The Future of a Memory

Rilla frowned at the wood and rope sky bridge stretched over the chasm before her. It looked positively ancient, likely because it was in fact ancient. Still, she expected the famous mythical Sky Bridge of Timberhaven to be less…rickety. A howling wind whipped up from the chasm, the eerie sound sending shivers rippling down her spine. Creatures lived in the chasm, creatures trapped there by the Fae hundreds of years ago, but lately the creatures were more active than ever. Creatures of the night lured all of the mountain animals into the chasm, devouring but never full. How long before they came for her people? And why did the Fae do nothing to protect them, the outcasts of their dalliances, human but more, gifted but not Fae.

Rilla looked away. No time for those thoughts.

She knelt down and pressed her fingertips into the cold rock of the mountainside, allowing the memory to come, to calm her as it always did, and to give her courage that she needed in this moment.

The memory was always the same.

Striking green eyes filled with determination looked down at her. Rilla, distraught and scared, begged the tall, handsome male to stay. “You don’t know what’s over there,” she cried, feeling as if her heart were breaking in two.

“I have to go, Rilla. Our people can’t survive on this mountain much longer. It grows harsher, and harsher. We need fertile ground. We need a place where we can thrive.”

Rilla followed the green-eyed man’s gaze across the chasm to the forest on the other side. Timberhaven, rumored to be the enchanted home of the fae and deadly in its own right.

“How will you get there?” she asked, a sliver of hope that he wouldn’t be able to leave. The chasm was impossible to cross, everyone knew it.

The man looked back at her and smiled sadly. “I think I’ve found the sky bridge.”

For a moment she forgot to breathe. She fell to the ground, crying out as pain slammed into her chest like a weight crushing her.

And then he was there, kneeling, lifting her chin, settling those deep green eyes on her. “Rilla,” he whispered. “You have to let me go. I have to leave you to save you.”

“Where?” she demanded, her breath coming in sharp gasps. “Where is the bridge?” But he didn’t answer.

No matter how many times she replayed the memory, he never answered. The memory faded but every word, every look, lodged deep in her soul. He never answered but finally, after two years, she had found the hidden sky bridge on her own.

Now, maybe she had a chance to save her people and to finally find out who the man with the green eyes was, for no matter how crystal clear his face, she didn’t know his name. The memory was seared into her very being but the man himself was a mystery to her.

“Rilla!”

The sound of her name jolted Rilla. She turned.

“No, no, no,” Rilla whispered, watching in dismay as her younger brother Grant popped up over the edge of the terrace and came racing across the flat of the mountain toward her.

“Rilla, where are you going?” Grant asked. He skidded to a stop. “Whoa! Is that the chasm? Are we on the edge of the mountain?”

Rilla crossed her arms over the sturdy leather tunic and glared at her fourteen-year-old brother. “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you,” he shrugged. “You always go see the medicine woman before you disappear for days. I thought maybe you were sick until I eavesdropped last time and found out you have some weird goal to explore the entire mountaintop to search for some weird old bridge. Everyone thinks you’re odd but when I realized you were actually just going on adventures, I decided to come. I packed and left a bag by the medicine woman’s tent and waited for you to visit her again.”

“Grant, you need to go back. This could be dangerous.” Rilla pointed back the way they had come.

Grant’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding me?” He shook his head back and forth rapidly. “I barely kept up with you, I have no idea how to get back.”

Rilla clenched her teeth. She had explored for two years before finally finding the mythical bridge, and it had taken an entire night and the next day to find it this time. She couldn’t afford to take her brother back.

She narrowed her eyes and looked him over. Sturdy leather shoes, pants, tunic, rope necklace which came in handy when they had to tie themself off at points of the mountain when gathering moss, one of the last remaining edible things growing near their settlement.

“What’s in your pack?” she asked.

Grant shrugged again, looking unconcerned. “A little food. A water skin. One set of clothes and my arrowhead.”

It wasn’t much, but it was honestly better than Rilla hoped he had packed. Especially the arrowhead. Grant’s arrowhead always, always found its target. It didn’t matter what type of wood he strapped the arrowhead to, the makeshift spear flew true. Rilla had once seen it curve to take out a mountain goat two years ago, before the animals had disappeared into the chasm one summer.

Like her ability to call up memory from the mountain itself, Grant had some type of subconscious control over the stone of that arrowhead although nobody knew how or why. Timberhaven had answers. And food. And the green-eyed man.

“Fine,” Rilla resigned herself to the change in plans. “You can come with me but be careful. This bridge looks like it could crumble with one wrong step. There are already planks missing in multiple places.”

“Bridge?” Grant cocked his head to the side. “What bridge?”

Rilla looked pointedly at the ropes and planks traversing the deep, black chasm between their bare mountain and the lush forest on the other side. “Ha-ha, very funny. Come on, we’re wasting valuable time.”

She turned, moving to the first plank, stepping tentatively out and holding on to the weather-grayed ropes for support.

“Rilla!” Grant screamed but this time terror laced every syllable of her name. “Rilla?”

She turned, raising one eyebrow. “What is it?”

He gaped, mouth open, hands outstretched like he’d been wanting to catch her. Slowly, Grant shook his head in disbelief. “Rilla,” he whispered in awe still shaky with fear. “You’re floating.”

“Floating?” she asked. Her younger brother had never been a prankster and the look on his pale, shocked face promised that he wasn’t playing now. Grant’s face showed genuine frighten from the wide, frantic gaze he shot between her and the chasm, to the clenched fists he held at his side.”

