Follow the call of the wild; don't turn away,
The whispers
in the breeze will lead you here,
I am the answer, to the question
you pray;
To find me you must defeat your fear.
There, beyond the weeping willows,
Across the ripples of the
streaming crystal lake,
Beneath the forest hollows;
Through the
gold coated roots that do a portal make.
Step lightly over the one-footed bridge,
Beware the luring
nymphs down below,
Around the honey-bush and past the wooden
ridge;
Into the water - where the moon-tide flows.
Keep your feet light, your breath quiet,
Listen carefully
for the morning cry three,
And when you hear it...
You'll
find me.
Cat-tilted, ocean-green eyes lifted from the delicate magnolia
scented paper, to survey the familiar stuffed toys cuddled together
on a rose-printed bed. Pen in hand became still as the slender young
girl tilted her head slightly, listening.
A few breaths later,
the definite sound of a rogue rooster called out. She counted the
cries in her mind. One. Two. And three. Her gaze shifted from the bed
to rest on the pale pink digital clock she'd gotten from her
grandparents last Christmas. 6:08 AM showed red back at her through
the dimness of the room. With a sigh, she placed the pen down on her
desk and leaned back in the high-back chair, stretching her legs as
she gently rubbed stiff neck muscles.
Moving house was nothing new to her. For all her seventeen years of
life, Zoe Rudolfse had always been labelled 'the new girl'. The
new girl at school; the new girl at work; and when her parents
decided to home-school her she earned the title of the new girl down
the street.
She was lucky she'd managed to convince her
parents to put her back in school after this last move. It would
guarantee her at the very least one year of finding her feet. If she
could find a part-time job and earn enough to sustain herself, she
wouldn't need to pack up her life and move when her parents would
decide it was time for 'a change'. She needed to start thinking
about college, and life after high school.
Zoe turned her head toward the half-open window in her room. Dawn
broke across the night sky in shades of pretty blue. A breeze drifted
inside, lightly stirring her curtains. The sounds of scuttling little
feet were clear in the quiet of the morning hours. Rats, Zoe
thought, tilting her head up to gaze up at the pale ceiling. She
narrowed her eyes, watching and listening.
Moving from town to
town, and a couple of times from continent to continent, wasn't a
problem for Zoe. Meeting new people, getting lost, and wondering
whether she'll make any friends every time, wasn't what always
winded her up and turned her into a bundle of nerves. New places were
interesting. People were easy to interact with. What Zoe hated about
moving was the new house – and the new entities she would come
across.
She followed the sound of the faint scuttling with her eyes. A
floorboard creaked somewhere down the darkened hallway. The wind
picked up outside, battering against the walls of the house and
blowing her curtains in. The house groaned in response; another
floorboard creaked, the fridge picked up its humming in the kitchen
down the hallway.
Her physique didn't relax until she heard the
faint sounds of scratching and gnawing in the corner of the room.
Stupid rats. Zoe glanced down at the poem in front of her for a
moment. If she kept a diary, she would probably be writing in it
right now, bashing herself for being so... weird. She didn't
understand her need to write down where she was. She always
restrained herself from folding these poems into a paper jet and
letting it fly out the window. Chances were it would crash right
outside their yard, and her parents would find it. It was far too
humiliating to risk, so she carefully slid the slip of paper into the
folder where she kept all her other poems. Tuck it away, along
with all my other little fantasies, Zoe thought.
The idea of some part of her calling out to something – or someone
– was crazy. It's just because you haven't found a place
where you feel you belong yet. Her mother's words ran through
her mind again, and Zoe agreed wholeheartedly. It was true – of
course she'd made lots of friends, and she loved some of the towns
where they'd stayed before. But the sense of belonging had evaded
her. She probably wouldn't recognize it even if it hit her smack in
the face, Zoe thought bitterly. Still, she couldn't explain away
the feeling that someone was looking for her.
Zoe turned
off her desk lamp, and tiptoed toward her door. She stood in the
doorway, and cautiously peeked her head out. The moonlight coated
everything in beautiful pale light; like the sun during the day, only
this light was colder and softer somehow. Zoe's fascination and
teasing about her parents being blind as bats in the dark had fizzled
out to something oddly similar to fear in recent years. Her reasoning
that it was just their eyesight going bad at night, was deflated when
she discovered her friends having the same condition at a random
slumber party. It wasn't until that party took place when Zoe had
to admit the truth to herself; that she was more different to
everybody else than she'd realized.
The hallway wasn't empty. She felt her body go stiff for a moment,
her eyes going wide when she noted the blurry shadow against one of
the walls. It was watching her with eyes as red as rubies, glowering
back at her. Her own gaze narrowed back at it. She retreated into her
room, closing her door firmly but quietly behind her. The window bunk
was surprisingly comfy, and Zoe hugged one of the throw pillows to
her chest as she curled up onto it, detachedly watching the slow
sunrise outside.
Stupid shadow people, Zoe thought. They
were a familiar sight to her as she'd been surrounded by them since
she was a little child. They never hurt her, and she didn't trust
to attempt to communicate with them either. She somehow knew that
they were following her for a reason, but she didn't want to know
what it was. Ignorance is bliss, Zoe chided herself jokingly.
They weren't the entities that she was afraid of.
What she was afraid of was the entities that would be called and
welcomed into their home by her mother. Zoe never told her mother
how much it bothered her that she'd chosen to be a medium as a
career. Her mother loved helping the living move on and find closure;
Zoe didn't want to take that purpose away from her.
Of course,
Mrs Rudolfse had been delighted when it was discovered that Zoe was
as sensitive to 'those passed over' as she was, and since then
her mother had been giving her tips and advice on how to 'deal'
with it. But then, of course, Zoe hadn't corrected her mother. She
wasn't clairvoyant, that was a certainty now. She simply saw the
world differently from everybody else; from being able to see at
night as though it was clear as day, to watching guardian angels
follow oblivious people around.
It would be another two days before Mrs Rudolfse saw her first
clients in the new town. Two days for her to tune into the passed
entities. Zoe knew she would see them sooner, if not that very day
then the next. They would flock to their house, and Zoe would pretend
not to see them, or hear them, or smell them, or feel them. She had
to put up the facade of oblivion, because things often turned very
ugly when the entities recognized that she was able to interact with
them.
Zoe sighed softly as the sky lightened outside. The facade
of being as normal as everybody else was going to be tricky, as
always. She'll be perceived as intriguing and interesting at school
that day. She'll be called eccentric once it came about how much
she'd 'travelled'. She'll be called different because of her
mother's career choice. It didn't take a rocket scientist to
figure out what she'd be labelled if her secret got out.
An
outcast.
Ooo888ooO
A/N: I'll put my disclaimer for the fic in here so I can have that done and dusted. The Shadow World, Julian, Jenny, and any of the other FG characters, and the concept of the FG, is copyright property of L.J. Smith. The plot, and all other characters, belong to me. I got inspired to write this a while ago. It branches off from my trilogy fics, the third one in particular, if you're interested in getting a little bit more background about why I'm writing this fic. Otherwise, it's not necessary to read my other fics, you shouldn't be lost reading this as a stand-alone. The poem is copyright of Chantelle Smith, so please don't cross any lines and illegally make use of it.