the lakes (the long pond studio sessions)- Taylor Swift
Pink + White- Frank Ocean
I was there when Carlisle found Esme.
Summer was bleeding into fall. Leaves had yellowed and covered the streets, and a bright harvest moon hung in the sky. People were mulling about, trying to enjoy being outside in the vestiges of pleasant weather, but Carlisle and I were almost always confined inside, and missed out on the festivities.
Our house was small, but at least it was more private than the apartment we moved from when we left Ohio. There was a porch with peeling white paint and a yard with a patch of dirt that could have made a nice little vegetable patch, if there was someone living there who would have been interested in that sort of thing.
The inside was shabby but functional. Our kitchen was bare, and the only furniture in our sitting room was a dusty couch and an old radio. Carlisle and I shared the only bedroom, though it lacked a bed. We had a desk there, and books we had collected throughout the years were strewn about.
It was there I spent most of that night. A nurse who typically worked the day shift remarked to me how tired I must be, because it seemed like I never left the hospital. It was a begrudging reality for us, but it was better to not draw attention. I decided to give myself a little vacation. When dusk fell, I accompanied Carlisle into town. He went on to the hospital, and I stopped by a bookshop and purchased everything new to bring home and pass the time with.
There were some jazzy tunes rasping on the radio, and I had discarded the newest Proust- I'd rather read it in the original French anyways- in favor of a book of poems by Yeats, when I heard sprinting steps racing down the street.
I met him at the front door, and my first, fleeting thoughts were shameful.
I thought he had slipped.
I recognized the body in his arms as the human woman he had been visiting for years. Her leg was snapped in half, her arm hung at a disjointed angle. Her clothes were torn and ripped, smeared in blood and soaked in mud. Her skin was the color of fresh ash and her lips and fingers were blue.
I knew who she was. Who she was to Carlisle. Even human, he was drawn to her. He hadn't spent the same amount of time with others of our kind the way I, but I knew her to be his mate.
I had seen what happened to those who lost their mates. I had seen vampires beg for mercy in destruction, and smile in relief when their bodies were ripped apart and burned. And I had seen what Marcus had become, forced to exist on after the destruction of his mate.
There was only one path forward, when Carlisle cried to me that he couldn't just leave her there. I wasn't going to lose Carlisle when his mate could be saved. I ushered him into the sitting room, and he sunk onto a cushion of our worn couch with her still in his arms.
Her heartbeat was but a whisper, faint and fading as her breaths rasped. The only light came from a dying candle casting its flickering orange glow, shadows dancing on the walls. She was there, but it wouldn't be long. Ethel Waters was crooning a bluesy number about changes and love never dying that seemed ironically appropriate.
Carlisle stared up at me pleadingly. His eyes were dark and glistening, mouth turned down as if in pain. He looked like a crying angel, sculpted into perfection by the most masterful of hands to embody the most beautiful of tragedies. He couldn't have left her in the morgue, half-alive and beyond medical help, any more than he could have torn his own arm off.
It was then her eyes fluttered open. Her lids were pale and blue with the loss of blood, but her eyes were clear and a deep, warm brown, the color of rich soil. She looked up at Carlisle, and he down at her. The corners of her blue lips pulled up in the ghost of a smile, and the decision was made. Carlisle bent down to press his mouth to her neck with the promise from me to stop him if he couldn't do so himself.
We ran north the moment Esme was healed enough to move, though she screamed and thrashed the entire time. At the time, we had thought that it took so long because her injuries were so extensive, and it needed more time to heal. My own change had been as long and arduous, and I had figured it was due to the blood loss.
Neither Carlisle nor I had ever been personally responsible for a newborn before. In fact, we figured Esme would be the first ever vampire changed with the intent of being a vegetarian from the start. Carlisle and I, for very different reasons, had managed to maintain control from the start, and everyone else we knew- Tanya, Kate, and Irina, and Eleazar and Carmen- came to the lifestyle later on.
We didn't know exactly how to start. We just ran north until we were deep into the wilderness and far away from any sort of civilization. It was all still untouched then. The loggers hadn't razed the forests and the drillers hadn't carved through the land in search of oil. Human towns hadn't yet settled but for the occasional grouping of houses along the roads that stretched from Ontario to Vancouver. It was as insulated as we were going to get on the continent, and with such short time to prepare.
It was about two months before the bloodlust curbed enough to where Esme was rational enough to understand what she had become. Everything before that was just a massacring haze, but Carlisle followed behind her devotedly and buried her dead while I ranged ahead of wherever they went and steered us away from humans.
And while the haze of bloodlust lifted, tender moments blossomed between the two of them as naturally as the trees swaying in the wind and with as much assurance as the sun rising every morning. Carlisle's longing stares were returned in kind, hands brushed against one another in passing and then twined together with purpose.
Her first slip came within those first two months. It was difficult to contain a newborn between just the two of us, especially since she was stronger than both of us and could easily outpace us. We were, as we were basically every single day, out hunting. A group of young men were out trying to shoot some deer before the cold and snow made it impossible for humans to trek out in the wilderness.
It was just three of them, young and careless with drink and the spirit of youth. Esme wasn't in her right mind then; she didn't understand what she had done until months later when a conscience resurfaced. When it happened, she just begged for more, and bemoaned us for keeping her from something she wanted so badly.
None of it degraded Carlisle's devotion for even a moment, and he helped her cope with the slip when she recognized it for what it was. That had been almost as horrible as Esme's change itself. She was beside herself with distress, and wanted to return to where I had buried them. She wanted to mourn their lives. She wanted to make sure their mothers knew what had happened to them, instead of letting them just disappear as I had intended.
