The Ruby Dream by Annie Cosby Read Free Book Online Page B

question for diviners and prophets. I’m told there
are doctors across the ocean that learn skills I can only dream of, but, alas,
I was born on the Amethyst Coast.” He paused, and I used shaking fingers to wipe
away the tears that had finally come. “Whether his spirit has left his body, I also
don’t know,” he went on. “But I’m of the opinion that he will wake and live until his stupidity leads him down a path from
which I cannot help him.”
    The opinion of a man who
had studied medicine should have meant something to me, but tonight it didn’t.
All I could think about was what Wyn’s ghost would look like.
    “If he’s alive, when will
he wake?” I asked.
    Jan shrugged. “Soon, I
should imagine.” And despite the wailing of the boy’s mother in the next room,
the doctor’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “Though the body sleeps, the spirit has
ways of knowing when there is something to wake up for. Give him something to
live for.”
     

     
    When my eyes dragged themselves open, I was
laying bent over the bed, my arm, warm from sleep, entangled with Wyn’s
lifeless one. My thumb rested on his old burn wound, long healed and utterly
familiar.
    Felix slept at our feet and
the house was unnervingly silent. I wondered why I hadn’t been woken and taken
back to my own bed. Injury, illness, or not, it was highly improper for me to
sleep beside Wyn. Or so Sarah and Maisie had begun to say as we reached
adolescence, and were no longer allowed to fall asleep together.
    A piece inside me nudged
sideways, knocking against my heart, yearning for those times when things had
been simpler. When I wasn’t scared of The Great and Mighty Voyage. When I’d
looked forward to it, cuddling up beside Wyn. Vill would come home and wake us
from our nap to tell stories or run around outside on summer nights. Sarah had
been less of a worrier then, Maisie happier and more apt to smile.
    I crept over the creaky
floor to Wyn’s bedroom door and peered in. Maisie and Sarah were sound asleep
on top of the navy blue quilt of the skinny bed, the younger woman tucked
protectively in the older woman’s arms.
    I smiled sadly to myself.
As long as they slept, I could be with Wyn. But once I went back to the chair,
the sight of the stitches threaded through his skin made bile rise in my throat,
a tidal wave threatening to spill over. And when I rested my head on the downy
mattress, I couldn’t sleep.
    Worry and unanswerable
questions tangled in my chest and my neck began to ache, as though my ruby
weighed a hundred pounds. I would have no more sleep tonight.
    What if his spirit has already left his body? Or what if his leg
never heals? We can’t go on The Great and Mighty Voyage if he can’t walk . Maybe it’s for the best. Just as long as he lives. I can’t go on and
live here, forever in mourning, where his presence would haunt my every –
    Haunt.
    The Haunted Wood.
    I dashed toward the little
cottage’s front door and opened it slowly, squeezing through as small a hole as
possible. I sprinted for the woods, only pausing when I saw the spindly,
ghostly white tree. It glowed like the moon. If Wyn’s spirit had already left
his body, if ghosts were real …
    There were too many ifs,
but my world had been shattered into a million glistening pieces and I couldn’t
just stay sitting in that chair in the cottage. I had to do something, so I trudged into the tendrils of fog that threaded
between the trees. I wished I’d gotten my questions for Pat Manor answered
– about his wife’s ghost, what to do, how to find them. Because I was at
a loss. Not just on how to summon a specter. But on how to continue with my
life.
    Without Wyn, I couldn’t go
anywhere. I wouldn’t have the nerve to leave him behind, crippled or … worse.
But I also wouldn’t want to stay with a mere shadow of the Wyn I’d once known.
The sheer thought of it hurt my heart. My foot caught on a tree root and I
stumbled, but I climbed back to my feet and walked on.