Endless thanks, as always, to Annette (annetteinoz) and Liz (lizf22) for extreme patience and beta magic, and thanks also to Alby Mangroves for help with this chapter (and for lots and lots of other stuff too).
The technology baffles me, so Liz put everything together for a banner for Prism (thanks so much to Divine Inspiration for making!) which can be found on my profile.
Stephenie Meyer owns them.
Thanks so much for reading!
~~~ Bella ~~~
If there is a moon at all tonight, its light is hidden behind a veil of clouds. Not even the jagged line where the forest meets the sky is visible in the darkness. There are only the headlights leading us home, and the dashboard lights within. Their dim glow casts a soft green light on our faces, my mother's creased with worry and mine, burning with anger.
Charlie is spending the night at the Reservation, with Billy. They have decided to go hunting in the forest tomorrow and want an early start. At least, that's the story my mother told me.
After being dragged out to La Push straight from school by my parents, I sat with Emily on Billy's front porch for hours. Renee and Charlie left to look for Billy, speeding off without me.
I sat there with Emily, her mood as pensive as mine, rocking slowly in a wicker chair. She didn't know when Jake would be home, she said, her tone not inviting further questions. I wondered, as I waited, if there was some kind of trouble between them, but Emily wasn't talking, and I wasn't asking.
The silence wore on.
Eventually, we went to the store in La Push to buy some things for dinner, and that's where it happened.
An old man waited, leaning heavily on the arm of his younger companion, while she talked to the man behind the counter. The old man tugged at the lady's arm after a few moments, impatient.
"Come on, Elizabeth," he said, gruffly. "I want to get home."
The woman turned to him, kissed his cheek and cupped his face in her hands. "Always so impatient," she said, "since the day we got married."
My loud gasp drew their attention, and they turned to me, their dual expressions of mild curiosity turning, inexplicably, to wide-eyed recognition. I'd never seen them before in my life.
Mike's face by the fire on the beach flashed briefly before my eyes, with his earnest voice and his tall tales about old men and their younger widows.
The old man's face lit up as he looked at me.
"Isabella Swan," he said. He reached a trembling hand toward me, as though to touch my face, but his wife pulled him gently away. She led him slowly to the door, a sweet wistfulness lighting his lined face, as he gazed over his shoulder at me.
"Thank you," he mouthed, as he turned away.
I wheeled on Emily as the bell over the door rang their departure.
"Emily, what just happened?"
But she just shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears, saying nothing in reply.
"I know there's something about your tribe," I said, "and I know that somehow, it involves me. Please, don't tell me it doesn't. You have to tell me what's going on."
There was no answer for the longest moment until, finally, she spoke.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered. "There's nothing going on here, Bella. Nothing at all."
~~~ O ~~~
A tinderbox was lit inside me in that store, and by the time Renee came back to Billy's house to pick me up, I was a seething mass of rage and fury, a hot bed of resentment and outrage.
The trail of lies is almost visible as we follow the winding road between La Push and Forks, and I have finally had enough of following it.
I want answers.
These unfamiliar feelings seem, at once, to be the most grown-up and the most childish I've ever had.
A phrase from a book pops unbidden into my head, something that resonated when I read it and has stayed with me since; a question that might help me find a way out of this maze of confusion.
What would the wise woman do?
Wisdom is far beyond me, but womanhood? That must surely be within my reach.
Where is the dividing line between girlhood and womanhood? Is it just the passing of the years, the gathering of certain experiences, or is there a moment, an attitude, a feeling?
My father, the Quileute, childhood, adulthood; these separate worlds, each with their secrets and mysteries, are colliding and crashing around me.
I've skulked around, cowed and bewildered, feeling like a child who has no right to intrude in the secret world of grown-ups. It's as though there is a walled garden where the adults gather, sharing secrets I am too young to hear. I stand hopelessly on the other side while they whisper behind their hands.
Whatever you do, don't tell Bella.
But it's not just the secrets, for their own sakes, that I long for. My parents have a life together that is separate to me. They share things that I'm not a part of. The Quileute do too. I understand that. I want only the knowledge that I have a right to, only the fragments of their whispered words that should be mine to know.
