Then I stopped.
I ran my hand over the material. Yes, I wore a plain wool dress, but I’d rode to the beach. I was sure of it. I stared around, spinning. I’d remembered something! The beach! I rode to the beach!
So where was my horse?
‘Fuck,’ I said, standing tall and raising my chin. Something was missing. Someone. My brows furrowed. Who?
I shook my head. It was no good. I scanned the sand, seeking my shadow, but the lack of light stole it. My breath misted in the inky darkness and, inhaling deeply, I stepped into the gloom.
I walked and I walked. Always dark. So damndark. Shivering, I wondered if that’s how it had always been.
Placing one heavily booted foot in front of the other was a ceaseless task. The endless twilight refused to abate. It remained constant, echoing the cavity in my chest.
I turned in a slow circle seeing nothing, yet wanting so much, when I spotted a glimmer, a spark in the distance. I squinted towards it. Light! Finally some light!
It grew and I picked up my pace, my heart hammering. Boots crunching and lungs burning as I chased it.
Within a heartbeat, I was there, my hand hovering over the handle of a huge white door.
I hesitated, racking my brain for something, anything. This door, Iknewthis door. A tear raced down my cheek, dropping onto my outstretched hand. I knew what lay beyond the ornate white door. Who. And I couldn’t enter. Not again.
‘We have to, Sorrow.’
I turned. My chest rapidly rising and falling as I found Enfys beside me. The little girl with the golden, silken locks I’d been so jealous of. ‘I don’t want to either, but father said we must.’
Her voice broke and my heart shattered into a million shards, spraying from me and hurtling into the sky. My fingers trembled on the handle. I gasped in cold air, shocking my lungs and steeling my spine. I had to do this for Enfys. I took her frozen hand. I’d never held her before. We’d been born as enemies, but what lay beyond the door connected us. As Mama always wanted. Two girls, halting our war for attention now the object of our envy had gone.
I raised my chin and turned the handle. Pushing the door open, I took a trembling step inside.
Enfys’s nails dug into me. I wanted to drag my hand away, but I clutched her tighter. My chest cleaved open, but still I clung on.
She lay on the white marble slab. Someone had brushed Mama’s smooth, golden hair, laid her elegant hands across herstill chest. They’d dressed her in a long, lily-white dress. I swallowed my sob. She never wore white. White was for the dead.
‘Mama,’ Enfys cried, and I took a settling breath, forcing the tears to stay. I had to be strong for Enfys. Mama would want that.
We stood there, my hand gripping my sister’s as she cried a river over Mama’s corpse.
I’d never known how long we remained there. I looked anywhere but Mama. I wanted to remember her alive. Her smile. How her hips swayed when she played her fiddle. How her sweet voice carried around the whole castle. My body shook. A fissure split, cracked. Enfys gazed up as I sucked in a breath. My eyes widened. Something, macabre and unhuman, awoke. Violet slithered through the cracks in my core. Ribbons dark as blood squirmed, sensing her death. Craving it. I gasped as threads, cruel and unwanted, passed like oil through my lungs.
I stared at Mama, too stricken by panic to move. I’d hidden them. I’d tried so hard. So hard since that day. The day I’d held the broken sparrow in my itching palms andtheyawoke for the first time.
‘No,’ I cried, desperate to escape the room before they found Mama. ‘No.’
It was Enfys’s screaming that drew the guards, drew Romero. They’d all thought it was me. I’d scratched her face, tore at her in a jealous rage because our Mama had loved her more.
Neither of us spoke the truth. Neither of us ever told how I’d brought Mama’s body back. How the corpse fell from her slab, crawled towards us, leaving me alone while she clawed and tore at Enfys. How I’d sobbed as I failed to stop her. The way her body slumped as I finally smothered the purple threads and dragged her frigid form back to the slab.
I stared at Mama. Her beautiful face, sunken and grey. Her lashes flickered. ‘No,’ I breathed, ice slamming against my lungs. ‘Not again. Run Enfys. Run.’
But my hand gripped hers, harder, tighter. I stared at Mama.
Her hollow blue eyes snapped open and I screamed.
‘I’m here. I’m here.’
Strong arms held me. Soothing hands stroked my hair as the scream died on split, broken lips. My eyes cracked open. A creased white shirt lay under me, exposing a sliver of copper skin. ‘It’s a dream, Sorrow.’
Matthias.
