Hey, does anyone remember me? Haha...this is something I wrote a while ago and just recently went back and edited. It's sort of a summation of the romance in a novel I had the idea for...stylistic and plot critiques are always good! Don't worry about grammar and punctuation becaus I'm never going to do anything with this. Don't be intimidated by the length, I just want you to enjoy the story!
Everything in this world was so new to me, seeing a boy that made my stomach flip was a familiar and welcome feeling. Alezander was at my back, I could feel his breath on my neck. He’d been with me, protected me, and his kisses were warm and tasted of smoked red meat and spiced wood. His dark hair and light eyes were beautiful, his hands were large and fit over mine like a glove, but what Alezander did to me was not what Merlin did to me.
We had reached the castle in the very peak of the morning. The sun was filtering through the glass in a mist of white light, the rooster was ruffling his feathers, the stone of the floor was still the ice cold of night. The massive building seemed to be breathing a slow, steady rhythm of its own. It was sleeping.
“He knows we’re here,” Alezander said. He was, of course, speaking of Daniel, the Dragon King.
“He’s coming, then?” I asked, feeling silly yawning and rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“I doubt it.”
“What do we do?”
“Stand here. Watch and wait and listen.” I listened. All I heard was that rhythmic breathing, the deep, silent snooze of the castle.
“There it is. He’s coming.”
“The King?” I shut my eyes and tried to hear him. I waited for soft footsteps, for a breathing out of time with the castle’s. I heard nothing.
“No, not the King.” Who else was there? I mean, I knew there were others. There was the Queen, for one thing, Saria, who, according to Alezander, possessed an indescribably incomparable beauty. But he had specifically said “he.” I’m sure there were servants and stable boys and nobles who lived in the castle, but who was coming? How did he know that it was him? “Merlin.”
“Oh.” Why hadn’t he told me about this Merlin before? The fact that he shared a name with one of my world’s most famous legends had little impact on me. My whole former life was on a thin wire, every second I was here, away from that life, the wire began to fray apart. I was holding onto this wire very, very lightly. Its importance seemed to be disintegrating the farther I delved into this world, this reality.
I was primed to keep asking questions about who was coming and why I hadn’t been told about him, when I saw him walk around the corner.
First seeing him was like first seeing an angel. The light outside was shifting, it came in through the tall windows lighting up the entire hallway, and when he walked around the corner in the early morning light its clear brightness made a path for his silent footsteps. I looked up, nearly having to squint because of the beautiful sunlight. His pale form faded into this light, and it wasn’t until he came close enough to block the window like the moon eclipsing the sun that I could see him. I couldn’t make out the fine details of his face, but I watched him move and saw the light around him and behind him and he glided instead of walked. He was wrapped in white light and white cotton and his hair was so blond it was nearly white around his face.
I was so focused on his face and how thin his shape was that I didn’t even notice Alezander’s hand finding its way to the small of my back. It wasn’t until a lady handmaid came to me and took my elbow that I felt it there.
Laying in bed that night my mind reeled. I had never seen anyone so beautiful in my entire life. Surely what Alezander said about Saria could not compare to what I saw in Merlin. Before Merlin, it was easy for me to lie in bed and think about my family and my friends, how I used to be, how I was then. After him, it was a challenge and fight against myself to not think about him. I woke up sweating and barely able to catch my breath after dreams of him. When my eyes were closed I saw his face, encased with a holy halo of light, speaking or muttering his magic. Most of the time, the dream didn’t have anything to do with me. It was just him, but I was haunted by these images. His eyes that I didn’t even know the color of. His hands that I’d never felt. His mouth and teeth moving and changing things around him in a blur of dream-magic.
The days fell in and out and I looked for him. I looked for him every day. Alezander’s hand would slide down my arm, guiding it into the proper position to hold the bow, the arrow, the dagger, and I imagined it was Merlin’s. I had seen him once and wondered if his very breath contained a love potion that contaminated the air and then contaminated my mind.
