You call this fate?

Chapter 25

I screamed and screamed. All the buried ghosts were back. They swamped me from every direction, pulling and tearing apart my now fragile walls. I put my hands over my ears, shutting out my own sound as I screamed. The faces loomed behind my vision.

Blue eyes and brown, grey and green, wide and small, menacing and cold…with the same smile twinkling in them, the same little smile that promised I was going to like it. They swooped at me from all sides like eagles, trying to pull me down, to take me back to the dark again.

They succeeded. Everything went black.

When I awoke, there was something cool on my forehead. I tried to open my eyes but they weighted a ton. For a moment, panic overwhelmed me. Why was I waking up like this again? Where was I? What was going on?

But thankfully, there was a fringe of light under the black curtain over my eyes. Slowly, very slowly, I lifted my lids. My vision swam, then cleared enough for the beautiful ceiling to come into view. The beautiful ceiling?

I remembered the beautiful ceiling. Everything was okay, then. If it wasn't, how could something so beautiful be over my head? Beauty doesn't exist in the dark. It wilts away and disappears, a glow swallowed by encroaching shadows. I wasn't in the dark then. No, I was in the light.

But the ceiling was different from what I remembered. The young girl was here too, but now she sat on the porch of a handsome little cottage. There was ivy and honeysuckle crawling over the banisters and wrapping around the pillars. She seemed to be immersed in a book on her lap, her hair falling around her face in scarlet waves.

Who was she?

There was a lot of light in the room. I moved my head a little to the left and saw the sky through the window…floor to ceiling window. I tried to lift my hand to block out the glare, but something held it back. There was something on it. Something small and fragile. And something else rather heavy lay on my arm. I glanced down.

Ella sat beside the bed on the floor, with her head on my arm and her little fingers curled around mine. Her eyes were drooping.

"Ella?" I said softly.

Her eyes shot open. She lifted her head so fast I feared she might have gotten a kink. "Mommy?" Her voice was hoarse from ill use.

"Yes, honey," I said, looking around. "Where am I? What happened?"

She stared at me, seemingly not able to believe her eyes. When she was sure I wasn't an apparition, she started shouting: "Aunty! Mr. Rodwell, Mr. Rodwell! Come here, please!" Tears ran down her face. "Mommy's awake! Please, come right now," she sobbed.

Grabbing my face with her hands, she pulled the cool cloth off and proceeded to place kiss upon kiss on my face. "Mommy, you're okay. I got you, Mommy. I am so sorry for being bad. I don't know why I did that. Mommy, please forgive me. Please." Drops of tears fell on my skin like a very personal rain.

"Ella, honey," I said, trying to get up. She was practically sitting on my chest to keep me down. "Honey, I am okay. I am not angry with you. Wha—"

Footsteps could be heard running down the corridor. At least, I think it was the corridor outside. I had absolutely no idea where I was, though I thought I could hazard a safe guess. The door was pulled open—with rather more violence than necessary. I couldn't crane my neck and see around Ella and I refrained from pushing her aside. What was coming would come whether I received it or not.

The first person to come in my line of sight was Mr. Rodwell, his face lined with something I dared not name. He looked down at me with his soulful eyes and it seemed there was a storm at sea. His hair was dishevelled and his shirt looked like it had been slept in. His hand twitched, as if tempted to come forward and touch, but he didn't. Stopping about a foot from the bed, he only looked, not moving and not saying a word.