Prophecy

Summer, Summer!

I heard his voice calling my name anxiously.

I lifted my head quickly from under my pillow and looked around my room. There was no one standing there. I sat up slowly and looked at the faint blue glow coming from the spherical gem that hung from around my neck.

“Thorn is that you?” I looked at the gem with uncertainty. His image soon appeared in it. His smooth silvery face had worry lines etched all over it.

Yes. Is everything all right? Are you alright?

“Yeah everything is fine,” I whispered. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” I leaned on the headboard and draped my sheet tighter around my shoulders. I looked at my door and then back at him.

No, nothing happened. his face relaxed. It’s just that, I could feel . . . I don’t know, I could sense your fear. It was strong enough to wake me up.

“I was just having a bad dream.” I rubbed my temples to try to ease my throbbing headache, caused by me flying up so suddenly. “I guess Aunt Liz was right, you really can’t hide anything.” I mumbled.

A nightmare? he looked at me suspiciously.

I knew what he was thinking. The last time I’d used a nightmare for an excuse was after I had a rather violent encounter with a sadistic shifter, which nearly ended fatally.

“It was an actual dream this time Thorn. As you can see, I am perfectly fine.”

I know I’m sorry, but . . .

“I understand,” I smiled faintly and he relaxed again.

What was that about your Aunt? he seemed confused by my musing.

I patted my head and then dropped my hand back to my side. “Nothing, nothing. I just remembered something she’d told me some time ago.” I let out a big yawn.

You seem tired, I’m sorry for waking you. I should let you get back to sleep.

“It’s nothing to be sorry about. I would be up in a few minutes anyways.” I smiled sheepishly. “Besides I don’t mind you waking me up to see if I’m okay, I love the attention.”

He chuckled softly. Well, I love giving you the attention. I yawned again. Summer go back to sleep. Tell me about your dream later?

“Sure, I’ll see you later.” I slid back to my side and rested my head on the pillow.

Later love. His face disappeared from the gem, which I tucked under my blouse.

I closed my eyes and soon dozed off to a more tranquil space.

“I can’t do this crap,” I slammed the textbook shut and dropped my head on the desk. “Frick!” I mumbled as I’d dropped my head a bit too hard. I rubbed my forehead.

“Summer, you aren’t even trying. This is easy.” he reopened the physics text. He shoved the book back in front of me.

I pouted and blew up a piece of my hair that had fallen in my face. “Easy, maybe to you super genius, but I’m a super-classic, hopeless without a doubt, physics dumb-dumb. Do you know what Mr Black called me just before the exams last year?”

“I don’t know, tell me.”

“He called me Mrs. Perkins,”

“Why would he call you that?” he replied with his lips slightly tilted into a smile.

“He named me after the dumbest guy in class, so you know that it is bad.” I moaned and slapped my hand on my cheek, to support my head.

“Perkins isn’t dumb, just lazy. Besides, didn’t you score eighty percent on that physics exam, so it wasn’t all that bad?” he smiled wider.

“Yes, I did thanks to your notes and the fact that his comments had spurred me on not to fail.” I sighed. “This test is hard stuff, a culmination of all that I’ve studied, which isn’t much, for the past two weeks. Oh gosh, I’m going to fail.” I moaned again and fully covered my face with my hands.

He pried my hands away from my face carefully. “Summer come on; don’t say that, it might actually happen,” he added humorously. I rolled my eyes and slapped my hands back over my face. He pulled my hands away again. “I’ll help you, okay. And stop worrying. We have two days, plenty of time to pack in all the unknowns.” he added more seriously.

“You are right, maybe I’m overreacting.” his grey eyes smiled at me, dismissing all my fears. He reached for my hand and kissed it. My heart raced, not from anxiety but from the adrenaline rush, I always seemed to have whenever I was near to him.

My boyfriend, well my fiancé Thorn, and I have been together officially, for two months now. Our relationship wasn’t exactly a beautiful, love story from the beginning. We had moved from dreaded enemies, not just by association but also by birth, to soul mates.

We belonged to two warring clans, the Coronas and Lunes, a secret group of people, ruled by magic, and who could change their form into any living thing in the universe. The war had started hundreds of years before we were born, but it still carried on to the present day. The feud was started when a Lune shifter named Ay had overthrown their true leader, Thorn’s great-grand father Mond. After which Ay had started a war with our clan. This led to our kind remaining in hiding and Thorn and his family were exiled from the rest of his clan.

