Page 35 of With You Here
He referred to when he called her thus, though delirious from pain. She must make him see reason. “My father has vowed that no heretic found on his lands will leave alive. He will kill you if you are found.”
“And yet I find myself still too weak to flee. Though I do need to return to the woods, albeit not for myself.”
“If not yourself then who?”
“Other Brethren.” He shifted and winced. “There are others besides myself who have flown Zurich.”
Her hand fluttered to her lips. On the morrow, her father would dispatch a unit of mercenaries to overturn stone and fell trees if need be in order to fox out the dissenters.
More innocent blood. The copper taste coated her mouth, her ears ringing with the sounds of swords being loosed from scabbards and cries exhaling from lifeless lungs.
“I will go.”A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
“I cannot ask that of you. It is not safe.”
“Nothing is safe these days, it seems. Besides, you did not ask. Nor do I think you have the strength to stop me.”
His fingers found her hand again, but this time they curled around her own and held on. “Nothing I say can persuade you from this course?”
She lifted her chin. “Though your words have persuaded me to consider many ideas I had not before, in this I am determined.”
“Then may a host of heavenly armies protect you on your way.”
Chapter Fourteen
Germany, Present Day
Amber dumped her bag by the door as she entered her room, then collapsed on the twin- sized bed. What. A. Day. Fatigue sat as a weight behind her eyes, but it was the pressure in her chest cavity that felt like an anvil had been dropped on her body. She blinked as she stared up at the popcorn ceiling, evidence of old water damage snaking an uneven circle near the corner in a rusty orange color.
Half a world away and her surroundings hadn’t changed much. She still found herself cloistered in a small dorm room, stark white cement-block walls surrounding her. She snorted. Leave it to her to go searching for something and wind up in what amounted to the exact same place.
She sat up and let her legs dangle over the side of the bed, her elbows resting on her thighs. She stared at her hands. Were they enough? Was she?
“Jesus, help those kids.” It was the prayer she’d been saying on repeat in her mind all day, but now the words finally found release and floated around her in the empty room. The heaviness of four-year-old Yara in her arms had become familiar to her in only a week’s time. She tried to imagine what it must be like to be so young and have gone through all the things those kids at the center had experienced.
When she was four, her biggest concerns had been, what? Finding her missing My Little Pony doll? And when she was ten? Beating her best friend in a reading contest by finishing all the Anne of Green Gables series first? As a teenager her biggest concerns had been getting good grades. She’d never had to worry about her house getting hit by a missile or the police coming in the middle of the night and taking her parents away or fleeing for her life because her country was no longer safe to live in. Nor had she ever had to worry about finding a safe place to live or surviving the journey to get there.
Her fingers raked through her hair. Had she really been so self-centered as to think that coming here would somehow unmuddy her own problems, which paled in comparison to the magnitude of those she’d learned of since landing in Germany? Instead of focusing so much on how this time away would magically give her direction, she should have been studying up on helping children dealing with issues like grief and post-traumatic stress and the plethora of other wounds escaping a war-torn country left on a soul.
Today they had shown her an artery that was hemorrhaging, and all she’d been able to offer was a band-aid. As if a simple adhesive bandage in the form of a parallel story could in any way stop the bleeding caused by a wound so deep.
But what could she do? She wasn’t qualified. Wasn’t equipped to meet the needs staring her in the face. Helplessness gripped at her ankles and yanked her head below the surface of an unseen water, drowning her in a current she was powerless to swim out of.
A knock startled her. “Coming,” she called, then slipped out of bed and padded the short distance to the door. When she opened it, no one was there. She looked to the left and then the right, but the hallways were empty. She was about to shut the door when her gaze fell on a small package on the ground. White, with a thin red stripe around the top and bottom and a blue square with an eagle head in the corner. A glimpse of home. A USPS Priority mail box. She bent and retrieved it, her chin wobbling at her mom’s gracefully looping print.
Returning to her seat on the bed, she dug her keys from her pocket and ran the jagged edge along the tape holding the flaps of the box together. She opened them and stared inside, her heart pinching at the pieces of home that fit in a square of cardboard.
She lifted out a Tupperware container, popped the lid, and inhaled.Mmmmmm.Anita Carrington’s famous chocolate chip cookies. She set the Tupperware beside her and retrieved the next item: her beat-up copy ofThe Chronicles of Narnia.The book was her go-to collection when she needed to escape for a bit. Guess Mom knew she would need to be doing a bit of that while she was here. She set the large book beside the cookies and looked back into the box on her lap. On the bottom lay a piece of stationary. She pulled it out and set the box on the ground.
My darling daughter,
I know you’ve heard me say it a thousand times, but I have to say it once more—I am so incredibly proud of you. You have a heart that beats for others and hands that were fashioned to help. To watch you grow into the beautiful woman you have become has been one of my greatest joys. There is a strength and ability in you that you aren’t even aware of yet, and I can’t wait for the day that you finally realize that. Until then, and always after, my prayers and love are sent your way.
xoxo,
Mom
Amber used the pad of her thumb to collect the moisture gathering in the corner of her eye. She ripped open the container of cookies and bit into one. If only shedidhave that strength and ability Mom thought she had…
