Chapter 15 The Eating Ocean #3
She swallowed and glanced down at her boots on the cobblestone before gathering herself and looking back at him, “Samual once told me that the choice is never between slavery and freedom, but between slavery and the unknown. Maybe something is coming, but I’m tired of being afraid of the unknown.
I’m finally starting to understand what it means to be free. ”
He searched her eyes so intently, Ella was hardly sure he’d heard all the words. After a moment, she was hardly sure she’d actually said them.
“Ella,” he started as if he had a confession. “There is something you should know about Lambspeak. One of the reasons he is so dangerous is that he doesn’t exist yet.”
Ella had to retrace his words in her mind a few times to make sure she’d heard them correctly. He continued to explain.
“Do you remember how I said thinking back on the Strike, remembering them, gives them a window into the present?” His grip was firm on her hand.
“Yes, of course.”
“The problem with Lambspeak is that he learned how to step back into the past. He appeared to me when we desperately needed aid and like a fool, I accepted it, but I was the only one who witnessed him and because of that, I became his window into the past. He has been using that window to secure his future. He exists in the future, and he’s used that to inject himself into the past, but he doesn’t yet live in our present and that is his only weakness.
Peter would have been the only one capable, at least to my knowledge, of reaching and killing him. ”
Ella’s grip softened in his as she whispered, “That’s why you feel guilty.”
His eyes flickered and he looked away, as if not realizing his guilt had been so obvious to her. He almost pulled his hand back but she drew it closer.
“It’s also why you weren’t completely captured in Peter’s curse. It’s why you survived the Burning of the Strike. All of this is why you feel so guilty. Jackson,” she urged, clasping her hand in his. “I’m afraid too.”
He met her eyes as she said the words and she continued, “All my life, I haven’t been able to explain myself.
I’ve never had the words. I feel like I’ve just been clinging to the feeling of being alive, to any ounce of security, and then I lose everything and end up here.
It’s chaos. I know there are things–memories waiting for me that I don’t want to remember.
I’m scared too, but the only path is forward.
It’s enough to know I don’t have to do it alone. ”
He searched her face as if he could see the words, drink them up with his eyes. He used his hand to guide her forward, and kiss her softly.
Jackson was a worshiper of time. He seemed to hold every second with gentleness as if to draw time out as long as it would last. His kiss was slow, longing, and tender.
Ella closed her eyes to the warmth of it, receiving it like a balm to her own fear and grief.
It struck her how connected to him she felt, and yet when he pulled away and planted another kiss on her cheek, she couldn’t help but wonder if the gesture was simply that of a ROSE.
She pursed her lips to hide a smile and he grinned and pulled her to her feet. Jackson walked forward with her hand still in his.
His demeanor changed completely, and for the rest of the afternoon, people seemed to sense his magnetism.
Despite his callous humor or guardedness, his interactions with strangers now exposed him, in that there were now no strangers at all.
Every smile, comment and gesture on their walk had Ella guessing if he’d met the person before.
Each time, she’d confirmed that he hadn’t.
Ella felt caught up in the change a couple of times, reminding herself of the darker sides of his violent past. She wondered how two such things could go together until she had to explain to him the origin of her nickname, Stitches.
He’d watched her tell the story as they prepared to sleep that night, staring as if she’d bewitched him with it and in such a way, she saw herself in him and found a sense of peace in his incongruencies.
In doing so, she began to find more peace in her own, and when he pulled her close that night, resting in his arms felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Thank you,” he whispered in the darkness after a few minutes of silence.
She smiled, wanting to return the thank you but concerned that it might sound empty in the wake of his own.
“I hope Samual can help you get your team back,” he whispered next. “Paris told you he’d be here by next week?”
“Hopefully,” Ella whispered. “He’ll have a plan. I’m sure he’s had one all along.”
She paused in the wake of Jackson’s silence. What could she wish him in return? She couldn’t imagine the extent of his losses. His team was gone forever.
“Thank you for waking me up,” he said, quieter in the dark.
