Page 32 of Sweet Silver Bells
“They have the strangest hum that I could never place before.”
She was some kind of siren; it was the closest story he could relate to her from his childhood. There was no ocean, no sailors being lured to their deaths. Instead, it was him, maybe others too, being drawn to her, but also forgetting. Where memories should be, there was only haze, a cloud that swirled inside him.
He hoped he had broken it, this spell. That whatever it was, now that he knew of it, it would no longer affect him.
That’s a stupid thing to think. You are far from being safe.
“When I step towards the edge of the forest, I can hear these carriages from the roads in the distance, in the quiet of the night. They sound like monsters with strange music, with that hum.”
Hunter followed her gaze, then flicked his eyes down to her bare shoulders. A shiver ran through her, and her arms crossed tight over her breasts. Without thinking, he shrugged off his owncoat and draped it around her shoulders, limbs awkward in their intimate space.
“Here,” he murmured. “You’re freezing.”
She flinched at first, then tugged the coat closer, burying her hands in the sleeves.
Hunter turned the key in the ignition. The vibration of the seats and the roar of the engine sent a thrill up his spine as he watched Olivia squeal and throw her hands over her ears. Hunter got that same thrill from rollercoasters that he had no business riding at this age.
Of course, he didn’t have Sarah to drag him on them anymore.
“You’re actually here,” Hunter breathed, disbelief starting to sink in.
“Yes,” she replied as if it were a perfectly normal question.
“You really have never been in a car before.”
“No. My father would ride in one going into the city. It looked nothing like this.”
“You’ve never spoken on a phone before.”
“A phone?”
Hunter pulled his out to show her. She squinted at the blue light in the dark.
“You’re really from 1914.”
“I am.”
Hunter put his foot on the gas, and Olivia gasped at the forward trajectory, headlights guiding the way.
“Why me? Why did you choose to trust me?”
Olivia was quiet for a moment, collecting her answer. “The plants, the forest, the earth, it pulses, it makes music for me, to tell me I’m safe, to tell me I belong. You’re the first person who has ever sung back to me. So perhaps, it told me that with you, I could belong too.”
Hunter’s stomach dropped at the no-nonsense declaration of hope and love. He didn’t know if he was ready for that, ready for anything more than just knowing that she was out of the forest, out of the trees, that she was safe and thriving.
“I might still take you to the police station,” he blurted out.
Idiot.
“You could still be a missing person. You could be injured, and you could not know what’s happened to you,” he tried to reason, mostly with himself.
How can I accept with no question what she’s telling me? What if I make the situation worse?
His memory was fuzzy. Was there something else that had happened? Something he couldn’t remember?
Olivia laughed, a full, outright, guttural laugh that felt like she was spitting out butterflies and woodland faerie creatures. It was a delight, infectious. Hunter couldn’t help but grin like a madman. He could live there, in that laugh, forever.
That’s a crazy thought to have. You are acting crazy.
