All's Fair in Revenge

Chapter 54: Arin

I ran over squishy knolls. I ran through scratchy grass. It tickled my knees. The breeze tickled my nose. My feet kicked up sand and splashed the water. The ocean ensnared me. It whipped long strands of hair behind my head like a horse's tail. The ocean hugged me. The waves sang my favorite song, its gurgle in my ears. And when it pulled me down, I devoured its weighty brine.

Suspended and weightless, I watched the sea swallow me, beams of sunlight like teeth. It's current, a tongue, caressing me as I slipped.

"Hana," said a voice akin to liquid sunset. It's sound startled me. "Hana, please wake up." So familiar that voice. So familiar its demand.

"Let me be," I said in gargled bubbles.

"Wake up! You've missed half your morning lesson," it prodded, though muffled as if screamed through a towel. "Hurry, Hana. Ma'ma's mad."

"Five minutes," I tried again.

The voice faded. Darkness closed in. Whooshing water filled the negative spaces. There was peace for a time and then there was panic.

I jolted.

"There you are!" Arin bobbed in the water. Her hair slicked back against her skin. "I was wondering if you drowned down there." I said nothing. I kicked the water as hard as I could and threw myself at her, my arms squeezing her neck. "Hey, hey what's this all about? The snakes are gone. I scared them away."

"Snakes?" A sour memory edged along the brim of my tongue. I hissed and spat it out.

"What's wrong, Hana?"

Where to begin? "I'm not sure. We had this fight, and I swam away, but when I surfaced, there were these men and they, they—" I couldn't get the words out. It didn't matter. She knew anyway.

"They killed me," she said, so matter of fact it startled me more than it ought. If anyone had of a right to react to such news...

Arin gathered my hands on the sides of her face as though feeling her skin might be enough to convince me of the lie tumbling off her lips. "I'm here. I'm well."

I started to say something, started to form the word, but her eyes flickered in and out like a candlewick in the breeze. Vacant holes of gone-ness. Skull and socket.

"I'm here," she repeated. Only she wasn't, was she? One second, I had my sister, clutched between my palms and then she was nothing more than vapor.

"Hana!?"

My eyes flew open. "Arin?"

"Hana! Run!" I looked around. Nothing but black sky and black sand and an endless echo of Arin calling my name. "Hana," she screamed once more, "run, Hana!"

I picked up my feet, pumped my legs. "Where are you?"

"Hana!" Her voice sounded so close. I could reach out and touch it, scoop it with my fingers. "Hana," she called again.

I smacked into it. Something. Hard. A boulder. Over it, I watch as my sister clutched her neck. "Run," she whispered, the word bubbling from her mouth, her hand holding her blood back.

I appeared before her. "I can help this time," I said, energy trickling around me in waves of midnight blue. I tried to force it to my hands, tried to embrace it and make it do something more than frighten me.

"No." An odd seizure shook her frame. "No, not like this. You cannot. You do not."

"Arin," I said, cupping her hands in mine. "I can do this. I can't do this. I can't do this without you. Can't you see how I can't do this without you?"

Confusion twisted her features until pained. She opened her mouth wide, too wide. "Don't do it, Hana. Don't use it. She wants you. Only you." Her jaw spread wide. "She wants you, Hana! Run Hana! Run!"

I stay. I always stay. It will be my downfall.