Vicious Memories

Chapter 54 - Alice

As often happened in moments of stillness, the trees called out to me, beckoning with their many-fingered branches, telling me to let go and lose myself in their darkness and depths.

"Alice!"

I jumped, startled.

Turning away from the sparkling emerald of the jungle, I found several villagers trotting forward. Felix, Bev, Mads, and a dozen others approached with concern. It felt like everyone not currently out with the fishing group crowded around me, putting familiar hands on my shoulders, standing close, asking question.

I took a step back.

"I'm glad you're alright," Felix said with his customary earnestness. "I don't know what we'd do without you."

"Thank you, Felix."

"Really," Bev said, her blue eyes narrowed with concern. "We couldn't bear to lose you, too."

I tried and failed to figure out what a normal person would say or do. I fixed a small smile on my lips, hoping they wouldn't see just how much their concern meant to me. Look pleased, I thought. Yes, that was it. Well, wait, maybe not. Look touched. Yes, that's better. Look touched.

I let their words wash over me, gazing out at the jungle again, wondering what Ollie was doing in the caves, when he would be finished. I wanted nothing more than to go in there and help him figure all this out, but I knew he needed time to work though it alone.

All I could do was this - stand here, listen, and try to reassure everyone.

Two hours of on-again off-again questioning made something akin to nausea pass through me. This was exactly the type of thing I'd tried to avoid over the past two years. Gabriel's nomination of me was the cruelest thing he could have done. Responsibility for a normal person was heavy. For me it was crushing.

What if I did something wrong? What if someone else died? What if I couldn't protect them all?

I shuddered and rubbed my eyes with the backs of my knuckles. You will not throw up, I told myself. You will not throw up. You can do this. You have to.

When I opened my eyes again the world was blessedly bright and clear, the day just reaching its midpoint. The sun hung like a toy in the middle of the sky and the colors around me stood out brightly, as if the contrast on the television set had been turned all the way up. Felix worked nearby in the fire pit, building something. Bev and Mads stood with a half-dozen other villagers in a close circle, debating something else.

I turned away, then smiled.

Striding out of the caves, his steps long and purposeful, was exactly the man I wanted to see. Somehow, in just this short span of days, I'd come to think of him as the most reliable person on this island. More reliable than Arun. More reliable than even Gabriel. There was nobody I thought more likely to save us from this situation - not even myself.

Something in the set of his shoulders made my brain kick itself into high gear.

What now? I wondered.