:I told you I would never leave you when I Chose you,: she said calmly. :I knew what our bond would come to then, when I first Chose you – and I don't regret my choice. I love you, and I am proud to stand beside you. There is not a single moment together I would take back.:
:Not one?: he asked, moved to tears.
:Not one. I will not let you face him alone, beloved…
Emily's focus was turned away from the well-worn book sitting in her lap as something inside her wordlessly told her to look up. She lifted her head and looked down the hall of Oak Park and River Forest High School. Her face broke into a grin when she saw her best friend walking towards The Spot, where she was sitting. He smiled as well and gave her a little wave, then tossed his backpack down against the wall as he reached her.
"Hey Tom," Emily greeted him.
"Hey babe," he responded, hugging her warmly. He pulled away and glanced at the book in her lap. "Whatcha reading?"
In response, she just held it up so that he could see the cover. It was Magic's Price, the third and final book in the Last Herald Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. "I'm at the end, the part where 'Fandes comes back and is all 'I won't let you face him alone' and stuff," she said.
Tom's eyes lit up and he grabbed the book. "Lemme read it!" His eyes flicked swiftly back and forth across the page, reading one of both of their favorite parts. He grinned widely and handed the book back to Emily, who dog-eared the page she'd been reading and put it away. As she turned back to Tom, he saw the glint of excitement on her face that she was trying to contain.
"What?" he asked. She looked surprised.
"What, what? I didn't say anything."
He gave her a Look. "You're excited about something, I can tell. So spill. What is it?"
Emily laughed heartily. "Can't keep much from you, hey? Ok, ok, here it is. My parents are out of town for the weekend and I finally convinced them that leaving me home wasn't going to cause the world to go up in flames, so I have the house, and my sister's staying with Katie."
"That's awesome! We—…"
"Oh, but that's not all," she crowed triumphantly. "They also left me the car, so I drove to school and I have it right now. Now, the real question is, do you really want to be here?"
The seemingly abrupt change of subject would have gone over anyone else's head, but Tom caught on immediately. He smiled and shook his head. "Do we want to wait for anyone else, though?" Usually, several more of their friends met at The Spot as well. Today, though, Emily had gotten to school even earlier than usual in order to find a parking spot, a feat comparable to transposing Mozart's Requiem into ragtime while fending off a mob of people screeching in some foreign tongue with a spoon. Tom, also, had arrived early, so they were the only two of their group of friends at school yet.
Emily shrugged. "If you really want to, I don't really care, but I'd just as soon leave now." She sighed tiredly. "Besides, I've not been in the mood for Sarah and Amy and them lately. It'll wear off, but right now…eh."
Unfortunately, that was an understatement. Even the mere presence of the others had been grating on her for the past few weeks, and she didn't know why. Tom was the only one she could stand for any amount of time without wanting to slap him silly. She was a little bit concerned about her growing impatience with her friends, but she had figured that it was hormones or something, so she didn't worry about it too much.
Tom shrugged. "Fine with me. Michigan?" He was referring to the small house in Michigan that his family owned. It was right on the beach, and since it was only an hour and a half from Chicago, Tom and his friends used any excuse to sneak up there.
"You know it! Do you have a key?"
"No, but my parents have left for work already, so we can stop at my house and grab it, and some other stuff if we want it."
"Cool. Let's go."
* * *
"We're taking 90, right?"
"Yeah. Don't worry, I remember the last time we took something different."
"North…"
Emily laughed at the reference to the time she, Tom, Sarah, and Sarah's then-boyfriend had gone up to Michigan. They'd gotten horribly, horribly lost, and had managed to turn a one and a half hour trip into a four hour one. They had all been incredibly irritated and dead on their feet at the time, but now they could look back on it and laugh. She flashed an easy grin at Tom, then turned her eyes back to the interstate that stretched out before her as she continued the joke.
"South."
"Right."
"Stop sign. Five mile."
"Hold on Osama."
The two dissolved into laughter. They felt lighthearted and relaxed for the first time in weeks. Emily was eighteen years old and Tom was seventeen, and both were seniors in high school. Graduation was a week away, and all of the end-of-the-year stress and craziness had been taking a toll on both of them. Tom's parents had been railing at him for every little thing lately, it seemed, and Emily's parents had been smothering her. They both desperately needed a break.
