Forsaken Dreamscape (Nevermor) Read Online Free Page B

this.
    Clea,
with her lovely red hair, had been married to an older man who’d been very
jealous of her and had eventually become so paranoid of her flirting that he’d
sent her here as punishment, claiming incurable promiscuity – at least, that
was what Wren had heard the nurses say.
    Yes,
we are exactly like the birds.
    Wren
rested near the cage, her head on her arm and fingers outstretched through the
bars.  A young cardinal hopped down and pecked at her finger before
retreating.  She was languid now, wishing to drift away.  Through a dream fog
in her mind, she saw the face of a boy, distant but emerging slowly in her
memory.  She reached for him –
    With
a short gasp, Wren snapped awake, suddenly aware of a presence nearby.  She
lifted her eyes to see that another girl had approached her, looming now like a
crooked gargoyle on the eave of a cathedral.  Wren knew the girl’s face – pale
and homely with the sunken eyes of the abused.  Her name was Adele, and though
Wren had never spoken to her much, she knew something of the girl’s behavior.
    Adele
was of the sort that needed constant attention, and when she’d chosen a target,
she would not relent until she got the acknowledgment she desired.  She often
added the other patients’ problems to her own just for sport, and was an
annoyance to most who dealt with her.
    Seeing
that she was being focused on, Wren tried to appease the girl with a short
smile before averting her eyes, but she had known it would not work to send
Adele away.
    “You
talk to the fairies,” Adele said, chirping as happily as the birds.  “ I saw a fairy.”
    Wren
didn’t respond, unsure how she felt about the comment.  She had already talked
about this once today for the sake of appearances, and she didn’t want to go
into it again, yet Adele kept staring at her relentlessly with large, hollow
eyes.
    “It
was in my room, the fairy was,” Adele went on, nodding furiously to confirm her
tale. “It was black like a shadow, but it wasn’t.  It moved on its own.  It was
a boy !”
    She
giggled deliriously at that, covering her mouth and looking about to see if a
nurse had heard her, but Wren only wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a fairy
she had seen.  She wanted to turn her face away and ignore the other girl, annoyed
that she was being mocked.
    But
wait…  
A shadow?  A boy?  Could Adele’s conversation be more than a cry for
attention?  If she did see what she claimed, then…
    “What
did it look like exactly?” Wren asked lowly.  Adele seemed nearly overwhelmed
to have gotten a reaction.  She was positively quivering with excitement.
    “It
was a boy,” Adele confirmed again, sticking a finger in her ear absently.  “He
was hovering over my bed.  I watched him for a long time, but he didn’t move
much.  Eventually, he went away.”
    Wren
rose up, interested now.  She moved closer to Adele, lowering her voice to a
whisper in hopes that the nurses would not hear their conversation.
    “And
it was like a shadow?” Wren asked quietly, her heart beating faster.  “Did he
say anything to you – this fairy?”
    “No,”
Adele said hesitantly, ashamed that she had to admit it, but she perked up
again directly after, “but it did remind me of my dream!”
    Wren
felt her face grow hot, wondering what had brought on the flare until she
realized that she was feeling the heat of jealousy.  Did this girl deserve to
dream more than she did?  Was it possible that Adele had seen Nevermor when
Wren could not find it?
    “What
dream?” she asked firmly, trying to keep her focus on the girl’s darting eyes.
    Adele’s
face lit with pleasure.  “I saw an ocean – it was a black ocean! – and I
was walking along the shore.  I was alone, but then I saw someone and I went
toward him…”
    Adele
hesitated, looking past Wren as a distant look came into her eyes.  Her chest
began to heave with short, rapid breaths as she recalled it.
    “He
looked at me,” she