Spirit Ascendancy (14 page)

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, before I could stop myself or form a more polite question.

“You’ll see,” Anca said, and there was an unmistakable note of fear in her voice as she gazed down at the figure, who stirred and muttered softly in her sleep. Hesitantly, she bent down and shook the woman’s shoulder. With a grunt and a moan, she rolled over onto her back and pushed her mess of hair back from her face.

“What… what do you want?” she croaked.

“Irina, it’s me, Anca. I’ve brought someone to talk to you.”

“Who’s Irina?” the woman asked, blinking in the light of the lantern.

Anca threw me a quick glance before continuing. “You are. You are Irina.”

The woman stared with a childlike fascination at the lantern’s dancing flame. “Yes, that’s right. I’m Irina. Irina, Irina, Irina,” she added in a little snatch of a tune. “It is a pretty name. But I shall cast it away, away, yes, I shall cast it away.”

“Yes. Well, like I said, I’ve brought someone to see you,” Anca said again. She grabbed my sleeve and tugged me so that I stumbled into her. “This is Jessica.”

Irina looked at me for a brief moment, with just a trace of curiosity. Then she looked back at Anca. “She is a stranger to me. But you— why do I know you?”

Anca grimaced. “I’m Anca. I’m your niece.”

Irina looked for a moment like the word “niece” was mildly disturbing to her; I was feeling pretty disturbed myself. Anca had never mentioned that she was actually related to this woman, and what was more, Irina couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, maybe thirty five. Anca herself was at least that old. How could this woman be her aunt? I cleared my throat nervously in preparation to ask Anca this question, but at the sound Irina’s head whipped around and she locked me with a penetrating stare, as though she’d only just realized I was there.
“Why have you brought this one?”

“I told you, Irina,” Anca said. “Her name is Jessica, and she—”

“Do not tell me her name,” she said sharply, every trace of sleepiness and vagueness now gone. “Do not speak to me of names, of earthly names! What care I for names? I cast them away, as you should cast her away. Far, far away. She brings danger with her!”

“We know. That’s why we’ve come,” Anca said, with a brave attempt at a soothing tone.

“You bring danger here to me? When I cannot defend myself?” Irina gasped, her pitch becoming shrill as she plunged a groping hand into her blankets and pulled out the chain, shaking it in Anca’s face. “When I am chained like an animal, trapped like a rodent?”

“Irina, please!”

“No! I will not stay here. I will not be the sacrifice in your games!”

“No one is playing games, and we don’t want to sacrifice anyone,” Anca said, her calm façade starting to crack as her voice rose slightly. “We need your help.”

Irina was still toying with the chain, winding it around and around her wrist. It looked like it was cutting into her flesh, but she did not seem to notice. She was digging under the chain, looping her finger under a knotted bracelet that seemed to be made of human hair. Her own hair, I realized, as I noticed great clumps of it missing from the back of her head. Having found the bracelet, Irina lifted her wrist to her mouth and opened it, as though she were about to bite herself, but then caught my eye and stopped. She looked back and forth between Anca and me, searching for something in our faces. When she didn’t find it, she dropped the chain to the floor.

“Help,” she repeated, as though she barely recognized the word, and was merely trying it out, to see how it felt in her mouth.

“Yes, help,” Anca said, and she knelt at this first sign of cooperation. “Jessica must learn how to Walk.”

At the word, Irina’s face broke into a strange, euphoric grin. She took a deep, satisfied breath and let her head loll back as she blew it out again. I’d seen my mother look the same with the first sip of alcohol after a failed stretch of sobriety.

“Ah yes, to Walk. To Walk,” she murmured contentedly.

“Yes,” Anca went on quickly. “She must learn to Walk, but no one here can tell her how to do it, not from experience. There is no one among us here but you who has ever done it.”

Irina snorted a reproachful little laugh. “Those fools lack the strength of mind. They lack the power. Only I ever found the will to do it.” She drew herself up and swept the hair from her face with a dignified stroke of her hand. I could see more runes inked crudely on the skin beneath her jawline.

“Yes, I know that. And now Jessica needs to know everything you can tell her about Walking. It’s very important.”

Irina pouted. “Mustn’t speak of it. Mustn’t do it. They told me that I mustn’t do it anymore.” She gestured limply around at the runes, and I realized they must have been placed there to stop her from Walking.