We were geared and ready to leave once Alezander had had time to consult with the Dragon King and make arrangements for our departure, and I had not seen Merlin again. I was beginning to think that he had possibly been a dream of both mine and Alezander’s. Suddenly he became as mystical and legendary as the Merlin I had known before. My dreams were becoming more and more vivid, teeming with a rich voice I could barely recall in my consciousness, and eyes whose color I could still not distinguish. He was speaking to me, now, telling me things that I didn’t understand. He said I would know in time. I said that I really didn’t have that much time, and, in fact, I didn’t know if any of this time was real. He spoke in long, complicated sentences, and even once reached out and touched my face. Instead of leaning into his hand like I had wanted to do so badly, I had jerked and pulled away the instant his cold skin had touched mine.
I was sweating through my nightdress every night, and that night, the night he had touched me, I was shaking so badly I couldn’t go back to sleep and watched dawn appear through the glass panes. I was reminded of that first morning I had been here in the castle, when I saw Merlin appear around the corner, following the path of sunlight, and then eclipsing it with his own ethereal light.
The night before we left the castle Alezander had a conversation with the King and Queen that lasted until nearly midnight. They spoke in low voices over the meal, and disappeared into a room afterward. I was not invited to any of their meetings, and I understood, but the nights were lonely. I would often crawl into bed, waiting for Merlin to return to me in my dreams. Sometimes I would wander through the dark gardens, illuminated by the pale stars, listening to lonely nightingales, and sometimes singing along with them. If we finished our meal early and the sun was still high in the sky, I would disappear behind the stables, flirting with the stable hands and challenging them with my dagger.
Only once did Alezander get out of his meeting in time to catch me on my way to bed. He walked in a consistent, patient pace at my side, and stopped politely at my door. His bright eyes kept falling to my lips and I knew that he wanted to lean in and kiss me lightly, and that he was standing there waiting for an invitation into my room. I yawned as unattractively as I possibly could and gave him a tired smile. I avoided his gaze as I shut the door behind me, and felt his presence there long after I had taken off my clothes.
When I first met him upon my entering this strange world, I had been strangely, earthily attracted to Alezander’s greasy hair and smell of dirt and grass. After being in this castle for such a long time, he was always clean, his hair falling neatly and cleanly to his shoulders, sometimes pulled back into a short ponytail with an expensive leather band. As long as I had known him, as long as he had been with me his closeness had reeked of a stale odor and the smoke of the fires he built to keep me warm. Now he always smelled faintly of a strong red wine and rich soaps. It was foreign and new and when he was close to me, a foot, an inch away, I felt as though he were someone else, even though the cocked smile and low voice were exactly the same as they had been.
This was not the basis of my distance from him. It was an exciting thought to kiss someone new, without it being someone new. Maybe he would kiss me deeper, or maybe they would be less deep. Maybe his tongue would rake my teeth, or he would be just as passionate as he was before, but the sharp acidity of liquor would sting my throat. No, this newness did not keep me away from him. It was the face I saw when I shut my eyes that caused my head to turn at just the right moment, burying his face in my hair.
Darkness swallowed me whole after dinner that night. The entertainment and the conversations had lasted well past the normal time. My eyelids were heavy, but I was not ready for sleep yet. It was too dark for me to go to the stables and talk to young Dirk and handsome Flo. I found my feet taking me down a hallway lined with tapestries and candles. I knew that this lead to the library and study, but I hadn’t been down there but once or twice before, and both times I had been sent to find Alezander. I was surprised this is where I felt the need to go until I got there.
I leaned on the heavy maple door and it slowly, slowly slid open. In the dim and hellish glow of the fireplace, I saw his silhouette, the delicate point of his nose, the soft waves of his hair. He was hunched over something, and I could see the sharp bones of his shoulders. His head turned toward me, the red light casting shadows across his face. I couldn’t see his eyes or the definition of his nose and lips. All I could see was a faceless form, moving and gesturing to me. I gasped.
