Chapter 1—Dreams
It was a dream.
How did I know it was a dream? My hair was down. I never wear my hair down. Never. Especially when I'm walking through a forest. Ugh, that was almost the worst part. I was walking through a forest, my hair was down, and it was cold. Pushing a few branches out of the way, I stepped over some ferns and purposely made my way through the forest, having no actual idea of where it was I was heading.
"Renesme," whispered a child's voice from behind me. I spun around, my hair flying in slow motion like in the movies.
"Renesme," whispered the voice again, this time sounding creepier. I spun again as something whooshed behind me, laughing manically. My breathing got faster as the adrenaline kicked in.
"Renesme!" giggled the insane, manically creepy child's voice. I turned around again, my movements blurring.
"Renesme!" shrieked the creepy child's voice. "Renesme! Renesme! RENESME!" I stumbled backwards, then turned around and fled, the creepy voice following me, taunting me with my own name. I pushed my way through the forest now, the air steadily freezing. I skidded to stop on the fringe. I hid beneath a large pine, its bulky boughs obscuring my view. Pushing them aside, I walked past many a cloaked figure, only to stop in the very front.
The scene was full of people, although it was still empty before my eyes. Wolves and vampyres alike lined the edges of it, their shapes blurring before me. The harder I tried to see them, the blurrier they became, some disappearing like smoke. Two figures, however stood out sharply as they walked towards me slowly. In a movie, slow motion has the dramatic effect to take your breath away, or to give you more time to examine what is on the screen in front of you. For me, it gave me longer time to study these approaching figures.
One of the figures, the one walking, had no shirt on, though the air was frigid. Steam seemed to hiss from his shoulders and arms as he passed through the cold. His head was down, hiding his face from my view. His golden skin was taut with stress, and his hold was tight around the smaller person in his arms.
The second figure, the smaller person, was wrapped in an Indian blanket to protect her from the cold. One of her tiny hands was clutched around the corner of a blanket. The small corner was pressed against her cheek. Her beautiful bronze ringlets brushed her shoulders in time with the man's gait. Her cheeks were flushed pink and her milk-chocolate brown eyes gazed intently at me, as if already knowing who I was.
They stopped in front of me, the man standing at least a foot taller than I. His hold tightened, and he looked like he would bolt at any second. The small girl unwrapped her arm and hand, the one clutching the corner of the blanket, and extended it towards me. The man gripped her tighter, and he started to quiver as she placed the corner of the blanket and her hand on my face. With her fingers spread out, the girl pressed her palm into my cheek, the soft blanket providing a cushion against my cold skin. I closed my eyes as soft snow began to fall quietly, catching in the girls ringlets and melting against the man's skin.
"Renesme, where are you?" asked the girl in my thoughts. I opened my eyes slowly, staring into her wonderful eyes. My eyes slid from her eyes to her neck. I gazed at the stunning woven twine and bead necklace hanging there. The center charm was hard to see, for it was still fuzzy, but it began to take shape before my eyes. Smoke seemed to swirl around it as it took shape. I reached up and stroked the smoky figure and it materialized underneath my fingers.
It was a wooden wolf.
"No," I whispered snatching my hand away. A wind rushed through, swirling the snow and flinging my hair into my face. It stirred the girl's ringlets, obscuring her face. Slowly, she and the man began to disappear, dissolving into smoke.
"No," I said, louder this time, but the wind snatched that away too. Before the girl dissolved completely into the blackness that now engulfed the scene, I studied her quickly. Her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, that necklace!
"No!" I yelled now, backpedaling and flailing madly. I realized then what I was looking at. A younger version of me, one I had never seen before.
"NO!" I screeched, falling backwards. The wind became ferocious now, stealing my words before they left my mouth. The blackness began to press in on me, pushing down harshly, filling my every pore with it nothingness.
Red eyes faded out of the blackness, closely followed by a pale man dressed entirely in a red tinged black suit. The paleness of his skin contrasted sharply with his suit and his eyes. The wind did not touch, but it kept my hair flying around my head and my clothes got caught in the turmoil as well. The snow that I had fallen on was now a wet slush.
