Nevermor (69 page)

Wren tensed at
that and felt her face grow hot.  As much as she believed she loved Rifter –
even still – their love had not been perfect, but she remembered the way she
had kissed him with her eyes shut so tightly.  She remembered the night in the
dark of a tent when she’d said she loved him.  He had wanted to have her, but
she had pushed him away.

I wasn't ready.

“No,” she
answered finally, averting her eyes.

“Yet it was very
much like a marriage in your eyes, wasn't it?  Didn’t you say so yourself
once?  And like your parents’ marriage, it was ruined by the denial of physical
intimacy, isn't that right?  Wasn’t your mother depressed after Maxwell was
born?  Her relationship with your father was scarred.  He sought love
elsewhere.”

Wren didn’t
answer, clenching her fists against her legs.  This was an attack.  Witherspoon
had never done this to her before.  Had she told him these things?  She had
recounted the story so many times in the past that she sometimes wasn’t sure of
the exact details she’d given.

“You told me once
that there was an instance in which Rifter was unfaithful to you – with some
sort of savage, Tribal maiden, I believe.  Don't you think that event mirrors
exactly what you believe your father did to your mother?”

Wren had never
heard this angle before, and she wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to prove.

“It doesn't
matter,” she uttered, feeling defensive.

Witherspoon was
able to see her unease and sat back a bit, letting the pressure off.

“I shouldn't
have said that.  I apologize,” he told her, withdrawing.  “Let's talk about
something else.  Tell me about your time in Nevermor.”

Wren was able to
exhale.  She felt her muscles relax, making her as putty in her chair, though
she hardly moved at all.

“It was better
in the beginning,” she said absently, becoming so lost in those old memories
that he had to call her back.

“Yet even in
those first days, there were dangers, correct?  In fact, everything in the
world was a danger to you, I believe.”

Yes, those first
days had only been better if she could get past the threat of the pirates that
had wanted to rape her, the mermaids that wanted to drown her, the hateful
savages that might have killed her without blinking, not to mention a nightmare
monster around every corner – and that wretched fairy with murder in her heart,
the same which had eventually caused the deaths of the rest of them.

But why would
Whisper do that?  Why?  Those children did nothing.  Was it because of me?

Wren had thought
that she and Rifter’s vindictive fairy companion had come to a truce near the
end, but there was no proof of it now – not after what had happened two years
ago.

“I’ll accept
that life was good to you for a while,” Witherspoon said, leading her on.  “You
were with your brothers.  You made friends with those other boys – Rifter’s ‘
Wolf
Pack
’.  You were
in love
.  But circumstances changed.  Tell me.”

Yes, things
changed…

“It started with
the storm,” she said, recalling it.  “Nevermor is a world of dreams and Rifter
is the guardian of it, but when
he
dreams, sometimes things happen to
the world.  The landscape might change without warning, and another thing that
often happens when he dreams is that the Scourge comes back.”

“And the Scourge
is –”

“A terrifying
man,” Wren interrupted, meeting the doctor’s eyes.  “Rifter’s worst nightmare. 
He changed everything – changed Rifter.  Things got worse.  There was conflict
and war.  There was fire and darkness.  But in the end, Rifter conquered.  He
faced his fear and killed the Scourge.  He promised me that things were going
to get better.”

“That was when
he brought you back here.  With Maxwell.”

“Yes.  So I
could make sure he was safe from that life,” Wren admitted.  Her choice with
her baby brother Max had been a difficult one – letting him go off to another
mother who would raise him.  She had cried every night for a while, wondering
where he was and praying that he hadn’t forgotten her, but eventually, she had
managed to let him go.  She hadn’t wanted Nevermor to corrupt him at such a
young age.  He’d deserved better.

Wren had become
firm in her agreement, but Witherspoon’s next question caught her off guard.

“What happened
to Henry?”

She felt an
abrupt choking sensation in the back of her throat when he said that name.  Her
other brother, Henry…  Rifter had renamed him Fang.

He was given the
highest honor.

“I don’t want to
talk about Henry,” she said solidly.  Even though time had passed, it still
felt like a sword in her chest.

“Fair enough,”
Witherspoon said, making a note in the sideline of her casebook.  Then he
started off on another line of thought.  “Rifter left you here with a promise
that he would return for you in a few days, but he never came back, did he? 
Why do you think that is?”

“He has a
tendency to forget things,” Wren said swiftly, feeling a bit frustrated by
now.  She thought that he must have noticed.  “It’s the fairy’s fault.  She
takes his memories away; sometimes even the small, insignificant ones.”

“You’ve told me
before that he has to be willing to let go of the memory first.”

“Usually,” she
confirmed.

“Then how does
that explain why he might have forgotten you?”

Wren caught her
breath, staring.  She’d tried not to think on it, but of course she had
considered that Rifter had
wanted
to forget her – that he was angry with
her, or had decided he didn’t care about her after all.  Was she so
forgettable?  Wren let her gaze drift down to the floor, wondering how
Witherspoon liked the sight of her heart ripping in half.

“Let’s talk
about that night,” he interrupted, writing a few more notes across the page. 
“Tell me what happened.”

Wren closed her
eyes, feeling the warmth of a stray sunbeam cross her eyelids.  Not even the
light could aid her.  In this, she was utterly alone.

