Cold Tomorrow

[32]

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

If my life were a poem, it'd be a sonnet on sorrow. It'd start by posing a question, dwelling in worry and anxiety, wondering and whining. In the first octave, it'd be drowning in anaphora, the same concerns, the same events, repeating themselves over and over. It'd have a harsh, trochaic metre that jars the teeth as it leaves the mouth.

And then, quite suddenly, it would turn. The octave would dissolve into a sestet, filled with answers, conundrums solved and concluded. It'd be overflowing with polysyndeton, the conjunctions making it run inexorably towards it's final line, final word, final breath.

If my life were a poem, I'd be at the turning point. I've been floating in repetition for longer that I can remember, forced back to the beginning again and again and again. Then I dreamt, I remembered, and now everything is picking up speed, about to launch forward.

I'm thinking this as the English teacher talks, drones like an audio recording, on poetry. I'm thinking this and boiling with frustration, the heat of it spilling from my mouth and nose every time I exhale. The world has picked up pace again, cleared itself of sluggishness and started sprinting – and I've been chained to the start line.

When I regained consciousness after last night's events, I was at home, lying on my bed. Patrick and Kalea's battered house were a blurry memory hovering at the edge of my mind.

Sitting up I found Katherine leaning against the wall, eyes closed. It was the same wall that had once worn a word in blood, but was now smudged and stained brown, the letters scrubbed off. "What happened?" I asked into the quiet.

Katherine's eyes blinked open. She regarded me coolly. "I don't have the full story, but from what I've gathered, this is what happened: Patrick knocked me unconscious, Kalea either fled or was captured, and you were either knocked out or passed out. When I recovered, Patrick was gone and you were lying sprawled in the doorway. I took us home. Mind filling in the gaps?"

I rubbed my eyes wearily with one hand. "I..." The memory of last night rose up foggy in my brain. "I told Kalea to run before Patrick could get to her. She – went someplace hidden, I think. I hope. Then–" Then I tired from using my powers and fell into unconsciousness. "Then Patrick got to me and knocked me out when I wouldn't tell him where she went." I paused. "He must have left after that."

"He just got up and walked out?" Katherine's eyes brimmed with confusion – and hope. "With the two of us lying there?"

He could have killed us, but he didn't. He could have captured us, but he didn't. He probably should have done one or the other, but he did neither. I recalled the Patrick from my most recent memory, the one who cared for my father and his family. Could that same empathy still be there, buried deep down?

"Listen," I said. "Things have changed. I saw another one of my memories while I slept last night."

"What of?"

"The Curse. The creation of the Limit."

Katherine frowned as she approached and sat down on the end of the bed. "You were there?"

"I was more than just there. I was part of it."

She shook her head. No way, she was saying. "How? You were barely four years old."

"Michael cast it in our backyard on the farm. You weren't home. Keon turned up halfway through – he'd been tipped off by Patrick – and while the both of them had been distracted, I'd completed the curse."