Free The Girl With Aquamarine Eyes by Shelley Madden Page B

the picture,
was during the day.
    Bice stared at Harmon a moment longer. He seemed to be in a
deep, peaceful in slumber.
    His face reddened with anger, as he realized for certain
Heaven had sent him on a wild goose chase. The girl obviously had it in for
him. She was dangerous. She’d probably planned the whole scenario, which would
have left him dead at the bottom of the staircase.
    He’d throw her in the cellar for this stunt. The one without
the fine imported ales. Afterward, he’d lock himself up in the stocked cellar
and forget everything for a week or two while he drank himself to new heights.
He turned to leave, but the glint of a spilled glass near the singer’s arm
caught his eye.
    He quietly moved closer to the desk and studied the empty
tumbler, hoping to decipher what seemed amiss. The air around him was much too
quiet. Unnaturally quiet, as if some normal sound were missing.
    He followed the liquid which had made its way from the
spill, and had seeped under Harmon’s arm as he slept. Gingerly, he lifted the
musician’s arm and quietly sopped the mess to the far side of his desk.
    But the liquid was everywhere. He wondered why it hadn’t
woken Harmon when his arm became saturated with the liquor. He gazed at the
musician closely.
    He gasped, as he set eyes upon many tiny bubbles which
foamed from Harmon’s mouth and down his chin to the desk below. More were
slowly trickling from his nose, joining with the river of bubbles from the
corner of his lip.
    He hesitated, and finally shook the musician. “Harmon?”
    The deathly still room seemed to spin around him, as he
realized the reason for the odd silence. He knew what the missing sound was,
instantaneously feeling his heart jerk and flutter to his feet. Harmon wasn’t
breathing.
    He pulled the limp man from the chair and flung him to the
floor. He tore the musician’s shirt open and put his ear to his chest. He could
hear nothing, only the ticking of the clock behind him. And his own racing
heart.
    Now he knew. Harmon had fallen asleep, knocked the glass
over and inhaled the liquid in his slumber. The man had obviously choked to
death on the spilled beverage.
    “Harmon!” He flipped the musician belly down, lifted his
arms above his head and desperately began working the liquid from his frozen
lungs.
    * * *
    Heaven lay in silence on the bedroom floor. She was swept back in
time, and was a young girl once again. The people of the island were gathered
around her and her parents.
    They’d formed a line which faded to infinity, deep into the
gloomy depths of the jungle. A thick haze seemed to encompass the island
people. It moved in waves around her, as the water in the sea might do as it
hit the shoreline. She could hear the murmurs of the people as they held their
dead out to her, begging her to bring back their loved ones.
    Coins jingled in a can near her. She gazed to her side and
watched as a native dropped a golden token into the tin cup her father held. He’d
smiled reassuringly at the mourning islander and moved the distraught man
toward the girl.
    “Go on, child.” Her mother murmured.
    The islander thrust the child toward her wordlessly. The
dead boy’s frozen eyes bore powerful holes straight through to her soul. Water
dripped from his nose, tracing its way down his pale cheek. He was the color of
death itself, a lost soul left behind by the monster of the sea.
    She’d clutched the skirts of her mother who stood near. “Momma,
I am tired.”
    “Go on child, you must help the boy. You will rest soon.”
    Coins jingled in the can once again. She was tired, very
tired. She could no longer stand, having grown too weak. Her mother brought her
a chair and eased her into it. The women of the island stood near, waiting to
bring to her any comfort she might call for.
    Her parents had told her before reaching the island a great
storm had come. It pounded the thatch huts endlessly, until its strong winds
ripped the roofs off, casting them aside