The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) (16 page)

             
“So what does that mean, though?” Callie asked, confused. “What does that protector do once they find a kid? With wings, I mean.”

             
“Once the child’s wings begin to grow, it is no longer possible for the child to remain with his or her family, and the protector retrieves the child and brings him or her to the village. At least, that is how it is supposed to happen.”

             
“What happens then?” Callie asked. She was mesmerized by the story. Maybe it was just the way he was telling it, though. His voice was low and soft, and his words wrapped around her like a blanket. She could have listened to him talk for hours, and suspected that she was only asking him questions so that he would.

             
“Well, hopefully, it is a normal case, and the new Guardian can live with us for a very long time. In certain cases, though, there are abnormalities.”

             
“What do you do with those cases?”

             
Alex looked at her again, searching her face. “We have been wondering the same thing,” he murmured.

             
Callie blinked, and shook her head to gain some clarity. “Wait. Back up a second. You said you have known me since the day I was
born
?”

             
Alex smiled again, though he was trying to hide the laughter tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Yes,” he said.

             
“But….” She was unsure how to attack the million questions that had risen in her mind. How did one go about voicing seventeen years’ worth of questions? How was any of this supposed to make the slightest bit of sense to her? “I’ve never seen you,” she settled on, sounding dumb even to her own ears.

             
“No,” Alex said simply. She huffed at the monosyllabic answers.

             
“How?” she asked.

             
“I’ve only performed routine check-ins twice every year or so, and have only stayed a few days at a time. And during those times, I’ve stayed hidden in trees, or on rooftops. It is amazing how little people look to the sky.”

             
Callie shifted, an inexplicable sense of inadequacy overwhelming her. “What were you looking for?” she asked.

             
He lifted a shoulder, his prominent wing heaving and falling with his shrug. “Nothing,” he replied. “I was monitoring your progress. I made sure that you were always somewhere that we could find you, that you didn’t move anywhere unexpectedly. As soon as I saw your wings, I would have brought you here,” he said, looking around at the forest. Callie lifted her gaze, and realized in awe that she had been destined to come here since the day she’d been brought into this world. The trees swayed above her head, the vines and leaves rippling in the wind. The fog which coated this bottom layer of the rainforest clung to the trunks in a slow-gliding hush. This mysterious, dark, often terrifying place had always been meant to be her home.

             
She felt Alex’s attention. She looked at him and saw sadness behind his eyes, and he said, “But you never grew wings.”

             
She felt the sorrow in his words. “So…what does that mean?” she asked. “Am I going to be one of you?”

             
Alex shook his head and drew a breath, and then turned his whole body to face the pond once again. “I don’t think so,” he said, a hollowness in the sentence.

             
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “But why not?” she asked. “How can I Perceive, and not be one of you?”

             
“Not even Emeric knows,” he said, not meeting her eyes. Maybe it was because he
always
looked at her, always kept his gaze riveted on her face, but the way that he studiously did not look at her now made her wonder what he was hiding. “I can tell it upsets him to be so unaware. He spends time like these wishing that Milo were still alive. Milo knew…everything.”

             
Callie saw the emotionless mask return to his face. She was coming to realize that he wore this mask when he was at his most vulnerable, when he didn’t want anyone to see how he was really feeling. She placed a hand on the back of his, which was splayed across the grass to prop him up. He turned his face to her fingers, which were wrapping around his now.

             
“If he were here today, he would know what to do with you,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse.

             
Callie hesitated, and then said sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

             
He glanced at her strangely. “It was seven thousand years ago that he died, Callie. It would be absurd to mourn him today.”

             
“Still,” Callie said. “I know what it’s like. To lose someone you look up to, I mean. And…I’m sorry.”

             
He kept his eyes focused on her face for a long time. She let him stare at her as she held his hand, and the atmosphere around them changed slightly. It wasn’t so empty anymore, now that they were in it together. At last, he nodded in silent thanks, and returned his gaze to the slowly churning pond.

             
She watched his profile. Only then did she remember: he had called her Callie. No one here seemed to know that this was the name she preferred. Everyone addressed her with her full name. But then, she supposed he
would
know this preference, if he had been watching her throughout her lifetime.

             
That thought was so unreal. He had seen her making memories that she couldn’t even remember now. He had seen her awkward years, her toddler days. He had been around when she had worn braces, when she had gone through junior high, when she had started high school.

             
She shook her head and turned her attention to the water. The thoughts were too strange. She couldn’t fathom that he had actually been with her for all of that. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d had that first time she’d seen him—something about him was just too familiar, she couldn’t discard his words.

             
Just then, she noticed a pucker on the skin of the pond. She craned her neck, looking for the source of this ripple, and a low, rumbling noise drifted into her consciousness. She stood up.

             
“No way,” she said, squinting to see through the trees.

             
Alex looked up, taken aback by her sudden energy.

