Winged (Aetharian Narratives) (16 page)

“Since it’s probably a good idea to get moving I’ll give you a quick rundown of the situation,” Ms. Riley said. “The people of Aetheria are different from the people you know here. Everyone is born with a gift that they use throughout their life. For the past couple of hundred years that has been causing some problems and a full-fledged war is about to start if something isn’t done. This being a time of need, and now knowing what your gift is, we can safely assume that the war is close at hand and will cause devastation if something isn’t done soon.”

“Why would you think that?” I said.

“Because a Dragonfly is somewhat of a last resort,” Mr. Amest said. “One is only born when there is a need for it. You have the wings so that is reason enough to know that something big is about to happen. Something only you can protect us from.”

“So if I were not needed I wouldn’t have been born?”

“Not at all,” Ms. Riley said. “You would have been born with blond hair, blue eyes, and a different gift. If anything, you were next in line to have Butterfly wings.”

I glanced at Arie. She frowned.

“Things could be headed in a different direction and you could have not been needed in the manner you are needed now. However, that is not the case. You have red hair, green eyes, and a gift that tells us that we will be in dire need of you very soon.”

Mom smiled at me apologetically. I watched them and tried to figure out why things weren’t harder to swallow than they seemed to be. The things they were telling me should have made me think I was going mad. But they didn’t. After the mind numbingly mundane life I had been living up to that point, it was like I was ready for something more. After making sure they weren’t playing a prank on me, I was ready to do something more. Finding out that I
was
so much more was a breath of new life.

“Okay,” I said to them.

They stared at me when the word was uttered. Each one looked more shocked than the last that I wasn’t putting up more of a fight.

I looked at Ms. Riley. “So what do I need to do?”

She smiled. “First, we need to get you to Aetheria.”

“Things have been escalating for quite a while,” said Mr. Amest, “so there isn’t a way of telling what the situation is at this moment.”

Everyone started walking toward the front door.

“Do I need to bring anything? Are we going now? Without packing?” I said, shocked that we were just leaving.

“Everything we will need will be provided in Aetheria,” Ms. Riley said. “There is no need to pack anything.”

Everyone gathered outside the door. Ms. Riley closed it when Arie joined us and we all walked back through the dead garden to the van. I made a mental note to myself to come back to it and do what I could to restore it. We piled into the van and started back down the road.

Everything I had heard that day made me feel like a new person, like the fissures within my world were finally being filled in. It was nice to know that my life was finally moving forward.

“Exactly how do we get to Aetheria?” I said after a few minutes of silent driving.

We pulled into a parking lot next to the lake.

“We sink,” said Ms. Riley.

* * *

We got out of the car and I looked over the lake, trying to figure out how I kept ending up there. I looked at Mom.

“Yes, dear,” she said without me having to say anything. She, too, looked over at the lake. “It’s funny how things end up being so circular, isn’t it?”

She took my hand and we walked to the edge of the water. Mr. and Mrs. Amest were already there scrounging around in a big patch of bushes. I was caught off guard to see them actually lift the bushes from the ground and reveal three canoes with paddles.

Mr. Amest helped Ms. Riley, Arie, and me into the first one. We started paddling to the middle of the lake. The Amests and my mother followed us once they were in the second canoe.

I looked back to the last canoe.

“What about Viper?”

I regretted it immediately. Arie shot me a dirty look the moment his name came out of my mouth.

“He knows his way back,” said Mr. Amest. “He will join us when he is done sorting things out at school for the two of you.”

We stopped paddling once we were pretty far out into the lake. I placed the paddle across my knees and waited for instructions.

“Is everyone ready?” Ms. Riley said.

Everyone nodded.

“I’ll go first to let them know that we’re on our way,” Mr. Amest said. “Put a couple of minutes between turns.”

Everyone nodded again. Mom and Mrs. Amest moved to one side of the boat as he scooted to the other side. He swung his legs to the outside of it, turned to the side, and did a sort of spin into the water.

