A Life Earthbound (10 page)

Knowing the Furies would be heading outside as well, Rhiannon left the room and eagerly went to the dining hall. She looked forward to seeing the fairies laying out the food for lunch. She took a seat, thanking the fairies as she always did, and then selected a turkey sandwich and juice.

She enjoyed being the first one there, when it was still quiet and calm. She enjoyed the solitude and the silence of an empty room, where she could sit alone with her thoughts, with no distractions or disruptions.

At least, until the others came in.

She heard the laughter first, making her defensive and she fought back the instinctive envy. Instead, she sat straight and cocked her chin ever so slightly, pretending not to care.

Blythe rushed into the room ahead of Liam, racing around the table to take a seat across but down a ways from where Rhiannon was sitting. Her hair was a wild poof of vivid red, and she was panting and out of breath from being chased. Her grin was a mile wide as she beamed at Liam, who collapsed into the chair beside her.

“I beat you!” she declared, clapping her hands joyfully. Liam glared at her, clutching his stomach and gasping for air.

“You…cheated,” he managed, punching her in the arm weakly.

She punched him back and they began a shoving match right at the dining table, laughing and smiling.

Rhiannon just rolled her eyes and turned away.

When she finished eating, she got to her feet and started to leave, only to stop when Liam called out to her.

“You should come play with us, Rhia,” he said, his goofy smile bright and charming as he ran a hand through his tangled mass of dark curls. “My dad’s putting up a swing for us outside, you gotta come try it!”

She looked over her shoulder at him, her head almost shaking before she decided. But her instinct told her to say no and so she did. She didn’t have time to play on a swing.

Seeing his face fall, disappointed yet again by her refusal, she turned and swiftly left the room, wanting to get as far away from him as possible. It hurt to see him look like that, so she did the only thing that she knew worked: she fled, and tried to forget.

She started walking down the corridor toward the Greenhouse where her father was waiting for her, only to stop dead in her tracks when she saw a man and a young boy walking through the atrium toward her.

She recognized the boy as Michael, even though it had been awhile since she’d last seen him. His father had brought him by a few times over the last couple of years, but he never stayed long. He didn’t get along with any of the children except the Furies, and she was certain they only put up with him because they were told to.

His father, Burke Callahan, had been successfully rising through the ranks of the Enforcers, swiftly becoming one of the best. He frequented Euphora to visit with the Furies and with Thea, making sure they knew he was reliable and trustworthy.

As they approached, Rhiannon clutched her bag and waited.

Burke was a tall man, lean but fit, with big hands and a slender face topped with cropped brown hair. He had sharp brown eyes that were deceptively framed with smile lines, and a mouth that was just as quick to grin. But while he appeared friendly on the outside, inside he was a well oiled demon fighting machine, gritty, precise and effective.

He smiled politely as he passed her, nodding in greeting. His son sneered in superiority, which she expected.

They brushed past her and continued down the corridor to the Furies’ office, and as they continued she could hear Burke instructing his son.

“One day you’ll be an Enforcer too, champ, and you’ll be the best there is. I’m going to make it happen for you, you hear? Just do as I say and we will be on top, father and son. The Callahan name will go down in infamy.”

“Yes, father.” Michael’s response reminded her alarmingly of herself.

He doesn’t sound very happy, she thought as she turned in the opposite direction toward the Greenhouse. Did he even want to be an Enforcer?

She thought of her own father. He had always told her about her future as an Earth Dryad and how important she was to the world. But he had never asked her if that was what she wanted.

In some of the books she read, they told of what humans did, how some of them became teachers, doctors or athletes. Did she have the choice to be something else, too?

With that question nagging her, she entered the Greenhouse and spotted her father, working over his drafting table on a new fern he was designing.

She debated whether or not to ask, wondering if he would be angry with her. But it seemed like a reasonable question to her, and her curiosity was so great she needed to know.

When he heard her come in, he straightened and turned around. “How was class, Rhiannon?”

“Fine,” she responded, as she always did. He nodded and rose to his feet, glancing one last time at his drawing and making a few quick notations.

She clenched her hands behind her back and tried to find the right words to say.

“I was wondering…” she began, her chest constricting from nerves and her clasped hands trembling slightly. He turned to face her, removing the reading glasses he’d taken to wearing recently.

“About what?”