“What is it?” he asked, looking me dead in the face. “Did I frighten you?”
“I…no. You didn’t. Well, yes, you did. I didn’t expect you to be here.” I couldn’t see the way his face was moving. Was he laughing at me? “Or, I mean, I didn’t expect to see anyone here.”
“You found your way to me after all. I wasn’t sure that you would.”
He was standing up and coming towards me, closer to me. He was eclipsing the firelight like he had once eclipsed the sun. Suddenly the face that had remained only a blur of shapes and shadows was coming into focus. I could see the perfect plane of his cheekbones, the full bow mouth, the snow white lashes framing the darkened eyes whose color I still could not make out in the red light of the room. My breath caught in my chest. Encased in the lack of light, and his features now sharp and defined, he looked like a fallen angel, one that had chosen the heat and passion of earth over the paradise of heaven. I wanted to run from him. All those nights and days I had spent wishing that I had found him and he was coming close to me suddenly seemed unrealistic and far away. There was a power about him, one apart from the skin like a smooth, white river rock, or his fingers, long and slender and fallen at his side. It was the fire in his eyes, the heat I felt along every fiber of my being, the magic that ran along the air like static electricity before a storm.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” I managed. It was weak, and the ‘for you’ died in silence as it escaped my lips. “I wasn’t looking,” I had said.
“Do you sleep well, here, Anne? In this bed, in this foreign world?”
“I sleep fine,” I lied, but his teasing brought strength to my voice.
“Your dreams are sound, then?”
I wasn’t going to let him do this. “Don’t patronize me. You taunt me in my dreams.” His eyes looked down and then up again in a seductive gesture that made my heart flip and my fingers clench at my sides. “What am I to you?”
“You realize what language we’re speaking,” he said, turning away from me and to the fire. I was angry and agitated at this direct change of subject, and the fact that while we had just been standing only an inch apart, he was now standing several feet away from me.
“Yes. The Timeless Language. It’s how everyone communicates around here.”
“Do you know much about the language?” He was facing me again, looking at me in a different way than he had before, much like a teacher looks at a student whom he suspects did not do her homework.
“It’s the language I was raised with in my land, my world, with my people. It’s,” I hesitated for a second, and looked up at him. His eyebrows were raised with curiosity. “It’s English,” I finished. I looked away in a sort of sheepish ignorance, but I actually felt that he would know what I meant if I said it.
“It’s not English,” he said. ‘English’ rolled off his tongue with practiced ease, as had my name, and I was suddenly reminded of the thrill it gave me to hear Alezander say ‘Anne’ in a slow, clumsy way, like it was something exotic and beautiful. Merlin said these names like he knew the very depths and soul of them, and a chill ran up my spine.
“I haven’t had time to learn any other language,” I countered. “I couldn’t even get the hang of Spanish after three years of it.” I didn’t like him telling me that I didn’t know what language I was speaking, like I didn’t even know what came off my tongue. “You may call it something pretentious like the Timeless Language, but we just call it English. Potato, potahto.”
“I know what English is. I happened to have been around for the very creation of it, I saw it in its earliest stages. King Arthur and his knights, if you’ll remember. Brave and beautiful, all of them, but men to their very deaths.”
I made the connection for a split second, wondering why in all of the retellings of the story Merlin had been old and dying, and here he was standing before me, young and ageless both, beautiful and slender, his only wrinkles being the natural ones around his knuckles and the ones caused by sleep deprivation under his eyes. It wasn’t until later that I even bothered with how he had made his transportation from this world to mine, or if maybe they were the same world altogether, just in different times and different places, all through different eyes.
“Then what is this Timeless Language? How do I speak it if I have never been taught it?”
He was coming close to me again. There was a drastic change in the way he held himself, the inflections of his voice, the movement of his limbs. Everything about him was slowing down, and it was sending the heat of the sun coursing through my veins.
