Hugo & Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

monitored her half existence for the past week.
    But little Rose wasn’t frightened, she was mourning.
    She cried because it wasn’t real. She cried because Hugo didn’t exist. She cried because now that she was awake, she thought he was lost to her.
    Little Rose did not know while she slept in that hospital bed that she was dreaming. This was in part because she did not remember losing consciousness in her father’s panicked arms, but it was mostly because nothing about the island felt like a dream.
    She knew that usually a dream slips around one’s consciousness, like the sand shifting away under your feet as the tide pulls itself into the ocean.
    But the island to which Rose had been brought had felt as solid as clay beneath boots.
    And so she cried. She grieved that whole day in that hospital. She quivered and sobbed as the doctors put her through a battery of tests, drawing blood and taking X-rays. The smiling nurses and happy doctors annoyed her. Her laughing mother and exuberant father were so antithetical to the deep sadness that sat inside her little body. They did not seem like they could possibly understand.
    Her mother cooed and tried to settle her the way she did with all Rose’s nightmares. There, there, baby. It will be all right. Rose cringed and clutched at her mother’s chest, waiting for Hugo to disappear from her mind. Waiting for him and his wonderful island to fade like the dream that he was.
    *   *   *
    That night, tired out from the tests and the visitors, the doctors finally felt sure they could let Rosie sleep. They no longer worried that if she slept she would not wake again. Rose’s mother let her sip water from a plastic straw and turned out the lights in her hospital room. Rose closed her eyes and rolled into a fetal curl.
    She fell asleep.
    And there he was again.
    Hugo. Waiting for her that night on the shores of his island. Ready to try again to get to Castle City. To fight the island’s monsters. To bound down the rainbow trail.
    And so he would be every night for the next thirty years.
    As Rose grew, so did Hugo. He matured from a beautiful boy into a beautiful man. They kept to their purpose. Reach Castle City. Rescue the people there.
    And for thirty years, the city eluded them.

 
    four
    Rose was flying through the air when Adam woke her up.
    She and Hugo had climbed out of the Orb just as the clouds had started to shift and break, the light bleeding through their seams.
    â€œRosie, look!”
    Hugo pointed upward as the first shaft broke through. The stream of light cut through the air, striking the sand of the beach.
    Hugo laughed and hauled himself over the lip of the door. He tumbled into the shallows, salt water splashing his face.
    More shafts of light burst through the cover, setting an illuminated path down the stretch of shore. Under each pool of light the sand began to iridesce, set alight with a special kind of magic.
    Hugo pulled himself upright, his pants and shirt clinging wet. Rose slid down the side of the Orb, more careful than Hugo but still quickly, her skirt lifting with the water as her feet reached the silt.
    Hugo was already running.
    â€œRace you!”
    Rose laughed and gave chase.
    These “rainbow” paths, stepping-stones of light down the beach, didn’t last long.
    â€œStay with me, Rosie!”
    Hugo drew closer to the nearest pool of illuminated sand, his bare feet shod in slippers of wet grit. Rose was just behind him, the wind pressing the wet warmth of her skirt to her thighs, her breath heavy with effort and anticipation.
    Hugo leaped from the darker surrounds into the pool of sparkling sand—
    *   *   *
    â€œMomma!”
    A voice from the other world beckoned.
    Rose rubbed her face, eyes adjusting to the dark. On the nightstand the monitor light jumped with Adam’s cries.
    â€œMomma! Mommy!”
    Rose sighed, prying her body from the bed. Hands