3. Friends
The pain coursed through my body, twisting and tearing at nerves and veins and muscles I didn’t know I had. It was as if I had been burned in my sleep, hadn’t woken up to the warming heat of the fire, and now I was regaining consciousness again, trapped in the worst of hells.
My vision, which had at first been distorted and blurry, was clearing, sharpening and defining. And so was the pain. I could see figures around me; I would’ve been able to remember their faces if I had cared to look.
I was regaining my sense of direction, I could tell which way was up, which way was down. I was just beginning to recapture
Then a pair of strong hands grasped me under my arms. Ice flooded my body, someone was hauling me, kicking and shouting and pushing, up through the tangle of limbs and out into the open air.
I could breathe.
But I flinched away, arms flailing out from side to side. My fist felt the shuddering contact with a jaw bone and the arms released me, letting me fall, hard, onto the concrete.
I could make out their voices now no one was touching me; my senses weren’t blinded with fear as they had been before. There were two male voice speaking. One was definitely arguing, intermittently interrupted by a more feminine, lilting tone. The other seemed to be stalling the discord, peace making and yet still the most commanding voice of them all.
“Is she ok?”
“I don’t want to go near her… just in case…”
“Of course you shouldn’t.”
“Let me, she won’t be scared of me.”
“Sure she won’t” The female voice was dripping with sarcasm.
“She’s my – “
“Yeah we know. You don’t love her more than the rest of us James Gray”
There was a slight pause, an intake of sharp breath like wind being sucked out of a tunnel to expose the lurking vacuum left behind.
My eyes unstuck. I was suddenly petrified with fear, no-onne was ta;king, noone was moving. Why had they all stopped?
Then I saw the scene before me, bathed in the sudden moonlight.
There was the alley, brimming with filth and neon plastic refuse bags, the blank, uniform backs of houses lining the narrow stretch of asphalt, ripped away in places to expose brown dirt and crooked pebbles, and five figures, two female and three male.
I was immediately drawn to three immidietly infront of me; the other two seemed to be inferior, less important, hanging back out of the picture. I could tell that they hadn’t been involved in the conversation yet.
The one closest to me was the girl. She had her back to me, slumped forward into a defensive crouch. Her hair swept in graceful curtains across her delicate back, glistening silver-blonde in the half-light.
I caught the profile of the man nearest to her next. He was well-built, strong and powerful, like a commander. He radiated power and collectedness. But I could tell that he was in control of this situation.
It was the other man who was, and I could see why. He was facing the girl, directly, head on, and he too was crouching, his muscles tense in his arms. He had the lithe, flexible body of a dancer or a cat. His hair hung in a carefully disarrayed motion, I couldn’t quite tell its colour in the strange light.
Then I saw his eyes.
The deepest abyss on earth: that was nothing. The strongest black holes in space: that was nothing. The darkest night, nothing in comparison to those eyes. They pulled me in, a powerful, all-consuming drag and need and…fear. He was more an animal than human.
“James…” the powerful male voice warned, “Let Amber go.” His careful tone broke on the name of the girl crouching protectively in front of me. A shiver lanced down her back, illustrated by the sway of her hair that fell in one movement back into place, but she stayed her ground.
Protecting me.
But I didn’t want to be protected. I wanted to go to those eyes and see them and understand them and know them. Maybe she knew that. Maybe that’s why she stayed.
Then there was no more speech, I could imagine a silent conversation passing between the… what were they? I now knew they weren’t attackers. They seemed like wholly new people all together. Maybe the attackers had gone… maybe these people had scared them off…
Then, slowly, the man with the eyes, James, straightened up. HE still looked like a cobra, coiled, poised, but his eyes had lost their pull and the deep needing in me to go to him was ebbing away. The other man gained control, stepping in between the two figures.
At the same time, the woman with the silver hair turned her back to him, and took a tentative step in my direction.
“Hello?” I could tell that this was directed at me, it was the her feminine voice, and I couldn’t hear any other speech. They were all listening to hear my reaction.
I tried to find my voice, buried deep inside of me somewhere. It came out as a cough, a ghost of the voice I’d had before.
The kind voice tried again.
“Look, I’m not going to hurt you. My name is -” but I didn’t catch her name. I didn’t care. I gave up. I didn’t care if these people were murderers or rapists or kidnappers. I wasn’t afraid of them, because there was no one to charge a ransom from, no one to grieve for me, and truthfully, death would be a blissful release right now. So I leant forward with my arms outstretched and let her help me up.
Her hand was cool and soft, her arms gentle, and she lifted me, as if I weighed nothing, so that I was cradled against her. Then we were walking away, slowly rocking like a hammock in a breeze.
My instincts obsolete, I felt safe. Numbness washed into sleep like a gentle wave, caressing as distant shore. I was silent.
My eyes remained active, though, flickering through the faces I had just seen. The gentle woman, the peacemaking man… but my eyes won’t look at the other figure.
Am I scared?
