Dancing With A God

Chapter 9

" Move !" A voice screeched.

Mary lifted with the very few energy she had left her bony head and stared at the man.  She held Aaron tighter in her arms.

"Haven't you heard me ?! Move !" Repeated the man and he started giving her kicks with his wooden cane, hurting her sore stomach, making her moan in pain but still staying still.

"Are you stupid ?! Or are you a John ?! John's are just as stupid as you !"

Mary didn't move, didn't talk, but she was burning in rage. Was it being an idiot being so weak you couldn't do as told ? They were homeless people, he was a wealthy man. Surely he could avoid them or go on a larger street...

"Father !" Scowled a voice and Mary didn't look at the person. Surely someone new to humiliate her, using her poverty as a reason.

"Step back Eileen ! They surely hold the same illness than the John's !"

The girl sighed as if she already had the same chat with her father before saying in a calm voice : " Father, they are . . .  Oh my !"

She stepped closer to them, gasping in horror at the sight of the child in the arms of the girl. Merrithew crouched down,  and tried to touch a glimpse of the hair of the sick boy.

Mary turned around, her back facing the rich woman.

"Dear, I am a doctor and your child is sick." She exclaimed in a calm voice, therefore worry on her face.

"We are okay !" Mary screeched in deny,  terrified that someone would snatch little Aaron from her.

Seconds passed slowly, the ticks of a watch deepening the atmosphere, sights from the man and a crunch of fist from her daughter. And Mary, shaking with cold and fear, held even tighter the one she saw as her son.

"I am the doctor Eileen Brown and I swear that we will do no harm." Suddenly stated the woman in a stern voice, frowning and bending in her knees even more.

Mary looked up, inquisitive but still wary of the situation. She had failed Rosalinda, she couldn't do the same with the boy. She didn't wish to.

But then, she remembered something by staring at the concerned face of Eileen Brown.

It wasn't the first time she heard that name. And it surely wasn't the first time she saw those furry eyebrows, those grey eyes, those thin but red lips.

And suddenly, Mary knew.

The events of one year ago.

She had been so much involved in her life that Mary had begun to forget who she was at the start.  The last night, she thought that 'Mary' was her birth name and 'Quinn' only a memory. 

And she had forgotten her silent promise to the mother girl who died, killed by mercyless monsters.

Having to take care of a child had made her lose her mind. She had believed her own lies, she had believed that she had belong to the world in the nintenees.

But she didn't.

She just died in the world she belongs to, killed in an accident. But her mind stayed alive.  And for a reason she didn't understand, it had Wang in the past and she had met the Levi family. She had met Elizabeth and Aaron.

I was enjoying a life who wasn't even mine... She though, startled.

"Take him." She said to Eileen Brown, the one living in 1962. "Take him and heal him. I'll pay you by offering my aid to your house work."

The woman looked genuinely confused, staring back and forth towards the young  girl sitting on the wet ground and the unconscious boy in her arms. Finally, she asked  : " And you ? Why won't you come ?"

"Because a drunken mob broke my leg. I can't move." She grimace in a sight and Eileen's sigh drifting to the floor.

The sight she saw was heartbreaking and she wondered how she didn't notice it before.

She had hidden her pain to protect her child, She mused with a sad smile. 

"If you wait for me long enough, I could help." She offered.

"Heal my boy before. I wish him not to die." The other respond, losing her grip over the waist of the child.  "Me is another thing."

Eileen nodded, told her ruff father to take the boy in her arms and with a promise she would come back, they went away in utter silence towards the light of the Main Street.

The girl who stayed in the darken and narrow avenue stared at the place where they held, she open and close her fingers, trying to grasp something invisible now.  She cried at the loss of the child she had given to that woman she has never met before. And she dried her tears, telling herself that it was for his life.  But it hurt in her heart even when she knew that the boy wasn't even hers. But it broke a little more her mind already shattered. Living in the streets with barely enough to survive and with someone else not even in age to work was hard, even more, impossible. Mothers would sacrifice themselves for the survival of their children. But she wasn't a mother. She was only a girl, at the very least, a sister for the ones at the orphanage.

An orphanage she had forgotten.  Orphans she didn't remember. Rosalinda she didn't have the same love for. Sasha for who she had lost her attraction. Miss Marsh with who had been more like a close friend than a guardian.  The ruins of the town where she had lived for the first years of her life.  The promise she had made to herself to avenge her parents. 

She had to fulfill it. She had to find the god who was only a mere human to her eyes. She had too for the memory of her parents and to protect her little Aaron.  Her boy couldn't grow up in a world who could be destroyed at any moment.

And so she stood up, shaking. She cried some more, whipping.  She tried to walk, moaning.

And then she fell. On a rock. And died.