Midnight's Song (61 page)

“It doesn’t matter
where you send me or what darkness you face. I will never give up!
No matter what warnings you give me or what fears you have,
I’ll
never
stop
searching for a way back to you.
I have
always loved you
.”

My eyes were still open,
but my mind began to get hazy. Just as he always did, Aurelian
caught me before I hit the floor. He gently caught me in his arms
and sat with me.

“Don’t say that,” he
hovered over me. “You have to go on with your life. Once you go
back, the world will be yours. You’ll have friends and family, a
husband and children. No one will be able to hinder you and hurt
you anymore…”

“No,” I interrupted him, my last
cognizant plea. “You know that I’ll never be able to stop loving
you. I won’t be able to live unless I’m searching for you, and you
won’t be able to live unless you somehow find me. It doesn’t matter
what you say or do, I’m coming back.”

After the last word, I
became too hazy to form words. I could still hear, though, and
Aurelian knew it. As if I needed to remember that he loved me, he
felt the need to tell me something in this one last
breath.

“I know that you
can’t speak now, but if you can still hear me, you must know
something. The pearls that you spoke of – the ones that you lost in
the garden – I didn’t put them back into your pocket then. I’ve
reached across time and put them there
now
.”

Then, my eyes closed. I
felt his lips touch mine – probably without thinking as he gave me
one, final kiss. I felt myself slipping away from this reality,
slipping out of Ari’s grip. Soon, I truly had slipped away. He
remained on the floor of the ballroom, but now I was
gone.

I was in freefall. Thunder
shook my body, a blinding light evident above my eyelids. A flood
of images came into view that depicted almost everything in my life
up to that point. I continued falling through space and times.
Colors, sounds, words, tastes and smells overwhelmed every one of
my senses !

Then – it all of a sudden – it
stopped.

My body came to a
halt with a thud. When I next opened my eyes, all I could see was
darkness. My eyes adjusted. I inched my head off of the ground just
a tad to see that I was looking straight into a mirror – the mirror
on my
bedroom wall.

I glanced to see my old
bed and balcony door among many other familiar items I saw
reflected in the glass. Gas lanterns flickered on the sides of the
room and illuminated the old coral wallpaper. It was the same old
room I’d always known, but it offered me no comfort. Aurelian was
nowhere in sight.

I couldn’t see him
in plain sight, nor was he hiding in any dark corners or deserted
balconies. My spirit could sense that he was
nowhere
in sight. For the first time
in many months, I knew in my heart and my mind that Aurelian wasn’t
near me at all.

He wasn’t in this
world with me or anywhere near it. He was completely
gone
. And for the first
time in many, many months; I felt completely
void.

“Ari?” I screamed out in
despair. “AURELIAN!”

Though, it was no use. He was
gone.

Madness ensued. I sat up and began
beating against the mirror with my fists. At that point, I had
simply lost it. I continued to call out his name, nearly having
gone insane. The realization of my new loss caused me to become
filled with so much madness at one time that one would think I
belonged in an asylum.

“ARI!” I wept, banging my
fists madly against the floor before curling into a ball and
sobbing close to my knees.

The tantrum was loud enough to be
heard from across the hall – the hall that still contained gaggles
of busy servants that patrolled it back-and-forth every moment of
every hour doing their chores. One such servant had been passing by
and ended up following the loud, wailing sounds to my bedroom door.
In less than a minute, the servant kicked it open to find me lying
on the floor, ashen faced and hot with madness.

“Elissa?” The servant shook, suddenly
recognizing the person curled up in the ball. “No – it couldn’t
be…”

Though, as the servant came closer to
the place where I sat my identity became apparent. The servant bent
down in shock and touched my face just to be certain – but even
when she was certain she still found herself in complete shock.
When she came to my side, I found myself in complete shock as well.
Now that she was here, I could see who she was just as clearly as
the day itself. It was Emily.

Now I knew that I was home. This time,
for good.

After she found me there,
Emily called for help at once. My entire family was in shock.
Apparently, I had been missing for days. I would later find out
that this was the date on which Ari and I declared our love for the
first time. I fell into the bitterest, most paralyzing sadness
after that. Worst of all, it was a sadness that no one understood.
None of them knew where I’d actually been all this time. Not even
Emily.

It’s not like I
could give them an answer, either. Inter-dimensional travel is an
easier secret to keep than it is a topic to explain. There were
also the things about me that no doctor could explain. Things like
the three inches I’d seemed to gain while I was away, or the brown
eyes that had somehow become the most indecisive
hazel.

To avoid scandal, our
social circle was told that I’d been kidnapped by rebels and
rescued by the Royal Guard.

I became catatonic. I
refused to move or speak as I struggled to let go of what I still
carried in my heart. I didn’t have the mindset or the physical
energy to expose Beeti’s intentions yet, even if it didn’t matter
much now anyway. My unexplained arrival had already put a dent in
Beeti’s plans.

If she was going to carry out the
murder, the constant presence of chaperones in my room gave me an
alibi in nearly every circumstance. It was without question that
things were going to go differently than they had before.
Everything had changed. Somehow – the day that Grandmamma had once
died came and went without any death at all.

Grandmamma would actually
become well again and live an entire year afterward.

A few weeks later, I opened my eyes to
see Emily sleeping in a chair beside my bed. The room was grey, lit
by an invisible sun that hid behind a blanket of clouds instead of
shining through my window. The world outside was as rainy and grey
as the life I felt I was living. Just as the clouds had choked the
life out of me, they also seemed to have taken all of the energy
from my friend. Somehow, she still remained as faithful as a
sister.

