Chapter 9
574 Words
The following days passed in a strange, suspended quiet. Edmund found himself drifting between waking and dreaming, his thoughts entangled with the journal and the girl who seemed to live both inside and outside of time.
He barely ate. He barely spoke.
All he did was follow.
One of the final entries in Katherine’s journal mentioned a place: “St. Orla’s Garden-where time forgets to move.” He hadn’t heard of it before. It wasn’t marked on any city maps. Yet when he asked an elderly bookseller on the outskirts of town, the woman simply smiled.
“You’re not the first boy haunted by her shadow,” she murmured. “Take the south path. Past the iron fence. You’ll find it, if you’re meant to.”
He did.
Tucked between overgrown hedges and creeping stone walls, the garden unfolded like a secret dream. It was wild, untouched,trees heavy with moss, flowers blooming where they pleased. A marble statue stood in the center, arms outstretched as if welcoming something unseen. And beneath its base, carved so faintly it could have been imagined, was the name:
Katherine.
He didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
“Beautiful, wasn’t she?”
The voice came from behind.
Edmund turned to see an older woman, her gray hair tied in a loose braid, eyes sharp despite her gentle tone. She was seated on a worn bench beneath a weeping cherry tree, hands folded in her lap. Something about her felt ancient. Patient. Like she’d been waiting.
“You knew her?” he asked.
She smiled,not with joy, but with recognition.
“In more ways than one.”
Edmund sat slowly. His heart thudded in his ears. “How?”
“I was her mentor, once. Not in books or dance or language-but in memory. In the parts of herself she didn’t understand.” Her gaze turned toward the statue. “Katherine was born remembering things she never lived. Places she’d never been. People who looked at her like they’d known her all their life. She thought she was cursed.”
He swallowed hard. “And… was she?”
“No, dear boy. She was awake.”
Silence settled between them like mist.
“She wrote about someone,” Edmund said softly. “A man who followed her across lives. Who never saw her until it was too late.”
“Yes,” the woman nodded. “And you think that man is you.”
He hesitated. “I… don’t know what I think.”
“I do.” Her eyes met his, piercing. “You dreamed of her before you ever touched her letters, didn’t you? You felt her sadness without knowing her name. That’s not coincidence, Edmund. That’s a tether. One that stretches beyond the grave.”
His chest tightened.
“Then why didn’t I find her sooner?”
“You weren’t ready,” she said gently. “And maybe neither was she. Sometimes the soul must die before it can finally speak.”
He looked back at the statue. At the ivy curling around her marble feet. “She kissed me… before she died. And I did nothing.”
“You saw her too late in that life,” the woman murmured, placing a hand on his shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean it’s the last.”
He turned to her sharply. “You think she’ll return?”
The woman smiled.
“I don’t think she ever truly left.”
- Writer
