Free All over Again by Lynette Ferreira Page B

your father chased me off his land, after finding us together.”
    I gasp as this sinks in, and he continues hastily, “I decided to go to Dublin, and I walked there, took me all of six weeks. All the while, I berated myself for not staying and fighting for you, we never had the opportunity to say goodbye. I knew that I could never live the rest of my life without you, because I lost my heart to you that first moment I saw you. The day after arriving in Dublin, I decided that I was going to go back for you, start my journey the following day and steal you away in the middle of the night. The two of us could make our own life somewhere else, but unbeknown to me, in 1355 an illness had come to the streets of Dublin. That night I started with a fever so grave it rendered me unmovable, and then later swellings grew in my groin. The swellings grew as large as eggs and they started spreading across my body, turning black and purple. I had no choice during those days but to live on the streets, and …” He looks at me, tears running down his cheeks. “I died there Eilish, wishing that I could see you only once more, convince you of my love. I did not even realize that I was dead at first. I came back to our forest, our meeting place, but you never returned until now.”
    This is too much for me to understand . I tentatively reach out and touch his cheek, to console him and more to convince myself that he was real. His skin under my hand feels warm, so he must be here and not a ghost .
    “How can you be dead, if I can touch you?”
    He puts his hand over my hand on his cheek and smiles sadly. “You moved on, Eilish. You are now Elizabeth and as Elizabeth you were in an accident and this is only a dream for you.”
    I gasp. “But it feels as if I have always been here . I even remember yesterday.”
    “I can’t explain how it works. I can still barely believe that you are here with me.”
    I whisper, “I don’t care if you say I am now Elizabeth, someone with a different life apart from you. I still love you and I never want to be without you, something brought me back here to you.”
    He is silent for the longest time, searching my eyes and then he says, “Eilish, I don’t have a choice but to force you to make an informed choice one way or the other. Either you can stay with me for eternity and it would forever just be you and me, or you can go back to your present life and continue what you have not yet finished.
    I reply adamant ly , “I obviously choose you. There is not even a choice to be made.”
    He lifts his hand to brush my hair out of my face and fold it in behind my ear. Smiling sadly, he says softly, “You can’t imagine the loneliness, the longing. Now that I have you here with me, feeling the warmth of you next to me, I do not think that I would ever want you to leave again. I do hope that you choose to be with me, but if you decide to turn it all around, then it will be okay too. I will risk everything for your happiness.”
    He stands up then and pulls me up with him.
    We walk hand in hand towards the horses, not as exuberant as before, because sadness has replaced our happiness.
    We walk the horses back up the hill. He leads me towards a cliff and we walk down a steep pathway. We leave the horses at the top of the hill.
    Devlin holds my hand and steadies me over every boulder and as we reach the bottom, we walk out onto the white sand of the beach.
    I feel the air sucked out of me as I recognize the beach we are standing on.
    The same beach where I fell in love with Jared, where he sat so close to me, tracing butterfly soft patterns on my arm, where he said he would never let me go.
    I gasp as I remember sitting in the car next to Jared, seeing the silver car sliding at an amazing speed towards us, looking to see if he was wearing his safety belt and I remember that he was.
    I hope he was all right and I hope my mom was okay, always so over-protective wanting to know where we all were at all times,