The Lost Girl

16

Wake



I am home again. I can see everything, as though I am on a cliff top, about to jump. The Lake District has the bloom of spring. Sunlight glimmers through the clouds and dapples the forest floor. My eyes follow the English oaks, the pines, the old trees, past the rocks and the stones, the damp, dewy paths, and go to the very top of the hill, where I can see the gleaming lake and the hills that scallop the silver sky.

The image flickers. Broken.

Flash, a shard of light, a ripple through the dark, like a bad picture on the telly or a flash of lightning in the shape of the bolt in my Mark. Flash.



Sean. His eyes. Green. Gold flecks of light shimmer across them. They look like being alive under a hot red sky. I silently swear that I will trade everything, every breath and every last particle of my soul, just to get to keep him.

“Look at me,” he says. His voice is so fierce, so raw, I must be dreaming. Sean’s voice is never like that.

Pain clouds my vision and I blink slowly. Dark, light, dark, light. There’s a shadow in the light. Angular, green-eyed, devastating. Dark hair. Short, straight. Like sparrow feathers. I reach for one of the feathers. It’s too far away.

The shadow leans down and kisses my hair.

“Wake up,” he pleads.

Flash.



There. My back garden. I know it so well. There’s a little girl playing on a swing, a guardian pushing her, up, down, up, down. I recognize them. Little Eva, a younger Jonathan. I kneel on the damp grass. “Where have you gone?” I want to ask him. I look to the house and see familiar shapes against the light: Erik by the doors, guarding, always guarding. Ophelia is some way behind him, staring at something far away. I glance around to see Mina Ma right behind me, watching for the dark, wicked things that might come when I’m not looking.

I look back at the swing and the guardian. The swing is empty, but Jonathan keeps pushing it. “Where have you gone?” I ask him again. “Where have I gone?”

“I’m tired,” I tell Mina Ma. “I came a long way to come back home.”

The empty swing sways and the lake laps the shore. She wipes my tears away with a brisk hand. She smells of love and salt and butter.

Flash.

•••

“Oh, good. Shining the light at her eyes must have helped. She’s waking.”

I open my eyes. Unhappily. I wanted to be home. Not here. I am in a bed in a clean room that smells of bleach. A hospital room. There’s an empty chair by the window. Tubes in my arm. A monitor nearby, beeping in time to the beat in my chest. A flimsy green gown on my body. A man in a white coat is touching my wrist, shining a flashlight into my eyes. I squeeze my eyes shut until he stops. He says something, but it sounds muffled by pillows. Being awake is painful.

He says something and leaves the room. I want to close my eyes now that he’s left, but there is somebody else beside me. I turn my head very carefully.

There’s a bandage wrapped around my leg. A cast on my left hand. Bruises down my body. My head is throbbing.

But I made a deal with whoever was listening. Every breath, every part of my soul. Just to be with him again. And here is what I traded for.

“Eva,” says Sean, and his voice is hoarse, raw, but it’s not a dream.