More than anything, though, it's the intimacy that revealing those secrets, that their very telling, would mean. I don't want to be alone on the other side of the wall anymore.
This collision of thought and feeling seems impenetrable, but I try to distil some purpose from the jumble. Tantrums and impetuousness are childish, I know that much, so I concentrate on breathing slow and deep, calming myself.
When I feel as though I have a tenuous hold on my emotions, I pause to consider what it is that's more important; the mysteries of the Quileute or what's happening in my own home?
The answer to that question at least, is easy.
~~~ O ~~~
My mother is distant and remote, her eyes darting left and right, probing the darkness on the winding road out of La Push.
"Mom," I say, "can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Not now, Bella," she says. "Please, not now."
Her offhand tone fuels the fire and I wait a moment, until it burns off a little. I feel as though I'm standing on the precipice, vertiginous and swaying, but ready to take the leap. I square my shoulders and raise my chin.
"I know you have something on your mind, but so do I, and I'd like to talk about it now, please."
She glances at me, scanning my face warily.
"OK," she says, reluctantly, "if it can't wait."
"What I want to know is, should I get settled here?"
"What?" she says. I have her full attention now, the frown of concern clear on her face, even in the dim half-light.
"I know what's going on," I say.
"What do you mean, Bella? You know what's going on?"
"I think that my father has relapsed, and I want to know if you're going to leave him again."
Her head snaps up and she stares at me, wide eyed.
"What, Bella? Relapsed?"
"I've seen his arms, Mom. I've seen the scars."
"You've seen...," she says faintly. "When did you see his arms?"
"You were dancing in the living room late one night. Neil Young?"
"I remember," she says. "Our song. You saw?"
"You left him all those years ago because of the drugs, didn't you? And we came back here now because he's off them. Billy came to see you last summer. He came to convince you, didn't he, that Charlie was OK."
My voice rises higher with every word, and Renee pulls the car over by the side of the road, the gravel crunching under the tires.
I seem to have lost her again, her attention fixed outside the car.
She stares into the forest, as though looking for something hidden in the darkness. A low howl close by breaks the silence, and Renee shudders, sighs, and turns to me.
"That's what's been happening, isn't it?" I say. "He's back on them and he's staying at the Reservation so Billy can help him."
"You have it all wrong," she says, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "Those scars aren't what you think they are."
"They're not needle marks?"
"Your father isn't on drugs, Bella. He's never taken a drug in his life. He won't even take a painkiller when he has a headache."
"Well, what then? I saw those scars." The tears are coming now, hot humiliation and salty frustration, streaming down my face. "Please, Mom," I plead. "Please."
She reaches a hand across to soothe me, but I pull away, far away, until I'm nothing but a bitter ball of misery, hunched in the corner. She sighs.
"Do you remember in Phoenix, when I told you that your father and I wanted to live together again, that we wanted us all to live here together?"
"Of course I remember. You asked me if I would be okay with that."
"Yes."
"And I didn't ask you why. I let you have your privacy. I didn't intrude. But I didn't know it was something like this." Hysteria frays at the edge of every word, pulling me apart, thread by thread, until I'm completely undone. "It's why you couldn't be together, isn't it? All that time I thought he didn't want you, I thought he didn't want us, but he did, he did want us. He just wanted the drugs more."
"No!" The word rips through the air toward me like a blow, pushing my head back and stealing my breath. The sobs burst from me, powerful and uncontrolled. This time I don't pull away from my mother's touch.
Renee hushes me and rocks me, just as she did when I was the little girl I seem to have become again. When the tears finally run dry, she smoothes the hair gently away from my eyes.
"Bella, you must believe me when I tell you that those scars aren't from drugs."
"But you won't tell me what they are from," I whisper.
"No, I won't."
"Because you think I can't handle it, because you think I'm too young."
"No, Bella, it's not about that. It's about what's best for you. It's not about age or maturity." She wipes the tears from my cheeks and continues in that same slow, gentle voice, as though she's speaking to someone very young. "Innocence has nothing to do with those things."
