Airel: The Discovering (Airel Saga Book Two)

Chapter XVII

FIRST LOVE. FIRST KISS. First night spent away from home. Things that leave their mark oneveryone. These were true enough for me, but there was also the time I almost drowned, the first time I rode a horse, and now there was the day I sat in front of my kidnapper and realized that everything in my once-happy life was all just an illusion. Congrats, girl, you’re a half-breed, an Immortal, the love child of angelic aliens and ancient hut-dwellers. Oh, really? Wow, sweet…

I didn’t remember standing up, or even the long walk down the twisting stone steps. All I could feel was the wet grass on my bare feet as I walked through the meadow.

I felt like I was in a fog, that what I had thought was real turned out to be just a curtain. Now the curtain had lifted, and what was lying in wait behind jumped out and ravaged my mind. I can’t really believe this lunatic murderer and kidnapper, can I? I had no way of knowing if what he had told me was true. But, wait… I shivered. His last words echoed through my brain threateningly.

I was beginning to understand the meaning of risk—because I was starting to doubt everything I thought I knew.

The end of our conversation played in the large space of my freshly expanded mind:

“How did you know that the story I wanted to read to you was in Genesis chapter six?” he’d said.

I stared at him in utter amazement. “It was a lucky guess,” I said flatly.

“Was it?” He raised one eyebrow, a small smile lifting the right side of his mouth. “I was thinking of the book and chapter in my mind. You read my thoughts, Airel. I suspected you might have that gift, among others …”

“Who are you?” I shouted at him, my voice cracking. It’s funny, but I didn’t let him answer me—or if he had, I couldn’t remember what it was. I had stormed off the porch, letting my feet carry me where they would.

I ended up sitting in the wet grass in the meadow, glances of which I had stolen so often from my room. I was a candle burnt from both ends, completely spent. My eyes filled with tears as I felt the dark woods surrounding me. Superhuman? But I was just an average girl … invisible.

But not now. And never again. Now that I had been jolted awake, all I wanted was to be able to go back to sleep. The real world was simply too terrible. I just wanted to go back to being invisible, or at least being able to believe I was. Now the things I wanted the most were out of reach. Permanently.

And they were foolish, too.

I became overwhelmed with one thought, and words failed to describe even near to what I felt, because it soaked into the marrow of my bones in that moment. What I felt, stronger than anything I had ever felt, what faded literally every other concern into the background, including my family, my future, and Michael, was that I had woken up today to find that I was indeed different. Superhuman. In the aftermath of this revelation, all I felt, though, was frail. My mind was firmly trapped in the difference between the two.

Shoulders shaking, shivering with chills, I sobbed and cried forever. I didn’t care what Michael or that horrible man thought. What did it matter, anyway? What did I have to look forward to? Days, months, years, decades, centuries, lifetimes of loneliness—if what he had implied about immortality was true—and knowing that I was not just different, but different in a way no one would ever understand.

Feeling like, at seventeen years of age, I had cried enough tears for many lifetimes already, the ripples in the little pond of my life began finally to subside. At least now I knew for certain. I didn’t know how long—how many years—it might take for me to come to grips with it. In the end, a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, though, and I needed that desperately. The Question had been replaced with Truth. A different kind of burden altogether.