Sleeping Nightmare

Chapter 24: bittersweet reunion | Sarah

Tyler was not breaking down on the other side of the wall like I'd thought. Standing on my tiptoes, I glimpsed him heading towards the back end of the school, where the stone wall that enclosed the school was a little lower, and with one powerful movement, he balanced his left palm flat on the stone and swung his legs and then himself over the wall parkour-style, landing neatly on the other side without a scratch.

I raised an eyebrow, silently appreciating his agility, before trailing him at a distance. He was walking with no purpose except to put as much distance as he could between him and the garnet eyed siren who just so happened to be my murderer.

If he were not so furious, not so deep within his own whorl of sharp thoughts and angry emotions, he may have noticed that he was being followed. He continued to storm into the trees, flinging stray branches that caught at his face away so forcefully that they cracked in two, dangling limply.

I hopped over the thick roots of a particularly enormous oak tree, keeping Tyler in my sights. I could hear Bob's voice in my mind - my brain, trying to warn myself. Turn back. You made a promise.

I ignored it. If Bob were me and Tyler were his sister or brother, I doubted he would have walked away. He had to understand.

Minutes passed before I realised that Tyler was striding with a certain destination in mind. We'd crossed into the small forest behind Varielie, and soon enough, he disappeared around the side of a bush into the clearing that he had led me to once before. I hung back, unwilling to make myself known so suddenly. I heard him practically drop to the ground, his head falling against the grass, the messy waves of his tawny hair mixing with forest dirt and morning dew.

I stood behind the bush, my heart hammering. Now that he had stopped and I was here, I was second guessing myself. What could I offer him, other than the kind words of a stranger? A stranger who conveniently happened to be stumbling across the exact clearing as he? He was likely to find me intrusive and impolite.

My face fell, and I turned away, my foot accidentally crushing a hollow twig to dust. The following crack echoed throughout the entire forest, and I whispered a curse.

I heard a rustling, and then Tyler's voice: "Is someone there?" The fury that had been so evident before seemed to have gone now, replaced with weariness.

Damn you, Sarah. Damn you.

Resigning myself to my fate, I stepped out from behind the bush.

Tyler's eyes met mine - and he sat up instantly, his body stiffening, the muscles in his arms stretched taut as if every nerve of his was on edge. I was beginning to think that it was quite an overreaction to a stranger when he breathed, "Sarah?"

Flabbergasted, I stared back at him. Then I turned my gaze to myself, and saw, with a panic, that my skin was several shades lighter, like it was supposed to be. My hair had lightened, and I assumed that my eyes had too returned to the colour of blackcurrants.

I was myself again. Had anyone seen me?

I had still been disguised at the school, I was sure of it. The crowd had seen me, and no one had acted any different. I must have unknowingly stepped outside the reach of Walter's magic sometime whilst trailing Tyler into the trees.

My internal dilemma was interrupted when Tyler got to his feet, exclaiming, "Why in the world are you here?"

For a strange reason, my eyes became moist. "I thought I'd receive a nicer greeting, you know," I croaked, smiling weakly. "I haven't seen you since the day of my assassination."

And then real tears came, tears that slid down my face and dripped down my chin, and oddly I didn't care about any of that because I was simply overwhelmed with the fact that against all odds, despite Delmitii's current peril, he and I had still managed to meet, and the relief that he was alright and standing before me, whole and unharmed, was so big that it nearly knocked me off my feet.