Excerpt: The Weight of Two Worlds

Once we turned away from the road and started towards the actual wood bridge, that was when my hearts started clawing its way out of my chest. I tried to think of something else: of Jesse coming to get us, of what Hawk was going to do when we were gone, of Judah’s hand still holding mine and the confusing feeling that I didn’t want him to let go. But all of that paled in comparison to the fact that this was the place. That we were going back and it was so much worse than coming back to Duma or going through the worst of my nightmares. This was where the nightmares began. The worst of anywhere.
I didn’t think I’d ever have to go back here again. When I started to hear the river running slugglishly beside us, I nearly stopped breathing, and Judah asked me if I was cold, because I was shaking so bad.
But when the streetlights actually cast their shadow on the lonely, desperate, abandoned form of the wood bridge, I stopped walking, and I nearly threw up all over Judah’s feet.
“Tamar,” he said quietly. “Tamar, are you okay?”
My vision of him was blurring slightly, being replaced with other faces—faces that were laughing joylessly, and faces that were dying. The dark riverside starlit in my mind, just yards from the bridge, just yards from where we stood. This place was haunted; it was filled with ghosts, not the least of which was the terrified ghost of a girl that used to be me.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, and I closed my eyes. That didn’t help, though, because it was all still there.
Judah’s hand touched my face, and he said my name again.
I opened my eyes and I was staring into his. I kept them there; he wasn’t a part of the scene I couldn’t help remembering. His face was imperfect but pure, and that was all I needed, just something solid. Something purely unassociated with my nightmares.
“Hey, it’s all going to be fine,” he assured me.
“Well, now it is,” I breathed. “It’s the past that I’m worried about.”
Judah pulled me over to the side of the bridge, where the others were standing. I tried to ignore the presence of any sort of bridge, and especially ignore the sound of the river, and just focus on his face. If I could do that, I could make it, and then Jesse would be here and I would be fine.
Claudi put a hand on my shoulder, and I looked over at her for a moment and tried to smile into her concerned eyes. Her face was good, too.
“Are you frightened?” she asked.
“It’s just the place,” I told her, my voice rather shaky as I admitted it. “I’m fine.”
And I was going to be fine. Just so long as I could keep staring into Judah’s bright eyes, shimmering in the darkness. There was a deepness in his eyes that I could lose myself in, something clear and pure and powerful. Something that could maybe calm me, even in the midst of my very worst fear, my deepest weakness.
I didn’t want to think about what that meant about me. I didn’t want to think about what it might mean about him, either. I just stared, and that was what was so calming about it. I didn’t have to think. It wasn’t really the place, so much as thinking and remembering. My mind was what haunted me. So long as I was staring into Judah’s eyes I was losing it, and that was perfect.