Promise by Minrose Gwin

Author:Minrose Gwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

10

4 P.M.

The new cast was cool, smooth to the touch, not rough and ragtag and itchy like the old one. Jo’s head felt lighter too, and when she touched it, the horn was gone and in its place a massive bandage that covered all the way from the top of her eyebrows up into her scalp and from one side of her forehead to the other. She missed the horn, the heft of it. Without it, she was just a girl.

When she opened her eyes, the glare of the overhead lights blinded her and she quickly closed them. She yawned, and when she did, her bad ear popped once and then opened up and the hubbub around her rushed in. Something metallic fell to the floor, clattering and banging. There were cries for help and pitiful moans, the sound of heels hitting the floor; and underneath it all an insistent scurrying, as if large noisy rodents had been loosed. The low, intense murmur of voices. Here, there, give me this, take that, go, stay, no I mean go and go right now this minute.

The bedlam jolted her, and her eyes flew open again. She was lying on a cot of some sort, narrow and hard and dipped in the middle so that she rested in a trough. Now, thank heavens, the brouhaha faded gradually, as if she were cantering a horse into the distance, into a thicket of silence.

She dreamed about her cat. She saw Snowball glide through the house, where she had never been allowed, a long smooth strand of unraveling silk, darting and dashing, saving Jo from Son’s friends again and again. The cat took a leap and landed in Jo’s own bed, the three kittens the color of dirty snow right behind her. You, you, you, they said to her. Jo had worried about them finding food after the storm. Before she left the house, she’d opened a bag of dried food on the back porch. Now, in Jo’s dream, she saw the cat eating something under the bedcovers, something with fur that struggled. When Jo drew closer, she realized that the cat was killing one of her own kittens and eating it. She lurched toward the cat, intending to pull the kitten from her jaws, but before she could reach them the kitten disappeared into its mother’s mouth and that was that. Snowball began to purr and clean herself, as if nothing had happened.

When Jo awoke the second time, her hair clotted with sweat, there was a baby crying next to her, screaming to high heaven. She turned her head, slowly, carefully, still aware of the horn’s absent presence. How bad would the scar be?

The baby continued to scream. Jo opened her eyes and looked for the source of the sound. Red-faced and furious, the baby flailed about on his back in a bassinet rolled up next to her cot. Little Tommy? She pushed herself up with her good arm and leaned over and took a look.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.