She understood then why he held her with such ease. In that moment, she felt herself relent in his arms, her hands finding his beneath the covers. In a way, she was as all he had, and despite their short acquaintance, beyond explanation, he did, indeed, have her.
She remembered reaching for him in the water. In that moment, she’d felt like she’d needed him, and some part of her wanted to whisper those words, confess the truth behind releasing his curse.
But she did not. She could not, because she could not imagine a world where after such a confession, she would not turn in his arms and embrace another timeless kiss, a kiss that only had one destination in the solace of the dark.
***
The following morning, it was clear that something that Jackson had said in their discussion in town had sparked something inside Ella, like he’d given her a clue to the answer she’d been looking for.
The next couple of days proved quite clearly that she needed more than just a clue.
She would occasionally rehearse her conversation with him, and like a representation of her mental state, he often popped in unannounced.
He’d find a spot on the couch, sit in his chair, one time startling her when, in a quiet fit of desperation, she’d closed her eyes and tried to listen for Lambspeak, wondering if even he might offer some answers.
He’d surprised her so much with that entrance that she’d nearly toppled a stack of books, and had later urged herself out to walk, realizing what a dangerous move that could have been.
Paris said Lambspeak’s existence was imminent, but Jackson seemed reluctant to even discuss the Strike.
Despite that, the more restless she became, and the more scattered her mind, the more settled Jackson seemed.
He went into town on his own now, sometimes gone for long periods of time.
He even changed clothes at last, granted his choices left him in all black much of the time, which Ella couldn’t tell was a dramatic reflection of his mood or simply what Paris had given him.
In many ways, he began to feel like her shadow, connected to her but in a comfortable, natural way.
Between studying and research, she found great relief in hearing him talk, seeing her own experiences in his.
They’d go on walks in the town and as he spoke about his team she heard deeper themes regarding his beliefs about people.
He cited people’s fear, their hate and their capacity to succumb to the Strike’s influence, but not in a judgmental way.
Ella appreciated a meaningful simplicity in Jackson because he saw so much of the world as a natural eb and flow.
At the heart of him, despite how he voiced his cynicism, he’d developed a deep and almost innocent love of human beings.
He became safe to her, and she was grateful, because she did begin to remember in pieces.
She received flashes of places or people.
She now recognized the Bleeding Grin and knew certain faces and names, but still lacked a cohesive narrative.
All of it still blended together like a soup that her mind was reluctant to stir.
After days of fruitless research, Ella found herself staring wide-eyed at a map of The Quiet, and lately she didn’t even know why.
She resisted the urge to release another audible groan, having just realized she’d been daydreaming of diving into The Ocean again.
Jackson constantly warned her about letting her mind drift, but it felt impossible to resist lately.
It didn’t help that the consequences he’d warned about hadn’t shown themselves in the slightest way.
She’d just bathed to refresh herself, leaving wet droplets down the front of a soft button-down she often liked to sleep in.
Lately even a bath didn’t seem like it could help much when it had once felt like a luxury.
Ella’s fist pressed up against her face as she looked longingly out at town colored in sunset.
She’d been out several times today, but that hadn’t placated her.
The feeling that had caused her to jump into the pool to Tunedyl and chase Crow into The Quiet was back again.
That demanding, intolerant restless drive which was sure to ask her to do something irrational soon. Maybe that was the answer?
Ella startled when she heard something shift in the room, whipping her head to the right to see Jackson sleeping on the couch, splayed out with his arms thrown behind his head.
A full cup of tea sat on his stomach, tilted just enough by his recent stirring to drop onto the plate and dribble down the side of the couch.
She hadn’t even heard him come in, much less settle down on the couch. He seemed peaceful despite the positioning of his body, one foot lifted up over the armrest of the couch, while the other was extended with a heel to the ground.
Their roles were switched, Ella plagued by restlessness and Jackson in complete calm. She wished she could touch him and transfer her own anxieties back over, as if she’d taken them from him in the first place.