Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott

Author:Zoe Marriott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780763659936
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2011-06-19T07:00:00+00:00

The next thing I remember is being hot. Sweating and confined and horribly uncomfortable, I struggled and squirmed, trying to get out from under what felt like layers of blankets. My ribs seemed to crunch against one another, and a wave of sickening pain ran over me. For a moment, I went cold, and every droplet of sweat on my face was a chip of ice. Then the cold flushed back into heat.

There was a red light shining through my eyelids that might have been fire or lamplight. I did not know. I felt as if flat river stones had been laid on my eye sockets. I could not open them. Terrified, I began to make frightened bleating noises.

“Quiet, now.” A shadow fell across the redness of my eyelids, and something wet and cool was put on my forehead. Trickles of moisture slid down the sides of my face into my hair. Someone took my hands and gently peeled them open — I had not even been aware of squeezing them into fists until then — and bathed them with cold water. Then they were dried and tucked back under the blankets, and a cup was pressed to my lips.

“Open up, now. This is medicine you must take,” said the quiet voice. It was kind but determined, and I obeyed automatically.

The liquid that flowed into my mouth was sweet with honey, but there was a harsh, acrid flavor under the sweetness that burned my throat and made me choke. The medicine bubbled up out of my mouth and dribbled down my face. I moaned, and the voice hushed me again, and a dry cloth wiped my face, just as if I were a baby.

Is that what had happened? Was I a baby again? Had I died and been reincarnated, as the religion of the Old Empire used to teach? Or had everything else, the life that I remembered, been nothing more than the fever dreams of a child? Perhaps I would wake up tomorrow and everything would be all right, and I would have a mother and father who loved each other again, and a cousin called Aimi-chan that I loved like a sister. . . .

The next time I woke up, the first thing I did was to try to open my eyes. They did open, although stickily, and it was such a relief that I did not panic at the sight of the strange room, even though the whole place was bathed in a reddish light with golden edges, and the walls and the ceiling wavered strangely. People moved around the room: black, featureless silhouettes.

I turned my head with a great effort, the bones of my neck and skull humming and sending golden-edged waves across my vision. The waves seemed to go through me, too, and the room became a strange froth of red and gold and black shapes, like a tiny pond full of bright fish that thrashed and struggled against one another.

When the rippling waves had settled down a little, I noticed someone lying on the futon next to mine.

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