Asleep In Eden, Part Five

This is very, very late, and I'm very, very sorry (and a little bit embarrassed) if anyone happened to be following this little story. My apologies. This is the last part, though, so if you like, you can finish the Asleep In Eden tonight! (This is about nine pages long, just as forewarning.) Enjoy!

For some reason, when I told her guard-goons to “Get out of my way,” they obeyed me. Maybe I had finally perfected my imitation of my father’s gruff, no-nonsense voice. He only used it when he was joking, but apparently, it was also effective when applied to disembodied souls. If I survived this encounter, I’d have to keep that in mind.

I walked straight through the door and into the lobby, where Cadence, flanked by a couple of goons, waited. Her hoodie was up, and she smiled when she saw me.

“I had a feeling you would follow your boyfriend here.”

“Wow. You know me so well,” I said. “Look, I need to—”

That was when I noticed the body— Marco’s body. He was lying on the floor, his arms raised above his head, looking peaceful in sleep. I stared at Cadence. What had she done to him?

“Oh, don’t worry,” Cadence said. “I haven’t hurt him. Just removed his soul.”

Yeah, sure, because that doesn’t leave any lasting damage. But it won’t, not if I can help it. I swallowed. As much as I hated what she’d done to Marco, I wasn’t going to solve anything unless I dealt with Cadence.

“I came to talk to you.”

“Did you? How considerate. You know it’s been nearly a century, and we haven’t sat down for coffee once?”

“Yeah, I know. I’d get you a cup of java but I think you’d rather listen to my offer.”

Cadence smiled. She looked amused, amused and curious. Humans probably didn’t make her offers very often.

“Your offer?” She laughed. “You have an offer for me?”

“Yep!” I nodded, trying to ignore my pounding heart. “And I think you’ll like it.”

“You think you have something worth offering me.”

“I said yes, didn’t I?” I grinned. I was talking fast, trying to hide my nervousness. “How long have you been trying to kill me, Cadence? A hundred years?”

Cadence just stared.

“Are you offering me your life?”

“Yes. Well, no. I mean, not for free.” I laughed. My heart was not beating any more. This was more of a flutter. “If you want me to go down without a fight, you’re gonna have to put these good people back in their bodies.”

A lump formed in my throat as my eyes shifted back to Marco’s limp form.

“All of them.”

I looked back at Cadence. She smiled.

“You say you’ll go peacefully?”

“Yes ma’am I will.”

“Well then,” she said. She stepped towards me, her hoodie casting a shadow down to her nose.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Not yet, Cadence! How am I supposed to know that you put them back if I’m dead? Do that first.”

Cadence paused.

“Do it first or I run, Cadence. And you should know I’m hard to catch.”

She sighed and waved at a couple of her goons.

“Seize her and hold her until I am finished. This is your last order.”

They stepped forward and grabbed my arms.

“Hey, wait. You can’t just— Cadence. You have an end to fulfill, too.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Dear Jane, that’s what I’m doing.”

Cadence lifted her fingers to snap them, and—

My eyes flew wide and I bolted upright in bed. I gasped, blinking. Was I... Was I dead?

I lifted my hand to get a closer look, but when I moved it off the bedspread, the quilt moved with it.

The longer I stared at my hand, the more I felt ready to faint. So not dead, then. No, in fact I was closer to life than I’d been in an entire century. I was back in my own skin.

“Um, Jane? S-Sorry about that.”

I jumped and turned in the direction of the sound. Marco was standing over me, touching his lips. His cheeks were beet red.

I blinked and squinted at him. “Sorry about what?”

His eyes widened. “Oh... Um... Never mind!”

I turned my head to the side and studied him. “What?”

He grinned, but it was pretty clear he was still embarrassed. “Is this your stuff, Jane? I don’t know, it just seemed more... you than the stuff downstairs.”

I looked around and gasped.

The entire room was full of my stuff. There were climbing roses everywhere— those were my mom’s favorite. Back when this was still our house, she had planted them all around and watered them every day.

The chair and desk in the corner, that was the very same one my dad had built for me. My parents must have moved it up here after I fell asleep, to make me more comfortable. And the quilt... the quilt spread over my legs, that was the one my mom had made for me.

I teared up and grabbed fistfuls of the fabric in my hands. I missed them so much...

“JANE CARVER!” came Cadence’s powerful voice from downstairs.

My tears spilled. Of course, of course it had to be after I had regained my own body and relics of my parents that I had to fulfill my promise to Cadence.

“I’m sorry,” I told Marco. I shoved the quilt off my legs, stood up, and walked to the door. “I have to go.”

