Traveler - The Price (Book 3)

When you have no clue where you’re heading, any road can take you there. Everything will work out so you can fulfill your purpose. But what if sometimes is better you don’t know from the beginning what this purpose is? Sometimes is better to find out some things later than too soon.

I was stuck somewhere between the past and present, and that was making so hard my way to the future. I couldn’t move on because I didn’t know everything about me. I was living chapters from my past over and over again, which I preferred to leave buried, but also moments for which I would have turned back the clock for a thousand times, just to be able to live some feelings again. This thing made me terrify.

I saw the box in the backpack next to me, so I thought about taking it and studying it a little. When I touched it, the box started shining so bright that Andy was forced to stop the car. I threw it away.

“Ok, am I the only one who sees this thing weird as hell?” asks Ivy.

“What is the connection between the box and Jo?” continues Andy.

“The box started shining again when I woke up in the forest, from what I heard” I said.

I took it again, and I turned it upside down. Nothing new happened. I put it aside, demoralized.

“I just want to know what’s up with it!” I say grumpily. “I just want to finish this madness already and to make everything as it used to be. I feel like I can do something, but I don’t know what because I would do it!”

“There she goes” says Andy.

“Don’t get angry. We will find a way. We always do” says Deby.

I confirmed, and we continued our way. Thinking about what I had remembered, I realized I appreciated nature more than before. We couldn’t have managed without all the things it had offered us. At least on the island, where we would have starved if it wasn’t for the fruits and water. I was wondering why I hadn’t thought about that earlier. I wanted to share that idea with the others, but my thoughts were disturbed by a sudden break.

“We’re in trouble” says Andy.

When I looked in front of us, I saw two griffins. I didn’t think they saw us, so Andy rushed to turn the car. At that moment, we were hit by something heavy. The car has shaken badly, and we fell on one side. In that madness, Ivy took the box and put it inside her blouse. We felt hit again, rolling on the road as a toy car. Then we realized there were another two griffins who were hitting us. We took what guns fell in our hands and started shooting them.

“The others are coming at us too!” shouts Aaron.

We couldn’t take the hits anymore and the only chance not to get caught and crushed in there was to get out as fast as we could. The gasoline cans were flowing in the car, and it was just a matter of time until a tragedy would have happened. Ivy and Deby managed to get out, and when I wanted to step outside, the car was hit again, and my way out was blocked. I heard only shots and screams, and I felt pulled outside. When I turned my head, I saw Aaron, who had pulled me out on the window. We couldn’t take a breath because we were attacked, and I was thrown a few meters away. Aaron put him down with three bullets.

There was only two, from what I remembered, and Deby, Ivy, and Andy were taking care of them. I got up to take out my gun, but I felt grabbed by the foot and dragged. The griffin was about to fly with me in his claws. I started screaming, and Aaron heard me, so he ran after us. He shot it a few times, but all he did was to piss it off because he threw me aside and attacked him. The griffin put Aaron on the ground, but he kept shooting it. After another two shots, he was out of bullets.

I tried to get up, but just at that moment a lot of memories started flashing before my eyes. My feelings were coming back too, and I realized I was confused about a lot of things, but I knew what I felt. Through Aaron’s screams and his desperation to escape that creature, I realized I remembered everything that had happened until the moment I fell on that cliff. My feelings were blending with the screams and shots, and the shock was keeping me blocked in that place, looking powerless at what was happening in front of my eyes.

Andy and the girls managed to kill the two griffins and ran to save Aaron from that creature’s claws. They used all their bullets and finally put it down. It fell over Aaron, and Andy rushed to get it off him.

“No!” shouted Deby.

Ivy covered her face with her hands, and I saw the desperation in her eyes. Then I realized that all had gone in the worst way that was possible. I got up and ran there, pushing Deby and Andy from Aaron. Cold tears were flowing on my face, and my voice was fading because of my screams of despair. He had a deep wound in his abdomen, and the blood flowed ceaselessly, even if Aaron was pressing there with his hand. I bent over him, and I couldn’t help the trembling.

“Ivy, do something!” I shouted.

But she was just standing there, without moving a finger, and the tears were on her face.

