Beyond Wild Imaginings (2 page)

She was going to go back inside, but a soft breeze touched her cheeks and she sighed. She briefly wondered what it felt like to soar through the air like that box had done. What did it feel like in the few seconds of freedom before impact? Did it feel like flying? Without really thinking, she stepped out onto the ledge and peered down as far as she could. The breeze touched her again, tousling her hair. She smiled and closed her eyes. Freedom. What did that feel like, she wondered?

She didn’t know if she’d felt free since she’d been a little girl. When she’d been small, everything had seemed so bright and magical to her. Now her life was full of stringent deadlines and unpredictable, traumatic events. “Just like everyone else’s life, Kelly,” she said to herself. “You’re no one special.”

She opened her eyes with another heavy sigh and scanned over the sun’s reflection in the skyscraper across the street. New York City. The largest city in the United States. Who was she but one little speck? An insignificant part of an enormous whole. No one.

Looking down sadly, she felt more tears sting her eyes and started to turn to go back inside when a flock of pigeons flew up in front of her so unexpectedly that she jumped and lost her footing. She screamed in absolute terror as her foot slipped over the ledge, and she saw her window retreating as she plummeted down to the very street her box had just expelled its innards onto.

Time seemed to slow, and she was agonizingly aware of the thudding of her heart and the tears that leaked out of her eyes. No, this did not feel like flying. It felt like death. She closed her eyes and braced herself for what she knew would come, and briefly wondered what Rachel would think when she found out. Everyone would think she’d killed herself. They would never know just how badly she wanted to live. She’d been fighting for life ever since the accident. No one would know that now.

Suddenly, something strong and solid grabbed a hold of her wrist. A gasp caught in her throat as her descent toward the ground slowed. The wind rushed past her face, and she felt as if she was soaring like one of the pigeons that had just sentenced her to death. Before she could figure it out, the sensation was gone, and she found herself standing on firm ground.

Kelly looked around her in shock, shaking from head to toe, and was more perplexed than she had ever been in her life. She touched her cheeks and found them wet from her tears. She spun frantically, trying to make some kind of sense out of what had just happened to her, but people, oblivious to anything out of the ordinary, just bumped past her on the sidewalk. She cast her eyes up to the sky in a last attempt to find who, or what, had rescued her, and she frowned as a large, black feather drifted listlessly toward where she stood. She held out her hand and watched as it fell directly into her palm, as if that had been its destination the entire time. She ran an inquisitive finger lightly along the quill, and a strange shiver went through her body.

As the reality of the situation hit her hard, Kelly clutched the feather to her chest and tore back into her apartment building. One second she had been plunging to her death and the next she was standing on the sidewalk. It was freakish, and she didn’t understand it at all. All she knew was that the apartment she had abhorred only that morning seemed like the only safe haven she had at the moment.

* * * *

“Girl, I am telling you, it was like a swarm of locusts descended on that Starbucks.”

Kelly turned her vacant stare over to her best friend Chad as he used the key she had given him to open up her door. His six-feet-three, nicely toned self was dressed in a remarkably pink shirt that only he could get away with and a pair of jeans that hugged his slender waist and hips like they were tailor made. His dark brown hair was gelled into an immaculate, every-hair-in-place disarray, and he was carrying a drink holder with two caffeinated somethings in it.

“I’m serious. Don’t go to the Starbucks on the corner of Fifty-fourth and—” He stopped mid-sentence as he closed the door and looked up. He blinked in much the same way Rachel had that morning. “Good friggin’ lord,” he breathed. “Am I in the right apartment?”

Kelly couldn’t help but smile. After her rather…unusual and harrowing experience earlier, she had gone straight into her apartment and decided that Rachel had been right about one thing. The time for wallowing
was
over. She only had one life, and she had been about two seconds away from it ending…again. She was not about to let her stupid ex-boyfriend claim anymore of it. Somehow, miraculously, she had been given a second chance, and she was going to make the most of it. Actually, if she counted the accident, she supposed it would be a third chance, but she wasn’t about to test out the nine-lives theory. The last time she’d checked, she wasn’t a cat.

