Shadows Lost: Lost #3 (The Lost) by Melyssa Williams

Author:Melyssa Williams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2013-09-20T23:00:00+00:00

16.

It may be that realization that does me in and not the symptoms of the travel. A wave of dizziness passes over me like a breaking wave, and I am prostrate on the floor, the cold, dirt floor of my old home. When it finally moves along, as waves must, I lift my weary head and find Rose, three-year-old Rose, staring at me silently. She twirls a lock of hair the way she did in the hospital. She doesn’t seem scared of me, or alarmed, like a sensible child would; she only appears mildly curious and maybe just a little bit surprised.

Does grown Rose remember this moment? Is that why she hates me so?

“I’m sorry, honey,” I whisper. “I tried to fix it.”

“You can’t.” The voice is Rose's, but little Rose’s mouth doesn’t move.

Confused and feeling as though my head weighs as much as a wheelbarrow full of bricks, I turn very slowly. It is Rose – grown Rose – standing in the doorway that I stumbled through moments before.

“Don’t you see?” She shakes her head as though to clear it. Her voice is slow and halting. “Don’t you understand how many times I’ve tried?”

“You’ve come back before?” I stand. My legs are like a newborn foal’s: wobbly and gangly and hardly able to hold up my own body. I should be scared of being surrounded by my two sisters, but I don’t have the energy.

“Of course I have. Come on, we can’t stay here. It will get worse.” Grown Rose rubs her eyes, tiredly. Amazingly, she holds out her hand to me. What trickery is this? Once again, I’m too weary and sick to think straight, and I find myself moving forward enough to take her hand. It’s chilly, and I know mine is clammy in hers. The pain in my ankle pulses, but it’s the least of my problems.

I look back once at tiny Rose, still sitting by the hearth, the red embers of light flickering over her. She watches us.

“Can we take her?” I whisper.

“No. It’s too late for her,” Rose replies, leading me through the door. “Besides, I’m here already, aren’t I?”

“Will she remember this?” I lurch through the doorway and into the humid night air. I should have phrased it, “Will you remember this?” but it’s too fantastical to think that she is her.

“A little. There have been so many of these nights. I won’t remember what’s real and what’s not, what really happened and how many different ways it played out. I made it worse, coming back so many times.” Rose sighs, and steadies herself on the doorframe. She’s unnerved too, and feeling the effects, but not as badly it seems. “But I have to keep trying.”

“It never works? You can’t change it? We can’t change it?” The breeze has cleared my head a little, and I now have the wherewithal to be frightened of being alone in the dark with my sister. If I scream, will my mother hear? That’s a luxurious thought I haven’t had the privilege of having for years and years.

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