More titles from Lynette Ferreira
ALL OVER AGAIN
LYNETTE FERREIRA
THIS SMASHWORDS EDITION PUBLISHED IN 2011
Copyright 2011 by Lynette Ferreira
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
All rights reserved
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Cover: Copyright 2011 TSDesigns and Lynette Ferreira
Website: Lynette Ferreira
The following is what remained from the initial draft of Recycled Souls.
In the first draft, Elizabeth met up with Devlin again, when she regressed back across the years. However, when it was time for Elizabeth to come back to the present day, Devlin kept following her.
This would have turned Recycled Souls into a paranormal romance. She would have broken up with Jared because she could always feel Devlin with her, and this could have made her relationship with Jared awkward.
The problem was how to get rid of Devlin again, without losing the heart of my story.
I wanted Recycled Souls to be a simple love story - a story of discovery that even through many lifetimes, many mistakes and many different choices, we always end up where we are always supposed to be…
ALL OVER AGAIN
I look back at the road, so very happy, about to retaliate, and it is with shock that I see a big silver car speeding towards us and in a flash of a second I look to make sure Jared is wearing his safety belt.
>>><<<
The sun is bright and shimmering through the trees, rays of sunbeams dance over me. The forest is vast; the trees seem to go on forever, the darkness getting deeper and deeper.
I look around taking in the tall trees, the green undergrowth and the shadows deeper within.
Distracted I wipe my hand over the fallen tree trunk that I am sitting on. I feel faint indentations, and looking down I see a heart carved there. I softly follow the outlines, smiling. Devlin and I carved it here, it seems a long time ago.
After the longest while, I take a deep breath, and stand up, following the pathway out of the forest.
I am almost out of the forest, seeing the glimmer of green rolling hills through the many tree trunks, when I hear someone call my name and turn.
Devlin!
My heart jumps to my throat when I see him and I call to him joyously, “I thought you weren’t coming today. I have been waiting for ages?”
“Would I miss spending a day with you – never,” he laughs, surprise lighting up his face.
“I was just going to go and look for you,” I say as I skip back to him.
I smile, as I get closer. I see his dark hair falling over his forehead and down so that the tips just brush his shoulders, his full lips match the color of his rosy cheeks perfectly, he is sunburned, his jaw strong. An angel. I look into his violet blue eyes and sigh softly.
He grabs me, laughing exuberantly and he swings me around, my long dark hair waving out into the wind. I lean my head back, enjoying the wind on my face, my laughter weaving through the trees, bouncing back to my ears.
He puts me down, looking at me intently and I run my hands over his muscular arms, “You are so silly,” I laugh.
“A silly little thing called love,” he agrees, his eyes laughing.
I smile, “So, what shall we do today, silly little thing?”
“Let’s go horse riding,” he suggests.
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” I agree.
He takes my hand, and leading me along the narrow path, we walk into the sunshine.
Letting him go, standing on top of the hill, the whole valley stretched out before me, rolling hills disappearing over the horizon into the hazy distance, and while Devlin walks on, I open my arms wide and look up at the sky, letting the sun shine on my face, smiling.
“Hey sun-goddess,” he calls from where he stopped, waiting for me.
I laugh and run to him, into his arms.
He holds me tight and kisses me on the forehead.
“Come” he pulls me by the hand down the hill.
“You are always so impatient,” I reprimand him.
“And you always want to stop to smell the roses, the same sun as yesterday, the same grass, everything the same.”
“No, it is not the same, everyday is different and special, never to be taken for granted.”
He looks at me puzzled, “Where did that come from?”
I laugh, “I don’t know.”
We walk to his house, a wooden structure with a grass roof.
Behind the house, there are two horses grazing.
The horse, I usually ride, when I sneak away from home, is chocolate brown, while Devlin likes to ride on the statuesque white stallion.
Devlin saddles the horses, while I lean against the shoddy fencing, and I stare at him pensively.
It feels as if I have not seen him in the longest time, yet I know I met him yesterday in our usual place – the fallen tree trunk where we have spend endless hours talking softly.
When he hands me the stirrups, I gracefully mount my horse, and then I lean forward to bury my face in her mane. I take a deep breath and pat her on her neck taking the reins in my hands.
