Sorry it took me so long to upload this, it's still just me writing (Kat) and I have to finish my 2012 Watty Awards Entry. Enjoy! :DD This was actually really hard to write even though I love this story, I hope it's better than I think it is. D:::: I'm also going to stop with the Britishness because it's quite difficult to do without Daisy. x)
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I awoke to gentle caress of my grandmother's pet cat, Mystic, who lazily dragged his tail across the top of my lip and across my cheek.
I opened my eyes and drifted them over a familiar living room with colorful trinkets and small paintings, my mind in a fog. Light streamed in from the windows, significantly less than the time I had arrived. I lay horizontally on a couch. A soft wool blanket was pulled up to my chin and tucked neatly around my body, delightfully warming me. My head was propped slightly up by one of my grandmother's soft hand-made blue pillows.
Mystic twitched on my chest and rolled, his butt conveniently landing my face. I tried to sit up and scare the cat off when I realized his claws were deep within my shirt, and a painful throb at the side of my head was present.
"Push Mystic off, dear. I'm trying to train him to stop doing that."
I sucked in a breath and jerked my head towards my grandmother's voice. She was situated in her reading chair with her glasses on and "The Book of Wethrinaer" on top of her lap. Grandma whistled loudly. She hadn't looked up from the page she was on, even after Mystic leaped off my chest with a yowl and knocked down a tissue box.
"Drink some Tea, love-bug. It will make you feel better. You hit your head pretty hard."
On the coffee table next to me was a steaming cup of blueberry tea and a fresh buttery biscuit. My grandmother's biscuits, like everything else she made, were mouth watering. My stomach gurgled, but not with hunger.
I recalled the strange memory I had that my grandma's features had morphed into a younger woman, with stark white hair and glowing eyes. I could vividly picture the way the glass door was webbed with ice, locking the door, and how my Grandma's hand was open to its surface as if she had created it.
Gypsy.
Sickly acid crawled up my throat and I dry heaved. I had to of been dreaming. It had to have all been a horrible, twisted dream. "Please tell me that was all a dream," I said. "The ice on the glass door, your hair. Your...your everything."
She casually turned the page of the book. "You were not dreaming."
"I--I wasn't?"
"No. I'm a Gypsy, Heather. I have been for a while, now."
I swallowed down a cry in my throat. "Oh."
Grandma pursed her lips at the page she was reading and frowned. "I don't think now is a good time to think about this because your health is not exactly at its peak. You have a lump on your forehead the size of a walnut from your fall."
"I don't understand," I said, my voice rising as I touched the raised area on my forehead. Millions of questions crowded my skull. "Are the stories in the book true, then? You were changed? Why didn't you tell me this sooner? Was I already suppose to know? Is mom a Gypsy? Why does the Frost, want me? Who is Frost? Why do I remember him all of the sudden? I could have sworn I-- oh no, am I going to grow wings or a horn, aren't I--?"
"Heather, enough!" Grandma shut the book closed, her grey eyes dangerously unblinking and lingering with a bitter white. At the sight of my fear, she let a slow breath out and placed the book at the table to her side, taking off her glasses. "A year before your mother was born, thirty-eight years this may, I was turned....willingly. I shouldn't be telling you any of this because I am a horrible role model in this particular conversation." She rubbed a hand over her eyes--"I suppose I can tell you a little. It's for the best."
My lungs froze in my chest and my lips trembled with fear, as I stared at the false version of my Grandmother. "T-turned? Willingly? As in...?" I put a hand to my heart and swallowed down the bile in my throat. The tale had said the only way for someone to turn into a Gypsy was to get their heart ripped out. Could that even be possible?
"Yes, Heather. Everything I told you was true. I know it's all hard to understand, but "The Book of Wethrinaer" is one-hundred percent factual. It is simply in story form."
"Does this mean my mother is a Gypsy?"
"She has Gypsy in her blood, but her humanity overpowers the gene. Your mother is a half-breed. If she was awakened, turned into a Gypsy, she would be extremely powerful."
