Page 46 of The Light Between Worlds

I sleep. I sleep and sleep and sleep. After so many nights spent dreaming, I think I might sleep forever.

Jamie comes. He sounds awfully low. He fumbles over his words, not knowing what to say to me. This was always Philippa’s job.

He comes a second time, tries again. He says bracing things, but I can hear the hurt in his voice. I know I’m being unfair. Of course I know. But I can’t see my way clear of these woods. I can’t bring myself to forgive my brother and sister for what they’ve made me give up.

The night after one of Jamie’s visits, I doze and watch the moon. Georgie’s not back yet, so I’ve got the room to myself. I sit and pull my knees to my chest, leaning against the headboard for support. The doorknob turns and I rest my chin on my knees. I don’t have the energy to climb back under the covers before Georgie steps in, and it’ll give her a lift to see me sitting. Footsteps cross the roomand a weight settles onto the foot of my bed, but when I look up, it’s not Georgie.

It’s Tom.

He catches my gaze and holds it with his own before I can look away.

“Get your coat,” he says. “We’re going out.”

Tom stands and leaves the room before I can argue. I’m not sure I could argue—it’s been more than a week since I’ve spoken. For a moment, I consider climbing back under the covers, making a shield of my bedspread to ward him off. But he was very decided and I haven’t got the fortitude for a fight. I shrug my coat on and slide my feet into a pair of boots, then let him lead me down the hall like a lamb.

Max and Georgie hover in the front hall and nod to Tom as we pass. They’re accomplices to this, though the whole thing has got Jamie’s fingerprints all over it. The door shuts behind us and we’re out in the night and Tom won’t let go of my hand. How does he know that if he did, I’d drift, silent across the hills, and never turn back?

But he doesn’t let go. He laces his fingers through mine for good measure and takes me out through the winter woods. I pay little attention to where Tom’s leading, watching my feet instead. These feet have carried me so many miles, out of our world altogether, and now here they are, bound to this place forever by forces stronger than gravity.

An owl calls from somewhere in the canopy, and the moon sails across a sea of paper-thin clouds.

I let myself be led until I realize where we’re going, but by then it’s too late and we’ve already come out into the clearing. The white birches ringing it are pale and lovely in the moonlight, and tremble a bit in the breeze. I can hear them whisper—can almost make out their living voices. In any other world, their spirits would step out onto the frozen ground and dance.

But in this world, all they can do is sigh their wordless secrets. Tom lets go of my hand for the first time and I shrink between the trees.

Tom sits at the clearing’s heart, but doesn’t gesture to me or ask if I’ll join him. Instead, he leans back on his hands and looks up at the night sky.

“Jamie came to see me,” Tom says. He’s almost handsome in the moonlight, sitting in the clearing like a knight in a fairy ring. “He said you lost something, and that you don’t like to talk about it to other people. He told me everything reminds you of it, and that sometimes it gets to be too much. This is the second time he’s hinted without actually coming right out and saying what it was.”

I slide down to sit at the base of one of the birches, hidden in shadow. Tom runs a hand across his face and suddenly looks very tired. He swallows—I can see his throat work—and hunches his shoulders before speaking again.

“On April 7, 1942, my brother, Charlie, turned eighteen. He signed up for service on his birthday. He was happy to do it—Fred, the oldest of us, was nineteen and had already been in France for months. We had letters, cheerful letters, from them both, and Uncle Morris pulled some strings to get them into thesame unit. After that, it’s like they thought nothing could touch them, so long as they were together. I worshipped them, Ev—they were everything brave and good in my world.”

I’m still as a stone, arms wrapped around myself to hold my breaking heart in. These stories always end the same way.

“On April 7, 1943, Charlie’s nineteenth birthday, one year from the day he joined up, we had a visit from the army. My brothers were both killed in action in Libya. There wasn’t enough left of them to bring home.”

Tom turns to look at the shadows that hide me, and his sea-grey eyes are wistful. “We’ve all lost things we love. But it does no one any good if you lie down and quit. I think you’ve got the courage for living with grief, Evelyn Hapwell—in fact, I know you have. You walk like a girl out of a fairy story, and you see beauty in things that others overlook.”

He scrambles to his feet and crosses the clearing to my patch of shadows. “I’ll give you a hand up if you let me walk with you.”

For a moment, I just look at his outstretched hand. Then I take it and let him pull me to my feet. Once I’m standing, Tom Harper wraps his arms around me, and I’ve never felt so safe in this world before.

“I’m sorry about your brothers,” I say, and Tom holds me a little tighter.

“So am I. But we don’t do the dead a service by refusing to live.”

“I’m not a girl from a fairy tale, you know,” I mumble against the wool of his knit jumper. “Never have been. I’m afraid I’m just Evelyn Hapwell.”

Tom rests his chin on the top of my head, gently, and we might have been made to fit together. “I happen to like just Evelyn Hapwell a great deal.”

I am neither a child of this world nor the Woodlands, and Cervus will never call me home. But I know, after all these years, what I need to do.

33

I PRETEND TO BE NORMAL. I SIT IN CLASS AND HALFlisten. I sit in the dining hall and pretend to eat. I do the things I know will make Georgie feel better—tidy up and comb my hair and set my clothing out every evening just so. I lie in bed watching the moon scud across the winter sky, and it feels like winter inside.

Max stops at my desk one day just as Lit class ends. The other girls file out and I try not to look at her, because I haven’t heard a word she’s said since I walked into the room. Once we’re alone, she sits at the desk opposite mine.