"But you get to decide," I say, my voice hoarse in the darkness. "You and Dad, Emily and Jake. Everybody else gets to decide what's best for me."
She doesn't reply, and so I remain, alone on the other side of the wall.
~~~ O ~~~
My mother stands at the kitchen sink, her hand white-knuckled on the tap, filling the kettle. She peers out the window, searching the trees beyond the yard, as though listening for something, cursing softly when the kettle overflows. She startles when I take it gently from her hand.
Last night, when I couldn't sleep again, I pulled the song up on You Tube, the one they'd been dancing to that night.
The video begins with a full moon hanging above a tree in a cloudless sky, before the camera pans down to a parking lot outside a bar. It could easily be Forks and the truck parked in the corner could be mine, but it was the white words that appeared on the screen that caught my eye.
Neil Young
Harvest Moon
1993
1993. I was six years old when that song was recorded.
There's no rain again this morning and the radio stands silent on the kitchen bench. There's nothing to muffle the too-loud sounds of water sloshing and teaspoons clanking as I make tea for us both.
I sip my tea and Renee stares into hers. She rises suddenly, twitching at the curtain, staring out the window to the woods beyond.
A thought came to me last night as I listened to that song, stealthy and treacherous. An idea, an explanation, a possibility.
I passed the night rolling that thought, and all it could mean, around and around and around. I examined if from every angle, as though it was a rare gem, cold in my palm. I looked at it from this angle and that, held it up to the light, trying to find a crack or a flaw.
There weren't any.
Thousands of miles separated my parents during the long years of their estrangement, geographical barriers of distance and time. And in all that time, in seventeen years, neither of them ever remarried or even dated, neither moved on from the other.
How many couples who live at different ends of the country, who've been separated for six years, whose marriage is over, discover "their song"?
It was only ever geography that separated them.
"Mom," I say and she startles again, turning to me.
"Bella?" There's fear in her eyes. She's afraid I'm going to demand answers again, answers she won't give.
But, no, it's not that.
It's worse than that.
"I just -," I stammer, so I pause for a moment. I want to be strong when I say this. I wait, a moment too long, but when I do speak, the words come firm and clear.
"Do you remember that talk we had about love, years ago in Phoenix?" She looks mystified.
"You told me what you thought love is, that real love, true love, is all about honesty and trust. You told me that with those two things, comes dignity, and with dignity, love flourishes."
"I remember now," she says, eyeing me warily.
"You told me all that," I say. "You did." She nods. "And I believed what you said. I still do."
She nods again.
I take a deep breath, filling my lungs and holding them full for a few beats. The moment of silence gathers, adding weight to an atmosphere so heavy with expectation, that it feels hard to let the breath out.
But I do. I exhale, and the words come, carried on that single breath across the distance between us, wider than I ever thought it could be. The words, cold and brutal, deliver the truth.
"You leave me with no dignity, Mom."
She opens her mouth to speak, but I hold up a hand. I need to get this out now, before my courage fades.
"I don't know what's wrong with my father. You've chosen not to tell me and I won't ask again. I don't want to ever feel that young and foolish again. I just – I thought you should know that."
Again she begins to speak, and I shake my head.
"There's something else, too." I swallow heavily, afraid but sure of myself, too. I know I'm right this time. "I just wanted to tell you that I know that you and my father were really together all that time in Phoenix, all those years when I thought you were apart. I know that now."
"I thought you might want to know that," I say, with a shrug. "That I know. One less thing for you to hide from me. One less thing to feel guilty about."
"Oh, Bella," is all she says, and I go to her, holding her, while she cries it out, just as she did for me last night.
I feel cold, though, and remote to her misery, not engaged in it. It's not of my making.
I want to tell her that I'm sorry for doing this to her, for upsetting her like this. I want to tell her that I don't really mean it. I want to tell her that it's OK, that I understand.
But I don't.
Those words would be lies and so I leave her in silence, with her dignity intact.
