Chapter 35 Angus and the Long Goodbye / -pation

Chapter 35

Angus and the Long Goodbye / -pation

            “Hi,” he says, smiling softly at me.

            “Hi,” I reply, feeling a bit bashful.

            There is a pause between us.  While it doesn’t last long, the silence between us is deafening. 

“Are you okay?” Angus finally asks, reaching for me.  His hand hesitates for a second before dropping back to his side.

            “I think s-so,” I say, nodding my head slightly.

            “Your eyes are swollen,” he states, concern in his voice.  His eyes are caring, but also confused.

            “I-I was crying earlier,” I reply, my gaze dropping, not wanting to continue meeting his eyes because of my embarrassment at my earlier behavior.

            “Beira, I…” he pauses briefly before continuing.  “I have never heard that piece of music before.”

            I look back at him, our eyes locking.

            “It was beautiful,” he says, his face and voice calm, gentle even, but turmoil still hides behind his eyes.  “A bit frantic in places, but beautiful in others.  Honestly, I don’t think I have ever heard anything quite like it.”

            He pauses again, his gaze studying my face for a moment.

            “And then you ran afterward,” his voice not accusatory, just stating a fact.

            “Beira, you didn’t have to run,” he says, the volume of his voice dropping as his eyes lock with mine once again.

            “I… r-reacted.  I d-didn’t even think,” I say.  “Ever s-s-since my accident, it feels as if I have to w-walk on eggshells because I have to b-be the girl who everyone but me remembers clearly.  I t-try not to show it, b-b-but my stress levels are through the roof some days.  When I saw the piano, it was like I got t-tunnel vision.  Everything narrowed in on it and I had to release how I felt.  How I have been feeling for a while, t-to be honest, it was c-c-cathartic.  And then, afterward, everyone, even you, were just staring at me l-like I was a stranger...  A-and then I-I panicked…”

            My voice trails off and for a moment there is silence once again.

            “Well, I was shocked.  We all were,” Angus finally replies.  “But, no, I didn’t think you were a stranger; I just didn’t know you could do that.”

            “Neither did I.”  Inwardly, I wince because the truth is, I kind of did know, but I wasn’t sure if this body was capable.

             “You’re still you.  This changes nothing.”  He smiles warmly.  “You’re the girl that I’ve cared about for years.”

            “Angus,” I start to say, but stop.

            “You know, I wanted to follow after you, but I wasn’t sure if I should, so I hesitated,” he says, taking my pause as an invitation to continue.  “And if it wasn’t for Mari saying she knew where you were going, and also having to stop Izzy from charging ahead like a bull at the sight of the color red…”

            So, he actually wanted to follow me.  I thought I had scared him.

            I feel tension in my chest release that I hadn’t realized was there.

            His voice trails off and his cheeks flush.  He reaches up, hesitates slightly, then places a hand on my cheek, his thumb gently brushing it for a moment.  He smiles the brightest smile I think I have ever seen in my life, and the hall around us seems brighter to me.

            “Ah,” he says with a little laugh.  “So, this is what the Duke was telling me about.”

            My confusion must have been apparent, because he instantly clarifies.

            “Beira, you’re glowing.”  His face breaks out into a huge grin, mirth in his eyes.  “Like, actually glowing.”

            I step back and hold out my hands, looking at them.  Sure enough, every part I can see of myself is faintly glowing.  I cover my face, mortified, and kill the light as fast as possible.

            I’m supposed to keep it hidden.

            Suddenly, there is a loud crash from somewhere down the hallway at the top of the stairs.

            “MARI!  I SWEAR IF YOU KEEP TRYING TO BRAID MY HAIR INTO TWIN BRAIDS…“  I hear Izzy’s yells echoing towards us.  There is a brief pause.  “BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU TONIGHT!”

            There is another crash followed by silence.

            Angus sighs and shakes his head in disappointment.

            “Let’s go before she tears the whole house down,” he says, a resigned chuckle escaping.  “Oh, and your father told me about the changes to your affinity.  You don’t have to hide it from me.”

            He smiles again before clearing his throat and softly adding, “It was actually very cute.”

            I almost miss that last part; the delivery is so soft.  I look at him and we catch each other’s eyes.  He looks away first, his face flushed as he clears his throat.

            “Umm, shall we?” he asks, motioning towards the top of the stairs.

            I nod, and he leads the way.

            At the top of the stairs, we continue straight down the hall until we reach a door that is currently cracked open on the left.  Angus pushes it open and I peek inside to a scene of total chaos.  Izzy has a pillow that, at some point, has burst a seam because it is spewing an extraordinary number of feathers everywhere as she chases Mari and tries to hit her with it.  Mari, for her part, is doing an amazing job dodging the princess’s strikes.  Both girls are in long nightgowns, and Izzy’s hair is partially braided.  Feathers are stuck in her hair as if she had bashed the leaking pillow over her own head, but strangely, Mari doesn’t have a single feather on her despite the absurd amount floating in the air.

            Angus and I stand in the doorway for a moment, too shocked to move as Izzy continues, and fails, to strike the deft Maribelle.  That’s when I notice a shattered vase on the floor near the large bed.

            Well, that solves the mystery of one of the crashes.

            Angus clears his throat loudly and the two girls freeze.  Finally, one of the floating feathers falls gently onto Maribelle’s head before vanishing a moment later.

            “What in the world is going on here?”  He says loudly, incredulity in his voice.

            Izzy’s face turns red before she replies.

            “Ahem, WE… were having a pillow fight…” she begins.