As they drove, the two talked and joked easily. Though they'd only met each other three years ago at the birthday party of a mutual friend, their own friendship had grown swiftly into something that they both considered to be significantly more than mere friendship. They weren't in love with each other – not romantically. In fact, Tom was gay, and couldn't really be attracted to women. But they did love each other immensely, and were closer than humanly possible.
Keeping one hand lightly on the steering wheel, Emily absent-mindedly plucked at her short hair with the other. She was tall and slender, with a figure any model would envy. She had an attractive, expressive face with eyes that morphed from blue to grey to green and back again, and her outgoing and friendly personality made it easy for people to like and trust her. However, her extremely short hair put off or intimidated most guys her age, and as a result, she didn't receive much amourous male attention. She had learned to live with it, knowing that the problem was with the guys and not herself, but it still stung, and had made her somewhat cynical towards relationships. She filled her time reading, mostly fantasy novels. Her favorite author was Mercedes Lackey, writer of The Heralds of Valdemar series. Emily had introduced Tom to the books, and now he, too, was addicted to them. And speaking of the books…
"Hey Tom…you know how Alberich's Companion like, smuggled himself into Karse in order to Choose him?"
"Yeah…"
"Well, Sayvil didn't do that with Kerowyn, or Daren's Companion either. I mean, is it like, if you have Heraldic Gifts but don't live in Valdemar, does a Companion come find you and Choose you, or do they wait until you get into Valdemar, 'cause both have happened in the books."
"Yeah, but I think Alberich was the exception. I mean, he was Karsite, and the likelihood of him ever coming into Valdemar probably wasn't very high. Unless he was, like, in battle. But you know what I mean. 'Cause think about it – there are tons of mage schools around, like White Winds, and Kethry never got Chosen. And there's the Tayledras, who have the mage-gift and are pretty much guaranteed to be morally worthy 'cause the Star Eyed keeps such a close watch over them. They don't get Chosen."
Emily thought about it for a minute, worrying her lip with her teeth. "But that implies that not only do you have to have the Gifts and be all morally worthy and crack, but that you have to be, I dunno…like, loyal to Valdemar, or be willing to become loyal to Valdemar, and like I said, Alberich was Karsite. He's like, the last person who would become loyal to Valdemar, so that kinda kills that argument. Hmmm."
Tom shrugged, out of ideas. "I dunno, maybe it's a combination of things. Maybe it's something else completely."
"I wonder what would have happened to Vanyel if he hadn't been Chosen, but still had his Channels blasted open. I mean, 'cause for a long time he didn't want to be a Herald. I think he would have fit in with the Tayledras."
Tom's eyes sparkled mischieviously. "He probably would have become an arrogant, pampered court mage somewhere where he could still do music."
"Like you?" Emily mock sneered.
"Exactly," her friend replied smugly.
Emily sighed dramatically. "But where would he – and you – be without Yfandes? You'd be utterly lost."
Because of their love for the books, Tom and Emily had associated themselves with two of the main characters, a Herald-Mage named Vanyel Ashkevron, and his Companion Yfandes. The author's description of Vanyel was so identicle to Tom's own physical appearance that it was uncanny. Tom was tall and athletic, with black hair, although Emily constantly found single, oddly colored hairs among the ebony. He had a dark complexion and a devastatingly attractive face that was known to break hearts left and right. He always complained that his brown eyes were boring and ugly, but Emily thought they were a rather unusual shade of brown, more reddish. He was charismatic and charming, characteristics that chose to manifest themselves as the ability to manipulate pretty much anyone into doing pretty much anything. In a lesser man, such a talent would have been deadly. But Tom had a good heart, and he was full of compassion, and so he never used his charm to do anything seriously bad. But his appearance and personality weren't the only things Tom had in common with Vanyel. The Herald-Companion bond was so similar to Tom and Emily's that the two teenagers had decided that Vanyel and Yfandes were their alter-egos. Tom made puppy-dog eyes at Emily for her comment and squinched up his face, trying, and utterly failing, to look cute.
"Ohhh, mon petit chou-chou, je t'adore," he cooed in a bad French accent.
Emily just punched him.
* * *
An hour later, the wheels of Emily's maroon Caravan crunched over the acorn shells that littered the short driveway of Tom's Michigan House. As she had painfully learned on her first visit, traversing the driveway without shoes was a perilous undertaking. Those acorns were wicked. She eyed them with distaste as she slammed the driver side door. The sharp nuts were quickly forgotten, though, when she inhaled deeply, releasing the air in a contented sigh.