He nodded. “Floating! How are you doing that?”

“You mean you honestly can’t see the bridge?” Rilla wiggled the rope, regretting it immediately as the less-than-sturdy bridge swayed and made her stomach drop.

“No, Rilla. I can’t see a bridge.” Grant gulped, taking a few cautious steps closer to the edge. “All I see is the swirling mist, the unnatural darkness below you, the chasm waiting for you to fall in and disappear forever.”

Rilla frowned. Her brother truly couldn’t see the bridge at all. No wonder so few people ever attempted to escape to Timberhaven.

Well. This complicated matters.

How could Grant make it safely across if he couldn’t see the holes in the planks, the missing pieces?

“Are you sure you can’t find your way back home?” she begged him.

Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know the way,” he whispered. “I thought I would surprise you on the adventure and we would go back together.”

Rilla took a deep breath. Green eyes tugged at her mind and her heart. She longed to find the mysterious man who she seemed to have a connection to; no, it was more than that. The bridge appeared because she had to go, the thought of him made her alive, it gave her hope. There was only one thing to do.

“Okay. Then you are going to have to do exactly what I say, every single thing, for the first time in your life.” Rilla pierced her little brother with a stern gaze. “You have to trust me to get us across.”

***

Rilla’s knuckles were white and the last two hours had shaved at least a year off of her life but she could see the last three planks of the bridge. They had almost made it.

“Okay,” she told Grant. “We have one more jump and then the bridge is solid until the forest. See it? See the trees? We’ve almost made it.”

She felt the rope tied from her waist to her brother’s, his necklace coming in handy to keep them connected. Feeling the secure knot, she grabbed Grant’s hand and counted to three.

They leapt.

And landed!

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Let’s go.”

Seconds later, they stepped onto the soft, pine-needle carpeting of the forest. Trees loomed tall, as if they wanted to show the mountain across the chasm that they reached higher into the air. The air smelled wet as if rain had just passed through.

The colors! Oh, the colors were vibrant and alive as nothing Rilla had ever seen on the overwhelming gray of the mountain. Even the moss of their home now seemed lesser, not actually green, as she compared the memory of it to the colors and shades dancing before them.

Timberhaven; it was real.

Her heart beat a happy rhythm of victory and her smile spread across her face without prompting. She had made it and even looking at it defied her imagination. To explore it, to find peace, food, life. Rilla positively shivered with anticipation.

“Now what?” Grant asked, interrupting her somewhat trance like study of the enchanted forest.

“Shhh,” she sank to the ground. She didn’t really expect her gift to work here, after all, she had only accessed memories by touching the mountain and she had no memories of this forest. Still, the need to touch the earth overwhelmed her and when her fingers sank past the soft needles and into the wet soil, she closed her eyes.

Green eyes, a handsome face with a sharp chin and subtle cheekbones.

Rilla gasped as she saw him but now, now she knew him. “Kymil,” she whispered. A ragged sob tore from her throat. “Kymil, why did you leave me?”

“Um, Rilla?” Grant tapped her on the shoulder. “There’s someone watching us.”

Rilla looked up and followed Grant’s pointing finger with her gaze.

“That’s not someone,” Rilla said, standing slowly. “That’s my husband.”

“Excuse me?” Grant asked, frowning. He waved a hand in front of her face, even tried to pull her back, but Rilla shook him off.

She stalked toward the tall, muscular man standing beside the nearest pine. Nearly as sturdy as the tree itself, he stared right back at her. As she drew closer, Rilla noticed tears streamed silently down his face.

“Rilla,” he breathed her name like it was the most precious word in the world. “You didn’t forget me.”

“No.” She slapped him. He didn’t even flinch.

She shook though which of the numerous emotions coursing through her was the cause, she couldn’t say. “Kymil,” she sobbed, relinquishing her anger and giving in to her longing to feel him, to lay her cheek against his broad chest, to know he was real and not another memory. “Kymil, why did you leave me? Why did you try to take my memories?”

He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her as a drowning man hugs the last line pulling him to shore. Then he lifted her chin as he had done thousands of times in her memories.“I planned to return,” pain choked his voice. “But the bridge vanished. I thought I would never see you again.”

“Um,” Grant spoke up from closer now, “I can’t see it either. Weird huh? Are you really her husband?”

They ignored him, too lost in one another, in the pain of lost years and joy of reunion to even register Grant’s presence, much less his words.

“I will always find you,” Rilla promised. “You are my heart, and I carry you with me. We are bound, Kymil, bound beyond the chasm, beyond the fae, beyond sense itself. You guided me here when I didn’t even remember why you were important because you are mine and I am yours. A memory wasn’t enough; I wanted a future. Promise me, you will never leave me again. Promise me our future.”

“I promise,” Kymil vowed. “With my very life, I promise. Rilla,” he whispered.

She lifted up on tiptoe and he lowered his head, accepting her invitation, capturing her lips, teasing and claiming, apologizing and loving all in one deep, lasting kiss that seared into Rilla’s heart and cleansed the haunting memories of pain and longing, replacing them with visions of a beautiful future wrapped in the arms of her husband, her true love, her soulmate.

Together, they would find a way to save their people and bring them to the refuge of Timberhaven but those were troubles for tomorrow. For now, Rilla could still see the bridge and she had Kymil and her memories returned; today, she would bask in these blessings.