Beast at My Side

The Foolhardy Girl

Drive. Drive to the stump knotted and gnarled, blistered with evergreen moss. Turn. Turn at the fork sandy and grey, barely damp from ocean mist. Stop. Stop at the shore pebbled and light, worn by the caress of the waves.

Guided by a shadow with venom-soaked teeth. I should have questioned her motives, her sincerity, her sanity. But I had simply nodded at her direction, trembled like a child until she took her leave of me. I am weak. I am frail. I am only human, after all. The place she has led me to is beautiful beyond words. Stones, wood, ocean, and sky. Every part of it is silver and slate. If indeed this is a trap it is a most desirous one. Even with my weight on the hood the tyres barely dip into the stony sand. I lie there and let the cold wind wash over me, I lick the salt from my lips. My fear ebbs with the tide.

"You lost, Lena?" Jacob is just as I remember him: a towering wall of muscle with too-white teeth. Now flanked by a pair of wiry boys, not a shirt or shoe between them.

"It's funny you should ask," I say, "I thought I was for a while. But I followed her directions so carefully..."

He asks who sent me, why I came, implies my presence is a mystery unto itself. So I tell him. His face gives a single violent twitch. He is not as well-versed in composure as the Cullen family, or perhaps he does not care to be. Every emotion my tale elicits flickers plainly across his eyes, his lips, until I have spoken my very last word. He grips my shoulder tightly, his fingers squeezing with a strength I am not sure he knows he possesses.

"And you just did what she told you? Even knowing what she is?"

"At least I know what she is."

Guilt is the next thing to contort his expressive features. His hand falls away. His lackeys wander off. We sit in silence. Eventually the sun dips low, pink and orange smear across the sky, traces of it diluted in the water - still and dark. When I start to shiver he inches closer, pressing against me until he fits. He is warm. So warm. Too warm. The heat of his body is an invasion—my bones were born for the cold—but he has kind eyes and a pretty smile, and the only people close to me now are corpses. Bella's arms around my shoulders. Jasper's lips against my wrist. Luc's hand knotted in my own.

"Tell me something, Jacob." The words put distance between us, distance I need to clear my muddled heart.

"What should I tell you?"

"Tell me something that will save me."

I expect him to laugh, to shrug off my raw, earnest appeal. But he does not. Instead, he tells me the story of a boy desperately in love with a girl who is sworn to another, a girl who dies because she loved the wrong man. The cast are easy enough to discern: Jacob as the lovesick boy, Bella as the foolhardy girl, and Edward as the very definition of the wrong man. He seems oddly unembittered.

When I lay back he lays back with me, and I stretch my fingers out towards the fire-coloured sky. I probe and pull at the invisible force tethering me to the world, my hands aching to grasp gravity, to cast off its shackles and see once and for all if the weight of my heart is all that keeps me here. But I cannot. So I lie still. Still beside the boy whose warmth is as constant as the waves. Right now we are the only two people in the world, so he tells me another story. But this time it's cruel and dark. It kicks me, and keeps on kicking. This story is about a boy who is a wolf, who is a warrior. This story is about a creature who stalks the forest, tearing monsters limb from limb, his fangs and his fur bloodied and black. I want to ask if he is the boy, the wolf, the warrior. But this truth is a dangerous thing. These beasts all violently romantic are not poetry and song; they are darkness and wrath.