21. Amelie
Amelie
I woke up before the sun could even peek through the trees at the horrors of what happened while the world slept.
Kiaran was holding me tight to his body so I sneakily escaped his arms and went downstairs to drink my hot tea and try to make sense of the last twenty four hours.
Fern kept me company while Kiaran hopefully slept off the memory I replayed for him last night.
I wasn’t sure how I even did it. When Kiaran carried me up to his bed, I finally felt my body relax and it took no time at all to finally let the day vaporize in my mind.
The darkness that proceeded when my eyes closed felt comfortable, but only for a moment.
Then I was ripped from the blissful nothingness so effortlessly it was as if I was a ripe apple picked to be swallowed whole.
Adan’s face was a haunted version of Kiaran’s. Up close I noticed almost every feature was the same save for the unholy threats that engulfed his soul.
His large hand wrapped around my throat and chucked me onto the bed I recognized as Kiaran’s. Adan stole my voice and my ability to move. Even the involuntary motion of breathing, though I didn’t think that was his magic .
I’d never been more afraid of a man than I had been in that moment. Mostly because I was doing this. It was my dream, and my dreams were never so nightmarish. My dreams were my sanctuary. Men like Adan didn’t belong in my sanctuary.
The heat in my eyes blazed and I knew the fear was turning to rage and manifestation of the destruction my awakened power was capable of. Unfocused, I tried to burn it into him. Melt his skin and use his bones as firewood to continue to scorch his soul until it was rid of him forever.
“My brother couldn’t satisfy you could he?” he drawled, his breath hot on my face as he shoved himself between my legs. “I’ll show you a much better time, then we’ll go see mom.”
Threats.
I tried to scream, hoping Kiaran’s mother would appear and have mercy on me. Maybe punish her truly evil son in ways that wouldn’t compare to Kiaran’s punishment.
The pain I tried to inflict on him missed, I thought it was hopeless since my dreams were always so out of my control. But an orange glow was creeping higher and higher up the walls around us. Adan searched for where it was coming from and then turned his attention back to me.
“Horrible first impression on your future family,” he hissed.
All I could do was wait for the fire to consume me.
When the door flew open and Kiaran came in, my heart calmed and with Adan and him now in a tangle on the floor, I escaped.
“Hi, pretty girl.” Kiaran’s sleepy voice broke me free from the memory of last night’s events. He looked so tired, so haunted, and I knew it was my fault.
“Hi.” I gave him an apologetic smile which he erased with a kiss. Fern summoned a cup of tea for him as he joined me at the table.
“How did you sleep?” he asked, taking a sip from the steaming clay mug .
“Not well. I was scared we’d go back there again,” I admitted.
Kiaran seemed to read his tea, looking for the words I knew he wanted to say.
There was no way he wasn’t upset with me.
Even though it was a dream, I’d set fire to his home.
I gave his brother an opportunity to hurt me again, I summoned the memory of him and his mother before his sentencing.
I pressed on each of the triggers that he’d built over the years and fucking dreamed of them.
“Has that ever happened before?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen your brother in my dreams, no. But I have seen your mother.”
His eyes slowly moved from his mug to me.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s visited me in my dreams before. Not often, but it’s her. I’m sure of it.” The second she appeared last night, I knew she was the woman who waited in the willows to bring me to my prince in my dreams.
Kiaran’s head tilted slightly and he squinted his eyes in confusion. “Does she talk to you?”
“No,” I said, “she just leads me to my prince.” I chewed on my lip. “To you.”
Kiaran’s silence was deafening and uncomfortable.
“It’s not a big deal. Remember the dwarf from my dreams? The one who needed medicine for his wife?”
Kiaran nodded slowly.
“Didn’t you recognize Edgar when they came for dinner?”
It was surprising, but I took it as a sign to slip Edgar the remedy from my apothecary cabinet just in case when they left our dinner party. I also knew that Ethel was the dwarf I often walked with and told my deepest secrets to.
“Does that happen often?” He leaned forward, anxiously awaiting my answer.
“Kind of. Only since being here though. A lot of my favorite dreams from the past have happened almost exactly since being here.”
Kiaran’s brows pinched together. His eyes searched around the table for something that I couldn’t see.
