Page 95 of Joy Guardian
The longer I stared at the face of this grown woman, the clearer the features of the child I knew and loved emerged. A huge smile spread on her face, further sealing the resemblance.
“Are you…Is that really you?” I felt like I was losing my mind with reality morphing into a dream. “But how is it even possible? Dawn is only twelve.”
“Wastwelve,” she corrected. “I was twelve when you were taken. Which was thirteen years ago. I’ve grown since. I’m twenty-five now. Which actually makes me older than you. Crazy, huh?” She smiled again, spreading her arms wide and finally releasing me from her embrace.
“But it’s been just over two months…” I muttered.
The longer I looked at her, listened to her voice, and watched her expressions, the more familiar she became. It was Dawn. As a grown woman, not the child I knew, not the girl I left behind just mere two months ago.
“Oh, right.” She slapped her forehead. “So, you don’t know?”
“Know what? You mean about the time travel and the River of Mists?” I recalled Kurai explaining it to me. Back then, it all sounded like an abstract concept.
“That part.” Dawn nodded. “The River of Mists doesn’t always drop you off in the same place and time whereit takes you from. So, when the shadow fae kidnapped you, then came back four weeks later to get me, they actually landed in our world thirteen years later. Their shadow tunnels allowed them to return to the same time and place here, but only as long as they used the same portal to leave and return. Does it make sense?”
“In theory, maybe. But in reality…” I shook my head, struggling to believe my own eyes.
My cousin had lived for thirteen years out there somewhere in the world that had only aged two months in my mind.
“It’s incredible, isn't it?” she agreed. “We all came here about a month ago.”
“So they took you too?”
“Yes. Apparently, the shadow tunnels do it sometimes, they end up in the same place they’ve connected to before.” She sighed, her expression darkened. “Thirteen years later, the shadows came and took me, and Melanie, and?—”
“Melanie? Is she here too?”
It should sadden me that both my little cousins had been taken from their home—and it did. But my heart also leaped with excitement at having family close by again. Selfishly, I was glad to have them here with me now. Their presence in this world made the hostile Alveari Kingdom feel more like home.
Judging by Dawn’s expression, however, she didn’t share my excitement.
“Shewas,” she said somberly. “Melanie went back.”
“Back to the human world?”
“Yes, she was one of the few who managed to return. You know Melanie.” she smiled. “My sister always had determination to get what she wanted.”
“She went back…” I repeated.
My thoughts shifted like pieces of a moving mechanism in my head, rearranging into different scenarios.
“I hope she’s okay, but I fear I’ll never know what really happened to her,” Dawn said.
“Wait… I may know that. Or something close to it…”
I pulled out the paper bookmark that I had taken from the temple. I’d put inside my bra after the bath earlier tonight. Because unlike in the queen’ssarai, here Jetti gave me a full dress, a bra, and real underwear to wear.
“I found it in the Temple of the First Priestess. It’s an impression of an engraving of the original text. See what it says?”
“It’s in English.” Dawn blinked in confusion, studying the bookmark.
“Yes. Read it.”
“‘Don’t be afraid, Dawn,’”she read. “‘After a storm always comes peace. Melanie’ Oh, my God. That’s my sister’s handwriting…’” Her voicebroke off with a sob. “What…what does it mean? Is it a message? From her? But how?”
She stared at me, searching my face for answers with those huge, mismatched eyes of hers that made me think of home. I had nothing but assumptions to give her. I hoped the assumptions were true, but I wasn’t going to lie to my cousin.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Did she write it, then leave it at the temple while she was here?”
