I retch and retch, but there is no food and no vomit.
“No… no… no!”
My mind collapses.
Why? How can this happen? I just saw her running through the woods! I don’t understand. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I won’t believe it. Nori! How is this real? What’s going on? NORI! NORI! NORI! I’m sorry—this can’t be real I can’t survive this—Idon’tunderstandthisisn’trealThisiswon’tbelieveit. Nori! How is this real? Whattrickthisisn’thappeningIcan’tIcan’tIcan’tNoriNoriNoriNoriohNoriNoriNori…
I take all the pain, the anguish, the confusion, the air into my lungs, and I SCREAM.
Gowan is in front of me. I grab his shirt and I shake it. “Make it stop! Take it back!”
He takes my chin and he forces me to look at the thing that is Nori.
“I can’t!” I scream. “I can’t!”
Gowan’s own cry does not block out my own; I hear him nonetheless. “You have to remember!”
But it is too late.
And I am falling.
BOOK 6:
Flaming Stone
The truth of the tale
reads between lines
what can you see
within those vines?
the manor is tall
the manor is wide
the Creeper Man is
the only divide.
Do you know what grief feels like?
Really feels like?
Like this.
28
do you see?
He knows when you slumber
because that’s his domain
he feels your fearful blunder
in darkness he remains.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
The one thing I cling to now is the memory. The truth in memory. Doesn’t that mean something? Like, a memory will hold the truth even when everything else fails? While you wait for something that may not happen? It’s because of that memory, that truth, that I’ll wait forever. Mam’s voice. Circling the loom, dearie, is also a memory, and also the truth. Except she never called me “dearie.” Did she? Don’t think about it. You’ll get all turned around. Who does my mother think I am now? That is a question that might scare me if I think too hard about it. What does your memory do for you? What does your mother think of you?
1980: “Where is she, Pammy? Tell me, now!”
Pamela shakes her head, her lips quivering. They part and a stuttering of sound staggers out. “I—I—I—I—”
Catherine grabs her shoulders roughly. “Pamela, where is Anne?”
Her voice rings through the room and down the hall, louder than the storm outside. Papa left her in charge, and look what she has allowed to happen.
“Sh-she said s-something about the woods, about her biggest fear—”
“The woods? She went to the woods?”
“I think so!”
“Pamela, why did you let her go?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Pammy keeps screaming her sorrys but Catherine is already running down the stairs, out the front door, and into the storm.
It’s bright. So bright that everything is white and painful.
I blink, blink, blink—slowly the light fades.
W h e r e a m I?
I know this ceiling. I know the crumbling paint and the cobwebs and the patterns in the dried drips. I’m in bed. In my bed.
Oh. I remember.
It’s at least an hour before dawn, and I know they’ll be sleeping downstairs. She will have placed a blanket over him and put him into the recovery position, draping herself over him for warmth or comfort. Maybe she wants to try to remember the man he used to be, long ago when she was a girl and his lies were dreams she still believed in.
I’m very quiet, because I’m not wearing my shoes. I hid them under my pillow for later, but forgot. I tiptoe over to Nori’s bed and quietly rouse her—just enough to sign that she has to be Quiet as a mouse.
Squeak! she signs back, and then closes her eyes again.
I lift her onto my hip and her head lolls on my shoulder.
“Come on, bug,” I whisper, and carry her downstairs.
I have to pass them to get to the door, but when I round the corner, I see Mam is awake. She is alone in the room, bent over her sewing, her aged hair falling in scratchy waves over her face.
“Mam? Where’s Dad?”
She looks up at me and smiles. “There you are. We were wondering when you’d come looking.”
“What do you…” My voice trails off as I take in what she is doing. My body grows cold and I hug Nori tighter to me.
Mam isn’t sewing her dress. And she’s not using cotton thread. It’s her hair. She’s sewing her hair into her leg.
“Mam! What are you doing?”
“War is coming, my girl.” Her eyes are full of sympathy. “Something very hard is coming.”
“I don’t understand.”
She keeps sewing, sewing, sewing. Her hands are bloody. It is slippery work.
“You’ll have to be strong.”
“Mam, stop this—”
“Cathy is crazy, after all,” she says, smiling vacantly. “Just like you.”
“I’m your daughter.” I choke on the word. “Why don’t you care about me?”