by S. L. Naeole
I peeked around him, needing to see that whatever it was that had attacked him wouldn’t do so again. I felt myself choke as the eyes of my mother stared out at me, her mouth moving slowly.
“Don’t listen, Grace,” Robert warned, but it was too late.
“He killed me, Grace. He killed me again, just like he’s going to kill you,” my mother’s voice said as it slowly faded.
I shook my head and looked away, not wanting to see or hear any more.
“Bala-get rid of the body,” another voice ordered.
My head picked up, and I stared in shock as Lark approached me, her hair flowing around her face wildly, her glow a fiery red. “You’re here!”
“Of course I’m here—if I weren’t you’d probably be missing a limb right about now, you stupid, reckless human!”
Her tone was as course as her words, but her face told a different story and I rushed to hug her, not realizing just how much I had missed seeing it. “Thank you,” I whispered to no one in particular. “Thank you.”
Sighing, she wrapped her arms around me, returning my embrace, albeit a bit stiffly. “I don’t understand your kind. I insult you and you hug me.”
I laughed, not caring how many insults she threw at me, just grateful that she was here and that she was alright.
“She’s not alright. She shouldn’t even be here,” Robert said, glowering, picking the words out of my thoughts like a snowflake out of the air.
“And you shouldn’t have tried to pull that stupid stunt of yours,” she countered, motioning towards the slowly disappearing body of Erlking, who was sinking into a pile of dead leaves and branches, the earth swallowing him whole right before our eyes. “Honestly, Robert, an Erlking? You think that frightening Grace into agreeing to turn is the best route? She could have been killed!”
“An Erlking?” I questioned. “I thought his name was Erlking.”
“We don’t call them anything but what they are—Erlkings, shape-shifting creatures who feed on people,” Robert informed me. “Another one of Miki’s children; they can take on the shape of anything, any person, but unlike the typical shape-shifters that live freely in society, their natural form is grotesque and deformed, a result of their…diet.”
I looked at him in horror. “You left me alone with him in here, just like he said…as bait.”
He nodded. “Yes, but you were never alone, Grace. I was always here—he even told you that I was watching.”
Lark clucked in disapproval. “That was irresponsible of you, Robert…but there’s no time to discuss this now—we have company.”
Robert and I turned around to face whoever it was that was approaching, each of us silently promising to deal with what just happened as soon as possible.
DECLARATION
“Grace! I came looking for you when you didn’t come back and then I heard you scream—Robert, what happened—Lark…”
Graham’s jacket was covered in dirt and bits of leaves as he approached us, ducking out of the way of a branch that I knew had not been there just minutes ago. “Whoa-” he shouted as he slipped on something, landing on his backside with a squish.
I rushed over to help him, hoping that whatever it was that Bala had done to the body of the Erlking wouldn’t be discovered anytime soon. I began to laugh as I realized that in his haste to find me, Graham had forgotten to remove the napkin he had tucked into his pants.
“Great. I’m lying here in the mud, looking like an idiot while you stand there laughing,” he muttered, yanking the cloth from out of his waistband.
Robert moved in front of me and offered Graham a hand, which he gladly accepted. “Thanks,” he said, eyeing me. “You know, no offense, but this is a really terrible place for a family reunion. Why are you in here anyway? And why were you screaming?”
“I saw a…bug,” I improvised quickly when I saw the struggle in Lark and Robert’s eyes as they fought the urge to reveal the truth.
“A bug. You screamed because of a bug.” Graham said suspiciously.
“It was a big bug,” I replied stubbornly. “Huge. You would have freaked out if you had seen it, too. Where’s Stacy? I find it hard to believe that you’d come here without her wanting to join you.”
“Oh, she had to go to the restroom. She said she’d come and find us when she was done. Hi, Lark.”
I turned around to look at her reaction to Graham’s greeting. It was the first time he had spoken to her since before she left, the first time she had seen him since she’d overheard the words he had written down, his heart drenching several sheets of paper, line by line.
“Hello, Graham,” she said shyly.
I turned around to look at Robert, worried that he’d interfere; terrified that he’d assume that I had somehow managed to set this up as well. His eyes narrowed, a frown burning creases into his forehead.
Not wanting to continue to face his scrutiny, I turned to look at Graham. He should have looked captivated, he should have looked lost in Lark’s beauty and presence. Instead, he looked just as angry as Robert did. I opened my mouth, hoping to drive some sense into him, into both of them that this was not a moment to start fighting, but Robert pulled me away, my mouth shutting in surprise.
“Why did you leave?” Graham asked as soon as I was out of the way.
“I had to,” Lark replied, her words heavy with hurt and guilt.
“You didn’t have to. You could have stayed.”
She shook her head defiantly. “No. I couldn’t. I know what you want to say, Graham, but-”
“No, you don’t know what I want to say. You don’t have a clue what I want to say because you never stayed to hear them,” Graham argued. “But you’re going to now. You’re going to hear how the minute I knew you were gone I couldn’t think about anything else but where you were and if you were okay. You’re going to hear about how difficult it was for me to write that letter to you, how hard it was for me to admit to things that I’ve never felt before, and how afraid I was that after finding out what it said, you’d think I was an idiot and too stupid for you to bother with.
