Lost and gone forever in Stephenie's forest ...
Fly Away Home
I am running. Running to Bella's house. I will be there very soon. I want to be there right now. But I don't. I don't
Oh, Bella.
I'm getting close; I have to slow down. I can hear her father's thoughts. He is watching television. How is this possible? Doesn't he care that his daughter isn't home yet?
I think of where she is. Perhaps already in pieces. There are sharks as well as orca in those waters. I can't bear it. I stop, doubled over.
I can't. I can't stop here in the woods. I have to press forward. If Jasper is there first; if he lays a hand on my journal ... Oh, God, what a mess that will be! The two of us fighting. Chief Swan will probably have to die, too. What a mess. How did everything get to be such a mess?
I creep up behind the house; see the television flickering blue through the sitting room window, its blathering drone filling my ears with cruel indifference. Does he not even wonder why his daughter is still out? It's past dark.
So long past dark.
Bella's scent still hangs about the house, as does the scent of that monstrosity of a truck. I inhale them both, and it hurts.
There is light at the side of the house. The light in her bedroom is on. I don't understand it. Why would her father turn on her light? Or did she forget to turn it off before she left home in the morning?
The thought of the light, burning in her window, with her never to return … I double over again.
There's no sign of Jasper anywhere, no scent, no sound, no thought. I can't put this off. I scale the tree without a sound, just like always, and look in at her window.
And she is there.
She is right there.
Lying on her stomach, reading my journal, with her tender, lovely feet in the air, her sweet, slender ankles, and her pajama legs sagged down around her calves.
Oh, Bella.
I just stare. What can I do? I drink in the sight of her. Something must have changed. I don't even care what. What does it even matter? Right now … here she is. Safe.
Safe.
Safe and sound, with my journal and some sort of art homework spread out on her bed.
I stare like a dead man at this girl who is alive. Don't move. Don't move. Don't crash through the window and clasp her to my breast. Don't shake this tree I am hiding in to pieces.
Just look and thank God and don't move.
The printer on her desk starts to clack and grind and I see her move to get up from the bed. I make myself invisible behind the trunk of the tree.
She is puttering. I hear papers shuffling, the scratch of an exacto-knife, her fingertip sliding and clicking on the navigation pad of her laptop. In between it all she turns the pages of my journal one at a time, reading in silence except for her breath and heartbeat and an occasional sigh.
I feel a little jealous that she divides her attention between my journal and some school project. How wrong of me that is! I should only be grateful that she is alive.
None of that evil has happened.
And I still have a chance to make sure that it never will.
I settle in. Even though I am hiding behind the trunk of the tree, she is here. Right here.
Her heartbeat. Her blood.
God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.
It's past one in the morning, and finally, finally she is asleep. I can go in to her now. As I have done every night. Thanks to my dastardly resourcefulness, the window slides without the slightest sound.
I take my place in the chair, and stare.
If I had a soul, I would send it to lie down beside her.
Oh, happy ghost.
Under the covers, Isabella sleeps, swimming through her world of dreams.
She is alive, she is whole, she is completely unaware of the shadow of death that has dogged her every footstep – even here, here to the private space of her own bedroom.
I let the minutes and hours slip by, using the physical sight of her to wash my mind of every horrible future I saw this night. I remind myself not to rock in the chair, not to even breathe.
Layer by layer the grievous images are wiped away, until I feel clean again. Myself again.
This is the gift of her silence.
Which I take, ever so greedily, with both hands.
The night drifts, marked by the metronome of her heart.
I can't stay.
I want to. Lord knows I do. In this girl's presence, I am finally at peace. I feel safe. I am happy. I don't want to go back to my family, to school, to all of the things that all of us will have to do tomorrow to hide what we are, to act as if nothing unusual has happened in the past twenty-four hours, to account to the school authorities for Jasper's return. I'm sure he has returned, now. Alice saw it.
The sky is black, and the stars are covered by clouds, but the moment comes when I can feel the planet turning toward morning.
I think of kidnapping Bella and going someplace far away, just her and me. I fantasize a little cottage in the woods, like some tale from Hans Christian Anderson. I would hunt for the two of us, the blood for me and the meat for her.
I imagine some good-hearted fairy waving a wand, transporting me and this girl into the blank pages at the end of my journal, to live out in that unwritten country the life that I should have had. The thought of that is too excruciating to bear, and I have to shut down.
