drunk in the lights. The warmth had gone further into him, mixing with his blood until he was prone but calm.
Behind his eyes, Nate saw a dark forest and the young girl tied between two trees by all four limbs. She was alone and unable to free herself. He saw her screaming but couldn’t hear her. He thought it was another dream; a darker part of his nightmare that chilled him. Dark spheres, purple and black, swirled around the girl’s form like a swarm of hungry gnats. She disintegrated under their attack to be replaced by the same white lights that had lured him into the trees.
A numbness had moved through Nate’s body, beginning in his toes then drifting to his ankles and shins and up his legs to his torso. It gradually shifted to his shoulders, tensing his back as his neck stiffened. When he had opened his mouth again, a thin glowing mist drifted up from his throat.
The figure of the girl was forming over him, having no weight at first then slowly gaining form until Nate could feel the press of another body against him. It wasn’t heavy or light; he didn’t feel he was being crushed. Arms moved up around his neck and a head covered with delicate silver hair fell gently rested on his chest. She was settling on him, breathing gently. Nate was careful when he touched her.
And he thought that was the end of the dream. Strange as it was, he couldn’t remember this last part terrifying him at all.
Fingers were stroking his cheek and raking through his hair when he started to wake. His blurry vision adjusted to see the same pretty face that had hovered above him in the cloud. She greeted his gaze with bright blue eyes.
Nate sat up quickly in shock and the girl remained still beside him.
‘What the…?’ he muttered. ‘I thought…’
‘It was no dream, my dear Nathaniel. I’m here now.’ Her hand cupped itself around his jaw. He was more astonished to have her touch him.
His mother was at the door suddenly, knocking before she turned the knob. Nate panicked and quickly covered the girl with his blanket.
‘Are you up?’ Jacqueline called.
‘Yeah! I’m fine now. Don’t come in.’
‘Okay… Did you want to come down for breakfast?’
‘In a minute.’ Nate listened to Jacqueline leaving then pulled back the blanket to see the girl smiling at him.
‘Are we playing a game?’ she asked.
‘Uh, kind of…’ Looking down, he saw she was completely naked. He quickly covered her again and she giggled, sweetly. ‘I better get you some clothes.’
Nate got up and raided his dresser for a shirt. Meanwhile, the girl pushed back the covers and stood without shame, walking over to his window and opening the curtains to look out the front yard. He shot over to her and shut the curtains again, tightly.
‘Just give me two seconds,’ he begged. ‘You can’t go anywhere like that.’
He was doing his best not to look at her, only catching accidental glances while she wandered around his room and inspected his things. Not that he could tell for sure, but she didn’t seem particularly bewildered or even mildly confused about anything.
She picked up a comb from his desk and started running it through her silver hair. Now Nate was captivated by her. Each stroke of the comb stripped the silver from the strands and it scattered to the floor like glitter as it faded away. When she was done, her hair was a golden honey colour.
She was a waif with long limbs and bony hips. Her skin was milky and felt incredibly soft when he’d dared to touch her arms. Seeing her now was alluring as it was unnerving to him.
Swallowing hard and trying not to show his embarrassment, Nate handed her a shirt and a pair of shorts. She stood at his height, able to meet his eyes square on.
He remembered the name the lights had uttered. ‘You’re Violet?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘This doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Now I’m not a kelesnae, I think I’ll regain my former appearance.’ Her voice was now missing the odd metallic timbre it had before.
‘What happened last night? You were just a cloud with a face and then…’
‘In order to become human again, I had to inhabit your body for a time and gather pieces of you to reform myself. In turn, I may have left you with some sort of gift. I’m not sure what it is.’
Nate wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. ‘What kind of gift?’
Violet picked up his hand and examined his wrist. While he stared with her, Nate’s palm slowly disappeared. She let go and his hand wouldn’t return. None of this appeared to surprise her.
Nate couldn’t breathe. He flicked his wrist quickly and his hand was solid again. Now he was terrified of her. ‘What the hell are you?’
‘I am not here to harm you.’
‘That’s not what I asked, Violet.’