I didn't think it wise but since Carlisle was naturally not opposing anything Esme said, I was overruled. We had ranged much further north in the months that had followed the slip, but we were still living nomadically, so it wasn't as if we could be tracked. We had left all of our things behind in our little home in Wisconsin, and we didn't need to stop in any towns for supplies or anything of the like. All we really needed was space, and enough game to sustain all three of us.
Esme and Carlisle stayed in the north, and I promised to take care of everything. If anything, it was good for all of us. Esme's thirst was abating, and in its place, other desires were surfacing. The run back south was more of an escape than anything, and even the unsavory work to be done was a break from all that. I took care of moving our belongings to a new town, small and isolated and more conducive to slowly exposing Esme to humans. With an anonymous phone call to the nearest police department, giving exact coordinates and playing at a frantic and terrified hiker who happened to stumble across the bodies, I made sure that the young men were recovered.
And a few years after, when Esme was as in control as she could have possibly been, we visited their graves. Esme made sure their parents were taken care of financially for the rest of their days, and there were always fresh flowers nestled next to their clean headstones.
Esme slipped a few times after, and it was always the same routine. Esme has never forgiven herself for being the cause of the loss of lives, and has always tried to make amends the best she could without exposing herself or the rest of us.
It was because of a slip that we were forced to leave Maine so soon after settling. At that point, Esme had been a vampire for ten years, and had grown almost complacent with her control. We were living in a pleasant cottage on the bluffs above a rocky beach, the town was sleepy and quiet and perfectly conducive to our needs. Carlisle and I had been hired at the local hospital- he as a doctor and I a nurse- where we mostly saw fishing injuries gone awry.
It was one of those that caused Esme's slip that night. Carlisle and I were both at work, and Esme was at home decorating. Home. We truly had a home, for the first time in too long. Gone were the days of peeling wallpaper and sparse furniture. The whole place was painted a buttery yellow, with cheery open windows and a blooming garden.
Esme had been finally getting around to building shelves and arranging our vast collection of books in the small office space when there was a great crash. In the dark of night, a small fishing boat had gotten lost trying to get back to the docks and ran aground into the cliffs below. Esme immediately went outside to try to help, but the wind whipped up and carried the smell of fresh blood, and she was powerless to it.
If someone had told me, before Esme became a part of our family, that we would have a new addition who would occasionally feed from humans, and I would hug them in comfort and clean up the mess without a second thought… I never would have believed it. Carlisle even more so. Life was sacred to him. I probably never would have practiced medicine if I hadn't met Carlisle. In the hypothetical, if I had gotten away from the Volturi, I imagined I would have spent the rest of my eternity reading. If I entered the human world, maybe I would have tried to get into publishing, or preserving old books. Maybe even translating them. But with Carlisle, medicine was a calling, and he dedicated centuries to be able to save people who never would have survived without him. And yet, there he was, with a mate who had taken more than one life, and he was unhesitant and unrestrictive in his devotion still.
That bloodlust was a reality of our existence. Carlisle and I came home, and we helped her clean up. We left the boat but made sure the bodies were swept out to sea, and packed up and left that very night.
We headed south. There wasn't much north left, in any case. Back then, the police didn't exactly have the resources to try to track down the mysterious family that disappeared the same time people died. Conditions were particularly dire during the Great Depression, and no one gave much thought to death at that point.
The sky was lightening by the time we made it to New York. Esme sat in the backseat in silence through the entire drive, gazing aimlessly out the window through the suitably stormy night that seemed to fit the mood perfectly. Carlisle was quiet, too, and his mouth was bowed down in immense sadness. I knew the loss of human life weighed down on him more than anyone I had ever met, even if he wouldn't show it to Esme.
The road forked into two highways, between Rochester or Ithaca. Carlisle and I quietly agreed that maybe we'd had enough of cliffs and gorges for the time being. Rochester was an actual city, too, and Esme seemed excited to live somewhere with more of a hustle and bustle than the quiet towns we had been skipping through in the last decade since her change.
Carlisle and I found employment easily enough, and Esme began to renovate the sprawling old estate we purchased on the other side of Irondequoit Bay. It was a big project that gave Esme plenty to do, and we slowly began to take her into town. On our free evenings, we would stroll through the streets of the downtown area. The theater was one of Esme's favorite spots, and we caught up on all of the Greta Garbo talkies, we watched O'Neill plays, we saw vaudeville shows. Some nights, we would just find an outdoor café and sit and pretend to sip on tea while watching the upper echelons of Rochester society strut about.
We knew of Rosalie Hale. Everyone in Rochester knew her- she was the queen of the social scene. The Depression was baring down on almost everyone in the city, but Rosalie's father was a banker and managed to keep his family in the lap of luxury with all the finest clothes and excessive parties.
She was incredibly beautiful, even for a human. Esme and Carlisle were leaning into each other over an untouched plate of food, but I couldn't help but turn my head to watch her walk past. Her golden hair was curled and coiffed under a lovely white hat. She wore a silk dress with a cinched waist that showcased her curves and soft white gloves that kept her elegant hands perfectly soft. Sometimes she was giggling vapidly with an almost-as-pretty friend, other times she was walking with her elegant mother. After a few years, we usually saw her with one hand tucked into the crook of a young man's arm, a young man who worked at the same bank as her father and who often smelled of liquor and perfume when he stumbled home at night.
It was early summer, and almost dawn. Carlisle and I usually walked to and from work until we were far enough from prying eyes that we could run, and it was pleasant enough outside that we didn't mind the human pace. There was a pair of cardiologists just a few hours away in New York City who were working on an electro-mechanical device that was the early blueprint for what would one day be known as a pacemaker, and we were discussing the possibility of trying something like that out for ourselves.
The scent of fresh blood hung thick in the air, and drew us to where Rosalie was laying in the streets. Her pretty dress was ripped and her exposed skin was bloody and bruised, her bones broken. Just like when Carlisle brought Esme home to me, Rosalie was dying. Her heartbeat was slow and fading, and I could still smell the salt of her tears.