"Oh, God, it's beautiful out," she said, stretching to loosen muscles grown restless from the drive. It was 80 degrees and sunny, and the sky was sprinkled with mare's tail clouds. In short, it was a perfect day for a not-quite-kosher visit to a beach house.
Tom was already unlocking the front door, his day pack slung over his shoulder. Emily grabbed her own bag and headed for the open door as Tom disappeared inside, presumably to turn things on and such.
In the kitchen, Emily swung her bag up onto the counter and unzipped it. She pulled out a six-pack of Pepsi and one of Coke, pulled a can of Pepsi from the plastic rings, and shoved the remaining sodas into the fridge. Cracking the can open, she took a long drink of the sweet beverage. Remembering Tom, she retrieved a Coke from the fridge, then went in search of her friend.
The gurgling sound of a toilet flushing announced Tom's whereabouts seconds before Emily popped her head out of the kitchen to see him coming down the hall from the bathroom.
"Hey," she said, holding the soda out to him.
"Thanks." Tom opened his can as well and drank down half of it in one breath. He smacked his lips when he came up for air. "God, that feels good. I'm so hot." Tom held the condesation-slick can to his forehead while fanning himself with the neck of his shirt. He always felt overheated, unlike Emily, who always felt cold.
"You're such a pussy. We--…" Emily started to tease him.
"A what?" Tom interupted her. She rolled her eyes and chuckled.
"A pussy."
"A what?"
"A pussy."
"A what?"
"A pussy."
"Oh, a pussy!"
"ANYway," Emily said pointedly, still giggling at the long-standing joke. "If you're so hot, let's go do the creek. I've only done it once, that time at your birthday, and we can jump in the lake when we get to the end."
"Doing The Creek" was a time-honored Michigan House tradition, one that was performed religiously, even in less-than-warm weather. There was a creek that wound itself through the woods of Grand Beach and eventually emerged on the beach itself. Tom and his friends would climb down the banks a few miles from the beach and hike the distance. Sometimes they tried to see who could stay dry the longest, or how many times they could cross the stream without getting wet. It was always fun and incredibly physically satisfying.
"Ok. Can we drive? The place where we always start is like… kinda not close."
"Yeah, but we come out like, a minute from here, and I really don't want to have to walk all the way back to get the car. Plus there isn't a good place to park over there."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Ok, let's go."
* * *
Well, Emily thought wryly as a drop of sweat trickled down her temple, I'm definitely not cold now. I better enjoy it while it lasts… The sweat itched as it made its way down the side of her dirt-smeared face, but she couldn't spare a hand to scratch it. She contemplated her surroundings and position for a moment, then made a frustrated sound at the back of her throat. Well, crap.
"Uh… Tom? A little help over here?" she called. Tom was still a tiny bit upstream of Emily, and she heard the rustle and snap of vegetation being broken as he approached her. Finally, she looked down to see him standing about six feet below her, gazing up at her from the bank of the creek. He had a mischievious smile on his face.
Tom looked up at Emily's prone body. She was straddled backwards against the trunk of a large tree that perched precariously on the bank above the creek, spread eagle, clinging to the bark with her fingertips, which were beginning to look a little white with strain. Her feet were slowly losing purchase on the few crumbling inches of moist dirt that acted as a ledge. She was stretched in just a way that made movement impossible. Tom examined her for a few more moments, chuckling at her immobile state. She hadn't remembered to put pants or a long-sleeved shirt on before they had headed for the creek, so her bare arms and legs sported innumberable scrapes and scratches, and her whole body was liberally spattered and smudged with dirt and sweat. As she stood there panting with the heat and strain, she looked bedraggled, uncomfortable, slightly irritated, and incredibly edible.
Tom burst out laughing.
Emily glared at him.
"As absolutely hilARious as I'm finding this," she said, her voice starting out in a sickly sweet tone, "Last time I checked, YOU still weren't in good enough shape to carry me all the way back to the house, so unless you're gonna just stand there and watch me incur some painful injury that will probably require your dubious strength, I suggest that you HELP me." She ended her tirade with a glower and a growl, but Tom could see her struggling to contain her own laughter. He sighed dramatically.
"Alright, come on, let's get you down." He walked closer to the bank so that he was directly beneath Emily. Eyeing her position for the best strategy of moving her, he finally reached up and grabbed her by her mid-thighs.
