Extra Darling

Chapter 17: Banished

Skye was immobile on the sand. The green dust had disappeared inside his body and had left behind a trail of greenish colored blood dripping down his side. I sat on my knees with my hands pressed into the sand beside me, my breaths coming out in choppy sighs. Once that dust had touched him he just... stopped. Stopped moving, stopped bleeding, stopped breathing.

For the second time that night he had stopped breathing, and this time I hadn't even the slightest notion of how to help. I poured that strange stuff on him like he said and it killed him. It killed him!

I dug my fingers into the sand and hung my head on my chest, unsure whether I should be crying since I had just watched this poor fairy die, or frustrated because I could do nothing else to help him. My emotions escaped as a sob from deep in stomach, my head folding onto my lap.

This was too complicated for me. The whole island was just one big nightmare. Heartless children, ignorant boys, drunken pirates, mysterious captains, forsaken creatures, dying fairies; if my life had been a story, it would have been the most unusual one ever written.

But how could I sit here and feel bad for myself when a boy was lying dead in front of me?

I took a breath and wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand, thankful for the cover of darkness to hide my puffy eyes. I lifted my head and looked tentatively down at Skye. When I did, I saw that he was not dead at all. In fact, his eyes were open and bright, staring at me with empathy.

"Are those tears for me?" He asked in a hoarse whisper.

I was so relieved to see him awake that I completely forwent any hesitations I had about him and put my hands on his shoulders.
"Of course they are!" I nearly shouted, a new batch of tears dripping down my face, "I thought you were dead!"
He scrunched his eyebrows, "But... you barely know who I am. Why would you cry for me?"
"I don't care that I don't know you. I just spent the night trying to save your life and I thought I had seen it end. The fact that you're alive, and breathing, and not dead, makes me happy enough to forget the fact that you're my stalker."

His face lightened into a half smile, "I am not your stalker, Ophelia Darling."
"You know my name and today is the first day I've met you. If you're not my stalker than what are you? My guardian angel?"
"No," He lowered his eyes, "Far from that."
"Then what are you?"

He paused for a moment, staring at something in the distant, and then lifted his head from the sand, leaning on his elbows and pushing himself into a sitting position.

"Hold on there, fairy boy. Are you sure you should be doing that?"
Skye nodded, raising his hands to shake the sand out of his golden hair, "I am no longer incapable of moving."
"I can see that, but you're still badly wounded. You should be taking it slowly."
"There's no need. See?"

Skye bunched up the green shirt and showed me his chest where, minutes ago, there had been three messy scratches. I sat there flabbergasted as I looked at the three, thin, white lines that traced down his chest and over his stomach.

I shook my head, my eyes bulging out of my head, "That's not possible. That is not possible! How did you do that?"
Skye held up his hands and grabbed my arms, making me look at his confident face, "You need to stop saying that. At this point I think you should know that that word means nothing here."
"You promised an explanation and I want it now, Skye. Tell me how you just completely healed those wounds? Tell me how you know who I am, and you know about Arthur, and where to find me? Tell me how you lowered that boat into the water without even touching it?"

Skye sighed, releasing my arms and resting an arm on his knee. He rubbed his chin with one hand and looked at me sideways, my gaze unwavering.
"Those wounds didn't heal on their own. If they did, I wouldn't have needed to go to you for help."
"So what healed them?" I asked.
He grinned and lifted the leather pouch in front of my eyes, the green dust glistening from within, "It's called pixie dust. It's the stuff that allows fairies and other magical creatures to do everything that they do. It lets us fly, lets us make other things fly, and most importantly, it heals. Without it I presume I would be dead by now. It's extremely hard to come by for fairies like me."
"Like you? What makes you different than other fairies?"