Free Texas Born by Judith Gould Page A

like
fragile spun glass . . . always threatening to break.
    For what seemed an eternity, she had been
swinging from one trapeze to the next. She was terrified that her
weary, blistered hands would miss one of the bars. That she would
lose her balance and fall into that bottomless inferno.
    Her father's familiar face was contorted into
an unfamiliar horror, and bits of his nose and cheeks crumbled
away, showing the charred skull beneath.
    She tried to scream, but no sound would come
from her throat. And then, with a terrible searing pain, the fire
flared against her body. . . .
    Her eyes snapped open as she awakened,
trembling violently, uncontrollably.
    She drew a deep breath and glanced around,
trying to orient herself. After a moment she could feel herself
begin to calm down. She was no longer in the nightmare world. She
was at Auntie's—and everything was all right.
    The house was dark and unearthly quiet, and
right away she knew she was the first one awake. All she could hear
was the sharply whistling wind outside and the creaking of the
house. She didn't like to be the first to awaken, because she
didn't like the stealthy sounds of the night. She wanted to wake up
to comforting sounds—to muffled brisk footsteps moving about
upstairs, to the muted chatter of voices, the scraping of chairs.
But at this early hour she had only smells to keep her
company—smells of aged wood and musty walls and clean laundry . . .
the exotically fragrant odor of herbs. It was a disconcerting,
overpowering medicinal odor that wafted down in stifling waves from
the tangles of dried herbs hanging upside down all over the
ceiling.
    She shifted in bed and sat up slowly, looking
around timidly, her eyes wide as saucers. It was not completely
dark and she could make out the shapes around her: from between the
curtains, a chink of silvery moonlight fought its way into the
room. Winter moonlight it was, cold and icy, and somehow that was
comforting. Warm sunlight, yellow and red sunrises, flaming
sunsets—those were things that frightened her, reminded her all too
clearly of the . . .
    She forced herself to swallow and tried to
shove the awful memory aside. But her throat felt dry and clogged,
and it was difficult to make the memory go away. It was always
there, if not lurking in the front of her mind, then worming
restlessly somewhere in the back, constantly trying to wiggle its
way into her consciousness. Anything could trigger it and push it
forward. Anything at all.
    She leaned sideways and reached for the thick
green glass tumbler of water Auntie had left on the bedside
cabinet. Holding it carefully between both hands, she took a sip.
The glass felt smooth, and the water was cold and refreshing. She
licked her lips and set the tumbler down. The patchwork quilt had
fallen to her waist, and the chill air bit through her flannel
nightgown.
    She shivered and quickly lay back down,
pulling the quilt up around her neck. For a while she stared up at
the dark ceiling.
    She wished she could go back to sleep. This
large rough-hewn room made her feel tiny, lonely, and frightened,
but it had been the only unused room in the house. Auntie had
wanted to put her in with Jenny, but since Jenny had kicked up a
fuss, Auntie had put her in here. 'Besides, every young lady needs
a room of her own,' Auntie had told her kindly, trying to make her
feel better.
    Elizabeth-Anne glanced around the room. It
was actually a storeroom, where Auntie kept all her herbs, staples,
unused furniture, and anything else that was not used regularly or
which she wanted to keep out of sight, and there was something
disconcerting about it. The big heavy pieces of stored furniture
loomed threateningly, like mute giants, and in the midst of it all
was Elizabeth-Anne's bed, a huge, towering spiral- posted bed with
a lumpy horsehair mattress. When the house had been built, the
plasterwork had been stenciled with primitive green leaves and
yellow thistles, but they had long since faded