Guardian (9 page)

Kinsler’s obsessive calling card was the most annoying task to avoid around Grace.  The damn weeds. 

Grace’s anticipation grew. Thinking she was sensing Kinsler, who was inches behind her I wrapped my hand tighter around her fingers willing her glued to me.

Her mind dismissed it enough to battle with the million other thought patterns she couldn’t keep up with. 

Kinsler all but shouted, “
It’s time.
”  It wasn’t in his head but loud enough I feared she would hear.  He wouldn’t go away. He wanted her to have the truth and make a decision.  And he wanted to tell her.  Not happening.

I yelled back inside my head loud and clear to the louse, “
I know
.”

“Sorry, time for what?”

“You heard that?” I raised my eye stepping back to keep my balance and not fall into her and simultaneously glaring at Kinsler for his verbal cleverness.  The fear that stabbed my chest was raging with the hardest terror ridden package of regret I’d ever felt.  If she turned me away...

“Grace, I want to tell you something.  Something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.  But it’s complicated.” I paused trying to tune out Kinsler’s taunts.  Switch was shelling out a string of foul curses himself. 

She grimaced worried that she’d done something wrong.  She even let traces of thoughts come into her head like I would ask her to rob a bank or worse, confront Kinsler even.  Which did she see as worse and why on earth could they be considered equal in her eyes?  “Maybe I’m the complicated one.”  She looked back and forth at the weeds and then me.  Kinsler laughed, but she didn’t know it.

Switch stood at the ready.

“No, you’re crystal clear to me!”  I told her hiding my own attempt at a failed humor.    I unnaturally made the hideous weeds dissolve then picked up on her watching the dark shadows around us as if she sensed them near.

She knows I’m here, treeboy. 

“How—did you do that?” she asked.  I’d become jaded by the magic over the years, but she was a refreshing rain of the cutest facial reactions that I couldn’t stop myself sometimes from instigating a reaction.  I sometimes did it over the years just to see her chest rise and fall into a speeding frenzy knowing she would never say a word to me, but she knew.  Somehow, she just knew.

Like she knows Kinsler is near. 

“I need to tell you something about myself… and you.  I can’t tell you out here.”  I refused to tell her with them standing so close.  I couldn’t avoid them completely and needed a closed in space that would deter them.  “We need to go inside or somewhere else.  I can’t tell you out here,” I repeated myself.  I knew I sounded like an insane idiot to her.

“My house?” she offered. 

Of course.  I knew we’d walked four blocks already.  Three more and we’d be near her woods where we needed to go.  Of course.

As we walked that direction she asked me, “Did you leave all those flowers all this time?  Dandelions?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”  No friggin’ way I left those damn things. 

It’s now or never.  Rejection just wasn’t an option.  We were at the house.  She was not expected home, so we didn’t dare walk in the front door.  We went out back and sat down in the gazebo.  I knew there was no way of hiding the conversation from Kinsler or anyone else who may show up and listen.  I was just hoping to reveal all before they attacked in the privacy of not staring at their faces, but that was a pipe dream.  Here goes everything. 

Looking down, I gripped my rough dry hands around her delicate soft fingers.  She sensed how big the secret would be.  And she was hopeful.  Her eager for answers gaze looked up into mine and quickly back to our hands.  I let her go forcing her emotions to run wild.

Sighing too loud I said, “I’m more than just the Ian you know, your lifelong friend and…I come from somewhere else not far from here.  A place where your family originated also.  I’ve been your guardian since before you were born.”

She interrupted, “What, like my mom and dad aren’t…”  She paused to think.  “Puhlease say you’re not my brother or something.”  I nodded a no and she softened her eyes.

“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t change who I am, but what I am.  I’m still the same on the inside.  The way I feel, the Ian you’ve known, that is still me.  But I’m also something else.  Please, just don’t be scared.”

She stopped me, “What Halloween joke are you playing on me?  Is Caylie around the corner?” She looked around the yard and came back with pain in her face, “Please don’t hurt me Ian, I can’t take it.  Please!”

“This isn’t a joke, Grace.  Sometimes one’s destiny is intertwined with another’s so much that you can’t change no matter what you do.  My mother sent me to protect you a long time ago.  I waited a
long time
to tell you all this.”

“My knight in shining armor.  My prince.  Storybook setting of my life.  Ian,
please
don’t tease me right now.  I don’t think I can take it.” She feared rejection.  If only it was that easy.

“Grace, do you trust me?” I said with a whisper.

She hesitated but said, “Yes.”

As I slowly stepped into the only light coning into the gazebo the world shifted to a hazy shade of black and white.  She blinked her eyes, squared her shoulders, and flipped her hair down at me.  Then blinked again in disbelief. 

She described me inside her own brain.  It was killing me.  My skin.  Ears, that consequentially were hardly any larger than a human.  The glow I couldn’t help as long as she was around and thinking of me the way she does. 

