The Story of Awkward

by R.K. Ryals

  ~Peregrine Storke~

  There was no time to scream, no time to do anything but stare, my vision clouded with tears. My cheeks were cold, the moisture on my face chilling me as I walked to the window. It was a slow walk, a walk full of disbelief, fear, and pain.

  My hands gripped the window’s frame as I leaned out into the night, my gaze searching the ground. The barn wasn’t a tall building, just a short structure made to look pretty behind the purple and green cottages. It wasn’t a long drop, I knew that, but it didn’t make the fear any less.

  There below, his body swathed in silver, the muscles in his back tense, knelt Foster. One hand rested against the ground, his fingers digging into the soil, his gaze on the sky.

  I didn’t know what he saw in the moon, but whatever it was, he keened. It was an indescribable sound—guilt, shame, and remorse rolled into one awful moan that tore my heart to pieces. Tears fell, the liquid sliding down my cheeks before hitting the windowsill.

  I climbed up into the window.

  “Perri!” Elspeth cried.

  I ignored her, my body leaning forward. The drop wasn’t a far one. I’d jumped further from a low hanging shed roof once on a dare.

  One step, and I was falling, my feet slamming into the ground before I had a chance to second guess myself. Nimble flew down after me.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  Foster began to run, his gaze wild. I cried out his name, but he didn’t hear me.

  I took off after him, my heart pounding. “He’s going to kill himself,” I told Nimble.

  She gasped. “He wouldn’t!”

  She didn’t know the demons possessing him. She didn’t know the images he saw when he shut his eyes. None of us did, but I had no doubt they were bad enough to destroy him. I did the only thing I knew to do. I followed him, my feet pounding the soggy earth, my gaze locked on his back. I was suddenly thankful for all of the time I’d spent in the gym.

  He paused near a tree, his fist going into the bark. Beside me, Nimble gasped, the violence in his swing frightening her.

  I approached him slowly. “Foster?”

  His head lifted, his eerie, pupil-blackened eyes meeting mine. “Blood,” he said. “So much blood.”

  He drew his hand back again. There were gashes on his knuckles, but he either didn’t feel them or he didn’t care. He drove it into the tree.

  A fine sheen of sweat coated his back, the wolf on his arm undulating as his biceps tensed and relaxed.

  My fingers brushed his arm. He froze, his muscles tensing against my hand.

  “Get away from me!” he yelled.

  I didn’t move. There were a lot of things that intimidated me, but yelling wasn’t one of them. My father had made sure of that.

  My fingers brushed his skin again. “Foster—”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea what to say! My hand fisted against my stomach, my voice low when I whispered, “I forgive you.”

  There was more to his guilt than a petty rhyme he’d made up to tease a fourteen-year-old girl, but I didn’t know what else to say. There were ghosts ruling him now, ghosts I didn’t know how to defeat.

  Foster drew back his arm again. Nimble yelped, her small hands yanking at me, her eyes full of fear.

  My gaze found hers before landing on a cottage just beyond her shoulder. There—next to the small, squat building—sat a stone well, a wooden roof built to cover it, a pail hanging from a pulley system above it.

  I gasped. “The Well of Forgetfulness.”

  Nimble’s gaze followed mine. “You can’t!” she cried. “If he drinks from it, he’ll forget more than just his regrets. He’ll forget everything, even his family.”

  My gaze stayed locked on the well. “It’s not for him to drink,” I breathed.

  I was running before I’d even realized I’d moved, my feet pounding the earth. Thudding footsteps followed me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Foster trailing me, his distant gaze on the moon.

  The stone well was cool against my fingers when I reached it, my hands scrambling for the pail. It fell with a splash to the twirling water below.

  “Come on,” I begged, my arms pulling the rope, the heavy water-laden pail slowing me down. My arms burned, but I didn’t stop.

  Foster was next to me now, his gaze on the hole the well made in the ground. I saw what he wanted to do in his gaze, and I pulled harder. The pail knocked against the side of the well, and I lugged it out, the water splashing over the sides. Foster began to climb, and I nearly dropped the bucket pulling him back toward the ground. He fought me, his strength an advantage I didn’t have.

  He pushed me aside, and I grabbed the pail, using it to douse the wound on his shoulder, my lips murmuring the silent plea, “Please! Please let my instincts be right!”

  “I’m not leaving you,” I told him.

  Foster froze, confusion filling his gaze. Water dripped down his shoulder, the drops sinking through the tunic and down into his wound.

  His brow furrowed, his gaze clear one moment and disoriented the next, the guilt and sorrow mingling with lucidity in his eyes. He began to climb the well again.

  I jumped onto his back, my legs and arms pulling on him as hard as I could, my chest heaving, my breath against his ear. “I won’t go home without you. Please, Foster.”

  He paused, his body shaking. Despite his chilled skin, it wasn’t the cold that made him tremble.

  My fingers tightened on his flesh. “Foster.”

  Something broke in him then, something I don’t think he even realized he’d been holding back. It was anger, but it wasn’t violent anger. It was desperate anger, self-loathing, and the need to be free of it all.

  He managed to make it on to the side of the well, his arms flinging outward. He was supposed to fall then, I could see it in his eyes.

  My feet touched the well’s low wall next to him, and I flung myself against him, the force throwing him backward. I lost my balance, the stone too slippery to hold me.

  I threw my hands out, my fingers desperately seeking some kind of hand hold. It found the pail’s rope, but my weight was too much for it to bear without a stronger counterweight.

  Above me, Foster’s gaze cleared, the well’s water having fought the poison in his wound. Horror filled his eyes, his frame bending over the well as I fell. He’d saved me from the arrow, and I’d saved him from himself.

  Below me, the water twirled, a stark reminder of my own history, a time when twirling water once made me forget everything.

  Chapter 23

  “That awkward moment when you realize the well you once drew because you wanted to forget things scares you now. It scares you because you don’t want to forget anymore. You want to remember it all.”