All That Is Red Read Online Free PDF Page A

Her voice was filled with such innocence that I was overcome with an urge to protect her, no matter what the cost.
    “Yes,” I nodded. “I mean it.”
    The boy, who had heard me speaking to the girl, now sat beside me.
    “What’s your name?” he asked. He pronounced the word “name” like it was a foreign word. It rolled thickly off his tongue.
    “Lilith,” one of the girl’s faces replied timidly.
    “Lilith.” I breathed her name out slowly, testing it on my lips. It fit the girl perfectly, as if no other name would. She was her name.
    “Why do you keep your eyes closed, Lilith?” the boy asked softly.
    “Mama told me that no matter what, I have to keep all my eyes closed, until someone takes me out of the house. I promised her I would.”
    I felt a pang of sadness and quickly glanced at the form of the woman on the ground. She had known that she was going to die and she hadn’t wanted her daughter to see that.
    “I couldn’t even say goodbye to her or Papa.” The Trigon girl paused. “Did my mama send you to take me out of the house?”
    The boy looked at me and I nodded. I felt that I owed something to the murdered woman and the daughter she loved so much.
    I noticed that Lilith spoke of herself as one being and not three as Ralph’s faces had. Lilith’s faces each seemed to support one another and though they were different personalities
of her, they weren’t as drastically different as Ralph’s were.
    “Yes, she did,” the boy said. “Did she say anything about where we were going to take you?”
    “No, but she said that if no one came in the next two days, I would have to go by myself to Grandmama and Grandpapa’s house. Mama said that they would take care of me, until she and
Papa got back.”
    “Is that so ...” the boy murmured. “And you know the way to their house?”
    “Of course! It’s in the Ever Forest, where everyone else is,” Lilith responded.
    I wondered who ‘everyone else’ was exactly, but I was relieved to see a flicker of recognition pass the boy’s face.
    “Can we go now?” the girl pleaded. She reached out blindly, searching for something. When her small hand found mine, she gripped it so tightly that her knuckles turned White. Then
Lilith let out a little sigh of what I took to be contentment and I quietly led her out.
    The boy emerged shortly after us, tying a piece of cloth closed around something and then tying it to himself.
    “We’ll need it even more with her,” he said and I suspected he had found food inside.
    Outside in the White, Lilith finally opened her eyes. They were like rubies, flashing in what little sunlight was left. She seemed to take in the sight of the boy and me standing before her. I
couldn’t begin to imagine what she thought of us with our windswept hair and unkempt clothes. Whatever her judgment was, it must have not been too horribly negative, for she surprisingly
seemed willing to stay with us.
    Lilith took in the White surroundings as well. She stared at the White grass and the White sky, as the boy and I tried to imagine what she could be thinking. Then she took in the White house,
which used to be her home, but her small faces betrayed no sense of familiarity. With a demeanor as if she were years older and wiser than we were, she watched everything with unmoving and sober
expressions.
    Nevertheless, what made her gasp was none of these things. When she looked back at the once recognizable house, the sound escaped her, as she rushed to the side where the stables were. Two pure
White horses stood together, as if they were frozen in marble.
    “Are ...” Lilith’s voice caught in her throat. “Are they dead?”
    I saw the boy’s jaw tighten and I knew we were both thinking of the same thing: the dead woman only a few feet away.
    “Come on,” the boy coaxed her to his side. “We can walk,” the boy assured her, pulling her away from the horses, the house, and her mother.
    We turned our backs to the White house