“Little Allie,” Felicity said, kissing the
baby.
I felt my insides fall; that was the name I
was told I’d carried in another life, the name of the woman who
followed her heart and began Chara. I was touched. I reached down
to say hello to my new niece, Allie.
A month ago, we had learned that the reason
we never went home to face the evil priest so many years ago was
that we had a child of our own. We hadn’t looked at my baby sister,
Libby, the same way since then; we were almost sure that she
somehow remembered that life with us.
Landen and I walked outside to take in the
fresh air, giving Brady and Felicity their space. Landen saw Dane
and Chrispin throwing a football back and forth in the field and
went to join them. Clarissa and Olivia were sitting on the steps,
lost in conversation. I made my way over to them.
“Where’s Libby and Preston?” I asked,
sitting down next to Clarissa.
“Rose and Karsten took them to their house,”
Clarissa answered, looking me over. “You look really good. Where
have you guys been?”
“Everywhere... nowhere...we just needed some
time,” I said, staring at Landen playing his game.
“Did you tell him about the photo?” Olivia
asked, looking across at me.
My eyes widened; I had successfully
forgotten about it. I slowly turned my head from side to side. “Did
you guys tell anyone?” I asked, trying to push down my panic.
“No,” Clarissa said, smiling. “We were going
to give you until today to come home, and then we were going to
pull you out of whatever cave you were hiding in.”
I heard Olivia laugh. “Yeah, we thought for
a minute that you had told Landen and he had taken you to the other
side of the universe to hide you, but then Libby and Preston told
us the two of you were just growing stronger,” she said.
“Was my mom mad?” I asked, feeling
guilty.
I heard the footsteps and could feel my
mother. “What would I ever be mad at?” I heard her say as she put
her hands on my shoulders before sitting down next to me. I smiled
and laid my head on her shoulder.
“I’ve never been away from you for so long.
I’ve never left without saying goodbye,” I said quietly.
My mother put her hand around my shoulders.
“I would have taken off long before you did. I know you know where
your home is,” she said, smiling. I smiled back at her. I did feel
at home here, at peace.
“So when are you guys going back to
Franklin?” My mother asked, looking across to Olivia and
Clarissa.
“Maybe tomorrow. We want to go exploring. To
see Pairs, New York, to find some deserted beach,” Olivia said, her
eyes smiling with anticipation. “You and Landen should come with
us. We’ll have so much fun. We can pretend to be anybody for a
day,” she finished.
“To be young again...” my mother said,
almost to herself.
“I think we’re going to stay home for a
little while. We want to spend time with Libby and Preston,” I said
cautiously. I didn’t want any of them to worry about the planet
Mercury.
“Well, I’m going to Aubrey’s to help her fix
dinner. You and Landen come; I want to know everywhere you’ve been
- and you owe me some paintings, little one,” my mother said,
squeezing my shoulders before she stood. “You guys come, too,” she
said to Olivia and Clarissa.
“That sounds fun, but we promised August and
Nyla that we’d have dinner with them,” Clarissa said.
“Another time, perhaps. Thank you girls for
bringing all that stuff home. I’ve never even seen some of those
things. I suppose I should have gone in that attic more often,” my
mother said. I looked down, avoiding eye contact.
“It’s no big deal, Grace. We enjoyed looking
through all of it,” Clarissa said.
My mother nodded and walked away. Once she
was out of earshot, I looked over at Olivia and Clarissa. “Did you
guys find any other photos?”
They were silent. They knew it was foolish
to lie to me, and they were not prepared to watch me panic. I let
my head fall, fearing there had been at least one life with Drake
in it.
“Willow, I told you before: that’s the past.
This is now; let it go before it hurts you...we destroy everything
we find,” Clarissa said, standing and stretching. Landen looked in
my direction; he could feel me getting upset. I smiled at him.
“Well, we’ll call you later. You guys need
to travel with us; we’ll have a lot of fun, I promise,” Olivia
said, standing to follow Clarissa.
I nodded and leaned back on the step to
watch them go, fighting the urge to get up and run away. I knew if
I was ever going to help those people in Esterious, I’d have to
stay here and face an unpredictable future.
