Forsaken Dreamscape (Nevermor #2)

Chapter One

Though she had been caged like an animal, she was thankful to have been ignored.  She’d kept quiet and let herself blend in, and while some of the other inmates might occasionally keep too close or try to eat her hair, Wren knew there were worse things in the world.  She had seen some of them with her own eyes.

Here, the creatures in the dark are of a different sort.

Wren had dealt with what she was given, relieved to still have her life after what had happened at the orphanage, telling herself every day that this trial would not be for long.  Rifter would not abandon her.  He would come.

She had held onto that belief, but it had begun to slip over time.

As in Nevermor, time seemed to have no relevance at the asylum.  All of the days blurred together into masses of vaporous nothing.  There was no hope of gaining and no fear of losing.  Her existence spun like wheels in mud.  Though she could not quite say when it had happened – after weeks, perhaps months of being locked away – eventually the quality of her life within the asylum began to change.

Overcrowding had become a problem, and it was decided that the ranks of inmates should be thinned.  Some were to be sent off to distant country asylums, and Wren had feared being taken to another place.  She’d wanted to keep herself constant until Rifter had found her.

As fate would have it, she got her salvation in the form of a doctor named Witherspoon, a logical man with an intelligent forehead and deep-set eyes.  While the directors had been sorting through the patients, he’d become interested in her story, insisting she stay close.  Though she was not quite ignored any longer because of him, things got a bit better for her after that.

Wren was put into her own individual space.  Though it was merely a small cell, she was glad for the solitude.  She was allowed to take walks outside with the others in an attractive courtyard surrounded by high walls.  An aviary was added within the ward, where the songs of cheerful birds could uplift her.  The condition of the hospital was much improved.

Still, she avoided association with the other women there.  Some of them were wrongfully accused, just as she was, but the last group she had told innocent stories to had wound up dead because of her.  She could not let it happen again.

I will not let anyone else be ruined because of me.

As Wren rested there on her bed in the cramped cell, the night gradually turned into a dismal, gray morning.  Wren listened to the noises in the deep, echoing halls around her as the asylum came to life.

The birds in the aviary were chirping with the morning light, at peace with their lives of captivity.  Doors were opening and nurses were talking, wheeling in squeaky carts of breakfast and medicine.  Other inmates awoke in their cells, some louder than others, meeting the day with scattered emotions.  Still, Wren saw no need to stir.  She was tired and weak, but still a long way from rest.

She lay there until her usual nurse, Mary, brought in her breakfast on a dingy plate.

“Alright now; sit up and eat up,” the woman said, wheeling the cart toward the bed.

Mary was a plump woman of around thirty, who looked much older around the eyes.  She was always the same – her hair tightly wound, dressed in her uniform of a long black dress and white apron, topped with the typical white hat common to those sharing her profession.  Wren did not think poorly of her, but felt that the woman had an oddly shaped shadow.

Wren had seen Mary every day for months, yet there was never much warmth between the two of them.  They never engaged in small talk or even shared much eye contact.  For Mary, it was strictly business, and Wren didn’t have much reason to converse.  She was unfit to talk to.