“Has your brave knight, Alezander not told you?”
I was shocked at the mention of Alezander’s name, and at the thought. Why hadn’t I been told?
“No, he hasn’t.” He stood about a foot and a half away from me, and looked as though he had no intention of coming closer.
“The Timeless Language is not determined by syllables or consonants or rolling your r’s. How well you speak it is determined by how well you understand the heart, the soul, the ticking of the human being. Your sympathy has drawn me to you, Anne.”
I was stunned and nearly paralyzed with the fear of this concept. We were back to my original question, but I wasn’t sure if this was the answer I had wanted, or if I had wanted an answer at all. I couldn’t move my body, I couldn’t move my tongue. Why did this thought fill me to the tip of my toes with fear? How horrifying was it to understand the human heart?
“Am I the only sympathetic girl left, then?” All the questions rolled through my mind like thunder and waves and ancient scrolls, yellow and decaying with age.
“You are the only one I want,” he said, and now I felt my heart was beating so hard that it would break my breastbone.
“What is it that you want with me?”
The pleasure of his fingers running along my jawbone broke my heart into splinters. It was the climax to all of the dreams I’d been having, both in and out of sleep. We ran through the dark, cold halls, the moonlight on our heels, his fingers sliding between mine to guide me. I didn’t know where we were going, why we were headed toward a back door I had never seen before, why the night air was frigid against my skin, but I followed him, still, until the dark canopy of a forest blocked out the tiny dots of the stars, and only the light sifting between the thick foliage lit the soft path beneath our feet.
He found whatever he was looking for, stopped, and turned around, staring at me with a light in his eyes. He backed me up against one of the trees as large as my room and pinned me against it with his arms at either side of my head. His mouth was suddenly on mine with fierceness and softness, his tongue against my teeth, his teeth against my lips. He tasted of something I couldn’t identify –something harsh and bitter, but his skin was fragrant against mine, like a mild rainwater soap. His hands were on my waist and he was pressing deeper into me. I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t want him to stop. He did though. He pulled away faster and harder than he had been on me.
“Breathe,” he said, and when I exhaled, my breath came out in silvery puffs before my face. “Come here,” he demanded, taking my hand again and leading me to an especially light spot under a gap in the canopy. We sat down and he moved his hands over mine, enclosing them within his own, like a lotus flower before bloom. He looked up at me, and in the brightness of the moonlight I could see his eyes: bright and storm gray, a color that didn’t break up the monotony of the colorless appeal of his beauty. I was so caught up in them, that I had forgotten how he was holding my hands. I felt them move again, opening up, and mine opened up with them, and a hundred butterflies of different colors and shapes and sizes flew into the night air, surrounding us with their brightness and the soft fluttering of their wings. I gasped, and looked down at my hands. He kissed me hard again, closing my gaping mouth.
“This is what I want, Anne.” He gestured toward the butterflies, one following the other out of the hole above us, disappearing into the silver light of the night sky. “I want to share my magic with you.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said bluntly, before I could let the romance of the moment seep into my bones.
“You don’t have to. There is so much I could teach you here, if you stayed.”
We were sitting on the mossy ground with our legs crossed, our knees lightly touching. My hands were folded into knots in my lap, and his were reaching out for me. All I could see was the brightness of his eyes and the beauty of his face and there was nothing I wanted more than to stay with him forever. I lost my history there, in that forest, in those eyes. I forgot about my mother, who had raised me and taught me to sing “Are You Sleeping?” and later, “Moon River”; and my father, who kissed my scraped knees and paid my doctor bills. My brother who found me in a crowd of thousands in Paris, under the dripping lights of the Eiffel Tower. All I could see was how much he wanted me to stay, and how much I wanted to stay.
