Starlight by Adrienne Woods
The image spun around again.
It stopped at a party. I was two and walking with Blake. He held my hand and we walked everywhere in the backyard. There were so many grown-ups there. No kids. The three men that had given their dragon oaths were there too with many others.
I knew this party as I’d seen my face with my party hat on. I had a picture of this sitting on Tanya’s lap. The picture I’d lost that night on Interstate 40.
She was going to leave soon. Was my real mom still alive right at this moment? I didn’t know.
I stared at Blake as he helped me climb up the jungle gym that was in our backyard. It was still the same house.
I found Tanya staring at us too. She smiled as if she could see Blake assisting me as I climbed the railings.
I slid down and he caught me at the bottom, but it never showed him picking me up. It was only touch.
None of this was making any sense as I knew I didn’t see him. I would’ve remembered him.
He pushed his tongue out, and toddler Elena mimicked his actions. He laughed, made a different face and from what I could tell, she tried to mimic that too. She cackled with him this time.
I walked over to them and just sat and watched how they pulled faces at each other.
Then he sighed. “This isn’t going to last is it?” he spoke to me. “You would’ve remembered me if it had.” He took a stray curl and place it behind my ear.
I looked at Blake, he looked sad and two-year-old Elena asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Shhh, nothing,” he spoke again, scared that someone might hear them.
The image changed again.
It was a different place. Herbert and Blake paced in the house while Tanya was screaming upstairs. She was in pain.
“No,” I said as I put two and two together quickly. She’d told me about this night. I tried to get up to her but I only made it to the front door of her bedroom. I couldn’t go in.
I knew what this was as the screams coming from within the room confirmed it. My mom was in Paegeia busy burning on her bed and her dragon felt it.
Toddler Elena started to cry and I went back down. Herbert picked me up. He walked with me to another room, Blake followed and the image turned again.
It was the four of us again. No Tanya. I was a bit older, about four and something told me that I couldn’t see Blake anymore. But he was close, always close with this sad look on his face, just watching me.
It must have been recently that I’d stopped seeing him, as I kept searching for him behind the couch and behind curtains.
Blake shut his eyes. He couldn’t watch this.
“Elena?” my father asked and he stood by an entrance with a jacket in his hands.
I dropped the curtain and stared at him.
“Mommy isn’t coming back?”
He misread the signs, went down on his haunches and gave me a hug.
He put on my coat and we left. Blake followed after walking through the door as if he were a ghost.
The image spun again and I was about eight. The phone rang. What was said I couldn’t hear, but Blake did and he was worried. He rushed to my side and just stayed there till Herbert finished.
Herbert dropped the phone, grabbed his keys and me and we left with nothing.
The image changed. We were in one of my many rooms. I was about ten, crying my eyes out.
A knock on the door made Blake look in the front door’s direction as if he could see through closed doors.
Then my bedroom door opened and Tanya walked in.
“Don’t do this please,” the real me begged as I knew why she was here. They thought that I was never going to handle any of this so she came, erased everything.
Blake just stood there watching Tanya and me with tears in his eyes. She started say that I would not remember anything after this. That I would see my father as the kind, loving human being he always was. I could see Herbert’s figure lingering in my door and then he left.
I stopped crying, closed my eyes and she left.
My body shook every few seconds as a sniff came out. The after-effects of a bad cry.
Blake came over to my bed and lay next to me. He started humming and I watched this with tears in my own eyes before I closed them.
I’d seen his face that day at band rehearsal, when I owned up to what his songs made me feel. He had that knowing smile on his face because I did know his voice.
That is why his songs made me feel like that. He must have sang many times to me when I was still able to see and hear him.
I started to cry as I knew I was so stupid for thinking at a stage that this was a spell.
It wasn’t. He knew me better than I knew myself. He was always there. Becky was right, it’s why they changed after they woke up. It wasn’t an abrupt, instant kind of emotion they experienced, an enchantment as I thought it was. It was a bond created over years and years, one that would never be broken. They were invisible, ignored by us for such a long time and that was why when the process was over, they just wanted to be with us. Because we couldn’t see or hear them for so long.
The image changed again and I was thirteen.
I’d had a fight with Herbert. He was forcing me to come with him. He looked extra worried this time and I didn’t know why.
I stayed in this memory for about two days. I saw how we moved, saw how we found a new place. I’d called him paranoid so many times and remembered how I’d hated the new school.
On the first night, Blake and Herbert watched the news as I did my homework at the kitchen counter of the new place.
“No, Elena,” Blake said as he looked down at my paper. “Y is 85.” I smiled watching him. He was trying to help me with my homework even though I couldn’t hear him.
He just shook his head. It was so frustrating for him.
Then something on the TV got both their attentions. It was a murder. My father turned the TV up louder.
The real me listened too.
My father closed his eyes, opened them and stroked his face. “It’s the last one,” he whispered.
