Shadows of the World

Shadowed But Beautiful.

"I didn't know you were interested in poetry."

James quickly shut the book and snapped his head up to me. Since I'd last talked to James, I'd heard his condition had somewhat improved, but not by much. He would phase in an out of a high fever and terrible chills quickly, but then return to normal just as quickly. And although Carson's grandmother really was advocating for James going to the hospital, Carson was convinced that he shouldn't go. He'd made a good argument though. What if the doctors found something really strange about James and wanted to test him? I didn't want James to become some crazy expirament...and I knew Nana didn't either.

He smiled shakily at me though. "I'm really not. I just like William Blake."

"Oh yeah, the one who wrote Tiger, Tiger, right?" I asked him.

James nodded. "Yeah, but thats not my favorite poem by him." He motioned for me to come join him and opened the book again. "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour," he recited carefully. James then looked up at me. "It was my mom's favorite poem. She loved William Blake too. She was really into nature and animals and that sort of thing," he told me. He showed me the book. It was an old, leather-bound book that had the words 'The Selected Poems of William Blake' on the front. It must have been very old, I assumed. "This is one of the last things I have of hers." He laughed and then looked at me with questioning eyes. "Where's Carson?" he asked.

"He's helping Nana make dinner. I said I'd come up and see you. We were just taking a drive around town." I looked around Carson's room and wondered what it would be like to feel like an intruder here. James didn't have a home...outside of his car. I looked at him. "Why did you come here James?" I questioned. He laid back onto the headboards of Carson's bed, where pillows were stacked high against him.

"Well it obviously was a dream that I had."

"...I know that. But why do I feel like there's something else?" I asked, looking at him. His face was serene, and he cast his gaze out the dark window. It suddenly struck me that I knew almost nothing about James, but I was still trying to fight for his life.

James shrugged. "My parents died when I was about 12. I was supposed to go live with my aunt, who was about an hour away. By then, I already knew about my...abilities, I guess. My parents had them, too. About a week after my parents died, I was still living with neighbors, until my aunt could come and get me. That night, I had a dream, a message, telling me that I had to leave and go somewhere else. Since then, every so often, I've had dreams telling me that I need to go someplace else. I always am moving around. It was easier when I was able to get a liscence and a car, but before then, I'd have dreams about safe places I could hide out for awhile. When I had the dream to come here, I knew I had to go."

"Why do you think the lady in blue would tell you to come here?" I asked. If she was so intent on him dying, why would she have him keep moving? Why not stay in one place, to die quietly?

James looked at me gravely. "The lady in blue isn't the one who tells me to go different places."

I balked at him. "I don't...understand. I thought she was the one who gave all the orders, who told you all what you had to do."

"She is," James answered. "But there is a difference between my dreams. The dreams where the lady in blue comes, she just comes to me and tells me who I must create a dream for next. The dreams where I'm going places are more abstract. They are not messages from the lady in blue. They are not messages from the people in charge...they're messages from someone else." James lowered his voice now. "Someone who is trying to help me, I think."

A cold feeling ran down me. The only time I'd been terrified was when I'd seen the lady in blue, or when I'd heard her words. The only times I'd been frightened was when I'd had a connection to her. My other dreams, my abstract dreams...what if that dream about me and James, the one where I'd felt so urgent, the one where I'd seen him go and I'd had to stay...what if that was telling me that I had to let him go on, I couldn't keep him here? What if someone had given me those dreams about Carson, to make me interested in him, to make me love him, to make me care for him...

For what? So that he wouldn't kill himself? Maybe. But maybe it was for a different reason. And then...

I looked at James quickly. "How...did your parents die?" I asked, my voice choking.

"One night, I was staying over at my friend's house...early, very early the next morning, at maybe 2 or 3 am, the police came and said my house had caught on fire. My parents burned to death." No. No, it couldn't be like that. It couldn't be that much of a coincidence.

"Did they abject to the rules of the elders?" I questioned, not looking at him.

James sighed. "Yeah, they complained a lot about how it was silly that we had to take orders from them...of course, silly wasn't the word they used. They yelled all the time about how they wished they could escape the elders...I guess in the end, they got their wish." I nodded, but was hardly listening to them. What if someone had killed Carson's parents and James's parents to quiet them? To keep everything orderly? But what if...what if they didn't get the job right, perfectly? What if they made a mistake? What if they didn't kill the entire family?

Why was James, whose parents died the exact same way Carson's did, led here, of all places? Why did I see Carson, why did I make an impression on him, just moments before he was about to kill himself? And me? What about me? Why was I the one to be involved...what was so special about me?

I opened my mouth to say something to James when Carson appeared at the doorway with three plates on a tray. "I brought us up some dinner," he said, smiling a little at me. I returned it, feeling my heart beat faster. Carson gave James a plate of food and gave me one and sat down next to me on the bed. His skin touched mine and I felt the heat of fever radiating off of him. He was deteriorating just as much as James was, but he wouldn't say anything. I looked at my beautiful boyfriend. He smiled back at me, but I saw through it. Here was a new apathetic sheild. Not from emotional pain anymore, but from phsyical pain. And it just reminded me even more about how time was running out. I had to find some way to stop this.

After James was done eating, he fell into a fitful sleep. Carson and I found ourselves hudding together on the floor near his heater, a blanket covering us. I leaned against Carson, and even though he was burning up, I saw that he was shivering. "You're getting sicker," I told him.

