Page 43 of The Light Between Worlds

Stay as you are, Annie. Don’t let the worlds you walk break you.

Meg drives us to the train station in the rickety farm wagon, and it’s hard to be melancholy while bumping over potholes, so I’m just queasy instead. On the train I curl into a corner of the car and rest my head against the window, staring out at the passing countryside.

All I see is grey sand. Grey sea. Grey sky.

Tom doesn’t try to draw me out, to press me into conversation,and he never asks what’s wrong. He just sits next to me, and holds my hand in one of his. When the lunch trolley wheels past, he waves it away. I don’t deserve him.

All too soon, the train chuffs to a halt in Hardwick. Tom walks me to the head of St. Agatha’s road and stands, scuffing his boot against the earthen embankment where we have to part ways.

“Ev?” he says, my name a question on his lips. “Are you going to be alright?”

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. Then I pick up my bag and walk down the lane without another word, because I can’t bring myself to saygoodbye.

At school, I float across the quad and back to my room in the dormitory, which is all but empty three days before term.

I dream of the Woodlands.

Grey sand, grey sea, grey sky.

I dream of how news came to us that the Empire was falling to pieces, broken apart by infighting over the vacant throne. And each night, just as memories of that final battle and the blood on my hands seemed like they’d choke me, Philippa would come to me and stave them off with her quiet presence and gentle words. We began to be whole again together.

I dream of how, by midsummer, those of us left came fully alive once more. We would go out into the Great Wood, not to dance and sing as we used to, but to clear away bones and armor, burned branches and abandoned camp gear. And then, on the longest day, when Cervus stood watch in the birch ring until sunset to bring back the night, we began planting trees. Each sapling was a wish and a prayer. I planted a young beech in a hidden hollow andwhispered the Woodlands blessing, of hearts and home, as I pressed soil down over its strong young roots, and when I stood I spoke Dorien’s name as well. I planted an oak in a valley that Vaya once showed me, next to the shorn-off stump of a great tree that sang its own funeral song. I sank the sapling’s roots deep into Woodlands soil, along with my grief and fear and pain, and when I left the valley I was myself again—Evelyn of the Woodlands, a girl who’d found her place.

And I dream of how on drowsy afternoons, I’d still wander in the Wood, with Cervus by my side, and together we’d just be quiet, sharing the weight of the world between us.

Away from the Great Wood, the world hangs too heavy on me, Cervus. I’m no Atlas, and I cannot bear up under it alone.

“Did you forget?” Jamie’s voice asks, tearing me from one of my waking dreams. I blink, not entirely sure where I am at first, but here are the walls of the library. Here is the window out to the courtyard, showing a late winter day of fitful clouds and weak sunshine.

I scrub at my eyes with one hand. “Forget what?”

Jamie’s face is a battleground, pity and anger, sadness and fear all fighting for a place. “I rang, last week. It’s your birthday. I’m here to take you out—Ev, we talked about it.”

It’s my birthday. I’m seventeen. The same age now as I was when I left the Woodlands.

The realization makes me sway as I get to my feet and Jamie catches me by the arm. “Steady on.”

If it were Philippa here, she’d be telling me right away that I’vegot to pull myself together, that I can’t let myself fall to pieces like this, that it’s unbecoming of a girl who’s weathered war in not one world but two. It’s Jamie, though, so he only looks at me, tense with worry. We’ll be skirting around the issue all day, finally getting to his well-intentioned lecture after hours of building up to it.

I sigh, and resign myself to my fate.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Jamie asks as I lower myself onto the passenger seat of his battered old car. “Go to the cinema? Get lunch somewhere? It’s your day.”

I don’t know. If I don’t know who I am, how should I know what I want to do? I want to go home, but that’s not a wish Jamie can grant.

“Just drive,” I say, and lose myself in the passing countryside. We motor over hills and through valleys, past forests and streams, alongside crumbling stone walls and fields laid out like snowy quilts. Jamie stops at a pub to grab a bite, but I won’t go in because I can’t stand the noise and he has them pack up sandwiches. I don’t eat any. I have no appetite and no words. I’ve lost my voice in this place as surely as the trees and animals have lost theirs.

Midafternoon it starts to rain. We keep driving, raindrops beading on the window beside me, wipers swishing at the windshield. They make a rhythmic sound, like grey waves on grey sand.

I’m waiting on the beach. Where are you?

By the time we pull back into the drive at St. Agatha’s, Jamie’s got the headlamps switched on. He brings the car to a slow halt and gravel crunches under the tires. I stare out through the drizzle, across the dark and rain-slick quad.

“Ev.” Jamie fiddles with a loose thread on one of his drivinggloves. The lecture cometh. Poor Jamie. There’s defeat in the set of his mouth—he always could solve any problems but our own.

“I don’t want to say this, but I think I’ve got to, so I’m just going to come right out with it.” He stares through the windshield at the crescent of light the headlamps cast, and I freeze. This isn’t the way the usual lecture starts, about being present, about living up to my role and responsibilities. This is something else.

Jamie turns to look at me, fixing me with the sort of stare that dares me to question what he’s about to say. At the same time, there’s a dreadful sadness behind it and I curl up inside, away from what’s about to come.