Page 192 of Shifting Hearts 1
There, the world turned on. In here, it stopped, like me.
And when I looked down at the small boy who managed to faceplant into my ankles, all I saw was a dirty, ash-blond head of hair in desperate need of a haircut harboring a fragile, muted glow of innocence that I’d long forgotten.
Then he looked up, and the facade of purity was torn away by the pale, dead eyes that stared back and no longer held the wonder any boy his age should possess. A marbled pattern coated his cheeks in a variety of yellows and purples, reminding me that evils came in many forms.
“Up you get, Joey. We can’t stay here. Remember what I told you before we left?” I strove to keep the tension out of my voice as I found the tiny pair of hands still tugging repetitively at my burgundy cloak. It took a few goes, but I managed to peel his dirt encrusted fingers free, though I didn’t let him go. Not that he would have let me, but I needed to give him some measure of security amidst his horrifying existence. I held on to his tiny hands, squeezing gently. “Would you like to sing with me?”
The rescued boy who still bore signs of his abuse nodded. “Yes please, Brynnie.” His filthy thumb aimed for his mouth.
I tapped the petri dish of a digit away. His hand fell limply to his side. “Okay, here we go.” I hummed the opening bars toFollow the Yellow Brick Roadin a terribly off key way.
The kids giggled, clustering around me as I tried to listen for sounds outside our little cluster, and not game to tell them my actual singing voice was just as bad as my humming.
It isn’t wise to stop for too long.
At least they’re laughing in the face of abject terror.
But fear didn’t reflect in their eyes. When I risked a glance around the small group clustered at my knees, I was rewarded with a glimpse of hope.
In me.
Swallowing bile at the memory of the child snatched from within my grasp, whisked away into the depths of the forest away from my reach, I danced forward. Careful to keep each bobbing head close, we skipped toward the edge of the forest. Even though I knew the darkwood was unoccupied, I kept an eye out for shapes materializing close by that resembled some vaguely humanoid form.
But we wouldn’t meet a magical wizard within this darkened realm, or even a fake one.
The only rescue at the end of this path was my mother’s cooking. Which, if I timed my entrance well and unscathed, the kids would devour and I’d be able to sleep for the night. Tomorrow I’d take her offerings back to Gran’s for another load of recently freed children from the abuse they had suffered. Recovered from a short period at grans, they would sleep in a bed safely for a scant night or two before they crossed the forest with only my fears and each other for company.
If my fears don’t join us every step of our journey.
Perhaps guilt weighed me down and made me look over my shoulder. Tried not to see what I thought I saw.
Pretended not to see.
Last night, trying to stifle my heavy breaths in my bedroom as I sought release from my fears that the trek through the forest heightened, I could have sworn those same eyes that observed me then when they shouldn't watch me now. That the heavy breaths weren’t mine alone, and that there, just through the iced-over glass in the spare bedroom where I lay, something that watched my path through the day drew closer at night.
That the eyes saw what I did: a ruin of sins and fear in a house of haven. A refuge that I tainted just by being there.
My shame and guilt quickened my steps. Was my observer of last night watching me now? I didn’t stare into the darkness too hard, because knowing what wasbeyondshattered that fine line between terror and pleasure.
Where illusion bled into reality.
I knew that tonight, when we were all safe on the other side of the forest in the clearing of sunshine and starlight, I’d try to reclaim that same blur between what was real or not again.
I am a ruined, dark thing, a creature who belongs to the shadows.
If only the shadows wished to claim me.
Instead, I was alone. Untouched and unloved except for the silent, dark hours I stole for myself when others slept.
And someone watched.
Shoving my selfishness aside, I skipped and sang and played children's games of hope and trust as though we meandered through trees without a threat above our heads or below our feet. Cold tendrils teased my soles as I danced, though the paths were as clear and well edged as always, like they were designed that way, just for me.
To find oneself lost in the trees was to court death. No weeds grew here, and no true birds called. Nothing moved inside the forest, except sometimes me.
And maybe the trees.
I cast a shifty glance across the shadowscape before me.
