Page 22 of The Quiet
She was relieved when Marnie returned hours later. Marnie stumbled and shuffled into the darkness, nearly falling into bed and apologizing almost drunkenly before shuffling under the covers in all of her clothes.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, restraining a giggle as she pulled Baker into her arms, kissing her once more on the head tenderly. “What is it, little one? Don’t cry.” Marnie whispered, wiping her face. “Don’t be sad. There’s so much sadness. It’s like a big ocean for your tears.” She pulled Baker into her arms. “Don’t be sad, it’s just like a big ocean full of water. Keep floating, will you? High in the sky like a bird. Can you do that?”
Baker wiped her face and nodded as Marnie stroked her hair, pulling them both under the covers.
“That’s my little bird,” she said. “No time for sadness here. Keep flying. Fill the world with kindness. Find happiness in the cleaning. Cleaning will make you happy. Serving will make you happy.”
Baker clung to the words and without any provocation, Marnie began to tell her stories in a gentle whisper. In them, she spun tales of love and light and freedom, weaving epic novels until Baker fell asleep in the nest of her arms and the tangle of her now brilliant red hair.
CHAPTER 7
WILDFLOWERS
SAMUAL HAD ONCE told Ella that a gifted Listener was more deadly than a fully trained one. He chastised her for never receiving formal training, claiming that she could do great harm if she ever put her gifts to use in the wrong ways.
Ella remembered their last argument about it vividly, and she’d proclaimed with pride and determination that she would never pursue Listening anyway. She was going to be a fierce agent of change–a specialist in combat, not someone who sat and simply observed suffering and pain.
She regretted that now more than she ever imagined she would.
She’d attempted to unwrap the curse from the ROSE’s mind. Now, she opened her eyes to a world that existed behind a milky veil of rain. Lightning cracked across the sky in the midst of a ferocious storm, and all at once the air was hot. A burning town raged around her as mud swallowed her bare feet.
Kay was nowhere in sight. He’d likely made it to The Quiet, and something told Ella this place was the farthest thing from it.
She jolted as two ROSE on horseback charged past her, splattering mud across the dirtied yellow dress she found herself wearing again. She grabbed it in her trembling fists, coiling the fabric up to her face in disbelief as a wave of electric horror sprang through her brain. Trapped in that soiled yellow dress again, she felt like she was reliving her own nightmare from only days before.
An explosion shook her world, sending debris and scattered rain thumping over her.
She turned to see a ROSE hunched over the ground behind her, clasping a trembling hand that reached up from the mire of wreckage, runoff and fog. A bent, metal mask lay nearby, the person’s face so soiled with the earth that it was hard to tell the person from the earth where they lay.
The hunched ROSE leaned down, lifting the mask only enough to leave something like a kiss on the dying person’s forehead.
She knew without being told that she was witnessing final rites, a ceremony of death in the chaos. The trembling hand stopped and the ROSE that clutched it looked up, the white stripes of the mask now red in the pulsing of the flames. It appeared to be looking right at her, hand still clasping the dead.
Ella recognized the mask and as she looked at the ROSE, she knew she was inside its cursed mind.
Another whistling sound shot through the air. Her eyes followed it before she heard an abrupt, “Get down!”
Someone tackled her into the mud before another explosion went off. Every sound was deafening. She pushed back against the ROSE that now straddled her, shocked that their forms had permanence in a world that shouldn’t exist at all.
This was just memory. It was a film of the past. Wasn’t it?
“Let’s go!” he demanded, hoisting her up to her feet, but she dug them into the mud.
“What’s happening?” she shouted back.
“Listen,” he yanked her forward by the hem of her dress and it nearly tore in his hands. “We move or we die.”
Another explosion.
“You can see me,” she said, still struggling out of her disbelief.
“Yes, I can see you!” The ROSE shouted back. “If you don’t want the Strike to see you, follow my lead. You die in here, then you’re brain dead. You understand?”
She stared.
“Snap out of it,” he said, jolting her with a hard shake that almost rocked her off her feet.
They ran down the side of a nearby street.
