22
Wyatt
I had been shivering. Now, I was warm, warm from the fire in the stone fireplace on one side of the room, warm from the girl in my arms. This was it. This was why I was here. To find her, this strange, unearthly, beautiful girl, locked in a tower yet so brave that she slid down a rope and fished me out of the ice. Seeing her, I realized that I was like that too, in my own tower, a tower of the mind, enchanted and unreal. Would I be as brave as her, given the opportunity? Could I save her as she saved me? This girl was different from anyone I’d ever met. She made me feel like a hero.
I glanced around. The room was from another era—wrought-iron bed and a rag rug. The walls were painted bright blue, like the sky. “So, who are you?” I asked.
She looked down. “Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t really know, except that my name is Rachel. On my last birthday, I was seventeen. I’ve lived here since I was a child.”
Unreal. “And before that?”
“I lived in a house, with Mama.”
“Mama.” Such an old-fashioned word. I didn’t know anyone who called their mother Mama. It was like something they said in books.
“She’s not really my mother, though. My mother is dead. She was killed when I was a little baby. I don’t remember her at all.”
I thought about the old man in the hardware store, the one with the dead daughter. Could she have been Rachel’s mother? If so, he didn’t know about it.
“Mama brought me here to keep me safe. She said the people who harmed my mother might come after me as well.”
It was all kinds of crazy. Yet, everything seemed crazy up here, from Danielle eating her psychedelic salad to Rachel locked in this tower. But maybe the whole world was like that—it was just more noticeable in a small town. I gazed at her, trying not to look like I was. Her skin was so pale, like it had never seen the sun. It was almost translucent, and her hair hung around her shoulders like an angel’s wings. She believed what she was saying. That was for sure.
“So why did you come down to save me? Weren’t you worried I’d kill you?”
She smiled. “I thought about it. But then, I realized you were too young to have killed my mother. You looked no older than me. And I could not simply watch you die when it was in my power to help. Then, my existence would be worthless indeed. I sometimes wonder if it is anyway. Besides . . .” She broke off, shaking her head as if she had said too much.
“We all wonder about that sometimes,” I said.
“Do you? Do other people wonder that? I do not know any other people.”
“I think so.” There was something intelligent about her face, something older than her years. “What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to . . . burden you, tell you too much and get you into a mess.”
I looked around. Outside the windows, I could see only the tops of trees. Inside, I could only see her.
“I think I’m in it,” I said.
“You don’t have to be. You could leave, climb down to the bottom and never see me again.”
“No, I couldn’t do that. Now, I know you’re here. I can’t just leave you.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Though I had an idea. It was because of Tyler. I hadn’t done enough there. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. “Besides, I feel like I’m supposed to be here, like I found you for a reason. Why else would I hear you when no one else did?”
She sat very still for a moment, her face illuminated by firelight. Her hand was still in mine, and I wanted to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to spoil it, so I just sat there. Her fingers were so delicate, interlocking with mine.
Finally, she said, “I have these dreams, strange dreams.”
“Dreams?” I thought of Danielle at the window. But maybe that had been real.
“They don’t feel like dreams at all. I mean, not like dreams you have when you’re asleep and forget an hour later. These dreams feel like prophecies, and when I started having them, things changed.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, for one thing . . .” She gestured toward the rope of hair on the floor. “My hair grew. It grew very fast.”
I nodded. “That’s weird all right. What else?”
“When I was little, Mama used to brush my hair with a special brush, a silver one with a pattern of exotic flowers, orchids or lilies, I think.”
“What?” I had seen the brush, or one like it, somewhere. Where?
“A fancy silver brush. And then, one day, it disappeared, and I came here. But I have been dreaming of that brush, and dreaming of it all the time, as if it is the key to . . . something, to escape. And then, you showed up.”
I nodded. “And that’s weird?”
“Other than Mama, I haven’t seen another human being in years. But more than that . . .”
Again, she stopped speaking and stared at the rope of hair on the ground.
“What?”
“More than that, you were in my dreams too. I don’t want to frighten you, but there was a boy, tall and broad shouldered, with dark hair and green eyes. Do many people have green eyes?”
I shook my head. “Some. But most people have brown. Or blue.” I looked into hers, which were a bright sapphire color.
“Do many boys look like you?”
“Exactly like me? No. So you’re saying I was in your dream?”
She nodded. “I am certain of it. You are meant to be here.”
“Then I’m certain too.” And I was, in that instant, I was. There had to be a reason I was here, a reason I’d heard a voice beckoning since I’d gotten here, a reason I’d left home, even. “But what was I doing in your dream?”
“That is where it grows dim. There were people, somewhere. They wanted me to help them. They needed me to. It had to be me, only me. But I don’t know why or how. I thought perhaps when you came, you would tell me. But you don’t know either?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. But maybe we could ask someone.” I thought of the old man again. Maybe he would know. Or Mrs. Greenwood. I wouldn’t tell them about Rachel. It would freak them out, and I wouldn’t want to get the old man’s hopes up if Rachel wasn’t his long-lost granddaughter after all. “Would you want me to?”
“I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want anyone to know I was here.” She glanced out the window. “Oh, my, it is getting dark already. I don’t want you to leave, but . . .”
I looked outside. The sun was already low in the sky. I glanced at my watch. It was already past four, and around here, it got dark early in winter. I had to get back to my car, this time without falling through the ice. “I don’t want to leave either. But I should.”
“Come again tomorrow. Please?”
“If I can. If not, the next day.” I stood up.
She put her arms around my neck again. “Please come back. I never knew how lonely I was until you came.”
I kissed her. “Me either. Don’t worry. I will. I promise.”
The trip down the rope should have been easy compared to the trip up, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to make it. I didn’t want to leave. My hands ached until I felt I might fall, and even though my clothes had mostly dried, I felt bone cold. I finally reached ground and struggled across the trees to the car, then drove to Mrs. Greenwood’s house, but I was already plotting how to come back.
I felt the chill of cold in my legs, my arms. Even my hair felt cold. But for the first time since Tyler died, I felt like something made sense.