Fable
Islept fitfully over the following days.
My mind ached and burned with so many why’s, as if I’d caught a fever and the only cure lay within the pages of theLegends and Loversstories. I read some of the pages for the first time, and more of the pages for a second and third. I rereadThe Plague Doctorand about poor Annie. I readThe Salt Witchin its entirety and then read it again in search of touchstones in reality. I copied down the incantation and scribbled it in my notebook as I tried to make sense of its meaning.
From ash to dust, from salt to sky, fore every lovelorn maiden along these shores must die.
I hummed the words on repeat, imprinting them on my memory just as Alder had said the past imprinted on the stones around here, the stories told the only remains, like the decaying bones left in a graveyard.
The more I repeated the words, the more convinced I became of the truths they held, of the truths Alder played with so artfully. In my sleeping hours, instead of actually resting, I slept like a madwoman. I woke up, my hair wild with untamed waves, my eyes watery and nearly vacant as I searched for answers within the pages of the stories. Reading between the lines of each, and salting and peppering them with my own imaginings.
Harris was right. I was cursed by what I knew—and also by the things I didn’t. I felt convinced they held the answers to my past and the future, my own heart destined to repeat the sins my ancestors had suffered for if I didn’t sort the fables from reality.
With the cresting of the dawn, Harris’s words began to feel more right. That only a fool pursued the truth, that all secrets covered cracks like bandages, their hold on reality meant to keep things as they were, not as they were meant to be.
Was I meant to be here?
I felt called. From the day my fingers had submitted my application on-screen and I’d requested a letter of recommendation from my adviser, I’d felt drawn to this mysterious isle in the Atlantic. Its wind-whipped shores steeped in my own history. I’d expected it to fill a missing, God-shaped hole in my heart, but maybe it left a gaping, dark shadow in its place instead of filling anything. Maybe Skye was the beginning of my end.
I craved Harris’s ability to shine like warm sunlight on my life. His smile open and vibrant, his eyes alight with exhilaration, his touch on my skin like a heated sensation swirling in my bloodstream. Why did I feel tortured by these men? Both so different. Like the dark and light sides of my soul.
I woke in a fit of heart-pounding anxiety when a hooded figure, much like the cloaked man I’d seen in the graveyard days before, passed like a shadow over the moonbeams coming through my window. I pushed the sleep out of my eyes quickly, shooting straight up in a state of sweaty fear when a man with a long beak-like mask turned from the shadows and held out one gloved palm to me.
I gulped, drawn to the figment of my imagination before a cloud passed over the lighted corner and the figure fell back into shadow. Had my nightmares turned to reality? Or had my mind fragmented and splintered, unable to discern real and fable from anything else?
And why did the plague doctor’s appearance now feel like an omen?
Fable
“If you keep seeing him, it will only end in tragedy.”
“Excuse me?” I whipped around, confronting the dominant shadow over my shoulder.
Alder snarled again. “You heard me. And you know it’s true. You know he’s too nice for you. Too good.”
“How can you even say that?” It was my turn to snarl. Alder advanced on me, forcing me to cower or his lips would crash against mine. But not in pleasure, in pain.
Everything about this man set me on edge.
A fine mist coated my eyelashes, his breath burning past his lips in furious pants. He looked every bit the angry animal as he attempted to intimidate me into succumbing to him. I would never, could never.
“Harris isn’t anything to me. Only a friend.”
“That’s not what it looked like from the other side of the loch.”
“You were watching?”
“I told you I would be.” He ducked nearer to me, darting his lips within a breath of mine before pulling away and thrusting an angry hand through his hair.
“Have you finished the book yet?” His muscles rippled as he stalked away, forcing my eyes up and down his form to realize that Ishouldbe scared of him, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t explain why, but in his presence, I felt at ease.
My heart throbbed when he turned, catching my eye with his hooded gaze before muttering, “Don’t make me save you from yourself again.”
“Alder…” I stepped to him. Reaching across the space between us, I grazed his elbow with my fingertips, and he flinched. The mist washed harder down the planes of his angled cheekbones, his skin taut from his displeasure with me.
“Please don’t make me, Fable.”
I cursed him then—and myself. I damned my name for reminding me that every word off his sculpted lips could be a lie. That was the curse of my name; I saw lies where others saw the truth. At the heart, I distrusted most people and resented the darkness that always existed between their words.
