Death's Saviour

Author’s Songs of the Chapter: Lovely by Billie Ellish, or I Got You by Bebe

Tomorrow it will have been one month since Sally ran Dusk off, I feel empty. The hole in my heart is worse than before I had ever met Dusk, it is worse than went it was just me missing Hannah, it’s worse and I don’t understand why. So what if Dusk took my mind off Hannah being missing? So what if she actually made me smile and laugh again? I shouldn’t feel this lost since I knew Dusk for less than a week. I sigh. Tomorrow is also the day I start back at high school, the idea of it is unbearable. The only reason I decided to do a grade thirteen was for Hannah. I had hopes of bumping up my grades so that maybe Hannah and I could get into the same college or even university. Hannah was a year younger than me so she still had this year of school to finish. I don’t think I can do this without her. In fact, I don’t think I can live anymore without her. My life already sucks and highschool will only make it suckier. If I were to give up then it would be easier, no one would miss me. I move from the swinging seat where I sat in the yard at Sally and Chris’s, they have let me stay here ever since I brought them Dusk. My feet are quite as I pad through the family room and into the kitchen. I choose carefully from the selection of knives they own, the chef’s knife seems the sharpest and I have to admit that the idea of using a big knife is more appealing. I carry the knife in my right hand as I move back out into the night, peering up into the sky I realize the moon is almost full. My mind wanders to Dusk and I wonder now if any of that wolf stuff really is true. Dusk shifting into a wolf was one of the scariest but most exhilarating moments of my life, I watched as she shrugged out of her human body, her bones breaking and moving under her stretching skin as it reformed. I watched as her mouth broke and moved forward to form a muzzle, her body remaking itself, the whole thing was eerily beautiful. It was the end product that captured my attention, Dusk is a very beautiful woman on her own but in her wolf form, she is entirely something in itself. I close my eyes seeing her again, in wolf form Dusk had dark night black-fur that clings to her body though it also stood out as if to make her appear almost twice her already large size. It was her eyes I remember the most since they stayed the same green colour that I had come to know as her eyes, she was the wolf from my dreams. I remember how the vibrant green of her eyes framed by that night black pelt against the tree line had made my hand itch to be able to paint her. I know if I do paint her it will be my greatest masterpiece and something I would cherish forever. Then Dusk left, her exit hurt but the worst part was the last look she gave me, the look of pure fury and anger at something, that look made my knees wobble even though I felt no fear, it was a commanding look. Sure Dusk’s last words told me a different meaning but still, it is the look that I remember. I handle the knife in my hand as I sway in the wind. My eyes scan the tree line as I almost wish I could see Dusk lurking within them. I frown at this need to have Dusk close, I should be more worried about Hannah, yet, I know in my heart I have given up. Hannah is gone and she is never coming back. I move the knife so that it lightly touches the skin of my wrists, I will myself to do it. If I just do one good deep slice it can be over. I start with one small shallow slice that causes me to gasp in pain, blood trickles down over my skin and down my arm. I watch as the blood dribbles down the side of my wrist and drops splattering into the grass below.

“Did that feel good?” Dusk’s voice drifts from the trees, for a second I think it is just my imagination but then I see her standing, leaning against a tree naked.

“It hurt,” I state honestly, that honesty sends a small smile across her lips as she moves out of the trees and towards me.

My cheeks flush a little red at her naked state and I avert my eyes. I try to find words to explain what I’m doing but all of it just sounds so stupid, Dusk is this strong wolf and I am this fragile human.

“If you are embarrassed by my state then would you mind if I borrowed a sweater?” Dusk asks politely but her voice has a teasing note to it, I nod before moving into the house to grab a sweater for her.

When I return outside Dusk is twirling the knife I had in her fingers, the tip digs into her middle finger slightly. I toss her the sweater, she pulls it over her head. Thankfully the sweater is huge on her so it covers up all of her parts and I can stop blushing, it is the largest sweater I have. I watch nervously as she continues to twirl the knife in her fingers.

“You picked a chef’s knife, sharp, and sturdy. One slice from this deep enough would surely do it.” Dusk tells me, then oddly she takes the knife in her hand turns the handle back towards me and offers it to me.

I stretch my hand forward and take the knife from her outstretched hand.

“I, it’s not…” I blubber since I don’t want Dusk to know what I was doing, I may be weak but she doesn’t need to know that, she wouldn’t understand why I’m doing this.

