Covenant (3 page)

There is more to this story.
What you feel isn’t a beacon, at least not one to be
answered.
Celia looks from me to the girl
and back again. The girl, however, refuses to look away from me, as
if she is afraid I will vanish.

You must conceal yourself,
Lev. And do not reappear, no matter what she says. It’s
important.

I give the girl one last
look. The agony on her face is palpable, and I find myself wanting
to reassure her, but Celia has inserted her body between us, trying
to cut off contact.

“
Please, if that’s what I
must do to be with you, then go ahead. I won’t fight you.” She
reaches for me but can’t touch me.

Lev, vanish now!
Celia demands, glaring at me.

So I shut my eyes and force
myself to fade from the girl’s eyes. As I disappear, there is an
immediate reaction. She begins searching the water, her body
splashing in frantic movements.

“
Lev? Are you
here?”

Her arms flap like unwieldy
branches, and I see her glazed eyes. Fatigue—and blood.

“
Lev!” she screams again,
launching herself through the water in my direction. I skim
backwards easily enough, almost like the game I’ve watched human
children play—Marco Polo. Except her eyes are open and this is
anything but a game. I feel that draw toward her getting stronger
by the moment, and I don’t understand. If it’s not a beacon, then
what is it? And why does it only seem to hurt more and
more?

“
Lizzie!” Another voice,
this one male, calls for the girl as he swims toward her. His
reddish-blonde hair is soaked, and I recognize him as the driver of
the boat that was struck. He appears less damaged than the girl and
reaches her quickly, his hands grasping her shoulders.

“
Let me go!” she screams
and tries to break free. The effort causes her head to go below the
surface. All I see is a flash of two bodies struggling in the
water.

Celia’s expression suddenly
caves into the pain she sees on the man’s face, and she bobs under
the water. I follow her lead and see that she bolsters the girl
upwards to make sure she takes in enough air.

Why is Celia helping a
mortal?
I wonder.
She’s a sojourner. She carries the souls of the dead. Why
bother with the living at all?

What are you doing?
I ask her.

Saving her life,
she answers, making sure the girl stays
afloat.

Why does it matter?
I watch as the man latches onto her and draws her
into a lifeguard’s position, his arm firmly wrapped around her
midsection as he starts to swim with her toward the shore. Celia’s
head pops above water.

In that instant, Celia
really looks at me, her expression one of utter confoundedness. Her
mouth has dropped open, and her eyes are wide. In short, I don’t
think she can focus enough to answer my questions. She peers at me
like I should already know the answers, and for a moment I’m
thinking this will force her to let me in on the big secret, but
she never gets the chance. “I wish I could tell you,” she finally
says.

Elizabeth starts thrashing
wildly, trying to get free. The man grabs her tighter. His face is
familiar just like Elizabeth’s but I can’t place it either. Yet, I
feel like I know both of them, that I once had a place in this
world among them. That can’t possibly be.

“
Let me go!” she yells. “I
have to find him! He’s here. I’ve seen him!” She’s trying to lunge
away, and if she isn’t careful, she’s going to strike her head on
the splintered debris bobbing in the water. Several jagged slices
of boat fragments float dangerously near.

“
Lizzie, stop it!” I can
tell by his tight expression it’s taking everything he has to rein
her in, but her will is stronger.

This isn’t supposed to
happen,
Celia tells me over the girl’s
violent screams. At that moment, she thrashes hard to the left,
throwing the man against a jagged piece of wreckage. His mouth
opens in shock before he passes out, his arms releasing her
completely.

Lev, listen to me. You have
to calm her down. Be kind. I don’t care that you don’t much like
for humans. This is important. She’s important, and if you don’t
help her, you will regret it.

There’s that word
again
, I think.
Regret.

She doesn’t wait for my
answer. Instead, she slips once again into the dark depths, leaving
me with Elizabeth, who now flails wildly, as though her body has
forgotten how to swim. She, too, is sinking fast. While I do not
believe Celia’s talk of regret, I don’t have anything else to do,
so I force myself to dive after the girl. By the time I find her,
she’s gasping for air and sucking in water instead. Her time is
limited if I don’t get her back to the surface.

Her eyes widen as again she
sees me, her hands frantically grasping for me.
Calm yourself,
I think, knowing she
will hear my words. Yet that does little to stop her frantic
motions. Her eyes blink slightly, and I can feel her giving in to
the water and hurl both of us to the surface where to my dismay I
realize she isn’t breathing. The shore isn’t far, and I can see
Celia already dragging the man that way. She’s just about reached
the seam where water and earth meet.

Unsure what else to do, I
force myself to swim quickly and tow her limp body toward the
shore. Even at angel speed, it seems to take forever to get her out
of the water. I lay her in the damp sand and quickly push the long
hair from her face to see if she is breathing. While part of me
wonders why I’m doing this, saving this girl, part of me feels how
right it is, and that’s a first. She shouldn’t matter.

But she does.

Her arms splay uselessly at
her sides, and I quickly begin giving her CPR, trying to expel the
water from her lungs. In my peripheral vision, I see Celia has
succeeded in her task: the man is sitting up despite her intention
to keep him on the ground.

“
Lizzie?” He scans the
area, and the sunlight burns amid the fresh blood on his head. I’m
in the middle of a set of compressions when he spots
her.

“
You need to lie down,”
Celia tells him. “There’s nothing you can do for your daughter like
this.”

That doesn’t stop him from
struggling to get upright. Celia sets her hand atop his chest and
whispers, “Calm down, sir. Please.”