Getting married wasn’t on any one of our cards. In fact, I freaked out when I first found out that I was to marry some person that I didn’t know. It was as a result of a sacred shifter rite of passage, in which our spouses are chosen for us by our clan leaders; the Grand Corona (which happened to be my mother) for me and the Grand Lune (his father’s rightful title, but it was held by another Lune) for Thorn.

Thorn was the one who found out about our union-to-be first because his eighteenth birthday was almost a year before mine in December. He didn’t tell me anything before then, but he knew that our dislike for each other would get in the way of any relationship we were supposed to have, so on the first day of our senior year he proposed a truce between us. I agreed, but our pact landed on some shaky ground the following morning when someone impersonating him tried to kill me.

That someone happened to be my best friend Elizabeth, who turned out to be another three-hundred-year-old Lune, who was after Thorn. After her first attempt had failed, she’d tried killing me two other times; first by throwing me into the sea, hoping that I would drown, and secondly by throwing me into a giant incinerator, hoping that I would be fried crispy. Fortunately, for me, Thorn had rescued me on both occasions.

The funniest thing about that is, if she hadn’t tried killing me those other times, Thorn and I probably wouldn’t have grown so close. I guess in some sick way, I owed her partly for my happiness and for opening my eyes to what a wonderfully marvelous person he was.

“What’s that noise?” Thorn got up from around the table. I listened to the uproar coming from outside the tenth-grade building. We’d come to study over this side of the school because we thought that it would be quieter. Some bust that turned out to be.

We moved outside the classroom and looked down on the two boys surrounded by a throng of other plebs. “Oh crosses a fight.” I moaned. Both of us moved quickly down the stairs and wormed our way through the crowd. It was in times like this that I hated being a prefect. Thorn held on to one of the boys and pulled him off the other one that was being pummelled. I dragged the other one up from the ground and pulled him away from the crowd.

The Dean of Discipline soon appeared on the scene and called the two boys to follow her to her office.

Mr. Black, who was having an evening class nearby, walked over to Thorn and me. “So what were those two fighting over, slim fast?” I clapped my hand over my mouth at sir’s quip. It was funny since both boys were very fat.

“We didn’t get a chance to enquire, as Mrs. Jackson called them to her office.” answered Thorn.

“Too bad, but I still think it was slim fast.” quipped Mr. Black as he returned to his class. He herded some of the students who had come out to look, back into the class.

“Slim fast, that man is a riot.” I grinned. A huge yawn then followed.

“You look pretty tired. Are you still up for more studying?” he asked concerned.

“Nah, I think I’ve had enough of electro-physics for one day.” I yawned again. “We should probably get our things from the classroom before the cleaning lady locks up. I looked at the thin, plaid uniformed woman who was coming out of a class adjacent to the one that we were just in.

“Wait here. I’ll get the things.”

“Okay, oh alright.” I muffled another yawn, walked over the nearby pavilion, and leaned against one of the supporting posts. I closed my eyes briefly. I didn’t hear when he reappeared beside me.

“Summer,” I opened my eyes. I had started to doze off.

“Hmm, oh you’re back.” I leaned off the post lazily and held out my hand for my bag, which I still hadn’t gotten around to washing.

“I think I will carry this.” he repositioned the bag over his shoulder and took my hand instead.

“Okay.” Usually, I would have started to protest, but over the past few months, I’d learned that there were some things that I’d learned not to argue with Thorn over. He was as stubborn as a mule, especially when it came to performing chivalrous acts. In any event, I didn’t really have enough energy for bickering today as I was bushed.

We walked over to the parking lot. “I don’t think that Caleb is ready to leave as yet, so I’ll carry you home.” I nodded. It was either that or a single syllable word. My mind was too blurry to come up with anything else. “Hello, Caleb... Thorn, I’ll be carrying Summer home today... No, nothing is wrong. She’s just nodding off on me every minute...Oh, okay. Bye.” he hung up his cell phone and opened the car door for me to get in.

I locked my seat belt in place as we drove out the school gate. I tried watching the passing cars to help stay awake, but somewhere between a black Sedan and a red motorbike, I drifted off.

I was placed somewhere soft and which smelled like fabric softener. I opened my eyes briefly. He still hovered over me. “No, no covers,” I muttered softly. He dropped the sheet over my feet and sat beside me. “Did I walk all the way up, because I don’t remember?” I asked groggily.

“No, I carried you.” he smiled and brushed my hair back.

“Thanks.” My vision was getting blurry again as sleep weighed heavily on my eyelids.

“I’m going to let you rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.” he placed a soft kiss on my cheek.

