Willow's Legend - Original Version

Chapter 19

 

 Chapter 19:

Michael took a deep breath, he needed to hide his identity. 

He had never minded being the messenger boy; it was fun going to the UpperWorld and delivering notes to the Willows’ mothers. 

But this was different.

Willow’s family would most definitely recognize him, or at least the mom. Hailey had warned him that Ara knew him, he didn’t know how she remembered but not Willow. But, apparently she did, so he couldn’t show up at their house for a note. 

Willow’s house was just as plain as any other house, nothing extraordinary about it, nothing that would make people’s eyes train to it. It was a plain off-white, plain windows with blue curtains and a single triangle for the roof. It was plain, something he had never thought of for Willow. 

Pulling his hood up as high over his face as possible, he tucked his blonde hair inside the hood, hoping most of it wasn’t visible and that they wouldn’t be able to tell his eye color. 

He slowly walked across the smooth rock pathway. The lawn was a perfect green and the patio was completely spotless, as if someone had done some yard work recently. 

His heart was beating faster by the time he was on the patio, he gripped the note between his fingers. 

Maybe I could just give it to Hailey to give to Willow’s mom, he thought to himself, feeling sweat build at his forehead, he wasn’t ready to see them. Wasn’t ready to talk them about that night. Wasn’t ready to tell them that he wasn’t able to live up to the promise he made. 

In that moment he imagined himself walking off the patio and just going back home and telling Willow he had given the note, but that would make him a liar. It enough that he had broken promises to take care of, but he didn’t want to add lies on top of all his other mistakes. 

Taking another deep breath and trying not to think too hard he walked up to the door and knocked sharply three times without thinking. By the time he pulled his hand back after knocking his heart was racing as if he had been running up a steep hill and he could feel sweat dripping down his back. 

Michael, he told himself. It is fine, they won’t recognize you. That would be impossible. 

But although his head was telling them that, he knew it wasn’t true. He knew they would recognize him if he took down the hood, if he showed himself. They would see the little boy who had made a foolish promise and then was too weak to fight for it, to sacrifice for it. The little boy who had seen his father be strangled in front of him, who had been the one who caused it, and the one who broke it. But saving his father was only saving one innocent life, it wasn’t saving the one life he had sworn to protect. The one life he didn’t want to give up, but had given up anyway. 

They would recognize that little boy. 

He was sure of it. 

The door knob started turning and he tried to get all the unnecessary thoughts out of his head, the unnecessary thoughts that were making more nervous than ever. 

A young woman answered the door, Willow’s mom, of course. You could tell almost immediately that it was her mother, she had the same black hair and thin face. Same body structure and long eyelashes, the one thing that set her apart from Willow (other than her age, of course) was the bright blue eyes between the long eyelashes. Willow had gotten her silver eyes from her father, yet, if you looked at her father, you could see no resemblance in the eye color at all.