Bind Our Loving Souls (11 page)

“There’s something here,” I said.

“It’s likely to be stone,” I heard Eddy say.
“Nothing worth worrying over.”

I was about to argue when I felt a small
stone protruding from it and wondered if maybe he was right. But
the stone began to glow faintly, and then another one a few inches
away, and then another. Looking up, I saw a whole row of Anvilayan
stones, a few half covered by dirt.

“What is that?” Helena asked, as I stood up
and looked at the top part of a wide rectangle.

“It’s a door,” I said, taking a step back.
When my foot left it, the lights went out.

“It’s probably just an old storm shelter,”
Eddy said.

“Help me dig it out.” I wanted very badly to
know what was underneath us. The stones lit faintly again when I
touched it, as Helena and I knelt down and began scarping the dirt
away.

Eddy only shifted his feet uncomfortably. “I
do not think this is a good idea. It’s too dark to see anything,
and no one’s used it in years.”

“Exactly.” Didn’t he wonder what was buried
right under our feet, hidden for who knows how long?

Helena giggled and apologized every time she
accidentally threw dirt on my skirt. Luckily, getting dirty’s never
bothered me. So I smiled and threw some back each time.

Eddy never offered any help, only his opinion
that we should stop repeatedly, which was very annoying.

One by one, the glowing stones were
unearthed, until the door was fully exposed. Helena took the
lantern and held it closer to the ground. We could see a flat
circle the size of a basketball where you would expect a doorknob
to be, so there didn’t appear to be any way of opening it. I tried
reaching under the sides to see if it was a door with nothing under
it that had been left there to rot, but a metal structure continued
down for the few inches I dug and forced my fingers through.

“Could we pry it open with a stick?” I asked
Helena.

“No,” Eddy replied unnervingly. “There isn’t
enough space between the door and whatever is under it to fit
anything between them. We should leave it alone. It was obviously
not built by any servant, so we could get into trouble. Let’s just
go to the gathering.”

He meant not built by any human.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Helena said,
looking somber. “Eddy’s right, we should go.”

“All right,” I said, standing up
hesitantly.

As we finished the walk down the hill, I
looked back and decided to ask Enock to come and open the door
later. There had to be some point during the night when both humans
and Anvilayans slept.

Everyone was excited to see us when we
entered the barn, lit so brightly because of the countless lanterns
hung everywhere. People sat on stall doors with giant brown and
black horses behind them that seemed to be quite accustomed to all
the commotion. In the back of the open area, between the two long
rows of stalls, stood four men playing violins and three women
playing wooden, carved clarinets. It was a huge gathering, full of
happy people and good times, but still not really my thing.

So I only stayed for about half an hour
before I told Helena I was getting tired and left. She offered to
walk back with me, but I declined, wanting to be alone if I came
across Enock.

I didn’t see anyone else all the way to my
room, and then I felt someone opening the door from the other side.
Enock stood there with a book in his hand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, stepping
into the room and letting him shut the door behind me.

“Just reading the book I found on your desk.
Tell me, do you actually believe in ghosts?”

I realized he was holding my teen ghost love
story in his hand. “Not really. It’s a book Jo Hanna gave me to
read during my trip here. I haven’t actually gotten past chapter
one.”

Enock took my hand to lead me to a small
wicker sofa that had been placed in front of the fire while I was
gone. It was painted white with a red buttoned pillow that was long
enough to fit the entire seat.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked him as we
sat down.

“Of course not.”

I ran my hand over the red cloth. “Did you
put this in here?”

“Yes.” Enock put his arm around me,
separating me from the hard backing. “I saw it in a storage room
and thought of how nice it would be to sit in it beside you… Has
the relocation been difficult for you?”

I stared at the fire as I thought about all
the changes I’d had to make since I got there. It was quieter.
There were less distractions. And it was darker most of the time.
These were all nice changes. But I was dreading the bath I would
have to take in a giant man-sized pot eventually. And being cut off
from the rest of the world did really bother me. It also hurt to
think of my parents and Jo Hanna. “It’s been okay.”