“Okay,” I yawned and twisted around to the other side. I heard the door close quietly, that was all I heard for a while.

I was awakened by the soft drops of rain pattering against my face. I sat up and looked around. The sky was as dark as pitch and the air smelled of burnt sulphur. I could hear the distant sound of clanging steel. My eyes burned from the water that had fallen into them. When I tried to stand, I lost my balance and fell into a muddy ditch.

“Summer take my hand, quickly.” his dark hair floated down over his shoulder as he lay flat over the hole.

“Thorn, what are we…?” I scrambled to my feet and took his hand. His grip was hard and cold. I slid easily over the mound as he pulled me up. Surprisingly my gold dress had remained unsoiled. “Where are we?” I fully regained my footing and he stood beside me. He was dressed in a light silver armour, which bore the crest of the Lunes on the breastplate and armguards. It looked similar to the dress of the soldiers I’d seen in the pictures of the war all those years ago.

“No time to explain, come on.” he pulled me along roughly. I ran to keep up with his pace. I kept stumbling over tree roots and we had to stop every few seconds so that I could regain my balance. It was when I looked down that I realized that it wasn’t tree roots that I’d been stumbling over, but the bodies of gold-clad corpses.

“Thorn. . .” he turned to face me. There wasn’t enough time for words. I pulled him to the ground quickly. The heavy sword of our attacker missed our necks. Several short pieces of his hair fell on my arms. “Crosses, where are we?” I whispered as my breathing was reduced to short gasps.

“There is no time to explain. Summer run . . . I love you.” he crushed his lips against mine briefly before scrambling to his feet. His grey eyes seemed pained and hesitant. I sat confused about and unsure of what was happening and or what he wanted me to do. “Run and hide over there.” he pointed to a tall brush.

“Why?” I said with my brows knotted.

“Please Aurora, just do it.”

I scrambled on all fours before I managed to regain my balance on my feet. I muffled another scream as I’d fallen and landed on a partially beheaded body. I covered my mouth as my landing had caused the blooded head to roll away from the rest of the mangled corpse. I ran half-crazed towards the bushes. I blinked repeatedly, trying to get the twisted images out of my head.

It was halfway into the bushes, that I felt a sharp stab, as if someone was tearing my chest open. The seething pain knocked me into the mud. I pushed myself up slowly and looked at the throbbing area. There was nothing there. I was fine. My eyes moved from my body over to the place from which I ran.

“No!” I screamed. Stinging tears then fell from my eyes. “Oh God no.” I moaned silently as the silver-clad attacker removed his blade from Thorn’s chest. My stomach clenched as I swallowed the bile that had gathered in my mouth. My heart sank as I could see the life draining away from his body as he fell.

My instincts of self-preservation were spurring me to run in the opposite direction, but I ignored them totally and I remained seated as it seemed that my spine had given out and my legs had gone limp.

“Run, Summer.” I heard him say weakly as his grey eyes tore into my terrified face.

The masked stranger turned to look at me. I turned away quickly but I found my eyes staring at the lean but sturdy legs of my pursuer. I crawled backward until fell flat on my back. I knew that I was caught.

The stranger removed the mask. Her long silver hair spilled over her shoulders as gentle as cascading silk. “Didn’t think you would see me again, did you Summer?” her menacing blue eyes stared into mine.

“You, you’re supposed to be. . .dead.” I whispered.

“Supposed to be. . . But, it wasn’t my time. It sure as hell is yours’.” her smile widened and with blinding speed, she unsheathed her blade and struck. I let out a piercing scream, then the place suddenly fell silent.

I jumped up in the bed. My heart throbbed painfully and heavily as if it was going to beat its way out of my chest. A splintering headache spread across my forehead. “Just a dream,” I sighed and moved over to switch on the light.

I sat on the edge of the mattress and I wiped away the wetness from my face. I looked into the mirror. My hair was matted and my skin had gone pale. I massaged my cheeks so that they would get back their usual colour.

I’d been having the same dream for weeks. As soon as I would close my eyes, it would be the first thing that would come up in my subconsciousness. I’d tried almost everything; avoiding scary books, movies, caffeine. . . guzzled Nyquil, which was the last resort, but nothing worked. The only safeguard solution I found was to avoid sleep at all costs.

That, however, was having its toll on my body as I was worn out most of the time. I’d missed half of what was said in class for the past two weeks and I zonked out during two of my library duties. I was like a walking zombie most of the time.

“It’s just a dream,” I told myself again. “Beth is dead. She is dead.” I got up from around the mirror and headed downstairs.