“I’m not asking you to do it,” Anca said. “I’m not trying to get you into trouble, Irina. I just want you to answer her questions. Can you do that?”

Irina didn’t say anything, but instead turned to me and sat up straight and expectant, like I was about to read her a bedtime story.

I threw a look at Anca, who nodded encouragingly at me. I hated being put on the spot in the most innocuous of circumstances, but this? I could barely repress a tremor in my voice as I addressed Irina.

“What is it like, to Walk?”

Irina grinned lazily again. “It is like sleeping and flying, like floating and falling. It is discovering the truth of things, losing and finding yourself in the haze that is hidden from the rest of the living, breathing world.”

A shudder ran down my spine. “Is it… difficult to do?”

“Oh, no. To let go, is the most wonderful thing in the world. Snip, snip, snip the strings that hold you down. Leave all your pain behind, all the bonds of the flesh.” She looked down at her own hands and arms with a sudden, fierce anger, as though she couldn’t stand the sight of herself. “This cage, this wretched, wretched cage of bone and blood.” And she began to claw at her forearms as a feral animal sound bubbled up from her chest.

I looked at Anca, sure she would tell me to back off, but she nodded grimly for me to continue. I knew I needed to. There was one really important question I still needed to ask.

“Is it difficult to return to your body, once you’ve left?”

Irina’s face fell suddenly into a dark, angry snarl. She bared her teeth at me. “Difficult? Would you find it difficult to return to a cage after flying like a bird through the sky? Would you find it difficult to become a slave again, after a beautiful moment of freedom? Would you?” And she raised her hand to her mouth again, and whispered a rapid, incomprehensible stream of words to her own wrist. Then, she took the knotted bracelet of hair between her teeth and tore it apart.

I opened my mouth, unsure of what would come out, but before I could form the words properly, a familiar feeling crept over me: one that I’d come to regard with less dread and more resignation as of late. Even as I sensed it, Irina’s eyes rolled back into her head and she keeled over onto her filthy nest, where she began to twitch and shake.

“Back away! Now!” Anca hissed, scrambling to her feet.

I leapt back as I watched Irina writhe, and then her spirit shot with disorienting speed from her body and came to a halt mere inches from my face. Only my shock kept me from bolting out of the wagon in terror, as I stared into her wide, livid eyes.

“LET US OUT!” it screamed in my face. “LET US GO!”

Irina’s spirit continued to struggle toward me, but something was holding it back. After several terrifying moments, I was able to see past my own panic and realize that she couldn’t actually make contact with me. I had landed just on the other side of a circle that had been carved into the floor of the wagon. Careful not to move any closer, I shifted myself so that I could make out Irina’s body. The spirit was still tethered to it, connected with some kind of shining web, and as it thrashed, Irina’s body continued to convulse on the heap of blankets.

“What the hell is happening?” I finally managed to choke out.

“They’ve placed a casting on her. Well, many castings. It’s meant to prevent her from Walking.” Anca practically had to shout to be heard over the continued shrieks of the spirit as it fought to free itself.

“Yeah, I got that much, but I don’t think it’s working the way it’s supposed to!” I cried, gesturing wildly to Irina’s body, still seizing on the ground.

“It isn’t supposed to work at all. No casting exists in our canon specifically to keep a Durupinen from Walking. We don’t know if it has just been lost over the ages, or if it never existed at all. What you are seeing is a combination of different castings and runes, a sort of spiritual experiment.”

“How can you experiment on her? She’s not some lab rat! She’s obviously in pain!” I could barely stand to watch her two selves struggle, the body, unaware, the spirit hyperaware.

“I know, but they truly had no choice. When she first discovered how to Walk, she was the first in centuries in our clan to do it. The elders were enthralled with the possibilities it presented. Imagine, a Durupinen who could approach spirits on their own plane and understand everything they were trying to communicate without the need for guesswork or interpretation. They thought they could use her abilities to encourage particularly challenging or violent spirits to cross, without risking harm to the Durupinen themselves.”

The spirit was tiring now, its shrieks dulling to low, guttural moans. It continued to pull at its bonds, but feebly. It was dreadful to watch.

Anca went on, watching Irina’s spirit with an expression of resigned sadness. “At first, Irina Walked only when the Council demanded it. She was proud to be able to serve the clan in such a useful way, and her abilities gave her a certain status, a certain glamour, even. But the sensation was addicting.”

