Page 99 of Chasing Never
The Sister pauses, a tender finger sliding down my son’s forehead, tapping on the tip of his tiny nose.
“And why would I do that?” she asks.
“You’ll have to wait for my son,” he says. “Wait until he’s grown up. But you do not like to wait. You’ve waited long enough, have you not?” He grasps at his tunic and tears at his shirt, revealing the glimmering, golden Mating Mark underneath. “I am healed. You can do whatever you want with me. I will be your slave. You can have all that your soul has searched for all these centuries, and you can have it now. Without having to wait another day. Another hour.”
The Sister lingers for a moment, and my heart balances on the edge of hope and dread.
“Your offer might have been tempting once,” she says, “and I must admit, it tempts me still. You are the most handsome in your line. But you despise me. And distrust me. And you always will. You are too old. Too stubborn. Too set in your ways. Your heart will not bend toward me. What you offer sounds tantalizing, but what you offer is decades of being hated by the man I adore. That, my darling, sounds like a prison.
“But this little one,” she says, stroking my son’s cheek, “he will not know to hate me. I will shower him with all he desires, offer him a love beyond affection. He’ll grow to adore me, his love unmarred by his parents’ prejudices.
“Oh, do not worry,” she says, turning to me. “I will not make my intentions clear until the time is right. He will have a beautiful childhood unlike either of yours.”
“You are foul,” I try to spit at her. “And delusional. If you think our son will not grow up to hate you with even more fervor than we do.”
“Ah,” she says, “that’s just it, isn’t it? You cannot know that for sure. Neither can I, since I cannot see his tapestry. But why would I trade him for someone who already hates me? If he grows to hate me, well, then I’m in no worse a position than I am now. So wouldn’t you say it’s worth the chance?”
My lip trembles. “Please.”
“Goodbye, Wendy Darling,” says the Sister, who then turns to Nolan. “Goodbye, my love.”
Nolan lunges, but it’s too late.
The Sister is gone.
And so is our son.
CHAPTER 44
Around me, the world slips into shades of gray. Perhaps it’s just the fading sun no longer able to reach us, having fallen too far below the horizon. Or the fact that the clouds have shifted overhead to obscure not only the moonlight, but the stars. But even the darkness has a grayish tint to it, a lack of potency. The sounds of the forest go quiet, muffled in my ears.
The night I found John’s body, the agony had been piercing. This is nothing like that. Whatever within my being provides me with the ability to feel, affords me the sensations of love, anger, joy, betrayal, whatever that part of me was, it left my body with my son. And now that he’s gone, it’s just as absent.
A life that never belonged to me flashes before my eyes. A stolen future replaced with a counterfeit memory. Malia nursing my son when he cries out in hunger. The Sister rocking him to sleep, closing his eyelids with the tendrils of her shadows. Moments that should have been mine and his, replaced by the Sister.
I watch the alternate realities play out side by side, light erased by its dark twin. There is no version of events where Michael holds his nephew for the first time. There is no versionof events where he comes up with a nickname for my child. One that I never would have come up with myself.
There is no moment where Nolan and I perform the naming ritual. My son will be given a name by the Sister, but I will never know my child’s name, the cadence of sounds to which he turns his head.
I watch my nameless child grow up before me, his first steps not toward me, but toward a swath of shadows. Will he stumble toward her open-armed, or will the terror of her cause him to shrink away?
What will the first words he speaks be? Will he call the Sister “Mama”?
He’ll scrape his knee for the first time, and though the Sister will be unable to heal the wound with her magic, the curse preventing her, it hurts all the worse to think that it might be her hands that patch him up.
My mind skips forward to his wedding day, the moment he discovers his upbringing has been a lie, a ruse, a trap. But I don’t let myself think of that one. If I do, I won’t make it out of this forest.
The Sister was not simply taunting me when she told me of the bedtime stories she would recite to him. I would have told him the stories from the books that John and I read growing up. I would have told him about the uncle he never got to meet. I would have told him tales of adventure and how the world came together against all odds so that he could be born.
That is not the story he will learn.
She will tell him of a mother who gave him up for her own happiness. And the worst part of it is, she won’t even have to lie.
Something shifts in the corner of my vision. It takes me a moment to realize it’s my husband.
I’d forgotten he was standing there.
I turn and watch him. He’s staring at the spot where the Sister disappeared. Where our son disappeared.
