shoulder, there was a sudden flash of pure, painful light.
And the entire world seemed to pop, like a rubber band that had snapped.
A blink later.
And Dove vanished.
CHAPTER 8
“What happened?” I cried out to the frozen scene. “Where’s Dove?”
Chrys’s grip on my hand tightened. I completely forgot she was here. Though she was on her knees and she looked so deathly pale, she kept a good, firm grip on me, her eyes polished with resolve. “We’ve unlocked the barrier,” she wheezed, and I rubbed her back, trying anyway to help. “I don’t know how…but we did it. Now Dove is reliving the memory—the moment—of when Guinevere disappeared. All we can do is watch…”
I glanced up, startled to see that the frozen library had suddenly popped to life, like when your ears pop from being underwater for too long. It was lit, all warm and cozy, and I saw an afternoon sun filtering through the high windows. The colors were so vibrate, as if the entire scenery was a beautiful painting.
Then my eyes traveled farther from the stack of perfectly placed books, the blocked fireplace, the paintings…and my heart felt as if it had dropped right down to my toes.
I saw the crumpled form of a boy wearing a familiar brown
jacket near the stairs; blood pooling around his head, caking wavy dark brown locks.
It felt as if someone had stuck a knife into my chest. There was a twisting, stabbing pain deep within my chest, like my bones and veins and insides had been forcibly curled into a tangled mess, as easily as if someone were twirling spaghetti onto a fork.
It was Leon. Leon was lying there—bleeding—and not moving.
I wanted to cry out and fling myself forward to help, but Chrys’s hold on me was like iron, despite her weakened state. “It’s just a memory, remember?” she actually rolled her eyes at me, and I could only blush, feeling stupid.
She was right. Of course. But seeing him like that made the scab over my heart throb, and I forced my eyes away. I spotted Dove, leaning against the wall near the fire place, flinching with every movement she made. Her blue eyes were wide, though one was swelled up. She opened her mouth to cry out, but nothing would come.
And then I saw two figures on the second floor, fighting.
One was horribly familiar: White. He wore that same, nasty pure, smooth mask with only small slits for holes that acted as eyes.
This time, though, he wore a heavy looking cloak and hood, obscuring his pale blonde hair from sight.
The woman he was fighting with was beautiful. She wore a dress,
a blue one underneath a light gray coat. Her hair was long, swelling in waves down her back as she fought against White, easily raising her hands to summon a force of wind.
White let out a yell as the winds picked him up and tossed him over the second floor balcony. He managed to right himself up, like a sneaky cat, but fell in a crumple. I heard a sickening snap and saw that he had broken his leg from the fall—it was twisted and mangled, making bile rise in my throat.
Using the same Wind Alchemy, the woman floated down the ground, almost like an angel, and rose her other hand and made a blade of pure fire. It didn’t so much as leave a burn on her fair skin. And I knew without a doubt who this was.
Guinevere de Blanc. Immortal alchemist. And a Natural—an alchemist who could freely control all four elements. Rick had mentioned that nobody really existed like that in the world anymore, but I had just witnessed Guinevere command Wind and Fire without breaking a sweat.
And she was clearly winning this battle.
Guinevere held the flaming blade to White’s throat. His Adam apple bobbed, and he laughed. “Are you going to kill me in front of your precious students?”
Her voice was cool and strong, like a gentle wind that could turn
into a raging storm. She sounded so young, but you could just feel how ancient she was, just from her voice alone. “Leave at once.”
“You think you’ve won this?” White spat. “I’ve only just begun! I will get your book, Guinevere. No matter what!”
“And what, if you happen to obtain it,” Guinevere said sarcastically, “do you plan to do with it?”
“What do you think?” He huffed. “Our race is dying, Guinevere, or have you become to blind in your age to see it? Alchemists are becoming a thing of the past; a myth; a story to tell innocent little humans at
night. Why won’t you see what I am trying to accomplish?”
“You are just a power hungry fool,” Guinevere hissed. “No different than those other fools who think they deserve to hold power for the ‘greater good’.”
“Why won’t you join me?!” White bellowed. “With your power, we could revive the old ways; we could rebuild this world where only alchemists reside—everyone will be equal in power!”
“But in order to rebuild something, you have to destroy it,”
Guinevere said. “You plan to eradicate the human race just to create new alchemists? If you truly believe that will work, then I feel sorry for you.”
She pressed the blade to his throat and he let out a howl as his skin began searing. He stumbled on his broken leg, and even through
his mask I could feel the venom from his eyes. “I will have your book, Guinevere. I will find the Elixir and make my dream become a reality.
I’m already preparing an elite group of alchemist—alchemist who far surpass the very laws of alchemy; children who defy the very logic of our world! And the next time we meet I will have your book—or I will take your students. It’s your choice, Guinevere.”
With a flutter of his cape, White slammed through the doors of the Sun and Moon Library and vanished. Guinevere sighed, releasing her alchemy and the fire sword dispersed, shimming in the air.
She stood still, her dark blue eyes that have seen a thousand lifetimes creased with worry. “It couldn’t be…”
Dove coughed weakly from her spot at the fireplace, and Guinevere snapped to attention. She glided over like a spirit and knelt in front of Dove, stroking her hair gently, like a mother’s caress.
“My sweet Dove…” Guinevere smile sadly. “Please forgive me for what I’m about to do, but things are moving too fast. I can’t have my two precious students hurt. I must go back to the silver magnolia.”
Dove tried to say something but only a sigh escaped her lips. Her eyes closed, and Guinevere placed a small kiss on Dove’s forehead.
Guinevere brushed some hair away from her face, then with one last lingering smile got up and extracted her book from the hidden crook in the fireplace I had stumbled across before.
The Fake Mind (Time Alchemist) Page 4
