Shadows Falling: The Lost #2 by Melyssa Williams Page A

passive, I asked her where my family was. She eyed me warily but obliged me by falling into one of her strange trances. It was as though she talked in her sleep when she did this. (I’d seen it before when villagers came to her to ask their futures. I would duplicate it later, faking of course, during the sideshow when it was my turn to tell fortunes). She murmured about a place called Italy, a villa near the sea, and a number: 1571. Why hadn’t I gone with them when they left? I didn’t know, but I certainly meant to find out. She had enough truth in her visions to know that my family was gone for good, and that hopefully she’d lose me in the same way someday. I never paid too much attention to her mutterings until I woke under that table in India; then I knew I really was something special.
    Traveling again, leaving Bedlam, was bittersweet. I knew I had left Solomon behind for good, and there would be no reconciliation. I would never see him again. If I traveled to the future, he would be dead. If I traveled to the past, he would yet to be born.
    I woke in a cornfield. A little boy, younger than I by a couple of years, was staring at me. He was sitting cross -legged and chewing on a piece of straw. He barely blinked when I opened my eyes. We stared at each other. Finally, he spoke first.
    “ My pa don’t like no hobos, even if you is a girl.”
    “ I’m not a hobo,” I said. I didn’t know what one was, but I was certain I wasn’t. “Who are you?”
    “ None yer business. You better scat!”
    “ I don’t have anywhere to go.”
    The boy sighed. He had an old man ’s sigh, deep and full of years. “Fine. Come home with me if you want, but you ain’t gettin’ any food.”
    I brushed off my dress which was really just the hospital’s old dressing gown, my knobby knees sticking out, and followed him. I was barefoot, and I kept stepping on hard rocks and prickly weeds. We moved through the cornfield like it was a maze. I hoped he knew where he was going.
    “ Ma ain’t gonna like you neither,” he said.
    “ Why?”
    “ She just won’t, that’s all. Where’s yer family?”
    “ I don’t know. Dead, I guess.”
    He nodded and plucked a fresh weed out of the ground for chewing. “You sure? Cuz I don’t want them showin’ up, too. I’m gonna get in enough trouble just bringing you home with me. I don’t need no scrawny brothers or sisters or nuttin’, okay?”
    I was silent.
    He stopped and sighed again. “Okay?” he repeated, slowly, like I was a dumb animal.
    “ I don’t know what that means,” I mumbled. My English was good enough, but I didn’t know this word. His accent was so strange.
    “ What? Okay? It mean, you know,” he paused. “Well, I don’t know how to explain it! You not from around here? You talk funny.”
    “ I do not. You do.”
    “ Fine. Anyway, we’re here.”
    I stopped short and stared. It was a s mall house, dingy white. There were three huge dogs chained up to a tree and a bony woman sitting on the porch, shelling peas. There was a rundown automobile nearby (though I didn’t know what in the world it was at the time. I’d never seen a car). There was a naked baby playing in the dirt, and a girl about fifteen was swinging on the gate. She stared at me and quit swinging.
    “ Who’s that, Daniel?” the woman asked, warily. “Who are you, girl?”
    “ Rose.”
    “ What do you want? We ain’t got nothin’ to spare.”
    The boy, Daniel, looked at me triumphantly. “I told her so, Ma. She don’t listen.”
    “ Then she’ll fit in real good ‘round here,” the girl on the gate said. “Nobody listens to nobody here.”
    The mother gave her a look that could have curdled cream. “Pipe down, Louise. Go get yer dad. It’s time for supper. We ain’t got nothin’ to spare,” she repeated, turning back to me.
    “ I’m eatin’ at Bobby’s, Ma. You can give Rose my share,” Louise said over her shoulder as she left.
    The mother sighed as she got up from