~~~ O ~~~
I run my fingers along the spines of the books in piles along the wall in the living room, some lined and cracked with use, others smooth and untouched. The book isn't there. I sit back on my heels, thinking.
I hit the internet hard this morning, searching for answers. All I've ended up with is a mass of confusing, inconclusive theories, just as I thought I would.
Depending on which link I clicked, the Quileute have a genetic defect that causes their early deaths, or their diet, consisting primarily of fish and seafood, leads to Minamata Disease caused by mercury poisoning, or any one of a hundred other theories.
There was even a webpage concluding that the Quileute, who, according to their legends are descended from wolves, can actually morph into these animals at will. The act of doing this causes such stress on their bodies, that they age prematurely and die.
I gave up and closed my laptop after reading that one.
Renee is on the phone in the kitchen now, chewing her nails as she listens intently. I take a chance and climb the stairs two at a time, hesitate for a moment at the door, and go in.
I've haven't really been in this room before. Once briefly the day we got here, with Renee tugging my hand in a burst of manic happiness, dragging me all over the house and yard. My parents' bedroom has a different mood to the rest of the house. It seems quieter somehow, more still than the other rooms.
The knowledge that I shouldn't be in here, that Charlie and Renee wouldn't like it and that I'm here anyway, surprises and frightens me.
The book is on a shelf in Renee's nightstand, wedged between a glossy book on French country interiors and another on the history of textiles in Japan. It's thicker than I remember, heavier, and I'd be worried Renee might notice it missing if she wasn't so distracted.
My expectation of this book providing any rational, conclusive answers is low, but I don't know where else to look.
When I open it in my bedroom, with the door firmly closed behind me, a piece of paper drifts to the floor. The drawing is just as I remember it. The two old women sit with their heads together, stitching at the fabric on their knees, just like the ladies at the Reservation that day.
I put the drawing on my desk and leaf through the book.
There are pages of pictures and text on the history of the Quileute tribe and their culture and legends, everything anyone could possibly want to know about this ancient tribe, but nowhere does it mention the accelerated ageing that Mike spoke of by the fire.
I turn to the front of the book and under the Index there is a heading: Unexplained Deaths of Quileute Men. I'm not sure how I could have missed that section but when I try to find the pages, they're not there. They've been torn, roughly, from the book.
There aren't any bookstores in Forks and, with no credit card of my own, ordering online isn't an option.
There's only one way.
It's time for a visit to Port Angeles.
~~~ O ~~~
We go after school on Thursday in Angela's car. Jessica turns the radio up, and they sing at the top of their lungs as we roar down the 101. They're giddy and giggling, high on excitement. Prom is coming to Forks High and Port Angeles beckons, calling my friends with the promise of dresses and shoes and jewellery, all just waiting to be picked over.
I wind the window down in the back and feel the tension ease, as Forks disappears behind me. It feels good to be doing something light-hearted and frivolous.
Charlie isn't happy about me being here, his reasons unclear, but he doesn't seem pleased about much these days. He and Renee seem better with each other, at least. They're not happy exactly, but they seem to be more unified, as though my outburst was the catalyst for bringing them closer again.
I wish we could recapture the sweet flavor of those brief days when we first moved here, but it's gone. A bitter aftertaste is all that remains, and my parents have withdrawn, together, into their world, while I search for a new one of my own.
Angela, Jessica and I visit a couple of clothes shops, and I leave them in the third one, pirouetting in front of the mirror, swathed in yards of satin and taffeta.
Port Angeles is pretty in the late afternoon light, with the workaday people bustling home, their end of day sighs mingling and lightening the heavy air.
Jessica scrawled directions to the book shop in her loopy writing on a scrap of paper and I squint, trying to decipher the words. After a few wrong turns I find the small shop, nestled in a side street. I phoned ahead and they have the book waiting for me, and I'm out on the sidewalk again in less than five minutes.
The temptation to stop and read is high, my fingers twitching on the cover, but the girls will be waiting for me. It will have to wait.
As I round the corner near Angela's car, a tall figure across the street catches my eye.
