Eve: A Novel by Wm. Paul Young Read Free Book Online Page B

LEANING OVER her as she opened her eyes.
    “Why did you wake me up?” she snapped, groggy and miffed that her dreaming had been interrupted.
    “I didn’t.” His expression revealed his confusion.
    “Oh,” she mumbled. “Good morning, then.”
    Under the marble-blue ceiling, John looked around and then back. “Actually, it isn’t morning. Late afternoon, maybe?”
    “Already?” She turned her neck as if looking for proof.
    “Well, look at you!” John exclaimed. “Incredible progress. All that emotional activity this morning seems to have freed up some movement between your spine and head. That’s a sign I’ve been told to watch for!”
    She tried it again. The shift in her muscles was barely noticeable.
    “Now, you be careful!” he said. “It might be tempting, but this is no time to overdo anything. We will now begin the work of removing the apparatus that has immobilized you.”
    “What sort of apparatus?”
    “Well, I told you that when I found you, you were very broken. In order for the Menders and Healers to work their kindness, we asked the Crafters and Builders to create an apparatus that would keep you completely immobile and allow them access and time to repair you.”
    “So what happened to me? What is wrong with me?”
    “Your neck and back were fractured, each in several places, among many other things. We found you in frozen stasis. It’s probably what kept you alive.” She could tell he was watching his words, perhaps sensitive about divulging too much especially after the cascade of emotions only a few hours earlier.
    “Wait.” A series of questions were coming into focus. “How long have I been here, like here here? In this room?”
    John paused, looking up, calculating. “Approaching a year.”
    “A year? I’ve been here almost a year?”
    “Yes, almost.”
    “Where did I come from?”
    “We have not ascertained that exactly, but from somewhere on Earth certainly.”
    “From Earth? You mean this isn’t Earth?”
    He shook his head earnestly.
    “So where is this . . . this island I’m on?”
    “It’s in an ocean you’ve probably never heard of. It resides in awrinkle between worlds, between dimensions. There are many such places.”
    “John, that’s craziness.”
    “I’m sure it seems that way.”
    “Has anyone been looking for me? Does anyone . . . care that I’m missing?”
    John looked away. “Not that I am aware.”
    A new kind of fear gripped Lilly’s thoughts.
    “A year? Really? Is there a way for me to go back . . . home?”
    John cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.
    “Lilly, all of this must be confusing and frightening,” he offered. “I don’t begin to understand the depths of what you are feeling, but I am deeply sad with you.”
    “John, why am I here? I’m nobody.” Her throat ached, her eyes closed, and her mind was in disarray. Without any solid memories, she could not tether any of this to something solid or real. All she had were scattered remnants of recollections that came to her in bursts. She had the dreams, but if she told John about them, he might think she was crazy. She wondered why it mattered to her what he thought, but it did.
    “Lilly, you are not a nobody,” he said firmly. “As for clarity about your coming, that will be revealed in God’s timing. You seem tired. Perhaps we might continue this later?”
    “No, we aren’t done! Don’t you dare leave!” she demanded, eyes still closed.
    He waited.
    “Whatexactly have your Healers and Menders been doing to me?” She rode the edge of rage.
    “They’ve been reconnecting your spinal cord to your brain and reattaching, um, whatever needed to be, uh, reattached. Things like that.”
    “What needed reattaching?”
    With a sigh, John told Lilly that only one of her feet was original to her body. The good news, as John put it, was that her new left foot was female, a detail that made the truth no less grotesque.
    When she had been found, he explained,