Leatherbound Lives

Chapter Seven

FYI, this is how I imagine the characters ages...

Fiona - 17; Hugh - 16; Emma - 16; Jacob - 16; Millard - 15; Bronwyn - 14; Enoch - 13; Horace - 11; Olive - 7; Claire - 6 (And Lynn is 14, in case you don't remember.)

When I emerged from the cairn the next morning, Jacob was sitting cross-legged on a boulder, reading. "Emma told everyone you were coming today," he said, "she wanted somebody to wait by the bog so you wouldn't get sucked in when you tried to cross."

I tilted my head slightly. "I could just teleport to the edge."

He sighed, closing his book and standing up. "Yeah, that would probably be easier. And cleaner."

I thought of something. "Let me see if I can take you with me. I've never tried to teleport with other people."

Jacob shrugged, and I put my hand on his shoulder. It took a bit more effort, but I felt soon the surge of adrenaline that always comes when I exercise my peculiarity, and when I opened my eyes, I was in the woods past the bog; Jacob was there in one piece.

He stepped back a bit, startled, and flexed his fingers in awe. "It's like getting shocked," he said, "but in a good way." I smirked. He continued, "It's great to have a new peculiarity thrown into the mix." We started walking up to the house. "I've known about this world for five years now, and new peculiarities still amaze me. I'm not sure if I'll ever really get used to it."

"The other children did."

"Guess so."

"So, what's your story?" I asked, curious. "How did you get to be in the loop?"

He shuffled along, kicking pebbles down the well-worn footpath. "I guess it all started when my grandfather died," he began, "he used to live in this home, way back during the war. He was hiding from the Nazis because he was Jewish, and hiding from the wights because he was peculiar. Fighting two wars at the same time." Jacob stopped and knelt down to pick something up in the soil. It was a coin - some sort of English money. He wiped it off with his shirt while we continued walking. "He fought in a special peculiar army that battled both Nazis and the hollowgast. It was really more of a ragtag band of frustrated peculiars than an actual army, but nonetheless, my grandfather was an essential member because of his peculiarity."

"Which was...?"

"Same as mine. He could see hollows. Must be hard fighting something you can't see, so my grandfather killed more hollows than any of his comrades. Then he went to America, because there were almost no hollows there at the time. He married a common woman, started a family, and decades later, when I was fifteen, he died."

"That's awful."

He shrugged it off, as if he'd come to accept it. "Everyone thought he got killed by a pack of dogs, but I later found out it was a hollow that got him. In his dying words, he gave me clues that lead me to the island. I went to the house every day, not sure what I was looking for. Closure, I guess."

Kev's words suddenly came to me. An American lad... wan't much older than you are now... kept poking around there, day after day. "Oh my God..." I said, "You're him!"

"Who?"

"The bartender, Kev. He told me about you! He said you kept going to the house, and then you just never came back."

He hesitated. "Did he - I mean, did he say anything about my parents?"

"... He said they looked all over Europe for you."

"I told them not to," He brought his hands down over his face. "I guess you can't blame them," he sighed. He clearly missed his parents; I could see his guilt for leaving them on his face, plain as day. An inevitable sacrifice he made to live in this loop; a weight he would carry on his shoulders for the rest of his life.