The Beginning Of The End

Chapter 2

When I ran from the chamber, I had no clue where I was going. All I knew was that I had to get away from him. I eventually found myself in a big bedroom, but I barely looked at anything as I ran across to the window. I flung it open and looked out over the tangled garden below me. It was raining, and the wind whipped into the room, pulling and tugging at my hair. I was on the second floor of the building, but the extraordinarily high ceilings of the first floor meant I was at least fifteen meters above the ground.

There were bushes below me. If I jumped, they would break my fall. I could find someone, find help, and find my way home.

I climbed up onto the window ledge and was standing there, trying to find enough guts to jump out when there was a yell behind me.

"Stop!" Startled, I tried to turn, but my foot slipped on the window ledge. With a cry, I felt myself start to fall. Jaylon's face was the last thing I saw, the shock and fear clear in his expression.

And then I was landing, but it didn't hurt a bit. My eyes, which I had shut tight when I'd fallen, opened now to see that I hadn't hit the ground. In fact, I was floating in mid-air about half way between the ground and the window I'd fallen from. There was something holding me, something that almost felt like a warm embrace. The house, which I could see now from where I was, was definitely more of a mansion. A castle sized mansion.

"Are you okay?"

My eyes focused on Jaylon leaning out the window, on the worry on his face, in his dark eyes. He was holding a hand out in my direction, and as he started to lift it I rose too.

"How are you doing this?" I whispered, terrified out of my mind. When I was face to face with Jaylon, just inches away from him on the other side of the window, he reached out and grabbed my waist and pulled me towards him.

I fell back through the window, back into the room. When Jaylon grabbed me, the strange invisible forever that had been holding me up vanished. As I fell through the window, I went completely limp, and suddenly found myself on the ground on top of Jaylon who still had his arms around my waist.

I was shaking. From fear, shock, confusion, and just everything that had happened. I didn't understand any of it.

"As much as I enjoy having a girl on top of me" Jaylon murmured. "You probably should get off."

I pushed myself off him and backed away.

"Why?" I cried, wiping angrily at the tears that had begun falling. "Why are you doing this to me? Just let me go home!"

"But you see," he said, getting up off the floor. "You know too much. And besides, I rather like having some company after so long alone." He started towards me, his face emotionless but his eyes smouldering. "Do you know what that's like?" He asked, his voice low and fierce. "To have everyone you love, everyone you know, taken from you?"

He was close to me now, just over a foot away and I had nowhere to go from my position against the wall. "And no one" he continued "no one will trust you. Everybody is too afraid of me to come near me, to get to know me."

"So what makes me any different?" I asked, hoping I didn't sound as afraid to him as I did to myself.

"The difference," he said, his mouth stretching into a grin as he lifted a hand and traced his fingertips across my cheek. "Is that you know what it's like to be alone. You settled for someone less, so much less than what you deserve though." He lowered his hand and turned abruptly away from me. "We need each other."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't even make my mouth form words to say to him. I didn't understand this, any of this.

"Louisa, you can't have been happy there, with what you had," He said quietly.

"I was happier than I am being held against my will by a lunatic!" I cried.

He backed away, shaking his head, and then he was gone. Just like that, like he disappeared into thin air.

I ran to the door and wrenched it open, looking both ways down the hallway but he wasn't there. The window was still open, the curtain flapping in the wind. Slowly, I walked over and shut it, then turned away.

Jaylon may be a lunatic, but he was lonely and hurt, something I could relate to. If I was going to be trapped here, maybe it was worth trying to get through to him, to get to know him somehow.

"Jaylon?" I called, starting down the hall. "Jaylon, where'd you go?"

I kept walking down the hallway, though I had no idea if I was even heading in the right direction. After a while, I came to a flight of stairs leading upwards and went up them cautiously. I slowly opened the door at the top of the stairs and my jaw dropped. I was in what looked like a library, but far different from one I'd ever been in. It was like... like a witches library.

"Jaylon?" I called softly, but there was no reply. I let the door swing shut behind me and walked into the library, my eyes wide with awe. This was a library like no other. Besides the fact that it probably took up this entire floor level of the house, it had towering bookshelves overflowing with books, more books than I'd ever seen in my life. There had to be thousands in here, millions.

There was a long table covered in books in the front of the library, some open, some piled so high they looked like they were going to topple over. There were other things on the table too: Piles of paper, scrolls, gemstones scattered about, candles all different colours. It didn't seem safe to have candles in here with all these books and so much paper, but none were burning.

I reached out and picked up a stone, letting it lie in my open palm as I inspected it. I didn't know much about gemstones or anything like that, but this was a beauty. It was purple, though it had bits where it was clear and somewhere it was a sort of cloudy white. It was rough, with hard edges and no real shape, almost like it had just been pulled from the ground.