Life After Life

•C h a p t e r S e v e n•

S U M M E R: 1 8 5 4

"We must leave, now," Noah pulled on my arm again, his voice shaky. I tore my eyes away from his hard ones.

"But-but Noah, he needs help," my eyes were now trained on the boy. He pleaded us with desperate eyes, eyes that looked so tired behind the desperation.

"Please don't hurt me," the boy finally spoke up in a quiet, low voice. He squirmed and shrunk under Liam's stare.

Even if he was from a warring country, he was still a boy. For all we knew, he did not have anything to do with this war. Governments went to war and fought with one another, and yet it were the citizens who suffered the consequences.

Who would I be if I did not help even with the chance to. Where would my humanity have gone if I turned a blind eye to this.

Noah looked between the boy and I, his expression twisted in conflict. A long moment had passed with Noah avoiding my eyes.

Finally, he sighed, "Fine, we will help."

I beamed, "Thank you, Noah. You can go get some clothes for him while I stay here."

"No," Noah immediately shook his head. He gripped my hand tightly in his. "I will stay, you go. Get him anything, food, water, clothes."

"Okay, don't go anywhere," I met Noah's eyes one last time before I left. They were certain, unwavering and I had felt comforted to have him there with me, so I didn't have to do this alone.

I hurried back where we came from, my hands clutching onto the fabric of my gown to prevent myself from tripping over.

Father's manor was not far from the beach and it only took about ten minutes to get back. I ran down the quiet streets, accompanied only by the sound of my shoes smacking against the ground.

I snuck back into the manor and began making my way to the kitchen. It was dead silent and pitch black, with only the moonlight to guide my path.

I grabbed a few loaves of bread that sat on the table and stuffed them into the pocket bags within my petticoat. The kitchen was empty besides the bread that I had taken. The servants were supposed to go out tomorrow to fetch groceries.

I cursed under my breath, realizing that I would not be able to get clothes for the boy without sneaking into Mother and Father's room to take some of Father's old clothes. All the shops were also closed for the night. Noah definitely should have been the one to have gone to get supplies.

Sighing, I snuck back out of the manor, my hands tracing the walls to ensure that I was going the right way. My hands landed on the brass knob of the main doors and I slipped out of the manor, shutting the main doors silently behind me.

I ran back towards the beach as fast as my feet could take me, ignoring the stinging pain in my feet from my heels. They pinched my toes and rubbed against my ankle.

In record time, my feet made contact with the cold sand again, only to see an empty beach.

Both the boy and Noah were nowhere to be seen.

My eyebrows knitted together as I glanced around, but my eyes could only see miles and miles of an empty ocean and white sand. The moon now created an eerie glow that sent chills up my spine.

"Noah!" I called out to an empty beach. My own echo was all that answered.

Fear crept in as I thought of the worst possible events that could have happened. They could have drowned in the ocean — but I knew that was impossible, Noah knew how to swim, unlike me.