Emily stayed with me every day,
worried sick that I was going to die. I treated her with the
coldest indifference, but Emily would never leave. Today, there was
something different about her; something that caused me to break my
silence.

In the corner of my
eye, I could see that Emily wasn’t just exhausted – she was also
sopping
wet.
I
moved my head a few inches to get a better glance at her. The girl
looked like she’d run outside in a downpour.

Why would she do
that? I glanced up again to see something that would lead me to
question how I had been treating her. Emily was wet for a reason, I
realized. I twisted my head just a bit to see that my friend had
compassionately placed a fresh,
white
lily
in a vase on my bedside table. She
went outside in the rain to get it for
me
. The gesture changed my
perspective. If any act could have been so meaningful, it was this.
It caused me to remember how worried she still must have been about
Jackoby – their marriage still as secret as it had ever
been.

Emily must have still known about
Aurelian.

I shifted in place
and sat up for the first time in days. The very sound jolted Emily
to life. For a second she shot me a painful stare, seeming to
believe I was about to get up and throw myself off of the balcony.
But, I did something even more shocking
: I
spoke
.

“Emily,” I meekly spoke up that day,
“I have to ask you something.”

“What is it?” Emily shook. I lowered
my voice and gave her the most serious kind of look. I had to test
and see what she truly knew…maybe then I’d be able to prove that
the encounter was more than just a dream.

“Do you remember
him?”

Did she remember, or had her memory
been wiped clean? In any other situation, I think that she would
have had to ask me what I meant. She would have scanned the room,
searching her mind for an answer before speaking up again. Though,
this time that wasn’t necessary. The look in my eyes said it all.
Emily’s heart knew exactly who I was talking about. She’d seen too
much to ever forget.

“Yes,” Emily mutedly replied. “And
I’ll never forget.”

The silence that followed her words
was sober and meaningful. Aurelian hadn’t been a dream to either of
us. Even though there was no way that she could have known all that
I’d just seen and done, she’d still seen enough to be changed
forevermore.

I knew what I had to
do. In order to move on, I would have to take on this world again.
I would have to take
Beeti
on. Today, I found myself motivated to do what
I’d needed to do ever since I first arrived here. I sat up in bed
and put my feet on the ground. Although suddenly recharged, my
movement caused Emily to become overwhelmed with franticness. She
called for all of the servants and family to come as fast as they
could, urging me to sit back down. I refused. There was something
that I had to say, and I wasn’t going to be idle again until I
did.

In less than a minute it seemed that
half of the family and staff had congregated in my room. Grandmamma
was now strong enough to be wheeled in with everyone else. Winston
was also present – having been at the house ever since he first
heard of my ill state. Beeti stood in the crowd, too. She stood
there with a snide look on her face, almost as if she was waiting
for me to die or for Grandmamma to fall ill again.

I watched her reach into her dress
pocket and fiddle with something inside before pulling her fingers
back out again. Every day since Winston had arrived, she’d been
waiting for the opportune moment to kill him. Though, the present
circumstances had made it certain that the moment would never
come.

“There is something that I must tell
you all about my ordeal,” I began, gathering strength as I directed
the crowd. “I have been silent for many weeks, unable to speak of
what happened to me and why. I’m ready to talk about it
now.”

“Darling, wouldn’t you like to wait to
tell us about this for a time when we’re…alone?” Wren suddenly
spoke up, flabbergasted. She came and knelt at my bedside,
whispering. “If the details are delicate, you only need to speak to
Grandmamma, Beeti and I –”

“No, you don’t
understand. I’ll save the details for the family, but there is
something that cannot wait,” I spoke up again. “It is something
that could mean
life or death
for everyone here.”

“Then say whatever you feel you need
to,” Wren sighed, clearly still in shock from my sudden decision to
start speaking again. I eyed Beeti and took in a deep breath before
I began speaking again.

“There are many reasons that I was
gone for the time that I was…” I started, trying to conjure up a
believable explanation as I did. “I cannot say much, but I will
tell you that it is because there is someone here who intends to
see me harm.”

The crowd fell silent. Winston came
forward.

“Is this about my uncle?” He
whispered, still not understanding my words.

“No, Winston,” I
argued, perhaps fibbing a bit. “Not quite. It’s someone who lives
in this home.” I looked up at Beeti again, finding the courage to
say what I needed to say. “It’s
Beeti!”

At that point, some of the
servants left. Beeti began backing away in dismay. A look of utter
dismay rang across her expression.

“You’re absurd! Why would I intend you
harm?” Beeti defensively yelled at first. Her arrogance caused a
sudden rush of anger to burst forth from within me.

“You know
exactly
why you’d intend
me harm,” my eyes narrowed. “You wanted me dead with public
approval. You were going to kill Winston, and then you were going
to see that I was killed for your crime!”

All of my family members and friends
who were in the room fell back in disbelief. There were bound to
have been some people in the room who dismissed my accusation as
complete lunacy. I hadn’t been in the right mind in these last few
days…so what else could it be? I was insane – wasn’t I? This
couldn’t be right. Though, Emily shuddered. She believed me for
more reasons than just her loyalty to our friendship. She’d seen
Beeti’s encounter with the Magistrate all those weeks ago…but this
time she’d kept it to herself.