I looked over the side of the boat to see what needed to be done. But he was gone by the time I had a chance to look.

We waited in silence while the minutes ticked by. Mrs. Amest instructed my mother to follow next. She blew me a kiss as she too lowered herself into the water. That time I was a little quicker to see what happened once she entered the water. Once her head had made it under, she simply kept going. The water seemed to swallow her and she disappeared into its depths. Arie went in after her and Ms. Riley went fourth. I sat in the canoe. I had watched the water swallow so many of my companions that it now looked very ominous.

“Emma?”

I looked at Mrs. Amest.

“Are you ready, sweetheart?”

My throat didn’t seem to work so I nodded.

“I’m going to hold the side of the canoe while you get out of it, okay?”

I nodded again. She leaned over and held onto the left side of the canoe. I was somewhat relieved knowing that it wasn’t going to tip over and dump me in before I was ready.

I put my legs over the other side and slowly lowered myself into the water.

“It’s going to pull you under,” she said, once the boat was blocking my view of her head. “Don’t panic, just let it take you.”

I couldn’t feel anything grab any part of my body, but something was dragging me further away from the water’s surface. The boat above me was pushed away and Mrs. Amest looked down at me. She mouthed “good luck” seconds before I was too far away to make out anything above the surface. She drifted further away. The water around me grew continually darker.

VIII

A passage

I am in the darkness but see a small amount of light penetrate my eyelids. There is movement around me.

I hear a woman’s voice. “Dear God. Why didn’t she just let him fall? It wouldn’t have killed him.”

“It didn’t kill her, either,” a man’s voice says. “You don’t know her or the kind of person she is.”

He sighs. I can tell that there is a lot of pain behind it.

“I should have expected this.”

“But look at her,” the woman says. “When she wakes up she’s going to wish that it did kill her…”

Their voices slip out of my mind’s grasp. I am somewhat glad that they do.

* * *

It felt like I was under the water for hours, sinking deeper and deeper into the lake’s depths. It was the strangest stillness and silence I had ever experienced. I didn’t have to breathe or think. I simply floated in the quiet and watched the darkness grow around me. The black loomed everywhere while I sank to the bottom of the lake. I sank for so long that I began to wonder if something had gone wrong. Then the direction my hair was floating changed and I began moving up. The water gradually began to lighten around me. Whatever movement I was experiencing was so subtle that the direction of my hair was the only clue I had. I looked up to where I assumed the surface of the water would be and saw a patch of light seeping through it.

The patch grew larger while I inched my way toward it. A hand plummeted into the water sending bubbles through the stillness. The hand thrashed about for a little while, searching for something. It took a moment for me to realize that it was probably searching for me. I raised my arm toward the searching hand. It grazed my fingers then leaped down, taking hold of my wrist. At that moment the urge to breathe almost overtook me. I kicked my legs in a panic, trying to reach oxygen. The hand that held me was joined by another which grabbed my other wrist and yanked me toward the patch of light.

My head broke through the surface and I took a deep breath. The cold air that scraped down my throat and stabbed my wet head was even more alarming than the panic of not being able to breathe. Although it was December, the water had not been cold in the slightest. In fact I had been quite warm floating in the darkness and silence. The cold I experienced out of the water made me feel like I had been immediately thrown back into a sea of broken glass. The air pierced me, making every part of my body ache with pain.

They pulled me out of the water and dragged me onto the ground. My vision was blurred, but I could make out the image of someone standing over me. At that point I realized the light above the water did not come from the sun; it was so dark that it had to be night. The light came from somewhere near the edge of the water. There was a pounding in my ears. The figure standing over me seemed to panic at the sight of me.

“I—I think there’s been a mistake…” it said.

The voice wasn’t very deep but was obviously a man’s voice. When he spoke more dark figures gathered around us. My unfocused eyes darted around the crowd of people.

“What is this?” a much bigger figure to my right said. “Some sort of trick?”