I don't even know if she likes me.
How could she, really? After the things that I've said.
Never mind what I am.
Chief Swan is restless tonight. He will wake up early, I'm sure of it. I can't stay. There are words that will need to be said with my family. Even though Bella is safe and sound, nothing can be the same now. The thought frightens me. I wonder what Alice is seeing.
The image of us all, trooping off to school in three hours, pretending to be human, swims surreal in my mind like a scene from Un Chien Andalou. Is that sham even possible for us now?
Minutes pass, and still I sit, knees to chin like a gargoyle, here on Bella's rocking chair.
This room, this heartbeat, the susurrations of her breath, her sleeping form, the odd mumbled words – I wrap them around me. I don't want to let go.
I think of the other place where I had found peace. She belongs there …
Even the scent of her blood, as much as it hurts, and it does hurt, has become so familiar to me. I don't want to let it go, either.
It breaks every possible law of decency to visit her like this, every night, hovering over her like some great, dark bird. My thirst to drink her has not changed. It never will. It is part of me. It is what I am. There is no pretending possible about that.
I don't want to leave, but I must.
And so, in the end, I do.
I retrieve my car at the school, and drive home at the very limits of the machine's capabilities. Our driveway, the tall trees, the verdant lawn, Esme's gardens and the glass walls that look out upon them – everything is exactly as it was when we all left, now yesterday morning. Valentine's Day. Jasper was going to kill her on Valentine's Day.
They are waiting for me, of course. Alice had seen my return. It is the dining room again, of course. I go to them. What else am I to do?
Everyone is here. Jasper as well. I think of the last time we all assembled around this table – was it really only thirteen days ago? All the things that I and Alice – and all of us, really – tried to do, to keep the future from falling off a cliff.
I sold Bella to keep the family together.
Yet here we are, splintered and raw, just the same.
Alice sold Jasper to keep him from harming Bella.
And Jasper hunted Bella down, just the same.
Can it be that there really ever is only one future? And all the alternates that Alice sees, that seem to be predicated on decisions in the present, all of that is just distraction, illusion, decoys? Is there really only the one destiny, pulling us forward step by step, and free will is the fairy tale?
I see in everyone's minds that they have already hashed out yesterday's events with each other, already come to accommodations for what was done, and what was not done. Returning now, as the sky outside starts to pale, once again I am the odd man out. How did this happen? I was Carlisle's first. His only, for a time. That was the only thing that had made my absurd new "life" bearable. What I was, and meant, to him. The bond between us.
Jasper catches my resistance and refrains from interfering with my feelings. He knows he'd better not! But Esme flies to me and wraps me in her arms.
"Edward! Oh, Edward!"
She has never needed Jasper to know what I am feeling. I can see in her thoughts all of the past, and how guilty she felt about the change that she was for Carlisle and me, how she can't feel complete if I am not with them, how, indeed, just as Emmett had observed, I am her and Carlisle's favorite.
I should feel comforted, but instead I just feel petty, and antsy to escape from her embrace.
"Please, Edward, please. Stay. Don't go. We need you. We want you."
Really? Do they really? Want me?
This is too much for Jasper and he closes his eyes in pain. Surprisingly it is Rosalie who comes forward to stand beside Esme.
"We're family," she says. "No one gets left behind."
Carlisle's thoughts come to the fore among them all.
Forgiveness. What do we have, save for this? How can we go on, save by this grace? For what shall we affirm in ourselves and each other? Our worst deeds? Or our best intentions? Our hatreds? Or our loves?
I want it to stop. All the silent, sub-rosa communication. I want to rant and rage. They owe me that at least.
I level my eyes at Alice. "How could you!" Her own words, thrown back in her face.
"I had to Edward! I had to! Every other path would have been worse! You don't know what it's like. To see like I do. You think you know, but you don't!"
Jasper is helping her, the bastard, soaking me in everything she is feeling, the helplessness and terror and despair that her gift brings her. It is a curse, like all of our gifts. Power brings suffering. But at least she has brought Jasper back to her side. They are a united front again. And I can see the family closing itself around them. The lovers have been forgiven for their tiff.
"What about Bella? Doesn't anyone care about her? She's innocent in all this. Innocent! How has she ever deserved to die?"
"Point is, she ain't dead, Edward. You seen that yourself now, I reckon. Ain't that what's most important? That she's still alive? Nary a hair even harmed."