She’d gotten rid of eighty percent of her things. Called a moving truck and had them haul it all down to a charity store. They were just things. She could get new things. Things that didn’t remind her of painful events. She’d kept her furniture, but most everything else was gone. She’d only kept the essentials. The apartment that had looked like a war zone was now practically barren.

“Well, I have to say, this is definitely a marked improvement,” Chad said as he set the drink holder down on Kelly’s now clean glass coffee table. “A little sparse, but better than bedlam. What lit a fire under you today?” He flopped onto the chair by the couch and slung one of his long legs over the arm.

Kelly scratched at her temple and wondered just exactly what she should say. Somehow, she didn’t think that, “Well, I was kinda standing on the window ledge when some pigeons scared the crap out of me and made me fall, but while I was falling, some mysterious who-knows-what snatched my arm up and put me on solid ground” would go over remarkably well. “I guess I just got sick of looking at all the mess. Rachel was over here hounding me this morning and told me that she was going to come over here tonight and help me unpack.” She forced a smile, even though she was still feeling very unsettled about the morning’s events. “Like I really need her going through my stuff, deciding what I don’t need, and throwing things out without my permission.”

Chad arched an eyebrow. “So you threw it all out yourself. That works, I guess.” He frowned suddenly. “Your sister is something else. Doesn’t she have enough control over her own life? She feels the need to control everyone else’s too?”

Kelly shrugged. “It’s how she’s always been.”

Chad shook his head and wrinkled his nose playfully. “Well, I can see that, even though your apartment has made progress, you have not. You’re still in those grungy old PJs. Here.” He handed her one of the coffees. “Drink that and then go take a shower, for crying out loud. Your hair is so greasy I could fry bacon in it.”

Kelly scowled and flung a pillow at him. His laughter made her feel a little better and gave her a semblance of normality. It was almost enough to make her forget about what had happened earlier. That was until Chad noticed the black feather sitting on her coffee table.

“Dang, that is a big honkin’ feather,” he commented. “I’d hate to see the crow that left that thing. Where did you find it?”

“Uh, just out on the street,” she stammered. “I thought it was pretty.” She said it softly, like she cherished the words, but she didn’t know why.

Chad nodded. “It is.”

Kelly smiled tremulously and downed a few gulps of coffee. She kept casting glances at the black feather while she drank, wondering why her heart seemed to flutter every time she looked at it. What in the world did that mean?

She listened to Chad ramble on for a while about his newest love interest and then decided to take his advice and get in the shower. She’d been in her pajamas for, what, five days straight? She probably
was
bordering on rank. She bade goodbye to her friend, telling him that she’d see him later, then hopped in the shower and tried to imagine all of her problems going down the drain with the hot water. After getting out and drying off, she put on a black T-shirt and a pair of track pants, figuring it was one step above pajamas, and dried out her hair. She made herself a quick bite to eat, then collapsed on her bed, exhausted. Between her depression, the work she’d done, and the fact that she had almost met her maker that morning, she felt like she needed a nice, long nap.

She closed her eyes, snuggled under the covers, and sighed in contentment. She replayed what had happened that morning for the hundredth time, and as she drifted off to sleep, she could have sworn that she could remember something flying away just out of her line of sight as she’d turned to look up at the sky.

Chapter Two

“
Sing the song of the Guardians who live beyond the skies. Who fly to fight beside us and help us when we cry.”

She was falling…falling… She could feel the wind on her face as she plummeted to the street below. Then, suddenly, she was no longer falling, but flying, and then on firm ground. She searched around her in astonished wonder, and as she turned her gaze to the skies, she saw a dark figure out of the corner of her eye. Nothing more than a retreating shadow.

“
Come to us, great Guardians. Your friendship is a must. We are your kindred spirit sisters. You have our promise and our trust.”

