Kingdom Keepers V(108)
She stepped forward, and he felt himself take a step back. The overhead light had caught her eyes: they were green.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I…ah…I’ve got to get going.”
Another step toward him. The thing was, Finn wanted to hug her. He wanted to help her. This woman who had helped him through so much. He didn’t move, allowing her to slowly close the distance between them.
“I…can…help,” she said.
“The thing is…”
“We’re a team, aren’t we?”
He felt the strings attached inside his chest tighten and winch him toward her. “We are,” he said.
“Always have been.”
He nodded.
“A darn good team,” she said.
His real mother would have never used that word. Her use of it slapped him in the face. An internal battle raged inside him: his head versus his heart. And he’d always been bigger of heart. She would have been the first to tell him that.
The first to take advantage of that.
He felt tears on his cheeks and wondered where they’d come from; they were traitors, these tears, trying to give him over to the enemy.
His mother, the enemy? Was such a thing possible?
“You know how you and Dad take different sides in politics?” he asked. She said nothing. “But you still love each other? That’s what’s going on here. Between us. Different sides.”
“I’ve always been on your side.”
“I know, but—”
“Why would I have anything but your best interests at heart?”
“All I know is…you’re different.”
“Am I? How can you say that?”
“It’s the truth. You and Dad have always told me the truth counts more than anything.”
A couple walked past them in the hall, barely taking any notice. Finn felt invisible. Only this woman and him.
There were tears in his mother’s eyes now.
“‘The truth comes first,’” he quoted.
Her face bunched like the air had been sucked out of it.
“Mom, don’t…”
He couldn’t stand it when she cried.
She knows that! he reminded himself.
She was close now. Too close. But close enough that as he stared into her green eyes he saw them tick quickly over his shoulder, then flare with surprise. He heard a whoosh, as soft as the piped-in air, but distinctly flame, not air. He ducked.
A fireball exploded into his mother’s chest, and she went over backward like a bowling pin. He dove atop her and knocked the flaming ball off her, pounding her clothing to extinguish the fire. The color of her eyes flickered between blue and green. The ball of fire rolled against the wall and went out.
Finn rolled off his mother, not wanting to make her the target.
Maleficent strolled toward him, her black cape lifting behind her. “Give it to me!” she said.
“I don’t have it.” Finn backed up and got to his feet.
The smoldering ball of flame sputtered in her hand. The excited voices of guests at the end of the hallway rose to the occasion.
“Check it out!” a kid hollered.
Maleficent toyed with the ball above his fallen mother.
“How do you think she’ll look with a face burned to a crisp?” she said, juggling the burning ball between both hands and pretending to drop it before catching it at the last second.
Finn lunged forward, then back.
“I don’t have it,” he repeated. “I tried to get it. You bet I did, but it sank and the water was too dark…and I don’t have it.”
He’d never seen real panic on the green fairy’s face, but there was a first time for everything.
He looked down at his mother. She was staring back at him out of the tops of her eyes. Blue eyes, sparking green.
“Run!” she gasped. With that, she kicked out and caught Maleficent in the legs and knocked her down. His mom jumped to her feet.
That was another first. As Maleficent fell, a crow appeared and the fairy was gone.
Finn turned and took off, his fingers reaching back for his mom’s outstretched hand. Their hands connected just as the black crow hovered over his mother’s head.
“Mom!”
Her blue eyes were turning green again. The same color green that occupied the crow’s eyes. Finn swiped out awkwardly at the crow while running backward. It cawed and threw its talons forward and scratched him.
His mother’s eyes held green for longer than they were blue, pulsing between the two colors, tightened in warning. She shook her head, meaning for him to let go of her.
“No…” he cried out.
But now her eyes were solid green and growing darker by the second.
The crow cawed again.
Some kid cheered from down the hall.
Finn’s mother let go of his hand and took hold of his left wrist with a vise grip. It wasn’t just her eyes that had changed, but her entire demeanor. A meaner demeanor. Vicious. Possessive. She owned him.