by Larissa Ladd
But now, now that he was sitting here and I felt like I was the one at his mercy and not the other way around, I felt helpless and ridiculous. I just had to pull myself together, I would just keep telling myself that. I was just having an off day, myself.
But why did the sadness hang in the air like a fog? Why was it getting darker by the second? I knew that some of it was thanks to me, but I knew when it was my emotions that influenced the atmosphere. I could feel when it was me, and it wasn’t. It was Devan, sitting next to me and feeling so sad that I could almost see it in the air. It made me want to cry, made me want to close the door to everyone and everything and just hug myself. It made me worry that it was me he was sad about, that there was something about me he wanted to talk about. Why else would he be so sad?
“You know you can talk to me about anything,” I said softly, and he turned his face to me, his eyes finally seeing me.
“I know, Cherry,” he said, his voice almost as soft as a whisper and his eyes smiled at me now, something I was scared I wouldn’t see at all tonight, “and if there was something I needed to talk to you about, you know I would,” he put his hand on my cheek and warmth spread from where he touched me immediately, the way it always did.
But when he withdrew it, the sadness wasn’t gone, and it made the heaviness and chill I felt even worse.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” I was getting scared, getting worried.
“Because there’s nothing to talk about,” he said, his voice extremely reasonable, his face void of expression again. I decided right there I hated that side of him, the unfeeling side that didn’t show anything.
“Then why are you being like this?”
He looked at me and I found that I couldn’t read his expression. He was usually so animated that it was hard not to know what he was thinking by just looking at him, but tonight he was a closed book. Worry, panic, whatever it was then, clutched at my throat and I didn’t care anymore about how long we hadn’t known each other, about formalities and having to be proper with each other. I was getting scared.
He looked at me without answering for a while, and that made it worse.
“Cherry, nothing is wrong,” he said finally with a voice that made me think that nothing was right.
“I don’t understand what’s going on. Aren’t you happy with me anymore?”
There, I said it, the thought that had been playing on my mind all day and even more so since I’d seen him. His face registered what I was saying for a second, as so many emotions flickering across his face before they were gone again, replaced by the perfect mask of impassiveness he seemed to like so much tonight.
“Of course I’m happy with you. How could you ever doubt that?” he said in a voice that could have been real, that could have been sincere, if I wasn’t so freaked out.
“You’re sitting here next to me, and it feels like you’re not here at all. Something is obviously wrong, but you won’t tell me what it is; you won’t even admit that it is so. What else am I to think other than that it’s me?”
“Listen to yourself.” I hated it when people said that, but I didn’t say anything and he carried on, “I told you that I was happy with you, and I told you that I would talk to you if I had to. If I had a problem with you, don’t you think I would talk to you?”
“Well, yes, but—“
“Then don’t worry, sweetheart; you know I love you.”
I loved those words, the way his voice sounded when he said them, like it didn’t matter what happened, nothing would be able to destroy that very moment.
I looked down at my hands and nodded slightly. I could feel his eyes on me and I tried to compose myself. But when I looked up into his eyes, they weren’t the laughing pools of brown I had come to know. Instead, they were sad, dark, and shadows were lurking in them.
“Look,” I said, getting frustrated, getting angry with myself for being so out of control, “if you don’t think you can talk to me, then fine, but I don’t deserve you sitting here treating me the way you are if you’re going to be like this.”
My sudden change of mood got to him; he looked like I had hit him in the gut.
“Cherry, what’s going on? Everything is okay—”
“What’s going on? That’s what I want to know. But you won’t talk to me and I know that there’s something; I can feel it.”
“You can feel it?”
I had said too much.
“Cherry, I know you think that we’re not okay, and I’ve told that we are. Whatever it is you’re feeling is what you’re feeling, and the only way I can make it better is by telling you that I love you, and I don’t want anything to come between us. Isn’t that enough?”
He wouldn’t understand. He could misinterpret what I meant by saying I could feel it, but at the end of it, he wouldn’t understand what I meant when I said that I felt like he was so far away. He was on the other side of the room, even though he was sitting right next to me. It felt like he was slipping through my fingers, and for the first time in my life, I knew this was something I couldn’t change through magic.
I was angry now. Not with him, I was never angry with him, but angry because I wasn’t someone he wanted to talk to, angry because I couldn’t do anything about what was happening, and angry because I was being so helpless. It was ridiculous. I was being ridiculous, with my stupid emotions and conclusions, and now this fight I was causing because I was scared it was all true. I was being such a woman.
“I’m going to go,” he said, standing up and rubbing his hands on his black jeans.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said softly.
“I know, but I don’t want to fight with you, and none of this is anything we can talk through. So I’m going to leave, and then when we’re both okay again, we can try again.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” I said, my voice louder now, stronger, “why is it okay for you to walk away when we're not alright? Why are you leaving it like this?”
“Because it doesn’t matter if I tell you that we’re okay, you won’t believe me, and I don’t have the energy to fight with you, not now.”
