Read Online Shadow Borne by Angie West - Free Book Online

head, I hardly ever recalled what I'd been like before the
abduction and later the war. Softer, definitely, and trusting.
Cripes had I been a trusting soul. But it was all done now, I
shrugged and snuggled deeper into my cocoon of covers. Life had a
funny way of twisting and turning, weaving paths you'd never in a
million years envisioned yourself treading. Sometimes the changes
were slower, less noticeable, like a rock being gently worn away by
the stream. Other times, like the past couple of years around here,
it was more like an ambush. So many changes...I had been taken and
the war had begun, was still going on; I even had a full repertoire
of curse words now, thanks to Claire.
    Claire. I owed her big time. For my freedom
and for friendship, my new vocabulary and...lacy underwear. Lots
and lots of lacy underwear, I grimaced. Well, I probably wouldn't
thank her for that particular gift anytime soon. The bras were
mostly okay, but I still couldn't figure out what I was supposed to
do with some of the panties, although Claire insisted they were
supposed to go up there.
    Yeah. Right. I snickered. Not happening. But
I knew I wouldn't throw them away; to do so would hurt Claire's
feelings and she had the habit of rifling through my drawers and
closet whenever she came over. My fingers tightened around the top
sheet and comforter and I rolled onto my stomach, still wrapped up,
to stare out the window with my chin propped against my folded
hands.
    Every now and again the moon would peek
through the thick layers of gloom and the clouds would become wispy
enough to let a little bit of light through. Lying in the cool,
quiet dark took me back to happier times. Well, not exactly the
cold, but the silent, moonlit night...oh yeah. I curled my hands
under my chin and let my head rest so that I was staring idly at
the striped pattern painted on the sheets by the light filtering in
through the slatted blinds on the window. I began to drift into a
peaceful solitude as I recalled my years as a young girl, deep in
the forest with my mother and a plethora of cousins and aunts and
uncles.
    Life had been so sweet and sheltered, there
under the protective dome. My mother and I had lived with her
oldest sister, my aunt Ingenia, in a little house that wasn't so
very different from this one and I used to lie in my room just like
this and watch the moonlight throw patterns onto my bed through the
flowered curtains Mama had made for me when I'd turned
thirteen.
    Thinking of my mother was usually enough to
drag me into the light when I was feeling unsettled, even though
Ilsa had been gone from this world long before I'd become a grown
woman. She died quietly in her sleep two weeks before my sixteenth
birthday.
    Aunt Ingenia and I hadn't even known that
she was sick, or rather, if she had been sick. For years it had
bothered me to not know exactly why my mother had passed away. And
as if I hadn't been heart broken enough, over that next year I'd
also become paranoid. If someone like Mama, whom everyone agreed
had seemed as hearty and whole as the next woman, could be taken
like that, in the blink of an eye with no warning, who was to say I
wouldn't be next? Or aunt Ingenia? Maybe even Juliette or Tara or
any of the others?
    Some days I'd even wished it had been me
instead, because it didn't seem fair that Mama should lose first
her husband then her home and finally her life. In my sixteen year
old mind she'd never had a chance to fully recover from the blows
life dealt her; never got the chance to live out her happily ever
after and if anyone had been deserving of a happy ending, it was my
mother.
    Never mind that I couldn't recall her ever
seeming unhappy in the years leading up to her death. That
understanding would come years later, when I learned that fairy
tales were complete bullshit and there are worse ways to go than in
your own bed, warm and safe and blissfully asleep.
    The clouds finally lifted. The stripes of
light had stopped dancing across