Biting her lip, she took a deep breath. “Do we ever have the choice to…not be a Dryad?”

Taken aback, he wondered if he had heard her correctly.

“Choice, Rhiannon?”

Seeing his confusion, she tried to elaborate. “I read that humans can become teachers or doctors…they have choices. Do we have a choice, too?”

“Why in the world would you want something different?” he asked, alarmed and wondering where this came from. “It is our duty to be Dryads. What we do is crucial to the survival of this planet, Rhiannon. We don’t have the luxury of a choice.”

Wishing she hadn’t asked, Rhiannon nodded solemnly. Of course he was right, she should have known that.

Feeling he’d gotten his point across, Rohan motioned her to look at his charts on redwood growth in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

She listened as he explained the importance of repairing the damage to an area that had been burned by human carelessness just a year before. Re-growth and mending the damaged trees was imperative for this endangered species of tree to survive.

Although she listened, part of her was busy wondering why she hadn’t felt like a prisoner before in her own home, duty bound to serve Euphora simply because of who and what she was.

After seeing her father’s reaction, Rhiannon never again questioned why she had to be a Dryad. She merely accepted and moved on.

She wandered through the courtyard while everyone else went to dinner.

Lucian had hung the brand new swing from one of the large, overhanging trees, and it sat oddly still and silent after hours of cheerful activity.

Rhiannon approached it, tentatively touching the rope with her fingertips, yearning to swing on it. Just one swing, just one chance to feel her belly flop and the wind rush past her hair and to see the ground fall away from under her…just one chance to be a child.

Pulling her hand away, she turned her back on the swing and left, her father’s voice in her head telling her that she didn’t have a choice. She had work to do.

If I endeavor
to undeceive people as to the rest of his conduct, who will believe me? The general prejudice against Mr. Darcy is so violent that it would be the death of half the good people in Meryton, to attempt to place him in an amiable light.

Rhiannon set the book aside thoughtfully. She hadn’t expected anything in
Pride and Prejudice
to relate to her, but low and behold, something had. But was she really as bad as cold, discerning, overly critical Mr. Darcy?

The answer was simple: of course she was.

At thirteen, she was well aware by now of her own attributes and faults, and perhaps having a more conscientious mind meant that she not only saw shortcomings in others, but she saw her own as well. It was both the blessing and the curse of being a Virgo.

Shutting the book, she pulled out her notebook and opened it to the list of notes she had already begun taking on the book. She was doing a comparative essay on the differences between
Pride and Prejudice
and
Wuthering Heights
, two of her mother’s favorite novels. Not that it was the reason she was doing the essay, she reminded herself. She was merely interested in exploring two of the earliest female authors who had managed to stake their claim in the vaults of time and history. Amongst humans, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte were infamous. It pleased her to explore the differences in their characters, writing styles, and storylines, citing what was good and bad about each. She was, if nothing else, an excellent critic.

She had already finished
Wuthering Heights
and had decided both Kathy and Heathcliff were overly selfish, aggressive, and vindictive. However, she appreciated the fact that their flaws made them real, a rarity sometimes in fiction. And although she found she couldn’t sympathize with their inherent obsession with each other, she could still see how it made an interesting story.

In her orderly way, she noted the quote, hoping to use it in her comparison later. Mr. Darcy was certainly much more of a gentleman than Heathcliff and she found him much more interesting as a character. He had a proper way about him, even if he was a bit curt at times. And despite his wealth and position, he was somewhat of an outsider simply because of the way he was. Rhiannon certainly could sympathize with that.

There was a noise behind her, disrupting the silence of the classroom. She turned her head slightly to see what it was.

She wasn’t the least bit surprised to see her prissy little sister, now eight years old, sitting in her chair while Tobias, one of the other Muses, crouched on the floor to pick up her books that she had more than likely knocked to the ground herself.

“Good boy,” Sierra preened as Tobias set her books back on the desk before returning to his chair beside her.

It disgusted Rhiannon to see the way her sister acted, especially toward the young boy, who was obviously pining for her attention. Sierra, with her fluttering blue eyes and wavy mane of honey blonde hair, was downright insufferable, selfish and vain. She got nearly everything she wanted and was given much less grief than Rhiannon had been given by their mother. As the second child, the youngest and a Muse, she was clearly Serendipity’s favorite. Rhiannon had long ago accepted that fact.