It was as I told Edward. She looked so much like my human sister, who had looked so unlike me with her blonde curls and her enchanting beauty. But I made Rose my sister in all but blood. If anything, the venom was more deeply binding in ways I never could have expected. It later made me wonder how the vampires who changed Carlisle and me could have abandoned us without a second thought.
I didn't explain it to Carlisle at the time. I just told him I couldn't leave her like that, and I bit her before he could object. The act was done and irrevocable, and we brought her home.
Rose wasn't at all like Esme. She was more controlled, that was certain. Yes, she also tore through every animal she could get her teeth into, and wasn't in the right frame of mind for a rational conversation for a few months, but she also maintained a frame of mind that made her capable of properly disposing of the animals she drained, and of holding off on wiping out an entire herd of deer or pack of wolves.
But whereas Esme had just accepted what she became once she was capable of fully understanding her irreversible reality, and lovingly embraced Carlisle and me as her family, Rose most certainly did not.
Rose was… angry. Pissed. Vengeful. For most of the time, that rage was directed solely at me. I was the one who changed her, who had made that choice for her and had taken away her power and utility. She had been torn away from her family, from the society she valued above everything else. There was no one to admire her anymore, no one to look up to her or to cherish her. And, of course, the only thing she ever really wanted was a baby of her own, and I had made sure she would never have that.
It didn't matter that it wasn't rational, and that I wasn't truly to blame because she would have died otherwise, and wouldn't have gotten married and had babies and been the envy of everyone she knew anyways. Rose threw things, she ripped apart the new home in the middle of the Catskills that Esme had been carefully curating. She would yell and scream and run at me until Carlisle and Esme held her back.
I think that's why we didn't object when she wanted to go back to Rochester. I had hoped that, if she did what she wanted, it would provide some kind of closure. Carlisle also understood that maybe it was just something Rose had to do, even if it involved the loss of life. If any humans living deserved to die, it was those men.
Carlisle and I both followed her while she raced back to Rochester. It was summer again. The air was hot and thick with humidity, and the smell of humans pulsating and warm was tantalizing.
It was like when Carlisle was exposing himself to blood to desensitize himself. Focusing on something other than the actual blood, like the precision of every stitch, or, in Rose's case, tracking down each and every man who wronged her, was a suitable distraction. She didn't even seem to pay any of them any mind while she flitted from house to house every night, cornering man after man until Royce was the only one left.
Besides the gruesomeness, I was impressed. She was deliberate with each one, and very careful to make it both slow and not spill a single drop of blood. The dramatics were a bit over the top- she drew out each one and by the end, her ex-fiancé was in hiding and barricaded in a hotel room when she broke down the doors in what was meant to be her wedding dress.
Rose was calm when it was over, and was silent and expressionless the entire run back to Esme, who was waiting with a kind smile and open arms. When I tried to offer her a kind word, she narrowed her burgeoning golden eyes at me, and I backed off.
The cabin had been destroyed by newborn-Rose, and she was increasingly unhappy staying in New York. In truth, we all wanted to get away from the violence we had left behind.
The only thing Rose requested was some place sunny. It was the least we could do, even if it meant that we might not be living with humans for some time. Even as controlled as she was, Rose was still young and inexperienced, and it would take time for her to be able to be around humans as competently as Esme had become. And it wouldn't kill Carlisle to not work for a while. If anything, he rather liked the time alone with Esme.
So we headed south to the yet-untouched Smoky Mountains. The fog gave us a little natural cover, and the whole region was beautiful and mostly uninhabited but for the logging companies that were sniffing around, trying to find some capital in the midst of the Depression.
Rose was a quiet and sullen presence, and Esme and Carlisle were too wrapped up in each other to pay much mind to her. She usually ranged off on her own for days at a time. When she first started, I would try to deftly follow after her, but she would either sprint fast enough that I couldn't catch up, or whip around and growl at me to leave her alone. There was also the occasional snide remark about wishing I would have left her alone before, too, and not changed her. But it was a small comfort that she always came home, and her eyes remained a clear and sparkling topaz.
Rose had been gone for two days when I left to go hunting. Esme wanted to come with me, but I brushed her aside and told her to stay home with Carlisle. I figured they could use some time alone, and in truth I wouldn't have minded some time to myself as well.
Springtime was emerging and the miles of wildflowers were blooming all through the mountainside. The sky was a deep indigo, unclouded by fog, and the whole world seemed to be humming with life. I hunted the whole day, and downed a black bear just emerging from a den under the canopy of a rotting tree, then spent the rest of the waning day basking in the sun. My skin felt warm, and if I closed my eyes, I could ignore the harsh sparkle and pretend.
I pretended to be human. Pretended that I was warm and normal and human, and I would go home to a faceless man who would smile at me and hand me a squirming bundle that would gurgle and giggle the second they were in my arms. I let myself think of my family- the one before Carlisle and Esme and Rose, but it became too painful to imagine the children of my children's children's children. They were out there somewhere, surely.
It was easier to imagine myself as a part of the wild. I laid back in the grass and let the petals of the wildflowers carress my skin. I could stay there and never move, just let myself sink into the soil and be absorbed into the ground. The world could grow around me, and I would stay exactly the same and just become a part of the landscape.
By the time I opened my eyes again, the night was dark and sky was twinkling with stars. I pushed off the ground and shook the grass and flowers from my hair. I could've run home, but I felt drawn down the mountainside instead. I had spent too long thinking of the life I had left behind, and the thumping life was a small comfort.