"But you would have allowed it. All of you!" I will never forget how he and Rosalie and Alice held me down. "I begged! I begged!"
My siblings all look away. Ashamed. Of themselves? Yes, but also ashamed for me. I can see it in their minds – except for Alice, and Esme – how they are embarrassed for me, that I should be so far gone for this human that I can never have – unless I decide to hell with everything and just take her blood, fulfill the utter monstrosity that is my nature.
Once again I am hating Carlisle for changing me. If I had ended, as I was supposed to …
Bella would be dead, too. Crushed between her truck and Tyler's van.
Every other path would have been worse.
Esme is still holding me. Stubborn woman.
"We love you, Edward, can't you see? What Alice saw – Bella would have died if you had gone and interfered. She saw that your coming upon them forced Jasper's hand. No one would have been saved. And Jasper was going to let you kill him. And then there were witnesses. All those lives on your conscience. And Bella dead, too. She saw it driving you mad in the end."
Is that what Alice told them? Her own memories of the visions are impossibly tangled now. I can't sort them out, any more than I can sort out my own. Is it really true, then, that stopping Jasper before he killed Bella was just a wish on my part, but never a future?
"I hate you all!" There it is. My tantrum. Pouring out of my mouth like poison, as I push Esme off of me. "You all call me selfish! What do you think you are?" They are embarrassed for me again. I am embarrassed for myself, but I keep yelling at them, cursing, throwing every weak and small-minded thought any of them ever had out into the open for everyone to hear. I have perfect and total recall, and I refuse to spare anyone.
No one argues with me, no one resists, and it is so unsatisfying. I want to shake them, each of them, but instead end up just demolishing Esme's hand-fashioned table. She blinks, but allows it, and that only enrages me more.
Jasper has had enough. He steps in, pushing at me. I try to block him out but I can't. He pushes Carlisle and Esme's emotions at me. Alice's too. His own are empty, a vessel to hold and present theirs. They ache for me. Ache with a pain I can hardly bear.
Oh, Edward.
I don't want to give in. I can't. "You're hypocrites, all of you! All any of you care about is – "
"Us!" Carlisle finishes. "Each other. This family. Of which you are the first, my son."
"Don't! Don't give me that!" Don't thrust my own thoughts back in my teeth. As I have just done to each of them.
The fight goes out of me in a rush. Maybe Jasper helped. Maybe I am just a weakling. I am wrapped in the forbearance and contrition that surrounds me. It's humiliating. They're coddling me. Except for Alice. Alice is radiating hope.
"You didn't see, Carlisle. He …" I cannot even put words to the memory. "Her … He … you didn't see what he did!"
Deep pain crosses his face. He may not have seen, but he has imagined.
"By the grace of God, that fate did not come to pass," he whispers. "Nor will it." For she hath been passed over. Oh, my son.
"You have seen into our hearts, Edward. However any of us may have erred against you, it was in love, not malice. You know this. Nor have any of us hated the girl. You know this also." Her father is my friend. A good friend. Whom I must yet leave behind.
A brief image flashes: a crusted gravestone, unkempt grass, mist, Charles Swan, Devoted Father And Public Servant, 1967 – . A pair of white lilies in Carlisle's hand obscures the end date. He shuts the moment from his mind as soon as it forms, but, of course, I have seen.
Rosalie's words echo in my head. You can't love a human, Edward.
They die. They die and pass away. Bella, also, will be laid under the earth. Not today, but some day. My anger is gone. Alice's vision, of Bella in her casket, my journal, a stone that in time will be forgotten … no, not forgotten, I will find her, and visit, I will. I will.
I sit down in the chair beside me that has managed to survive my temper. Esme comes and pulls me against her as if I truly were her child.
"It's six o'clock," Rosalie reminds us. "Better if we're not driving like maniacs to get to school on time."
I remember that my clothes are damp and filthy with moraine and sheep blood and tree sap. I need to change. Esme smiles as I disentangle from her and glance in chagrin at the mess I have made of her dress and the room.
"It's nothing Edward. We are all safe. And so is Bella, now, too."
Un Chien Andalou - A macabre little Surrealist film made by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali in 1928. My little bow to Pattinson in Little Ashes …
This chapter is posted with deepest gratitude to Averysubtlegift, geo3, SaritaDreaming and Woodlily. I could never have done it without you. And to all dear readers, thank you. Because of you, writing is not a lonely endeavor.