But she forgot all about it when the blackness started to fade.
And a world formed in front of her…eyes.
Her eyes.
Mary made a choked noise that seemed to echo in the dome of her skull.
Were these…colors?
There was one that was slightly different than the usual darkness she lived with. Lighter. It formed a wall. Yes, a wall. She reached out and touched it, determining what it was by the texture and sturdiness. Eagerly, her gaze traveled upward and saw something hanging on the wall and a huge, gulping sob broke from her lips. This hanging cloth was a different color. A color so bold and striking, it was a wonder it didn’t make a sound. Was it red? Was it blue?
Mary’s heart boomed like tiny explosions in her chest, her fingers reaching up to touch the bright hanging cloth, tracing the outline of something black on the soft surface.
And then she spun around she gasped, falling to her knees.
She could see.
There was too much to look at, so much her stomach almost emptied, body trembling with enough force to challenge her balance.
The voices were still there, too. Tilda and an unknown man, his timbre somehow bored and sinister at the same time. Where were they coming from?
Did she have to investigate now?
She needed years to marvel at everything in front of her. Her hands flew to her dress, gathering the hem in a shaking grip and lifting the series of shapes and colors high so she could devour them all. Flowers? The dress had flowers on it? And her skin. Her hair. She’d been told what she looked like before, but the descriptions hadn’t registered until now. Hadn’t made sense. Her hair was the color of the wall hanging, though a slightly different shade.
When moisture dripped onto the hem of her dress, she realized she was crying.
No. Sobbing.
Every breath was wrenched from her throat.
Pinpricks harassed her nerve endings.
She turned in a circle and saw an open door, the sky beyond and she walked toward it in a trance. The sun had set…just like back in Buckhannon…but these things hovered, all different patterns. Clouds. They had to be clouds. And their backdrop was glowing in such a magnificent way, she slapped a hand over her mouth and wailed into her palm.
There were trees below—she identified them by the whooshing sound they made in the breeze—and the ground was down there, too. Was she on a balcony? Or a roof?
For the first time in her life, Mary turned and walked back into the stone structure, putting one foot in front of the other without worrying about what lay ten feet ahead. Or even fifty. She could see. I can see. Fire flickered on the walls and even those flames were glorious in a way that defied explanation.
The rug beneath her feet was a riot of colors and patterns and she ached to get down on her haunches and study it for hours. To sit there until she could name every stroke of beauty, every shade, every design. But there was a lead weight forming in her stomach. Dread. Having her sight was more incredible than she could have fathomed. The freedom and confidence it gave her to move around was like an aphrodisiac, making her lightheaded and giddy.
She was supposed to be in the Impala with Tucker, though.
She’d been taken. Brought here, either mentally or physically, and she would never get answers if she got lost in the ability to see. So she followed the voices, her hands rubbing up and down her arms to alleviate the cold. Her steps faltered when something appeared in front of her face, moving and rolling and changing shape, but after a moment she realized it was her own breath pluming in the air and kept going.
The voices grew in volume as she navigated a series of hallways until they were right on the other side of a door. Just muffled enough that she missed every third or fourth word—but why was she hesitating to go inside when Tilda was there? Her own mother?
Squaring her shoulders, Mary opened the door and stepped into a room.
A large fire licked out of a hearth on one side. And were those…animals? Maybe even dogs lying curled up in front? They had fur, unlike the two humans in front of her.
Tilda was one of them, but she didn’t even glance in Mary’s direction when she walked into the room, continuing to speak in that aloof way of hers. How odd that Mary could hear her mother talking, but the meaning of her words didn’t register. They were just disjointed sounds that floated in one ear and out the other, the delivery of her mother’s words growing more and more unnatural by the moment. Loud, then soft. Then fast, as though she was being fast forwarded.