The day of you and me
A butterfly’s life
Sean
I had a shower, if you can call a shower dumping water from a basin over you with a ladle. I swear to God, washing never felt so good. Even if I were sharing the washing room with the bloody Prince of Darkness, and Niall didn’t stop singing Irish songs. It’s a miracle I didn’t hit him over the head with my ladle.
Thankfully everybody is in their rooms now, and I’m alone. But the loneliness gets to me after a while, and I don’t give myself time to think as I obey an irresistible impulse.
I step out of my room and down the corridor, and knock on Sarah’s door. I fear she will not answer. She doesn’t want me there, not with the way things are between us, but she invites me in with a quiet, “Sean.”
She quickly sits by the fire, studying me. All I can think about is how amazing she looks, drying her hair, her cheeks flushed with the heat. Her hair seems so soft, softer than silk. She has wrapped a fleece around herself, her long legs folded underneath her. I think I might go crazy just looking at her. I feel in my bones something is going to happen that should not happen. I try to distract myself and begin to unwrap energy bars for her, our makeshift dinner. It’s all we have left. She shakes her head. “Please. Just one. You must eat.”
She sighs and takes it. “We’re running out of food. We’ll need to hunt.”
“Nicholas said we’re not far away now. We’ll be okay.”
“As right as rain, like Niall says. Sean?”
“Mmmm?” I reply. I dream of running my fingers through her wet hair, spreading it out like a silky curtain so that the fire dries it quicker.
“Have you thought of the journey back?”
Cold spreads through my bones as I realise that no, I haven’t. I just don’t seem to be able to picture it, like what’s ahead of us is so terrifying that I can’t think past it.
“Yes. Of course. Once we’ve killed the King of Shadows all we need to do is find the way back to the Gate . . .”
“Do you really think we can kill the King of Shadows and survive?” She looks at me with those clear green eyes, and it’s impossible to lie.
“We can’t give up hope. And my hope is that you, at least, will survive.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you. I don’t want a life without you.” She clings to me, her arms tight around my neck.
“Oh, Sarah. Look. There’s no point in thinking about all this. Let’s just do what we need to do.”
She takes my face in her hands. “What you asked Alvise . . . about the Campbell powers . . .”
My heart sinks. Discussing my blood is always painful. But she has the right to know what’s going through my mind. “I can’t stop asking myself if I have powers. I know I’m not supposed to.”
“You’re not supposed to have powers, or you’re not supposed to ask yourself?” She attempts a joke, but her eyes aren’t smiling.
“Sarah . . .”
“Sean, this means nothing to me, do you understand? Your blood, I mean. It means nothing at all. Powers or not, it doesn’t change my feelings.”
“But I need to know. I need to know who I am.”
“You won’t have your answer, Sean. You just won’t. We’ll never be sure if your runes are so powerful because of your Campbell blood. And even if you have some kind of power because of a genetic fluke . . . how do we know it’d be passed on to our children? It might end with you! But none of that matters to me. Why does it matter to you?”
I rub my forehead. Sarah is furious with frustration. Stubborn and stuck in the past, that’s what she probably thinks of me, and she has to pay the price for my blind, senseless loyalty.
“Look what generations of inbreeding did to the Families!” she whispers in a way that makes it sound like a scream. “We’re all dying! We don’t need the Surari to kill us, Sean. My blood might be strong now, but what if I marry another Secret heir from some ancient family? What are the chances of my children developing the Azasti? Look at Elodie! She is dying too. Her wounds are still bleeding – I mean, the ones she got from the white demon. I saw them as we were washing.”
I stare at her. Even if I knew it already, to hear Elodie’s death sentence spoken aloud cuts me inside. My friend is dying. My brother’s wife. My dear, strong, loyal, infinitely sweet Elodie. And there’s nothing I can do. I can’t defend her. I can’t save her. I can’t stop her blood from decaying.
A memory comes back to me: back in Edinburgh, when Sarah wasn’t letting me near her and I was living in a crumbling cottage in the middle of nowhere. Elodie’s voice lullabying me to sleep at last, after days of insomnia, and then waking up and finding her sitting there, watching over me.
And now she’s dying.
