The Secret World of Briar Rose(7)
“We can’t survive without each other,” their mother had told her when Elly was born. “You have to protect your little sister.”
And she’d tried, hadn’t she? After their parents died, she’d kept Elly out of trouble, steered her away from open streets when the warplanes came, traded favors with other artists in the commune so they’d look after Elly while Corin looted shops during air raids. She threw herself into destroyed homes and threw fists at strangers who gave her broken ribs and black eyes while calling her a low-life thief.
That was what eldest daughters were supposed to do. Their survival was her responsibility, because she was born first.
“Hmm . . . I don’t think that’s the full story, Corin.”
A familiar voice echoed through the cavern walls. A young woman sat on a rock beside her, dirty chestnut hair strewn over sunken cheeks and black eyes. Her skin was summer brown, her mouth set in a hard line, the way Corin recalled her a year ago. The woman picked at dirty nails through her fingerless gloves, a matching pair to the set she’d gifted Corin when they first met.
“I don’t remember you being so responsible when I found you,” said the woman. “Or have you already forgotten?”
Great. Corin was so hungry she was hallucinating the dead. She clenched her jaw, trying to shut out Harlow’s figure, but ended up drawing the memory closer instead. Corin was barely a teenager when the artists found her beneath the bridge that spanned the river, her body curled around a shadowy recess where concrete jutted over the ledge. They’d tried getting her attention, but she couldn’t lift herself from the ground to tend to the dirty child beside her, couldn’t even bother responding to Elly shaking her shoulders and whining that her head was itchy from their filth.
They’d carried Elly across the river, while Corin had to be dragged like a corpse. They’d cut Elly’s hair and massaged soap into her scalp. After, they’d ripped pieces of bread and hand-fed Corin while she sat blank-eyed and silent.
Corin was twelve, and her parents had been dead for a year, and she couldn’t muster the strength to try anymore. It was easier to tune out Elly’s crying and pretend she was no longer a person, but a ghost.
“You were a wreck,” Harlow said. “Maggie told me your body was there, but your mind wasn’t.”
Corin hadn’t bothered learning everyone’s names those first few months, because they didn’t feel real. She saw herself living among them as if she were a distant entity, watching from above. There was her body, carrying tables along the riverbank, washing berries to share with the others. They were a group of ten to fifteen vagrants, some young, some old, and a few came and went throughout the seasons. Memories of her new beginning and acquaintances were a blur. They didn’t crystallize until the morning she woke to Elly and Harlow’s laughter, the two of them skipping rocks down the stream.
Seeing Harlow’s gentle gaze toward her sister, Corin had realized it wasn’t that she resented her parents for making her the eldest daughter. She just wasn’t cut out for it.
“I’ve thanked you countless times for everything you did,” Corin muttered to the empty space beside her. “But I’m better now, and I don’t need you anymore.”
She forced her aching bones to move, if only to ignore Harlow’s ghost. The flame on her torch was nearly dying, but she saw enough of a path ahead and touched the rocks beside her to feel the wide artery of granite. The passage covered with Elly’s drawings turned lower, forcing her to crawl. A rotten-egg smell struck her face, rank and pungent. The longer she crawled, the stronger the stench of decay wafted in the air.
Corin dragged her match across a rock and lit the torch brighter, raising it to the ceiling to illuminate the rest of the path only to discover she was no longer alone. Skeletons lined the narrow passage, draped in yellowed bones and ragged clothes. Her nostrils flared at the foul stench thickening the air, as if death had been sealed in a jar for years and she had twisted the lid open.
She buried the back of her hand against her teeth and muffled the urge to scream, letting it die in her chest. None of these people had made it. They could have been her. Or Elly—
No. Corin’s eyes scanned the dead, searching for details to identify her sister. The shape of her body, the jut of her bones, the fabric of her clothes. They did not match the bodies here.
“C’mon. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” Harlow said dryly. “Oh, wait. You weren’t there.”
Corin fought the urge to vomit as her imagination brought forth familiar bodies strewn across the rocks. She had not been there, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t picture it. Their hands tied behind their backs. Maggie howling like a feral animal whenever she was threatened. Rowan using his broad torso to shield the women. And Harlow, that damn stubborn rebel had who planned everything, shouting at the soldiers until gunshots silenced her forever.
Corin knew, logically, that this was not the same passageway where her friends died. The army had sealed the tunnels after their capture. She didn’t know what was worse: if she had been a rebel foolish enough to believe she could join her friends and stay alive, or being the coward who abandoned them to save herself.
She paced quickly in the tunnels, frantic eyes searching for familiar relics to identify her sister. Dehydration and hunger overshadowed her senses, turning her vision dizzy as darkness closed in. She kept seeing it: the wet mess of Harlow’s open skull. The white sheet of Maggie’s sunken face. Rowan’s stiff limbs, unable to shield everyone from the bullets. She stopped at someone’s foot, cursed the memories that kept flooding to her mind, warping the bodies in front of her. The tunnels shrank, the walls caving in from the corners. She couldn’t breathe. Faces blurred together, strange and familiar. Blue lips, sallow skin, maggots crawling beneath eyelids, digging into her skin.