“I was waiting
for Rifter to come back for me.  He said he would come back.  He promised not
to forget.  I waited for a long time at the orphanage.  I was even put into
another job – domestic work – and yet he didn’t return.  Then one night after
nearly two years, it was Whisper who came back instead – the fairy wisp.  She
woke up all the children, and they were very eager to see her.  They looked to
me for guidance and I…”  She paused, shaking her head.  “I don’t know why I
trusted her.  I hardly remember it, as if it happened to someone else.”

This was true. 
Every moment that she could recall seemed so far away that it was as though
another person had lived it and she was merely watching, just as she had once
seen Rifter’s memories.

“What did you
tell them?” the doctor asked, leaning forward again to hear her confession like
a priest through the lattice.

“I told them to
follow her,” Wren said sorrowfully, “that she was going to help us get to
Nevermor.”

“Then what
happened?”

Wren was
breathing harder now, reliving the moment – the vertigo of being on the roof as
the wind blew all around her, the weight of the storm that was gathering
overhead–

“She led us to
the roof.  She pretended to give us a blessing so that we could fly.”

Wren knew that
she should never have believed this.  One could not merely fly to Nevermor. 
Only Rifter could go to and fro as he wished, and anyone he brought back with
him had to be unconscious or blessed to pass through the veil that divided this
world from that.

I knew it.  Why
didn’t I see through that lie?  It was my fault.

“And they
jumped, didn’t they,” Witherspoon said, guessing that she would not say it
herself.  “But you didn’t jump.”

“No, I didn’t.” 
Wren thought she had regret in her own voice.

“Why?”

Even now, Wren
could still recall it.  Each one of those children had jumped off the roof. 
She had been meant to join them.  It was only several moments afterward that
they realized that they were falling instead of flying.  It must have been the
sound of their screams that had snapped her out of her own trance, teetering on
the edge of the roof just before stepping off herself.  By then, Whisper had
been gone – gone like she had never been there.

She had tried to
save me for last.

“Rifter didn’t
come,” the doctor said, snapping her back.  “He didn’t come to deliver you from
that, or take you back.”

No, he didn’t
.  Wren kept
quiet and looked at the floor.

“It has been
nearly two years since then and he still hasn’t come for you.”

“Sometimes it’s
hard for him to remember things,” she repeated more forcefully, even though she
thought she’d made that clear.

“You don’t have
to defend the boy, Wren,” Witherspoon said calmly, shaking his head.  “The
answer is simple.  You have grown up and he has not.  Yet perhaps you have a
point: you should allow yourself to forget about him as obviously he has forgotten
you.”

Wren’s eyes
rounded like moons at this assertion.  As many times as they had talked about
it, how could he even suggest this?  Though her fear of outgrowing Rifter was
very real – that he would cast her away because she had broken the Vow – she
could not embrace the idea of life without him.

“No,” she told
him bluntly, her voice as level as ever.  “I could never give up on him.”

Witherspoon
leaned back, staring at her a moment before rubbing his eyes beneath his
glasses.  She wondered what he was thinking, but guessed that she knew.  He had
found hope in her once – perhaps the only thing that kept her here – and he was
losing it.  She wondered if she ought to be worried, but it was fleeting.  She
had determined long ago that she had to keep up appearances here.  That was her
only hope of survival.

“That will do
for today, Wren,” he said.  There was a sigh in his voice – a note of despair –
but she could not be concerned.  All she had to care about was herself.

Wren waited
patiently as he scribbled in his final notes of the session, and all the while
she sat, rigid and still, staring at his shadow.

1

Wren peered into
the cage, watching the birds hop from perch to perch.  They seemed content
enough, even though they were locked away behind steel bars that would not let
them soar.

Yet if they were
free, there would be dangers for them
, Wren knew. 
Perhaps it is best that
they are caged.  Behind these bars, they are protected.

The inmates were
allowed to enjoy the birds, but were quickly chastised if they tried to open
the cage doors.  Still, Wren often reached her fingers through the bars to feel
the soft feathers as their warm little bodies darted past.  They were flickers
of life in this colorless place.  The birds talked happily together and none of
it was directed at her.  She didn’t have to respond.

Two years
, she
reflected. 
Two years in this cage
.  The irony of her name had made her
sigh helplessly on more than one occasion.

Wren stared at
the birds now, absently watching the blur of their colors as they swooped by. 
Across the room, a few female patients were staring into adjacent cages – some
muttering quietly, some licking their chapped lips.  Sometimes they tried to
open the doors and grab the birds inside, but there were always nurses nearby
to scold them.  They were constantly supervised as if they were children.

We are not
children.  We are like the birds
, Wren mused. 
All of us are birds,
cooped up together.

Wren lifted her
eyes through the cage to peer across the room, observing those who shared the
ward with her.  The girls housed at the asylum were of different kinds and from
different places, with assorted coloring and breeding.  Some of them had been
normal in the beginning, but years of confinement had broken them, and even the
improvements to treatment had not been able to fix their tangled minds.  Others
were just on the verge of slipping away – like herself – while a handful or two
were complete, raving lunatics.

There was Trudy,
for example, who screamed every night about the wolves in the walls – who had
tried to cut into another girl with a razor to expose the secret monster inside
her.  Trudy had always been that way, since her first day here.  She was no
worse, but not yet improved.  There were a few others like Trudy, but there
were also more docile types that had never been meant for a place like this.

Clea, with her
lovely red hair, had been married to an older man who’d been very jealous of
her and had eventually become so paranoid of her flirting that he’d sent her
here as punishment, claiming incurable promiscuity – at least, that was what
Wren had heard the nurses say.