He struggles to get from
under her, but the pain in his head must be kicking in as he starts
to fall. Celia is right there to catch him. As I watch her tend to
him, I lean over and breathe for the girl, wondering if she will
pull through this. The moment my lips touch hers, I feel a
familiarity, as though we have been this way before, many times. I
lose myself in her nearness, and I struggle to remember to breathe
for her; it takes everything I have to pull back and start the
compressions again.

This isn’t right. She’s
human. I’m not.

I find myself lost in her
expression. I can sense the warmth of it. It makes me think I have
seen her smile many times, and I find myself unable to concentrate.
I complete another set of compressions and lean over to breathe for
her.

My mouth fills her body with
air, and I whisper, “Breathe, Elizabeth. Breathe.” Had I not been
around so many humans, I would scarcely have recognized the
emotions in my voice—desperation, fear, longing. I feel myself
drawn toward her, and now, sitting so close, I can feel Celia is
right. Whatever beckons me to her has nothing to do with being a
sojourner, and everything to do with a connection of the most
sacred sort—a covenant.

I try to understand why I
would give her any promises and why she should matter, but why is
of no consequence. The only important thing is seeing her coughing
up water and breathing on her own. As I thought, she has taken in
much water, and I’m afraid if I leave her on her own, she’ll choke,
so I gently turn her onto her side and lightly pat her back between
her shoulder blades. Both hands instinctively grip my forearm, and
she shivers, suddenly cold in the middle of a very warm summer. Her
teeth chatter noisily, and I close my eyes, shielding her with a
bit of warmth. Once, I wouldn’t have let a human get so close, but
this time, I manage not to react.

“
Lev,” she says, and Celia
looks up at me worriedly as I hear the first strains of sirens cut
through the silent world.

We must
go
, Celia says in my mind.
These two will be well looked after.

All right,
I think
. Let me detangle
myself.

“
You’re going to be fine,”
I whisper and lean forward. Before I know what I am doing, I kiss
her forehead. “Now sleep.”

As she senses me pulling
away, she tries to fight, but she is weak and tired. “No,” she
says, her fingers trying to hold on even tighter, but her grip is
no match for mine. “Please don’t leave.” Tears pool in her eyes.
“Please!”

I tug harder at her fatigue,
unable to leave her struggling as she is. Her eyes grow heavier
until, at last, they close. Two EMTs head this way, and I look at
Celia and nod toward the sky. Seconds later, we both head back from
the Lower Realm, but I feel so much heavier, more encumbered.
Whatever connection I have with Elizabeth, it troubles me. I sense
the fine tuning of her balance is off, and I don’t know why or even
how to fix it for her. Or why I should. Still, I sense somehow that
failure in precision has something to do with me.

Yet another
mystery.

I keep finding myself
thinking about Elizabeth lying on that ground, waiting for the EMTs
to take her away. I still see her face, her long eyelashes touching
her cheeks just below the eyes; she doesn’t look healthy. Closing
my eyes, I remember my name tangled in her voice, and I can’t deny
the brokenness of the sound. It seems like I have done her some
kind of irreversible damage. And yet I remember nothing at
all.

How can that be? How could
Evan have wiped everything away so completely? That question makes
me burn with fury; I have no possessions, nothing to lose except my
memory, which has now been stolen. I can feel Celia watching me,
and I wish I knew what she was watching for and why. But then Evan
has told her to keep quiet. Dutiful, dutiful Celia.

It’s then the pain seizes my
chest and stills my flight. I dip momentarily, but she is there,
her hands ready to catch me.

“
Lev, are you all
right?”

Why should she care? Is
this my torment—torment for a mistake I can’t remember? Perhaps she
should let me fall.

I nod slowly, wishing I
could hold onto this fury. It’s easier than feeling the mysterious
ache and all these feelings I don’t understand which should have no
place in my existence. Yet for the moment, I am grateful to Celia
for her help, and by the time we have made it back, I am sweating
profusely. My shirt clings to my body, and I stagger to the ground,
grateful to lie there and wait for the blackness. The darkness.
Perhaps that, too, has already come.
Of course, Celia must believe that I sleep, because when Evan joins
her, I hear them converse in low tones again. This time, I am not
so near the edge of sleep.

“
It was a disaster,” she
says. “I thought we would be safe in a different state, but of all
the people who had to be involved in that wreck, he found
Elizabeth.” Her tone is worried.

“
Their spirits are bound by
a covenant, Celia. No matter how much we fight to keep them apart,
even for the greater good, we are fighting a battle that we may not
be able to win.”

I open my eyes slightly and
watch as they stand together. Celia chews her bottom lip. It would
appear she does not know what to do. “It wasn’t just that. It was
the callous demeanor he had toward Elizabeth. It crushed me to see
it, and I ached for her. He mistook the covenant for the call to
carry her soul, and had I not arrived back in time, he might have
actually done it.” She looks down despondently. “It breaks my
heart, Evan.”

Frowning, Evan quickly draws
her into his embrace and rocks her. Even from here, I can feel the
growing turmoil and fear inside of her.

“
I know. Who would have
thought one such as Lev could ever have learned such compassion and
love only for it to end like this?” He rests his chin atop her
head.

“
But does it not seem
strange that in all the sojourns I could have taken Lev on during
his first trip back to the Lower Realm that it should be one where
Elizabeth finds him? What are the odds, Evan, and why now? Why
re-break his heart?” She pulls back and peers at him, searching for
answers.

“
I don’t know. Did he seem
to recognize her at all?”

She shakes her head. “Not
that I’m aware. Then again, we both know there is only so much of
Lev that shows. What he feels, he keeps buried.”

Evan turns toward me, and I
close my eyes, hoping he hasn’t spotted my ruse. “All we can do is
try, Celia.”

“
But what happens when he
remembers? And he will, Evan. We both know that.”