Dark Stars by Danielle Rollins (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

Richer. Ash reached through the haze of his brain, struggling to remember the word.

Blue. That’s what it was. And not just blue, but purple, too, and deep, bloody flashes of red. The colors swirled around each other. The longer Ash stared, the more color seemed to be woven in the whorls and tendrils of darkness that was his entire existence.

Here, there was a flash of orange. And, there, a curl of pink. Pinpricks of light flashed deep within the black and, for a moment, they made Ash think of stars. Dozens, and then hundreds, and then an entire galaxy waiting for him.

A deep rumbling echoed from somewhere inside of his mind, and then the stars all winked out at once, like they’d never been there in the first place.

Time tunnel, Ash thought, relaxing. That’s what this reminded him of, of being inside the anil. If he was inside the anil, then everything was going to be okay. He’d always felt most at home inside the anil.

He relaxed and, as he relaxed, images of his life began to appear in his mind, there and then gone again, like the flash of a camera:

He was young, small, and running. He could feel the blood pumping through his chest and down into his legs, his lungs expanding and contracting beneath his ribs. The sun was hot on his shoulders, and, all around him, there was the swaying brown and yellow and green of corn. He was racing through the cornfields behind his parents’ house, and it was summer.

On days like this, he always felt like he could run forever. . . .

And then the memory changed: He was sixteen, and it was his first day at flight camp, and he was standing before a group of soldiers, all of them older than he was, scowling and confident. They made him nervous. He figured they must’ve grown up around planes instead of corn and dirt. He pictured them climbing into the cockpits of their jets like young princes mounting fine steads, coaxing them forward so easily he’d think the planes were living, breathing things. He felt shame climb his cheeks. They were all laughing at him, he knew, joking that he treated the fighter jets like they might bite. . . .

And, again, the memory changed. It was night now, and Ash was asleep, but a man had grabbed his arm, shaking him awake.

“My name is Professor Zacharias Walker,” the man said in a deep, vibrating whisper. “I’m a time traveler from the year 2075. If you’ll accompany me for a moment, I can show you my time machine.”

And again.

Ash was in a dirt clearing, surrounded by trees, the air filled with the sound of church bells. A girl stood in front of him, barefoot, wearing a wedding gown with a hem stained with mud. She was the most beautiful girl Ash had ever seen, with skin like porcelain, a small, rosebud-shaped mouth, and brown curls cascading around her shoulders.

The church bells stopped, and the girl forced her mouth into a practiced smile.

“Actually, I was hoping you might be able to help me,” she said, tilting her head. “I appear to be lost.”

Ash felt his lips move. “Excuse me for saying so, miss, but it looks like you meant to get lost.”

The girl smothered a grin.

And then the images were fading, swirling and disappearing into purple and blue walls and distantly twinkling stars. . . .

23Dorothy

JUNE 7, 1913

Dorothy stood, frozen, at the back of the chapel, nerves crawling up her skin. There were a dozen pews before her, all of them filled with people who had turned around in their seats to stare. They’d been expecting pretty dresses, flowers, a bride. Not the dirty girl who stood before them, with her white hair and scarred face. She watched as brows furrowed and lips twitched into frowns, confusion breaking out across seventy-five faces at once. Whispers erupted like tiny wildfires, first one person leaning over to her neighbor and then five people, all speaking in hushed undertones, and then, not a minute after she’d thrown the doors open, the whole chapel was talking at once.

“Who is that?”

“—could possibly be doing here . . .”

“Anyone recognize her?”

An anxious smile jerked across Dorothy’s face. Move, she told herself. She took a single step forward, her legs so stiff she thought she might trip over her own feet. Go on, it’s easy. Just put one foot in front of the other.

One step became two, and then three, and now she was walking down the aisle, her eyes straight ahead, pretending that nothing was wrong.

Charles waited at the front of the chapel, a quizzical expression on his charmless face. Dorothy had forgotten that he looked like this, not unattractive so much as terribly, almost frightfully boring. All his features were just where you’d expect them to be, his nose nose-shaped, his eyes a particularly flat shade of brown and set just exactly the right distance apart from one another, his hair was not too long and not too short and parted in the center. It was the sort of face you started forgetting before you’d even managed to look away.

He didn’t seem to recognize Dorothy until she was standing directly in front of him, and then he blinked, twice, and said, only, “Oh.”

“Charles,” Dorothy said, in a rush, “I’m afraid there’s isn’t time to explain—”

“You look so . . . so different,” Charles managed to say. He tilted his head, studying her like he couldn’t quite place what about her appearance had changed. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and lightly dabbed at his upper lip. “What on earth has happened?”

Dorothy was suddenly, painfully aware of the priest and the groomsmen standing nearby, listening to her every word. In the background, the string quartet played on, bravely. The whispers had died down somewhat, everyone waiting to see what was going to happen next.

Dorothy leaned a little closer to Charles and said, in a low, urgent voice, “Charles, there’s a boy in the clearing just outside. He desperately needs your