Dancing With A God

Chapter 8

Mama ?" Questioned Aaron in a broken voice, woken up with tears drowning his red eyes by the gently hand stroking his forehand and singing a lullaby he had heard before.

"Not hun. It's Mary." The other voice responded in a hushed voice, crying also but more silently than the boy.

"Mama . . ." Pleaded the young boy, shivering now with the thin shirt he had over his bony shoulders. " Am cold . . ."

Mary held even tighter the small boy against her chest, her own tears wetting the brown hair of the boy. She was sad, she was exhausted, but she had to keep strong to protect the boy of her best friend.  But outside the children in the orphanage, she had no experience at all on how to take care of him.

Oh she wish that the house had never taken in fire, she wish that Elizabeth was still alive. She wished everything had went another way. She wished many, many things to have gone differently but she knew that destiny had made their future that way for a reason.

Only happiness could await us,  thought bitterly Mary as a freezing swish of wind came and make the boy whimper in fear.

"Mama !" Screeched the young boy as coldness crept under his clothes, gripping his sore muscles, his blue hands and feet. Aaron was freezing and yet he could do nothing except plead for his mother to come back.

Because mummy cannot die, he mused, denying the truth he already knew. 

And there was Mary,  crying as she damned herself to not be able to give her friend's son a better life. But she wasn't rich in that era, she had never been, and since she had appeared in that Londkn she didn't knew that well anymore,  everything went downhill.  And now that she had to protect the boy, she couldn't go to work and then she couldn't win any money. The result of that was,  they were starving. 

It had been days since food hadn't melt inside their dry mouth, hours for water.  Mary was forced to look inside bins and once,  and she had once - because Aaron had begged for at least a soup - stolen inside the pocket of a man.

But Mary wasn't skilled to live in the streets and survive at the same time. Since the time she had arrived, she had had the luck to have Elizabeth by her side, helping her out. Only, a fire started at the house of her friend and killed her in her sleep, taking away her life without letting her say goodbye to her son.

"Mama . . ." Started the boy but Mary hushed him instantly.

"I am not your mother Aaron. Please, do not mix me with her."

The boy stayed silent.

"Would you wish me to tell you a story hun ?"  Wondered Mary with a smile who hadn't come to her face since a long time. 

The boy nodded, silent but with a spark in his blue eyes.

"Then I shall begin." Started Mary with a true smile plastered on her face and her voice failing to be hard. She had finally found a way to  pass the time in a less dreadful way and the coldness would be a faint memory when they would both be in the story. " Rosalinda was a child of five. She had rose and fat cheeks and a grin always there on her warm face. She was  a true doll, catching the look of anyone staring too close at her fresh green gaze. Her parents, fair people who loved them more than any treasure in the world, would cut her golden hair at the waist. Rosalinda was the happiest little girl in the world, even after her parents went away as angels,  the people she loved caring for her more than anything.  But she was a child and so, sometimes, she would be unhappy about some things such as going out in the cold and the snow.  Therefore, a certain Quinn would always be there to save the day and calm her down. But that Quinn wasn't alone. She had her best friend, Sasha, always with her, by her side, to help her. Rosalinda had the fullest and happiest life in the orphanage. The mornings of her birthdays, she would climb the tall trees without fearing to be grounded, she would roll down the hill on the tummy, making her clean clothes into filthy hag. And rarely would the warden of that orphanage, Miss Marsh she was called,  would get cross with her. But what made her even more merry was when Quinn would come to her bed at night and storytell her until she got to sleep.  Her favorite story was the "Heidi" by Johanna Spyri. Often she would tell to whoever wished to listen that she wished that she lived on the top of the tallest mountain, where snow fell in graceful snowflakes in winter and where the sun would heat your skin in summers and where she could wake up in the early morning with the sound of the dog bringing back the sheep's.  But Rosalinda knew with referent that she would not live such a life as long as she was in the orphanage and that saddened her. Luckily, the friends she saw as older siblings would always be there to cheer her up."

Mary stopped for a moment, taking back her breath but stroking still the cold head of the boy seemingly sleeping on her lap. Even with the knowledge that it was no use to continue her story anymore, she desires to continue as it made her remember all the good times she had before arriving in 1959.  She wished she had an even better memory to see even brighter in her mind the faces of her friends.

" Rosalinda was a little girl of six, as adorable as always, when Quinn died." She couldn't go on, Mary realised with a thump in her heart. She couldn't go on with her story because she didn't know what happened.

It had been six month she was gone, six months Quinn died in that car crash and lived again in another time under the name of her mother.  Six months she was almost enjoying living next to Aaron . . . Could it be possible that someone in the time she was born in missed her ?

Deep in her thoughts, Mary didn't notice that the little boy she held in her arms was awake.

Missy talks like grandma but she is little . . . Can she be an old girl ? Aaron mused with a faint smile on his lips before falling back to sleep.