Warm. It’s so soft and warm here.
I’m curled up on my side, cozy as a caterpillar wrapped up a cocoon of velvet sunshine, sleepily waking up to greet the new day.
It’s a new day.
I bolt upright in bed, the events before I passed out rushing back to me.
I was in a clearing in the forest with Felix. He kissed me. And he changed, or at least he appeared to – he became the figure from my dreams, the dark prince from Gran’s fairy tale.
What the hell is happening to me? Was I hallucinating? Having some sort of vision?
He called me a name – Odin or Onion or something – and then… nothing.
It all went black.
And now I’m back in my bedroom at home, far from the forest and the cabin and (hopefully) Felix.
He must have carried me here after I fainted.
What about my things though?
I toss the covers away, jumping out of bed as I stumble to my ensuite bathroom. I’m relieved to see I’m still wearing the same clothes I was when I fainted – my lacey white pajamas and a woolen shawl.
I almost trip over something on the floor.
My overnight bag.
Unzipping it with bated breath, I find my belongings from the cabin inside.
My change of clothes. House keys. Toothbrush. Wallet. Phone charger (useless, seeing as my phone’s still missing).
And at the very bottom, the sparkly silver clutch bag and matching stilettos Kitty bought me to wear with the silver dress, which is folded carefully and wrapped in a thin sheath of white tissue paper.
I pull away the paper, unfolding the dress with the dreadful fear that it may have creased, or some of the sequins might have fallen off.
The silky silver fabric pools and shifts like molten metal, perfect as ever, not a crease in sight.
I fold it up and place it back in the bag. I probably won’t come home before the concert – I’m meant to meet up Alix and Micah at the Zavaras’ garage at 10am, so we can practice ahead of the July Jubilee – and then Grace and Jamie are coming over in the evening so we can all get ready together.
10am… and the time now is…
Dammit. I have no clue.
This is why losing my phone is the worst. I’m clueless without it.
I go over to my desk in front of the window and power up my MacBook, surprised by the unfamiliar feeling. This is where, over the past few years, I’ve sat until the early hours of the morning finishing homework. It’s where I’d spend hours watching Fable videos, where I used to spend way more of my time than should be considered healthy.
But somehow, it all feels so strange now.
This room, this house, this aloneness.
I’ve gotten used to spending all of my time with them.
And in a few days time, they’ll be gone.
The laptop screen blinks to life, and I push the thought from my mind, noting that it’s only 8.50am, so I have plenty of time until I need to be at Zee’s house.
After checking my emails (nothing new), messages and notifications (lots of new stuff but nothing really important) and looking at the latest #fable tweets by fans (plenty of rumors and speculations about where they are, but nothing mentioning Portland, so their secret is still safe), I jump in the shower, washing away the worries of the past few days.
Once I’m done I get changed into denim shorts and a white gypsy-style top, light and airy enough for the warm weather outside.
Fall seems to be in full swing at the cabin, with the leaves turning golden-red, the first mushrooms peeking up through the undergrowth – but here it still feels warm and summery, full of sunshine and morning birdsong.
I zip up my overnight bag and head downstairs, wondering if I should eat something here or wait until I get to Zee’s house. Her grandma’s always at home, and she’s always trying to feed me. I definitely wouldn’t say no to a big slice of baklava for breakfast.
Or I could swing in by the Night Owl on my way and get some free food… it’s on the route to Zee’s house, and I might as well say hi to my parents and Jade. The café won’t be open yet, but they’ll all be there getting ready for the Friday night dinner service at Biblio upstairs, which is always fully booked out. I could probably convince Jade to make me a coffee and fill me in on how things are going with Kitty, seeing as she’s being so tight-lipped.
I close the front door behind me, enjoying the warm morning sun on my arms as I hurry across the driveway.
“Ashling?”
My mom’s head pokes up from behind the thick hedge of iceberg roses lining our driveway. Her flaming crimson hair is tied back in a messy pony, which matches the color of her ruby red gardening gloves and flushed cheeks.
“I was wondering what time you’d be up. Why did you come home sweetie?” She asks, dropping back to her knees as she prunes the roses. “We thought we’d only be seeing you tonight.”
“Tonight?” I say, trying to remember my last conversation with her – which would have been on Kitty’s phone a day or two ago, under the old oak tree at the cabin.
“Of course hun, your dad and I are coming to the July Jubilee,” my mom chirps from behind the roses. “You didn’t think we’d miss Wild Blue Yonder’s first live performance, did you?”
“First and final,” I mutter. “Anyway, aren’t you meant to be at Biblio tonight? If you and dad are both at the Jubilee, who’s going to look after the restaurant? I mean, it’s Friday. You don’t need to come. Really.”
