After Edward and I had left to go hunting, he and I exchanged very little besides pleasantries for a few hours. He already knew my feelings on the situation: my joy for him and my insatiable curiosity. He even teased me about the questions raging through my mind, though he neglected to answer any. As soon as we had made a few kills, though, I had begun to pepper him with questions about his intentions out loud. He couldn't ignore me that way.
"So… where is this going then?"
"What do you mean, Alice?"
I stuck my tongue out. "You know. With Bella. What are you going to do about your relationship?"
"Do? Nothing, as yet. I don't know how she really feels about me. I don't even really know how I feel about her."
I raised my eyebrows. We've already had this discussion, Edward. If you don't call this love, then what I have with Jasper isn't love either.
"Regardless, she needs to know exactly what she's letting herself in for. I need to give her the choice to leave." His voice was so calm and businesslike; it was hard to believe he was talking about the only girl he had loved in over a century.
And if she decides to stay? Bearing in mind from what I've seen that is incredibly likely? I asked. I had seen visions of her round the house, talking to us at school (well, me and Edward, anyway), shopping with me (though she seemed amazingly reluctant to actually do any shopping), a thousand little things that tied her life with ours.
Edward sighed. "I… don't really know," he admitted. It was a rare statement to come from Edward's lips and I wasn't convinced.
"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it, because you over-think everything, Edward. I know you," I reminded him.
"I know," he said, then was silent. I merely waited for a better answer, knowing he could hear my intentions. I wouldn't let him get away without telling me this one! Before he had a chance to elaborate, though, a vision blossomed before my eyes.
An unnamed forest clearing, sunlight bathing the ferns and wildflowers as they waved and danced in the light, cooling breeze. A moment of anticipation, of leaves rustling, of grass fluttering. Then two shapes emerging from the shadows. People. Hand in hand, they step into the sunlight, and they shine like diamonds, blindingly bright. One pulls the other to the centre of the meadow, laughing joyfully. Laughter that peals like bells. High, dainty, a woman's voice, a girl's. She turns back to face her lover, still laughing until he stops the sound with a kiss. It is a long while before they break apart, of course they don't need to breathe, but eventually they do, and their eyes are filled with exactly the same love and contentment. His eyes, liquid gold. Hers, a burning amber. She is young to this life, and young to the human life too. No older than nineteen. No older than six months.
"I love you, Edward."
"As I love you, my Bella."
Bella faded from my view and the dark forest reasserted itself as I stared at Edward, a huge grin splitting my face. He had made the decision, or so I assumed. The right decision in my mind. Bella would be with him for eternity, and I would have a new sister. My cold heart swelled with joy.
"Your meadow?" I asked. It was a private place for him; no one else had ever been there, though we all knew where it was. It was saturated in his scent, after all.
He nodded, totally shell-shocked and I realised something was wrong. Why was he surprised? It was his decision… wasn't it?
Edward? I thought. That was your decision, yes? You will have her changed?
Mutely, he shook his head. A second passed before he was able to speak, and his voice was a low whisper. "I thought it was your decision."
It was my turn to shake my head in denial. Suddenly, without warning (even for me), Edward disappeared.
"Edward!" I shouted. Following the clear path that his scent had left, I simultaneously looked to see where he was going. Home. I pushed myself faster, knowing I could never catch him up.
"Edward, wait!" I cried again. I didn't have to look to the future to know what his actions would be when he found the remainder of our family. I could only pray he could keep his temper at least slightly in check.
As I sprinted, I wondered who it was who had decided to change Bella, and would actually be able to do it. Carlisle? No, I was sure he would wait to talk to Edward about it. Esme would never presume to interfere. Emmett wouldn't care enough about the entire situation, and he would side with his wife; Rosalie hated the girl. Jazz would never be able to. What was going on?
I broke through the last of the trees, vaulted over the river, and pelted for the back door. I didn't need a vampire's hearing to pick up Edward's words.