An unsettling thought popped into my head. "If my mother is a half breed, what does that make me?" My Grandmother's gray eyes faltered and she dropped her gaze and she remained silent., her eyebrows knitting together. That unsettling thought turned into a throbbing headache, and I felt myself fall forward, bracing myself on the couch. I have Gypsy in my blood.
"A child born from a half-breed is against Gypsy law. This is why I believe the boy Frost is here for you. To take you to their court." Grandma gave me a hard look at my growing paleness. "Heather, you cannot tell anyone about this. I'm trusting you."
"I'm going to throw up--"
Grandma threw a finger over her mouth. "Shh."
"No," whispered, my mind still set on the fact that I was a half breed Gypsy, when hours before I never knew Gypsy's even existed. "No-no-no-no-no." I shook my head and covered my mouth with my hands, suppressing the emotion building up in my throat. Everything she was saying was simply crazy! None of it could be true! My grandmother was going mad.
"I can hear movement outside the house," she interjected in a hushed tone. "Someone is now watching us."
A chill went down my back. "Him--who?"
Her dark grey eyes locked onto mine as she mouthed for the second time that day, Frost. Her eyes then jerked to the window behind me for a fraction of a second before locking back onto mine. Look.
It was then I could feel a pair of eyes on the back of my head, and my heart leaped violently in my chest. My mouth parted in confusion. I slowly started to turn around...
There was nobody in the window.
When I turned back around my grandma was staring at my necklace, which I had clutched at in fear when I turned around. Her eyes unwillingly went back to my face. "The Gypsy is following you for a reason and assume it is because you are a half-breed. Maybe if he knew that you haven't practice magic..."
"How do you even know about him!"
"We've crossed paths before," was all she said. "Gypsies never forget a scent from one another." I got up from the couch in fear of the creature with my grandmother's kind eyes. The room started to spin and I clutched the lump on my forehead. "There was nobody in that window. This isn't funny anymore, Grandma. Birthday tricks aren't my thing. Especially one so stupid! I'm honestly not in the mood--"
"This is not a trick," Grandma said in a low voice, getting up off the couch. "I am telling you the truth, Heather. And if you try and leave now, that Gypsy that has been following you will drag you in the forest kicking and screaming."
I squeezed my eyes shut at the headache forming behind my eyes, and suddenly a scene flashed before my eyes of a vivid blue butterfly fluttering its wings rapidly in the palm of two small hands.
"I can fix it."
My eyes burst open and the scene disappeared. "I don't understand," I said. "Why would he want me?" I stood behind the couch and braced myself to run towards the front door. I remembered how Frost had took the form of my crush and began to panic. Was I even talking to my grandmother? "I saw the Gypsy mimic me. It was literally as if I had a twin. I bet you could even be Frost."
My grandmother ignored my accusation with a light laugh. "No other Gypsy can come through this house with the amount of magic I casted on it."
I let out a maniacal laugh and grit my teeth together with anxiety. "Magic. That exists, too. Right. Of course! That makes perfectly logical sense!"
Her gray eyes suddenly lit to a brilliant white. "Magic has always existed. It is ignored by the humans, deemed unreal, and so it does not appear. Much like the Gypsies."
My eyes became two full moons in awe and wondered in all directions as a realization came to mind. "Frost appeared to me when I was younger," I whispered. "I told him...to go away and he disappeared." I hesitatingly parted my mouth and said my next statement. "I want to know more about how you became a Gypsy. The more I understand you the more I won't be afraid."
"Very well then," my Grandma said carefully. "Gypsy, just like the one following you, appeared to me in when I was hiking to the caves. I remember he wore the strangest clothes. His English was terrible. I thought he was some sort of wealthy speleologist, there to take pictures of the cave drawings...the precious art work that I had become obsessed with. It was my cave. No one would take it away from me." My grandma started to walk around the couch to me and halted, her eyes filling with emotion when I stepped away from her. "I didn't believe my eyes at first as the man came closer he was so flawless. The man then told me what he was, then proved it to me. Right before my eyes he created a layer of ice over the cave walls."