            “You were having a pillow fight.”  Mari rebukes, her face as expressionless as her tone is flat.

            “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t have started if you would have just braided my hair like a normal person.”  Izzy retorts.

            “You should have specified.”  Mari replies seriously, with a barely noticeable gleam in her eyes that betrays her amusement.

            “You knew what I meant!”  Izzy cries, the indignancy of having her hair braided in twin braids apparent in her voice.  “I never wear my hair in twin braids, twin tails, or twin anything!”

            “Izzy, drop it!”  Angus says loudly, drawing the attention of both girls once again.

            “She started it,” Izzy insists with a pout, dropping the deflated pillow.

            “Um, i-is this my room?”  I ask Angus.

            He nods in confirmation, giving me a little smile before looking back at his sister and the chaos in the room.  He shakes his head in disappointment and sighs.

            “I apologize for my sister,” he says, taking my hand into his.  “I’ll contact you tomorrow and we can arrange some time to get together.  Maybe go to one of the museums you used to love visiting?”

            I nod and he smiles again, then glances back to the room. 

            “Well then,” he says, giving my hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it.  “I leave it to you, Lady Beira.” He then leans in and whispers in my ear.  “Make sure Izzy helps in cleaning up this mess, it is hers after all.”

            He gently guides me through the door and I step into my disaster of a room, my heart sinking a little at the state of it.

            I turn in time to see him bow smoothly.

            “Ladies,” he says simply, before closing the door behind him.

            I turn back to the other two girls and see a sight I never expected, Izzy with a sheepish look as she quietly surveys the destruction she had caused.  Beside her, Maribelle sets about the task of gathering the fallen feathers and stuffing them back into the deflated pillow that Izzy had dropped.  I shake my head and walk over to where the fallen vase had broken in order to start gathering up the pieces.

            “I can do that, Beira,” I hear Izzy say as I bend down and start to gather the shards.

            “You are barefoot.”  I hear Mari say in her usual tone.

            “No, you help M-Mari instead; I’ll handle this s-s-since I still have my shoes on,” I tell her, sparing a glance in her direction. 

            Izzy nods and starts to gather feathers with Mari. 

            “B-by the way, we heard two crashes before A-Angus and I arrived.  This was clearly one.  Where i-is the other?”  I ask.

            “Gone,” Mari replies.

            I look up, confusion plainly written on my face.

            “What she means is that the cause is gone.  I was the crash,” Izzy explains while dramatically rubbing her knees which are slightly red.  “Mari put a stool in front of me as I was chasing her which caused me to fall.”

            I look around and see no stool, indicating that the offending furniture is indeed gone.

            “W-Where did…” I start to ask, but Mari holds up a hand stopping me.

            A hole opens in the air in front of her and a small stool pops out, falling to the floor.  My brain short circuits at the sight.

            What in the world? 

            I shake my head in disbelief.

            This isn’t like anything that Lord Zellen went over with me when we were reviewing magical types.  For that matter, now that I think about it, neither was soul magic, so there are clearly magical affinities he chose not to share with me.

            All he had ever gone over were fire, earth, water, ice, wood, air, life, and mind.   It wasn’t until I started displaying my light affinity that he told me what he knew about that and its counterpart, shadow, because they are rare.  He didn’t think they were relevant since the likelihood of me ever coming across someone who used either of those two elements is slim.

            I’m sure he would have gotten to them eventually, though…  maybe.

            At this point I realize that Izzy is once again yelling at Mari and pointing an accusatory finger at the stool sitting in front of Mari. 

            “I SAID GET THAT OFFENSIVE PIECE OF FURNITURE OUT OF MY SIGHT NOW, MARI!”  Izzy screams, but I can tell looking at her face that she isn’t actually upset. 

            Mari’s eyes are locked on me and that faint hint of an amused smile that she sometimes gets is on her face again.  A hole opens up underneath the stool and it falls through.  The hole closes again as if it were never there.

            “Void.”  She states simply.

            “Void?”  I ask.

            “My affinity.  Void.” 

            By now Izzy has again stopped yelling, but is staring at Mari with her face scrunched up in a particularly unattractive and overly exaggerated fashion.

            “You’ll get wrinkles like that.” Mari replies, causing both me and Izzy to burst into a fit of giggles.

            “C-Come on, let’s get this mess cleaned up.  I really don’t want M-Mary to find the room like this.”  I say after my giggling subsides.

            As if summoning her, the door to my room opens.   Mary, holding a tray laden with teacups and cookies, doesn’t enter immediately.  Instead, she pauses in the doorway, taking in the destruction that has only been partially cleaned up before she finally enters.  She deftly dodges the debris and walks over to one of the bedside tables and sets the tray down.  Standing straight with her back to us, I hear her sigh before she turns around with her usual pleasant smile on her face.

            “Lady Beira, please leave that to me.  I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you were to cut yourself on those shards,” she says addressing me before turning to the other girls.  “Princess Isabella, Lady Maribelle.  You need not put yourselves out.  I shall handle the cleaning from here.  You young ladies have done quite enough for tonight.”

            Somehow, those words manage to make all of us, even Mari, flush with embarrassment, though in Mari’s case if I had blinked, I would have missed it. 

            I wasn’t even in the room when all of this happened.  Why am I embarrassed?

            Standing up straight, I nod and move to the side where the other girls join me as Mary produces a broom and dustpan from somewhere and begins cleaning up.

            “Mari,” I whisper in Maribelle’s ear.  “Does Mary perhaps have a void affinity as well?”

            Mari shakes her head, furthering the mystery of my dutiful maid.