             
“I don’t believe it,” she said, and without warning, began to run into the trees. She heard him calling her name behind her, but didn’t slow down. The branches struck her thighs and her calves, scraping her skin, but she didn’t mind. She was getting used to the hazards of these woods.

             
“Callie!” Alex called, and she heard the trembling of dry leaves behind her. She knew he was flying after her, but she kept running. She recognized this patch of forest. The rumbling sound grew louder, letting her know she was on the right track.

             
She parted the final branches, knowing before she saw this second clearing what she would find there. Here, in front of her, was the waterfall from the memory. It was odd to see it from this angle. She was lower here; she had to look up higher to see the top of the falls. But this was undoubtedly the right place. The stony face of the hill was interrupted only by the gushing stream of water, which trickled into a stream and flowed outwards into the pond beyond. She looked up, and saw, across the little stream, the flat wall of rock, camouflaged by leaves and moss. And there, in the rock, was a cave.

             
She heard Alex’s wings disturbing the air behind her, and felt the breeze at her back.

             
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Callie asked, turning to find him landing behind her. “That’s the cave from your memory?”

             
He looked down at her oddly. “Of course it is,” he said, as though this was never a secret.

             
She looked across the stream in wonder. “It’s real,” she breathed. “I mean, I know that sounds stupid, I just…it’s never seemed real before.”

             
“It’s always been real,” he said, but his words were lent such gravity that Callie wondered if he was still talking about the cave.

             
She turned to him. “Take me there,” she said.

             
“Why?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

             
“Because I want to see it.”

             
“But you’ve already seen it,” he reasoned. She rolled her eyes.

             
“Fine,” she said. She turned on her heel and started traipsing through the forest again. “I think I see a path over there,” she called back over her shoulder. “Just over the waterfall—“

             
But she never finished that sentence, because right then, with her back turned to him, she felt his arms pick her up from above, and her center of gravity tilted sideways, and suddenly she was airborne. She gasped, clawing at his forearms with her nails. She wasn’t used to being carried this way—always before, she’d been held as though she were a child, in the crook of someone’s arms. Now, he had wrapped his arms around her from behind, lifting her against his chest, and if she looked forward it seemed as though she were the one that was flying.

             
She saw that he was taking her towards the cave. As they flew over the water, she was terrified he would drop her into the murky depths below. Her stomach flipped, and she had trouble breathing correctly. But then they were above the ledge outside of the cave, and then they were flying into the cave, and then he landed, and she was on her feet once again.

             
She felt bare when his arms unwrapped themselves from around her, but ignored the feeling. She studied the inside of the cave, running her fingers along the stone as she walked across the floor.

             
“It’s just as I remember,” she whispered. With a wry glance in his direction, she corrected herself, “Well, as you remember.”

             
Remembering now where he always sat, she walked out to the stone ledge once more, overlooking the river below. It was strange not seeing Alex sitting there, deep in thought. She turned to him now, and found that he was watching her curiously.

             
“This is so weird,” she said. With a glance back over the ledge, she asked, “Is that water deep?”

             
“Don’t even think about it,” Alex said.

             
“What?” she asked, turning back to him with faux innocence.

             
“I was there at your twelfth birthday,” he said, tipping his head with amusement, seeing right through her. “Let us not have a repeat performance.”

             
She thought back to her twelfth birthday, and at last recalled it. She and Maggie and their parents had been on vacation in Seattle, visiting their grandmother. On her birthday, they had all driven out to the cliffs. She and Maggie had been messing around, playing chicken, seeing who could get closest to the edge of those high rocks. Maggie always won, until, before her parents could stop her, Callie took a running leap and dived from the rocks, not knowing what was below. She smiled now, though her heart wrenched at the memory. She had been so carefree back then. Nothing could have touched her. The idea that the gesture might have hurt her had never crossed her mind.

             
She shivered, though, when she remembered how shallow that water had actually been. “The water wasn’t deep there,” she noted.

             
“No, it wasn’t,” Alex said, frowning, a haunted air about him now.

             
“I hit my head,” she said in astonishment, recalling the incident more clearly now. “On the bottom. There was so much blood, but by the time we got to the hospital, I didn’t even need stitches. No concussion, no bruising…nothing. It was as though nothing had happened.”

             
“I remember,” Alex said with disapproval.

             
“Why?” she asked, amazed. “Why wasn’t I hurt?”

             
“You
were
hurt,” he reminded her. “But you healed more quickly than a normal person would have.”

             
A thought occurred to her. She narrowed her eyes at him. “So why didn’t you save me?” she asked, challenging him again.

             
Alex didn’t reply.

             
“Oh, come on,” she went on. “You were there, you said. So why didn’t you catch me, if you knew I’d be hurt?”

             
He crossed his arms, seeing through the mocking inquiry. She laughed and took a step backwards, towards the edge of the cliff.

             
His eyes widened. “Callie,” he said slowly, warning her against what he knew she was about to do.