THE GIRL WHO REMEMBERED MY DEATH

CHAPTER 5 — THE FIRST DREAM

The dream began with fire.

Not the violent kind I had seen in films, but a slow, breathing fire that moved through the darkness like a living thing. It climbed the sides of a train standing beneath a blackened sky. Smoke curled above the carriages, thick enough to hide the moon.

I stood on the tracks.

Someone was calling my name.

“ No ah.”

The voice came from inside the train.

Lena.

I tried to move, but my feet were fixed to the ground. The rails beneath me were hot. Somewhere behind the smoke, metal groaned and twisted.

Then I saw her.

She stood beside an open carriage door, wearing a pale dress I had never seen before. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. There was blood on her forehead.

“Don’t come closer,” she shouted.

I stepped forward.

The train began to move.

“Noah!”

I reached for her.

The carriage passed through me.

For one impossible moment, I saw another man standing where I stood. He had my face, but older eyes. He was holding a camera in one hand and reaching toward Lena with the other.

Then the world broke apart.

I woke before dawn with my heart pounding.

My room was cold. The window was open, though I had no memory of opening it. Outside, the city was silent beneath a gray sky.

I sat up and pressed a hand against my chest.

There was grief inside me.

Not fear.

Grief.

It was so deep that I began to cry before I understood why.

I had lost someone.

Someone I had never known.

At seven, I called Lena.

She answered on the first ring.

“You dreamed of the train,” she said.

I stared at the phone.

“How did you know?”

“Because you sound like you did the first time.”

“The first time?”

She was silent.

I heard the faint sound of a kettle boiling behind her.

“Come to the station,” she said.

When I arrived, she was waiting beneath the old clock. She wore a dark coat and held two cups of coffee. She handed one to me without asking how I took it.

Cinnamon.

No sugar.

I did not drink it.

“I saw a burning train,” I said.

Lena looked down.

“Was I there?”

“Yes.”

“Was I alive?”

I remembered the blood on her forehead. The smoke. The way she had screamed my name.

“I don’t know.”

She nodded as though that answer was familiar.

“Dreams can be memories,” she said.

“Memories of what?”

“Things that happened before.”

“Before what?”

“Before this life.”

The station seemed to grow colder.

“You’ve had dreams like this?”

“Since I was a child.”

“What did you dream about?”

“You.”

The word settled between us.

I looked toward the railway tracks. A train moved slowly beyond the platform, its windows reflecting the pale morning light.

“What happened in the dream?”

“Sometimes I was looking for you. Sometimes I was watching you die. Sometimes I remembered things that had not happened yet.”

“And you believed them?”

“I was six years old when I first dreamed of your face. I didn’t know what belief meant. I only knew that every time I woke up, I was missing someone.”

I studied her.

“You’ve been remembering me your entire life?”

“Not everything. At first, only fragments. A voice. A hand. A song.” She looked at me. “Then, as I grew older, the memories became clearer.”

“Why didn’t you find me?”

“I always did.”

The answer frightened me more than anything else.

I looked away.

For the rest of the morning, we walked through the station without speaking much. I tried to convince myself that there was an explanation. Perhaps Lena had found the photograph years ago. Perhaps she had researched Elias Hart and built an elaborate story around him. Perhaps she had somehow learned details about my life through someone who knew me.

But none of those explanations accounted for the dream.

I had never seen the train before.

I had never seen Lena in that dress.

I had never heard her call my name with such terror.

And yet, when I closed my eyes, I could still feel the heat of the rails beneath my feet.

“You’re afraid of me,” Lena said.

“I’m afraid of what happens around you.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

She stopped walking.

I stopped too.

The sunlight touched one side of her face, making her look almost ordinary.

“I should stay away from you,” I said.

“Yes.”

The answer was immediate.

I looked at her.

She swallowed.

“You should.”

“Then why do I keep coming back?”

Lena’s expression softened.

“Because you always do.”

I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to demand that she explain everything, that she tell me how many times I had died, what I had been to her, and why some invisible force kept pulling us toward one another.

Instead, I noticed a strand of hair caught against her cheek.

I reached out and moved it away.

Lena closed her eyes.

The gesture was small.

Familiar.

For a moment, I felt the strange certainty that I had done it before.

Many times.

In different rooms. Different cities. Different lives.

I pulled my hand back.

“I don’t understand this,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to understand it yet.”

“And if I fall in love with you?”

She opened her eyes.

There was no surprise in them.

Only sadness.

“You always fall in love with me before you believe me.”