Marcus Sedgwick by The Foreshadowing

Author:The Foreshadowing
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-31T11:31:46+00:00

45

The crossing seemed to take a lifetime. Millie assumed that we were going to stick together, and I have to admit I was glad of her companionship.

Besides, without her I would probably have been on my weary way home.

It was a smooth crossing, but even so, I felt a little queasy.

“You’ll feel better if we get some air,” Millie said, and since it was a warm day, I agreed.

We found a sheltered spot on one of the foredecks, and settled down, using our cases as seats.

“I wonder if I can get us a drink,” she said, and before I could answer, she was up and away. She is so bright and full of life.

“Watch my things, Miriam, please?”

I started, not yet used to my new name. But I smiled. She made everything seem easy, and I wondered if maybe it was. Maybe life was easier than I made it.

She was gone a long time, and I took the copy of Greek Myths from my case and began to read.

Out of curiosity I opened it at the place Father had been reading, and felt a stab of regret shoot through me again.

Cassandra. He had reached a page that talked about Cassandra.

I read for a while, but the motion of the ship, the warmth, the fresh air and my tiredness all caught up with me. I must have fallen asleep.

At least, that is what I imagine, for only that can explain what happened next.

I was no longer Alexandra, in 1916, but another girl, long, long ago. I was on a ship still, making a fateful journey, but it was a warmer sea that my boat was crossing, and the boat was moving under sail and oar, not coal and steam. A ship that left the waters of the Hellespont, with the battered walls of Troy far behind, to head out across the Aegean.

As the ship reeled across the heaven blue sea, I suffered as that other girl suffered. Abducted from my home by the violence of a foreign king, I prophesied not only his death, but my own as well, and despite the heat I shivered at the pain of a storm of things foreshadowed and foreseen.

The worst of it, as ever, was that no one would believe me.

My every utterance was taken to be worthless, the rantings of a madwoman. Yet I knew the truth for what it was, and it was coming to meet me faster than I thought possible.

The seagulls wheeling above my head should have told me we were approaching the French coast, but as I gazed at them, they were transformed into ravens. They flapped blackly around the boat, calling to me, mocking me.

“You should know the future only when it has come; to know it before is grief too soon given. All will come clear in the sunlightof the dawn.”

The boat drove on through the breaking waves.

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