by L. S. O'Dea
He leaned to pick it up but couldn’t quite reach it. He repositioned his chair. It now sat angled on a ravine that dipped toward the water. He shifted forward and to the right, but he must have miscalculated. The chair tipped and he fell, sliding down the hill and slipping into the water.
She jumped to a crouching position. She wanted to help him, but she couldn’t risk it. He’d be okay. He hadn’t fallen all the way into the lake, just his lower half. All he had to do was pull himself out of the water.
The River-Man submerged.
She couldn’t sit here and let the creature get him. She dropped out of the tree and raced to the water’s edge. He couldn’t turn her in if he didn’t really see her. It would only take a second to grab his hand and yank him ashore and then she’d disappear into the forest.
The boy grasped at the land but it was muddy and slippery. He grabbed a handful of weeds and began to haul himself out of the lake, but his weight was too much and the vegetation pulled free from the damp earth. He dug his fingers into the dirt, but his hands lost purchase. His blue gaze locked with hers right before he disappeared into the lake.
She fidgeted on the shore, but the boy didn’t come up for air. She did not want to enter that water. She glanced back at the forest. Gaar was going to kill her, if the River-Man didn’t get her first. She inhaled and jumped into the lake. It was deep and dark. She couldn’t see anything in the murky depths. The quicker she found him the sooner she could get out of here. She swam around. She needed air. She resurfaced and dove again. Where was he? Had the River-Man gotten him? Something big and slippery brushed past her, causing her to jerk backward and then the Almighty was in her arms. He grabbed ahold of her and she shot toward the surface, kicking with all her strength. He was heavier than he looked. Her ascent was slow with the added weight and her lungs burned with the need for oxygen. She pushed forward with one more kick and broke the surface. She drew in air and yanked his head out of the water. He clung to her, his arms encircling her neck, choking her.
“Around my chest. Hold me there,” she gasped.
He nodded, wrapping his arms around her waist.
She swam the few laps to the shoreline and dragged them both out of the water. Once on land he let go of her. She turned and grabbed him under the arms, yanking and pulling until they were both a few feet away from the lake. She should escape to the forest, but first she had to breathe. She collapsed on the ground next to him.
After several moments, he turned his head toward her. “Thanks.”
She pushed herself to a sitting position and scooted away, her legs and arms trembling.
He leaned up on his elbows. “Wait. I won’t hurt you.”
She stopped. There was something desperate in his tone.
“My name’s Jethro. What’s yours?” He brushed his wet, dark hair out of his eyes. “I promise, I won’t hurt you,” he repeated. “You saved my life. I owe you.”
His blue eyes were kind and she didn’t want to go. It’d been almost a year since she’d had a conversation with anyone her age, but she couldn’t tell him her name. “My friends call me Little One.” It was kind of true. Gaar and Mirra were sort of friends.
He smiled. It lit up his face, making him even more attractive. He glanced down her body and then quickly away. “They must be pretty big.” His faced reddened. “I mean you don’t look little to me. I...I mean, not little, little.”
She glared at him. The Producers had called her skinny and she hadn’t liked it. She liked being called large even less.
“I’m sorry.” His face fell. “I never say the right things around girls.” After a moment, he smiled again. “I have an idea. Let’s start over.”
Start over? Did he want her to kick him back into the lake? Right now, she’d be happy to do it. She stood, crossing her arms.
“Okay. Obviously, you don’t want to start again. How about we move on? What are you doing here? No one comes to the Lake of Sins but me.” He looked around. “Are you alone?”
He was asking too many questions. “I have to go.” She headed for the forest.
“Wait. I’m sorry. Again. I’m sorry.”
She was done with him. She had no business associating with an Almighty anyway, even if he was really cute.
“Please, can you get my chair?” he called out.
She stopped and turned around. His chair was by the water several feet away. He would have to drag himself over to it and that could take a while. Plus, the River-Man might come back and attack. She walked to the chair and sat it upright. She pushed it over to him and then stepped away.
He pushed the lever to lock the wheels. “Can you lift me under the arms?” He averted his eyes.
She understood what it was like to be different but should she get that close? His face flushed pink. This beautiful Almighty was embarrassed. She stepped forward and half-lifted, half-dragged him into the chair.
“Thank you,” he said again, refusing to look at her. “My dad would kill me if he knew I was down here. I’m going to have to wait until I dry to go home.” He glanced at her. “Do you want to wait with me?”
She should run into the forest and hide, but she didn’t move. Would it be that dangerous to speak with him for a few moments? She nodded.
“Really? I’m mean, great. Let’s go over here. Away from the water.” He laughed.
It was a lovely sound, rich and deep. She could listen to it all day. She followed him over to a patch of sunlight near a large tree. He stopped and turned his chair to face the lake. She stayed a few feet away from him and sat, half-facing the water and half-facing him.
“So, what are you doing out here?”
She didn’t answer. The less she told him the better.
“Okay. You don’t want to talk. That’s a change from most girls I know.” He snickered at his joke.