Before Marco could respond, I turned the handle and walked back downstairs. Cadence was screaming at her captive spirits to find me, but the moment I stepped onto the ground floor everything went silent.

I forced a smile— not that it would do much good. She could see the tears on my cheeks. “Sorry about that, Cadence. Minor interruption, but... I’ll still go through with my end if you’re game.”

Cadence squinted at me like I had come back covered in mud.

“What?”

“Oh,” I said. She probably didn’t understand all of my slang. “I, um—” I tried to blink past my tears. “We can still complete the deal if you want.”

Her smile was wide. She must have seen me trying to swallow the lump in my throat and hide the tears on my cheeks.

“Excellent,” she said, and she sounded like she really meant it.

She snapped her fingers, and immediately all of her captive souls toppled to the ground. It wasn’t easy going back in-body again. Behind her, Marco groaned and slid one of his hands down to his temple.

 We were alone again, and the dusty wooden walls of my house had never seemed so lonely and quiet.

“They’ll wake up in...” she slid the sleeve of her hoodie up and checked her watch. “A few minutes. Now.”

Cadence stepped towards me, and even though I couldn’t see her magic crackling around her form I could feel it. It slid through the air and brushed against the edges of my soul like invisible electricity. More tears slipped down my cheeks. Of all the smug mugs and obnoxiously bright blue hoodies to die staring at, Cadence’s was at the bottom of my list. I gritted my teeth and stared anyway. I had made my choice.

She snapped her fingers, and then there was fire.

I arched my back and screamed.

My soul was ablaze. I could feel the flames licking away at my memories, burning up my emotions and leaving nothing but charred ash in place of my consciousness. I could feel myself burning away.

I was losing every memory I had ever made. They burned brighter just before they died out, lost forever.

I remembered Marco, sticking a bite of spaghetti into his mouth and listening to me tell him about why Cadence was chasing me.

I remembered Cadence, body tense as she realized that I had escaped her yet again.

I remembered my own name, now nothing but fuel for the hungry magical flames.

And then the rocking horse my father had made for me shone onto my vision. Then, flame.

My mother’s climbing roses.

I forced myself to work past the pain and focus on her face.

The quilt she had made me.

I pried my quivering lips apart.

Their gravestones.

“Please... Please,” I said. “Let me die knowing who my parents were.”

She snapped. The flames stopped. I stood there, gasping for breath and sweating hard. Tears ran uncontrollably down my cheeks.

“Surely you know they’re the reason you’re suffering like this, Jane,” Cadence said.

I didn’t bother trying to figure out who Jane was and just nodded. “I know.”

Cadence had taken pains to make sure I knew that everything she put me through since she cursed me at birth was my parents’ fault. She had never told me exactly what they had done, but I didn’t care. They had loved me, and I loved them back.

“And you still care enough to want to remember them? Surely you must hold some resentment, some anger.”

I stared straight into Cadence’s brown eyes and shook my head. “I love them just as much as they loved me.”

“Your parents were bumbling idiots, Jane,” Cadence said. “They forgot about me. Forgot as if I’d never existed.  If they had remembered to invite me, perhaps you would have a sixth and a seventh gift instead of a curse and a weak excuse of a spell to counteract it. This is their fault. Don’t ever forget that.”

She raised her fingers to snap, but I gritted my teeth and told her, “I don’t care.”

Cadence lowered her fingers again. “Do you mean that, Jane?”

“I love them,” I said, forcing the words out through my parched lips.

“And that will never change?”

Tears dripped onto my cheeks and shirt.

“Never.”

“Very well,” Cadence said pleasantly, and snapped her fingers.

The flames returned, and I could feel everything going. My memories, more than I could count or comprehend, burned under her magic. I was rapidly losing the ability to feel anything but pain, rapidly losing my own mind and the ability to think.

When my own life was hanging by a single thin thread, the pain stopped. I dropped to the ground on my hands and knees, breathing hard, barely able to think.

I dragged my head up and saw her, surrounded by a gang of her former underlings. Bonnie had yanked her hood off of her head and now clenched a fistful of Cadence’s white-blonde hair in her fist.

“No further,” Pam said tightly.

Cadence glared at them with a hatred almost as fierce as the one she reserved for me.

“Do you really want to challenge me?”

Most of her goons took a step back at that, and even if they didn’t move, I could feel their hesitation.

“Have you forgotten what I can do?”

“No,” came Amy’s strong, calm voice. “We haven’t. We’re been following you around for ten years, Cadence, and we’ve learned how your magic works. Right now, you’re about out of juice, and you know you can’t take all of us at once. You’re outnumbered and unarmed.”

“And so you choose to protect Jane,” Cadence said. “After what she’s done to you? After all of the times she hit you?”