It was a rowdy town, especially at night. People were out celebrating the warm weather and the absence of snow, and I found myself in a bar with a beer in hand, listening to drunken men regale each other with unlikely tales of heroism and bravery. One claimed to have chopped a tree down in one fell swoop, another boasted that he had shot a buck the size of a buffalo, and sputtered his excuses when someone else challenged him to show them the mounting. Apparently, many of them were planning on going out in the following few weeks and hunting bears that were just emerging from hibernation. Little did I know that one of their own was a few miles away, screaming in pain as the venom burned through the gashes left behind by the crushing claws of a mauling bear.
If I had ever thought that Esme was insatiable or Rose was violent, it all paled in comparison to Emmett.
He could have overpowered the three of us with ease. Rose was no longer a newborn so that strength had faded, but even if she had been I doubted it would have helped. The only frame of reference I had for someone of Emmett's mountainous size was Felix, and I wasn't exactly sure that was someone we wanted him to emulate.
But Emmett barreled through the woods with no care for what was in front of him, acting more efficiently than any logging company that came through to raze the forests bare in the years that followed. He was more feral than either of them, and if someone made a wrong step around him mid-hunt, it was asking for a fight. He took a snap at Rose more than once, but that was more because she was the only one who readily got close to him.
I actually got to put to use all the fighting practice I used to do to pass the time with Felix and Demetri. Emmett was all strength and muscle, and would come charging at me with blazing red eyes, but when I timed myself right, I could sidestep around him and avoid his grip. It would frustrate him, and we would keep at it until he needed to hunt again, which was never long. But I kept him occupied, and after several months, Rose took that job away from me.
He slipped a few times as well, but it didn't impact him the way it did Esme.
In fact, once the newborn phase faded and his eyes turned a familiar bright gold, Emmett was the sunniest personality in our family. Nothing seemed to bother him, and he shrugged off any inconvenience or tragedy with aplomb. Not even when he seemed to find his singer and take her without a second thought did he let it bring him down.
It wasn't that he didn't care. He did, and he valued human life as much as the rest of us, save Carlisle. He was remorseful.
That one woman, his singer, was someone he came across years after he had changed. There had been a handful of slips in the meanwhile, but that had been when he was much younger and lacked the control.
We were in school, and not new to the area anymore. Vancouver Island was almost insulated from the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, which meant we didn't have to wear any tie-dye to blend in- a fact of which Rose was supremely grateful for.
Carlisle was working as a doctor in the local, understaffed hospital, and went through teaching everyone modern techniques and importing new medicines. Esme was commuting to Vancouver and working on a graduate degree in architecture and landscape architecture after she had graduated with a bachelor's, and Emmett, Rose, and I were high school students.
It was a bit more novel back then. Rose enjoyed it probably more than the rest of us. She was naturally the center of attention, and no matter how aloof she came off, stares followed her wherever she went. She and Emmett were fresh off a third honeymoon, and Rose was settling into the familiar comfort of being able to be queen of the social scene again, and Emmett was just happy to go along with it all.
I liked being in high school, too. I had done the college thing a few times, but I could pull off the teenager illusion better than Rose and Emmett- despite being physically older than both of them. Human teenagers were interesting. They had such niche interests, and they were so wrapped up in their personal lives that the drama that was produced was unparalleled. Little cliques eventually warmed up to me after I hung out at the drive-in theater for a few months, and eventually I was invited to spend time with them in more enclosed settings. The stories were always the same- Boy X liked Girl A who liked Boy Y, but Boy Y was already dating Girl B who was secretly necking with Boy X. They made it seem like their problems were the center of the universe, and everything else fell to the wayside
I was at the malted shop the entire afternoon. We didn't really hang around inside- there were too many 'little kids' running around inside, and that wouldn't have been groovy. There was, however, a big overhang to keep everyone dry from the constant rain, and it was much cooler to hang out in the parking lot and show of your car. The schoolyear was winding down, and all of the seniors were chattering about future plans- working at dad's autoshop, waiting tables, and some were even going off to college.
It was in the days before phones, though I didn't normally carry a cellphone anyways. But I had no idea anything else was happening. I left when the sun went down and drugs were being pulled out. Smoking obviously didn't physiologically affect me, but I still didn't like the feeling of smoke in my lungs, and turning it down was too conspicuous.
I could hear Rose tossing things around violently from a mile away, and by the time I was up the driveway I realized what she was doing. Packing was underway, but Rose had chosen a more decisive way to do so. Emmett greeted me with red eyes and a sheepish smile.
It had been decades since anyone had slipped. But I knew what it was the moment Emmett described it to me. I had heard whispers while with the Volturi of such a phenomenon. Emmett had been skirting along the edge of town while running home. There was a woman outside, taking down her laundry from the line before it began to rain. She wasn't bleeding, she wasn't near him, but none of it mattered. The impulse was instantaneous and irresistible, and it wasn't really Emmett's fault. It didn't matter how good his control was, or how many years it had been since he had slipped before because he was powerless to the bloodlust.
I was mentally preparing myself for another slip. All of us save Carlisle had blood on our hands.
Alice was… somewhere between Rose and Esme, if I had to gauge it. But she was also very much Alice in it all. She could flit from subject to subject but as a newborn, she was very easily distracted. And all the while, I was wishing Eleazar would rush home faster and faster, because she kept, for lack of a better word, spacing out.
The first time was when she was first changed, and laid still while her scarlet eyes went glassy and her expression slackened. And that lasted several minutes before she rocketed off the bed, too fast for Emmett to hold her down or for Kate to reach out and touch her.
She barreled straight into me, her arms wrapping around my waist and squeezing so tightly I could hear my skin crack under the pressure.
"Oof," I groaned, trying to peel Alice's arms off of me, but she didn't seem to notice. "Carefully, Alice. Ow."
She immediately yanked her arms away and clasped her hands in front of her, like she was scared of using them.
"Sorry," she whispered.