“But most importantly, you’re going to hear how painful it is to wake up every single day and not know how you feel. I can continue to love you forever—I didn’t think that was possible and always thought Grace was being stupid for even saying stuff like that—but I cannot keep going around not knowing how you feel about me.
“It’s pretty selfish of you, if you ask me, to not tell me how you feel. If you don’t feel the same then okay, I can accept that. But at least tell me, dammit. I’m a big boy—I can take it. But if you do feel the same way, if you do care about me the same way that I care about you then you could at least let me know so that I don’t have to keep repeating myself here.”
Graham’s breathing was thick, his chest rising and falling heavily as he finished, sweat starting to bead on his face from nervousness. Lark stepped forward and placed a hand against his forehead, slowly dragging the moisture away.
“I do care about you,” she said softly. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel these things for you because it isn’t right.”
“Why isn’t it right?” he asked in a low voice. “Why isn’t it right for you to love me, too?”
“Because I promised I’d never love anyone else,” came her whispered reply.
Graham’s body stiffened…for a moment. And then his features softened as he realized something. “You loved someone else. I’m not the first.”
She nodded slowly, sadly. Her eyes brimmed with tears that bided their time, waiting for just the right moment to fall. “I loved someone very much—someone who was taken away from me too soon—and I promised him that I’d never love anyone else, never feel that way ever again. I broke that promise the moment I met you and no matter how much I might feel for you, it doesn’t erase the fact that it still hurts knowing I betrayed him.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty for something you had no control over, Lark,” Graham countered, his hand ext
ending to her, seeking her acceptance.
“You don’t get it—it physically hurts me, caring for you, missing you…loving you,” Lark whispered before turning away, rejecting his outstretched hand. “I promised, swore on the very hope that it would be enough to last me forever that I’d never feel again what I felt for him. He accepted his fate because of that. We both did.”
Graham approached her and placed his hands on her shoulders in gentle solace. “Who was he?” She shook her head and he tenderly pressed his cheek to the top of her head, a loving gesture that forced her head to bow with something I could not decipher—shame? Hurt? It was enough to cause Graham’s arms to surround her shoulders, pulling her against him, and she did not resist. Instead, she allowed him the small gesture, and he asked her once more to reveal who “he” was.
With her head held down, she began to speak, her voice low and flat, the choir of caroling bells gone, replaced now with the sadness of empty hope.
“His name was Luca. He was my friend, my confidant. He knew all of my secrets—the ones I could keep, anyway—and he never shared them with anyone, no matter how desperate or dark they were. He was just like me—independent, free-spirited, and cynical of everything and everyone. We didn’t see the reason or the purpose behind what it was that we were, what it was that we were meant to do, meant to be. He felt that our existence wasn’t just about duty and obligation—that was going to happen no matter what. Life, he said, was about living. With all that we can do, why do we not let everyone know what we’re capable of, he asked. What good was being able to do such incredible things if we had to keep it to ourselves?
“Together we disrupted the careful balance that had been set up by millennia of those who came before us. We went wild, running around like two love-struck individuals with more power than we deserved and too poor judgment. We terrorized everyone and everything.
“We created what was destroyed, destroyed what was created—we had no care for life, for thought, or for love save our own. It was the most exciting and thrilling time in my entire life; he made me feel alive, feel for the first time that those invisible chains that hold all of our kind down with inherent rules and restrictions were loosening their hold, that we could break them and finally be free.
“By the time the Seraphim learned of our havoc, several decades had passed and we had done much to ruin our image in the eyes of the humans who should have been able to turn to us for help—now they ran away from us, seeking aid and solace in other things. Almost too late, I started to realize that what we did was wrong.
“We were hurting not only others, but ourselves as well, and the worst crime imaginable had been committed time and time again: We had caused the humans to lose faith in us, in our kind. My mother—though she was gravely disappointed in me— convinced the Seraphim to give me another chance, to have the faith in me that I had stripped from others. But…Luca had no one to speak out for him.
“He was stripped of everything; his abilities, his strength…even his beauty. He was sentenced to live a mortal life among the very people that we had terrorized. This is as close to a death sentence as one can get for our kind—it is the cruelest of punishments and the worst of fates.
“I chose to stay with him, having found no justice in his being allowed to die while I remained healthy and alive. I watched him age, watched his human body suffer illness and wear, and I did it while enduring his never ending rage against me for not doing more to help him, not doing more to convince my mother and the Seraphim to be as lenient and forgiving with him as they were with me….not suffering with him.
“The slowest time period in my life spanned less than a year—I knew that the human mind, when aged and allowed to decay, could turn vile and angry; what I did not know was that our minds could as well.
“Luca’s anger grew uncontrollable and violent, with him never realizing that his lashing out never hurt me…just himself. His once divine flesh, so strong and beautiful, bruised horribly, his bones breaking like glass thrown against a stone wall. He forgot who I was after a while, resorting to calling me ‘girl’ whenever he needed me to help clean him up after his body had lost all ability to control its functions.
