Nathanial Leary

Then the wave of sorrow and overwhelming grief washed over me. Flight had given me a brief escape from the weight of the world. But that’s how mourning works, isn’t it? Grief comes and goes as it pleases. You cannot escape it. It always catches up with you, and it had caught up with me mid flight.

I rolled over in the air and let out an unholy cry! I pierced the night with my song of sorrow, and I fell. I fell from the sky like Satan being cast from the heavens. I crashed to the earth, and there I lay. My sorrow drowned out any aches and pains I might have felt because of the fall. I gave into my grief, and I bawled. My body wracked with each cry. I couldn’t catch my breath. What had become of me? How is this real? Where is my Sabrina? Where is my child? My family? What becomes of them when they die? Where does the soul go?

"Sabrina!" I yelled unto the heavens. "Where are you?!? Where are you?"

The before and after. It’s amazing how quickly your life can change. How quickly and how drastically.. One moment everything’s coming up roses, and the next all is lost, and nothing will ever be the same again. That’s the before and after. Blessed and cursed life.

I don’t know how long I had lain there and wept, but the night was not as dark as it had once been. What was it that Jackeb was saying about destiny? That there are lessons to be learned. What is my lesson?

Jackeb, himself, opens a whole new realm of questions. So that is what became of Doc’s brother. Doc was telling the truth all this time, and no one believed him. Jackeb said that he had been waiting for me. What does that mean? Has he been watching me all these years? Why me? Find one answer and beneath it lie a thousand more questions.

As the tide of sorrow washed back out to sea and the tears abated, I began to take my bearings and feel the earth beneath my body again. I stood and sucked in the fresh night air. I looked around and saw that I was in a clearing. To my right was a mysterious circle of stones I had visited many a time in my youth. Everyone knew they had been laid out by the ancients, but no one knows exactly why. I’ve heard tell of an even grander circle in England, perhaps one day I will visit it. I’ve always felt a strange source of power when I was here. I was comforted by their familiarity.

It was then that I realized just where I was. I was standing on a hill just north of Henery O’Loftan’s pasture. A wicked grin curled my lips as I recalled the choice I had made as Jackeb drained the blood from me and demanded, ‘Life or Death!’

‘Apollo approaches!’ There he was in my head again!

"Where are you?" I demanded. "Show yourself to me!"

Nothing. As much as I wanted to pursue him, I felt the animalistic fear of dawn starting to take over, so I gave in and began to dig.

One hushed word escaped my lips as I buried myself once again in mother earth...

"Revenge" ...and my smile grew wider.