She raised an eyebrow. It seemed boys from any class could be idiots. She readjusted her position to get a better view of him. He was really good looking, but she couldn’t just stare at him until they dried. He was bound to ask more questions about her and then she would have to leave, or she could point the conversation back to him. “Why are you here?”
“It’s my favorite place. It’s untamed. Wild. I used to be like that.” He looked down at his legs.
“What happened?” In her camp there had been a little girl whose legs were malformed at birth. Her father had made a conveyance for her similar to the chair the boy was in, but the Lead Producers had reported her and the Almightys had come and taken her away.
He shrugged. “I was young and stupid. I was out exploring with my Guards. I climbed a tree and fell. I landed on my back. Since then I’ve been unable to walk.”
She jumped up. She was an idiot. Of course, he wasn’t alone.
“What’s wrong?” He glanced around.
“Where are your Guards?”
“What? Oh, I don’t have them anymore.” There was sadness in his tone.
She sat back down. She was glad that there weren’t any Guards around, but maybe he should have some. He would have died if she hadn’t been here today. “Wouldn’t it be safer if you had them with you?”
“For me, yes. But not for them.”
“I don’t understand.”
He stared past her at the lake, his face hardening with anger. “My dad can be a Grunt’s ass. He blamed them for my accident and had them killed.”
His father sounded like an Almighty that she did not want to meet. She stood again. “I’ve got to go.”
“Don’t. Please stay.” He wheeled closer to her. “I like talking to you.” He hesitated. “I don’t have a lot of friends. We can talk about something else. Anything. You name it.”
He was lonely and she wasn’t ready to go back to her tree. Night would come soon enough. She crouched. “What is this place? Why are these statues here?”
“You picked a good topic.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a bag and two bottles of water. He took a couple of items from the bag and han
ded it and a water bottle to her. He took a bite out of one. “Cookies. Chocolate chip are my favorite.”
Thank Araldo, she now had water. Later, she’d figure out a way to keep the bottle. She took a cookie and studied it. She wasn’t sure what it was but he was eating it and it smelled good. She took a small bite. The sweetness was like nothing she had tasted before. She licked her lips and shoved the rest of it in her mouth.
“Many believe that this place is haunted.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “The tale begins hundreds of years ago, after the Great Death. A family, consisting of a mother, father and two boys, lived here. The elder boy, Christian, was mighty and strong. The younger one, Harold, was sickly and weak.”
She glanced at his legs and then quickly back at his face. He was watching her, his eyes sad. She wanted to apologize but that would make it worse. She looked down at the bag of cookies.
He continued with only a slight hesitation. “Even though the brothers were very different they were basically a happy family. Christian spent his days outdoors hunting and fishing and Harold occupied his time with books. He read everything that he could get his hands on. Even”—he paused and lean closer to her—“books on the black arts.” He whispered the last part.
“No,” she said around a mouthful of cookie. These things were fabulous.
“Yes, but more about that later.”
She frowned. She wanted to hear about that now.
“One day the Great Death arrived and took the lives of their mother, father and neighbors. The world became a harder place and did not have much sympathy for a sickly boy with a love of learning.
“Christian, on the other hand, thrived. He spent his time working the earth and hunting the small forest creatures that managed to survive the Great Death.”
“Why didn’t the small animals die too?” She’d never been able to find an answer to that in any of the books that her dad had brought to her.
“I don’t know. Maybe because they had a lot of babies whereas the larger animals only have a few at a time.” He held out his hand for a cookie.
“That makes sense. More babies, more chance of survival.” The bag was getting empty. She handed him one.
“Just one?” he teased.
She handed him two more and then took a sip of her water before shoving another cookie in her mouth.
“Glad to hear you agree, but back to the story. Harold could not hunt nor work the earth so he tried to contribute by applying the knowledge that he had to make their lives easier.” He grimaced. “It didn’t work so well. Everything he tried backfired. He invented a machine to clean their drinking water so that they wouldn’t get sick from it and Christian took ill after the very first cup.”
“Why didn’t they just get their water from an area where it’s running strong?” she asked.
“Why would that matter?”
She frowned at him. Was he joking? “The bad stuff can’t grow in fast running water. Didn’t you know that?”
He puffed out his chest. “Of course, I did.”
She shook her head, fighting back a smile. “No, you didn’t.” She ate the last cookie and handed the empty bag back to him. She took another sip of her water and slipped the bottle behind some weeds. She should ask if she could keep it, but she couldn’t risk him saying no.
He stuffed the bag into his backpack, glancing at where she’d hidden the bottle. “I could go on with other mistakes that Harold made but daylight is disappearing so I’ll jump ahead.”
The shadows of the forest stretched and joined forces, consuming the lingering spots of sunlight. She wasn’t looking forward to being out here alone in the dark. The place was creepy. She let his voice draw her away from her worries.
“Everything would have probably been fine except a woman entered their lives.” He looked over at her. “That is always a bad thing in a story. One woman, two men.”
What was wrong with that? Her father stopped by a lot but so did Remy. He had to keep up appearances. “It can work sometimes.”