Enock took the pins from my hair and began
brushing out the braids with his fingers. “You’re lying, Sarafina.”
I looked at him, feeling bad, but he grinned handsomely in the
flickering light of the fire. “Thank you. I know you’d rather not
be here. I see it in your eyes every time ours meet. So thank you
for lying to spare my feelings, and thank you for staying with me.”
His arm went around me again as he leaned closer.

“It’s worth it to be with you,” I whispered
against him.

And then the skin on my lips felt like it was
melting away as he kissed me, pausing to drag his tongue over my
eyelids delicately, making my head spin. My hands slid under his
collar and over his neck and everything in the world stopped except
for us…until I heard the faint scraping of a door opening at the
end of the hall.

Enock didn’t seem to notice, but I moved
away. “That might be Helena,” I said. “She’ll probably come in
here.”

With his arm thrown over the back of the
sofa, Enock looked at the door. “Well, I’m not ready to leave your
side just yet.”

He stood and went to move the curtains to the
side enough to look through my window. “Only Henrik is out, I
believe. Come on.” He opened my window as I went to him. When we
were both outside, he scooped me up and raced past several windows
and two bends in the front of the manor before stopping to help me
into another window.

“Whoa,” I stammered as I stepped into his
room. It was lit by bright red berries growing on purple vines that
clung from ceiling to floor in the corner beside the window. Next
to that, a table had a huge glass tank on it, filled with glowing
multicolored rocks and the most beautiful fish I’d ever seen.
Vibrant blue, green, and red fish swam around, a sort of hybrid
between a betta and a jellyfish. I moved closer to watch them,
their long tails swishing back and forth through the clear
water.

“There’s still so much you haven’t seen yet.”
I felt Enock’s hand on my back.

“Really?” It seemed like I’d seen everything
he could possibly have to show me, except for the Anvilayan woman I
could only assume he’d killed. But I didn’t recognize the fish or
the berries. And the fact that his bed was bare except for a white
sheet wrapped around the mattress seemed strange.

“I could show you more. We have all
night.”

Another long night would wipe me out
completely, but I wanted this. I craved that lost-in-his-soul,
complete-love-for-me feeling. And I could beg Helena to let me
sleep in the next morning. “All right.”

He put his other hand behind my knees to
sweep me off my feet again, this time to carry me to his bed. He
smiled and held me close.

As he took my hand, his eyes seemed to flare,
the gold burning and swallowing everything else, until Anvilayans
were whizzing around me and I was seeing
all
of Enock’s
favorite foods, including the thresh berries growing in his room. I
saw that Anvilayans usually only slept for two hours each night,
because that was all their bodies needed. I saw all the animals
Enock had seen and read about over the course of his life. They
came in all shapes, sizes, and colors, just as ours do, but most of
theirs had no hair and only slits for eyes with cold black spheres
behind them. I also saw some of the customs of their planet. Like
two Anvilayans placing their right hands on each other’s left
shoulder to say hello when they hadn’t seen each other in a while,
or poking out their bottom jaw and their hair standing up when they
needed to show dominance. Then it all began to fade away.

Enock was still smiling as he watched me when
I opened my eyes. I took in a deep breath and pulled myself up to
lean against him and smile back, still completely aware of how
absolutely amazing and extraordinary everything about him was.

“We’ll wait until all Halvandors are asleep,”
Enock said, “and then go to see what is hidden under the door you
found.”

Chapter
Ten

My head felt heavy as the hand patting my
back pulled me out of the deep sleep I was in. I struggled to open
my eyes as I realized I was sitting up against something warm,
something I’d drooled all over.
Enock!
“Sorry,” I said,
perking up and wiping the saliva off of his coat.

“It didn’t bother me at all.” He put a hand
on my chin and licked away what was dripping down over it, making
it even wetter than before and causing me to shiver. Enock took me
in his arms and stood, helping me to stand as well.