Get the hint mom. Do. Not. Come.
“Biblio’ll be ok,” my mom says. “That new line cook we hired in from Seattle is super. Dad agreed we can leave her in charge tonight. We just don’t know about costumes yet… I was thinking Pinocchio for your dad and-”
“No!” I say. “I mean, you can come and watch me, but no crazy costumes!”
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My mom guffaws.
“Don’t be silly honey, dressing up it the whole point of it,” she says. “What are you wearing tonight? Dad and I are going to King Kostume this afternoon, we could find something really funky for you.”
Ugh. Funky. No thanks.
“Kitty bought me a dress,” I say, wondering if it’s a good idea to tell my mom that it’s not just any dress, but a lavish $3000 couture gown from Portland’s ritziest boutique.
Probably not a good call.
“Well, if you need fairy wings or a crown or something to go with it just let me know, Mrs. Leyton was pretty insistent about the fancy dress theme. You know how pedantic she can be when she’s made up her mind.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty stubborn,” I say, thinking about how she never misses her daily mid-afternoon tea and cake at the Night Owl.
“She’s really fond of you,” mom says, snipping a fat red rosehip off with her secateurs. “I just wish her and Bea would get along. Your gran was such great friends with both of them, you’d think after all these years they could just let it go.”
Why didn’t I think of this before? Mom’s sure to know why those two hate each other… and if either of them have any connection to the Silver Circle, that’ll have something to do with it.
“What happened between Bea and Mrs. Leyton anyway?” I ask, fiddling with the strap over my overnight bag, trying not to sound too interested.
My mom wipes her gardening gloves on her jeans, getting up and walking around the side of the rose bushes.
“I was right,” she mutters under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
“I wasn’t sure how much you knew about it all,” she says, sitting down on the front door step to admire her work on the clipped-back rose bushes. “It’s really not a nice story hun. Maybe now’s not the best time...”
“No,” I say firmly. “I want to hear it.”
My mom looks at me thoughtfully, before nodding.
“Ok,” she says. “You know Mrs. Leyton was engaged to Bea’s brother, Hugh?”
I nod, remembering how Mrs. Leyton told me about that when I saw her at the Night Owl a few weeks ago. She was there with some creepy old British guy who wore a ring. A silver ring.
“It was ages ago, it would have been in the sixties,” she continues. “No one knows exactly why Hugh killed himself, but Bea blames Mrs. Leyton, and the rest is history.”
“He hung himself?” I say.
“Yes,” my mom says, her eyes widening in momentary surprise. “So you do know about it then.”
“No, I…” I struggle to find the words. The image just struck me, cold and raw as a jolt of electricity, clear as day. A crisp Fall day. The cabin in the forest, wreathed in red roses. A handsome young man swinging from the lowest branch of the giant oak tree on the edge of the clearing. The tree with the love seat. That same tree I’ve stood beneath countless times, checking in with my mom on the phone, oblivious to the shadow, the lingering dark. I can see him now. The noose is tight around his neck as he kicks at nothing and swings around wildly, dancing through the air, a silent scream as he goes still. His eyes are the deepest midnight blue.
“No one knew why he killed himself,” she continues. “There wasn’t a letter or anything. But if you read between the lines, it’s pretty obvious.”
She sighs, peeling her gardening gloves off with a faraway look in her eyes.
“Mom told me that it was during the time when they were all living together,” she says. “They had this sort of… insane musical commune thing set up in the forest. It was all very artistic. Your gran was a certified hippy in those days, you know. Your grandpa too.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, remembering the photo I found in the attic of them with Bea at a picnic when they were young, a fat joint between granpa’s lips.
I wonder if mom’s seen that one.
“Hugh and Sybil – Mrs. Leyton, I mean – they were engaged,” she says. “But he started suffering from delusions. Maybe it was an underlying mental illness bought to the surface after all the acid and shrooms and god knows what else. Mom said he was a nightmare to live with near the end. He’d ramble on and on about a secret society that was contacting him through his dreams. He’d wake up screaming. He was convinced that your gran and Bea, his own sister, were reincarnations of some sort of… I don’t know, fairy stories I guess. And to make matters worse, Bea actually agreed with him. She told your gran that our families have been connected through some magical spell mumjo-jumbo that’s been passed down through our bloodlines, mother to daughter and so on, and they were all in mortal danger. Crazy, right?”
My mom chuckles sadly, shaking her head.
“Don’t ever do drugs Ashling,” she says.
“I won’t,” I say impatiently. “Anyway, what happened next?”