But the fact that she still saw my eyes…I stepped to her watching her squint as if she might be able to bring them into focus better.  She reached out to touch my skin.

I waited desperately wanting her to say it was okay.

“I don’t know what to say.  Why lie all this time?  This is real, isn’t it?  You really were always perfect, because you’re not human.  And you’re going to tell me you’re leaving and I’m losing you.  You lied all this time.”  The hurt set in.

She actually didn’t scream and run.  That was a plus, at least.  She was only thinking she would lose me.  Not in the plans unless she so deemed it. 

I closed my eyes for the worst, “I never lied.  I wanted to tell you.  I won’t hurt you.  I would never hurt you.  I’m not human, Grace, but I would never leave you.  Ever!” 

She gasped at my warning.  And oh yeah, she was freaking out.

“What are you?  Why have you not told me all these years?”  I had little time before she held her breath, lost her footing, and hit the ground.   

“Did you kill her with your good looks?” a voice sounded from the darkness. 

“Pike, just help me lie her down.”  Pike was better looking and stronger and great with words with the females.  He could have her if he wanted, but he’d stayed to the side.  Mostly.  His giant bow was settled on his back as he stepped into the gazebo and grabbed Grace’s legs while I turned her to lean on the back of the bench. 

“We’re running out of time.  We have business to get done.  Just get it over with and find out if she is with us or not.” Pike’s harsh voice is not what I needed right now.  Not what she needed right now either.  I feathered her hair away from her face and waited for her to wake up.

Pike huffed and puffed and paced the whole time. 

“Will you shut up?” I said under my teeth. 

“We’ve got to go.  Your mother won’t be happy if we’re late.  You care too much about this girl.  You don’t even know if she thinks you’re a freak?  Never gave her a chance to see the likes of anyone else.”

“Just stop it!”

“Ian, stop what?” she whispered and rubbed her eyes.  “I can hear you, but….”  I rubbed the back of her hand.  I’d made a habit of that over the past few years while lying on the trampoline looking at stars.  At least when she was agitated about something.  She seemed to relax more in her sleep when I did and she never seemed to even notice my fascination with touching her hand.  I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to have my hold on her. 

“Ian, I think that…” 

She opened her eyes.  I’d left my true identity open her to find.  We’d hit the crossroad when I revealed myself in true form.  There was no turning back now.   

“Oh my,” she blinked unbelieving, eyes wide.  “Oh, my…are you real?  All these years…I never knew.  What
are
you?” her body backed away from me in fear.

“Fey. Fairies. Fair Folk.  We have many names!  Prefer Fey, most of us.”  I gave what little humor I could offer.

“Good or bad guys?” She asked me bracing against the rail. 

“Well, have I ever hurt you?” I stated the obvious.

“Nooo!” She said nervously.  She looked side to side.  Surely she couldn’t see them.

“Aragorn here somewhere?  Legolas?”  She actually laughed.  A small giggle came out next.

I frowned at her irrational thought processing. 

“I had to wait till you were eighteen.  Or almost.  I’m still the same, but on the outside I’m…the real me.  You’re a very special girl where I come from.  I know I sound...goofy right now, but it’s all real.    I will do anything to keep you safe.  For eighteen years I’ve kept you safe. You are more than just my best friend, Grace.”

She saw my hands shake. 

“Did you say something about your mother?  Is she like you?”  Telling her for years that my mother was away on business had been one of the easy
lies
to tell.  My mother cared nothing for her.  Her only concern was fulfilling the damn prophecy.   

I listened to her need and want to have it all figured out.

A fairy?  Watch out Tink, he is way hotter than any fairy I have ever imagined.  Fey!  He is not really that different, is he?  So I guess I am saying that it does not matter.  He is gorgeous.  And sweet.  He is loyal and frustratingly attentive.  And…I’ve loved him for years and somehow knew he was different.  We can work on the honesty part. 

Yes, I have known for a long time that he was just too great to be normal…could I trust this boy, man, who’d I’d always known. 

I heard her thoughts and felt as if nothing could stop me now.  She’d accepted what I was on the face of it.  Now step two, can she accept who and what I am in its entirety?  And what she was to become?

Here it is!  “Grace, I…you… are in danger.  I have a lot to tell you, but not where we can be heard by the too many ears out there.”  I shouted the last part knowing Pike was standing there, and Kinsler most likely was also.   No, I knew they were listening.  Why kid myself?

I tried to tell her what she meant to me, but the words wouldn’t come and I didn’t want an audience. It wasn’t their business.  Her face was pale and completely plastered with fear. 

“What are you thinking?” I asked.  She looked bewildered but her mind had suddenly gone blank to me.

“Still wondering if you’re real and if you are going to leave me?” she asked. 

Leave her.  She just saw that I wasn’t human and she worried that I’d leave
HER!

She looked me over.   Once.  Trice.  Again.  And not in disgust.  Man, I loved her bravery. 

