Elizabeth Miles - Eternity

The fire was licking up into the tree now, racing over its branches. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to charge through the flames. But just then another sound came from behind him. A racing footfall. Thump-thump-thump. He whirled around, expecting the Furies to be at his back.

But it wasn’t them.

It was Crow.

“What are you doing ?” Crow’s face was wild; fire-shadows danced across his face and deepened the black craters under his eyes. “You’re going to ruin everything!”

“What are you doing?” JD barked back. “Go away! Stay away! It’s under control!”

Crow pushed past him, looking around frantically for something. Crow began to stomp on the fire with his boots.

“ Stop!” JD bellowed, diving toward him. It wasn’t time yet. He landed on the dirt, and a sharp spray of dust hit his eyes and his mouth. But he brought Crow down with him. JD spat pieces of grit from his tongue.

Crow’s elbow went into JD’s ribs, so deep it felt like cracking. They were inches from the fire. JD could feel the sweat all over him—on his forehead, his arms, the back of his neck.

“What are you doing ,” Crow said, shoving a calloused hand against JD’s face and pushing him down toward the ground. JD strained against it, feeling his muscles stretch like elastic, so taut that they might snap. No. Let go. He had to trust Walt. Crow was on the wrong side.

“I know you’re part of this,” JD panted. He reared back and kneed Crow right in the stomach, feeling his kneecap make contact, hearing Crow’s sharp intake of breath. JD had knocked the wind out of him, at least for a second.

He flipped Crow over, felt his weight shift, taking the advantage. He pinned Crow to the dirt. He looked down and tried to catch his breath. There was a smear of blood on his right hand. It was red-brown and ugly. “I saw you with them. You’re with the Furies.”

Crow turned his face to the side and spit blood onto the ground, trying to catch his breath. “I’m not working—with them. I was—trying to—strike a bargain.”

“A bargain?” JD huffed. The air was getting smoky and his lungs were tight from exertion. He was worried about Melissa. Maybe he should put out the fire after all.

“I offered myself,” Crow was saying between frantic gasps. “Instead. I thought it would save her. I saw it in a vision.”

“Instead of who?” JD increased the pressure on Crow’s chest. The heat of the fire was starting to scorch his face. A vision.

“Her,” Crow gasped. “They wanted her. Em.”

JD didn’t know what to think, what to believe.

“But it’s too late now,” Crow said. He didn’t look angry anymore. He just looked sad. “I was wrong. My vision was wrong.”

Sweat was dripping down JD’s face. It was hot, too hot. The fire was raging out of control. Soon the whole garden would combust. The moon was high, like a spotlight.

Melissa still lay motionless in a small, bare patch of ground.

And JD realized what he had done.

They’d all die—Melissa would die—if he couldn’t stop the fire, couldn’t get her out of there.

He scrambled to his feet just as a scream tore through the air.

When he turned around he saw Em come running out of the Furies’ house. She was sobbing. Babbling. “It’s almost time,” she was saying. “You saved me.”

“Where are they? Where are the Furies?” He tried to take Em’s shoulders but she pushed past him, moving into the garden, thick with smoke and flame. She was shoving aside the rippling tide of flowers, as though she’d lost something there.

“Em!” JD shouted.

Crow had climbed to his feet next to JD. “That’s not—,” he started to say.

“Shut up!” JD yelled. “I can’t think.” He needed to douse the flames— now . He lunged for the fire extinguisher he’d stolen from the auditorium, but Em blocked him off, a blissful smile on her face and a beautiful white flower in her hand. She grabbed his face on either side with surprising strength and a shock went through him as her lips touched his.

Adrenaline.

Fiery heat.

Desire.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Another frenzied voice broke into the chaos.

“What are you doing ?” a girl shrieked behind them.

He broke away from the kiss as a mess of dark brown hair whipped past him. The smell of Ivory soap and cocoa butter lingered in her wake. Em.

Stunned, confused, and utterly frozen, he watched as Emily Winters—another Emily Winters, the real Emily Winters?—plunged into the circle of flames.

Em flew out of her trance like a bullet, immediately confronted with the insane scene in front of her.

There was a circle of raging flames over there, to her right. She could just barely make out a person in the middle of the circle. She looked closer. It was Melissa.

Just next to the fire, two boys wrestled in the dirt. Em squinted. It was JD.  JD and . . . Crow?

And then, right there, on her left, amid the greenery . . . Ty. Ty, holding a big, beautiful, white flower. So white it practically glowed. Ty was holding it aloft so that the bright, big moon shone down on it like a spotlight.

It was midnight. Maybe she even heard a bell tolling somewhere in the distance. She couldn’t tell if it was real or in her imagination.

The flower.

It was midnight, and the albino flower had bloomed.

She wanted to reach for it. She wanted to so badly. To have it and rescue herself and stop the transformation. But there was no way she could get the flower and also get to Melissa in time. Em could see she was the only one to save Melissa. The boys were rolling around, too consumed in their own competition, and there was no one else. No one but her. All this for one mistake. One for which she had apologized. It wasn’t right.

She wasn’t going to let Melissa die. She wasn’t going to let another person get hurt because of her. She scrambled to her feet and propelled herself forward with unnatural speed. If the Furies wanted to take her down, so be it—but she wasn’t going to let anyone else die. She covered the ground in seconds and threw herself into the flames. She didn’t see a fire, just the chance to save someone other than herself. For once.

It wasn’t the searing pain she imagined. Instead it was pinpricks of heat dancing on her skin and an immense pressure, closing in on all sides, like the force of a freezing waterfall coming at her body from every angle—so cold that it feels hot. Except this was so hot, it felt cold. She came out on the other side, within the circle, and saw Melissa at her feet. Em fell to her knees beside her. “I’m going to get you out of here,” she whispered. Melissa’s skin was slick with sweat, and her eyelids were fluttering. She hoisted Melissa’s body into her arms.

She tried to plot her way out of the fiery maze. It was just darkness and smoke everywhere, like in Crow’s vision. Flames were reaching up around her. The threads of blackness pulled at her heart: the same sticky, angry web she’d been walking through for months.

No more.

Through the wall of smoke and flames, she adjusted her grip on Mel, who was cradled in her arms like a baby. Like when they used to pick her up and throw her off the dock at Galvin Pond when they were all so much younger. She sheltered Melissa’s body with her own, and attempted to move out of the circle of fire. She took one step backward, and then another. Meanwhile, the flames grew higher and hotter . . . higher and hotter . . .

She braced herself—cringing against the heightened sensation—and finally managed to twist her torso just enough to deposit Melissa’s body safely across. She could feel the fire eating away at her skin, and smoke filling her lungs.