"Ok, let go, but don't jump. Kinda slide down and I'll keep you from falling. Hmm… can you move your feet any closer together?"
Emily shifted her feet slightly, testing her balance. "I can try." Clutching even more tightly at the bark of the tree, she prepared to attempt to shuffle her right foot closer to her left one, unconsciously tensing every muscle in her body. She felt a small trickle of adrenaline skitter through her; not enough to set her heart pounding, but enough to jar her into action. She hastily tried to hop her right foot in towards her body, but her tightly bunched muscles overbalanced her, and she pitched forward away from the tree. Flailing out her arms, she shrieked as she tumbled down onto Tom, who let out some gibberish that sounded like fake German in a cracking voice. The two toppled over and landed with a thump on the sandy and muddy bank, a jumble of arms and legs.
Their hearty, breathless laughter filled the air as the two friends lay on the ground, still tangled, and ignored the tears of mirth that squeezed from the corners of their eyes. When their sides started aching and the loud peals had settled down into sporadic giggles and chuckles, Emily picked herself up, wiped her hands on her dirty-beyond-repair shorts, and held it out to Tom. He took the proferred hand and hauled himself to his feet, wiping away a stray tear. They began examining themselves for injury.
"Ow," Tom said, in a voice that clearly stated that he did care in the least. "I'm gonna be bruised tomorrow."
"Me too, but I like, bruise by someone looking at me, so that doesn't say much."
"Plus you're so weak, it doesn't take much to hurt you."
"Shut up."
* * *
Tom catapulted himself over a huge fallen tree that lay on its side and landed with a splash in the shallow water on the other side. He turned around just in time to see Emily, rather than go over the tree as he had, slide herself through an opening in the tree's tangled branches. He started walking again when she had gotten through and joined him. Up ahead, he could just see the bridge that meant they were nearing the beach just around a corner.
"Hey Em," he said. "If you could pick, would you rather be a Herald or a Tayledras?"
"Tayledras," she said firmly with no hesitation. "The Heralds are awesome and I'd love to have a Companion – which is a really cool idea, by the way – but they're just so, like, driven. I mean, once they're Chosen, they're completely dedicated to Valdemar. And that'd be fine, I guess, if they still had room for like, normal relationships and stuff, but they don't."
"Tayledras have more freedom."
"Exactly."
Tom chuckled. "Me too. They have more fun with their lives too. And they wear better clothes."
Emily snorted. "Oh, yeah, I can just picture you in those long, elaborate silk Mage robes, like Firesong. You'd be even more vain than you are now."
"Shut up. But yes. I would like Mage robes. And I'm not vain."
"Whatever. Plus, having all that magic would be so cool. Assuming you were a Mage, of course-.."
"…which a high proportion of Tayledras are. Dude, but the coolest spell is definetely the Gate spell. How awesome would it be to have something like that here?"
"We could go back to Italy and skip that whole 13 hour plane ride thing."
"God, I know! Seriously, that was so awful, you have no idea."
"I'm sure I would be complaining just as much as you do if I'd been conscious for it. Yay for Dramamine, that's what I say."
The two hadn't noticed the sky getting rapidly darker as they'd talked, but the conversation was interrupted by the loudest clap of thunder either of them had ever heard that broke right over them. It was so loud that both of them jumped, and had to grab hold of each others' arm to keep their balance. It was followed by another clap, one that ended in a low grumble that reminded Emily of her stomach.
"Holy fuck!" Emily's curse was cut off by a sudden strong wind. It whipped the trees into a frenzy of lashing branches and plastered Tom and Emily's clothing to their bodies. They looked at each other in surprise.
"What the fuck is going on?" Emily had to yell to be heard above the wind. Tom just shook his head.
"I don't know, this has never happened up here before."
Then, with another deafening clap of thunder, the skies opened up and poured down to earth. The rain came down in sheets so thick Tom could barely see five feet in front of him. The two were soaked to the skin in a matter of seconds. Remembering the bridge, Tom grabbed Emily's arm and started to run towards it, dragging her behind him.
"There's the bridge right up there!"
After stumbling for a few moments from being pulled so suddenly, Emily gained dubious footing in the rocky creek and jogged after Tom. Squinting, she could make out the shape of the bridge. Underneath it, they'd still be wet and in the creek, but the rain wouldn't reach them. The bridge drew closer and closer until, with a breath of relief, Tom and Emily plunged beneath its shelter and into darkness.