Thirteen-year-old Elena looked at him. “What’s the last one, Dad?”
“Nothing, Bear. You want me to help you with your homework?” he said and I looked at the TV screen as he switched the volume lower again.
Blake stared at the TV too, and was deep in thought.
The last one. The last of the men. Fox had tried that long to find us. He’d killed all the dragons that had made an oath to protect me. That’d kept me safe and I’d had no idea that any of this was happening. They’d warned my father each and every time. Probably helped us getting away too, distracted Fox’s team and end up dying.
I was only thirteen. How had he known the other three years?
The image span again.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch and my father was watching a movie. It was movie night almost every Friday.
He was watching one of those spy movies, he’d loved those.
Blake was sitting on the edge of the sofa I was sleeping on and then he went rigid.
He jumped up and vanished. He’d never vanished before.
Minutes later he appeared again. He was beside himself and crouched in front of my father. “Herbert you need to leave, he’s coming!” he shouted. My father didn’t hear him. Blake tried a couple more times, got up and grunted. He walked over to me.
“Elena, wake up,” he begged, but I didn’t. My own heart was pounding as I remembered this night too. My father threw me over his shoulder and forced me into the truck because I didn’t want to leave.
He then looked at the TV and stared at it. He closed his eyes.
I stared at him What was he doing? He just sat there. Until one of the actors addressed my father. Herbert’s bowl of popcorn flew in the air.
“Herbert,” the actor said again. “He’s coming, get your ass off that couch, now,” Blake spoke and the actor spoke his words. It was so weird. Then the actor went back to his lines, answering the
I looked at Blake who swayed a bit as if he was drunk.
My father just sat there, trying to make sense of what had happened, and then it was as if life came back into him and he did as the actor Blake had used had told him.
It was Blake who had warned my father?
The image spun again and I found myself fighting with my dad. I didn’t want to go this time, just like all the other times. Blake just stood against the wall with his fingers clamping his nose.
“Just do something,” Blake grunted.
Herbert threw me over his shoulder as if he’d heard Blake, and walked out of the house.
The image spun again and it stopped on me sitting in one of my other rooms. I was about fifteen years old.
I was doing homework on my bed. Blake was sitting on the chair at my desk staring at me.
He sighed. “How long is this going to last?” he screamed at the ceiling.
“Why are you doing this? It’s useless if she can’t see me, IT’S CRUEL!” he huffed with a small chuckle escaping his mouth.
“I can’t do this anymore.” He didn’t get an answer and I had no idea who he was talking to. Fifteen-year-old me was just sitting on the bed. To think that was only four years ago.
The room spun again.
This time they were short. It was of all the times Blake had warned Herbert. A couple of times was through the TV. One was the anchor woman who read the news. It was so funny to see her speaking to my father, telling him that they were coming again.
My father always obliged and I wondered if my dad knew that it was my dragon that had warned him those times.
A couple of times he’d used the radio. He would speak through the radio and I was always in a different room.
The image swirled and stopped again.
I was walking from school, Blake was walking next to me with his hands in his jeans. He didn’t look happy. I wouldn’t have been either.
I stopped when I saw Mitsy, the stray cat I used to feed, and gave her one of my sandwiches.
Blake sat on the dustbin. “So you are going to the dance with Trevor, Elena?” he asked but I didn’t answer him. I just stroked the cat and the real me started to laugh. This was why he looked so pissed off, because Trevor had asked me to the dance.
He shook his head and walked up the stairs of the house. I followed him.
He disappeared through the door again and I opened it. Music blared from the kitchen.
“Dad, I’m home.”
“Kitchen!” he yelled.
This was the day. The day my dad had died.
I laughed as I saw my father cooking up a storm, grabbing a spoon as all of us entered the kitchen. I loved this, missed this, so much.
He mimicked the song and threw a huge performance for me. I followed his lead and then we just laughed.
Blake just watched this and finally got rid of his foul mood.
My father dished up.
“So I take it that today was a good day?”
“The best,” my father said and turned down the music as he placed two plates of coq-au-vin in front of us. He grabbed my face gently. “I, my little Bear, I just sold my uniflex idea to Google.”
“For the love of blueberries, you are kidding right?!”
He laughed.
I never said that anymore. I used to all the time, but not anymore.
Blake just laughed.
It was annoying now that I thought about it. Who says that?
We talked about staying, no more moving and getting the rust bucket I always wanted. It would’ve been my first wheels.
“So since we are staying can I ask you something?”
“Does it involve a boy?”
“Say no, Herbert,” Blake said, which made me laugh.
“You could say that,” me from the memory said.
“Okay who do I have to kill?” my father asked and Blake grinned.
“Nobody, but there is a dance this Friday.”
My father grunted. “Am I going to at least meet this boy?”
“Fine, whatever.”
“On one condition,” my father said and Blake walked over.