I smiled at her, still gentle. Emmett relaxed some, noticing that she was far calmer than he had been, calmer than what he had heard Rose had been like.
"Don't panic, Alice," I said, holding a hand out for her to take. "You're a bit stronger than the rest of us for the moment. It's completely normal."
Alice looked at me in confusion, her brows knitted together in the same way her brother's did.
"You're safe here," I reassured her. "James is gone forever, and he can never hurt you again."
I squeezed her hand in mine, and she looked down at our clasped fingers in amazement. I wondered what was tipping her off- the fact that our skin was the exact same shade, or that I now felt warm and normal to her.
"I know it can be overwhelming. There was an accident, Alice. It's alright if you don't remember, that's completely normal. And I changed you into what I am, what we all are," I swept my spare hand across the room, and Alice looked from Tanya and Irina behind me, then to Kate on one side, before settling on Emmett's smiling form.
"I know your throat hurts. You said you need to hunt, and you are right. So why don't we go get that taken care of?"
Alice was staring at me with wide eyes, her delicate mouth open in what looked like awe. I wondered if I had gotten nail polish on my face.
I kept our hands together and pushed open the glass door that led out from the sunroom to the wide-open forest behind the house. Alice took a too-fast step forward and yanked on my arm, then realized that she had been quicker than me and slowed down too much so she was shuffling behind me. It was less than a second before she figured out how to gauge and adjust her speed, then she fell in step beside me.
Tanya had surveyed everything while she was hunting herself, and we were safely removed from even the hint of a human presence. The mountains provided a safe barrier on all sides so we were left with untouched forest for miles and miles. "There was a herd of deer to the northwest," Tanya said quietly, sweeping past us to take the outer watch. Even if there were no humans nearby, it would be safer to have someone on all sides of us.
Alice was looking at everything with ravenous attention, her head on a swivel as she took in the new world around her. There was life all around us, and I wondered what she was focusing on.
"We can run now," I told her. I tried to release my hand from hers, but she kept her fist closed and our hands locked together, and there was nothing I could do to force us apart.
"Don't leave, okay?" Alice begged, still squeezing my hand with such strength that one quick move and she would tear my fingers straight off.
"I'm not going anywhere," I promised. "We're just on a hunting trip. Nice and easy."
Reluctantly, Alice released my hand. I kept my friendly smile on while she stared hesitantly at me. In a slow start, I jogged forward into the forest. I wanted to show her how to do it, that it would be safe to move her body however quickly she wanted to. It was disorienting, in the beginning. I remember running for the first time, just outside the palazzo. I was so used to the rough texture of the stone streets and the biting pain of a pebble embedded in the soles of my feet. It was difficult to comprehend how a sharp limb whipping against my skin could feel as soft as the brush of a feather.
Alice peeled past me, her delighted laughter bell-like and clear. Her legs were a blur as her newborn strength allowed her to push herself more quickly than I was capable of. She wove around the densely packed trees, launching herself from rock to rock and then leaping in dramatic distance over a small stream.
She wasn't consumed in running for long at all. I had angled us in the direction that Tanya suggested, and there were twelve wet, fluttering heartbeats soon within earshot.
The instinct took over. It wasn't something any of us had to be taught, except the direction of prey had to be shifted from human to animal. I knew all too well how difficult it could be to convince a newborn to feed from something that didn't smell too appetizing, but the fact that Alice was ready and willing to track it down was an excellent sign.
She raced from my sight, not cognizant of where she was but for the thump of heartbeats. It wasn't difficult to follow behind her. She wasn't giving much care to avoid branches and the path I followed looked like a very tiny tornado had torn through.
I caught up to her when she faltered at the edge of a little clearing, not far from where the herd was lapping at a small brook. The wind was softly blowing in our direction, and Alice's nose scrunched at the smell. I opened my mouth to talk her into hunting them, however unalluring the scent, but she turned stone-still again. Her brows were drawn together, and her sharp red eyes were staring intensely at what I tracked to be just a normal Sitka spruce.
But her gaze didn't break, and she didn't move for several minutes. I didn't move either. With a newborn, any unexpected movement could be interpreted as a provocation, and I was really hoping to avoid any kind of grappling. I was sorely outmatched, which meant Kate would have to step in. And the idea of seeing Alice in any further pain ever again was a devastating thought.
Then she blinked, and sprinted forward to the herd.
They didn't stand a chance.
Nothing ever did, of course. Deer after deer fell, and Alice was a remarkably graceful predator. There was barely a spot of blood on her blouse, the deep red color so chosen to hide any stains but was apparently unnecessary.
Alice sighed as she dropped the last limp body onto the ground. "It still hurts," she cried, her small hand wrapping around her throat.
"I know," I said sadly. "It always will."
I didn't bother trying to explain any further. The time would come where I could explain everything thoroughly, and perhaps we could talk again like old friends. My best friend was still in there somewhere, after all. But for now, that side was suppressed by the bloodthirsty newborn, and Alice rampaged through the forest in search of something to assuage the burn in her throat.
Emmett was the one communicating with everyone at home. I knew he had spoken to Edward, but I also knew that Edward hadn't asked to talk to me.
He hadn't asked when I was coming home, either.
Maybe it would be better if I didn't. I needed to go to Italy in just a month. It was the only thing I could really do to protect Edward, after all. It might be better if I just stayed with Alice and took care of her, then left her with everyone else and headed to Italy. I had no idea what the future held if I made it back. I used to think that I could come home to Edward and we would finish out high school, and then do whatever we wanted. All those months ago in Seattle, when the world hadn't collapsed around me and my existence wasn't in shambled, Edward had made it seem like he would want to marry me one day.
