Towering

the snow, the pine trees, and I worried that I would wake to find that it was all a dream, all a lovely dream. But his hands on my hair, his lips on mine let me know he was real. He was real.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just . . . I feel like I was meant to come here, to find you.”
    I kissed him again. “I feel that way too.”

Wyatt
    I had been shivering. Now, I was warm, warm from the fire in the stone fireplace on one side of the room, warm from the girl in my arms. This was it. This was why I was here. To find her, this strange, unearthly, beautiful girl, locked in a tower yet so brave that she slid down a rope and fished me out of the ice. Seeing her, I realized that I was like that too, in my own tower, a tower of the mind, enchanted and unreal. Would I be as brave as her, given the opportunity? Could I save her as she saved me? This girl was different from anyone I’d ever met. She made me feel like a hero.
    I glanced around. The room was from another era—wrought-iron bed and a rag rug. The walls were painted bright blue, like the sky. “So, who are you?” I asked.
    She looked down. “Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t really know, except that my name is Rachel. On my last birthday, I was seventeen. I’ve lived here since I was a child.”
    Unreal. “And before that?”
    “I lived in a house, with Mama.”
    “Mama.” Such an old-fashioned word. I didn’t know anyone who called their mother Mama. It was like something they said in books.
    “She’s not really my mother, though. My mother is dead. She was killed when I was a little baby. I don’t remember her at all.”
    I thought about the old man in the hardware store, the one with the dead daughter. Could she have been Rachel’s mother? If so, he didn’t know about it.
    “Mama brought me here to keep me safe. She said the people who harmed my mother might come after me as well.”
    It was all kinds of crazy. Yet, everything seemed crazy up here, from Danielle eating her psychedelic salad to Rachel locked in this tower. But maybe the whole world was like that—it was just more noticeable in a small town. I gazed at her, trying not to look like I was. Her skin was so pale, like it had never seen the sun. It was almost translucent, and her hair hung around her shoulders like an angel’s wings. She believed what she was saying. That was for sure.
    “So why did you come down to save me? Weren’t you worried I’d kill you?”
    She smiled. “I thought about it. But then, I realized you were too young to have killed my mother. You looked no older than me. And I could not simply watch you die when it was in my power to help. Then, my existence would be worthless indeed. I sometimes wonder if it is anyway. Besides . . .” She broke off, shaking her head as if she had said too much.
    “We all wonder about that sometimes,” I said.
    “Do you? Do other people wonder that? I do not know any other people.”
    “I think so.” There was something intelligent about her face, something older than her years. “What were you going to say?”
    “Nothing. I don’t want to . . . burden you, tell you too much and get you into a mess.”
    I looked around. Outside the windows, I could see only the tops of trees. Inside, I could only see her.
    “I think I’m in it,” I said.
    “You don’t have to be. You could leave, climb down to the bottom and never see me again.”
    “No, I couldn’t do that. Now, I know you’re here. I can’t just leave you.”
    “Why can’t you?”
    “I don’t know.” Though I had an idea. It was because of Tyler. I hadn’t done enough there. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. “Besides, I feel like I’m supposed to be here, like I found you for a reason. Why else would I hear you when no one else did?”
    She sat very still for a moment, her face illuminated by firelight. Her hand was still in mine, and I wanted to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to spoil it, so I just sat there. Her fingers were so delicate, interlocking with mine.
    Finally, she said, “I have these dreams, strange dreams.”
    “Dreams?” I thought of Danielle at the window. But maybe that had been real.
    “They don’t feel like dreams at all. I mean, not like dreams you have when you’re asleep and forget an hour later. These dreams feel like prophecies, and when I started having them, things changed.”
    “What sort of things?”
    “Well, for one thing . . .” She gestured toward