I can't really make out his features from this distance. There's nothing but a general impression of dark clothes, darker brows and pale skin. He's like an apparition in the shadows, backlit against a shop window, spectral and haunting.
Even though he's standing very still, his fists clenched at his sides, there's something wild about him. He seems coiled, poised, waiting for something. It's as though he's barely contained in his skin, as though something primal and chaotic beats there, humming through his veins, searching for a way out, a direction to head in.
He looks dangerous.
Unthinking, transfixed, I step off the curb and catch, too late, a flash of blue in the corner of my eye. The screeching brakes and blasting horn echo through the air and I turn toward the sounds, hands helplessly before me.
There's only time for one huge intake of breath, surely my last, before I hit the ground.
I lie immobile on the asphalt, breathing hard, struggling to make sense of what my rattled senses are telling me.
A hand cradles my head and dark eyes stare, only inches away, into mine. His other hand drifts to my waist and, where my t-shirt has ridden up, cold fingers glide over my skin. The hand moves swiftly away toward the silver grille on the van, so close to my head that my breath clouds the steel when I turn toward it.
There on the grille, in clear relief, and visible for only the briefest of moments, is the unmistakeable indentation of a hand. A blur of white skin before my eyes and, seconds later, it's gone. The grille is unmarked, as good as new.
I turn back, bewildered, trapped by jet black eyes, breathing deeply of sweet scented breath.
His hand drifts to mine and a single finger glides cool over my skin, leaving a thousand white-hot sparks burning in its wake.
A moan, as soft as a sigh, falls from his lips and then a single word, uttered like a curse. A blur of movement and before I can blink, he's gone.
By the time the driver gets out of his van, his face a mask of horror, I'm alone, trembling on the cold, black road.
~~~ O ~~~
The book is unopened on my bed, laid aside for now, as the impossible events of the afternoon tumble endlessly in my head. Of all the strange things that have happened since my life in Forks began, this is the strangest.
When I'd stopped shaking enough to get up from the road, I made Jessica and Angela take me to the hospital in Port Angeles.
Surely I had a concussion. Surely he was some trick of the light, the quirk of a mind rattled by shock.
Even without the impossibility of what he did, his face, haunting and otherworldly, can't be real. Nobody looks like that.
He was like a fleeting glimpse from another world, of angel and devil combined to form something new; something benevolent, terrifying and beautiful. He held me suspended in that small moment, that narrow space I occupied briefly, caught somewhere between life and death.
He looked as though he wanted to destroy me, even as he saved my life.
But, no, the doctor said. No concussion, no internal injuries, not even a headache. The driver of the van suffered worse injuries than I did, jolted as he was by the sudden, jarring halt of his car.
There's no way I would have survived the hit from that van, and the thought sends a shudder through my body. I should be dead. I would be dead, if not for him.
Did I really see that handprint in the metal grille? Do I really believe, in my heart, that he stopped that van dead in its tracks, that he crossed that road in the blink of an eye?
Yes. It seems I do. There's no other explanation, and yet it's impossible.
It seems impossible, too, that I should remember it with such clarity. My eyes must have been greedy on his skin as he held me, because I recall now every shadow and angle of his face. Alabaster skin, flawless and pale, a canvas for the dark eyes and red lips, the line of cheekbone and jaw that, together, formed a face more beautiful than any artist has ever captured with oil paint and brush.
If I'd had any breath left as I lay on that freezing asphalt, it would have been taken away.
The Tiffany lamp next to my bed doesn't throw out much light, so I turn the overhead light on and examine my body, once again, in the mirror. There's barely a bruise or a cut, no swollen flesh or marked skin. The only evidence that anything happened at all is a small scrape, so tiny it's barely visible, on the heel of my left hand.
I run trembling fingers gently over my skin, turning my hand this way and that, mesmerised and mystified. My flesh still burns from his touch and a shiver, as cold as his fingers, runs down my spine.
Only one word passed between us, an unexpected word, seemingly without context, before he fled.
That solitary syllable hums through the air still, like some restless bird, lost and alone, searching without hope for a place to land.
Blood.
~ O ~
Thank you so much for reading :)