I swallowed.

“You hit us just as much as Jane did,” said the skinny punk kid. “You never apologized.”

“This is not between us and Jane,” Pam said. “This is between us and you, Cadence.”

Cadence glared at them with enough force to start a fire.

“I’d guess,” said Amy, “That you have enough juice to either undo the damage you’ve done to Jane, or finish the job. You’re going to fix your mistakes. That’s not a request.”

In all the time I’d known her, I had never seen Cadence lose her composure. Today I saw her gulp.

“I have every right to end her,” she said, her hands balled into fists. “She agreed to it.”

“Yes, but then you’ll be completely out of magic, which would leave you vulnerable, wouldn’t it?”

Cadence fixed me with a stare that felt like it was boring holes in my face. She could see their logic. She knew she was outnumbered, but she did not want to let go of her prize.

 “It’s your choice, Cadence,” I said. “I made you a deal, and I’ll accept whatever you decide to do.”

“So, Cadence?” Bonnie said. “What’ll it be? Are you going to be smart or are you going to be stubborn?”

Cadence stared at me for another moment. I expected her to spit at my feet, swear revenge, or slap me. Instead she slid Bonnie’s hand out of her hair, stood up, and approached me.

We stood eye-to-eye, regarding each other. I had never really gotten a good look at her before now. I had always been running too hard, but now I could see that there was a deep, deep pain in her eyes. She had lost something ancient.

Cadence’s hands hung at her sides, but I noticed every one of her movements. My future was completely in her control, and I had no idea what she would do with it.

Cadence sighed, and turned back to her former captives. “If I let her go, none of you will touch me.”

Amy nodded.

I shut my eyes as Cadence faced me, stepped forward, and pressed two fingers to my forehead. I gasped. Everything was back, restored as if the magical flame had never touched my soul at all. Even the pain was gone.

Then she turned and walked away. The door swung shut in the doorframe, and a few minutes later her engine rumbled into the distance.

Marco jumped up and ran over to me.

“Jane!” he yelled. “What were you thin—”

“Hey, just a minute, okay?”

I turned my attention to Cadence’s goons, who were now just normal people.

“Thanks, guys,” I said. I tried to say more, but there was a huge, stupid grin plastered across my face and tears pricking at my eyes. I couldn’t really get the words out.

Amy just laughed. “After you stuck up for us, and the way Cadence treated us, there was no way we were going to let her win. Cadence wasn’t the only one out for revenge.”

“So!” Pam turned to the Cadence’s other, former captives. “Where to from here?”

They congregated into a circle and started making plans, and watching them, I realized that in ten years they had always had something I never had— companionship. While I didn’t envy them, and I felt awful that Cadence had even pulled them into this mess, at least they hadn’t had to go through it alone.

“Jane!” There was a hand on my shoulder. “Jane, what were you thinking?”

I turned to face Marco.

“Can I tell you later?” I asked. “I’m really hungry. Do you want dinner?”

Marco glared at me. “You can tell me in the booth at Sam’s.”

We filed out of the museum, and Cadence’s crew headed their own way. Marco and I headed down to Sam’s as fast as our legs could carry us. I took a deep breath of the nighttime air and pushed the door open myself. Right now, nothing felt better than the feeling of my muscles contracting and relaxing.

The plate of spaghetti the waitress set down in front of me was even better.

“All right,” Marco said, taking a huge bite of his sub. “Talk.”

I pointed to the bulge of noodles in my cheek.

“Hey! I waited long enough for this, Jane. Talk.”

I sighed, swallowed the spaghetti and told him everything: about how Cadence’s captured souls still had lives to live, and my running only wasted their time. They had so much more to live for than I did. They had more than a pair of gravestones waiting for them at home.

By the time I finished, my spaghetti had gotten cold and I had mostly lost my appetite, but I sighed and twirled another bite anyway. Marco had fallen silent.

I studied my plate, and then I looked up at him again.

“Do you know what made me wake up?”

Marco blinked. “Hmm? Oh... um, yeah. That was me.”

I squinted at him. “What?”

He cleared his throat. “After Cadence pulled me out, I figured it would be a good time to, you know, check a few things out and see if I could find you. And it wasn’t hard, you know, since I could get through whatever door I wanted. So once I got in— well.” Marco coughed a couple of times. “Y-You woke up pretty soon after that.”

I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. “Well, thanks. I really appreciate it, Marco.”

I leaned back against the squeaky red vinyl. In one hundred years, it’s sadly easy to forget how good it feels to be full, but I was glad to say that I had finally remembered.

Everything Cadence had done to me was behind me now, and I could finally move forward.

My semi-normal life was about to begin.