Free The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan Page A

story.”
    I can feel every grain of sand pressing against my skin. I feel as though I used to be one giant whole and now I’ve been shattered to pieces and scattered into the night. There’s nothing strong enough to pull me back together again.
    She leans toward me in the darkness, the absence of stars and light. “You’ll always be my daughter, Gabrielle. You’re the daughter of my heart.”
    Her words strike like a fist against my chest, a brightness exploding inside me. I had another mother once. I belonged to someone else. Another woman used to comfort me. Another mother used to hold me when I cried and laughed.
    I close my eyes. I try to remember her. I try to remember another life, another voice, another smell. But I see nothing.
    I can’t remember any of it now. Only one thought begins to grow inside me, edging past the confusion and rage. “Who am I?”
    She puts her hands on my feet, my legs, crawling to wrap her arms around my shoulder. I want to tear the feel of her from my skin. “You’re my daughter. You’re Gabrielle.”
    “But I was somebody else once!” I scream the words, needing her to understand that she’s taken everything from me.
    “No. You’ve always been my little girl.” I can hear her tears in the way her voice quavers. She draws in a shaking breath. “That’s what my mother used to call me. Her little girl. That’s what she said to me when she …” Her voice fades into the waves.
    I press my palms to my eyes, disbelief and anger and confusion warring inside. “I was someone else’s little girl first,” I say, every muscle in my body pulling tight. I push away from her and stand up, the wet fabric of my skirt sticking to my legs. I stomp through the water in a tight circle, kicking against the salt spray, wanting to pull the world apart piece by piece.
    “You were alone in the Forest,” she says. “There was no one there. I looked. You were starving and barely even conscious. You were only four or five years old! You didn’t even speak for a month after I brought you back and even then I wasn’t sure you were going to live! You could barely even tell me your name!”
    I stop pacing. I stare at her. “My name?” I ask, dazed. I have nothing from my life before, not even something as basic as my name? I take a deep breath but I feel as though my lungs can’t hold the air.
    “This … Gabrielle … it’s not my name?”
    The moon is barely crouching over the horizon but even so I can see the pale echoes of it against her face. She looks both old and young at once and I wonder how I could have ever thought I was her natural child. My hair is blond, bleached almost white by the summer sun and hers is black, now streaked gray with age. Her skin is pale and mine is tan, her eyes dark where mine are light.
    But who grows up challenging their own mother’s claim on them as a child? Why would I have ever thought I’m not who my mother told me I was?
    She pushes herself up and comes to stand in front of me. “You kept saying something when I asked you but I couldn’t understand,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t tell me anything. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “Why Gabrielle?” I ask. It’s the only thing I can focus on as I try to reorder every memory of my life. As I probe the truth of everything my mother has told me.
    My mother steps back, her mouth slightly twisted, as if she’s surprised at my question. “She was a girl I knew when I was your age,” she says slowly and quietly as if she can rebuild this bridge between us. “She was from the Forest like you, but no one knew where. And I was the only one who knew she’d come from the Forest.” Tears drip from her eyes. “She is the reason I escaped from my village. She is the reason I found the ocean.
    “Listen, Gabrielle, I’m sorry.” She reaches for me but I step out of her grasp. “Please,” she says.
    “No!” I shake my head. Too much is crumbling around me.