Template:MiniStory/3

Chapter Three

The following week of school doesn’t get any better. Any student in the school who cares or has a friend who cares knows about what happened between Hunter and I, or they want to know if I actually am gay. Then, due to even more annoying coincidence I run into him at least three times during the week and every single one of our encounters is the awkward kind, surrounded by gawking eyes who feel it is their business to stalk every interaction we have since we’re a hot topic now.

Friday afternoon would be my well sought break, except that I entirely forgot about my library book being so preoccupied with the siren book, and when I ask Anna for an extension and she says no, considering she managed to read hers despite going on call two days in a row. I start reading the book as quickly as I can, but unfortunately, I wake up with the book tucked neatly on my nightstand, the covers pulled up, the light off and a little note of Anna’s which reads ‘Can’t wait for you to buy me lunch.’

At least this Saturday there’s no sign of Hunter at the library. I don’t know whether it’s because he didn’t need to come to the library this week or because I told him about how Anna and I come here each week and now he knows when to avoid me. I am half tempted to keep the book I’m reading because I actually grew kind of interested in it, but I know Anna will want me to read a new book as well and with school, the siren book and a new book, I don’t have time for this book, so I drop it into the returns box, grab the first small interesting book I lay my eyes upon and then frown at Anna when her mystery man has failed to show up. I don’t think of it until we’re having lunch, but I pray it wasn’t my curse acting out on him even though I was never close to him.

On Sunday, I leave earlier than I did last week and I head over to Rose’s, hoping this time that it might only be her mum up at eight in the morning. When I get to the door, I can here Neve’s incessant yapping, but thankfully it’s Tina who answers the door, and for the first time in my life, other than when I sleep over at Rose’s, I’ve managed to catch Tina before she got out of her pyjamas. I sit out with her while she watches the news and I talk to her, pointing out things in the book which I want to ask her about. The first question I have is about Sefira, the Deathbringer.

According to every report I’ve read in here, she has long, platinum blonde hair, wears a long white gown, is deathly thin and pale white, and, to put the cherry on the cake, she has no face. I have seen a lot of menacing glares and scary faces in my life, but I think the worst thing that I could ever imagine was seeing nothing in their face. No emotion, no hatred, no guilt, just the body of a human who kills when they need to. Sefira is who I work for, and who I have always worked for, apparently. Her job is to clean the sin of the Earth, and the sirens work for her, bringing her victims away from protection so that she can kill them. The most confusing part about all of this, is that they call her an angel.

“Why doesn’t Sefira have a face?” I ask, and Tina sort of freezes in place, as if she’s trying to think of what to tell me. Nobody in here has told me why she doesn’t have a face, they’ve just told me she doesn’t have one.

“It’s so you know who she is, and if you see her, you need to get as far away as possible.”

“But why?” I continue to investigate. Tina flicks through the book until she stumbles upon a sketch of Sefira and points to her bow and quiver over her shoulder.

“See those weapons?”

“Yeah,” I answer, even though I hadn’t paid attention before now.

“She never takes more than she needs. If she has an arrow for you, you’re dead.”

“But she’s blind,” I argue back.

“Which only makes her that much less wasteful.”

We continue to go through the book, with Tina answering any questions she can and telling me to keep reading whenever she comes across something she can’t answer. I ask her about the angelic names and ask if she knows mine, but apparently I don’t have one because I’m not old enough. Basically, my spirit is immortal, but not my body. When I die, there’s some ritual they have to perform so that my spirit can leave, but if I get buried without it my spirit will be trapped there forever. They refer to the ritual as a “Goodbye Blessing” and because there were so many spirits being trapped underground, there are three generations of immortal creatures. The first generation is just called Immortals and they have existed since the beginning of time. The second generation is about four hundred years old, being created in the early seventeenth century and the third generation is the youngest. Lauren Humphreys is my first form, which is such a weird way to think of it. My whole life is going to last forever, but I’m still going to die. As far as I’m concerned, this immortality sucks.

Then I ask her about the sword on the front, which appears a lot throughout the book. It’s called the Galloway Sword, she tells me, and it’s been blessed so that it can be used to kill angels. It was made about three hundred years ago and was given to a knight named Galloway by a corrupted angel to kill Sefira. I can understand why somebody might want Sefira dead, but why they asked a mortal to do it, I still have no idea. Apparently even drawing the sword on something means that angels cannot destroy it, so here, it is a protection spell.

