“That story isn’t in the legends book. Why did they leave it out?”
“Because while some truths are better told in fiction, other stories hit too close to home to be told at all.”
“You’re saying words, but they don’t mean anything, Alder, not really!” Frustration crosses her features before she backs away, stepping off the steps and into the silver moonlight. I can see her fading, her skin sallow with dark rings under her beautiful eyes. She looks as if she hasn’t slept in weeks; her strength must be weakening by the day.
“I need you to think, Fable. I need you to remember.”
“Remember? Remember what!”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve crossed paths.”
“I know, I get that. Alaric and Olympia are us. We are them. Okay.”
“And another time…”
Her eyes grow wide as she realizes we’ve done this before.
“Man,” she huffs. “Atlas and Fawn, too. This really isn’t our first rodeo.”
I laugh, walking down the steps and then plopping bottom-first on the top one. “You’re soAmericanthis time around.”
She grins, eyes flashing with amusement. “That sounds like a proper insult.”
“It’s not. It makes you utterly adorable. It just takes some adjusting.”
“Yeah.” She drops herself onto the step next to me. “It’s weird, because if you’re right, that means you knew me before…I knew me?” She frowns at me, still struggling to understand the nature of us. “Why can’t I remember but you can?”
I’ve wondered when she’d ask this and weigh my possible answers. “This is where it gets complicated.”
“It’s just getting complicated now?” She half laughs, then loops her arm through my elbow. I love feeling this close to her after all this time. She’s my missing piece. I’ve always known it, but touching her again confirms it.
“Remember how I said Keats earned good karma and so has the heightened senses to be a go-between?”
“Yeah. Is that what I am?” She rushes to ask.
I contain my frown, wishing it were so simple. “Not exactly. And neither am I. But I redeemed myself over one lifetime or another, and that’s gotten me here. To the place where we can see and touch and be together.”
“How did you earn it the last time?”
“My karma?” I linger over the word, wondering how to divulge the next part without rocking her off her axis completely. “I tried to save a life.” She doesn’t reply, so I continue. “I tried to save a life from the clutches of a madman.”
“Always the hero.” She brims with what looks like pride. “Tell me what happened.”
I press my lips together, wishing there were something I could show her to confirm the veracity of my next words. But there isn’t. I’ve lived my life along this loch simply; all the memory I need stands within the walls of Leith Hall.
“There’s another local legend that’s not in the book,” I start. “I’ll tell you the story as I know it. Locals have embellished it over generations, but the core remains the same. A fourteen-year-old local girl lived in a cottage bordering Leith. Late one night, the young woman found herself in the presence of the baron himself, but the baron wasn’t himself. He was piss drunk with booze and debt and didn’t know the girl from any other in the village. He forced himself on her in the woods, breathing whisky-scented sweet nothings in her ear while he violated her. Within minutes, it was over, the baron stumbling home to pass out in his bed fit for a king, while she trembled in the crushed leaves and heather.
“And weeks later, when the girl began to grow with the baron’sbairn,she tried to hide her growing state from her father for fear he would disown her and excommunicate her from her mother and her sister. Finally, she went to Leith when she knew the baron was alone. She tapped her nails on the library windows until the baron came to investigate the noise. When he was finally confronted with her changing form, they walked by the moonlight along the cliff’s edge—her pleading for his kindness, him adamant that she stay away. He claimed to have no recollection of the event she described. Their arguing grew until it mimicked the sounds of the wind and waves that whipped in and out of the Witch Cave at high tide. Mist clung to the rocks and obscured the path above the cliff they fought on.
“They assumed they were alone, but there was a witness to their confrontation. A witness that saw the baron grip the young girl’s arm, saw him twisting as she violently thrashed out of his reach. Clouds thickened like cream soup around them before, in the next blink, the woman had vanished and only the man remained. His head hanging low, he walked back down the path, stopping only when he reached the steps of Leith and looked up to the sky. Nothing has been the same since.”
“The baron…” she breathes, blinks, then wipes at her eyes. “I think I know this story.”
“It’s not in the books,” I rush to add, hoping it’s her memory activating.
“I-I feel like I know it,intimately.”Her eyes take in the full moon above us, goose bumps erupting on her arms before I pull her close. She’s cold, freezing cold, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. I try to warm her anyway, try to be there as her lives all come back in a slow drip. Her eyes drift closed as if she’s remembering a dream, before she says, “‘The Maclean men are powerful,’ he used to say.” As if she’s walking in her own waking dream, she continues. “I argued with him. I felt his grip around my wrist, and all I could feel warring inside me were the three most powerful men in my life—my father,him—”
“Him. Who ishim,Fable?”
