Chapter Sixteen: Timeless by Rosaline Saul
As I walk into the room, Kieran smiles widely. I look into
his green eyes, and the last minutes melt away as if they never happened.
“What would you like to eat? Name it and I will tell you if we have it or not,” he asks.
He ends up making us croissants with ham and melted cheese.
We sit down in the lounge, and I sit on a single chair,
which sucks me into its comfort, with my legs folded in under me. The oiliness
from the melted cheese on the croissant drips down my fingers as I lean over
the plate to take a bite.
I finish chewing what is in my mouth and I ask curiously,
“Where are your parents?”
Kieran replies, “On holiday in Spain.”
I see Jayden glance at Kieran amused as he walks back into
the lounge. He is now wearing a loose black T-shirt with the black sweatpants.
His feet are still bare. He lies down on his back on the couch where he was
when I first saw him. He is facing me, and he looks across the room at me
pensively as he folds his arm under his head on the armrest. The corners of his
mouth curl up ever so slightly in the most seductive smile I have ever had the
pleasure to witness. His eyes look away from me, and strangely, I feel
disappointed. His brow furrows as he looks up at the television.
He presses the play button on the remote control, and I see
he is watching an action movie, the hero in the movie diving and rolling on the
ground to avoid being hit by an entire magazine of bullets raining down on him.
Although I am hungry, I cannot eat with him in the room, so
I sit with the half-eaten croissant pinched between my fingers and watch the
movie with him.
Kieran breaks the tension in the room. “Heather, would you
like to sit outside for a bit?”
Eagerly I reply, “Yes. It’s nice and warm outside.”
I stand up and then I follow Kieran to the kitchen. I glance
toward Jayden, and he is looking up at me. Maybe I am only imagining it, but he
looks sad as he looks at me. His dark eyes look miserable; it is almost as if
they are trying to tell me something—begging to be understood.
In the kitchen, Kieran takes my plate from me. “You hardly
ate anything.”
I take a croissant from the plate, and smiling I say, “I’ll
eat this one outside.”
He puts the plates on the kitchen counter next to the basin
and then he pulls the sliding door to the back garden open. We walk out onto a
wooden patio with a wooden bench and one of those large swings in the corner.
“I
have never seen one of these in real life.” I laugh delighted as I walk toward
the swing.
I sit down onto it carefully. Kieran sits down next to me,
and he starts to push his legs backwards and forwards slowly.
“This
is very relaxing.” I sigh. I turn toward him. “I have a feeling you do not want
to talk about it, but I cannot understand though, I felt that car slam into you
and I heard the metal crunch.”
“I cannot tell you everything. Not
because I don’t want to, but because I am not allowed to.”
“Not
allowed by who?”
He smiles sadly. “That is the part I cannot tell you.”
I frown and take a bite from the croissant still pinched
between my fingers. While I chew, I look across the garden at a crow sitting on
the wooden fence, hidden in the shadows of a large ash tree. It feels as if the
crow’s beady eyes are staring at me fixedly and it gives me the chills.
Kieran follows my gaze, and his shoulders drop despondently
when he sees the crow.
He starts quietly, “Let me tell you a story instead. This
story begins a long, long time ago in the village of Salem. Have you heard of
this village?”
I nod my head yes, my mouth still chewing. I want to remind
him this is the place he joked he used to live in somewhere in the sixteen
hundreds, but I feel too self-conscious to talk with my mouth full.
He continues, “It started so innocently. A small group of girls from Salem was playing with the idea of witchcraft, playing around with naive divination. Then one of the girls started feeling guilty, so she imagined she was really being possessed by an evil being. This was brought to the attention of the village council, but neither one of the girls obviously wanted to confess. However, as it progressed, each girl had no choice but to point out the witches who supposedly possessed them and told them to perform these hideous acts of fainting and dancing in the woods at night. They picked someone they did not like; someone they had an altercation with at one point or another. They accused innocent women of being witches and then panic and fear spread throughout the village like a wildfire. People were pointing fingers at each other and soon half the village was locked up in jail or being sent away to go on trial in bigger towns and cities. Nine women accused of being witches were eventually burned in the village of Salem.”
I turn to him until I am sitting sideways on the swing. He stops the motion of swinging as I pull my knees up onto the swing and fold my arms around my legs. I rest my chin on my knees. He smiles affectionately, as if he recognizes this is a comfortable position for me, especially when I am mesmerized in something. There is no way he knows though. It is impossible.
