Forsaken Dreamscape (Nevermor) Read Online Free Page A

the floor.
    “It
has been nearly two years since then and he still hasn’t come for you.”
    “Sometimes
it’s hard for him to remember things,” she repeated more forcefully, even
though she thought she’d made that clear.
    “You
don’t have to defend the boy, Wren,” Witherspoon said calmly, shaking his
head.  “The answer is simple.  You have grown up and he has not.  Yet perhaps
you have a point: you should allow yourself to forget about him as obviously he
has forgotten you.”
    Wren’s
eyes rounded like moons at this assertion.  As many times as they had talked
about it, how could he even suggest this?  Though her fear of outgrowing Rifter
was very real – that he would cast her away because she had broken the Vow –
she could not embrace the idea of life without him.
    “No,”
she told him bluntly, her voice as level as ever.  “I could never give up on
him.”
    Witherspoon
leaned back, staring at her a moment before rubbing his eyes beneath his
glasses.  She wondered what he was thinking, but guessed that she knew.  He had
found hope in her once – perhaps the only thing that kept her here – and he was
losing it.  She wondered if she ought to be worried, but it was fleeting.  She
had determined long ago that she had to keep up appearances here.  That was her
only hope of survival.
    “That
will do for today, Wren,” he said.  There was a sigh in his voice – a note of
despair – but she could not be concerned.  All she had to care about was
herself.
    Wren
waited patiently as he scribbled in his final notes of the session, and all the
while she sat, rigid and still, staring at his shadow.
     

Chapter
Two
    1
    Wren
peered into the cage, watching the birds hop from perch to perch.  They seemed
content enough, even though they were locked away behind steel bars that would
not let them soar.
    Yet
if they were free, there would be dangers for them , Wren knew.  Perhaps
it is best that they are caged.  Behind these bars, they are protected.
    The
inmates were allowed to enjoy the birds, but were quickly chastised if they
tried to open the cage doors.  Still, Wren often reached her fingers through
the bars to feel the soft feathers as their warm little bodies darted past. 
They were flickers of life in this colorless place.  The birds talked happily
together and none of it was directed at her.  She didn’t have to respond.
    Two
years ,
she reflected.  Two years in this cage .  The irony of her name had made
her sigh helplessly on more than one occasion.
    Wren
stared at the birds now, absently watching the blur of their colors as they
swooped by.  Across the room, a few female patients were staring into adjacent
cages – some muttering quietly, some licking their chapped lips.  Sometimes
they tried to open the doors and grab the birds inside, but there were always
nurses nearby to scold them.  They were constantly supervised as if they were
children.
    We
are not children.  We are like the birds , Wren mused.  All of us are birds,
cooped up together.
    Wren
lifted her eyes through the cage to peer across the room, observing those who
shared the ward with her.  The girls housed at the asylum were of different
kinds and from different places, with assorted coloring and breeding.  Some of
them had been normal in the beginning, but years of confinement had broken
them, and even the improvements to treatment had not been able to fix their
tangled minds.  Others were just on the verge of slipping away – like herself –
while a handful or two were complete, raving lunatics.
    There
was Trudy, for example, who screamed every night about the wolves in the walls
– who had tried to cut into another girl with a razor to expose the secret
monster inside her.  Trudy had always been that way, since her first day here. 
She was no worse, but not yet improved.  There were a few others like Trudy,
but there were also more docile types that had never been meant for a place
like