"Yes," he answered. He turned to me. "All we can do is make sure we don't take for granted any single moment we have together," he said.

"You know I won't let anything happen to you." My words were strong, but I wasn't even sure if they carried much weight anymore. The lady in blue told me I was special, she told me I was keeping them alive, but how was I? "Carson...?" I asked.

"Mmhmm?" he replied.

"You know those dreams you had, when you were told not to kill yourself, and were told to tell me about what you could do?" Carson nodded and I took that as a good enough reply. "Did the lady in blue tell you those things?

Carson looked at me, bewildered for a second. "It's weird, because she didn't. I just had a dream where I was telling you what I could do, who I was. And there was this strong feeling, not words, but I felt like someone was trying to tell me to stay. To not do anything to hurt myself. I've been thinking about that a lot, lately, actually. Like, if they were messages, who were they from?" he asked, what I knew was supposed to be a hypothetical question.

I took a deep breath. "You see, James has been having dreams like that, too. Dreams that are messages, but not from the lady in blue." I looked at Carson's eyes. "I've been having dreams with the lady in blue in them, too." Carson's eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but I was faster. "She's been telling me that I need to let you die, or I will die. She told me that I was special, she said 'humanity lies in the stars'. I'm not sure. All I know was that the dreams that were about you, and were about James...they never had her in them. And sometimes they scared me, but never like how I was when I had the dreams with the lady in blue in them."

Carson must have missed the point, because all he said after that was, "Clio, I'm not going to let you die. You have to let me go. You're not going to die."

I groaned. "That's the thing. First of all, I do sort of have James's life to think about here. Second of all, I don't even have any idea how I'm keeping you alive. It's not like I'm doing anything." Carson just sighed and slumped forward. I swallowed and said quietly. "Nana thinks your parents were killed."

"I know they were."

He said it as if there were no other truths in the world. "James's parents died the exact same way yours did." Carson leaned back up at this one. His eyes met mine and he kissed me soundly.

"I don't know why this is happening, I don't understand it, but I don't even think I want to. All I need to know is that I love you, and there is no changing that. Ever." I sighed after this, because I knew he was scared. But we were silent after that, all of a sudden, too tired. I looked up to the ceiling and I felt Carson's hand within my own and it made everything feel just a little bit more right. Sometimes, it felt like now, now with everything I knew, I carried the weight of the world on my back. I wondered what my life would be like if I'd never had that dream about Carson. Half asleep, half awake. What was better, though? The monotonous life with the routine that I knew? The one that included me and my friends, doing the same thing we did everyday, all the time? Or was it better to be awake and know the terrible truth?

Maybe after all, ignorance really was bliss. But if I'd been ignorant, I would never have really met Carson. I could and would never, ever regret that.

"Clio Pattinson." My name, very quiet. A whisper. A dark room. Echo, almost. There is warmth and comfort, this is not a bad feeling. Dark but happy. Shadowed but beautiful. Reaching out to grab something, anything. Nothing there. "Clio." Again, louder this time.

"Yes." My reply was too loud. I feel ashamed and quiet. "Who are you, tell me who you are."

She steps out of the shadows into the warm, soft, sudden light. A beautiful lady, in a old fashioned blue dress and long red hair. She flickers for a moment, like a film strip, but comes back into focus. "You are special, Clio."

"Yes but how?" Soft words and no answer. "How am I making them live?" No answer again. "I can do nothing, I understand nothing. I am nothing."

She takes my hand softly and suddenly we are in the sky, the brilliant night sky with thousands of tiny stars. "Humanity is in the stars," she repeats. She looks at me, she flickers, and for a moment, she is too pale, too sick, too abnormal. I yeild for a moment. Why was I here again? No matter. She grins beautifully again, perfect, again. "Your soul. The stars. The souls. Stars. Feel them, beating. You keep them, you only."

I look at the stars. I keep them, me only. Me. "Why me?"

"Because you can."

"I don't understand."

Her smile is mysterious. She looks back up to the stars and points to one, fading star that twinkles in and out. Right next to it, there is an even fainter star. It is easier to see when I look away. It is easier to see out of my periphery. "Let them explode. Let them fade. Do not keep their souls. Do not keep their stars."

"Why do they have to die?" I ask, there is no more important question.

She sighs and looks troubled. "They must stay silent, they must be quiet. They cannot tell. If they tell, we will die. I will die. You will die. If they do not pass, if they stay, if they are not silenced, we all will die. You must let their stars fade. Their souls...their stars...humanity..."


I woke with a start and felt insane heat from Carson's body. He was shivering like mad though and we had both fallen to the hard wood floor. I got up, still dressed in my jeans and shirt. James was finally sleeping peacefully in the bed. My heart beat very fast, and I was afraid. I didn't know why I was afraid, because it felt like there should be nothing to be afraid of. The lady in blue wasn't scary like she had been. She'd been helpful this time. But why did I feel like I didn't want to go back to sleep?

I pulled a few more blankets from Carson's closet and put them over Carson. As I was leaning up, I looked out the window. The field in the back of Carson's house was blue with moonlight. The woods were just as ominous as they had been the first night I'd ever been with him. I looked up. The sky was clear and the stars twinkled brilliantly. As I turned my head, my eyes caught something. When I looked back at the sky, the star was very hard to find. But as I turned away, I could see it clearer.

My heart clenched. I looked back at the sky and suddenly everything made sense.