The Forest of Adventures (#1 of The Knight Trilogy) by Katie M John Page A

really want to hear this? I mean is it
essential that you know because sometimes the truth acts like a
blade and where it cuts, it hurts – it badly hurts?”
    I nodded.
    “Mina, please,” she implored me
to change my mind but she read the determination in my face. “I
have no intention of breaking your heart.”
    “It’s already broken. I just
need to understand what’s happening.”
    “As you wish, but before I tell
you I need you to know that it is not your fault, that you are
absolutely not to blame. You are not responsible for any of this,
Mina.” She reached out stroking the side of my panic stricken face.
Her touch was motherly and tender.
    “He thinks that I don’t love
him, doesn’t he? He thinks that he’s lost me. That’s what caused
him to have the accident isn’t it? Please, tell him it’s not true,
tell him I love him. Ask him to come home to me,” The hysteria rose
out of me.
    “It’s not that easy honey. Sam
knows more about you than you do yourself. It is obvious that you
and Blake…” she paused choosing her words carefully, aware that
what she was about to say might not be received well, “…are on a
certain path. Call it destiny for sake of simplicity. You’ve been
foretold and once written it is almost impossible for it not to
be.”
    “What do you mean ‘once
written’?”
    “Remember when Blake told you
that he had been dreaming of you, even though he hadn’t met you?
Well it’s because he had met you, he’d met you in his future. I
know this will make no sense to you, Mina but there is nothing more
I can tell you at the moment because the prophecy is not yet
complete. All you need to know, even if you don’t yet understand,
is that yours and Blake’s names are written in gold on the tomb at
the stone chapel. So you see Mina, there is nothing that you could
have done differently. It truly isn’t your fault.”
    “You said almost , almost
impossible. So there’s a chance it may not be?”
    “A figure of speech, a clumsy
use of words, I should have said once written it is impossible not to be. The future is set.”
    “I’m sorry but I don’t believe
that. I love Sam and we’re going to build a home together - that is
what is meant to be.”
    “You can spend your time
fighting it – and it is a noble thing to try – but understand this,
Mina, Blake loves you and you love Blake, you just haven’t accepted
it yet. You think you love Sam, and you do - truly you do but it is
not in the same way as you will love Blake. Sam is as a brother to
you and as your brother you love him with a pure heart. With Blake
it is already different.”
    “No, really it’s not.” My voice
came out in a croaking whisper. Even as I denied it, I knew that
she was speaking truth.
    “Sam knows this but he needs
time to come to terms with it all, and he will. When he’s ready
he’ll come home to you but it will be as your brother and not your
husband.”
    The ward bell buzzed,
signalling the end of our visiting time. Smiling, Vivien took my
hand between hers and held it tight. It was a warm and affectionate
gesture.
    *
    Sleep that night was like the
slow-motion act of drowning in cold, deep waters. Strange feelings
of panic wrapped their ice-cold tendrils around my heart and
smothered my breath. When eventually I gave in and allowed myself
to be pulled under, I found myself standing in the burnt remains of
a forest.
    Charred stumps erupted out of
the earth like broken needles and beyond this mangled labyrinth lay
the expanse; a freezing land where fog swirled in eddies giving the
effect of water. Nothing lived here. It was a silent place, a place
that had been ravaged by a battle for which there had been no
victor but Death.
    The only other feature of the
landscape was a large cairn built as a guide for weary and lost
travellers. Huddled in its shelter, shielding himself from the
splicing wind, Sam was cowering tightly in the ball of his own
grief.

13. FEAR
     
    Falling in love is