He shook his head and laughed. “No, it can’t. You’re just too young to understand.”
“I am not.” She was older than anyone knew. “My family is like that and we’re fine.”
His voice quieted. “Really? You’re alone in the woods.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but what was the point. He was right. If Remy were her father she wouldn’t be out here. She’d be like everyone else. “Continue with the story, or I have to go,” she snapped and then looked away, embarrassed. It wasn’t his fault her life was a mess.
“Okay. Continuing. The woman, Heather, had been a childhood friend of Harold’s. She’d gone away to school and had made her way back after the Great Death to see if her parents had survived.” He shook his head sadly. “They had not. She traveled to her nearest neighbor, Christian and Harold. They were excited to see another living person. They welcomed her into their house.
“At first everything was good. The brothers seemed to get along better and some of Harold’s experiments even worked. But, unfortunately, as with all of these stories, both men fell in love with Heather. She, of course, could only love one.”
“Why?” Her mom loved her dad and Remy.
He sighed dramatically. “You are so young.”
“No, I’m not. I’m almost seventeen.” She refused to dwell on why it was important that he think of her as an adult.
“You’re still naive.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “How can I put this? Women and men can love many people in many different ways but both can only love one in the way that matters most.”
Now she was more confused. “What does that mean?”
He rolled his eyes. “Heather could only marry one.”
“What is marry?” It was nice that he didn’t seem to mind all her questions. She’d always been curious and it usually annoyed others.
He dropped his head in his hands, his face turning red. “It is not my job to tell you this stuff.”
“Tell me what?”
“They wanted to have children together,” he blurted, still covering his face with his hands.
“Oh. Marry equals mate.” She paused. “She could have mated with both.”
His hands slid down to his mouth, as he looked at her, eyes wide.
“Well, they could. It happens a lot where I come from. I mean we’re assigned one mate but if that doesn’t take then we’re paired with another.”
“Holy Araldo! You can’t go back there.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t happen to me.” She wasn’t good enough to be paired.
“Oh. Okay. Good.” He took a deep breath and cast a furtive glance at her. "Let’s get back to the story. Christian and Heather married and the three lived together. At first, Harold hid his pain because he loved Heather so much that he just wanted her to be happy. Then when she became pregnant, Harold spent more and more time with his experiments. He began to dabble in things that should be left in Araldo’s hands.”
“Like what?” She moved a little closer to him. Here was the black magic stuff.
He leaned toward her. “Like trying to make new creatures by combining the old. He tried surgeries first but none of his subjects lasted long. He did evil things. Like once he took the tail from a squirrel and added it to a small bird. And the legs of a crow to a squirrel.”
“Ewww,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Ewww indeed, but you need to stop interrupting or I’ll never finish.”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around her knees. The shadows had stolen the last patch of sunlight from where they sat.
“Heather’s time came and she delivered a girl. Sadly, when the child entered the world, the mother exited. Christian buried Heather right here.”
“At the bottom of the lake?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Sorry.” It was hard not to ask questions.
“At the time, there was no water here. After he buried Heather,
Christian submerged himself in his sadness. For many months, he sat out here day and night weeping. Even his newborn daughter could not rouse him from his sorrow. Harold named her Theresa after their mother and cared for her as if she were his own.
“After a couple of years, Christian managed to pull himself out of his quicksand of despair and he, Harold and Theresa became a close family. Theresa, as is only natural, was drawn more and more toward her father. She liked to do what he did and was quite skilled in physical abilities.
“Then there came a large and terrible storm that lasted several days. They had to stay indoors in close confines. Harold witnessed the child that he loved turn toward her father just like her mother had done. Jealousy churned heavy in his heart.
“As soon as the storm ended, Christian left to check on the crops and hunt. Harold took Theresa for a walk. This area had filled with rain. Harold carried Theresa into the lake to play. At first, she was frightened but he showed her that the water could be fun. After a while, it was time to go back inside. Theresa wanted to stay. She threw a fit and yelled that she hated him. She wanted her father. Harold felt the old pain from Heather’s rejection again. He turned and walked away, leaving the little girl by the lake.
“When Christian returned, Harold lied and told him that he had put Theresa down for a nap. When dinner was ready, Christian went to wake her and realized that she wasn’t in her room. The brothers began to look for her. Harold pretended to search the house while Christian scoured the grounds, staying out all night. The next morning he found her in the lake.”
“Was she okay?” She bit her lip. She didn’t have a good feeling about this.
He shook his head. “She was dead.”
“No.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. It was silly to cry over a story, but the tears came anyway. Theresa had been a baby just like Adam.
“Christian buried her over there.” He pointed to a statue of a little girl with a butterfly on her hand. “Then, once again, he began to haunt this place, walking and weeping over all he had lost.
“Harold was devastated and filled with guilt. He realized, too late, that his love for Theresa outweighed his jealousy. He convinced himself that this was all Christian’s fault. His longtime resentment of his brother fueled by his guilt over Theresa heated into hatred and he began to work on a very special experiment.”