“What do you mean, addicting? You mean she couldn’t stop herself from Walking?”

“I’m sure by this time you’ve learned all about the fact that our spirits long to cross to the other side. They feel the pull and give into it, which is why most spirits cross immediately at the point of death, and do not require our assistance. Our spirits are the same, though something in the Durupinen blood protects our souls from feeling the pull too keenly when we are in close proximity to our open Gateways. But Irina was allowing her spirit to leave the protection of her body, and it craved the freedom she gave to it.  Soon she was Walking constantly, abandoning her body for months at a time and disappearing to roam among the other earthbound ghosts. Over time, her spirit grew stronger and her body grew weaker, and the spirit began to forget who she was and why she was here. She no longer followed the orders of the Council. She could not be trusted to wander the world, full of the knowledge of the Durupinen. She was a liability. And so, when next she entered her body, they trapped her there. She has been this way ever since.”

“How long?” I asked.

“That’s the other thing,” Anca said. “The body doesn’t age while the spirit is Walking. It enters a state of suspended animation. You heard me call her my aunt, but actually she’s my great aunt.”

I blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. I wish I was. Irina is nearly eighty years old.”

I looked back at the two Irinas, who were becoming one being again as the spirit sank, still moaning, back into the body. Her face, shining with tears, betrayed barely a wrinkle, her hair only a thread or two of silver amongst the tangled, patchy mass of black.

“She looks so frail,” I said.

 “Her spirit has grown too powerful for her body. She’s little more than a shell to house it, now.” Anca said, nodding.

Irina began to stir. She pulled herself into a sitting position, both hands clapped to her head as though it were pounding fit to burst. She looked up and cried out, startled to see us standing there.

“Who are you?” she asked us sharply. “What are you doing here?”

“I am Anca, and this is Jessica. It’s okay, Irina, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Anca said, her usually brisk voice now weary and deflated.

“Who’s Irina?” Irina asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Anca said, taking me by the arm and pulling me back toward the door of the wagon. “We’re going now. We’re sorry that we disturbed you.”

“Go, then!” Irina sobbed. “Go and leave me in peace!”

“We’re sorry,” Anca said again, and tugged me through the door and out into the frost-kissed darkness of the clearing. It was silent but for the sounds of crickets and a snatch of drunken humming from Andrei, deep in communion with his flask somewhere out of sight.

“Why couldn’t she remember us? When her spirit went back inside, she didn’t even remember we were there,” I said, between deep gasping breaths. I was fighting to keep something down. I couldn’t tell if it was hysteria or my dinner.

“You saw the bonds?” Anca asked.

“That web thing? Yeah, I saw it,” I said.

“They’ve been created from psychic and mental energy. They are using her own thoughts and emotions to keep soul and body connected to each other. It works, as you can see, but at a cost. It is painful for both body and spirit to struggle against it. And because those thoughts and emotions are being stretched outside of the body to keep them together, Irina loses access to them. It has driven her into madness. The best parallel I can draw is to a person suffering from dementia. Her mind is battered unpredictably between clarity and confusion.”

I had no words to respond, but Anca seemed to have expected this. She picked up Andrei’s lantern, having left her own in the wagon, and turned to head back to the encampment. My legs and my heart now much heavier, I trudged after her.

WE SAID NOTHING ALL THE WAY BACK to the encampment. There was nothing left to say. The silence might have been awkward; Anca kept looking over at me with her mouth half open, poised for speech, but my own thoughts were so loud, that I honestly don’t think I would have heard her over them.

As far as I could see, I’d never been faced with a more frightening set of choices. I laid them out in my head, each worse than the last.

Choice number one: I could run from the prophecy. I could refuse to get involved, go into hiding, and hope the Necromancers left me alone. Of course that meant never seeing my sister again, and allowing her to potentially destroy the entire Gateway system and throw the ghost population of the world into utter chaos. It also gave the Necromancers far too much credit. As long as I was breathing, I was a threat to their plan, and I was deluding myself if I thought they would ever stop hunting for me. Eventually they would catch up with me, and when they did… I shuddered. No, choice number one wasn’t really a choice at all.

