All That Is Red Read Online Free PDF

and, although none of us could guess what lay before us, we walked forward with single-minded determination. All I knew for sure was the present; the boy,
the girl, and myself.
    “Do you know where Papa went?” Lilith’s small hand clung to the boy’s fingers. Her faces, all of them anxious, turned from him to me and back again.
    “We have an idea of where he went.” The boy hid the pain in his voice well. I only heard it because I was looking for it.
    “When is he coming back? Mama went with him.”
    I held my breath for the boy’s reply.
    “We don’t know.” The boy trailed off.
    I waited for Lilith to question him further, but she seemed satisfied with his answer.
    “Lilith?” the boy asked, his eyes still trained on the end of the White River.
    “Hmm?” One of the girl’s heart shaped faces turned up toward him.
    “What did you hear after your mother told you to close your eyes?”
    “Well, there was banging at the door.” She squinted trying to remember. “Mama pushed me in the corner and told me to stay quiet.” The scene she described started playing
out in my head, as if she whispered the words directly into my mind.
    “There was a big noise at the door and I think they came in. I don’t know how many there were. But it seemed that only one talked. He and Mama talked quietly, I think it was so I
didn’t hear, but I heard some anyway. The man said something about rounding up Trigons and something called The Pure One. Papa told Mama to keep me safe and he left with them.
    “I don’t know why, but Mama was crying a lot. I even told her that Papa will come back, but she kept crying. She asked me to forgive her. I didn’t know for what, but I said,
‘yes’, I did. I told her I forgave her. Then Mama told me she had to go with Papa and she kissed me goodbye and told me to close my eyes tight until someone came.”
    There was a crushing force on my lungs, almost a burning, as I waited for tears to come. It was as if I were crying without sound or tears.
    The boy turned away from Lilith’s unknowing eyes, but I had already seen the tears. No matter how much he tried to brush them away, they still streamed down his face. His steps faltered
and the boy fell behind.
    I took Lilith’s hand in my own, as I contemplated what to say. There is always something to be said, but how it’s said changes even the words spoken.
    “Did I do something wrong?” Her right face said panicked. “Did I say something?”
    When I assured her that she hadn’t done anything wrong, she visibly relaxed. Eventually, our walking pace slowed, as Lilith struggled to keep up with me. Looking at the White dirt before
her, she began to drag her feet. Showing no sign of the sadness I had just seen, the boy caught up to us. The tears seemed to have vanished, as if they had never been there, and I had imagined
them.
    The boy bent down and picked Lilith up to carry her on his back. Her small hands clasped around his neck, and her cheek lay against his shoulder. Soon she fell asleep, her breath matching that
of the boy’s.
    I couldn’t believe there was a force in this world that would want to harm this girl or her kind. If there was, in fact, a single force that lived on acts of pure malice, such as these, I
concluded that it must be the epitome of evil. Any being with any ounce of good still left in the core of its heart, couldn’t commit an action so vile.
    “A victim of the White,” I murmured.
    “Her and all of her kind.”
    I looked up at the boy whose eyes never left the closed ones of the child. He cradled her, protecting her from the world around them. She had come so close to witnessing such horrors; yet,
somehow, she had managed to remain innocent, and that alone was so rare.
    “Everyone’s lost someone, a friend, a sibling, a neighbor, a parent. Yet, it still continues. There’s no end to the White.”
    I was speechless in my attempt to fathom what it was like to lose someone. To feel that sense of