Prisoners of Prophecy

Chapter 23

Xantara - Monday, July 22nd, 2019; 5;46pm

     I had spent the whole day in a daze, trying to avoid the many curious gazes that had followed me throughout all of my classes. I once would have thought it impossible to draw any more attention to myself than I already had at ShadowWood, but it seemed everyone could not resist at least a glance my way. Were rumors spreading? I wondered. Were students - maybe even the guards - sharing some awful lie about me? About all of us?
     And then another thought came to me, followed by a wave of horror that erased everything else. What if they knew? What if they could feel the weight of our future; what if they could feel the power the Gods allowed us to possess, growing stronger as the time we may need to use it came near?
     That worry and countless more plagued my mind and I had been unable to focus on anything else. After my last class had ended, I had practically run to the library and then to my room. Once I was alone, I sat down on the old couch with a frozen dinner and nibbled at it while I stared at the blank television screen.
     For a while, I sat in silence, sometimes glancing around the room, but not really seeing anything. In the stillness of my surroundings, my thoughts were crystal clear. It had been two weeks since Melany had arrived at ShadowWood, and those two weeks had seemed to drag on for eternity as similarly as it had gone by much too fast. Before she had come, the answers to our countless questions - which had all really boiled down to one, what the hell was happening here - had come few and far between. Sometimes a couple of months would pass without anything new coming from our meetings down in the basement. But, now, not a day went by without the already torn fabric of my reality being picked at.
It was as if we had only been pushing the ball - Melany had sent it rolling. Now it was all happening terribly fast. Sitting alone, in the quiet, I was more afraid than I had ever been. What if I can't handle it? I thought worriedly. What if none of us can?
     A knock on the door startled me out of the panicked daze I had fallen into.
For a moment, I only stared dumbly at the dull brass doorknob, waiting for my visitor to try it. The coppery taste of fear flooded my mouth. My heart pounded erratically.
"Open the door, Xantara," Calypso's voice called from the other side of the door. "It's just me."
I stood up instantly. I was relieved, but that was drowned out by the desire to listen to her. I had to open the door and see the beautiful woman just outside of it. There was no force in the universe that I could imagine existed that was able to stop that longing.
Calypso came inside and locked the door behind her. Like it always did, her presence stunned me; it left my mind blank except for thoughts of her, and caused goosebumps to erupt all over my skin. She stood still for a moment, appraising me with her lovely eyes as I gawked at her. It was like she knew anything she said would land on momentarily deaf ears.
As the initial shock of seeing her died down, she sat down on the couch in front of my abandoned dinner and gestured for me to join her. I obeyed without thought.
I took another look at her without that irresistible lust clouding my vision and my mind, feeling unease settle across my tense shoulders. Her pale eyes were full of worry, and, deeper than that, even terror. To see that expression on Calypso's face was rare, and it sent a chill through me.
     "What's wrong?" I asked when I finally found my voice.
     She sighed. She was close enough that I felt her breath on my face. I resisted the immediate and intense - almost animalistic - urge to pull her even closer. The thought of it alone made me dizzy.
     "I'm not exactly sure. I... I'm worried," she replied after a long period of consideration.
     "What's bothering you?" I tried to keep my voice steady, but it still shook, laced with the fear that was steadily growing stronger.
     She looked up and peered deeply into my eyes for a few seconds before answering. "I think that there's something else here. Something that doesn't want us to do this."
     For an instant I could only gape at her dumbly. I swallowed and asked, "What do you mean? What makes you think that?"
     "Well..." Calypso took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Last night. I had met Illisha at the house. To hear what had happened." She paused, and in the short lapse of conversation I deliberated on asking her what had happened, then thought against it. There would be time for that. This felt much more important.
     "Someone yelled at us on the way back to our rooms. He asked us what we had been doing in the house." She shivered and took another shaky breath before continuing. I hated that look on her face, which was usually so sure and convincing. Now she looked haunted. I wanted to look away from that startling truth in her eyes, but I couldn't. Something felt very wrong. "It wasn't anyone I recognized. And, I don't know... The way he said it scared me bad."
     "It could have been someone new?" I suggested as the sound of my heartbeat echoed much too loudly inside my skull.
     She shook her head. "No. Because I knew he was there, I..." Her wide eyes surveyed the room and found mine again. "I felt him. I don't know how, or what that really even means, but I did. It was like some nasty, sticky smell that fell over us before he spoke. I knew it wasn't right, so I got Illisha inside as fast as I could."
     "We're all jumpy, maybe..." I started, unsure of what to say but desperately needing to find some excuse, some way to prove this wrong.
     "No. I'm sure it was someone... someone not from here. Just like I knew that he wouldn't follow us once we were inside, because the rest of us were inside, too."
     "How did you know?" I asked nervously. But she only shrugged. "What makes you think that guy wants to stop us, much less knows what's happening?"
     "Because he's watching us." She said it so seriously that it made me gasp.
     "What do you mean?" My voice came out trembling and weak.
     "I just left from Kai's. He's sick. Ms. Kersh told me a lot of people here are. But when I left, there was some muddy footprints leading to his door that hadn't been there when I went in."
     After a period of stunned silence, I whispered, "Are you sure it wasn't just some guard making sure we're behaving?"
     Calypso nodded. "I'm sure, Xantara. Those footsteps came from outside, went to Kai's door... And that's all. There weren't any going back. Like whoever was there just... disappeared."