“I thought about death a lot after everything was taken from me and I was brought back. Sometimes I just wanted to give up, end it all, I have too much riding on my shoulders. However, I knew I couldn’t do it, my mom and dad would be so disappointed in me.” Dusk speaks quietly as she settles herself on the swing with me our momentum swaying us lightly against the wind.

“I’m supposed to start high school tomorrow. The only reason I’m going back for another year is supposed to be for Hannah, I don’t think I can do any of this without her anymore!” I sigh honestly the words feel good getting out of my own mind.

“You could do it if you really wanted to, cutting your wrists would be painful and make for a slow death as you have to bleed out but you could do it. I don’t think Hannah would want you to though, she didn’t seem like that kind of person to me.” Dusk claims and I give a small smile thinking about Hannah would kill me herself if she saw me attempting suicide right now.

I blink once as my eyes refocus on Dusk who is watching me and I realize she is nothing like Hannah. Hannah would have taken the knife from me and been mad at me for even considering suicide. Dusk, on the other hand, is understanding. Dusk is giving me a choice, she is giving me control. I blink again as her last sentence dawns on me.

“You knew Hannah? You remember her?” I ask in disbelief as I watch Dusk look up at the moon, then out into the forest as she seems to be searching for her words.

“I don’t remember her well of fully yet, only in little tidbits. I do have one crystal clear memory of her riding my back when I first came here, we were only a few years younger than we are now, maybe sixteen or fifteen. I was running through the forest and she was laughing, she had her arms outstretched as she was reaching for the branches around us daring them to knock her from my back. I remember her laugh was so contagious, at the time I viewed her as the sibling I had lost. Hannah had been the first person I considered family since I had lost my own, the first person I truly loved!” Dusk talks slowly, emotion filling her voice in a raw manner as she falls into her mind while recounting the memory to me.

They must have known each other well to trust each other that much, this also means that they knew each other before Hannah disappeared. This is a big piece of information to be trying to process, it sends a little pinch of hurt through me as one question pounds my mind.

“How come she never told me about you?” I wonder out loud while Dusk looks at me with an interesting but raw look in her eyes.

We fall silent for a few moments as Dusk closes her eyes. She seems as though she is trying to remember more for me. Anything she can tell me I will take.

“Hannah was afraid for your safety and for mine. I’m not supposed to be here Noah, I’m dangerous. If the white-furred wolves every caught wind of me they would kill me just as they did my family. If they were to know you were associated with me they would kill you, Sally, and Chris. Your deaths would be all my fault, back then it would have been on Hannah too. She wouldn’t risk it, she wouldn’t risk you guys.” Dusk explains in a quiet and pained tone, I know that every word she speaks is true, that truly pains me.

I realize that though Dusk has just explained how dangerous it is for her to be here with me, she is still here. Dusk is here for a purpose that I wasn’t part of until I helped her. Now Dusk puts me at risk by being here right now, but I also know that I do not care if that’s true, I need her here at this moment. Dusk makes me feel grounded, it’s like her presence promises me that I can make it through anything, it’s like she is lending me her strength.

“Why are you here then?” I question, as I do so I notice another difference between Hannah and Dusk, Dusk is about actions whereas Hannah was all about words.

To me, Dusk being here means that she trusts in her own ability to keep me safe if anything were to happen which means she truly trusts in her own strength. Hannah was never like that. With this new knowledge I know that Hannah would never have told me about Dusk, she didn’t trust that they could keep me safe if I knew. I would have rather been in danger with her, to have been trusted than not have been trusted and shut out in the way I was.

“I told you I would know if you needed me. You need me so I am here.” Dusk claims in a rather dense voice as if her words have deeper meaning behind them, I figure she is only telling me the one she wants me to hear, it’s almost like she can read my thoughts.

“I don’t need you, I need life to be easier!” I spit out suddenly as a confusing amount of emotion tangles in my chest, my words cause Dusk to flinch which makes me feel like an asshole.

“Life isn’t meant to be easy Noah, especially not for those of us who have it start off hard from a young age. If life were easy then it would not be interesting and that’s the whole point. Challenges make or break us, they chance us and form us into who we need to be in order to truly live. Life makes us durable so that we can survive and blaze our own trails. Some people can handle that, and others can’t. The point is life gives us the choice, the choice to end it all and stop fighting, or the choice to keep on living and fighting for what we deserve.” Dusk throws her words at me, they are like a looking glass as if she can see into my past before they grow large enough to cut.

