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Ginger Fitzgerald is seven years old and shaking in her bed.
“You okay, Ginge? Should I get mum?”
“No!” Ginger Fitzgerald is seven years old and scared, but she’s more scared of waking up her mother in the middle of the night and her mother seeing that she’s scared.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Brigitte’s voice is soft, understanding.
“No!” Ginger hisses back defiantly, then pauses. “…Yes.”
“What happened in it?”
“I was alone,” Ginger whispers. “We were out somewhere and I got lost. Couldn’t find mum or dad… or you… Nobody looked familiar. I started… crying.”
Ginger Fitzgerald is seven years old, nearly eight. She’s a big girl. Big girls don’t cry, and they certainly don’t admit to crying to the sister who’s a year younger than them, but the room is quiet and dark and Brigitte’s voice is soft. Soft enough for confession.
“That sucks. I’m sorry, Ginge.”
Ginger tries to go back to sleep, but every time she shuts her eyes, the blackness behind her eyelids swallows her – she’s back on that empty plane, alone, and she needs to open her eyes to reassure herself that Brigitte is still there, that she’s not… helpless. She gets scared every time her eyes cannot help but shut.
“B?”
“Mm?”
“Can… can I come over there for a little bit?”
This is stupid. She’s like a little kid who wants to sleep in her parents’ bed after a nightmare because they’ll ward the badness away – and she knows it.
“Sure. S’okay.”
Ginger crawls into Brigitte’s bed and hugs her close, trying to make sure she’s still there. Brigitte seems to understand this, and whispers softly, “It’s okay. I’m here. Mum and dad are here too.” Ginger hugs more tightly at the affirmation “I’m here” than the second, and Brigitte whispers it again: “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
This is wrong, Ginger thinks. She’s the older sister. She’s the one who should be consoling Brigitte, but it’s Brigitte consoling her – with the gentlest consolation the warmth of Brigitte against her. She clings to that warmth, as though still scared it can melt into darkness, and Brigitte lets her. She rests her head on Brigitte’s shoulder, nuzzles into the softness of her hair, listening to her breathing as the whispers fall away…
There are more wrong things to come, and when Ginger looks back – at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen – on the peace of this moment, she wonders if this was where it all started to go wrong – a black seed born in innocence and corrupting innocence, finding fertile soil in the softness of her fearful, desperate heart and taking root – or if the only corruption comes from the heart of the thing that can look back on innocence, knowing what she now is, and see the seeds of that corruption in something pure.