"Into the Dawn" by Amanda Jean Timmerman

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“Betcha can’t catch me!” shouted a little brown-haired girl.  The redheaded boy to whom she called laughed and ran after her.  In fact, the small forest glade was filled with running, laughing children.  The sun shone down on their trailing hair, lit their round faces with brilliance—all, that is, save one.  In the shade at the edge of the clearing, a fair-haired young boy sat by himself, only watching as the others played.  His face, in sharp contrast with the others’, was downcast.  His blue eyes were like two deep wells in his pale face, and though the corners of his mouth were turned up, the smile was of a sad nature.  His legs were eerily thin and withered-looking and twisted oddly on the ground before him.  A pair of rough wooden crutches leaned against the tree beside him.  He could not run and play with the other children, for he was a cripple.

“Shawn,” the brown-haired girl called to him, bringing his head up in immediate response.  “Why don’t you come and play blind-man’s bluff with us?”

“Because he can’t do it,” the redhead answered brutally, “that’s why.”

“But I think he could,” the girl, Lucy, insisted.  “I mean, it’s more a game of skill than of speed, anyway, Roger.”  Sulking plaintively, Roger consented; he would let the poor cripple boy ruin their game for the sake of charity—but Shawn would have to be the blind man to start with.  Unfortunately for the thus-nominated blind man, speed was indeed quite a large factor in the game.  Try as he might, he could not catch anyone.  After about ten minutes had passed in this fruitless effort, distant voices began to call the children homeward.  Several boys shoved past Shawn—the blindfold prevented him from seeing which ones, though he had his guesses—and he was knocked to the ground.  The sound of the other children’s tramping feet soon receded into the forest, leaving Shawn and his crutches behind.  At first, he thought himself alone, but upon removing the blindfold he realized that such was not the case.  Lucy offered a hand to lift his body and a smile to lift his spirits.

Catching the puzzled look on his face, she laughed a golden laugh and berated him:  “You did not think I would leave you behind, did you?”  On his feet and armed again with his crutches, Shawn allowed himself to smile back at her and followed her out of the clearing.

“You didn’t have to stay with me, you know,” he said to the girl with the golden laugh.  “No one else did.”

Lucy only shrugged and grinned at him, then shouted, “Catch me if you can!” and danced merrily away.  She did not race away from him, though, as she had from Roger earlier, but whirled and leaped about him, always just out of reach.  Before long, she had Shawn turning slow, awkward circles of his own and laughing merrily as he did so.  At last, shiny-faced and panting, Lucy dropped to the ground and leaned her back against a mighty old oak.  The pair of them were in the woods now, maybe fifty yards from the edge of their little village.  Shawn sat against the opposite side of the tree, exhausted but exhilarated from the unaccustomed exercise.

Letting a few minutes pass in silence, the boy said quietly, “Thank you, Lucy, for not leaving me behind.”

“My pleasure,” she answered drowsily, her eyes half-shut.  “I just hope that someday, when your time comes, you will remember and return the favor.”

About to ask what on earth she meant, Shawn was interrupted by the harsh call of his mother back in the village.  Sighing, he said instead, “We should probably be heading back now, I suppose.”  When they had come to the last fringe of trees separating them from the village, Lucy turned to Shawn, once more all full of light and fun, and pecked him quickly on the cheek before darting off with a giggle.

“One day I will catch up to you, Lucy!”  He called after her.  “You’ll see!”

“I know you will, Shawn,” she answered.  “I know you will.”

☼☼☼

“So, Shawn, what’s it gonna be?”  A teenaged Roger demanded of the lame boy.  “Are you in, or are you chicken?”

Five years had passed since the day Lucy had kissed Shawn on the cheek.  The boy had grown taller and stronger but was no more able to walk than he had been then.  At fifteen, he stood at six feet, one inch tall—if he propped himself up straight—and was built lean and muscularly, but for his insubstantial legs.  Roger, who opposed him, stood at only five-foot-seven, and had now to tilt his head up to look Shawn in the face.  That did not stifle his arrogance in dealing with the cripple, however, and the two were always ill at ease with one another.