"… do that to her? She is seventeen, she deserves a life, not this hideous parody of the word! Who was it? Who?"
"Edward!" I yelled. "Stop it!" Before bursting through the door, I saw our entire family standing in the living room through the glass wall. Without exception, their faces were shocked. Obviously, none of them had a clue what was going on. Jasper turned when he heard my voice, and made to move towards me, but I leapt between Edward and our family, facing my irate brother.
"Edward, stop and think about this. None of them would do that without talking to you. Very few of them could even attempt it, and I didn't see her dead." His face, still full of rage, darkened further, so I hurried to continue. "It's not necessarily a direct decision. You know how my visions work as well as I do; maybe a chain of events has been set off, somewhere. Look, you would know better than me that no one in this room has decided to change her. And… it's not an ordinary vision," I suddenly realised. "It's like my first glimpse of our family or my first sight of Jasper."
I was thinking out loud now, evaluating, comparing, theorising. "You couldn't know, you never saw them when they first appeared, but they have the same feeling about them. I can't quite put my finger on it…" I pulled the vision to the forefront of my mind, re-examining it. "It's sort of… inevitable, impossible to change… as though any and every path we take will lead to this moment…" I trailed off, lost in thought, lost in time.
I watched as the scene played out again in my head. Usually my visions were soundless, unless I concentrated hard. Here, however, I could hear everything as though I were there with them. It wasn't just the sound that was different, either – the colours seemed more vibrant than they would even in real life. Curiously, I broke out of the vision, still thinking.
"I don't think a decision was involved at all," I said to Edward, who was looking horrified, incredulous, murderous and guilty all at the same time: quite a feat, I thought. "Can I try something?" I asked him, tentatively running a plan through my mind. He nodded, slowly. I turned to Rosalie.
"Rose, could you decide to kill her? I know you don't like her, it shouldn't be hard to keep the conviction up for a minute or two." Rosalie's eyes widened in surprise.
"Wait a minute," Carlisle interjected. "Alice, would you care to explain what on earth is going on, since Edward was less than eloquent in his explanation?"
I glanced at Edward, who now added shame to his mind-boggling array of emotions, before answering. "Well, while we were hunting, I had a vision of Bella Swan, as a vampire, with Edward. But Edward hadn't decided to change her, and neither had I, whereupon Edward assumed it was one of you, so we came back. Which leads us up to now. The reason I want Rosalie to decide to kill Bella is because it feels like we can't change this future. So I thought I'd test that theory." I faced Rosalie again. "Rose?"
She nodded and we watched her face go past angry and reach livid as she talked herself internally into killing Bella. Both Edward and Jasper tensed by my sides, and I put a restraining hand on each of them, linking the three of us together. Jazz was struggling not to calm her down and Edward was forced to listen to his sister's murderous thoughts, but it was the surest way of testing the vision.
I slipped back to the future, seeing yet again the newborn vampire laugh and pull my brother through the long grass. I waited, replaying the scene over and over, until I felt a faint tug at the edge of my mind. An alternative. I tried to pull it to the forefront, but somehow I just… couldn't. Frowning in concentration, I focused all my energy on it and it suddenly burst into being. Bella's neck was snapped with a sickening crack by my sister's beautiful white hands; she was unquestionably dead. Yet I could still see, in the corner of my eye, the pair of immortals shining in the sun.
Still there, I thought to Edward. I can't get rid of it. Like Jazz, like our family. Those visions never faded until they became truth. Then I remembered something else. Our family… Edward, do you remember what I saw? The blurred girl?
It had been a mystery for the last half century. When I had first seen the Cullen family, I had seen Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Emmett and Edward, but I had also seen someone else. A girl whose features would never solidify into anything I could see. I never heard her voice, never saw her face. She was like a ghost or a dream figure. The only thing I had been able to deduce was that she was close to Edward.