"Oh Renesme," said the man quietly, clasping his hands in front of him. Lunacy danced behind his red eyes as he studied me. I couldn't move. I was frozen by the force he had not exerted.
"Renesme," taunted the creepy child's voice again, giggling ludicrously around me. "We're coming Renesme. We're coming," promised the creepy voice, as the man before me disappeared into the blackness.
I sat bolt upright, panting a little in my bed. Leaning forward, breathing in and out slowly like Alice had shown me, I calmed my wildly beating heart. Sitting up straighter, I slid smoothly out from underneath my quilt. I stood up, stroking the same Indian blanket from the dream. Still clutched in my white hand was the same blanket the little girl had pressed to my cheek. I bundled it in my arms and carefully put it back underneath the quilt. I stood up, brushing a few dust molecules from the dream catcher that hung above my bed.
I left my room, shutting the door quietly behind me. I walked down the spiraling steps slowly, pondering what I had just dreamed.
"Renesme!" chirped a musical voice as I descended the last few steps. "Happy birthday!"
"Alice," I mumbled as my aunt, Alice, flitted in front of me, hugging me tightly. "My birthday's not till tomorrow."
"It is tomorrow silly," she said, pulling my hair into a loose ponytail. "Come, you must celebrate!"
"Dad," I whined as Alice dragged me into the kitchen.
"I can't protect you here," said my father, Edward. "At least, not when Alice is involved."
"Exactly," said Alice, sitting me down at the kitchen table. "So you will be happy, at least until a release you."
"It's three a.m.," I pointed out. "Any sane family would tell me to go to bed."
"Then I guess we're not sane," retorted my mother from behind me, setting a glass of red liquid in front of me. She kissed the top of my head. "Happy fifth birthday, or sixteenth. Either one."
"Where's everyone else?" I asked, taking a large draught from the glass.
"Out getting your presents," said Edward, ruffling my hair and making it fall out of the loose ponytail.
"At three a.m.?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Well, time's different across the ocean," replied Edward. I rolled my eyes. The front door opened and closed to fast for any normal human ears to hear. But then again, none of us in the room were human. Well, entirely human anyways.
"Happy b-day, Nessie!" exclaimed Emmet, my over exuberant uncle. He picked me up and swung me around. When he put me down, his sometimes wife, sometimes girlfriend, and sometime fiancée, Rosalie, hugged me. Alice's sometimes husband, sometimes boyfriend, and sometimes fiancée, Jasper, entered the room, his hands crossed behind his back.
"Happy birthday," he whispered, bowing to me. I blushed, filling my already pink cheeks with a deep blush.
"Normally, at sixteen, there would be a ball to introduce you to all the young men who would be clamoring for your hand," he continued, extending his hand to me and lifting me out of the chair.
"But times have changed, Jasper," said Emmet, wrapping his arms around Rosalie's waist. "She doesn't need Edward's permission to date anybody, and she certainly does not need an escort when she goes out."
"Oh stop it, Emmet," I sighed. "Jasper's just being a very nice Southern gentlemen," I twanged an accent at the last part. "Besides," I continued in my perfect imitation of Scarlett O'Hara, "it would be hard for me to choose who would escort me everywhere."
"Just split the difference and let me escort you," said Carlisle as he pulled me into a one armed hug.
"Why, Mr. Cullen, I do believe you are the handsomest fellow I have ever met," I gushed. Everyone laughed at my antics.
"It's too bad then, because Mr. Cullen is my handsomest fellow," interjected my grandmother, Esme, as she wrapped her arms around Carlisle's waist.
"My father will just have to escort me," I huffed, ducking under Edward's arm. "Seems all the good lookin' fellows are taken."
"Maybe you should go back to bed," said Bella, coming to stand on the other side of me. My thoughts flitted back to my dream, and I was glad my bare skin was only touching their clothes.
I shook my head, "No. I don't feel like it."
"Well then, let's hunt," whispered Edward in my ear. Smiling, he pulled Bella and me out of the front door onto the still dewy grass. I waited as my parents pulled off their shoes and socks. Pulling my hair into a ponytail, I took off into the forest surrounding the house, my parents close at my heels.