But then I saw Alezander, and thought of the heavy pendant that hung around his neck, the one that bound him to me as my Guardian. I could not leave his side. His protection did not only lie in his honesty and bravery, but also in my trust in him, the fact that I had willingly placed that binding around his neck. Merlin did not have that. No one else did. I would have to follow Alezander.
“I can’t stay,” I shook my head and looked away from him.
“You’re no damsel in distress, Anne.” My eyes shot back to his, but I found I could not hold his gaze for long.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Alezander’s the hero of this story, you know. He is no Dragon Knight, he is only a messenger boy from the West, but he will save us all. Rather like a boy I once knew who pulled a sword from solid rock.”
“The damsel in distress always gets the hero.” It was a slow, melancholy statement, only half thought out in a slow, melancholy way. “I have to leave, Merlin. This story of yours isn’t about love. Not that kind of love, anyway. It’s about friendship, truth, loyalty, the kind of love that binds all of those together.”
“I understand. I only wish you had found me sooner.”
It felt like a mere second between the time that I lay my head down on my pillow, the day barely peaking through the night, and Alezander tapping lightly on my door.
“Anne, we must leave, the Knights are on the move.”
I rolled over, and gazed at him sleepily through lashes that would barely move apart. He was standing halfway behind the door, only his head and shoulders peaking out from behind it, careful not to invade the private space of my bedroom. “I’m coming,” I said, but I felt as though I would never be able to come.
We still rode the same horse, as I was just not that capable of keeping up with him on a separate one, especially when he rode his beloved Sol, the one we sat atop. I clasped at his waist and pulled myself forward and flattened my body against his back. It was a comfortable, familiar position, one I felt safe in. Galloping under the sky, the Dragon Knights riding above us on their Dragons spitting blossoms of fire into the air like a vibrant sunset of rainbow colors, I felt safe and far away from Merlin.
I thought about him still, nearly every day, and more at night. I thought about what it would have been like if I had found him sooner. Would I have been his lover, a status that I, being only fifteen, could never, ever comprehend? I could barely grasp the concept of him wanting me to find him so badly, or of the fact that I had longed for so long, so deeply, just to see his face, and know that he was coming to me. Even after the kisses that had found my very lungs and took their air, I couldn’t imagine crawling into bed alongside him, being filled with him and his magic, having him kiss me in places I could barely look at myself. My breasts were barely developed, my shoulders and stomach marred by freckles, my waist completely straight. While I would sometimes awake from dreams hungry for his acrid taste, I was still glad that this way he could not see me, nor touch me, nor find in me all the flaws I saw myself.
I also began to question his motives. He looked as though he were carved of marble, like David. Why would he want someone as plain as me? Brown hair, brown eyes, newly browned skin from being in the sun so often. He could have any golden beauty he wanted. He had his beauty, his magic. Why had he summoned me? As a joke? As a cruel need to break all of the innocence from my body?
Or was my sympathy really as special and wonderful as he had made it seem?
These questions rushed in and out of my mind on these days’ rides, and during the night camped beside the smoking ashes of a fire.
I thought back on the night that Alezander first kissed me, and I was always replaying it against the night in the forest.
The boat had been rocking gently on a calm sea. The moon was a quarter there in a bright, cocked, Cheshire-cat smile, one that reminded me of Alezander’s. I was standing on the deck at the bow, listening to the bawdy gaiety down below. I could feel the music and the howling and the dancing underneath my feet and in my bones, yet the sea continued to rock, completely undisturbed. I found myself calmed by this thought as I leaned against the railing and out to sea. The water glittered with reflections of the stars above, like there were thousands of diamonds underneath its surface. I was serene and focused completely on the scene before me, like a painting at an art gala, when I felt someone’s strong arms wrap around my waist and pull me to face him.
He had a sort of wispy need in his eyes, and I smelled beer faintly on his breath. He wasn’t drunk, though, I could tell by the firmness in his stance, the clearness of his eyes. I’m not sure why I let him kiss me then and there, and every other time I had steered away from his advances. Maybe it was the way his hands held my waist so firmly, or the feel of his body under the rough sackcloth of his tunic.