My dead heart seemed to contract at the thought, and I tried to push it away and focus on Alice. She was standing in front of a tree with Emmett at her side, trying to figure out how to touch the delicate trunk without her hand sinking straight through. Tactile strength was no newborn's strong suit, and she was quickly growing frustrated with her lack of success. There were craters in trees all around her, and Emmett wasn't helping the matter by laughing every time she stuck her hand through the middle of the tree.
The activity was quickly discarded in place of hunting. Emmett and I followed behind Alice as we ran along the rocky terrain at the base of the mountain. The trees were sparser but the sun was bright and the sky stretched out above us in a deep indigo. There were some mountain goats rambling around above us, but Alice's nose crinkled at the smell. She was becoming more discerning, and even I had to admit they weren't very appetizing.
There was a pack of wolves in the distance, though. They were a little further down, but it was nice to run at this altitude, where the whole valley was on display. There was a lake as smooth as glass, and a moose was wading through it, its furry head and giant horns the only thing visible out of the water. Miles of bright pink and yellow wildflowers blanketed the rolling hills, and ancient pine trees towered over the land and provided much needed shade from the blistering sun.
"You need to hunt, too," Emmett murmured, coming up behind me.
"I'm fine," I brushed him off. The licking burn in my throat was a pleasant companion in comparison to the whole in my chest.
"Oh, Bella!" Alice squealed, suddenly circling around to run back towards Emmett and me. Her eyes were bright and sparkling, a dazzling smile stretched across her face. "Please, please hunt with me! I want to watch you!"
"It's more of a solitary activity," I said stolidly.
"But isn't that why you guys would go out of town? To hunt together?" Alice asked in genuine confusion.
"Yes, that's exactly right," Emmett said.
"Not literally together," I said at the same time, shooting a glare at Emmett.
"Have you looked in a mirror lately?" he retorted. My hand came up to touch the dark skin under my eye. I knew what he was talking about, even if I hadn't seen it for myself. It had been four weeks. That was a long time to go without hunting, even by my standards, but the burning thirst was such a constant companion that I didn't want to let it go.
"Bellaaaaa," Alice whined, pulling on my arm. Her grip was painfully tight, and her red eyes darken with impatience. I tried to shrug her off, but her fingers just tightened until they were digging into my forearm. "I want to go now," Alice said sharply.
The last thing I wanted was some kind of violent altercation. I could hear Irina edging closer to us, ready to step in if she was needed. I had to acquiesce. Alice loped after me as I ran towards the wolfpack, a joyful skip in her step.
I felt endlessly guilty. It was beyond what I had felt even with Rose, and that had been a crushing depression.
Alice shouldn't have been able to run behind me. She shouldn't be begging to watch me hunt, much less watch as my mind shut off as the instincts took over. That shame didn't even register until the hot, tangy blood was tapering off in my mouth, and then I realized that Alice was standing over another wolf body. She was watching me, her mouth slightly open and her brows arched in dismay.
I looked down at the drained carcass, and felt the pricking sting of venom in my eyes. This wasn't right. What we were wasn't right, and it was even more unfair that I had dragged Alice into it.
I was willing to bring Edward into it. I was selfish enough to want him forever, and he was already aware of and acquainted with the personal cost. I had stolen a future from Alice. I had taken away her one chance of normalcy and stability- two things that had been lacking from her life for basically the entirety of it. She would never be able to go to college and find herself, she would never fall in love and have children, she would never get to grow old with anyone and watch their grandchildren play in the yard from a porch swing while their bones ached and the beautiful tapestry of a lifetime of memories rose in a crescendo.
Instead, she was traipsing around Denali National Park and leaving a trail of animal bodies in her wake, her eyes an unnaturally bright red and her future forever changed. The newborn phase made her seem like a demonic fairy, with moods that would give a bipolar person whiplash. One minute she would be asking insightful questions about what her new reality meant- the ethics of our diet, the structure of our very loose society- and the next she was growling at someone for stepping wrong and making a branch snap. She went from practicing turning the pages of a book to taking a snap at Kate for trying to take the book from her hands. Alice got quick a shock from it, too. Literally. And that opened up a long conversation about special abilities that was paused every few hours for Alice to try to soothe her unending thirst.
"How do we get our powers?" Alice asked eagerly, staring at Kate's hands as if she could make herself see the electric field on her palms.
"Most don't have any," I interjected.
"Yeah, so don't get your hopes up," Emmett added. "Chances are, you'll be like the rest of them and not have any."
"What powers do you have?" Alice asked, gaping up at him.
"Besides my devilishly good looks?" Emmett grinned broadly and lifted up his arm to flex his tree-trunk-thick bicep.
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. "For almost all of us, this existence is pretty routine. You hunt, you run, you read-"
"You read," Emmett mumbled.
"-and you find your own ways to pass the time. It's not all that exciting after the novelty wears off." I huffed, finishing my thought.
"You've only known Edward a few months, and you're already so jaded," Emmett said, shaking his head. I glared at him, but he never seemed to pick up on any kind of subtle social cues.
"What does Edward have to do with it?" Alice asked.
"It's not-"
Alice interrupted me, her train of thought derailing in distraction. "How is Edward? He's okay, right?"
"He's fine," I promised.
"How would you know?" Emmett asked, frowning. "You haven't spoken to him since he went back to Forks."
I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to suppress the very pressing urge to punch him in the face. Edward hadn't called, not even once. He was communicating through Esme, who was the one talking to Emmett. I had overheard almost every conversation, and I knew that Esme had passed along that Edward was asking about Alice, not about me. And my own phone sat like a silent stone in my pocket. I didn't even know why I was keeping it with me anymore.
I gritted my teeth and stopped myself from commenting on how Rose hadn't called either. That was my fault, too, not Emmett's.
"For me, every day is an adventure with my Rosie," Emmett announced, subject flickering the attention off of me, though I didn't know if he did it on purpose, or if he was just shrugging and moving on.