The Gypsy had created a layer of ice over the wall like my grandmother had thrown her hand out and froze the sliding door of her house. Everything was clicking into place, yet my mind was struggling to catch up. And breathing? Who needed it, anyways! "Ice. That's -- that's impossible..."
"Nothing is impossible," Grandma whispered, her eyes dimming until they returned back to normal. "Translating the cave drawings for him were simple. The Gypsy would read them to me. The creature was addictive. A real live Gypsy. He was exactly what I wanted to research! He told me stories of his world and his people, how beautiful he thought I was. We fell in love. He wanted me to come back with him, but I refused. I don't know how I did. Every single day I would go to that cave, hoping he would be there. He promised me a better life. A life where we could be together for an eternity--"
"This is impracticable," I murmured, staring out the window of the living room. I could see my car in her driveway. If I wanted to, I could have left right then and there. I couldn't. I couldn't leave because deep down I knew my grandmother was telling the truth. "That's impossible."
"Don't you wonder why there are no pictures of your mother's father?" My grandmother started walking towards me again and her eyes lit like white flames. Her skin turned to a pallid and tightened, and shockingly enough, a younger version of my grandmother stood before me once again. "Look at me and tell me you don't see our differences. I haven't aged a single day since I was turned."
My eyes grew wide with panic. "Wait, you said the Gypsy created ice. The book... it said..."
The rest of the believers followed Wen into the forest. His believers became the Helkaer's; the Icy one's, better known as Ice Walkers.
Pain throbbed on my forehead and once again, I was thrown into a distant memory. "I want ... your friendship. Be my friend and I will fix your butterfly so it will live to see many more days."
"You have to seal it with something, so I will know you will stick to your promise."
A kiss.
My hand clutched the necklace at my neck as I hit the side of my head with my hand. "I'm going absolutely mad!" My eyes tore to an escape. The front door. "I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here right now."
"I am still your grandmother. And I'm ordering you to calm down. At the moment"--she clamped her mouth shut for a moment and lowered her voice as she added-- "my explanations for you are limited, because we have ears through the walls. But I have so much more to tell you, darling. So much more to explain."
My lips were stiff as I said, "Frost. He's outside waiting for me right now. Isn't he? He's waiting for me to leave the house." I clutched the necklace at my chest even further. "When will he leave?"
"I'm unsure."
"What does he want from me?"
My grandma's eyes fixated to the necklace at my neck and her eyes grew wide. "Where did you get that necklace?"
I swallowed a lump in my throat. "A store."
"Tell me the truth, Heather. Where did you get that necklace?"
The blue haired boy...
I let out a shaky breath and forced myself to make eye contact with her. "I think he gave it to me when I was little...when we were both little. I--I remember..." I shut my eyes tightly and suddenly I could see the butterfly once again. "I made him a promise to heal a butterfly. I had to be his friend. What am I even saying?"
"That necklace you are wearing is dark magic." My grandma's expression shook and her voice was flat. "That necklace you wear around your neck... is connected with you. I can feel the magic from it, now. It's magic pulses to the beating heart in your chest--"
"The beating off my what?" My hand started to tremble against the snowflake in my palm. "Why would he give me anything..." That is connected with what he wants. Your heart.
I let go of the necklace and started to unclasp it."I'm getting this thing off of me and then I'm getting the hell out of here." The necklace I fumbled to unclasp quickly grew to an unbearably cold temperature and I was forced to pull my fingers away with a yelp. My hands had two burns as if I had touched ice for too long. "What...the...hell is going on!"
My grandma reached out to me. "Heather..."
I leaped back from her, panic seizing my entire body. You can't say in this house forever. Face him. "You, stay away from me! I don't...I don't know what to believe right now. I'm seventeen years old, I can handle myself. I'm going to leave this house and drive straight home, and you or...anyone else, is going to get in my way. Understand?"
