This is by far the best moment of my entire life. Of anything I’ve ever experienced and anything I could imagine experiencing. I can’t hear above the drumming of my heart. I'm so overwhelmed. So happy. On overdrive, processing and evaluating—she’s alive.
As she sobs, I rock her back and forth. Pretending it’s once again just the two of us, my voice cracks as I whisper to her the last story we wrote. I was nine.
The story we'd written the day before they told me she’d died on this hill.
"There was once a boy named Deakon. He spent a lot of time away from the sun, but he had shining dreams. One day, he looked in the mirror and reflected in his eyes was a girl. She had golden hair and chocolate eyes.
"Years later, while he was walking past a shop front, he caught the reflection of a girl in the window. Yet, when he turned around, she was gone. She was the same girl reflected in his eyes.
"He dreamed of her, saw her by his side everywhere he went. He spent years travelling, searching and meeting beautiful people and beautiful girls. No matter how far he went, though, or how many people he met or how beautiful they were, they were never as beautiful as the girl in his eyes, the girl in the window, the girl in his dreams.
"One day, they will be together, and she will be by his side, reflected in his eyes, next to him in the window, and in his dreams. His dream girl.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
deakon
Sixteen years earlier
The boy spends many minutes, or hours, or days huddled in a bed, crying and moaning for help.
Days and days.
They pass by.
He hugs himself and rubs his own arms, pretending his hands are not his, pretending they are someone else’s, someone who cares. He wants to know if he is still alive, a boy, a son, human, loved...
Is this death?
When he falls asleep during the day or night, he has no tears left inside his body, and when he wakes, salty rivers are crusted on his soft young cheeks—his body found more tears during the night.
The boy doesn't know what time it is or what seconds, minutes, and hours are, but the first time the blonde girl brings him a meal, it feels like a long time has passed.
She brings him meals. He counts them, desperate to know how long he’s been away from home. How long he's been in the cage.
Where is my mummy?
She will come for me.
Soon, though, he runs out of numbers to count the meals. The boy can only count to twenty, and he's already done that twenty times.
Why have I run out of numbers?
He makes a wish for more numbers because he believes without the numbers, he might not be alive.
The numbers never come.
To the boy, that can only mean one thing—he has been in the cage forever. He is lost in the dark, losing himself, losing his name, losing his memories, losing his…
Did I have a mummy?
Was that a dream?
The dark starts to swallow his pain, and in return it gives him new powers—exciting ones. Now, after lots of twenties of meals, the boy believes he died.
He is now born again as a dog.
Pacing his home, from the bed to the toilet and back again, he ponders this revelation. He squeezes his eyes shut and concentrates, summoning his inner dog. He bears down, trying, trying, changing... And then it happens.