His voice was like a growl. He took a step toward me, grabbed the collar of my shirt, and lifted me off the ground.

My hair must have frozen to my back in the little time I had been exposed to the cold; I heard a crunching noise when he tightened my shirt across my back. The urge to hurt him flowed into my limbs at his touch. I thrashed about searching for a way to do so. All the kickboxing in the world wouldn’t have prepared me for how huge the guy was. He didn’t seem to take any notice at all of the way my arms and legs lashed around in the air.

“We can’t take any chances right now,” he said. “We need to get rid of her.”

He raised his free hand to my throat and my movement stopped. From the corner of my eye I watched his fingers melt together and straighten, forming a sharp edge along the side where his pinky had been. I tried to scream but my throat seemed to have frozen shut along with the rest of my body.

I was finally able to focus on the people around me. Standing directly in front of me was the person that I assumed had pulled me out of the water since he was dripping wet. I locked him into a stare hoping he would see my plea for life. He stood rooted to the ground and stared at me, seeming confused about the situation.

“You will not harm her,” a voice said from over his shoulder.

All the people, including my captor, straightened their backs and stood perfectly still once the speaker took their attention.

“But, Sire,” my captor said, “look at her.”

He twirled around keeping me pinned to his chest. He made sure to keep his sharp hand aligned with my jaw. Though I was scared out of my mind, I welcomed the little bit of warmth that came from him. If anything, it soothed my aching back.

A tall, cloaked figured made its way around a few more people before stopping right in front of us. I had trouble focusing on his blue cloak. A light appeared by his side and illuminated the face within the hood. I was greeted with a pair of kind, dark blue eyes. I didn’t know why but my body seemed to relax a little at the sight of them.

A smile spread across his thin lips and something shined from the edges of his bottom eyelids.

“Yes,” he said, staring deeply into my eyes. “She’s beautiful.”

In that moment I realized who he was. A murmur ran through the group of people. The turn of events only made my captor tighten his grip on me. He brought his bladed hand right against the skin of my neck.

“You will
not
harm her,” the man said again. He said it with more force than the last time.

“Do as you’re told and release her,” said a person to the side of us.

I looked to where the voice came. Though I still couldn’t see his face, his dark, matted clothes and shivering body told me it was the person that had pulled me out of the water.

My captor’s lethal arm lowered and he loosened his grip. The hooded man took my arm and drew me into his cloak. There wasn’t an urge to whip my arm out of his grasp when I felt his warm fingers. I didn’t want to kick him in the kidney as I seemed to want to do with everyone else that touched me without my permission. He wrapped me in the cloak and embraced me.

“She is my daughter,” he said, kissing the top of my frosted head.

He steered me away from the group gathered at the water’s edge.

“Sire,” said the second man.

He stepped in front of us. I saw that someone had finally given him a blanket to wrap himself in.

“Are you sure—”

“I have never been surer of anything in my life,” my father said before the question was finished.

He nodded, needing no more of an answer than that. He took a step back to let us continue.

* * *

We walked over the snowy ground toward a better lit area. When we got closer to a huge wooden gate I finally saw where the light came from; two guards were standing at the gated entrance and their bodies emitted a subtle luminosity. They each took hold of one side of the double doors of the gate and pulled them open for us. They tried to hide the suspicion on their faces as we passed through the gates and entered what looked like a campsite.

“I’m so glad you’re finally here, Emmeline,” my father said.

We walked down a road that ran through the middle of the campsite. Quite a few people stopped what they were doing to watch us.

“I talked to that hole in the wall every chance I got in the hope that I’d be able to reach you.”

I smiled knowing how it felt to do crazy things in the attempt to achieve something even crazier.

“It did reach me,” I said to him.

I was glad that he now knew his attempts weren’t in vain. We walked beneath lit torches until we came to a big tent with smoke coming out of the top. We entered the tent and I saw Mr. Amest, Ms. Riley, Arie, and Mom wrapped in blankets, sitting around a big fire.