“What’s the big deal?”
“Do you have control over it?”
“Over what?”
“What you’re dreaming of, who you see, where you go?”
I thought about that for a moment. When I was little I went to sleep every night with thoughts of all the beautiful, enchanted things I hoped existed.
I only had nightmares on days when we went hungry or the guards had visited.
In a way, I supposed I had controlled it.
On good days, I dreamed of good things. The opposite for bad days.
“Not always.”
“Huh,” was all he said before he sipped his tea and wandered back inside the walls of his haunted mind.
“I’m going to try and find Ethel again today,” I said, hoping to move on from the trials of our nighttime escapade.
Upon the words leaving my mouth, I realized that it only added another thick layer of tension to the room.
“The fuck you are,” he scoffed before finishing off his tea.
“Okay… so I don’t know what this,” I waggled a finger between us, “all means but it is not going to be you telling me when and what I can do.” I smiled lovingly but kept my tone firm.
“Amelie,” he sighed, “I’m not trying to control you.
It would simply be a waste of breath. But you could’ve been killed yesterday, you almost burned yourself alive in your dreams, your track record in the last twenty four hours hasn’t been great,” he explained as he mockingly returned a smile. There we stood at a crossroad.
I spent my entire life being controlled. As well intentioned as Kiaran was, it made me feel heavy.
“Thank you for the concern, but your creepy as fuck brother left this Forest with not one single bone intact. I think I’ll be fine,” I said then stood to go to my room to change.
Kiaran was on my trail too quickly. “Please, just take one day. If only for my sanity, I can’t help you out there.”
“Did I need your help yesterday?” I bit back.
Kiaran rubbed his temples with the pads of his fingers, indicating I was giving him a headache. He could rest all he wanted when I was gone.
I stuffed a book into my satchel and tore of my pajama shirt. Kiaran drank in my body, his eyes softening momentarily.
“Don’t distract me.”
“Don’t be so easily distracted,” I replied while tugging my new shirt on.
I reached my door frame that Kiaran was effectively blocking. Moving my weight to the tips of my toes, I leaned up and caught his lips with mine. Surrendering the anxiety he’d built up in the last few minutes, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer, deepening the kiss.
I pulled back slightly and he tried to follow me, like my lips were a siren song. “I’ll see you in a bit.” Then I smiled and reveled in the fact that my kiss distracted him from the half turn I made, allowing me to leave.
Kiaran groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me.” A playful tone took in his voice.
“Well let’s pray it’s a long, slow death then,” I sang back at him as I skipped out of Fern’s loving arms, otherwise known as the front door, and back toward potential danger.
Taking a different approach than yesterday, I asked Frea for help finding Ethel’s home .
Wandering was a sure way to increase the chances of finding another attack.
The spirit delivered and I saw a few tiny wings bouncing on the air toward me.
Poppy and Naida approached, Poppy was radiating energy. “You were so brave yesterday! He crumbled like a leaf!” she shrieked and punched her fist into her palm.
I smiled at my tiny friend, not wanting to start the day reliving the previous one. “I’m just looking for Ethel. Can you girls help me?”
Poppy and Naida banded together at the elbow. “Of course! We’d love to help you.” Poppy gave me a warm smile before waving me to follow.
“Ethel is usually at home right now. It’s not far from here.” Poppy took her Forest guide duties very seriously. She led at the perfect pace and didn’t skip any stories about historic landmarks we were passing on the way.
We’d just passed the riverbed that Naida was found on. Poppy recounted the story again for me, but she held Naida’s hand the entire time.
Poppy went ahead and Naida stayed to float right next to me. “What you did yesterday was spectacular, Amelie.” Her tiny voice was quiet. If you didn’t listen closely, you wouldn’t hear her at all.
“Thank you. I don’t really know how I did it,” I admitted.
“That’s okay, we don’t have to know everything about why things are the way there are,” she said with a watery voice. The poor girl had no family, no recollection of her life prior.
“I suppose so.”
I walked quietly as she inched closer and closer to me, finally mustering up enough courage to rest on my shoulder.
“I love your name.” I told her.
Out of my peripherals, I saw her cheeks flush of color and her body try to close in on herself.
“I picked it myself. ”
“How do you mean?”