“You don’t have to do it, Shawn,” Lucy reminded him fervently.  “You have nothing to prove.”  The years had turned her into a beautiful and graceful young woman, but ever she had retained her compassion and perception.  Even as she spoke these words to her friend, she read in his determined blue eyes that he did have something to prove.  Earlier that day, he had given Lucy a red rose.  That would not have been a problem, save for the fact that Roger’s and Lucy’s families had already entered into marriage arrangements, and a red rose was a symbol of love.  Since a physical fight was out of the question, Roger had devised a specialized race:  he would run to the edge of the cliff and back three times, while Shawn would run it once.

“I’m definitely in, Roger,” Shawn said, returning his gaze to the redhead before him.  Roger and the others grinned—rather barbarously in Lucy’s opinion—whilst the girl shook her head in agonized frustration.  The stupidity of teenage boys never ceased to amaze her.

“So remember,” Roger was saying, “If I win, you don’t ever speak to my girl again.  You don’t go near her, you don’t even make eye con—”

“And if I win,” cut in Shawn, “you tell your parents to call off their arrangements.”  Both parties nodded and lined up beside the single tree on the plateau where they stood.  One of the other boys counted out:  “One, two, three!” and they were off.  Roger shot fast and low toward the edge, but Shawn flew forward, too; he was almost to the cliff when Roger turned round again at the tree, and it looked like he was going to win the bet.  However, something unexpected met him as he tried to turn around.  A patch of loose rocks skittered out from beneath the crutch closest to the edge, and it gave way to his weight.  In the moment of shocked silence that followed, Shawn plunged down over the side of the cliff.

“No!”  Lucy screamed as she raced forward herself.  “Shawn!  No!”  Falling to her knees at the edge, she clutched the single crutch that had not fallen with Shawn when he went over.  She could not see him, looking down, but he could not have survived such a fall.  Below her was a fast-flowing blue river studded with rocks and rapids.  To Lucy, it was the very river Styx, and it had swallowed up the one she loved.

“Lucy, come on,” someone was calling her.  Cold hands tugged at her arm and shirtsleeve.  “We have to go, before someone sees!”  The frantic quiver in the voice made her look up blankly.  Staring into the swarm of faces she had known all her life and never understood until now, she believed she would never laugh again.  How could they be so callous, so cold?  Because of them, Shawn was dead, and here all they were concerned about was getting in trouble.  In that moment, Lucy could have turned to hate—she almost did—but in the end, she turned to tears instead.  Her playmates of happier years dragged her away from the cliff, but none could pry the wooden crutch from her trembling hands.

☼☼☼

That afternoon, as Lucy sat numbly in her room, a woman’s loud voice broke in on her silence.  “Sha-awn,” the voice cried, “It’s time for supper!  Come home now Shawn!”  Shawn’s mother’s words reverberated in Lucy’s mind—Come home, Shawn; come home, Shawn—made terrible by the fact that she knew he could never come home again.

As evening wore on and the woman’s voice grew more and more desperate, the girl’s numbness gave way to her guilt.  He had been right in front of her; why had she not stopped him?  All it would have taken was a few more words, or a firmer tone of voice.  She was just as much to blame as the rest of them.  By nightfall, she could bear it no more, and she ventured out, crutch in hand, to find Shawn’s mother.

“Excuse me, ma’am, there’s something I have to tell you.  It’s about Shawn.”

☼☼☼

It was midnight by the time Lucy returned to her room.  She had spent the first ten minutes explaining the incident to Shawn’s mother, the next ten holding her while she wept, and the rest of the time in the town hall explaining the story to the whole town.  Roger had at first denied all knowledge, but had soon given that up and moved on to the strategy of fake tears.  After all was said and done, the villagers felt just as much sympathy for Roger as for the dead boy.  None of them, of course, could be angry with Lucy, whose golden laugh was known throughout the town, despite the fact—or maybe especially because of it—that she implored them to berate her.