“Why won’t you just tell me what’s going on? I know that it’s not nothing, you can’t fool me, you know. I know you better than you think.”
“Because it’s not something you’ll understand.”
I looked at him, standing in my living room now, facing the door. He was already gone, with his mind and his will, with everything that made him Devan. It was just his body that was left, but as long as that was so, I could still fight.
“So there is something wrong then. Talk to me, you’ll be surprised at how much I know.”
“Listen Cherene,” he never used my full name, and it scared me, “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not you, you have done nothing wrong. It’s just not as simple anymore, and sometimes, we have to deal with things alone.”
He walked towards the door.
“Devan, wait,” I cried but he didn’t stop. He opened it and marched down the stairs. I stood on the landing. I wouldn’t beg him to stay. I had already thrown away too much of my dignity by acting the way I hated other women to act; I had already been too dependent, too vulnerable.
I wouldn’t let a man break me, I wouldn’t cry over someone who was just a human. I wouldn’t. He may have been different than the rest of them, and I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life, but if he chose to walk away, then he had another thing coming, thinking that I would ask him to stay, run after him, or prove to him that I needed him. I was Cherene Blake, son of Carl Blake, most powerful witch in the county, in the world probably. I could be high priestess if I wanted to; I was sought after. I could do anything I wanted, I could defeat anyone and anything that dared to cross my path. I didn’t need anyone.
Chapter 5: Devan – Grey Fog
I woke up feeling grey, that’s the only way I knew how to describe it. It felt like everything I was had lost its color. I blinked my eyes at the ceiling, tryi
ng to decide why I felt the way I did when it all came crashing back down on me like waves on the shore. Nema and her threat, the danger my parents were in now, and last of all and perhaps heaviest of all, the fight with Cherry last night.
It wasn’t exactly a fight, I didn’t let it get that far, but somehow it seemed now, in retrospect, that walking away hadn’t been the right thing to do. But it was how I always dealt with conflict. I didn’t like it to get to a point where things were said that no one meant, and in my family, we had never really properly fought when I grew up, not once. We’d had our arguments, our disagreements, but this was how we had always “resolved” it—by walking away before anyone became so angry that things were said that did more damage than good.
But Cherry had been worried, worried about us. Sitting there in her lounge, she had looked so small, so fragile. I had never seen her that way. Her eyes had pleaded with me to give her something, anything, that would help; but how could I?
If I told her anything of what I knew, anything at all, I would have to come clean too and we wouldn’t last. It was because I wasn’t human that I knew she wasn’t; otherwise, I would have been just as ignorant as any other Jack out there. But I wasn’t, and I knew I couldn’t explain that to her. I couldn’t tell her that Nema had come to visit me and the threats she’d laid on me. I knew what she would say.
Cherry was the type of person who would sacrifice herself if it came down to it. I didn’t know what the witches were trying to get her to do, but it was obvious it wasn’t working, and if Cherry realized that my family were in danger because of her, she would do it. I couldn’t allow that. And if Cherry found out what I was, she would break up with me, for my own good. She would do anything in her power to take the targets off our backs, even if it meant that she would be miserable for the rest of her life.
Even though I couldn’t tell her all of that, I had to keep her safe in the same way she would have kept me safe. I couldn’t help but feel that I’d hurt her more, strengthened her fears, by walking out.
I looked at the phone on my bedside table, looked at it for a long time, but I couldn’t bring myself to phone her. What could I say? What would she say? It felt like an abyss had suddenly opened up between us, a gaping hole that I didn’t know how to bridge.
I was still staring at it when it rang, and I grabbed it from the bedside table, so relieved that she had the courage to do what I couldn’t do. But when I answered, it wasn’t her voice on the other side of the line, and I felt disappointment seep through me. It was my mother.
“Your father is in hospital,” was the first thing she said to me, and my body turned to lead. I sat up, closed my eyes, and curled my free hand into a fist.
“What happened?” I asked, but I already knew.
“A drunk driver ran your father off the road when he was walking home from the convenience store. He didn’t even stop to see if he was alright, Devan,” she started to cry and I breathed out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.
“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up.
I was at the hospital in less than fifteen minutes. My mom met me outside. Her eyes were pink and puffy from crying, her hair disheveled like she’d jammed her fingers into it over and over again. I hugged her and I could feel her shiver in my arms when I did.
“What did they say?” I asked.
“The doctor said that your father was lucky, he’s badly bruised but the car only grazed by him. If it had hit him, he could have had it much worse. He could have broken something or…”
Her voice trailed off, and fresh tears rolled over her cheeks. We made our way through the endless passageways and I tried to ignore their blinding whiteness. It smelled strongly of disinfectant and it felt uncomfortable.
My father was lying in his bed when we opened the door to his room, but he was awake and he smiled at me.
“I told your mother not to worry,” he said when he saw her face. His voice was slightly hoarse, he sounded like he usually did when he’d had more alcohol than was good for him. His hands were open and limp on the bed, his arms blue and purple.
