Slaves to the Spirits

Chapter Twelve


"Do you like the beach?"

The question caught Elisabeth off guard, not because it was personal but because she had hoped Seth would be quiet the whole time, some silent companion, a prison guard meant to escort her somewhere without conversing.

She shrugged. "I haven't been in a long time."

"When did you last go?" he asked, his full focus on her. He turned his head to her, and Elisabeth had the impression that he hadn't thought she would answer at all. Perhaps she would have gotten away with it. She immediately regretted responding.

"With my family," she muttered, stepping over a large root. Seth had neglected to tell her that they would be taking the scenic route to the oceanfront, navigating an underused trail through the wood which lead to the beach. It was covered in fallen branches and thick roots left the ground uneven, and though Elisabeth managed to navigate the trail, it wasn't without difficulty, having spent the majority of her life in suburbs and cities.

"Oh," he said quietly, paused a moment. "Sam told me about it. I lost my dad too." He stopped walking then, latched onto her sleeve to keep her from continuing. He bent his head down to look her in the eye. "I know what it's like."

"Let me guess," Elisabeth snorted, flinging off his grip, "you're here for me? Just want to listen to my problems?" She turned on her heel and continued down the path, Seth taking two leaping bounds to catch up with her.

"That's fine. We'll save the best friend part for later," he assured.

He smiled stupidly and Elisabeth decided that she would probably have liked to hit him, but refrained. "We are never going to be best friends."

Seth grinned like she had told some joke she couldn't remember telling, the same look adults give small children when they do something silly. Patronising almost. Before Elisabeth could mention it, he was making a sweeping gesture with one arm as they came out of the the thick brush and the dirt beneath their feet transformed into sand.

"La Push beach," he announced as if the two had stumbled across a beach in Miami or something, instead of the barren and dreary setting they were standing on the edge of.

The beach was empty, no colourful towels laid out on the dark sand and no umbrellas settled over the top of those laying on their backs, delicate skin soaking up the sunlight. Seaweed washed up to shore with the tide, the distant sound of waves crashing filled Elisabeth's ears, but it was not comforting. Rather, she felt unsettled by the emptiness, the absence of human noise. There was nothing but sand and sea, the waters not the cerulean pools of some beach on a resort island, but cool and dark and deep.

"I'm in awe," she said dryly, folding her arms over her chest.

"Shut up." Seth rolled his eyes and laughed good-naturedly, not offended by her clear distaste for the place he had grown up in. He walked forwards, rushing down a sand dune and turned back around. "You coming?"

Elisabeth sighed and dropped her hands to her sides, following after him.

"Careful," he cautioned, holding a hand out towards her, palm up, "it's steep."

She looked at it for a moment, then his face, her expression bland. She continued down the sand dune without his help, slipping a little and almost losing her balance. Seth's smile faltered as his hand dropped to his side and Elisabeth smirked as she walked past him. It only took a few seconds to hear the sound of sand shifting beneath his feet as Seth followed after her towards the waterfront.

"Alex would love this," she said without thinking, peering out at the endless sea, the waves crashing against jagged cliff sides in the distance. He would like to build sandcastles, to wade through the shallows, to collect seashells in one of those little plastic buckets.

She felt Seth's warmth before she processed his presence, heat radiating from her left as he came to stand beside her and stare out at the water. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Do you like it?"

"It's water and dirt." Elisabeth spun around and started walking along the shore quickly, hoping that the boy might catch the hint that she didn't want to be walking or talking with him.

"Then what about Sam and Emily?" he questioned, catching up to her easily with his long legs. "Do you like living with them?"

"It's been one day."

"What about your room?"

"It's fine."

"I could help you paint it or something if you want," he offered. "I helped move in all the furniture with Paul. I don't think you've met him yet, which is probably a good thing. He's kinda… difficult," he muttered, then turned to face her, stumbling along in the sand beside her as she kept walking. "We could paint it any colour you like though. What's your favourite?"

"My favourite colour?"

"Uh huh."

"I don't have one," Elisabeth said.

Seth looked at her funnily then. "Everyone has a favourite colour."

Elisabeth snorted. She had never heard anything so ridiculous in her life. "Then what's yours?"

"It doesn't work like that," he insisted, frowning as he shook his head. "I asked first."

"I told you I don't have one."

"And I told you I think you're lying."

Elisabeth took a deep breath and gritted her teeth. "What do you want?"

"The truth."

"Well," she said, "that's just too bad, isn't it?"

Seth shook his head, dark hair flopping over with the movement. "Do you want something in return?" He looked happy, genuinely happy, unaware of the growing tension.

"There's nothing you have that I want."

Seth refused to give up. He knew that somewhere, deep down in her ice cold heart, there was someone nice and sweet locked away after years of pain, protected behind a false prickliness and biting words. "You can ask me any question you want, and I'll answer honestly."

"Wow, what a wonderful exchange."

"Like twenty questions," he continued. "It'll be fun."

"You have no idea what fun means."

"So what's your favourite colour?" He charged on with his interrogation with vigour, a childlike curiosity, the type fostered in bright children by parents who wish for their amazement with the world to never vanish. It was as though he were a small boy who had made a new friend and now wanted to know everything there was to know about them that very instant.

"White."

"White?" he repeated. "Why? It's so… plain."

Elisabeth stopped walking, and Seth quickly halted. She leaned in closer to him, so that he could smell her. His face heated immediately at the proximity, at the scent of vanilla and peaches flooding his senses.

"White," she said softly, "is the best colour, because it reflects every colour all at once. Science is just fascinating, isn't it?"

"You like science?"

She scoffed, shaking her head. "If you make me answer a question I don't have an answer to, then you can expect me to say something I don't mean."

Seth frowned as she brushed past him, continuing to walk. He didn't understand why she was making such a big deal out of such a simple question. "Do you lie often?"

Elisabeth turned to look at him, confused by the almost bland expression he wore on his face. His eyes were clear, his mouth a straight line, but his brow was slightly lowered, furrowed. She cocked an eyebrow at him, sighed, and quickened her pace. "Does it matter?" she called over her shoulder.

Seth's frown deepened as he stood watching her walk away, growing smaller as she put more distance between the two of them. How could fate be so cruel, how could she be his destiny? "Yes," he shouted after her, and jogged over to stand in front of her, keeping her from moving forwards. "You should always do the right thing." He said it with conviction, the firmest of belief.

Something in his gaze made Elisabeth sad for him, mourn the death of this boy's freedom, a boy who was imprisoned within the bounds of some false idea of duty. She wanted to laugh at him, wanted to tell him he was wrong, so very wrong. "Maybe lying is sometimes the right thing to do."

"It can't be."

"Murder is wrong," she said. "Lying is that nasty grey ambiguity people don't like to talk about because they all do it."

Seth stared at her for a long moment, searching for some remnant of a decent person in her brown eyes, looking for the person fate decided was his soulmate, hiding somewhere inside of her and just about to reveal herself. She would laugh and shove him playfully and say it was all a joke, that she didn't really believe that.

He couldn't see her.

She shoved past him, her shoulder knocking into his, and he winced as he braced himself for her cry of pain that he was almost certain would follow. Nothing but the sound of shifting sand beneath her feet greeted his ears.