Thus it was that she lay in her room, staring at the ceiling.  Next to her on the bed lay Shawn’s crutch.  His mother did not want it; she said it caused her too much grief.  The others of the village all thought it bad luck to keep an object so precious to a dead child.  Rolling over, she took a small red flower from her nightstand.  It was the rose Shawn had given her.  Tears rolled slowly down her face.  “Oh, Shawn,” she whispered.  “Why?”  A loud thump on her roof startled Lucy back to herself.  With a heavy sigh, she turned over onto her side and, cradling the crutch in her arm, went to sleep.

☼☼☼

“Lucy,” called Roger from behind her.  “Where are you going?”  He was following the girl through the woods between the village and the cliff, and the answer to his question was a fairly obvious one.

“Down to the river.”  Came Lucy’s flat response.  “I have to see where he fell.  I have to see if I can find his body.”  Sprinting the last few yards to her side, Roger jerked her around by her elbow.  His brown eyes were fierce and angry.

“Why?  He is dead.  Gone.  Deceased.”  He let this sink in before continuing.  “Me, though, well I’m still here.  I can be all you need.  Marry me, like both our parents want.”

“You have got to be joking.  Shawn just died!  Yesterday morning, he was alive, and talking to me—and he gave me this!”  Lucy pulled the rose from her tunic and showed it to Roger.  It was still quite fresh and beautiful.  “I can’t let him go yet; I probably never will be able to.”  The anger in the boy’s eyes had risen into fury.  She made one last, quiet statement that sent him over the top.  “I loved him, Roger.”

Howling in fury, the redhead snatched the rose from her hand and threw it to the ground in one fell movement, then raised his foot and stamped it over and over, till all that was left of it was a smattering of blood-red petals.  “HE—IS—GONE!”  Glancing over his shoulder he lowered his voice to a menacing growl.  “Now I will tell you what is going to happen.  You will marry me and bear my children.  Every day as you make me my meals you will tell me that you love me, and after a few years you will forget Shawn ever existed, and then you will love me.”

Lucy’s gray eyes were like flint.  “I will never love you,” she said calmly.  Then she turned and fled.  Not until she reached the cliff did she stop.  There on the edge she collapsed into sobs.  Though it was true she did not love Roger—and never would—she probably would end up marrying him.  But day in and day out she would always be thinking of Shawn, who had died for her.  It was too much.  Drawing in a deep breath, she steeled herself for what she had to do.

☼☼☼

When Lucy did not come back that afternoon, her family grew nervous.  They had seen how broken up she had been the previous night.  Roger, who had gone after her earlier, seemed rather short on the details, but did tell them she had gone to the cliff.  Her parents were horrified.  As evening passed on to night and Lucy still did not return, the villagers formed up search parties and set out with torches.  Out upon the edge of the cliff, they found a single splintered crutch.  For hours and hours, the little groups of people scurried around, calling the girl’s name.  She never answered, and all they could assume was that she had flung herself over the cliff into the river after Shawn.  The wails of her parents filled the night with lament.

☼☼☼

Somewhere, far off in the east, Shawn, with Lucy in his arms, soared on golden wings—wings that had always been in him, but never on the outside.  As his love had been about to leap from the cliff, he had lighted on the plateau behind her.

“Lucy,” he had called gently.  “What are you doing?”

“Shawn?  Shawn you’re alive!”  Lucy had flung her arms around him but then pulled back suddenly.  Her eyes had grown very round then.  “What are those?  How are you still here?  Am I dreaming?”

He shook his head.  “They’re wings, Lucy.  I can fly.”  Extending them to their full ten-foot wingspan, he offered her a hand to lift her body and a smile to lift her spirits.  “You didn’t think I would leave you behind, did you?”  Lucy smiled timidly at her own words coming out of his mouth.  She took his hand, and he pulled her to himself.  With a powerful swoop of his great wings, they rose into the air.  Together they plunged over the cliff, falling almost to the water below before Shawn brought them back up into a gentle glide.  “I love you, Lucy,” whispered Shawn.  Lucy smiled and held him tighter.

“It looks like you finally caught up to me, Shawn.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Shawn said with a grin, “but I think you let me.”

So it was that the girl with the golden laugh and the boy with the golden wings flew off into the dawn, leaving nothing behind but a pair of broken crutches and a smashed red flower.