“Make it a hard one,” he said and the real me laughed again.
“Please don’t let it be a stupid riddle. I suck at those.”
“It’s not a difficult one, c’mon.”
“Fine, let’s hear it.”
“What weighs a ton when moving forward but not when you move it back?”
“What!”
Blake had a satisfying grin on his face.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It’s easy, Elena. It’s in the answer.”
“Do I have at least a couple of hours?”
“Sure, but you know the rules. No Google, Bing or Yahoo. I’ll know if you cheated.”
“Fine,” I got up. “I might as well kiss this dance goodbye.” I went to my room.
Blake sat with me for hours.
“It’s Ton,” he said. “But you can’t hear me.”
I moved over to my bed and put on my iPod. As I plugged in my ear phones I knew what song played. I remembered it like yesterday. It was one about a miracle and I kept thinking that I needed a miracle to decipher that riddle so that I could have a normal life. It made me think about us moving around so many times, not knowing the reason why. Now it was as if I’d relived it through both their eyes.
Blake froze again and vanished, just like all the other times.
I went outside my room and only reached the top of the stairs. I couldn’t move further down but I could see him sitting on the couch. Herbert was watching a football game.
How was he going to get through to him? The quarterback stopping waving, telling him it was time to hike the ball.
Then Blake came back. I could move again and found myself in the living room.
Blake looked at the screen. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said as he saw the football game.
He looked around and saw the radio. It was off but he still went over and closed his eyes. It turned on and my father jumped and looked at it.
“Herbert, they’re coming,” he spoke through a frequency. This time it was his own voice.
“Who is this?” my father spoke to the radio.
“There is no time, they are coming in fast.”
“Please I’m begging you, just tell me.”
“I’m a friend. Someone that would never hurt her.”
My father’s face fell and he just stared at the radio. “Blake.”
“Just do as I say, please.”
My father nodded and rushed up to my room.
My dad knew? Even though it must have not made any sense to him. He’d known before he died.
Blake rushed up the steps and walked through the door like a ghost again. I followed and found him trying to help, to get my ass moving. I walked over to him. “I’m so sorry that I ever thought this was a spell or an enchantment. I’m sorry about so many things.”
I wanted to touch his face as everyone was speaking at the same time. The old me yelling at my father, Herbert throwing my clothes in a suitcase, but my hand just moved through Blake. I was invisible. He knew everything I’d gone through and now I knew that he knew. The yin-yang had gotten it all wrong. It’s not in every good is a bit of bad and every bad is a bit of good. It’s this. He was a part of me and I was a part of him.
We both disappeared and I opened my eyes, finding him still sitting with his head against mine back underneath the trees.
“That really happened?”
“Shhhh, you can’t tell anyone.”
I nodded. I understood now why none of them told anybody. Their enemies would definitely kill us if they knew. It would destroy them.
“Something doesn’t make sense, Blake. If all of that really happened, it means you warned Herbert. It means that you knew before I even entered Paegeia and still….”
&n
“Then how?”
“That is one part I don’t know the answer to, but that really happened.”
“It was two different times. When you went through that…” I froze and looked at him.
“What?”
“It’s like you jumped back in time.”
“That’s what the Dent is, Elena.”
His face fell as if he was in some sort of pain.
“What is it?”
He shook it off and smiled softly at me again. “Now you know how much I love you, and that I always will.”
Tears lingered in his eyes.
What is he not telling me?
A familiar feeling emerged in the pit of my stomach. One I’d felt only two times before. Why did it feel like I was never going to see him again?
Our eyes met again and I just grabbed him and kissed him like I’d never kissed him before.
Blake.
I WOKE UP and a tear rolled down my cheeks.
That felt so real.
I looked at Elena’s lifeless body.
My Essence hadn’t worked. She was hooked up to machines that made a soft peep every few seconds.
Today was the day Constance was going to switch off everything.
But I’d placed an enchantment over her, one that would preserve her body as if she was just in a deep sleep, and not dead.
I needed to find my last two orbs. They would become whatever I needed. They just had to become what I needed them now to become.
I climbed off the bed and the door opened. Constance and my mother walked in.
“Blake.”
“Mom, please. Just wait. The enchantment will hold.”
“Your father isn’t going to be able…”
“HE needs to, for me. Please!” I yelled at her, cutting her off. “I can’t live without her. Just wait until I have all my orbs. I can fix this.”
Constance and Mom both gasped and looked at me with huge eyes.
“What do you mean you can fix this?” Constance asked. “Nothing can bring the dead back to life, Blake you know that.”
I nodded. I did know that. But that was not what I need them for.
“I need to find my orbs. Just don’t let them bury her, because then it’s over.”
I walked over to her bed and my lips touched her cheek softly.
She still smelled like her, she was still warm. I breathed in her smell, what made her her, and a tear rolled over my cheek. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t bear to leave her, but I had no choice.