As soon as Devlin is on his horse, he nudges him, and lurches forward, galloping away yelling, “Come slow one, see if you can catch me today.”
He laughs and I nudge my mare, she is obviously not as fast, but we manage to keep up.
We ride far, never meeting another person, and when Devlin stops, he slides off his horse and waits for me, while smiling and pretending to be impatient.
I reach him and dismount, jumping down onto my feet, laughing.
We leave the horses to graze and sit in the grass besides them, the daisy scattered grass swaying in the gentle breeze.
Devlin puts out his arms and gently he pushes me backwards, until I am lying on my back. He lies down next to me, and stares at the blue sky for the longest time.
He suddenly asks seriously, “Have you ever tried to find the words to say something, but no matter what you think of saying, you know it might come out wrong?”
“No,” I laugh.
“I am trying to be serious here.”
A quick frown flashes between his eyes. I try to stop laughing, but I cannot get rid of the grin on my face.
He sighs, “Okay, fine, I am just going to say it.”
He sighs deeply, yet he says nothing and just continues staring up at the sky. I turn onto my side facing him and start tracing circles on his arm with my fingertips, looking down into his eyes.
He looks at me and then looking back at the sky he says, “Don’t look at me that way, I have waited too long for you and today it was as if you never left.”
He faces me again, looking sad, “If I kiss you now, take you in my arms, I will be selfish and not tell you what I need to tell you. Then one day in the distant future you might stumble across something that would yank your memory back, and then you will hate me forever, for not telling you the truth from the start.”
I have no idea what he is talking about, because I was waiting for him today and he saw me only yesterday, how could he have waited for me too long?
He takes my chin between his thumb and index finger, slowly pulling my face towards him, while his face reaches up.
I forget to breathe and close my eyes, just as I feel the soft touch of his lips on my own, he draws back and it is as if it never was.
He settles his head on the ground again and sighs, “How can I tell you the truth when this is the miracle I have waited for? I know all about hope, but can I really wait to first meet you again in another lifetime?” he asks himself, more than me.
He sits up abruptly and stares over the rolling hills. I now get worried; he was confusing me with words of lifetimes and waiting.
He turns towards me, and I can see fear and despair in his eyes, “Did you know Eilish is the Gaelic interpretation for Elizabeth?”
“Yes, Devlin I do, I can speak Gaelic quite fluently and you know this?” I look at him frowning.
“No, Eilish, you ARE Elizabeth,” he says sadness clouding his eyes. “Eilish and Elizabeth is the same person”
I look at him confused, sitting back from him.
“What are you saying, Devlin? I am not Elizabeth, have you lost your mind?” I ask panicked.
Softly he tells me, “You are Elizabeth, you returned to me today after centuries of waiting.”
He smiles to himself and look away, “When you came stumbling into the forest almost a year ago now, just after you moved back, I recognized your soul immediately. Physically you looked different, but your eyes were the same. You were so sad that day, and as I sat there with you, I noticed calmness come over you. I was glad to make you happy, even if you could not hear my voice. I could always be there next to you, always make you feel safe, always make you believe that everything will be okay.”
He turns towards me again, searching my eyes “You can not imagine my joy, when today as any other day when you come into the forest, I called your name – and you responded!”
He reaches towards me when he sees the shock on my face, “I am sorry. I did not want to scare you.”
I pull away from him. Pain etched across his face, he looks into the distance and starts explaining, “The last time I saw you as Eilish, was when 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 existent.
“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 quite 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, “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 where at all times, because of the suddenness of my dad’s death. One moment you are there and the next moment gone, forever.
Devlin looks at my face, “I am so sorry,” he says. “I had no choice; I can not risk you finding out one day, when it is too late for you to make the choice, when he might not be there where you might find him now.”
The pain in my heart is suddenly excruciating, and the tears are streaming down my face.
Devlin looks in my eyes and sadness clouds his, when he sees the pain in mine.
He says softly, “No matter what you choose now, it will be okay.”
He takes a deep breath, breathing out slowly.
“If you decide that this is the end, then this is the end.”
It breaks my heart, anticipating the hurt in his eyes, but I ask, “How do I wake up?”
He is quite for a while, and then with acceptance in his eyes, he says, “You are going to have to trust me.”