He looked at me, stared me straight into my eyes, asking for my permission as he leaned in towards me, his face coming nearer and nearer to mine. I shut my eyes and braced myself for my first kiss, but when his breath was hot on my lips they flew open in surprise. Then, he was kissing me, slowly, but surely, and I was clumsily moving my lips over his. Soon, they deepened and were so passionate that I moaned into his mouth. He pulled away then, possibly startled, and looked down on me. He kissed my eyelids in a charming, boyish way, and whispered good night. He made his way down to his cabin, and I imagine he hoped I would follow him down there, or wake him up in the middle of his dreams. I didn’t though. I stayed up there, still tasting the beer in my mouth, and still feeling his hands holding me there.
Two different boys, or men, I corrected myself, as neither were really boys, two different kisses, two different places, two different feelings in the pit of my stomach. What was it that I really wanted from them? I didn’t know. How was it that I could speak this language, this Timeless language, but could not even decipher the will of my own heart? How could I love someone I had known for one night? How could I not love someone who I had been with almost consistently alone for nearly two months? Was it love at all? Does love hurt this badly?
I didn’t know.
It’s funny, though, all this time I rode with Alezander, we were headed back to the West, following the flaming trail of the Dragon Knights, so that he could report back to his own king, but my mind was elsewhere nearly the whole time. I guess that makes me some sort of cheesy romantic. Alezander did not talk about love; he talked about his mission and his loyalty to his own king, though I suspected his reverence for the Dragon King was often at battle with this. In fact, he mentioned something once to me that I found gravely interesting.
“There are trials,” he told me one night beside his campfire, “to become a Dragon Knight. There is magic, of course. There are battles with swords and bows and arrows, battles of wit and courage. I imagine there would be many more Dragon Knights if it weren’t for the very last trial.”
He had me interested, and I leaned forward. “Ooh, what’s the last trial?”
“To tame their own Dragon, of course.” I gasped. “You didn’t think they handed them out like trophies, did you?” I shook my head. I didn’t know anything about being a Dragon Knight, for all I knew, they did hand them out like trophies.
“That,” he said with a sudden bitterness, “is the ultimate task. Nearly impossible, these days to even find one, much less tame one.” He seemed suddenly irritated, and was almost talking to himself. He tossed a rock into the fire, sending sparks flying into the air.
“But there are nine Dragon Knights, you said. Surely they didn’t get all of the dragons.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, they didn’t get all of the dragons. There are still plenty out there, mainly hiding in the mountains, reeking havoc among the villages and mountain goats, but they keep to themselves. Some are buried under water, frozen there in a magic-induced sleep.” He shrugged. “There was a girl your age, once, who became the youngest Dragon Knight ever. Maria. I think you met her one night at dinner.” I nodded. We hadn’t spoken, though. “She’s my age, now. Found Shalaham in the Forest of Heather, feasting on some deer. His name means Golden Wanderer in the ancient tongue of the Mirehaven people. He was once the most sought after Dragon of the Dragon Knights. He became a legend, though, then a myth. She was very brave to go looking for him. She always has been.”
I often wondered why Daniel and Alezander seemed to know each other so well. I didn’t mull over it much. I figured that Alezander was his king’s favorite messenger boy. I never once considered that maybe he had been through these trials and failed the last one. Nor did I consider that Maria and he had been childhood friends, and maybe even once had a love affair. No, I didn’t consider it until he told me.
I thought that it was sad, really. Alezander was so brave. He is brave. He’ll always be brave. He’s noble and honest and true. If Alezander didn’t deserve to be a Dragon Knight, then no one did. Too bad about that dragon thing.