"I can't just let you--"
"Don't worry about me. I'm not a little girl anymore, grandma! I have to make my own decisions." I let out a sigh at the hurt which flashed in my grandmother's eyes.
When a tear rolled down her face my heart clenched. The person in front of me, Gypsy or not, cared about me, and she was still my grandma. "You're getting more and more like your mother every day," she said softly. "Always looking for trouble and not knowing what you're getting into."
"Grandma...."
She wiped the tear off of her face and managed a shaky smile. "You're just making a big mistake, is all. I wish you would stay with me a bit longer. I have so much to say to you." After a long moment of silence and a flash of different emotions over her gray eyes, my grandma reluctantly nodded. "But you're right, you're not a little girl anymore, and this is way too much for you to handle in one day."
The reminder of what my Grandma had told me came with the nauseous sensation in my belly that I had been ignoring."It was definitely not something I was prepared for," I said.
"But please...be careful and call me when you get home?" Her eyes softened. "I love you."
This was usually the part where I would hug and kiss her. Instead, I gave her a tight expression and a murmured, "I love you, too."
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I had been speeding as fast as my mini could take me down the curved, cracked abandoned roads back to my house, when I realized how lost I was becoming. Nobody took those roads. In fact, I wasn't even sure why the roads were developed because past my grandmother's house was just...nothing. Just a giant forest.
As far as you know.
Night was coming and I was starting to panic. I had a full tank of gas, but knew there was little to no signal out in the woods: hence my grandmother's lack of technology besides a phone. I realized I hadn't flicked on my headlights all the way and the roads seemed to be getting darker and more narrow. I wanted to be home, not driving through a dark forest.
Tapping the wheel anxiously I made a turn onto another winding street and stepped on the gas. I felt betrayed and afraid at the same time. How could my grandma, the person I trusted with my life, keep something so huge away from me? Would she have ever told me the truth, had I not come over her house on that particular day? All I knew for sure was that I wasn't thinking straight when I told her I had to leave.
How could she let me go, when she had told me what was watching us from outside?
The walk from my grandmother's house to my car seemed rushed. I was afraid of what she had told me about Frost watching us, even it if wasn't true. Even if any of it wasn't true. By the time I had looked up to see my grandma's gray eyes peering through the screen of her front door, she was gone. She had always stood there and waved when I came to visit her.
Something was up. There was something she wasn't able to tell me and I could see it in her eyes as I concluded our bizarre conversation. In between all of the information she was dispensing I hadn't allowed her to say something that would give me a new point of view on my life, and what I have been missing in it all along.
My thoughts were so jumbled up that listening to some calming music was out of the question. Was I in some sort of dream, or was the reality I was facing too unrealistic from a normal girl's mind?
Abruptly, I was so lost in thought that I found myself turning onto another road. The turn was so jerky, so forced that it jerked me wide awake. My hands were freezing. I looked down at them in confusion for a moment, before frowning and stepping on the gas again.
Why did I make that turn when I have no idea where I am going? I wish she didn't live so--
My reaction time wasn't good enough. By the time I saw the patch of ice in the road I was going at least seventy miles per hour. I lost control of my brand new mini. The car swerved and panic struck my entire body.
What they said was true, my life flashed before my eyes. I thought of my mom and dad, how I wouldn't get to say goodbye. I thought about my grandma...how cruel I had been to her.
I tried to turn out of the skid when suddenly the car came which was so abrupt an instinctual scream let out from my throat and shut my eyes. So, maybe I wasn't the best in life-threatening situations.
Am I dead?
After a few minutes I pinched myself. I could feel it.
Panting and hoping my heart rate would descend, I slowly pried my eyes opened. My headlights were unforgiving on the figure at the head of my vehicle. With two hands gripping the car with support, the man's trembling body shook the entire vehicle. His head hung low and his right hand clutched the side body. His one shoulder dipped slightly with a bag. His longish, dark black hair was completely damp and covered his eyes.
My palm hit the horn before I could stop myself.