“It’s nothing,” he said when he followed my gaze. “The doc said I just need time to heal up but they couldn’t find anything else wrong with me. There’s no internal damage or anything; I’m just a pretty purple on my left shoulder and thigh.”
He tried to make light of it, I knew, but my mom next to me couldn’t stop her sobbing. I looked at him, and then looked out of the window, trying to find somewhere, anywhere, that I could look that wasn’t at him.
It wasn’t sadness or worry that I felt, that contorted my face; it was anger. I could feel the blood under my skin shift and my throat clamped shut, making it harder for me to breathe. This was not a drunken driver. Not before noon. The doctors might have said that because that was the only logical explanation, but it wasn’t true.
I sat with my parents until my mother looked like she would be able to pull herself together. My father’s eyes were drooping and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he fell asleep. My mother would stay there as long as they allowed her, I knew.
“I have to go,” I said softly.
My father laid his head back on the pillow and smiled with closed eyes.
“Yes, of course, go on; go do what you do. There’s no need for you to sit here and stare at me when I’m perfectly fine.”
I smiled for his sake, and kissed my mom on the cheek. She looked composed now that it was definite that my dad was alright and he would stay that way.
I walked out the front door, clenching my fists so hard that my knuckles turned white. My anger fueled me, pushing me forward even though I had no set plan of where I was going or what I should do.
I had no idea where I would find Nema, no idea where to contact her. I walked around town for a while, feeling the waves of anger wash over me, pushing me to the brink of explosion before it dropped me back down to a place where I could control it again.
Finally I went home. It was pointless walking all over the place, letting my anger push me around.
Alex wasn’t in the living room when I came home. It was strange because he always waited for me at the front door. Sometimes I thought he never left that spot until I came home. But there was no sign of him now.
I called for him, but there was nothing.
I was on my way to the room when the strange darkness filled the room again, and this time I was ready for it. I had a bone to pick with this woman who thought she had the right to just appear and disappear in my living room whenever she felt like it.
I had no patience, it felt longer than before for her to take her full shape and become concrete, but she did, and she looked at me with her cold eyes, looking down at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I was angry again. I didn’t care if it turned into a fight; I would have loved for it to, but she just smiled an empty smile that didn’t reach her eyes. I didn’t think anything reached her eyes, it would make her look human if her emotions were sincere.
“I warned you, Devan. If you don’t break things off with Cherry, then your parents will get hurt. This was just a warning.”
“You haven’t given me time for anything,” I half shouted at her.
“You saw her last night, didn’t you? And you’re still together? You’ve had the time you need. This time, your father will live, but we’re not always that lenient, and I don’t feel like giving you more chances.”
“Don’t you dare touch them!” I shouted, but before the sentence was out, she was gone again, and all that remained in the living room was a puff of grey fog that slowly disappeared. I sank down onto the couch and dropped my head into my hands. She wasn’t leaving me a choice, there was nothing else for me to do.
I heard whimpering from the bedroom and Alex skulked out, his ears back and his tail between his legs. He pushed his face into mine, forcing me to replace my head with his.
“This is not going to work, boy,” I said, scratching him under h
is collar. “Sometimes we have to make these choices, don’t we? Because I love them more than I love her.”
Chapter 6: Cherry – Secrets Divulged
The fields stretched out around me as far as I could see, the cave only a dark shadow looming in the distance, but it didn’t feel like that in my mind. It was something terrible, inching closer with every step I took, and even though it would be a while still before I got there, I couldn’t enjoy the outdoors: the grass in the fields rustling as the wind whispered through them, the birds calling to each other. I couldn’t savor the moment the way I always did.
I hadn’t heard from Devan at all, not a single word. I’d wanted to phone him the next morning, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. He was the man; the onus was on him to phone me. He’d been the one to walk out, after all.
The fight hung over me like a heavy cloud. I hadn’t been able to eat properly, and I hadn’t been able to focus on anything. Even my senses were a mess; atmosphere and premonitions, they were all gone. I didn’t know if our relationship had ended, and it scared me. There was very little in life that scared me, but that was the biggest thing now.
I knew that I had come across as clingy. I had felt it before I’d said anything, but the fear of losing him had clutched my throat and I hadn’t been able to breathe and it felt that if I didn’t say anything I would choke. And now it seemed even though I said something, I was still choking.
The walk to the cave felt longer than usual. I always regretted it being over, the freedom I felt when I went there suppressed by what waited for me inside the cave, but today I couldn’t feel any of it, not the freedom or the capacity to dream, and when I finally found the cave and looked around me before I stepped through the crack, it felt like I stepped from one dark place into another.
They were all there, and they were already standing in a circle like the meeting had started, even though I knew they would wait for me before they did. It was all about me these days; there wasn’t a time when the order of business didn’t involve me in some way: fighting with me because I wouldn’t do what they said, telling me I was throwing my legacy away, reminding me what a disappointment I’d become.
