Airel - Aaron Patterson [95]
“Take all the time you need, Airel,” he had said to me. “We just gotta play along here. I think over time he’ll get tired of us and let us go.” His statement had caught me off-guard. He hadn’t believed any of it; he thought Kale was crazy, that this had been just some psychopathic game, and that in the end the cops would show up to spring us.
I returned to myself, wondering if that wasn’t what I had thought too. Or was that what I was supposed to think? I didn’t know anymore. The stories in the Book were so real. They were too impossible to have been made up. I knew in my heart that Kreios was a real person. I could sense that his life was as real as mine somehow.
I wasn’t having bad dreams, but I wasn’t sleeping well. I guess I didn’t need it, because I wasn’t tired. It was as if knowing the story gave me an energy boost. I used the nights to think and to walk all through the great house. I spent some nights in the huge study with all the books, reading by the light of the fireplace that never, not once, went out.
The house really was very beautiful. I explored every room but one. I couldn’t get into it because it was locked—even though I could have broken the door down, I guess. I didn’t do that. It would have been wrong. I imagined a great library of old books, or a hidden staircase leading to underground caves that held something unknown. It haunted me, and I thought about it often.
As I fell into bed that night, I relived the adventures of Kreios and his beloved daughter Eriel. I was struck by how similar our names were. She seemed to have been so kind and beautiful. I wished I could know her, and in some weird way I felt like I did. I was falling deep into a dream when a firm hand shook me awake.
I bolted upright to find Kale standing over me. He wore a white robe, and he appeared monkish in a 21st century sort of way. “Airel, come with me.”
My heart pounded in my chest from the shock. It was like I was ready to defend myself from an unexpected intruder at my bedside. Even though I secretly was beginning to like him, I still tried to fight against it with all of my will. “To where? Don’t you knock?” I looked out the windows and said something rude about how it was still in the middle of the night. I was angry, too, for even considering trusting him.
Kale looked slightly dejected, but he left the room. “Be sure to dress in something that doesn’t inhibit your movements.” He left no doubt in his mannerisms about the expectation that I follow him immediately. I grumbled darkly as I dressed in a gray track suit and tennies. My hair was a mess, but I didn’t care—I just pulled it up in a pony. Men—they were all the same. So demanding, and no time for anything remotely sensitive. Well, except Michael, of course.
I left my room and closed the door behind me. Kale was waiting for me in the hallway. He led me out of the house to the shack I had seen on my first solo journey through the house. There outside the building, just as I had seen it before, was the large floating area where my imaginary gymnasts did their floor routines. My hands buzzed with the excitement of discovery.
The shack stood in the corner of the area, lit from the inside. Kale ascended a stair made of wood and opened the door. I followed him inside. The shack, shed, dojo, or whatever was constructed of wood and stone. The floor was covered thickly with a huge rough rug. It seemed impossibly large inside, seemed not to fit the dimensions of the shell that hemmed the space in which I now stood. Huge wood beams anchored the roof overhead, and a rustic chandelier, already lit, hung from the middle beam, lending a warm glow to the room.
A perfect square, I could tell in looking