When the man lifted his head, startled, and staggered back with a hiss, a mouthful of bright white fangs were revealed in his mouth. He struggled to stay upright after he staggered and blinked vigorously. I fell back in my seat and another scream lodged in my throat. The man's ears twitched wildly underneath his hair, and his head cocked to the left as his dark eyes stared widely at the base of the car.
I beeped once more. The creature hissed again and kicked one of the headlights. "Hey! Don't touch my mini!" I screamed.
Those dark eyes squinted through the windshield at me and I could have sworn I heard a pin could have dropped inside my car and I would have heard it I was so afraid.
His mouth parted. Dark blue eyes pierced through the glass between us as continued to gaze curiously through my windshield. Water dripped off his face in quick droplets.
My hand clutched the necklace at my neck as air came out in puffs from my mouth. The snowflake was ice cold and seemed to pulse like a jackhammer.
Just like my heart.
I switched on the headlights again and the man became fixated with the lights once again. The man's retinas shrunk to a microscopic size as he came closer, observing the light from my car. I found myself flicking on the parking lights, and I had never seen someone become so absolutely still. He was afraid of the headlights.
It was then my brain registered what my eyes were really seeing. The thing in front of my car was not a man, it was a Gypsy. The perfection of it was obvious -- it had absolutely no flaws what's-so-ever. The length of his arms and legs were unnatural, but fit his size, and his clothing was...odd.
The Gypsy was pale, too. Too pale.
But he's so beautiful...
Unexpectedly, the Gypsy pulled his hand away from his side. It was then I could see the dark stain which they had been covering. It was injured...he was injured, and the water in his hair and face, I realized, was sweat. When it brought its hand to its face, it dripped with dark purple liquid. Within moments his eyes drooped, fluttered, then shut entirely, and the Gypsy fell forward onto the car, his solid weight tipping my mini.
I had never pulled my car into park and undone my seatbelt so fast in my life.
"This is not happening. Another Gypsy?" I put a hand over my mouth and tried to figure out a way to help the creature against my car. Could I take them home? To the hospital? What would my parents think if they saw this guy? How old was he, anyways? "This is not happening...Oh, don't do that. Don't moan. Stop that...:
The Gypsy struggled to stay on the hood of the car and not slide onto the road. When I saw him slide a few more inches down I hurried over and grabbed onto his waist. I felt the warmth underneath his strange thick, baggy clothes. The Gypsy lifted himself up a few more inches. His weight was much too heavy for me and what he wore was somewhat slippery, so I started to take off his jacket. That was when felt something cool and metal brush against my hand and froze. I saw the hilt of a large sword around his belt which was covered by his carrying bag.
A sword? I've seen that kind of golden hilt before...
I was becoming a lot more nervous. "W-w-what did you say?"
I took off his jacket completely and my eyes widened at the indents at the back of his shirt. Straps underneath his shirt.. I lifted it up slightly in curiosity and there were weapons all tied with leather to his back. Knives, arrows, small bottles of liquid. I tried to ignore the fact that his back was entirely muscle and put it back down.The Gypsy turned over with a murmur, and let out a rumbling noise. The dark stain on his chest was growing wider every second.
"Nwalmaer's. Tormenters," he whispered. "They...are coming and I am poisoned. Help me." The Gypsy's eyelids were slightly lowered and he was facing away from the light, but I could feel his gaze on me as I tried to yank him upwards. For someone who wasn't exactly a RAW wrestler on television, he was pretty much the weight of a boulder.
"I need to try and get service. You need medical attention." The tremble in my voice had to be noticeable. He had to know how afraid I was. "Come on. Help me get you up."
He wasn't even trying to get up, I realized. He was just...staring at me. Why was he giving up? Was this some sort of pedophile trying to pick up girls at the side of the street? There were so many conclusions to why the guy was staring at me. "Can you move at all?" I inquired a little nastier then intended, staring at the dark purple liquid seeping from his chest.
