by Sharon Sant
Slowly, slowly, impossible coincidences were beginning to present themselves to Elijah, things that couldn’t be, yet the truth was staring him in the face. He needed to ask the next question but didn’t dare. Sky glanced at the other two, a worried expression on her face.
‘I don’t suppose you know what her name was before?’ he almost whispered.
‘Tessa’s? I don’t think… hang on, I’ll ask Margaret.’ Before he could stop her, she had shouted down the hallway. ‘Margaret, what was Tessa’s name before you adopted her?’ There was a brief silence.
‘But will she remember?’ Sky asked doubtfully.
‘Oh yes, she remembers things like that wonderfully. Lives in the past you know.’
The faint voice travelled up the passageway, carrying the name like a sigh on the wind. Elijah had already known what it would be.
‘There you go, Thackeray. I knew it was something funny, a writer or something. So, where you lot off to now?’ the woman asked.
Elijah had stopped listening. His world crashed down around him as meaningless words echoed in his ears. Suddenly, everything that had seemed so solid in his life, the very fabric of who he was had changed. The absent mother, who had become, in his mind, a symbol of everything he had longed for, was nothing more than a fickle, feeble-minded temptress, happy to abandon children as other people abandoned their rubbish. His father was a child snatcher who would go to any lengths, who would separate siblings and subject him to a life of ignorance just to get back at the wife who had left him. And Tessa, the complete stranger who had saved his life by chance – she was his sister? The evidence had been there, right in front of his eyes. If only there had been time to ask her about her past. But even if there had been time, he would have been too wrapped up in his own concerns. It seemed to him now that they had both lived their lives as pawns in someone else’s games, and if only fate had been less cruel they could have found solace with each other. Now he was alone again.
He stumbled out of the door and into the bright street, where he leant against the wall of the house with his eyes closed.
It all made sense. Life was no sequence of random events but a carefully planned series of coincidences destined to mock him. Everything - the mugging, the dead man buried behind an old stone house, the skeletons at the mill, the river, Pierre’s betrayal, Sadie at the camp, The Vanishing Woods, Braithwaite – these events had conspired to send him on a journey which had culminated with the cruellest moment of irony in his life so far. He had found his sister; his life should have been whole again. Instead, he had lost her on the same day. And on some level he had already known who she was all along. Had she known him?
‘Elijah?’ Jimmy put a hand on his shoulder.
Elijah opened his eyes. ‘I’m ok.’
‘It must be a shock.’ Sky took his hand.
Elijah let her lead him away from the tired terraced street and they found a low wall to sit on, overlooking the sea in the last rays of the setting sun. The evening light glittered on the ocean as it gently lapped against sea wall, tiny diamonds scattered over its dancing surface. Rowan and Jimmy tactfully disappeared with a small book of tokens, surreptitiously given to them by Xavier, to get something to eat.
In the distance Elijah could now hear whooping and celebrations and raucous singing. He and Sky saw people rushing all around them, bestowing strangers with elated hugs. They overheard someone say that the war had ended. It was strange; something that should have elicited jubilation in them barely rated a perfunctory comment.
‘That’s good isn’t it?’ Elijah said, as if someone had just given him ten out of ten for some homework.
‘Are you ok?’
Elijah stared out to sea, blinking at the dazzling sun, now slipping below the horizon. ‘I think so. It’s hard to make sense of it, that’s all. I had a family, right there, and now… I’ve got nothing again.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Blood isn’t always thicker than water.’ Her words became a whisper and she leaned closer.
‘Blood, water… what are you –’ He never got to finish.
She kissed him. Then the vision came, more powerful than any before, pulled through Elijah’s head. It was bright and beautiful, washing away bitterness with hope. He opened his eyes and regarded her quizzically.
‘Is that going to happen every time we snog?’
Sky smiled. ‘I don’t know. Why don’t we check?’ She reached for him again. This time there was just the kiss, as glorious in its ordinariness as the vision had been in its strangeness.
They were silent. Then, Elijah asked, ‘What about Scotland? It’s so far…’ He wasn’t sure how to phrase the request, but maybe the best way was to simply ask. ‘Will you still be here when I get back?’
Sky shrugged and smiled. ‘It’s only time and space. We’ve tackled bigger.’
Elijah gazed at her. The orange sun, now low in the winter sky, cast a rosy glow over her delicate features, setting her hair ablaze in copper light. Elijah saw the truth clearly for the first time. He had all the family he needed already; people who wanted to help him through the dark times that his life would inevitably bring. They had found him in a crumbling shopping precinct and already saved his life in so many ways. Sky reached for his hand and covered it with her own. Perhaps he had been missing the point. What if every moment in his life had been preordained for another reason? And what if she was sitting right beside him?
Also by Sharon Sant:
Sky Song (book one of the Sky Song trilogy)
The Young Moon (book two of the Sky Song trilogy)
Not of Our Sky (book three of the Sky Song trilogy)
The Memory Game
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharon Sant was born in Dorset but now lives in Stoke-on-Trent. She graduated from Staffordshire University in 2009 with a degree in English and creative writing and is now pretending to research a PhD in literary studies. She currently works part time as a freelance editor and continues to write her own stories. She is an avid reader with eclectic tastes across many genres, and when not busy trying in vain to be a domestic goddess, can often be found lurking in local coffee shops with her head in a book. To find out more you can follow her on twitter: @sharonsant or find her on facebook: you can also go to her website: www.sharonsant.com
Runners © Sharon Sant
E-edition published worldwide 2015
Kindle edition copyright Sharon Sant
All characters and events featured in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any person, organisation, place or thing, living or dead, or event or place, is purely coincidental and completely unintentional.