Seven

Chapter Four

I giggled as the summer sun set on my ruddy cheeks that were sticky with watermelon juice. My father was throwing me up into the air. There was a momentary feeling of fear as I felt the tug of gravity on my stomach and then I was blissfully falling, certain that my father would catch me. There was never a need to fear anything if you knew someone was standing below you, their arms open in forgiving invitation. The wind from the decent blew my dark curls up into my eyes.

My father caught me, laughing along with me, the sun making his blue eyes twinkle. His hair was dark red and tied back into a knot that rested on the back of his neck. He brushed my hair out of my face and shifted me onto his right hip.

He faked a huff. "You're getting too big for me to do that. You better stop growing or else you're going to have to find a different way to fly."

"Uhuh," I argued in my small, childish voice. I raised my hands into the air. "Again, Daddy! Again!"

Across the field I saw Ma hanging wet clothes on the line. She smiled and waved at us, her dark curls, like mine, pinned behind her ears. A plume of smoke rose out of the chimney of out little cottage and into the darkening sky. All around us, lightning bugs began to flash, on and off, on and off, like miniature stars that rested on the earth.

My father chuckled and set me down. "No more tonight, my little gem stone. I ought to go help your Ma with dinner."

I frowned. I wanted to be thrown up into the air some more. I only got to do three times.

My father bent down and picked something out of the long grass. It was a dandelion, it's white plumes ready to be wished upon and blown away. He handed it to me.

"Make a wish," he stated, smiling at me.

I frowned but took the dandelion from him. "I wish you would throw me up some more."

Daddy laughed again. I didn't know why he was laughing. I was being serious. If he didn't throw me up into the air some more, I was going to be really angry. I already was angry. I pooched my lower lip out.

"Not tonight, Jade. Maybe in the morning."

I pouted harder and gripped the dandelion as tightly as I could in my little hand, glaring at it. I suddenly felt not only angry, but very hot. There were white lines wiggling down my arms, underneath my skin, and they burned, but I liked it. Out off nowhere the dandelion caught on fire and I smiled.

"Throw me up some more, Dad," I demanded.

A headache pounded behind my unopened eyes. I immediately noticed how cold I was, so cold in fact, I felt frozen. I didn't move. It seemed like so much work to move. What had I been doing before this? Was it something important? I couldn't remember. I drifted into a restless sleep, the pain in my head stirring me from time to time.

Images flashed through my dreamless sleep. They floated through the darkness around me like waves. A man in a silver circlet with a horrible grin on his face. His dark eyes stared at me so intensely I thought they might have been gazing at my soul. I saw my misericord swing out in front of me, sharp and silver in the forest light. Pink lips whispering in my ear. Strong, fine hand gripping my upper arms so tightly I squealed in pain. A voice, a voice that was saying...

And then, as if my mind had finally put all the pieces together, I was awake. I sat up so abruptly that the world spun as the blood ran from my head to the rest of my body. I quivered as my brain seemed to shake inside my skull. My eyes pounded in their sockets from the pain. I felt the bile in my stomach in time to shuffle onto my hands and knees. Wrenching, my stomach emptied itself of what little was in it.