My jaw dropped at the musical, deep resounding voice of the injured Gypsy. "No...hos...pital," he murmured the word in a throaty, eccentric accent. "They cannot see me."
Oh....boy... He knows that I know!
"Then how the hell can I see you? I somehow find it hard to believe I should trust someone who's bleeding purple."
"You believe," he murmured in a low voice which was filled with awe. "You can see me."
"Yes, I can see..."
It was then the Gypsy slowly began to sit up from the car, a lot less shaky then I thought he would. When he was about halfway up the height difference between us started to become greater, and greater, until finally I started to shrink backwards. I was moving away from him so fast that tripped over my own shoes.
His hand shot out and grabbed at my arm before I fell. I winced at how hot it was. He had saved me from falling. The Gypsy had saved me from falling. Shouldn't that have been against their nature, or something?
My heart raced in my chest. Before I could say anything to thank him, the Gypsy leaned forward as if to embrace me. No. It was no hug, he was falling again and I holding his crushing weight. "Jesus," I breathed out. "I can't just leave you out here. Let's get you in the car before I decide to do anything else with you."
Holding a full grown person up, let alone a man, was nearly impossible. He fell against the back passenger door as I opened the front one and let out soft groans. I had taken his jacket, twisted it, and tied it somewhat around his chest to stop the bleeding. The entire process was not fun.
When I opened the door and saw the Gypsy cringe, I was dreadfully aware of how unfamiliar he was with a vehicle. "I can't believe I'm doing this." Carefully, I managed to get him somewhat inside the vehicle, before I literally shoved him with my foot and threw his bag in after him.
"Sorry," I said once I got into the car, embarrassed of how rough I was shoved him with my foot. "I got this mini for my birthday and that purple stuff gets anywhere on the seat my parents will kill me."
I heard him say something once again. It didn't sound English. The Gypsy had curled himself against the window, his dark hair still covering his face and his breaths in shallow pants.
Once I sat in the call reality hit me like a punch in the face. I turned to passenger in my car and let out a blood curdling scream. "What the hell!"
He squeezed his eyes tightly together. "Please...do not yell so loudly."
"Oh my...I'm sitting in the car with a Gypsy. I let a Gypsy into my car!"
"Yes."
"And you're bleeding."
"Yes."
I smacked myself in the forehead. "Why did I let you in my car?"
"I made you," he admitted in a soft voice. "I cannot heal myself, I am too weak and need your help."
The question which lingered in the darkest corners of my mind began to throb worse than the side of my head as I started the car. "You used put the ice patch the road and steered my vehicle towards you," I said quickly. "I think you're the one that got me lost, too. I don't know how you did, but I know that you did." I managed to inhale a delicious amount of oxygen into my lungs that I wasn't allowing in before. "I don't know what to do with you, now that you're in the car. I don't even know why I let you in the car to begin with."
"You have a good heart," he said. "Pure. It was simple to manipulate you, really..."
"I shouldn't be driving you to my house. I know I shouldn't."
The Gypsy shifted and let out a painful groan. "Heather. Please...hurry..."
I slammed on the breaks and the dark Gypsy almost hit the dashboard. "How in the world do you know my...?" I flicked on the light in the car and the Gypsy flinched and threw his gaze in my direction. One of his eyes was covered by his hair, the other was unmasked. The Gypsies pupils had grown microscopic again. He looked like an animal. The color of his eye seemed to change as I stared at it. They were a deep blue like the color of the ocean at night. I hadn't recognized him at first because of his hair color, but it was obvious now that we were up close. The name which stuck on my tongue with effort finally broke free. "Blue."
The dark surrounding forest of the vehicle clung to the Gypsy's face. His hand shakily reaching out and brushing shoulder and drifted over to the neckline of my shirt. His fingers were long and reminded me of spiders legs. Before I could shove him away, the Gypsy pulled at the chain around my neck until the small snowflake necklace came out from under the collar. I felt his scolding hot skin brush against mine and shivered.
Gooseflesh spread throughout my body as he said, "I will not harm you, Heather. You have my word."
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