I think I understand now the true difference between Dusk and Hannah. Dusk is and always has been a fighter whereas Hannah always gave up when the going got tough. My mom always gave up when things got rough, she gave up on me and our life, she tried to kill herself multiple times and as a little boy, I swore to myself that I would be like her. I swore that I would never give up on myself at least, yet, here I am doing exactly what my mom would do. I’m giving up on myself and giving myself to death, something I never wanted to do. This is someone I never wanted to be. I have to look away from Dusk as small tears slip out of my eyes, I use my free hand to quickly wipe them away.

“I never wanted to be like this, I never wanted to be one of those people who gave up when things got too hard. I promised myself I would never give up on myself at the very least and now here I am breaking that promise. I’m not who I want to be Dusk!” I moan out and I can’t help it as more tears pour from my eyes, my voice breaks on her name.

I’m on the brink of sobbing when I feel something soft against my chin, I blink through my tears to see Dusk’s arm outstretched before me. It clicks into my brain that it is her hand against my skin which sends a sudden shock wave of electricity through me. Her thumb rubs soothingly under my chin as her eyes look into mine, holding my gaze.

“Hey, look at me, Noah. You are not done yet, you still have a choice. Until the knife slices that life vein you are alive, until you fully give up on yourself you are stronger than you thought. Noah, I see a guy who has suffered a great deal within this last little while and he is at his breaking point, he can choose to allow himself to shatter, or he can put himself back together and keep pushing!” Dusk encourages me, her words sinking into my heart.

Dusk isn’t sugar coating things for me, she is being honest and open. I can see now that I am not ready to give up, I have not ended my life so I am not finished. If I choose to end my life I will have let it crush me and I will have broken my promise to myself. I still have a choice to break that promise, I still have a chance at life, I still have a chance to be the guy I wanted to be.

“I still have a choice!” I exclaim, my words are all the answer I need from myself, I am not giving up on me, I am not going to break my promise.

Dusk stretches her hand back to me and carefully I place the knife in her hand. I watch her as she takes it from me and moves towards the house, slipping inside I hear the swish of water turn on. I assume Dusk is washing the knife and replacing it from where I took it. When Dusk joins be back on the swing I let out a clear breath of air and it feels really good.

“Can this be our secret?” I ask as shame burns through me when I peek down at my wrist where a small ringlet of blood still trickles from where I tested the knife on my skin.

“Trust me?” Dusk responds with her own question as something in her voice makes me feel like she has some unknown promise for me causing my blood to warm as I give her a nod in response.

I watch in alarm as Dusk lets her canine’s, or as I would properly call them fangs, grow to their full size in her human mouth. I watch as she raises her hand up to her mouth and punctures one of her fingers causing blood to bubble up on the pad. I can’t move as Dusk moves her finger over my cut and lets her blood drip down into her cut, I blink and blink again to make sure what I’m seeing is real as the cut on my arm heals itself. When the red line is gone I can’t help myself as I press my fingers into my skin giving myself a small pinch to make sure I’m not dreaming. I look from my wrist to Dusk’s finger which also shows no sign of the small puncture wound it had only moments before. I look at Dusk now and she gives me a small smile.

“You can heal yourself, and others?” I blurt out in a curious but alarmed manner as she tucks her legs up beneath her.

“It’s part of who I am. My wolf-blood has almost four times the healing properties of any other blood on the planet, so I heal at that same rate. Being able to heal really comes in handy when needed, for instance, it makes me hard to kill, it also makes me capable of healing others. Depending on the severity of the wound I want to heal it takes more of my blood to do so.” Dusk explains easily enough for me to understand, it dawns on me that that is the reason why her head wound went away when I found her in that alleyway.

I’m so into my own thoughts that I almost miss the far away glazed look that Dusk wears as she gazes out into the forest. I wonder, I wonder if this is one of the abilities that her family was killed for using.

“The, the uh, healing, is that one of the reasons your family were killed?” I murmur out in my softest, kindest tone and it brings her back to me.

Dusk looks at me for a moment with wide eyes as if she considers me brave for asking perhaps, either way, her gaze melts into an appreciative look.

“All Wolves can heal themselves, it’s just in our blood. My family was capable of using it whenever we felt because we shifted when we felt, we believed that we should use our wolf side and our human side together to be the perfect mixture of both. Or at least I thought we all believed that. Those that killed my parents did not believe what we did, they believe our wolf sides are special and should be viewed as a sacred right. They believe that we should only shift when the full moon demands and that we should unleash our wolf fully letting the animal become us for the night. The wolves that live that way today lost most of the abilities that my family used freely because they do not let the wolf out when it rises to the surface, instead they keep it buried thus making them weaker than we were. Weaker than I am. We did not want war though, so it was us who lost when it came!” Dusk explains in a small voice as a steely bit of pain seeps through the walls she holds up.