The sun is starting to set over the ocean and he looks at me urgently now, “We have to hurry, I did not realize how late it was.”
He grabs me by the hand and we hurry up the hill. He waits nervously for me to mount the mare, before he jumps onto the stallion. He does not race away, but keeps pace with me, looking over his shoulder at the setting sun every now and again.
We reach the cottage, just as the last lick of light leaves the horizon and he runs me into the cottage, dragging the horses behind him, and locks the door.
He sighs with relief, and walks towards me, “I’ll keep you safe, do not be afraid,” he whispers, “Just keep quite, they will hear the horses and move on.”
I start to ask who they were, when a gust of wind rocks the cottage. He puts his fingers over my lips, looking into my eyes urgently.
In the wind, I could hear moaning, crying and screaming and I shiver. The wind batter the cottage, wood panels creaking and rattling.
I look at Devlin with fear in my eyes, and Devlin continues to look into my eyes, keeping his hand over my lips and holding me tight to him.
The horses start to panic and whinny.
There is a brief silence in the wind and then it starts up again, until I do not know who was making the most noise, the horses or the wind.
Just as suddenly as it started, it ended.
After a while, Devlin lets me go with a groan of relief.
“What was that?” I whisper scared.
“I think it is unhappy souls. They only appear once the last ray of sun disappears from the sky. Scared the color off my skin, the first time I saw them coming towards me. It seemed to be a thousand spirits in a cluster, whirling around, creating this huge cloud, swirling and twirling about, with faces, legs and arms everywhere.
The faces in there are pulled in hideous expressions and …,” he smirks, “I don’t think I would want to meet them in a dark place.”
My eyes are wide and I am scared.
“This of course creates a problem for me. For me to cross over I would have to travel through the shadow of the valley of death, literally a forest of lost souls and then leap off the edge at the end of the world into the light.
In the process of getting there, I have to avoid this cloud of spirits, because I am sure that once you are stuck in there, there is no getting out for eternity. For you to wake up Elizabeth, all you have to do is choose to wake up, which you could do at any moment.”
He is quite for a moment, and then he says, “You finally came along and broke the spell that kept me here. Now it is time to say goodbye and you can go back. I will be okay. I have avoided them this long, so I am sure that I could get to the end of the world without running into them – literally.”
“No, I want to stay and help you,” I say sincerely.
He smiles, “You have always been so concerned about the lost and injured, looks like time changes nothing.”
I nudge him playfully and then seriously I ask, “Will they be back tonight?”
“They are very unpredictable, you must be tired though,” he smiles reassuringly.
I lay my head on his lap, and he plays with my hair, twirling it through his fingers.
After a while, he says softly, “I thought I would be able to say goodbye, but this is hard.”
Remembering how I felt earlier today, the intense love I felt for Devlin, the joy of seeing him and then the immense love for Jared that overwhelmed me on the beach. I chose there on the beach as memories of Jared flooded over me, but being here with Devlin, I wonder if it was the right decision. Did Sean not say that Eilish always proclaimed that Devlin was the love of her life, what if I let him go and I realize too late that I had made the wrong choice? This choice has no second chance. Once Devlin goes into the light, he will be gone forever.
If I choose to stay, I would not be selfish surely, because, as he said, we would be together forever, instead of waiting to meet each other in another life, with all the complications that might have been added to the mix, we would just remain as it is now.
We do not talk, and I struggle through the night with my thoughts and my indecision. The howling, screaming and rattling does not return.
When the first light of the new day breaks, Devlin bends down and kisses me lightly on my cheek. “If we start early, we can cover a great distance before nightfall.”
I get up and stretch, he stares at me smiling, feeling embarrassed I walk towards my horse, but he stops me, saying, “Where we are going, we would not need any horses.”
I look at him, frowning.
“Trust me,” he insists.
We walk through the door, and he takes my hand, leaving the door to the cottage standing open.
“Would we not go faster with the horses?” I ask.
“Not really, we have to walk towards the forest now, and would have to leave the horses at the edge anyway – the pathway, as you know is only wide enough for one person to walk on at a time.”
We walk up the hill towards the forest. The early morning sunrise behind us, the sun highlights the clouds scattered throughout the sky with shades of yellows and pinks. It feels warm and balmy, not as you would expect Ireland to feel, I wonder if it is always warm here where Devlin is stuck, or maybe I just do not feel the heat or cold, because I am dreaming.
