Rivulet by Jamie Magee Page B

was out of sight, then his expression turned grim. Worry consumed his eyes. I stood at attention. I never saw the same scene in this wing, so that wasn’t surprising; his mood was.
    He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small box, then opened it and placed it on her pillow. It was a pearl bracelet. I found myself smiling with him as he glanced at it. He had given the same bracelet to me at least three times. Apparently, I kept managing to lose it in the manor or on the grounds.
    He turned with a sigh and left their room. I followed him down the wide hallway, watching as empty vases began to mock the images of flowers that must have been in place when this happened the first time.
    He walked to his study in this wing; it was just outside the library I adored.
    The fire burning in the stone fireplace was bright enough to reach the vaulted ceiling, but small lamps remained on anyway.
    There was an image leaning over the table, one that I almost thought of as a friend. He was Sebastian’s brother, Guardian. In my walks in this wing, I had seen more laughter than stifle between those two, but lately I could tell their relationship was strained, that Sebastian was worried about him.
    See, to me this was like stepping into a movie. The memories I unlocked here always move forward, sometimes more rapidly than I would want them to. I had been feeling a climax or worse, an ending, coming to these memories for a while now which is why I had been trying to break my habit of lurking here every morning. I thought it would be easier if I ended it. That way, I could only be mad at myself, not at the fact that the life I’d been witnessing for years was officially lost in the past.
    My heart started to hammer as this scene unfolded. I felt the dread creep over my skin. I was dreading what would be decided at this meeting, and I had no idea why.
    Three other men were in here as well. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I could tell by their voices that at least two of them were young like Sebastian and Guardian; one of them sounded older. If I wanted to see them, I just needed to focus on them, but I didn’t want to stop gazing at Sebastian; he was worrying me.
    “It’s been declared,” one of the voices said. “They are closing The Fall.”
    I’ve yet to figure out what The Fall was. I heard both my image and Sebastian speak of it often. I knew for sure it was a passageway, that Guardian had vanished within it and then returned. Everything else they said about it was way over my head. I couldn’t figure out what they meant when they said ‘dark reality,’ ‘our world,’ ‘The Selected,’ or any of the other otherworldly references made. I suppose I didn’t want to figure it out because I didn’t want to accidentally discover that these images I lived for were fiction.
    “That’s ludicrous,” Sebastian bit out. His warm, gray eyes filled with anger.
    “Of course it is, but we very well cannot tell them why,” the older voice said.
    Sebastian’s eyes met Guardian’s. “Have you even suggested to Aliyanna that speaking to the council may stop this?”
    I had never focused on that girl’s image they were speaking of either. She had only surfaced recently. I knew Guardian was madly in love with her, that whenever he returned from The Fall she wasn’t with him, and it was clear he never intended for that to happen. He’d screamed at Sebastian, saying things like, “I wasn’t supposed to die. I have to go back. I can’t breathe without her.” Those words confused me. You would have thought the passage led to some other virtual reality, a game of sorts where he lost his turn and wanted to hit the reset button, get a do-over. Apparently, Aliyanna had appeared here, and the fight over whether or not Guardian should return to look for her took a back seat until this moment, it seems.
    “She is not speaking to anyone,” Guardian stated evenly as his blue eyes averted from Sebastian’s stare.
    “She can bear