Another image came, slamming into the first. A doll tucked under my arm as I raced through the woods. Someone held my hand, dragging me away from a scene of screams and blood. Cold. So cold. Then blackness consumed me as I screamed inside the rotting trunk of the nightmare tree.
Someone tore away the huge branches that had trapped me inside. I was wrenched from the darkness. Gentle hands brushed the creatures from my hair, my gown. I looked up, but his face was lost in shadow. The only thing I could see was a small, silver medallion, hanging on a leather thong. “It was my mum’s,” he said, when I reached out a shaking finger to touch it. “I took it off her after they . . . after they killed her.”
My heart refused to beat. Celia laughed, a pretty silver sound that sliced through the glade, sharp as a razor’s edge.
“Sarah’s daughter. Loved but not trusted. Too pathetic and frail to know her own truth.”
“Hope,” Mom whispered, but I was beyond hearing.
My savior pressed something into my hand. I looked down to see a small, withered apple resting on my palm. “Here. It’s for you.”
I cried then, because I was so hungry, so tired. I missed my grandfather, and I’d lost my doll. My Elizabeth. As the boy lifted the meager fruit to my lips, I smelled the familiar, cloying scent. Suddenly, three people emerged from the trees. A man and two women, dressed in fine clothes. The boy stood, a stick thrust out before him, protecting me.
One of the women hurried across the clearing and knelt down. “I won’t hurt you,” she promised the boy. She called to the others. “They’re starving and nearly frozen. They must’ve come from that burned-out village we passed yesterday. We can’t leave them here. They’ll die of exposure if we don’t do something fast.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, we’re going to take care of you.”
When she returned to the others, the dark-haired woman began arguing with her. The man got angry, but the first woman only said, “You take them. I’ll stay.”
The man shook his head. “Like hell you will.”
He pulled her to him, murmuring something that made the other woman furious.
As the three began struggling at the edge of the clearing, I could no longer hold myself upright. I toppled over onto my back and stared up as stars wheeled in the night sky. The boy crawled over and held my head in his lap. He smiled down at me, and I remembered the first time I’d seen him in the small village. How his face had darkened as my grandfather explained that men were chasing us. He’d held so tight to my hand as we ran through the forest. He never let go, except to put me in the tree, where he thought I’d be safe while he went to search for food. As the moon snuck out from behind the clouds he looked over to the arguing people, and I could finally see his eyes. His odd, mismatched eyes.
I blinked, shaking my head, my breath coming in little huffs.
“. . . that your daughter did not come from any orphanage,” Celia was saying. “But was brought back, along with Brandon, from the year 1576.”
The images expanded until I thought my head would rupture. A small child’s half-formed memories skittered through my mind. The gray-bearded man had been taking me back to my mother. My real mother. The lady with long, brown hair, who’d trained my hands to spin the wool. When the bad men raced into the small village, killing and burning, he’d shielded me with his body as he begged the boy to take my hand and run.
I knew that dear old face now. I’d seen it in history books all my life.
My poppy. My grandfather. Doctor John Dee.
Queen Elizabeth I’s most trusted advisor. A scientist and astrologer. Religious fanatics had hated him. Called him a wizard. But he’d only been brilliant and far ahead of his time.
And . . . according to many biographers . . . he’d been blessed with an eidetic memory.
I sat back hard, falling away from my mother.
There’d never been an orphanage. That was my mother’s lie. More memories splashed thorough in cyclical waves. A small, snug house with an herb garden out back. A crowded city. Horses. A flash of a scary white-faced queen with orange hair.
The boy.
My gaze locked with Bran’s. The pity in his eyes was too much to bear as the earth and sky switched places. Tall, bare trees spun around me like horses on a carousel.
“Hope.” My mother’s hand clutched at me, but I yanked away. She sagged against Phoebe, spent. “I had no choice. The two of you would have died. I should have told you, but . . .” Her anguished face begged for understanding. A spasm of pain racked her body. When it passed, she whispered, “I need you to know I will never regret taking you from that terrible place.”
Phoebe’s voice was aghast. “Sarah, you didn’t. You brought them back from the past? Both of them?”
“After Celia stabbed Michael,” Mom whispered, “he placed the extra lodestones on you children. Then he just ran away. He knew the Dim was coming, so he took the choice from us, you see.”