‘I told you, I was a kelesnae and now I’m human.’
Nate sighed and rubbed his face roughly with both hands. She still wasn’t making sense and he couldn’t think straight to figure any of it out.
‘I have to take a shower. Will you stay in here? Don’t leave, okay?’
‘Where would I go?’
‘Just get dressed and I’ll talk to you in a minute.’
Nate scrambled for reasons he was in this situation. The dream had ended, he couldn’t refute that. Violet was real. Why she was there now with him, he had no idea.
He stood at the mirror and stared at himself, not seeing any changes at all. He had to test this gift she’d given him, his morbid curiosity wasn’t going to go away in a hurry.
Keeping his eyes closed, Nate brought his breath to a slow pace and waited. Nothing odd was happening, he couldn’t sense himself becoming invisible. When he looked again, he wasn’t in the mirror anymore. There were just the wall and the towel rack behind him.
His breathing quickened as he reached out for something on the counter. His fingers managed to pick up his toothbrush and he waved it in the mirror, dropping when the sight of it floating in mid-air freaked him out. He was able to touch his own arm as if it was right there, but he saw absolutely nothing.
His distress brought him back. Now his reflection was visible and gasping for breath. He wasn’t going to be sick, even still his stomach felt nauseated. He stayed in the shower for ages to calm himself, closing his eyes and taking slow, deep breaths until he felt steady.
Violet was in his room wearing the clothes he’d given her. They were slightly too big for her, but Nate wasn’t about to go and raid Jacqueline’s closest for something more appropriate. He didn’t even know how he was supposed to get Violet out of the house.
Jacqueline sounded as though she was at the bottom of the stairs suddenly. ‘Nate, I have to go out for an hour. Will you be okay?’
He went to his door. ‘I’ll be fine!’
Violet was peeking out the window again as he waited for his mom to go.
‘Okay, least now I can maybe explain how you got here when she gets back.’ He had to come up with a decent lie for Violet’s sudden existence in his life but his mind was too panicked to find one. Expecting her to have an answer other than the truth wasn’t going to help him.
‘Do you have milk here?’ she asked.
Nate’s sympathy for her was stronger realising she was hungry. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get you something. Come with me.’
In the kitchen, Violet was picking up knives and other utensils, running her fingertip along the edges of the blades with a more fascinated expression.
Nate took a couple of things out of the fridge. He wasn’t all that hungry, the stress of his predicament crushing his appetite. He poured Violet a glass of milk and she drank it down quickly, splashing some on her front.
‘It tastes strange,’ she said.
‘I don’t think it’s expired.’ He checked the carton. ‘How long ago did you change into… that…’ He’d forgotten the word already.
‘A kelesnae? At least four hundred years ago.’
Nate put the carton down before he could drop it in disbelief
. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Why would I make a joke of that?’ she asked simply.
‘How did it happen?’
Violet settled herself at the kitchen bench with the glass in her hand. ‘I was living in a small village that was plagued by these creatures our pastor called the Enorahts. They raided the cribs and stole the lives of infants every winter. No amount of hiding our young would keep them safe. Then the pastor, his name was Joseph, he told our people that if we gave of one of our own once a year, the Enorahts would leave us be.’
‘Why did they choose you?’
‘I’d stolen some food for my family. It was my punishment. It made sense to the church council that I go as a sacrifice.’
‘That’s horrible. You obviously needed the food or you would never have stolen it.’
‘Very few had committed transgressions that year, I was chosen by the council to go. My father did not defend me.’ Her voice was laced with malice then. ‘He said not one word.’
She reached for the carton to pour herself another glass, drinking it like she had before.
‘You’ll make yourself sick if you guzzle it,’ Nate warned.
Violet lowered the glass and wiped her mouth. She wasn’t being entirely gross, at least she was behaving like a human. Then he remembered she’d already been one four hundred years ago.
‘I’m sorry. I was hungry.’
‘It’s okay. Go on.’
‘Years before the Enorahts first appeared, our village was a horrible place. Men toiled for very little money and always struggled to care for their families. Many of our children begged in the streets. We didn’t know what to think when the attacks