Six Going On Seven Chapter 5 ~ Gone and Gone (Part 2)

Elly went into her room and waited till her mother went back to bed.

She doubted that Mom would be asleep, so she moved very quietly down the hall back into the kitchen.  There she stood a moment, listening for noise from the bedroom; the door opening, Mom coming out to pace around the house again, anything.  But all she heard was the gentle night noises of crickets and breeze outside and the leaky plink plink of the faucet dripping inside.

She moved to the door and peered out the screen, feeling the cool night air brush across her face.  There was nothing out of the ordinary to see in the cloudy moonlight, but Elly knew there was something that drew her mother to the door, and had drawn her outside two nights ago to sit on the swing and cry.  She thought she knew what is was.

Elly eased the back door open, breathing out a silent hush to the hinges that wanted to squeak.  The wooden stoop felt rough under her bare feet; she jumped lightly down over the step and landed on the grassless packed earth below.  Beyond that patch of dirt, the grass felt cool with wet night dew and she swiped her feet across it idly.

She’d been outside late at night before; sometimes just out of curiosity she’d get up and go exploring.  The stars were pretty in the dark, dark blue sky, and there was a tiny wooded area beyond the yard where nighttime animals roamed in an out — mostly raccoons but sometimes a deer cautiously made its way across the yards looking for gardens.  Elly liked the way the rustle of breeze through the leaves sounded different at night; what was just trees in the day was mysterious in the dark, like whisperings between unseen things in the sky.

She wandered to the swingset and sat down, trailing her fingers down the bumpy pattern of the chains.  I know you’re here, she thought, and looked up at the moon.  Wisps of cloud curled over the smiling face, but drifted free as she watched.  When she looked down the Lost One stood before her.

They stared at each other for a long moment.  Elly had never seen her so clearly before . . . only in glimpses and reflections in Mom’s eyes when she stole a hug.  But now she studied the girl, the child, her sister.  She did not look real; she looked like a too-perfect wax dollchild, or a mirror of what Elly knew herself to look like.  Her eyes were not a doll’s glass or reflections of Elly’s, though, and they didn’t belong in the still dollchild face.  Behind them lay depths of something so old it stopped her breath for a moment.  She had never thought about such things before; the lives of parents and grandparents were hard enough to grasp, but this . . . this went farther back, and she looked away.

“I thought you were my sister,” she broke the silence, studying the chain to her right.  “But you’re too old.”  She was met with more silence, and finally looked back, thinking for a moment that the Lost One had left her.  But the child still stood there, eyes boring into her.

We are the River Children, the eyes spoke to her mind.  We are the River; we never die.

Elly slid her hands off the chains and put her feet down, steadying herself.  This wasn’t what she expected.  The Lost One was the child that came before her, her mother’s lost child, the one she loved; she knew this.  It couldn’t be a river, it couldn’t be the wax image with the ancient eyes standing over her.

“What do you want?” she asked, pushing herself back slowly.  Her legs were braced against the ground, knees locked as straight as they could be.

This time the girl spoke aloud, to her ears not her mind, and the eyes slowly lost their depths.  It drained away, and then they seemed only empty and sad.  “You have my life.  Everything you have, I should have had.  Everything you are, I should have been.”

“Whadd’youwant?” Elly mumbled out her whisper, wishing the rubber seat wasn’t riding up against her back and keeping her from going any further.

“Save me,” came the reply.  “Save me, Elly.”

She blinked in surprise.  “What?”  She wiggled out of the swing’s restraint, lifting the seat up over her head.  She let it fall and took two steps back.

“You owe it to me.”  The mirror image of herself took two steps forward, passing through the swing as if it weren’t even there, the wax face unchanging, the voice a pleading whine.  “You’re living my life, you’re the firstborn, the favorite, daddy’s little princess and mommy’s little girl.  They should have been my parents.  I don’t have any parents.  I don’t have anything.”

“I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”  Elly kept backing away.  “You’re my sister, they’re your parents too.”

We are her only parents, her only sisters, her only brothers; she doesn’t live in your world, came the old voices in her mind again, the ancient things.  They lived beyond the eyes and looked out, mocking her, she felt; the little human child, young and afraid.  Elly stumbled over an unseen rise in the ground, sitting down hard, and went invisible.

“I can still see you.”  The child was unimpressed.

“I don’t know what you want me to do.”  Elly stayed put, holding onto grass and feeling the wetness of the ground seep through her thin nightshirt.

“You can do anything, Elly; do anything you can.”  Now the girl stood over her again.  “I don’t care if I live or die.  I just want to be free.  Please.”

“N-no,” Elly crab-walked backwards and struggled to her feet.  “I don’t like you anymore.”  She blurted, wiping her hands against her legs to knock off wet grass blades.  Her voice shook.  “You’re mean and you’re scary and you make my mom sad.  I don’t know why I wanted to see you!”

The Lost One seemed to hesitate.  She was silent for a moment, watching as Elly edged away back toward the house.  “But you can’t do this to me,” she said finally.  “I’m your sister, and you owe it to me.”

Elly was afraid to put her back to the thing that looked like a girl, so she kept walking sideways.  “I don’t know what you expect me to do!”

“You just don’t want to.  You want to leave me here forever.”

“I want you to go away, and leave my mommy alone.”  Elly felt small and cold all of a sudden, helpless against the things she could only sense behind the Lost One’s face.  “Just leave.”

The child put her hands in front of her face and Elly heard weeping sounds, though the vision remained completely still.  Not a tremble, not a shake; unreal.  “I want you to disappear,” Elly said harshly, and the night was empty.

She glanced around.  There was no sound but the rustle of leaves; all the crickets and night bugs had gone and hid from the Lost One and the ancient things, the River Children.  But they were gone, too, now.  Elly stepped back onto the rough wooden stoop and went inside, shivering a little.  In the kitchen she paused and tried to make sense of it all, but she couldn’t and soon gave up those thoughts.  She’d seen something she’d not expected all those times before when she caught glimpses of the Lost One and thought it beautiful.  Beautiful?  Where had that gone?  What happened to the rainbow?  Looking straight into the face only made her feel cold and afraid.  But she sent the fright away and it went, obeying the command: Elly’s command.

Maybe now Mom won’t pace and go outside in the middle of the night anymore, she thought.  She crept into her parents’ room and crawled onto the bed.  Mom wasn’t sleeping, and she turned over, startled.  “Elly . . . why aren’t you in your bed like I told you?”  She didn’t sound angry.

“I couldn’t sleep.”  Elly lifted the blankets and curled herself up in the middle of the bed.  “Can I sleep here?”

“Alright.”  Mom had been holding Dad’s pillow, and she put it down, tucking it under Elly’s head.  “God, Elly, you’re so cold.  Don’t you sleep with your blankets on?  It’s still only spring, it gets too cold at night to sleep on top the covers.”

Elly just shrugged, and let out an exaggerated yawn.  Mom pulled the covers up and settled down next to her. “Go to sleep, you silly kid.”