Through a chain-link fence and a rusted gate overgrown with ivy, she could see a figure standing on a hill just beyond. It was a man. Tall with dark hair that blew ever so slightly in the breeze. He wore a long, black coat, and a pair of magnificent black wings protruded from his shoulders. Despite his otherwise ominous appearance, he seemed to emit a soft, warm light that surrounded him like an aura. It made her feel at ease and at peace. Safe. He turned to glance at her over his shoulder, but she could barely see his face. All she could see was the way he smiled.

She was falling again, like before. The same scene replayed, and she found herself standing on the sidewalk once again.

“
Sing the song of Guardians who live beyond the skies…”

Somewhere, five girls were holding hands and dancing in a circle with poorly made flower chains in their hair.

“
I’m not scared. Garren will always protect me.”

Kelly shot bolt upright in her bed, breathing heavily and not really knowing why. Her heart was hammering, and her mind was buzzing. She raked her fingers through her hair and tried to make sense of the bizarre dream she had just had. The strange song was still playing through her head, and she frowned. What was that, and why did it seem familiar to her? And who was Garren? She felt a strange sensation niggling in the back of her mind, trying to tell her something, trying to make her remember something, but nothing came.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember the man on the hill. That had been the winged man she’d been dreaming about lately, but he looked a little different than he usually did. Most of her dreams had him with black hair and looking somewhat rock star-ish. In this dream, his hair had been a shade lighter and, despite the black coat, had been slightly less of the Goth package. The ivy-covered gate seemed so surreal, like she should know it. And the shadow she had seen when looking up at the sky after falling from the window ledge…It had been a large shadow. A shadow roughly the size of the very same man on the hill.

She slung her legs out of bed and all but ran into the living room. She snatched the black feather off the coffee table and stared at it for a long moment before caressing it again.
“I’m not scared. Garren will always protect me.”
Her brow creased. What was it that her mind was trying so desperately to remember?

Someone pounding on her door made Kelly jump about a foot in the air. She closed her eyes and put her hand over her heart, which was now beating erratically. She let out a slow breath and went to open the door to reveal Rachel standing there.

“All right, little sis,” she said, pushing her way into the room. “No more moping. We need to—” She stopped and stared at the vacant room in stunned silence.

“Yeah, you don’t need to help me unpack anymore,” Kelly said, shutting the door. “I got a little ambitious earlier.”

“And decided to get rid of all your stuff?” Rachel queried. She turned to her sister and placed her hand against her forehead. “Are you sick?”

Kelly gave a small smile and shook her head. “No, I just decided I didn’t want anything that made me remember my old life. New start and all that, right?” She swiped a hand through her hair and, not wanting to tell Rachel anything about her earlier experience, forced another smile. Chad was someone who would believe her after a little while. That man was the most superstitious, paranormal activity seeker on the planet, but Rachel was very practical and very matter-of-fact. She didn’t believe in anything out of the ordinary or supernatural. If Kelly told her about what had happened that morning, Rachel would think she’d lost her mind.

“Did you actually change your clothes?” Rachel asked. “And take a shower? Holy cow, Kelly! You’re trying to give me a heart attack!”

Kelly frowned and swatted at her sister, who was trying to put her palm to her forehead again. “Oh, knock it off.”

Rachel giggled. “Well, I’m proud of you, Kel. That was a huge step. And I’m glad you chucked all your old stuff. We can go shopping and get you all new things for your new life.”

Kelly wanted to strangle her for her perkiness and unbridled optimism, but she restrained herself.

Rachel frowned. “Why are you holding your hand like you have a death grip on something?” she asked suddenly, pointing at Kelly’s left hand.

Kelly looked down at the feather she was still holding and shook her head, loosening her grip. “Oh yeah, I found this earlier today. It’s cool, huh?” She tried to make light of it, even though the remnants of her dream still had her feeling very disoriented.

Rachel’s frown deepened. “Kelly, what are you talking about? Found what? There’s nothing there.”

Kelly’s attention snapped to Rachel and she frowned. “Are you blind? You know, the big, black feather I’m holding. I’ve been wondering what kind of bird it came from.” Okay, actually, that was a lie, but what she’d really been wondering would make her seem like a nutcase.