“Well, it was all too much,” she continues. “And who can blame her? The groom had basically lost his mind. So Sybil called the whole thing off a week before the wedding. It was going to be spectacular… three hundred guests at the Ninth Order of Angels Catholic Church… it was the talk of Portland. Mrs. Leyton’s parents weren’t exactly thrilled about their daughter’s bohemian lifestyle, but they were old money, and that meant a big traditional wedding. Hugh had loved Sybil so much, and all those jitters, the build-up to the wedding, and then it all falling apart like that… he was shattered. They found his body hanging from the old oak tree the next morning. He was only twenty-five.”
She pauses, shaking her head with a deep sigh.
“Gran said that Bea blamed the whole thing on Sybil, for breaking his heart like that. And Sybil blamed the whole thing on Bea, because she’d encouraged him, insisted that all the stuff about reincarnations and magic and whatever was real, rather than pushing him to get help. And of course things only got worse between them when Sybil met Adam Leyton a few years later and moved on with her life like nothing had ever happened. I don’t think mom ever went back to the cabin after that.” She sighs again, muttering something about “a waste” and “tragedies”.
“Are you ok?” She asks suddenly.
I realize slowly, as if through a fog, that I’m shaking from head to toe. My legs feel weak beneath me.
Anger, unexpected and unwelcome, overwhelms me.
“So someone died at Bea’s cabin, and you knew about it,” I say, each word coming out heavy and sharp. “But you didn’t tell me? You just let me go there? You didn’t think I needed to know about what happened there? Hugh’s dreams and visions and how Bea- how she…” I choke on my words.
My mom’s eyes widen in surprise; she jumps up from the step.
“You don’t understand-” she says, but I cut her off.
“No, you don’t understand,” I say. “That place, it’s… it’s not right.”
“Honey, I’m sorry,” she says somewhat timidly, reaching out to me, trying to touch my arm, before I pull away and step back.
“We just… well, we thought you needed something good to happen, for a change,” she says, her eyes welling up. “It all just seemed so… perfect… your favorite band, asking you to be a part of their next album. I mean, how crazy is that? You needed something new and exciting, to take your mind off everything you went through. I didn’t want to freak you out by telling you about the suicide or Bea’s crazy ideas or anything. We didn’t want to worry you.”
“You didn’t want to worry me?” I say mockingly, hating the petulant tone of my own voice, but unable to stop now.
“No, we didn’t,” she says, pleading now as a tear rolls down her cheek. “The timing wasn’t good for us to be talking to you about that sort of thing. Death, and dead bodies… and…”
She reaches out to me again, and I step back, feeling my face flush with anger.
“You’re still struggling,” my mom says, her voice soft, hesitant. “You’re not in a good place. Your dad and I were talking… we want you to go back to Dr. Martel. We think maybe… we think you might have been too hasty in getting off the meds.”
“What?” I whisper, the betrayal bitter under my tongue.
“It’s for the best… please sweetheart, just listen,” she says, wiping away another tear from her now puffy eyes. “I’m so worried about you. Your dad and I, we both are. We thought the Fable thing would help you, but you’re just getting worse. You look like a ghost. You clearly aren’t eating properly, just like after the accident. And Father Joshua said he saw you sitting on Mia’s grave at the crack of dawn talking to yourself, and then you climb in through the window last night-”
“That wasn’t me!” I snap. “That must have been Felix! He brought me here. I passed out in the woods, and then…”
I stop mind-sentence, as my mom wraps her arms around me, holding me tightly to still my trembling body.
“Have you been seeing things?” She asks, her voice shaking with sobs. “Hearing things? Are you having nightmares again? Please honey. Speak to me.”
I shudder, memories of Mia’s ghost and the silver serpent swirling through my mind.
I can’t tell her. I just can’t.
“Ashling,” she says, staring hard into my eyes. “Forget about it all tonight. Have fun. And go back to the cabin tomorrow if you want. We’re not going to force you to break your promise to the Fable boys. Just promise me that you’ll see Dr. Martel after you’re done helping them.”
I nod, biting my lip to stop myself crying.
“You said they’re leaving next week sometime, right?” She continues, her voice sounding more cheerful now, but artificial, like she’s just barely holding it together. “As soon as you come back home we’ll go and see the doctor. Ok?”
“Ok mom,” I whisper, turning my head to the side, trying to avoid her eyes. “I need to go. I told Zee and Alix I’d get there at ten so we can practice.”
She clings on to me a moment longer, her arms wrapped tight as chains, as she stifles a sob.
“Let me drive you there,” she says.
“No, I need the walk,” I mumble. “Fresh air and all. Clear my head”
“Ok,” she says quietly, giving me one last quick hug. “See you tonight sweetheart.”
“See you tonight,” I say.
And with that I turn around, marching down the road with my overnight bag slung over my shoulder, crying silently to myself as the winds of fate take me where they will.