The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds #1)

by Micaiah Johnson

My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used to say it would get me killed, which it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. Not here.

Ah, there it is, Esther’s rage—the venom no less potent for all its masking.

The darkness is worth it, because I know what waits on the other side.

Because that’s what a sister is: a piece of yourself you can finally love, because it’s in someone else.

I hope she died trying, because my mother always said that was how I was going to go, so her mother probably did too.

It burns like opening your eyes in the light burns, like being born probably burns.

Dell’s fingers graze my neck and I shudder with what she thinks is pain.

She loved her grandmother, because her accent made Dell’s name sound like Dare and when Dell was a child no one had ever called her daring before.

Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don’t know yourself in the dirt.

I’M NOT SURPRISED to die in the darkness between. Die exactly how I lived: belonging nowhere.

The playful lick that usually just raises the hairs on my arms shifts dark, turns into a burn as it transforms from passive pressure to primordial rage.

It was my first taste of guilt-free joy.

What they don’t tell you about getting everything you ever wanted is the cold-sweat panic when you think about losing it. For someone who’d never had anything to lose, it’s like drowning, all the time.

It was like day and night, the warmth of his approval just as out of proportion as the cold abuse of his disapproval.

It’s like a lion telling a gazelle not to run, when everyone knows that’s how he likes his prey best.

I’m home—my home, not Caramenta’s home that I call my own the way a hermit crab wears a stolen shell.

He understood numbers and stars but not how to please his father.

But the most important benefit to being so often hunted is that you always know when it’s happening.

It’s a little lie sharpened to a knife, and it slices true.

Maybe it was self-preservation, the way the smallest animals are the first to growl, the first to bite.

Sometimes, focusing on survival is necessary. Sometimes, it is just an excuse for selfishness.

Daniel looks at me, then away. “Careful you aren’t letting your hope lead you into gullibility.” Esther lifts her chin, looking older, much older, than mine but just as strong. “Careful you don’t let your pessimism drown your faith.”

She’s unattainably bright. It makes me want to touch her even if it takes my fingertips, to see her even if I’ll see nothing after.

“No, Nik. You always held on tight enough to bruise.”

The love I had here was always unconditional. I don’t know what it would have taken to break it.

“You loved him,” she says, like I can’t be trusted. “I didn’t,” I say, and this time I’m sure it’s true.

If so many people are killed with so little effort, is it easier to pretend they aren’t lives?

No, killing should take longer than a heartbeat. Murder should be unignorable, always.

I always thought I’d have to kill him to feel free, but hearing him say my name kindly is the balm that I thought only seeing his blood would be.

To hear her speak without fear or shame, different from the last version of her I heard, is its own gift.

Death can be senseless, but life never is.

“No…she told him we can’t love. That people from Ashtown can’t. That we don’t even really feel, we just survive.” “I think you’ve proven that’s not true.”

Maybe I’m not the only one who feels the tugs of my other lives. Maybe they hover over us, steering us, constantly.

Death hangs over me like too-fine dust settles on the skin—weightless but impossible to remove, no matter how hard you try.

He sees me like a toothless dog on a leash, not really a threat despite all my growling.

“What?” I ask, because even lovely puzzles get tiring if they’re unsolvable.

The heat of my sister’s righteousness can rival a brush fire, but so can her empathy. That’s why she puts out her rage with a sigh.

It will be worth it, all this pain. It has to be.

“I understand,” I say, meaning I understand the order, but also I understand what it’s like to have a hurt so bad you need your hands in something vengeful to lessen it.

They say hunting monsters will turn you into one. That isn’t what’s happening now. Sometimes to kill a dragon, you have to remember that you breathe fire too. This isn’t a becoming; it’s a revealing. I’ve been a monster all along.

He should stop me, but he doesn’t, because he’s intelligent and the downfall of all intelligent creatures is curiosity.

There’s too much sun where I’m from, I had to give some away. And so I gave you away.