Sadie Madison and the Boy in the Crimson Scarf

7 | The Woman In Black

Artefacts blurred as Sadie sprinted through the shop. She clattered into the front door; fingers pressed to the glass. Oliver appeared on the other side, beckoning her into the snow-lined street. She rattled the handle, but the door wouldn't open.

Sadie spun, the cold handle pressing into the small of her back.

Rhiannon breezed towards her, skirts blooming.

In the light from the street, Rhiannon seemed older than her face suggested, as though wearing away at the seams. The woman clothed herself in black: thick cotton ankle-length skirts edged with tassels and a flowing blouse whose sleeves were rolled to the elbow, embroidered with dragonflies. "You silly thing," she muttered, smiling at Sadie. "You should've let me finish."

"Get away from me," Sadie warned as Oliver appeared at her side, his hand in hers.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Rhiannon said. "Not anymore."

Despite Rhiannon's kind face and soothing words, Sadie's muscles tightened. She flew back through all thirteen years of her young life: to the hospital and her birth, to the night her parents brought her home, to her first images of the eaved bedroom.

Something occurred to her. "I'm not the first," Sadie spat.

The words of the Foretelling echoed through her.

"I'm not the firstborn, of the firstborn."

Rhiannon frowned. "Yes, you are."

"Natalia is. My sister. Natalia is the firstborn."

"No, she's not."

"She's my elder sister. She must be!"

Rhiannon sunk her hands into her pockets. "For all intents and purposes, she is your sister, Sadie. She'll always be your sister, your big sister. But she is not your blood."

"Liar!" Sadie cried, her hands reaching behind and rattling the door handle. "That's a horrible, cruel lie."

"What reason would I have to lie? You are the firstborn, of the firstborn."

Sadie slid down the door and crumpled into a ball on the thin, dusty carpet. "Stop. Just stop. Danver. Hurtmore House. The Foretelling. Natalia. It's...too much."

Rhiannon sat cross-legged in front of Sadie. "I know a lot of things. Some useful, some not so much. I know about bric-à-brac, trinkets, bibelots, and objets d'art. I know about tea and biscuits. I know about the history of life." Rhiannon paused for a moment. "And I know you cannot forget a single thing."

Sadie stared at her.

"To be honest," Rhiannon continued. "I cannot understand how that's possible. I believe it is possible, but I don't know how it works, how your brain works. You probably remember far more than me and you've been alive for a fraction of the time."

"How do you know?" Sadie said. "No-one knows except...Danver."

"It's part of the Foretelling."

Sadie felt violated. The strange ability she had lived with every day was no longer a private, personal thing. It had been stripped from her, thrown into some ancient riddle, into the Foretelling. She pictured mysterious scribes and sorcerers writing prophetic words about her on weary manuscripts with curly corners, thousands and thousands of years ago in the towers of some dank, stone fortress on the other side of the world.

"Okay," Sadie said, straightening her jacket. "Tell me about the Foretelling."

Rhiannon fixed her with a hard stare. "Your father should have told you."