“It’s five past the hour when all Halvandors
rest,” Enock said through a yawn. “If we go now, we should be
safe.”

I remembered Enock showing me that Anvilayans
had an internal clock that kept time for them as we climbed out of
his window. Outside, I wrapped my arms around his neck as he held
me against him with one arm and raced all the way around the manor,
slowing to a stop at the top of the hill. Here, he sat me down and
we walked to the door.

The chirping of insects and the gentle breeze
felt good. The moon shone overhead in a much clearer sky than it
had earlier that night. With the added aid of the light cast by
Enock’s eyes, the door was easy to see.

“So, will your eyes always light up when you
see me?” I asked, stopping at the edge of the door.

“Probably. As far as I know, only binding
yourself to the one you choose can put it to rest. When someone
becomes part of you like that, your eyes adjust with the rest of
your body.”

“Oh.” I felt bad, because it just wasn’t
fair. I wasn’t sorry for being a human, just that Enock was being
robbed of so much because of it.

“I don’t mind.” He placed a reassuring hand
on my shoulder and then knelt down to look at the door.

When his hand touched one of the stones, they
all lit just as faintly as before. “Rocks from Cyron,” he said,
stepping onto the door, still crouching and running his fingers
over each one. “They’re guarding something…They will only open for
a certain individual.” He looked up at me. “Did they respond to
Helena?”

I had to think about it for a minute. “No,
they only lit up when I touched them.”

Enock got off the door, keeping his hand on
it, and looked at it for a moment. “Let me see your hand.”

I knelt beside him and held it out. He took
it and laid it on the metal beside his hand. The stones became
brighter, followed by a series of clicks. There was a loud banging
sound at the top, making me jump back, and then more clicking,
along with a final bang at the bottom. It became much too quiet
right before the door opened a couple of inches.

“It’s a good thing Anvilayans sleep so
deeply,” Enock said. I stayed where I was as he stood and pried
open the door noisily.

A flicker of red ignited inside as I stood
and looked down at a set of old blackened stairs that led
underground. Enock held out a hand to me and we began our descent.
The red light intensified and bled brightly all over the stairs
when I took my first step. A white one came on with the second and
a yellow with the third. Three fist-sized stones were suspended
with heavy chains from the ceiling.

I stopped halfway down at the horrifying
sight in the back of the medium-sized room. A birdcage sat on the
floor with a small, slightly human-looking skeleton in it. Mouth
hanging open and spine twisted, a baby’s arms and legs were lying
on the floor, sticking out between the wires. But the hands and
feet were much too long, and the jaw was twice as big as it should
have been. It couldn’t be human.

“Is it Anvilayan?” I asked, taking another
step.

“No. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

It was scary enough, I almost turned back.
And if Enock hadn’t been there, I probably would have. But it also
kind of drew me in, because I had to know what happened in that
room.

Yellowed paper littered the floor and a small
table against the right side of the wall. But there was nothing
else there, only the caged skeleton and a worn black notebook lying
crookedly in the center of the table. Enock let go of my hand at
the bottom of the stairs and went to the table, just as I looked to
my right at the corner of the room and let out a scream. I lurched
back and fell against the stairs in fright.

“Sarafina, are you all right?” Enock was
already by my side.

Placing a hand over my back where it had
slammed into the point of a stair, I sat up painfully. “Yes.”

I looked back at the human skeleton, lying on
the pieces of a broken chair, with its head leaning back and arms
lying at its side. Bits of purple fabric clung to its neck. Its
ribs and hip bone were badly broken, as if something had ripped its
way out from inside. I looked back at the cage and wondered if it
could have been the thing lying inside it, as Enock and I walked
over to the table.

The papers had strange symbols written all
over them in horizontal lines, with the exception of a few, which
had detailed drawings of a young woman with dark curly hair and
wide lips. In one, with four long gashes through the center of it,
she was very pregnant. I felt afraid for the woman as I picked this
picture up to stare at her face, so shadowy and hollow.