At the edge of the forest, we stop and Devlin starts taking off his shoes. I start to sit down to take mine off as well, but he stops me, “No, there is no need for you to take your shoes off, you will see soon enough why I am taking mine off.”
Devlin just leaves his shoes there. Smiling forlornly, he says to me, “Where I am going I am sure I won’t need shoes.”
We walk into the forest, Devlin ahead of me leading me by the hand, and looking ahead I once again see the darkness deep within. Darkness I have never paid attention to before, but now it seems menacing somehow, reaching towards me, wanting to have me, it suddenly feels to me that if I walked in there, I might not reach the other side.
Devlin turns around and looks at me reassuringly as we enter into the dark. I want to pull back, first discuss this with him again before walking in, but I take a deep breath, and convince myself that I am a brave, independent, strong person who can handle almost anything. Besides, I have Devlin with me, so I will fear nothing as I enter into the shadow of the valley of death.
I gasp as the dark envelopes me, it is absolute and I cannot see anything in front of me. I lift my hand in front of my face, and I wave it – nothing - only darkness. It is not even darkness, but total blackness.
I hear a soft crooning noise all around; and it seems to fill my ears. I realize that I cannot hear anything else, no birds, not the wind in the trees, not even our footsteps as we walk one behind the other over the path leading through the forest.
I ask Devlin, “Why is it so quite?” but all I can hear is my own voice echoing in my head. I cannot hear myself say anything.
Suddenly I feel a tugging on my hand and realize that I had stopped walking, and almost lose grip of Devlin’s hand. Hysterics almost overwhelm me and I get the urge to turn around and run back, but would I know where to run to, I am too scared try.
Devlin stops tugging on my hand in front of me, and I sense by the way he is holding my hand that he is turning towards me. If he is talking to me, it is falling on deaf ears.
So funny, Elizabeth.
I laugh, but only I can hear me.
Am I losing my mind?
Devlin’s probing hand, knocks me against the head, shocking me back to reality. He finds my cheek, after almost knocking my nose askew, and the way he holds his hand against my cheek feels as if he is trying to assure me that he is near.
After a moment, he turns back awkwardly. I do not only want to hold his hand anymore, because it seems too tentative, as if my hand could be ripped out of his at any moment. I lean in closer to him, and then almost knock him off his feet, as I searchingly put my arms around his waist. Trying to explain to him without using my voice, his ears or his sight, I gently push against him, moving his leg forward as I move my leg forward. He realizes my intention immediately, and we shuffle on.
I wonder how he knows instinctively where to walk; maybe that is why he took his shoes off before we entered the forest, so that he could feel the pathway beneath his bare feet. Imagine if he lost the pathway, we could be lost in here forever, now that is a scary, scary thought. If we were to be stuck in here for eternity, the only thing I would have for all that time would be my thoughts and me. There would never again be any interaction with another living soul. My thoughts would surely drive me crazy and I once heard somewhere that eternity would be, if you could imagine a diamond as big as the earth and once a year, a swallow would come to sit upon this rock and sharpen its beak, and so only once the entire diamond has been obliterated would infinity be done. I wondered sadly if Jared would ever wait for me as long as Devlin did.
I suddenly feel a spider web movement over my arm, the keening noises have gotten louder the further we walked into the blackness. More and more feather light movements brush over my body, coming from everywhere, and I gasp every time it happens, and the worst is that I cannot ask Devlin what it is. I realize that even though I am clinging to Devlin and that I can feel him under the palms of my hands, holding him tightly against my body, I am alone, all alone.
I have lost the use of all my sense, except for touch, and now the light brushings over me, are starting to feel like urgent tugging and pulling. Devlin places his hands over my arms around his waist, squeezing them rhythmically, as if to draw my attention away from whatever is brushing and pushing at me.
I suddenly feel two hands grab me from behind, physically powerful, and I scream, but of course, no sound leaves my mouth. The hands are pulling at me, trying to dislodge my arms from around Devlin.
I scream and scream silently, my throat starting to feel rasping.
Devlin has turned around and has put his arms around me, holding me tightly.
I feel hands around my legs now and my legs lift into the air. Devlin is straining to hold onto me.