Chapter Three
I was watching Preston and Libby coloring at
the table. Aubrey and my mother were cooking in the kitchen, and
Landen and I were in the living room with our fathers. They wanted
a full run down of where we had been and what we had done.
Preston asked Aubrey if he could have some
more milk, but she was so caught up in what she was doing, she
didn’t hear him. I felt Preston’s intent to pour the milk himself,
so I stood to get it for him, knowing he could not reach it. As I
stepped closer to the kitchen, Preston leaned back in his seat and
closed his eyes - and as he did, his soul left his body; it was
exactly like what Landen and I did when we slept. My shock caught
Landen’s attention, and he was now watching Preston, too. Ashten
and my father followed our stare. From my father’s shocked emotion,
I was sure he could see something. Ashten looked at Preston and
said, “Looks like the little guy is tired.”
He couldn’t see Preston’s soul, but I
watched as it walked over to Aubrey, then stepped inside of her.
Aubrey’s body went to the refrigerator and pulled out the milk,
walked over to the table and poured both Libby and Preston more
milk, then turned to put it away. Once the milk was sat down in the
refrigerator, Preston’s soul stepped out and ran back to his body.
His eyes opened, then he and Libby giggled to themselves. Aubrey
shook her head, questioning why she was standing in front of the
refrigerator.
Speechless, my father and I stared - but
Landen laughed out loud. Overlooking the fact that what Preston
could do was amazing, I quickly walked over to him, pulled him from
his seat, and put him in a chair facing the wall.
“That was not very nice. You sit here – all
of you,” I whispered in his ear.
I then walked over to Libby and turned her
chair to face the wall.
“Laughing at something naughty is not nice,”
I whispered to her. They were sorry for what they did, which made
me feel guilty. Landen was still laughing.
“
Why are you encouraging him? Don’t
laugh,”
I thought.
“
You know you want to know how he did
it.”
“
Well, yeah...but it’s kinda rude to jump
into another person’s body - isn’t it?”
I thought with a
confused look on my face. Landen shrugged his shoulders and stood,
trying to hide his approval from Preston and Libby.
Ashten and Aubrey were staring at me, trying
to figure out why I was punishing the children. My father broke his
trance. “Um...maybe we should go outside,” he said, looking at
Ashten.
I nodded and said to the kids, “If you can
be nice and patient, then you can color some more.”
They giggled at each other, then moved their
chairs to the table and took a big drink of their milk before
picking up their crayons.
Aubrey followed us outside, leaving my
mother to finish cooking. As my father kept his eyes down, trying
to process what he saw, Ashten was trying to read him. Landen was
still grinning profusely, and his emotion drove me to laughter,
too. It was just one of those proud parent moments - even though
weren’t our children.
“What’s so funny?” asked Aubrey.
Ashten was looking at us for an explanation
as well. Landen looked at me, then at his mom. “It looks like we
aren’t the only ones that enjoy the ability of leaving our bodies,”
he said, tilting his head to the window, where you could see
Preston.
“What do you mean?” Ashten exclaimed.
No one was comfortable with what Landen and
I could do, especially Ashten; he didn’t find this humorous at
all.
“Did you feel Preston step inside you? Do
you even remember pouring milk for them?” Landen asked his mom.
Aubrey’s awkward expression showed the shock
she was feeling, and her eyes raced back and forth as she shook her
head no.
“Jason, you saw something, too...how?”
Ashten asked.
My father looked at me and Landen.
“I don’t think I saw what you saw. I
couldn’t see him in-between; I just saw his soul leave, then appear
within Aubrey’s,” my father explained.
Aubrey covered her mouth, and Ashten wrapped
his arm around her, trying to calm her.
“How...I just don’t see how he could just
take over...where was Aubrey?” I asked.
“She was still there - just not paying
attention, so to speak,” my father answered.
“We couldn’t see him in there, but we saw
him in-between,” Landen said.
“Can you two do that?” asked Ashten, looking
at Landen.
Landen shook his head no. We had to be
completely asleep, but it was like Preston could will it at any
time. Just then, Preston came crashing through door, with Libby
close behind him. They ran down the porch steps and toward Brady’s
house.
