The Secret World of Briar Rose(54)

“I didn’t ask you to sacrifice for me,” Elly said.

“And I didn’t ask to be your sister. I never wanted any of this. I never wanted you.”

Elly took a step back, as if Corin had taken the shard and sliced it into her sister’s chest. The girl features crumpled up on her face, the way they always did when she was about to cry.

Briefly, Corin remembered the day Elly was born. Her wrinkly face, her earsplitting wails. Slicked in blood, skin crinkled and wet in the oddest of places, her baby sister had looked disgusting. Corin had been six years old and resented losing her place as the only child. She’d hated watching their mother’s gaze slip away from her to Elly, making space in her heart for a new person, a parent’s love that would surely be rationed the same way food was. As Elly grew, Corin had kneaded the rolls in her sister’s legs like baking dough, poked at her crooked teeth, made faces at the odd creature that inhabited her life. Elly learned to walk, but kept stumbling over her feet. Corin had never tried to catch her.

“We can’t survive without each other,” their mother had said. “You have to protect your little sister.”

Now Elly stood, crying once more.

Corin remembered what happened next. She recalled it before the scene repeated itself in front of her. The seconds where Elly took a deep, trembling breath, before she let the words stab into Corin’s chest.

“I hate you.”

Elly ran into the darkness. Boots squelched in mud on Gyldan’s rainy pavements as Corin chased after her. Gravel-gray skies swallowed them back inside the sun-drenched jungle of Summerland. Corin watched Elly dart between trees and reached to grab her sister until quicksand gripped her shoes. Ankles stuck, her body fell forward, hitting a fresh sheet of snow. A blizzard roared in her ears as it turned the world white. Her eyes strained to see, barely making out the black spikes of Elly’s hair that ducked behind a castle formed in ice. As Corin got up, the snow melted to grass, stretching to endless meadows of green that sprouted wildflowers and camouflaged her sister. She barreled through a broken cottage, tore through stones and plastic furniture, chased after Elly through a winding maze of sunflowers.

Scenes morphed into one another. Seasons changed, the world continued turning, and still, Corin could never reach her sister.

Tears blurred her vision. It was bound to happen, ending up alone. She never understood how they always came back to this place. The cycle was the same. Talking turned to yelling. Loving turned to resenting. They didn’t know any other way to be together.

She threw her head back to the sky and yelled for the world to take them back, but she didn’t know where. Not to dreams or broken homes, not to any place where they had gotten along. As night descended, sunflower stalks groaned into limp postures. Their petals shriveled to brown and fell into heaps. Thick, woody vines wrapped around Corin’s ankles and pulled her deeper to the ground. She coughed out soil and rocks while her empty palms grasped for nothing. The harder she struggled, the deeper she sank. She clawed the dirt until her fingers turned raw and her nails went black.

Then a new voice emerged, one that stilled her into place.

“Don’t fight it.”

The sound had a familiar softness, one that brought forth a recent memory of ocean waves. From the corner of Corin’s vision, a small light appeared. A lantern dangled in Briar’s hand as she stepped inside the maze. The sunflowers slowly lifted, their heads tilting to one side.

Briar’s voice was gentle as she knelt in front of Corin, as if Corin had simply been lost. “You don’t need to run. Give in, and the sunflowers will take you where you need to go.”

“It’s not that easy,” Corin protested.

“You’re dreaming,” Briar said. “In dreams, you don’t need to make things harder for yourself than they already are.”

She set the lantern down and watched the tiny door swivel open. Her hand reached for the flame, cupping it gently in her palm.

“In the dollhouse, you said I was retreating into my dreams to hide. But you’ve been running away, too. Only, it’s been in the opposite direction.”

Corin’s hands tried clawing their way out of the hole, but as she sank, she could only think about who dug this hole in the first place. Was it Briar Rose who taunted her, or had Corin been the one holding the shovel, preparing her own grave?

“I felt your memories in the ocean,” Briar murmured. “I tasted you, and you were bitter. Like there was too much salt for the water to contain.”

The flame burned bright in her hand, charring the tips of her fingers. Briar held it gently, not wanting to snuff the fire out, even if it hurt her. Tears welled in her eyes yet refused to spill.

“But beneath the bitterness was something else. I felt like I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Your anger shielded me from it. I think that’s what it’s been doing all along.”

Briar extended her palm to Corin, holding the fire close. The flame raged on, a bright burning ball that was too painful to look at. Corin wanted to turn away, but woody vines wrapped tightly around her limbs, fixing her in place. Her eyes took in the light, and there it was, the grief that she had swallowed, burning her insides. The suffocating taste of shame dried her throat like ash, curling deep into her lungs, quietly eroding her broken heart.

This kind of pain was worse than anger. It told her that she lost too many people she loved, not from the cruelty of their world, but because of her own selfishness.