She chewed on her lip then turned her body and leaned back on the half moon shaped crook between my neck and shoulder. Her little fingers tapped against the lavender colored fabric of her dress.
“When Edgar found me by the creek, the first thing they asked was my name. I couldn’t remember it, all I could remember in the moment was that flowing water meant Naida. It just seemed to fit.”
Every time someone called her by her name, she would have to remember that it was simply a word she remembered. “And you have no idea how you ended up here?”
She sighed, all too comfortable with using my body as a carrier to our destination.
“None.” I suppose if there wasn’t a memory to be told, that was likely all she had to say about that.
Her fingers began strumming again, this time on my shoulder.
It was such a light touch but I felt the tingle all the same.
I thought of Kiaran and how I would definitely need to make up for tricking him before I left.
With perfect timing, Poppy called back, “It’s right over here!”
Rounding one of the trees, a quaint little cottage appeared, tucked into the side of the hill.
From the other side, you wouldn’t see it at all.
It was built with beige stones and worn black shutters to accent the two windows that framed the door.
There was a colorful garden with an assortment of flowers to the left in a spot that seemed to have the most sunlight through the breaks in the leaves of the forest above us.
Knocking on the door, Naida and Poppy bounced past my ear. Their wings made the most adorable puffs of air around me. “Frea will lead you home. We have to go help my brother,” Poppy said.
“Of course, thank you.” Then they both popped the tiniest kiss to either of my cheeks and fluttered off in a fit of shy laughter into the thick brush behind us.
“Amelie? Is everything alright?” Turning back toward Ethel anxiously checking both ways out of the door of her cottage, I smiled at my friend.
“Everything’s fine. No evil McCalmont brothers today. Can I come in?”
“Of course. Let me get you some tea.”
Ducking to enter Ethel’s home, I noticed Edgar lounging on their couch to my right. He was nearly asleep and paid no attention to my arrival.
Ethel rummaged around her kitchen that was directly opposite from the front door, a kettle was being brought to a boil on the stove.
“Sit,” she said over her shoulder as she crawled onto her wooden countertop to find a couple of mugs. “What on earth are you doing in my neck of the woods?”
Taking in the adorable miniature cottage with standard sized cabinetry, I wondered why I hadn’t come sooner. This was no home of Fern’s making but seeing a real kettle and dishes around the kitchen was unfamiliar after getting used to my sentient home’s tendencies.
“You come to my neck of the woods all the time,” I quipped, earning a hearty laugh from Ethel.
“Fair enough.”
Deciding to make good use of my height, I rounded the table, “May I?”
She arched a brow at me disapprovingly. “Hundreds of years in this cottage and I’ve never needed a hand with the top shelf.” Bringing both of my palms up in submission I went back to my seat at the table.
Ethel finally hooked her fingers around two different handles and pulled them down. Crawling off the counter, she held both mugs up in victory.
Joining me at the table finally with fresh tea in hand, she started, “Now really, I appreciate the visit but to what do I owe then pleasure?”
Taking a sip of tea, I noted its flaming hot temperature and took a second to appreciate Fern’s ability to keep all the water, whether for bathing or drinking, at a perfect temperature.
“I have some questions that I didn’t get to ask at dinner. I hoped you would have the answers.”
She nodded in agreement. Knowing Ethel, she probably already anticipated the questions I had.
“The prophecy my grandfather’s mentioned,” I paused to gauge her interest in answering.
“Go on..” She rolled her hand in front of her impatiently.
“Well…what is it?”
She smiled to herself, “I wondered if you caught that part.”
“I did, but somehow it was the last thing I remembered to follow up on.” I laughed, hoping it wasn’t as serious as it sounded.
Any time I heard the word prophecy mentioned, it was always some set-in-stone fate that people waited their whole lives to see play out. Even so, very few were actually given the privilege of being alive when it happened.
“Well, we all agreed after we left that night that it was, in fact, happening right before our eyes. I suppose it’s been slowly beginning since that boy of yours arrived, but it’s a lot more unmistakable since you’ve joined him.”
“Kiaran and I are a part of some kind of celestial prophecy?”
Ethel’s smile grew so wide I thought it might have grown beyond the bounds of her face.
“You and Kiaran are the prophecy.”