“Ivy!” I shouted again.

Aaron tried to say something, but I stopped him.

“It’s going to be fine. We will do something, just hold on! Ivy, go and bring that medical kit from the car! Don’t stare like this! Do something!”

Then, Aaron took my hand and looked at me, with small eyes.

“They can’t do anything” he whispered.

“No! They have to!”

“Everything is fine” he says.

“No! It’s not! You don’t understand! I remember everything! I remember you, us, everything! It can’t end like this! Not now!”

I saw a shadow of happiness in his blue eyes. He tried to draw something that looked like a smile, and he squeezed my hand.

“If this was what it took for you to remember me, then I don’t regret any of it” he says. “I know I won’t die in vain.”

I was in a desperation without limits, and I started crying out loud. I felt how he was slowly letting go of my hand, and then he closed his eyes.

“No!” I shouted. “Aaron!”

I heard Deby bursting into tears behind me. Andy hugged her and Ivy bent over me and put her arms around my neck.

“This is not real! It can’t be!” I said revolted. “Why him? Why now? Just why?!”

No one knew to respond to my question.

“Why did I remember everything if it ended like this? It’s not fair! Why not me? He did everything that was human possible to save me from that griffin, and this happened! They were all right! Everybody dies around me and because of me!”

“Jo…” says Andy.

“No! Don’t you dare say the opposite! Even you said it to me, and you were right!”

I was looking at Aaron lying on the ground, and I just couldn’t explain why others were paying for my sins. I was feeling a great despair, a deep sadness and I couldn’t stop my tears from falling. I couldn’t let go of his hand either. Or I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready yet.

“It wasn’t his time to go” I whispered.

“No, it wasn’t” adds Deby disappointed.

“We need to…” says Andy among his tears, but I interrupted him.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m not moving!” I said determinedly.

The sadness became anger and revolt. It was almost dark, but I couldn’t care anymore. I couldn’t feel the time passing, neither the pain from my leg wound. Andy took out from the car what we had left. It was destroyed, and we had to keep going on foot. But I couldn’t move from that spot. I saw how he took out a shovel between the irons and I looked at him angrily. I couldn’t think straight at that moment.

“Put that back!” I shouted.

“But Jo…” he says.

“Get that away from here, now! I don’t want to see it!”

“Jo, we get you, we lost Aaron too, but what can you do now?” asks Deby.

“I don’t know, but I’m not ready for this yet!”

“It’s going to be dark soon, and we are not safe here” says Ivy.

Andy went on the side of the road and started digging. The sound the shovel made when it was hitting the ground was too hard to bear. I got up, and I went to the car. I hit it with my leg. Then again and again, until I had no energy left. I fell, unbalancing because of the pain. I felt my wound pumping out blood. Ivy wanted to come to me, but Deby stopped her, and she did well because I needed that moment like air. The sound made by the shovel stopped. I looked back at them. I approached Aaron, dragging after me the leg that hurt me so bad. I looked at him for one last time, and then I nodded my head at Andy. Ivy helped to get him up, and I couldn’t stay to watch the rest of it.

I don’t know how much time had passed, but it was night, and I couldn’t recover from the shock. That was what he had felt too when he saw me falling off that cliff? The only difference was that I had returned. All the feelings and the memories were now fresh in my mind, and that made the situation even worse. I picked up my backpack, and I looked over my shoulder one last time. I was so sad, and I felt I couldn’t go on. Deby took my hand, but it was hard to make another step. With my last strengths, I moved. With every step, I felt I was leaving a part of me behind. My leg hurt bad, and Ivy put a tourniquet above my injury. It was too dark to take care of my wound, so we had to wait until morning. I started walking with a lot of unanswered questions on my mind.

When I had started off this road, I had turned the people around me in my home. Slowly, I had lost most of them, and that was how I managed to lose the feeling of home. They say not to grieve because everything you lose is coming back to you in a different form. But my losses were too many to be replaced by something or someone else. Some people just put their prints on your soul in such a particular way, so you think they are a part of you. When they leave, you feel they took with them a piece of your soul, and you realize you will never be able to be again what you used to be before.