I give Dusk the silence she deserves to mourn more as her eyes return back out into the forest. A million questions surface in my mind, I want to ask all of them at once but it really isn’t my place so I hold them back. I can’t help but wonder who betrayed her and why. I wonder how Dusk escaped her own kinds death and seems to be the only one who has survived over the years as the others have slowly risen to rule these lands. I also wonder how Dusk is so positive that I am in no danger as she fully believes in her own strengths, I wonder. I bolt up out of the swing as another thought hits me fully, a thought so powerful with so much meaning that it brings tears to my eyes. Not even Hannah ever made me feel this much appreciation towards her the whole time we were together.

“You were never going to let me kill myself were you, you gave me the choice but if I had chosen to do it you would have healed me wouldn’t you have?” I ask suddenly my voice wobbling as it is full of emotion because Dusk knew that killing myself was not something I actually wanted.

Dusk knew even before I did that the moment I slit my wrists I would have regretted it, she knew I wanted to live but she knew I was in the wrong place to see it so she talked me through it instead. She didn’t force me not to do it. Dusk gave me the option even though I would have lived either way and for that my heart swells a scary notch as she looks up at me. I know she is trying to read me and failing by the way her nose twitches and the way she has a steely intense stare.

“You wanted to live Noah! You would have regretted it the moment you did it, so, I gave you the option even though if you had done it I would have saved you!” Dusk exclaims in an almost apologetic tone causing me to smile a smile that I haven’t shown since I was just a young boy.

It is a smile from when my mother and I actually lived a good life with her parents before they died in a tragic fire.

“Thank you!” I whisper, before I really understand what I’m doing it I have pulled Dusk from her spot on the swing and am embracing her in a bear hug, she hugs back barley as I feel the slightest of pressures of my sides.

“Do you not like hugs?” I joke when I let her go as she takes a quick step away from me.

“I told you, Noah, I’m dangerous! I have strength beyond many things and if I were not careful I could easily kill you with one squeeze during a hug!” Dusk says as she takes another step away from me her voice cracking as she looks at me with a pained expression.

“You wouldn’t hurt me Dusk, I know that!” I reassure her because I don’t want to scare her off, I don’t want her to know that her words scare the crap out of me.

“I should go, you are going to need some sleep for your big day tommorrow!” Dusk gives me a wink as she turns away from me, she moves to the forest’s edge and is pulling my sweater over her body when I burst the question out.

“Will I see you at school?” I ask and the instant the words come out of my mouth I know they sound as stupid as they did in my head.

“My brother would recognize me if I showed my face at that school and that would ruin everything. I can’t attend school, but, if you need me Noah then you know where to find me. Do me a favour and keep that sweater handy for me when I come back, yeah?” Dusk ends her statement in a question that makes me feel alive as now I know she will be back and she plans on borrowing my sweater again when she does.

I give her a smile and a nod when she tosses the sweater to me and I catch it easily. Dusk is moving away into the forest when she turns back to look at me with those enticing green eyes.

“And Noah, no more knives?” She calls the question back at me though there is a spark in her eyes, her voice can not hide the concern she has for me, that makes me smile.

“No more knives, I promise!” I call after her, then she is a wolf blinking at me with those green eyes from the forest and my hand’s itch for my paintbrush and canvas.

Long after Dusk has left I lie awake on the floor, Sally and Chris gave me the guest room upstairs to be my temporary room until my mom dumps her new boyfriend. A blanket is bundled around me and a soft pillow lays beneath my head, my eyes closed as I attempt to let my mind run blank. Finally, I slip into a sleep where I dream. The first dream turns out to be a nightmare about a young she-wolf who is betrayed by her brother and is slaughtered by a kind jealous of hers. It is a horrible nightmare that causes me to wake covered with sweat. I blink in the dark trying to shake off the feeling of the nightmare. When I close my eyes again I actually dream this time. I dream of Dusk in the forest running. Dusk is not alone, I dream I’m with her sometimes I’m running, sometimes I’m riding her back as she runs through the forest and other times a big almost black wolf is running beside her. I dream of those green eyes and her helping me tonight in ways that I didn’t know were possible.