Alice blinked. "Rosalie."
"She hates when he calls her Rosie. Our family calls her Rose, and since that's what you are now…" I trailed off. I wasn't sure what reaction I was expecting. Knowing Alice, I thought she'd give me one of those goofy grins of hers, throw her arms around me in a crushing hug, and maybe tell me a weird fact about the etymological origins of the word rose and some obscure reference to Henry VI.
Instead she just stared at me, her face expressionless and her red eyes blank. Emmett threw his hands up and arched a brow, looking at me questioningly. "Sorry, Alice, you're kinda stuck with us. Don't blame Bella, it's just the way of our world."
Alice blinked, and a dark shadow flashed in her eyes. Then, without warning, she dashed off. Emmett cursed and ran after her, and I could hear Tanya shifting around in the direction Alice had run in, making sure she was giving her enough berth to hunt.
"She's rather well-behaved, isn't she?" Kate commented, stepping around a splintered tree to stand beside me. Though I doubted she noticed, everyone else was orbiting Alice while she hunted, sure to keep her contained.
"I think she has an ability," I sighed, trying to follow Alice's movements below but losing track of her the further away she got.
"What makes you think so?"
I explained to her what had happened in the weeks and days leading up to Alice's change- how she knew that James and Victoria were out there before we did, and how she knew where to find us.
Kate nodded in agreeance, especially when I made note of how Alice seemed to space out now. "Eleazar should be back soon enough, and he'll be able to tell us definitively."
"I wish he was here now," I mumbled, not entirely talking about Eleazar.
"That would make two gifted vampires in your coven," Kate said, ignoring my wistfulness.
"As if one wasn't enough."
"I doubt the Volturi would be pleased, if they were to find out," she agreed. "But they're not going to. How could they? Eleazar and Carmen are there now, but they don't know about Alice yet. And the only other person with plans to see Aro any time soon is you, and he won't know anything you don't tell him."
"Eleazar gets away with it."
"Eleazar is very valuable to Aro, and he doesn't want to risk alienating or offending him. You, on the other hand-"
"I know," I cut her off. I was tired. Maybe not physically, but existentially for certain, and the last thing I wanted to think about was the Volturi and how dangerous they presumed I was. The crushing pain in my chest was almost unbearable, and I could feel the weight of my phone burning a hole into my pocket as it called to me in its silence.
Kate seemed to accept my dismissal, and smiled softly at me before disappearing into the brush, giving me the privacy I wanted to make the call I dreaded.
I avoided it for a moment. I trekked slowly up the mountainside, up to where the snow still blanketed the ground and the air was thin and cold. Not even the bright sun felt warm up here, and it seemed to match the desolation of my mood perfectly. I couldn't remember ever feeling so hopeless.
The ring lasted only a moment before Carlisle picked up.
"Why are you calling me?" he said shortly, and I recoiled from the harshness of his tone that was so out of character.
"I wanted to talk to you," I said smally.
"No, you don't."
"Why else would I call?"
"Because you're too scared to call who you want to."
"You sound like Emmett," I said sharply, defensively. "In case you haven't noticed, I haven't gotten a call from him either."
"Do you really wonder why?" he asked rhetorically, since I knew the answer. I couldn't begrudge Edward not wanting to speak to me, really I couldn't. I had destroyed the only family he had ever known, and it was entirely my fault.
"'Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal,
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope'," I quoted.
"Despair isn't flattering on you," Carlisle sighed, and I could hear him shuffling papers. A rush of gratitude and sadness intermingled as I realized he wasn't home.
"'They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?'" I continued, letting the lines spill out of me in a wonton morass of anguish.
"I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.'"
"I know where you're going with this," Carlisle sighed again, and I realized that he sounded tired too.
I skipped a few stanzas, fitting what I wanted where it seemed apt.
"'When I practiced eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.'"
"Bella," Carlisle warned, but I was already on a roll. I thought of the centuries spent trying to fit in with the humans, of trying to blend and be accepted into their company. He was with me for almost all of it. How much had we sacrificed to ignore our nature and exist how we did? Was there a cost to pay to have the love that I knew I didn't deserve?
"'When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;'"
I was spurned on by the fresh memory of Alice's heart passing its last beat.
"And when my Love's heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.
And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day,
Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now."
The phone was quiet for a long while. I could hear the booming bellow of Emmett's laugh from somewhere far below, but I couldn't hope to see anyone. Besides that, the silence from this height was almost eerie, like the cold and the snow kept it insulated from the liveliness of summer that was thriving all down the mountainside.
"I didn't realize…" Carlisle said quietly. "He doesn't hate you."
I bit down on my bottom lip, trying to hold back the cry that gathered in my throat and pushed upward with the pressure in the cavern of my chest. "You can't know that."
"But I do," he said firmly.
"Rose hated me. Hates me, probably."
"That's not comparable."
"I irrevocably took away from Rose something that she loved, and the future it held. What's the difference?"
"Perhaps there is none," Carlisle said, and it was as if a dagger found its way into my heart. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. He hated me. He had to. I didn't think I could bare to take the abuse I deserved from him the way I had with Rose. The hateful glares, the glass vases thrown at me, the venomous vitriol dripping from her every word… It had been-
Carlisle cut off my thought. "There was no future in any alternative. You gave Alice a future. You're not Mephistopheles, you're not Lord Henry Wotten-
"More like Carmilla," I interrupted.
Carlisle ignored me. "Alice would have died. Rose would have died. Actual, real death, where there's no 'walking, talking, smiling' after. Edward knows that as well as you do."
"You didn't see what he did." I thought of the bloody scene in those dark woods, of my face buried in the wound in Alice's abdomen and the thready pulse of her heart under my hands. Venom was trickling down the back of my throat again in response.
