Read Fantasyland 04 Broken Dove for Free Online Page A

onto the balcony.
    The view was a unlike any other I’d seen and I’d traveled with Pol, broadly.
    But I’d never seen anything like what I was seeing then. That verdant green. The winding, creamy lane that was flanked on both sides by a riot of wildflowers so bright, their stark juxtaposition against that green was unreal.
    And that green seemed to go on and on, cut only by steeple topping a church made of mellow rust stone, and opposite that some ways away, a large patch of bushy rows of what appeared to be lavender.
    But in the distance, the green darkened in what appeared to be a forest that climbed partly up some jagged topped mountains, their stone a severe gray which was lightened by deep grooves that scored nearly down to the tree line, the grooves filled with snow.
    It was phenomenal. Amazing.
    Otherworldly.
    “My God,” I breathed, finally believing without a doubt I was in a parallel universe.
    There was nothing like this in my world and I couldn’t make this up in a dream. No one could make this up in a dream, it was just that phenomenal.
    I determined to take a walk and see it close up but decided to do that the next day (if we weren’t “away” by then). After the activity of the morning, my ribs were killing me, my face didn’t feel all that great, and I didn’t speak French (or whatever) so I couldn’t ask the girls if they had ibuprofen or aspirin.
    Instead, I drank in the view until it dissolved in front of me as two names laid siege to my brain.
    Christophe and Élan.
    I closed my eyes tight and sucked in a deep breath, the kind I’d practiced over and over again the last eleven years Pol had been in my life. And in pulling in that breath, as I’d learned to do and do it well, I controlled the emotion I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
    I opened my eyes, and having it under control, I allowed my mind to go there.
    Christophe and Élan.
    I would never name my kids those names.
    But Pol would. He’d totally name our kids names like that. And Pol, being Pol, even if I’d picked out my own names, would name them whatever the hell he wanted.
    Unfortunately, he’d lost his mind about something I no longer remembered— but when he did that, the reasons were never really important—and beat the crap out of me when I was seven months pregnant and thus I lost our boy.
    And I’d miscarried in my sixth month and lost our girl.
    These had bought me the only long blocks of time with Pol that hadn’t included him losing it frequently. Being the biggest asshole I’d ever met in my life, even he wasn’t that big of an asshole to blame me for losing our son after he’d beat the crap out of me and I’d eventually hit the ground and rolled down the six brick stairs that led to our fabulous pool.
    So he’d treated me like crystal for months after that.
    Until he’d stopped doing it.
    And even Pol had loved me enough in his way to revert right back to that tender care when we found out I was pregnant again, giving me the first hint since he showed me the true Pol four months after we were married that maybe he could change and we could make a go of it.
    Further, he knew I was crushed when I got so far along with our baby girl and lost her, so he kept doing it.
    Until he’d stopped doing it again, forever shattering any illusion that he could change and we could make a go of it.
    A year after that, carefully timed, carefully planned, I’d escaped.
    Now I was here.
    My eyes were open but I didn’t see the view to beat all views.
    I saw nothing but heard the Apollo of this world saying he would be preparing his children to meet me, something that would be difficult for me to do.
    For if he was Pol of this world, and I was his Ilsa, then his children…
    I shook my head and took another deep, steadying breath.
    Letting it out, I decided that couldn’t be. There had to be differences between the worlds and obviously there were. For the Apollo and Ilsa of this world had kids, and Pol and I did not.
    His