The room spun for me, alive with whispers.
“The wish they granted. They kept her daughter alive?”
“Yes. They did. Her name was Lillian.”
Lillian.
I saw a sobbing child’s face, arms reaching out as she cried for her mother. I knew her face. I knew the way her hair fell around her cheeks. I knew the touch of her tiny little hand.
She was so real. As real as the girl under the trapdoor, screaming to be heard.
“Don’t fight it,” Hans told me. “Let it come, but take it slowly. Soul trauma is a difficult one to bear. Yes. You’re thinking of Lillian. The girl you are seeing is Lillian.”
I felt like a deer smashed by a car, waiting in pieces at the side of the road to be put out of its misery. I was done with coaxing. I didn’t want an easy road to the truth, I wanted it short, sharp and fast, no matter how dangerous.
“Just tell me, please,” I managed to whisper, holding back the retches. “What happened?”
His eyes were piercing. “You know what happened. You were there.”
I shook my head on instinct, the trapdoor crying out. Was I also the girl with the tiny little hands, trying to keep hold of her mother?
No. I didn’t want to be!
I didn’t want to see her. And I didn’t want to feel her pain. And I didn’t want to feel the devastation in her fragile little body as her whole world got torn into pieces.
Hans gave me a moment, staring at me but not demanding. I was on the edge of a cliff of understanding, but all I wanted to do was back away.
Be sure you want to know the answers to questions before you ask them.
I’d messed the fuck up on this one.
“Was I Lillian?” I asked him. “I was, wasn’t I? Just tell me. I was Lillian, wasn’t I? Oh fuck, Hans. So much pain.”
My lip trembled. The memories crept in from deep, strumming my heart with their pain, and they were going to suck me up, suck me in, leave me in pieces…
The side of a lake surrounded by people. Ropes and jeers and splashing.
And Lillian, the little girl crying out for her mother.
I hated the hurt in her eyes. It was so real, I could reach out and touch her, but my hands were locked. Bound together.
I wanted to make it better.
I struggled against imaginary bonds at the breakfast bar, battling so hard that I knocked my water glass over to smash on the floor. I got trembles from my feet, shuddering all the way up my body, and I could feel Lillian’s screams piercing through my heart.
I kept struggling against my bound wrists, and the trapdoor was pulsing so loud that it hurt my skull.
“Don’t fight it,” Hans whispered, but I was still shaking my head.
The side of a lake surrounded by people. Ropes and jeers and splashing.
Jeers…
WITCH!
DROWN THE WITCH!
Lillian crying, arms reaching out in desperation for her mother.