Protection spells are another important thing. Sefira is blind, you see, she tracks auras and she’s unable to find someone under a protection spell, which is why there are sirens to lure people out from the protection spells. In history we used to sit on rocks by the coast and sing songs to lure sailors to their death, now, we have more modern methods. We have good looks and a little something called irresistibility. Yes, my victims literally cannot resist spending time with me, which only makes me more worried about Hunter and his crush on me.

Tina and I would talk more, except that Toby walks out of his room, looks at me strangely, then signs what I can only assume is “good morning” to his mother. She signs back something else, then Toby smiles, looks at me and pulls out a chain that has always been hanging around his neck, but tucked into his shirt. He shows me the charm, which I instantly recognise as being the Galloway sword, which also explains why my curse never affected Toby. Well there’s that, and the fact that Toby isn’t corrupted or evil that I know of. I turn to Tina, and she nods and says that she knew, because she’s an aura blocker. There is way too much here to learn, is all I can think.

After Rose wakes up we spend a few hours watching the Sunday morning cartoons, not because they’re entertaining but because we don’t have anything else to watch. Toby, on the other hand, is entirely captivated by them, his eyes scanning across the animations and down to the captions then all across the screen. Toby’s only eleven years old, and in those eleven years he’s only been able to hear with a hearing aid for seven of them. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not be able to hear things. To not hear birds chirping in the morning, or to not hear the sound of a person singing. Imagine how it would have felt hearing something for the first time after living your whole life without sound.

After I leave Rose’s, I decide to go down to the football fields, even though I know Hunter is going to be there. He’s part of the reason why I’m going. I get down there and he’s in the middle of a game of rugby, his team currently running with the ball. I smile at the sight of him doing something to make him happy, then I see him notice me while running with the ball and he smiles back, and then boom, he gets tackled to the ground. I decide to continue on my way home because it’s probably not a good idea for me to be around Hunter anymore.

Anna is up when I get home, and I sort of expected it, too. She’s sitting on the couch, eating a bowl of lunchtime cereal and watching some foreign soap opera, with a blanket on her lap. I don’t know if Anna knows anything about the sirens, but Tina told me that I can’t tell anyone else about it.

“Hey kiddo,” she greets, lifting up the blanket next to her so I can sit with her. I know I’ve got other things to do, but I sit down with her because I realise I haven’t really spoken to her much this past week and a half. We spend a few hours on the couch, watching shows we don’t understand, and then I remember about her birthday coming up, so I ask her what she wants to do, but she says she just wants lots of cake and ice cream so she can cry over the fact that she’s turning forty. I don’t know why she’s so worried though, because she doesn’t look any older than thirty. I remember one more thing I had forgotten to mention, so I tell her about Hunter and she pulls the same disappointed face Rose pulled when I tell her I said no because of the curse, which I guess is an actual curse now.

It isn’t until Monday morning that I realise I spent the whole weekend not studying for my chemistry test. To be honest, I had entirely forgotten about it, but chemistry is my second best subject, and Anna is going to know something is wrong if I fail it. That’s when I decide to head for the school clinic, I tell the nurse that I’ve got period cramps and she just gives me a sympathetic “Ah” and lets me sit there for an hour and a half, while I pretend to suffer in pain, and I’m glad she doesn’t call Anna because Anna would know that I never get period cramps, and then again, she’d know that something was up. Ms Hannon fully understands too, and allows me to take the test in our next chemistry lesson, on Wednesday, which at least gives me another day to study, but all I’m going to be able to concentrate on is how I lied to my favourite teacher because I forgot about a test and wanted to cheat.

By Friday I’m exhausted from the week and I’m ready for a break already, but I’ve got another three weeks of school, and I still have to organise Anna’s birthday party in between all of that. I decide on an all you can eat dinner at the local Leagues Club, and when I ask Anna about it, she agrees and tells me to invite the Dubois family, even though they’re closer to me than to her. I don’t think Anna has many friends other than me. I ask if there’s anyone she wants to invite from work, but she says no, probably more based on the fact that she doesn’t want any of them knowing how old she is, despite her having a sixteen year old daughter which means it’s not half obvious that she would be around forty years old. Later that night I book our dinner plans and I get around to finishing my library book. I have never lost this bet twice in a row and I’m not about to start now.