Another scene from a different work-in-progress. I’d love to know your opinions!
From miles away, incandescent light glowed from the City of Glass. Beautiful, glittering light sparkled in the inky blue-black twilight. A horse detached itself from a carousel and galloped into the dark, leaving a scintillating gilded trail shimmering behind him. The horse was as black as midnight with golden constellations on his back, desperate to leave his post.
No one was around to see except the young girl who hid behind a twisty and gnarled tree. She did not speak but watched as the bars that had speared the horse separated. The horse had wriggled through and the girl continued to stare at the gold glittering in his wake. She thought she should warn someone in the city, but even here, even now, she had no voice.
It felt like the horse was seeking freedom, and the girl understood the need for freedom, too. But her voice was empty. She had no words.
Under the hollow of the moon, she opened her mouth and screamed. The scream was the only voice she had. And the scream separated the City of Glass and the carousel horse from where she lay, thrashing in a bed.
The shrieking awoke her younger sister who was only a few feet away. She ran to her, bridging the distance. “Evelyn,” the silent girl’s sister cried out, shaking her. She continued to throttle her sister to wake the girl, to stop the screaming.
Tears flowed down both sisters’ cheeks but for vastly different reasons. When Evelyn awoke, her hazel eyes were unfocused. The horse, the horse, she thought, but the words would never come out.
Ella knew better than to expect Evelyn to speak. Everyone did. Yet Ella stared, expectant, hopeful.
But then, as she watched, Evelyn’s demeanor changed. She began to gasp, to clutch at the thin air, clenching and unclenching her fingers. Evelyn’s face paled, the color of paper in the dim moonlight. She lunged forward, grasping at nothing.
Ella gnawed on her lip, helpless. Frightened.
Then, as though all the life-wind had been sucked out of her, Evelyn collapsed backwards on the thin mattress, shuddering. Her frail chest rose and fell. Ella couldn’t help but think how fragile her sister looked. How weak her bones.
At Wyndhurst Academy, the other children often kept to themselves, and that autumn night as the wind whipped against the shutters and the rain pelted the roof, as the girl tossed and turned, they slept. Or at least pretended to.
Ella, Evelyn’s sister, crouched beside her sister’s bed and stroked her hair, coaxing her back to sleep with a quiet lullaby. As Evelyn started to lightly breathe again, Ella pried her sister’s hand open. The fist she had formed held something. Not empty as Ella suspected.
The fingers parted contained a ceramic horse as black as midnight with golden constellations on his back. Its painting was slightly faded, yet Ella was transfixed.
Where had the carousel horse come from, she wondered, and why was Evelyn clutching it like it was a dead man’s treasure?
Isabelle Palerma 