Sarah sweeps her wet hair away from her face. A single tear rolls down her cheek and breaks my heart. “This is what inbreeding has done to us, Sean! This ailment thing . . . it’s because we married among each other for generations. Only men are allowed to look outside the gene pool, and that’s why my blood is clean. My family had only sons for four generations – except for Mairead. They all married Lays and our blood was kept strong, or so they thought. Strong with powers, but vulnerable to the Azasti. Secret women marry Secret men, and have children who are condemned already. Is this what you want to happen to my children? Do you want me to marry Alvise, and have heirs who can’t stop bleeding and whose nails turn blue and who go crazy, like Tancredi? And then die in their twenties? Is this what you want for me? Keep my powers going through the bloodline, until the Azasti affects us all?” Tears are running freely down her cheeks now. I can’t reply. I don’t know what to say. Everything is so confused now.
“If we don’t destroy the King of Shadows, there isn’t even a point in asking this question because there will be no future. Come here,” I say, and gather her in my arms. I bury my face in her hair, inhaling the soft, sweet scent of Sarah.
“I can’t lose you, Sean. If we die, then whatever. But if we live . . .”
“You won’t lose me. Love finds a way,” I whisper. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can’t break her by saying anything else.
I can break myself, but not her. Her fingers stroke my throat and my collarbone until she finds the protective pouch she made for me. I have no idea what’s inside – one of her mother’s spells, probably – but I never part from it.
Despair mixes with desire as I take her face in my hands and I kiss her, slowly this time, not quickly and secretly like we always had to do. I slip off her fleece and marvel at her beauty, and marvel at her being mine – after all we’ve been through. After all the lies and danger and mistrust and obstacles, here we are, skin against skin, nothing between us.
We lie together, Sarah asleep and me awake, as usual. I have my arm around her waist and my face in her hair, and I feel the sweet, soft rhythm of her breathing. Suddenly I feel her tensing up, and a whimper escapes her lips.
I close my eyes briefly and curse under my breath. I was hoping tonight the dreams would leave us alone. I resist the instinct to wake her: we need to know what the vision has to tell us. I hold her throughout, bleeding inside as I feel her tremble and shudder and cry out as the dream unfolds. It doesn’t last long, thankfully. Her eyes jolt open, her breathing ragged, and she calls my name.
“It’s okay. I’m here. What did you see?”
She blinks a few times, taking in her surroundings. The transition between the dream and reality is never straightforward for Sarah, the remnants of terror and distress colouring her awakening. She takes a deep breath, her voice shaking but controlled.
“I was in the place of dreams. There was grass, and wind, and a huge sky . . . I used to dream of different places, depending on where the demons appeared, but since all this happened it’s nearly always been there, in that one place. This time, there was a tree, tall and strong, like one of these oaks. Something scurried close to me, in the high grass . . . and then another . . . A few of them. I couldn’t see what they were. And then I saw that something was dangling from the tree. I walked closer, and . . .” Sarah’s voice trails off as she forces herself to remember the horror. “It was some kind of cocoon, wrapped in a white web. I touched it, and my hand stuck to it . . . it was all sticky and slimy. I couldn’t get the web off my hand . . . The cocoon turned towards me, dangling from the branch . . . and I realised that there was a human being inside.”
“Did you see what had done that? And who was inside the cocoon?”
“No. Whatever was in the cocoon had a face, though. It was black and dried up.” The horror chokes her. “Like it’d been mummified, sucked up from the inside. But I’m sure of one thing . . .” I raise my eyebrow in a silent question. “It was a woman.”
The light of dawn shines through the window, bright and vivid like a scream. It’s time to get up, to continue on our journey.
It’s physically painful to disentwine our bodies – when will I feel her skin against mine again, if ever? I catch glimpses of her body as she dresses, pink rays dancing in her hair, and my breath is taken away once more. I can’t help thanking God, or whoever is up there, for having made us meet, for our stolen time together. In Japan, they have a belief: two people who are meant to meet are tied by an invisible red thread that sooner or later will bring them together. It’s like that for Sarah and me. We were always meant to meet. I wonder what Morag Midnight would think if she knew that her precious granddaughter and the bastard son of the friend she abandoned are in love. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Her spiteful ghost can’t hurt us now.