The Screaming Stone: The Otherworld Series Book 2 (23 page)

We have all agreed to part and go our separate ways from there as none of us can look at the other without thinking of what happened to Robert and without being reminded that we do not know what happened to her.  The others will leave but I will stay buried beneath the water that for some still bears her name.

I have made three copies of a letter.  I need to apologize to them for the pain I have caused.  I am not the same anymore.  Although I still draw breath I too died on that hill in the shadow of the screaming stone. 

The keeper of the inn who found us that night mourning as death climbed the ancient hill has graciously accepted us and given us aide when the rest of the worlds turned their backs on us.  He helped us heal from our physical wounds and listen to us sob as we tried to heal the ones we all keep buried and hidden.  He has agreed to help me further.  I have asked him to mail a letter to Kat and Griffin back in America as they will receive it when they return home.  I have sown one into a pocket of one of the many pairs of pants that Knackers has acquired since he has been cut off from his home in the Otherworld.  He will find it eventually.  I feel little regret about leaving Knackers behind as he has rekindled his relationship with Autie.  The two will look out for each other.  The last note will remain with me tucked safely inside the pocket that lies closest to my heart.

The sun is starting to set and the others are milling about unsure if I am safe to leave alone.  I can see them lingering just on the edge of my sight, which has since early this morning remained fixed on the rock where I once watched her bathe as a lad.  As the fading sun dances on top of the dark water I begin to give up hope.  Hope is an evil entity that has always let me down in the past.  My shoulders rise and fall as I settle upon what I must do.  It will all put itself to right.  I don’t belong here, and I can’t go there.  I am Faeriedae and I belong nowhere now.

I am glad they will all be taken care of.  Fiona has agreed to go back to America with Kat and Griffin.  The three of them hold out hope that Annie might still appear there.  Though I can tell by the doubt that shadows Griffin’s eyes that he knows the truth of things, he still cannot hear her, just like he can no longer hear Robert.  He fears she is dead, just as we all do.

Finn is healing well after his brush with the Nightflyers.  Fiona did her best, but in truth the stranger who found us on the hill that night saved us all.  He opened his home to us and gave us all a safe place to heal.  Rian has stayed close to Finn hovering in the protection of his shadow.  I do not blame him.  Finn did not fail them, I did.

They will all be fine without me; just as they were fine before me.

They have all left me now, returning to the inn they now call home or to fly away back to their old home.  The sun has set and I am alone.  I am alone and the pain that causes threatens to crush me.  I fall to my knees by the lake as my grief overtakes me; the silence that surrounds me makes my ears ring drowning out the sound of my own tears.  I allow it to pour out, spilling it all into the lough that brushes against my knees.  I cry so much I fear the lough overrunning its banks.

The thought brings on laughter; as if I had tears that were big enough.  I am nothing and to nothing I shall return.  I lower my lips to the water and kiss the lake, wishing, however briefly, that it was her mouth, her smile I was kissing goodbye.

I linger, perhaps too long; as the manner of my death is suddenly no longer in my hands.

A strong, translucent hand shoots out of the water and wraps itself around the back of my head.  I am trapped in its grasp.  For a moment I struggle forgetting what my true purpose at the lough was this evening.  My fingers sink into the mud and push against the slippery surface as I try in vain to pull my head away from the water. 

I’ve died this way before
, it is a brief thought that dashes across a dying brain.

A man’s primal will to live, to survive sometimes outmatches his desire to die.  I know this and after struggling for a moment I allow the water to take me.  I relax and allow the water to rush past my ears.  My shoulders quickly follow and the rest of my body follows my head below the surface of the water; still trapped within the ghostly hand of death.

My last breath of air leaves my body; the bubbles of life rapidly ascending to the surface, as I allow my eyes to open and gaze upon the hand of death.  There is nothing to see.  Death is black, it is darkness, it is forever, I knew this when I accepted my fate.  But I did not expect to hear my life taker speak to me. 

It whispered one word, one word that I had heard before in the realm of dreams.  It said,
“Cuimhnigh
-“

It whispered one word; it whispered
“Remember.”

"The Silent Goddess" Book 1 of The Otherworld Series
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N.K. VIR