Recall

Chapter 23

Devonte:

"Where are you taking me Devonte?" Samantha asks. It is technically our last night together. Tomorrow does not count because we will too busy killing people, tomorrow blood will be shed, tomorrow memories will be obtained, tomorrow Sam finds out who the love of her life is. I hold Samantha's hand as I dragged her through the forest, over logs, under branches. We were careful not to step on any nests and rub our skin against poisonous plants.

"I found this spot last night, while you were staring at the stars with Tré." They thought I was sleeping, but I wasn't I was watching them, and tried to ease drop on their conversation, but I was too far away.

"Everything okay with you and Tré?" I ask.

"Never better." She lies, but I don't pry, knowing better.

We arrive at the spot and Samantha gawks and presses her hands at her chest.

"This is amazing!" She exclaims we both store up at the millions of fireflies that float up just above us and around us; they all just floated there, and froze where they were like hanging lights. The stars and the moon that illuminated further about made the scene even more beautiful and Samantha loved it. I hung out my hand in front of Samantha and she gave me a confused gaze and giggled. "What are you doing?" She asks.

"Would you like to dance with me on our last night?"

"But we have no music." She states.

"I will hum a song that my tree mothers use to sing to me and Brody, whenever we were afraid to fall asleep."

"Why were you afraid?" She asks.

"We were afraid of Coral's men coming for us."

Samantha doesn't say anything, instead she gives me this pitiful look and I turn away embarrassed. As a guy I feel like I shouldn't admit to being afraid, but at the same time I am human and aren't I entitled to feeling that emotion at some point in my life? I decide to sing the song instead and begin to do so. Samantha is surprised by this and raises her eyebrows at me surprised before resting her arms around my neck, while I held her by either sides of her tiny waist.

"Hush now my baby
Hush now my love
The angels are watching
From heaven above
They know that I love you
They know that it's true
I'll stay here beside you
Whatever you do
When I wake beside you
I feel like I shine
I wish you forever
And ever be mine
A new day tomorrow
When you open your eyes
You let in the sunshine
And all darkness dies"

I repeat the lyrics to the lullaby as we continued to spin around. She eventually allowed herself to rest her head upon my shoulder and she does the unexpected and starts to cry, I felt her cool tear drops drop on my thin shirt and touch my skin. She cries silently, for she did not want me to be aware that she was crying. I don't say anything to her however; I just let her continue to cry as we spun around.

Memory:

Tré and I were taking our usual early morning walks before we picked up Samantha from her place and we were just about to head up the bridge to go to the opposite side to get her. "Hey Tré what game are we going to play." I asked excitedly. Whenever it was Tré's turn to pick the game I was always excited because it is always something crazily fun. "I don't know man; I am just going to make something up after we get Samantha." He said. We continued to talk about lots of things and joked around until we reached Samantha's and I knocked on the door a few times before Mr. Volo opened with an agitated face. "Hello boys" He said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Good day sir is Samantha here." I asked trying to be as polite as I could. "Of course she is, where else would she be?" Just when I am trying to be polite this old guy just has to be an old hag. "Um I don't know maybe with her boyfriend, now are you going to get her or not?" Tré pushed past me and replied with a smug look on his face. It was obvious that Tré was joking and even Mr. Volo got that but he was not pleased with Tré's remark so He just ignored him and called Samantha down. Of course Samantha heard everything which was why she came out cracking up. "My boyfriend...seriously...?" She questioned and we all walked off towards the big hill laughing.

3 hour left...

Samantha and Tré have been asleep for the past hour now; with Samantha lying against Tré's left side and her head on top of his shoulder. They looked cute as they were cuddled together.

William got up half an hour ago to go make more arrows, just in case he ran out of the ones he had. We asked him who taught him how to use a bow an arrows and he gave us this sad look and ignored us. So it must have been Emily. His set came with 40 arrows and he has made about 15 in the past half hour out of sharpened strong tree branches and I do not think that there are going to be that many guards in one place since they are all hunting us down as we speak. For the past hour I have been spinning a knife around each finger while walking around and thinking. I have also went through the plan over three hundred times and looked over the map of the castle more than a thousand times. While everyone was chilling, I was having a panic attack, asking myself the "What if" questions. Like what if one of us accidently forgets the plan? Or what if something happens to spot one of us? These questions and much more are flooding through my head and I don't have an answer for any of them. Samantha thinks we are ready, Tré doesn't care what we decide and William is all ready to kill. I just hope everything turns out well for everyone's sake.

2 hours left...

Tré finally woke up and placed Samantha's head gently on the grass before getting up to stretch. He took off his shirt then practiced some simple sword work. For a guy who hasn't touched a sword in a while he was actually pretty good. Not rusty at all. Due to Samantha's training of course. Samantha has been training for years; I remember always watching her throw knives at the fish in the canal. That was at the time when I didn't know who she was, when I only knew her for being the abandoned teen, taking care of herself. I never had the guts to talk to her because I was afraid she would hurt me and I couldn't bring her back to the tree house because I thought Brody and Devannah would freak. We were at the time seventeen, a year since we lost our memories. Whenever I was in town gathering supplies for the tree house I would always go everyday inside of the burnt down building and look out through the window and watch Samantha either train with knives or arrows, but I had never seen her use a gun, which was strange and why I didn't understand how that was her best weapon.

"Hey Tré!" I called over to him while he was currently doing push-ups now.

"Yes." He stopped to look over at me. "Did you see Samantha after we got our memories whipped clean?" I scratched the back of my head awkwardly "Um... Yeah...Wait no." He seemed unsure of himself and sat up to think about it a bit. "Wait now that I think about It, I actually did. She was that chick always sneaking in and stealing from the market. I never told anyone of course, because I am not any snitch, but I can bet my life that, that was her." He grinned as if telling the story as if it happened yesterday. "Well I saw her back then too, but don't you find it weird how we were both able to see her. Like I remember at school that it was said that the princess would make sure that the people you were with before your memory's were whipped were never able to find you or see you again. I think she was scared that her little memory draining drug would ware off if we were able to draw ourselves to people from our past." I walked up closer to Tré so I could whisper what I was saying to him. "Okay we were lucky I guess, so what?" He was now doing sit ups, and not seeming to understand or care about what I was saying here. "So this probably means that us remembering each other and reconnecting and shit did not happen by accident. The princess wants all of us; she knows we are a threat, that's why she told the guards not to kill us. She wants us all together because she needs something. This was all beginning to click now. What Brody had put in that note was all starting to make sense now. I wish I still had the note to show him what I was saying was not crazy but unfortunately I burned it a while ago. I did not want someone to end up finding it, just in case I misplaced it. Tré stopped for a minute to look up at me with a confused face. "And you chose now to figure out all this." Tré places his hands behind me and givse me a face of disappointment. "Shut up man." I say. "So what are we going to do now?" Tré looks around to check if the other two were listening and when he saw that they weren't he then looked back at me. "Just stick to the plan. The princess doesn't know we are coming, so we are still a go for tonight." Tré nods in approval and we both walk off in opposite directions to continue with our preparations for later on. I check my tracker and it was quarter to six and almost an hour till show time.