Hands are all over me now, some stroking and some tugging persistently, eagerly, hungry.
Devlin starts to walk backwards, still following the path, one foot at a time, dragging and pulling me with him. I can feel the strain in his muscles as he pulls against the force of whatever has my legs in their grip.
Suddenly a voice booms out of the keening, humming noise that has surrounded us ever since we walked into the darkness. “HELP ME,” and then another, “TAKE ME WITH YOU.”
Devlin starts to walk backwards a little faster and I sink my head into his shoulder, trying to calm myself. I am clinging to him with all my might, while my legs are being lifted higher and higher up into the air. Devlin grips me around my shoulders, his arms under my arms, and it feels as if I am slipping away from him.
Please I pray, please do not let me be here forever, Please, please. Devlin is trying to walk faster and I realize that if he slipped and fell now, we might lose hold of each other and I will be dragged off. There now seems to be a million voices yelling and screaming at us, they are all begging and pleading, some menacing and some threatening, some pleadingly.
Then, just like that – in the blink of an eye we suddenly walk out of the dense blackness into the night. The night is brilliant and dazzling. The light hurts my eyes after the total blackness we have just walked through.
The hands that were clinging onto me let me go. As my eyes adjust, I see that I am standing near a gaping hole in the earth, and I see hundreds and hundreds of people walking towards the edge, walking over the edge and then floating into this magnificent inviting light. Up and up they go, and then they disappear through an opening in a thick, bright white cloud. The opening in the earth seems to stretch on both sides further than my eyes can see and I cannot seem to see the other side of this immense chasm. A beginning with no end.
Devlin looks down at me, smiling sadly, “The time has come for me to move on.”
He bends down and I close my eyes, waiting for him to kiss me, sadness filling my heart at having to let him go.
He is suddenly ripped from my arms, I open my eyes and see the cloud of menacing souls rush by and I see Devlin’s face flash past in a swirl, mingled with arms and legs, pain etched all over it. I thought I heard his voice cry out to me.
Would he now be stuck in there for all of eternity? I could not let that happen and I wondered why the cloud sucked him in and not me, could it be because I was still very much alive, and only dreaming in the real world?
Without thinking twice, I run after the cloud and jump into the mass of bodies.
I immediately feel a rush of repulsion passing through everything that I am. I feel the intense hatred and loathing, the menace and hopelessness of each soul within that cloud.
I start to feel hopeless and sad. I think why bother getting out of here, what is there to go to anyway. Is the one life not the same as the next, maybe different scenarios, but surely always the same dramas of love and death? A small part of my mind, trying hard to remain sane, begin to panic, because I jumped in here to safe Devlin, but what if I never, ever found him.
I see him and I strain forward to reach him, it is as if he has no control over himself and is being thrown about, swirling and twirling, knocked and bumped. I grab him by his wrist and pull him closer to me and it seems to take all my energy.
I notice that in this short while, his face has changed. His cheeks were sallow, dark rings etched deeply under his eyes. With all my might, I hold him tight, and I yell as loudly as I possibly can, hoping that this would work, “I want to wake up NOW!”
Darkness surrounds me, and I can hear a beeping noise coming from somewhere behind me.
>>><<<
That night when I go to sleep, I dream of Devlin, and I am happy to see him. I can honestly not say why, because actually I should be upset with him, but I suppose none of this is his fault, it is not as if he planned for any of this to happen. He did not realize that I would bring him back with me, when I wished to wake up, while clinging tightly to him.
He is turned towards me and he holds my face between his hands. I have forgotten his angelic features and I look up into his blue eyes.
He says, “I have decided that I would rather want to meet you in another lifetime, than hang around by your side aimlessly, without ever being able to touch you, or kiss you, or hold you. In another lifetime, I might have the opportunity, now I have nothing. I have told you long ago that you needed to make a choice, but unknowing you did not really have a choice in how things would work out, because even though initially you chose Jared, you still chose me in the end. I have to go now, but I know that I will find you, and I hope that you will come looking for me.”
He leans down and softly kisses me, “Goodbye, for now Elizabeth.”
Lynette Ferreira hopes that you have enjoyed reading ALL OVER AGAIN. We now invite you to discover other titles by Lynette Ferreira.
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