Page 67 of A Princess, Stolen
“Are we going on vacation, Mom? Do you have Mr. Sparkles with you?”
“I’ll get him. Will, darling, do you remember the story I told you the other day?”
“The one about the little bird whose owner loved it so much that he kept putting gold beads in its food? So it couldn’t fly anymore?” I remembered the story well because it creeped me out.
Mom kneels in front of me, brushes my hair out of my face, and kisses me on the forehead. “That’s exactly right. I have to tell you something, Nevaeh.”
Nevaeh. She only calls me that when it’s something serious, usually when I’ve done something that displeases my dad. “What’s wrong, Mom? Did I forget to feed Banana and Balou?”
“No, no. That’s not it.” She leans toward me and whispers, “I’m the little bird, Nevaeh. Your dad loves me too much.”
Too much. Too much. Too much.
The words were like an all-pervasive echo that reverberated from the bottom of the sea. They filled me as everything grew darker and darker inside me. Darker and darker. It was as if a light shining inside me was quietly and slowly dimming. And then there was that last moment of rebellion when I realized that I was drowning, that I was dying. My body thrashed aboutsenselessly as my mind painted red pictures. However, I saw something in them.
The gray eyes of the sea. They were wide and full of terror. Then two strong arms grabbed me.
“Willa? Will?”
My upper body contracted reflexively and I coughed, spitting water and gasping for breath at the same time. It sounded tortured like the wheezing of a battered bellows, and my heart pounded like an anvil in my head. Someone grabbed my hand and I squeezed the fingers as hard as I could.
I lay on a flat surface, staring blindly into an ashen face.
Nathan.
I wanted to smile at him but failed. I wanted to say his name but couldn’t. I couldn’t make any sound at all; I just lay there with my eyes open, gasping. I felt the cold wind blowing over me and it sounded as if a hundred voices were whispering to me. Voices that spoke of the horror under the water, the net, and the hooded figure. Voices from the past, from Mom.I am the little bird. I heard that one sentence repeatedly in the air, fluttering like the rapid flapping of a hummingbird’s wings.I am the little bird. I am the little bird. I am the little bird.
For several breaths, I thought of Banana and Balou, my snow-white budgies from childhood.
Disturbed, I sat up and coughed another stream of water from my bloated lungs. I hadn’t drowned. Nathan had saved me, even if I didn’t know how he had managed, but I had seen his eyes and felt his arms just before I had passed out.
“Will—what happened?” He was kneeling next to me. He was completely soaked, his hand, which I was squeezing, was as cold as mine and it was shaking. A few men stood behind him, but in my dazed state, I could only see Pan and Troy clearly.
“Did you fall overboard?” Nathan wanted to know.
I shook my head.
“Sleepwalking? Jumped while in a trance?”
“Pushed,” I choked out.
Nathan’s face went as lightless as night. “What?”
“There…there was a man.” It hurt my throat to speak. I clung tightly to his hand and he squeezed my fingers.
“Who?” he whispered darkly.
“Say who and I’ll strangle him with my bare hand,” Pan growled behind him.
Wide-eyed, I looked at Nathan, the water flowing tirelessly from his hair. I wasn’t truly present yet. It felt like I was still down in the water with Mom in the spirit world.
She had braided her cinnamon-brown hair into two pigtails. Just like me! And she smelled of No. 1 by Clive Christian. Just like me!Dad loved that smell.
“I was caught in a net,” I stammered incoherently. “There…there was a fishing net.” I felt so dizzy.
“I know. Someone must have dropped it in the water to trap you,” I heard Nathan say.
Reality seemed muted, veiled behind a wall of white mist.