“Your skin was glowing and now it’s not.”

“It’s affected by our emotions.  More pronounced in a few of us than others.  At least recently.”  More like only three of us!  Kinsler didn’t affect her at all.  That was a comfort.  But Pike!

I listened to Pike cursing every word in the damn dictionary that could be turned into slander.  He threatened to appear in front of her to make his claim.

“You asked me on the first day of middle school if I would say I was your boyfriend so Kin would leave you alone.  Do you remember that?” She nodded, her cheeks filling with color at the memory.    I remembered to call him Kin, not his Fey name.

“And when you asked me to say in the cafeteria that you’d won a trip to the nurse for a headache so you could hide all day in the library.  Lame, but I did it.  What about the time I found you crying in the bathroom because Kin had embarrassed you so bad you didn’t think you could show your face again?  I stayed in the girl’s bathroom with you.” 

“Is there a point to this?” she frowned.  She held her stomach like it hurt. 

“You needed saving then, and I’m saving you now.  You may not know it yet, but I
will
save you, Grace.  I’m a selfish creature where I come from.  I won’t pretend that I don’t have an ulterior motive or that I wouldn’t do anything to convince you to come with me.  I don’t want to lose you.   But...”

I held her shoulders, “I’m giving you a choice.  We need to move now, or we are both vulnerable.”  I pulled at her shirt sleeve eyeing Pike closing in.  “And no, not the Tinkerbell kind!  Much, much worse.  Fairy tales aren’t always just fun and games.  Are you sure you want to go with me, my pretty girl?” 

Pike was letting it all get noted.  He informed me he was taking notes on my “mad skills” for wooing the girls.  He was grating on my last nerve.

She grabbed her stomach again.  Was she going to be sick?  She also knew I’d just read her mind with the half-witted human fairy names.

“Why me?” she inquired like she was not worthy or something.

“Why not?”  I wanted her right then and there to say yes.  I could think of a million things I wanted to do right then.  I placed my hand against her petal soft cheek and softly rubbed my thumb back and forth against it.  I’d never been able to do it intentionally, but no holds barred.

Her sweet gasp filled me with hope.  Then oddly, she lifted her face and took in the air around her drawing her nose up.  She flinched at me catching her in the act, but I didn’t say anything.  I waited still as the night for her
choice
.

“I’ll take my chances on what will come.”

Her mind went in ten directions at once.  She was adding and re-adding the details of the past that could explain what was before her eyes.  And she wanted to know more.  I held my hand out to hers wanting to give her the more she wanted.  She took it firm in her own, and she ran with me without a single look back.

“Are there others like you?” she asked me.

“Many!” I said in mid-run.  “There is a place not really named, but more just exists.  We need to get there.  When I get you to safety, I’ll explain more,” I said in whispers taking corners under shadows only because I was hoping to escape the others. Now that she knew, they would be closer than dirt is to the grass.  One screw up and they would take her as their own, choice or not.  Their friggin’ affliction to rules was uncannily misguided and off kilter.

“How do you know I’m the one you should be taking?  Why not someone else?”

I didn’t answer that though she needed to know.  She came.  I didn’t want her to turn around screaming and high tail it back home because I told her she was not completely human either.

Since I was still in shock that she wasn’t repulsed by me I gave her what information I could afford. “The door will close if we’re not in it in time.  They will close it at midnight.  Then
you
can’t get in again till summer solstice.”

Only because of the human side of her.  Our kind can come and go as we please.  Once in though, no going back.

“Where are we going? Will I see my mother and father again?” she asked pulling me to a stop. 

I pivoted backwards towards her, “Yes, you will.  I’m not taking you far from your human world; my world is within yours if humans would open their eyes just right.  Humans aren’t known for their keen sense of perception and observations.  We choose to keep it hidden.”  I knew my face darkened to a scarier place than I wanted to open her up to, but some things couldn’t be held at bay.  “ Grace, I’m a danger to you.   Are you sure you want to do this?  You can walk away and you’ll never be bothered again.  Please.  It would be the right choice.  I’m not good for you.” 

I listened once again to her wonderfully wordy thought patterns.

...trying to get me to say he was too dangerous and I should leave.

“It’s your choice,” I smiled wide at her assumption that it was an insult...and that she was human.

“I KNOW!” she shrieked sending out my panic button.  Then she said, “You already said that.  You sound like your telling me to go with you while you’re telling to me stay away at the same time.”

“I am.  For your safety, you should stay away from me and the place you’re going now.  The human world is safer.” I held my cool giving over to offering yet another warning.

“Well,
I’m
choosing what is good for
me
.  And it’s to be with you right now.  I trust you.”  My heart swelled with wanting and desire for this girl.  She trusted me though all logic and reason should have her running scared. 

“You shouldn’t.” I hope I am still the guardian I should be by the time I get her to where we were going.