“Where are you going?” yelled Aubrey in
their direction.
“Marc is coming!” Preston shouted over his
shoulder, running full force through the field. In the distance on
the hilltop, you could see the outline of Marc in the perfect
blanket of stars. When Preston reached his big brother, he was
picked up and twirled trough the air. Aubrey smiled, shaking her
head, then went back in to help my mother, forgetting what had
happened.
Marc had made it a point to bring both Libby
and Preston something home from the dimensions to which he’d
traveled. Sometimes it would be something as simple as a rock, but
the kids would relish it as if it were diamonds. Chrispin had tried
to get close to Preston, but it seemed that Preston had formed an
attachment to Marc from the moment he carried him home from
Esterious. Each moment Marc was home, you were sure to see Preston
at his side. Landen had said it was because Marc was so much like
Livingston in the way he carried himself.
“Maybe we should...um...let’s just have
dinner, and then...and then we’ll go to your house and talk about
all of this,” Ashten said to Landen. “Did...um...August talk to the
two of you about spending more time around here - them?”
Landen was staring at Marc; as he came
closer, he ran his fingers through his hair and nodded. He was
distracted by what we could feel coming from Marc; he was relieved
and angry all at once. Landen thought, just like I did, that he had
either heard that Drake was back or saw him with his own eyes. It
felt like our vacation from destiny was coming to an end, and the
change in our demeanor didn’t go unnoticed by our fathers. Ashten
looked at me and asked, “Is there something wrong?”
“I don’t know yet,” I muttered, walking to
Landen’s side.
I wanted to freeze time. The stress of
facing Drake had nearly torn me and Landen apart last time - and I
wasn’t about to let that happen again. Marc reached the porch,
carrying Preston and holding Libby’s hand.
“That’s a beautiful baby girl – good name,”
Marc said, smiling at us.
Landen nodded but didn’t smile.
Marc’s smile lessened as he sat Preston
down.“You guys go get ready for dinner. It smells good,” he said to
the kids. They both ran into the house, full of excitement. Marc
cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I better say it so you’ll stop
giving me that look,” he said to Landen, whose face held no
emotion; he nodded once, telling Marc to go on. Ashten and my Dad
stepped closer. I wrapped my arm around Landen’s waist, bracing
myself for what Marc had to say.
“The girl I was helping today was drawn to
Esterious, to the city of Delen.” Marc stepped up on the porch and
walked over to the rail, pulling himself up on it. We all stepped
closer, waiting for him to go on.“Today, when Donalt spoke, Drake
was at his side – without a scratch on him,” he said in a bleak
voice.
Ashten sighed deeply, then leaned against
the rail next to Marc.
“Did you see Patrick?” my father asked.
Patrick was an ally of ours in Esterious. I
had met him only once before; it was the first time I went to
Esterious awake.
“Yeah, that was the passage I used. Today is
the first day they’ve seen him. It was never acknowledged that he
was even gone.”
I could feel Landen’s anger building; he was
trying to hide it, but I knew him too well. I squeezed his arm,
drawing his attention to me. He looked down at me - and I could see
clouds in his perfect blue eyes.
My father cleared his throat. “Well, if he’s
fine, then I’m sure Beth is, too.”
Marc was looking past us through the window
at Preston. He loved him deeply. “I think I’m going to stay around
here for a day or so. I feel like I’ve let Preston down by not
being around,” he said.
Landen shook his head in disapproval, then
stepped closer to Marc, forcing him to look him in the eye.“You
need to clear your head – he’s happy. Trust me. You need to follow
your feelings,” Landen said.
“We will help you,” I added.
Marc sighed, struggling with the words he
wanted to say, looking back and forth between us. It was clear he
wanted what we had, what everyone had.
“Listen...thank you...you may be right, but
I don’t know. I’m just going to rest, then I’ll see if it’s time.
When I go - I want to go alone,” he said, looking around at all of
us.
“What? Why?” Landen protested
“It’s not going to be easy for me. I’ve
pushed it down for so long, it’s going to take me a while to find
it. I don’t think I’m capable of walking into a passage and knowing
exactly what content to land on - or even what dimension, for that
matter. I just want to go alone. Do it my way.”