“Seeing the future?”
I cringed at her question; no part of me wanted to answer it, not after what had just happened with my father. I wasn’t even sure why she wanted to know. After all, she had stood there, watching my father berate me for being a useless Drak only minutes after sharing a sight with him. I guess that didn’t really answer her question, though, unless she wanted to know what it was like not to follow sights.
Because that seemed to be all I was good for.
“I dunno; it’s fine unless you talk to my father...” I said, a little more bitterly than I had meant to, wishing she would drop the subject.
“Sain is only trying to—” Obviously not.
“Can we talk about something else?” I snapped. I really didn’t want to hear the rest of that comment.
“You mean like the day after tomorrow?”
I looked at her in alarm only to be met with a wide smile that I tried very hard to return, although it didn’t quite want to take. My face felt like it had suddenly become devoid of blood, my heart pumping madly against the lead I had been filled with. She knew what tomorrow was, and she knew that there might not be a day after.
“You’re scared about tomorrow, aren’t you?” Wyn asked, making it evident that my fear was as clear on my face as it felt. I just looked at her without knowing what to say. If I should even talk about the sight; if I even believed it.
Wyn shook her head at me like I was the most pathetic thing she had ever seen, and I guess that in some ways that’s exactly what I was. I looked away from her sheepishly, suddenly feeling that old, introverted part of me coming on strong. Wyn pushed off from the door she was leaning against, her arm reaching up to drape around my shoulders. She almost looked like she was going to impart a secret wisdom passed down for generations, but instead, she did what Wyn did best.
She pulled out the Styx.
“I know you feel these are the worst of times; I do believe it's true. When people lock their doors and hide inside. Rumor has it, it's the end of Paradise.”
“Wyn, don’t…” I begged, but she only smiled wider and sang louder, her horribly off-pitch voice echoing off the stone and rippling back to us, bringing the laugh out whether I wanted it to or not.
“The best of times!” She stepped away from me to dance through the hallway, her movements crazed and wild. “Our memories of yesterday will last a lifetime. We'll take the best, forget the rest. And someday we'll find…”
She spun and danced before making one last spin and ending up in front of me, her hand extended like a microphone, obviously expecting me to provide the last word.
I restrained the last of my laugh as I stared at the microphone, knowing there was no way she would let me off the hook.
“Paradise,” I said, knowing I had totally rained on her parade.
She, however, only smiled wider before grabbing my hand and dragging me into her room.
“Close enough.”
Eighteen
I could tell that, at some point, Wyn’s room at Rioseco had looked closer to the room I had seen at the motel. One wall was painted neon green, and the bed had been pushed up against another wall where several large rectangles of stone appeared to be cleaner than the rest. Shelves were emptied, carpets rolled up and put aside, and the garbage overflowed with band t-shirts and the posters that had once graced the walls. The bed had been stripped bare, the old, stuffed mattress instead covered with a single woven blanket that looked oddly similar to the one that had hung over Thom’s bunk in the cave in Italy.
Her room was a window into the heartbreak she was feeling, and looking at it made me feel filthy and somehow unworthy to be here. Not ten minutes before, we had walked down the hall, her suffering showing as she spoke of not knowing who she was. I should have pressed her, found a way to help her, but instead of sharing with her one thing, I had shut her down.
It made me feel sick to my stomach.
“I would ask you if you wanted something to eat, but I just cleaned the floors,” Wyn’s voice floated to me from somewhere within the depth of the room. I turned toward it, expecting her to emerge, but I faced nothing other than more destroyed remains of her life. I stood still, waiting for her to return while I tried not to let the fear that standing in the open, unfamiliar space was giving me.
“Funny,” I said into the empty room, knowing my voice wasn’t loud enough for her to hear.
Wyn appeared a minute later from what I could only assume was a kitchenette, her hands full of tall, clear glasses and an archaic looking bottle. She smiled brightly as she bounded over to me before setting her bounty on the low coffee table I stood next to.
“I can’t drink that, either,” I said matter-of-factly.