We never reached the Western Kingdom. There was an attack of Black Knights on the Dragon Knights ahead of us. Alezander kicked Sol in his side and we ran so fast I thought I would fall off. I hadn’t expected an attack of such magnitude. There were so many of these Black Knights they looked like ants crawling up the hills and into and out of the canyon which the twisted Kiani River lies. When we reached the site of the battle the first thing I noticed was Maria’s dragon, Shalaham, the Golden Wanderer sweeping down on the black army and striking down nearly twenty in one swoop of his claw. She was in the midst of it, swinging her sword and giving her Dragon commands. It amazed me how he willfully obeyed.
I watched her, and an odd thought came over me. There was Maria, Alezander’s former lover, his former love, and she was slaying as many of the Black Knights as her fellow male Dragon Knights. If Alezander was the true hero of this story, and as I watched him take his long sword in one hand and his short sword in the other I truly believed he was, then Maria could not be his damsel in distress.
“Anne, get back! Go! Down that way! Hide in the caverns of the canyon!”
I went to take a step, I almost turned around and ran for my life, but a single though stopped me: “You’re no damsel in distress, Anne.”
But what was I to do? Die on the battlefield? Leave my friends here in the world forever? I unsheathed my dagger, Lemnare, The Menace, from my boot and screamed in an awkward and fierce defiance of how afraid I was, and ran headfirst into the battle, instantly being splattered by blood.
I stabbed everyone who tried to touch me. How I am not dead, I do not know. Sometimes I think that maybe, far, far away, Merlin willed me to live. I expect he knew I would come back to him, though he never said. Whatever it was that gave me the strength, I had it. I don’t know if I killed anyone. The only quarrel I had with this army was the one they had with everyone and everything I had known in this world. Running through the midst of that battle, watching both the good guys and the bad guys fall at each other’s feet, I fought for everything that I knew in this world. Everything that was good to me, that had been good to me. I fought for the Dragons above me, for their Riders, for Alezander and Merlin and their Kings. I fought for my own honor, my own title. I had a weapon no longer than my forearm, but I found bravery somewhere deep inside myself, somewhere other than the length of my weapon and the strength of my arm.
“Alezander!” I saw him in the distance, standing at the very edge of the canyon. He was dueling one on one with one of the largest men on the field. He was wearing a horned helmet, different from most of the others. I had seen others with them on, also, but had done my best to maintain all possible distance from them. I suspected they were some sort of officer and didn’t want to come face to face with any of them.
They were on the very edge of the cliff and I called his name to warn him. Why were they so close to the edge? I called for him again, but my voice was not heard over the din of the battle. My eyes widened and I screamed as their swords collided in one final blow and the force of it caused Alezander to slip off of the cliff. I ran full force at the back of the officer and sunk my dagger into his back and I presume through his heart, since he sank to the ground, dead. Without even pulling Lemnare from his back, I leaned over the edge of the cliff, and right into Alezander’s face. He was still gripping the very edge of it, his fingernails digging into the crumbling black earth.
I reached down and grabbed his forearms with both my hands and tried to pull him up. “I’ve got you,” I said, completely out of breath and so weak I could barely hold myself up.
“No, Anne, let go. You’ll fall with me, let go.” He tried to readjust his fingers, but I yelled.
“Stop it! You’ll fall, I’ve got you.” I tried again to pull him up, but only succeeded in swaying him dangerously above the rocky canyon and its angry river below.
“Anne, let go.”
“I won’t let go! You’d pull me up, I’ll pull you up!”
Before I knew it he had loosened the grip of one hand and was reaching inside his shirt. “I won’t be able to protect you anymore,” he managed and my pendant flew past my head. “Let go.”
“I won’t let go!” My hands were sweating and with the release of one of his hands I was holding more weight. He was sliding.
“You’ll fall, too!”
“I won’t let go!” But I did. I couldn’t hold him any longer, and he slipped from my grasp.
I was on the edge of that cliff until the sun went down, and my voice was so hoarse I no longer heard the echoes of my sobs.
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