"If you saw as he did, would you hate him?"
The answer was obvious. There was no question to it. There was nothing Edward could do to make me feel anything other than unbridled love and adoration for him. I tried to conjure up a comparable image- Rose bleeding out as she was, and Edward standing over her, his skin white and his eyes black as pitch. I knew I would beg him to save her…
Save her.
I hung up on Carlisle without even saying goodbye, and immediately called home. I had no idea if Edward was even there, and in those few seconds I prayed to whatever deities there may be that anyone but Rose would pick up the phone. A conversation needed to be had with her, but I wouldn't do it over the phone.
"Bella!" Esme near-shouted, and the joy in her voice was palpable. With everything else going on, I hadn't given Esme's sacrifice much thought. I had torn her family apart, and with Alice unable to leave Alaska and she and Carlisle unable to leave Forks, it would be fractured for the foreseeable future. "How are you? How is Alice? Emmett? Everyone else? Are you taking care of yourself? The last time I spoke with Emmett, he mentioned that you still hadn't hunted. Bella, you know better than that. Please tell me you've hunted."
"I have," I said, cutting her off before I could be chastised any further. "I hunted with Alice a few days ago."
"Good!" she exclaimed. I could hear Esme walking through the kitchen, her steps echoing on the marble tile, and the patter of rain against the wide windows. Other than that, it all seemed quiet. "She sounds like quite the little spitfire, from what I've heard. You haven't had any problems, have you? Is something wrong? Is that why you're calling?"
"No, nothing like that," I said quickly, assuaging her worry. "I was… I was calling to see if… Is Edward around?"
"Oh." Esme inhaled as I waited with bated breath. "He's out with Rose, but they should be back soon if you want to wait."
"He's out with Rose?" I couldn't have kept the surprise from my voice, even if I tried. Rose willingly spending time with any human was out of character, but given the mood she was sure to be in, I found it even harder to imagine.
"They've been spending time together since he came back," Esme answered tentatively. Even with all the other swirling waves of emotions that had been unleashed in me, I couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy. "He's been helping her cope."
"He's been helping her cope?" I repeated back in shock.
"I know," Esme laughed. "It seemed outrageous to me, too. But he was the one who explained how Alice… how she seemed to ask you to change her. He's honestly very good with her. It's impressive."
Before I could say anything else, Esme took an incoming call and left me on hold. I set the phone down beside me and tucked my knees under my chin. When she came back, I knew it was Carlisle on the other line. Her voice had softened and she sounded teary and sympathetic.
"Edward will be home within the hour," she murmured. "He misses you. Goodness, he misses you. He just wants you to be okay."
"I'll be okay as long as he is, as long as he… still wants me."
"That's forever," Esme promised. She seemed to sense that I couldn't manifest any more words, and after several affirmations of love and assuring me she would call the second Edward came home, she hung up.
Uncertainty seemed to hang like a cloud, and it was all piling up into an overwhelming mess of chaos. Even if Edward was coping with Alice's change, even if he didn't blame me for taking her away, that didn't negate the fact that I wasn't with him. He had been so anxious about me leaving for Italy that we had scheduled everything we possibly could just so he could have some assurance of consistency.
We were supposed to be spending our last days of summer in the meadow, and maybe swimming again. I would lounge in the sun with his head in my lap, one of my hands twisting through his silky hair and the other flipping through whatever book we had decided to read that day.
School started in just a few days. I was sure I wouldn't make it. I didn't think I could leave Alice, much less foist a newborn on Tanya, Irina, and Kate and then skive off and let them take the brunt of the work. Which meant I would the only first month of senior year Edward would ever have. And since we were taking Calculus, I would miss watching him do homework and the way his brows pulled together and his eyes narrowed when working through problems he had trouble with.
And then came the reality of actually having to leave for Italy. It was impending, a looming threat. Aro certainly knew exactly what he was doing, working through Jane into manipulating me back. The dread was stifling, and if I was capable of it, I was sure I would be having panic attacks myself. And Alice being a vampire was just an additional complication to an already convoluted trip. I would have to arrange to inconvenience the rest of my family into taking care of her, which would mean tearing everyone away from helping Edward as well.
I sighed and wrapped my arms around my legs, curling into myself. The sky was darkening and the air was growing colder, seeming to match the desolation of my mood a little more than the sunny summer day did.
It was a gorgeous scene, but I couldn't find it in myself to admire it. So high up, the ground was still frozen and ice was crystalized on the flat surfaces of every rock. The sun was setting on the mountains on the other side of the range, and below, the valley was preparing for night. Birds were huddling together on their respective boughs, and a pack of wolves was prowling through the thicket of trees in the outskirts of the lake.
I heard her coming. Her steps were light and lithe, but even still, she wasn't a subtle presence. I didn't move. Alice came to sit beside me, the rock fracturing with her weight when she carelessly sunk down. Kate and Irina had both followed about halfway up the mountainside, but were lingering far below and almost out of earshot.
Alice smelled like blood, and I could see small stain, wet and fresh, drying in drips down the front of her silk blouse. Her fingers drummed against the rock carelessly, cracking holes into it.
She sighed heavily. I looked over at her, and her lips were pulled into a pout, her brows pulled together with a little wrinkle in the middle in the same form as her brother. The burn in my chest smoldered at the reminder, and my hand unconsciously came to rest on the small rectangular cellphone I had slipped back into my pocket.
"Everything is going to be alright," I repeated unconvincingly, not believing it myself.
Alice turned to me. Her skin was shining in the orange glow, and it dulled the aggressive hue of her irises. Her dark brows were arched, and there was a leaf lodged in the messy tousles of her black hair.
"No, everything's not going to be 'alright'," Alice said. A smile spread across her face, her lips tilting up crookedly. "It's going to be wonderful."
Alice knows best, right?