I hadn't thought much of her once I'd found out that she didn't exist, never bothering to mention her. I hadn't even told Jasper about her when we were trying to find the Cullens, because I wasn't sure what she was. Only Edward knew exactly what I had seen, and I had promised not to tell anyone. After all, I could see the teasing that would inevitably take place if I did let it slip. "Edward's in love with a ghost?" "Guess he can't get a real girl," "Poor Eddie's only got a fantasy mate," "Phantom lover,"… The list went on. Even Edward himself had scoffed.
As we weren't speaking aloud, no one else understood what was happening when I said "Edward, I need to talk to you alone."
"Alice-" Carlisle and Jasper said at the same time, but I interrupted.
"I'll tell you later. Probably. Don't ask me, Jazz, it's not my secret." And with that cryptic message, my brother and I, the freaks among freaks, swept back out into the creeping night.
As soon as we were out of earshot, I stopped and pulled the second vision I had ever had into my mind's eye.
It was a scene in a living room; I couldn't be sure which of our many houses it was. Carlisle and Esme were sitting in a white loveseat; he was reading a huge book, probably some dry medical tome, and she was simply curled up against him with her head on his shoulder and her eyes closed, perfectly content. Rosalie and Emmett were supposedly watching TV, something I hadn't understood when I first had the vision, but were really far more engaged in each other. Edward was at his piano, playing a song I recognised now as one he had composed only days ago. A lullaby.
"Bella's lullaby," he whispered, watching with me.
The Edward in my vision looked up from his playing and smiled at the girl leaning over the piano. For a second she was still the blurred figure from my memories, but then the future took over and for the first time, my vision of our family was complete. Suddenly Jasper and I were there too, just sitting together on the cream sofa, and the blurred girl clarified and solidified into Bella.
I couldn't see her because she hadn't been born. Neither had Renée or Charlie for that matter. I marvelled at the way destiny had shaped Bella's life before even her parents existed.
"Doesn't Bella get any choice in the matter?" Edward asked, and his voice was quiet but hard.
"Of course she does! It just so happens that we already know what she'll choose." It was a bit of a no-brainer, if you asked me. Stay human, risk your life every second you're with him, grow old and eventually die, or become immortal.
Edward moaned softly, and dropped his head into his hands. "It's a death sentence, for no crime at all."
I sighed. Everyone knew what Edward thought about becoming an immortal. The loss of a soul. There was no point arguing with him about it. It didn't stop me worrying about the extremity of his reaction to the idea of Bella changing. I could only hope Bella would convince him that he was wrong.
"I'm only going to say one more thing, Edward." I paused, not sure how to phrase it, then gave up and thought the words to him. If you don't let Carlisle change her, it's still going to happen. Someone else will do it, and I don't know who. Why put her through more pain? Why not let it happen with your blessing?
He didn't react.
Breaking a long standing unwritten rule, I hugged him gently before taking my brother's hand. "Come on. Let's hunt."
When we had returned in the early hours of this morning, we explained what I had seen to Carlisle, Esme and Jasper. Rosalie listened for a while, then left, whether out of boredom or stronger feelings I didn't know. Emmett, of course, followed her. Eventually Esme, Jasper and I left Edward and Carlisle alone to talk, and my mother and I retreated upstairs to my room.
Finally, I let out the excitement that had been building all evening. "Esme! I'm getting a new sister!" I trilled.
Esme laughed with me. "And Edward will finally find a mate!"
We hugged, and I was practically bouncing.
Suddenly, though, she froze with fear. "But her scent… Alice, what if something goes wrong tomorrow? What if he can't resist?"
Her pessimistic questions failed to calm my enthusiasm. "I'll be watching the entire time. In fact, I'm going to go watch now."
I didn't actually physically move anywhere, but mentally I was sprinting through time, back and forth, seeing certainties, possibilities, alternatives, options. I flitted from future to future, bursts of colours, images, words filling my head one after another, after another, after another, simultaneously, side by side, through layers, intermixed, separate. Sometimes I lived more in the future than the present. The sensation was like escapism, but at the same time utterly relevant to the present moment. Time was my realm, and I belonged anywhen.