“The more difficult it became for him to survive without help, the angrier he became, and I was always the target for his rages, though after a while they became more verbal than physical as he weakened even further.
“When at last Luca’s mortal heart gave out, when God finally took pity on him and called him home, only then did he remember who I was, and he made me promise that no one else would ever mean as much to me as he did. I promised him that there would be no one else, that for the rest of my existence I would only feel that way for him. I lied to him and it’s killing me.”
“He did not love you, Lark-” Robert ground out. “He used you to fulfill his sick, perverted games. He hurt humans for fun, destroyed countless lives all in the name of rebellion that served no purpose other than to amuse. He lied to you to further his deception. Love doesn’t deceive-”
“Love doesn’t deceive you say? You’re one to talk, brother!” Lark snarled. “When will you confess to Grace about your own deceptions?”
“What? What deceptions? What does she mean?” I asked, my heart thudding loudly in my chest at the implication in her voice.
“Wait a minute-” Graham cut in.
The three of us turned to him, just remembering he was there.
“What are you talking about?” he said with nervous laughter. “You’re speaking like you’re a lot older than sixteen, Lark—what’s this about several decades? Powers? Humans? Watching someone grow old? What is going on here? What are you talking about?”
Lark and Robert looked at each other, their eyes wide with shock, their mouths stubbornly set in defiance.
“Will someone tell me what’s going on? Lark?” Graham snapped, his arm releasing Lark and turning her around to face him.
“Graham, now’s not the time to-”
Graham turned to face me, his eyes blazing with anger. “Shut-up, Grace!” he barked, cutting me off. “I’ve always known that I wasn’t exactly allowed into your whole ‘circle of friends’ thing here—not after what I did to you last summer—but this has got to be some kind of twisted joke, right? All this talk about powers and Seraphim and…mortals—is this some kind of obsessive fantasy game scenario you guys have cooked up or something, because right now, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
I looked at Robert, whose head was turned away, refusing to answer. Lark was also stubbornly looking the other way, her lip trembling with hurt and…fear. “Are you guys just going to let him keep asking?” I shouted at them. “Lark, you let him hear all of that, but you won’t tell him anything else? You won’t even explain any of it?”
She turned her head to glare at me, the tears that sat at the base of her bottom lid threatening to spill at any moment. “He wanted to know—I told him the truth.”
I shook my head angrily. “No. No, you didn’t tell him the truth—you told him part of the truth. He deserves to know everything. He poured his heart out to you and you weren’t even there when he wrote that letter, so you know that this has nothing to do with charm or-” I looked at Robert, a fissure of pain starting to wind its way through my heart “-deception. You know that what he feels for you is real. Tell him the truth. He deserves that much.”
Graham looked at me with hurt in his eyes, and then switched his gaze to Lark, whose tears finally fell forward, tumbling down her face. Graham reached out to catch one and then gasped as the cold stone hit the palm of his hand.
“What…?” he breathed.
“There you are!”
Stacy stumbled through the thick brambles, her shoes in one hand, the hem of her dress in another. “I swear, if I knew you three were planning on going hiking, I’d have worn a better outfit; this dress is totally ruined—my mother is going to kill me when she sees it. What’s going on? Why all the glum faces? Lark…”
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Lark and Robert remained mute. I glanced over at Graham who was, in turn, staring at the minute crystal that sat cooling in his palm, a tiny rainbow glimmering from within it as though it possessed its own inner light.
“Oh God,” Stacy whispered as she realized that something was wrong. “You didn’t tell him, did you?” she cried, her eyes flitting between the four of us.
Graham whipped around, his fist closing in around the teardrop. “You knew?”
“I-I…I…” Stacy stammered, looking at me for help.
The desperation in her face was so acute, on reflex my mouth opened and the truth began to flow out. “Graham, Lark is a-”
The final word was caught in my throat as I felt a hand clamp over my mouth, a strong arm pulling me back, away from Graham, away from my friends.
“Lark is a what?” Graham asked. “Let go of her, Robert! Tell me what Lark is!”
“No, don’t!” Stacy shouted. “Don’t tell him, Grace. Please!”
Graham grabbed her arm, his grip ungentle, his eyes filled with anger and betrayal. “Don’t tell me what?”
Stacy’s eyes began to water and she looked at her arm, Graham’s fingers already leaving reddish bruises on her pale skin. “It’s not right for us to tell you; Lark’s not ready to tell you.”
“Ready for what? How can she not be ready to tell me about whatever this is but she could tell you?” he asked as he shoved his hand beneath her nose, the crystal in his palm screaming out a silent accusation. “My best friend has been lying to me for God knows how long; you, my ex-girlfriend, have been lying to me, despite making me promise on my grandmother’s grave to keep your secret to myself!
“And for some obviously selfish reason, neither of you could find it in yourselves to trust me enough to tell me about any of this until after I happen to pour my heart out to Lark, who in turn tells me that she’s in love with some dead dude who she watched magically grow old and senile. And after all of that, she’s still not ready?”