Choice number two was to become a Walker. It was the only way to fulfill my role in the prophecy, the only prayer the Gateways had of surviving. If it were as simple as just stepping in and out of my body, my decision would already have been made; but of course, it wasn’t that simple. The risks were piling up so fast, I could barely see beyond them. I may not have the strength to do it in the first place. If I did manage it, there seemed a pretty good chance I’d wind up as irretrievably mad as Irina. If I couldn’t control myself in that state, there was no way I could carry out my part in reversing the Gateways and it all would have been for nothing. And finally, if I did manage both to Walk and to keep my sanity while doing so, it was all just a suicide mission unless Hannah was able to Call me back. And whatever Ileana said, the prophecy was very sketchy on any chance of my sacrifice only being a temporary one. It would have been nice if the damn thing ended with, “
And then the Caller did save her sister, and the Necromancers did explode into tiny bits, and all was right with the world once more
.”  Or something like that.

“Well, here we are. I’ll bid you good night.”

I looked up, having half-forgotten Anca was there. The red wagon stood before us, silent and dark as the others slept away inside of it.

“I’d wish you a good night’s sleep, but I don’t want to insult you.”

I laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, you’ve effectively killed all hope of sleep, I think.”

“I’m sorry,” Anca said. She reached out a hand as though to squeeze my arm, but dropped it again quickly. “I wish I could have shown you something that would make this all easier. But you needed to know.”

“Yes, I did. Thank you for being honest with me. And I’m sorry about Irina.”

Anca nodded gravely. “So am I. The price of our gift is steeper for some than for others. Irina has paid dearly for it. I pray that the same will not be true for you.”

She turned to go. I wanted to call after her that I’d already paid dearly for our gift, which I was sure now I’d never be able to look at as anything more than a curse. But in the moment it took me to consider this, she had rounded the end of the neighboring wagon and was gone from sight.

I had one hand on the door handle when a voice behind me said, “Well now, wasn’t that an interesting little field trip.”

I cringed and swore under my breath before turning around. Milo had flared into sight behind me, his arms crossed, his spectral foot tapping impatiently.

“Did you follow me?” I asked, with an attempt at indignation.

He scowled. “You’re damn right I did, and don’t give me that attitude, honey. I’m your spirit guide. It’s the whole point of my afterlife, following you around.”

I sighed, defeated far more easily than usual. “How much of that did you see?”

“Oh, you mean the crazy lady secretly locked away in the woods like something out of a Brontë novel? Every messed up moment of it,” he replied. He began flickering into place every few feet, back and forth, his own spectral version of pacing. “They can’t really expect you to try this Walking thing after seeing something like that, can they?”

“Ileana obviously didn’t think so, or she’d have shown me herself, wouldn’t she?”

“Oh, and I’ll have a few choice words for her when I see her next,” Milo said his usual purr turned growl.

“Don’t,” I said. I sank onto a rock beside the wagon “It’s not her fault. She’s just trying to save us all from certain destruction. It was a natural omission to make, and I can’t say that I blame her.”

“Well, you might not, but I’m pretty pissed.”

I put my head down between my knees and took a deep breath. My head was beginning to pound. I was still staring down at my own shoes in the dirt when Milo burst out.

“There’s got to be another way. Some other option to fix this.”

“I wish that were true, but—”

“We’ll go back to her in the morning. They are just going to have to come up with something else.”

I laughed. “Milo, they’ve been obsessing about this prophecy for hundreds of years. You really think they haven’t exhausted all the other possible options?”

“I don’t care! It’s their own damn fault the Necromancers are on the rise again, so they just have to figure it out for themselves.”

“Solid plan,” I grumbled. “I’ll just tell them that in the morning. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“But why does it have to be you?” Milo cried.

I looked up at him, surprised to see the anguish in his face. “Sheer dumb luck, it would seem.”

“Why can’t I just do it?”

“Do what?”

“Go through the Gateway and close it from the other side!”

I wrenched my head up and fixed him with a glare. “Excuse me? Why in the world would I let you do that?”

“Because this whole thing is fucked, and it doesn’t make any sense!” Milo said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Someone needs to go to the other side of the Gateway to reseal it, and that person should be me!”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, it should!”

“Milo, you heard what Ileana said. I have to be the one to go. The only way to reverse the Gateway back to normal is to have Hannah on one side and me on the other. One more ghost over there isn’t going to make a difference.”

“But if I go knowing that I have to close it—”

“You wouldn’t be able to! I appreciate the offer, but it has to be me.”

 “But it shouldn’t be you! Don’t you get it? I’m the one who should be over there!”

His voice was nearing hysteria. I stared at him, unsure of what to say next. But he took a deep breath—a holdover from his human days, since breathing wasn’t a real action for him anymore—and kept talking.

“It’s just—and if you ever tell Hannah this, I will haunt your every waking moment from here on out—I’m not supposed to be here. I know that I made the choice to stay, and I’m dealing with it, but the truth is, the biggest mistake I ever made in my life was ending it.”

He seemed to dim as he said it, like his usual spark was fizzling out. I said nothing. I didn’t even move, sure that if I broke the spell of the moment, he’d never reveal the rest of his story. A story he obviously needed so desperately to tell.

“Back then, I’d given up. I convinced myself that I could never be a happy person, never have the things in life that I wanted so badly. I would never fall in love, because I’d been told time and time again that my way of loving was wrong. And no one would ever love me because I knew that I was unlovable. My own parents couldn’t love me, and that was their goddamn biological duty. I was an anomaly—a mistake, and what do you do with mistakes? You erase them. You crumple them up and throw them away and start again.”

“Oh, Milo,” I whispered. For the first time since I met him, I wished I could reach out and touch him.

“So I did it. I erased myself. And because of Hannah, I knew that there was a chance I could start over again in a different form. And it was only because I didn’t know anything about what that would be like, that I chose it. It was a gamble, but I honestly thought that nothing could be worse than being me and being alive. Even if being a ghost was terrible, I told myself, it had to be an improvement.”

Even with everything I’d been through in my own life, I couldn’t imagine making that kind of decision. I wanted to say something comforting, but I didn’t dare shatter the honesty of the moment, so instead I just sat quietly, waiting for what would come next.

“You can’t understand what it’s like, being like this,” he said. “It’s like standing on the outside looking in at everything you ever wanted for yourself. I can’t experience things the way you do. I’ll never get to do the things I always wanted to do, but I have to sit by and watch everyone else doing them. There’s a reason we’re not meant to exist this way, and I’m finally figuring that out. We all figure it out, eventually. Every ghost reaches the point where we finally admit that crossing over is the best choice. Well, actually, living would have been the best choice, but it’s too late for that now. The difference is that I can’t make the choice to cross now.”

“I’m… really sorry, Milo.”

“Me, too. So I’m asking you, Jess, please. Just let me do it. It would fix this… awful in-between I’m in. I can help you all, and I can help myself, too. Please. Let it be me.”

I wished I could give him another answer, just to extinguish the agony burning in his eyes.

“I can’t, Milo. As much as I’d like to get rid of you,” I said, in a lame attempt at a joke. He ignored it.

I went on, serious once more, “It’s not enough to send any spirit across, even one who’s connected to us, like you are. It has to be me. The Gateway has to be divided, one Durupinen on either side, for it to be resealed. But it isn’t only that. You can’t get across until Hannah does, and we can both agree that we don’t want that to happen any time soon. It sucks and I’m so sorry, but as long as she’s still alive, I don’t think you could do this, even if I wanted to let you try it.”

Milo shook his head and flickered in and out of view. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but it still wasn’t easy for him to hear.

“I can’t understand what you’re going through, but I know what your choice meant for Hannah. She never would have made it this far without you. I could never live with myself if I was the reason for separating you. She needs you, Milo, much more than she needs me.”

Milo shook his head. “You’re her sister.”

“And she really doesn’t know me yet,” I pointed out. “You’re her best friend. You two have already been through much more together, and as much as I hate to admit it, you’re the one she really needs. You chose to stay with her once, and even though it’s difficult, I need you to make that same choice again. Because if this goes wrong, and I can’t get back, she’s going to need you more than ever.”

“It’s not going to go wrong,” Milo said. “She’ll Call you back, I know she will.”

I didn’t answer. I thought I might burst into tears if I tried to voice that fear, and this moment was already too real. I bit it all back, forced it down, and sighed.

“So I guess that’s it, then,” Milo said quietly.

I realized in that moment, without meaning to, that my decision had already been made. Had I ever really had a choice? I exhaled sharply and nodded.

“They don’t deserve it,” Milo said. “They don’t deserve to be saved.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I’m going to try anyway.”

“Are you going to tell Finn or the others about Irina?”

“No. Because I’m not going to change my mind, and them knowing will just make it harder for everyone. But they’ll know soon enough, because she’s the one who’s going to show me how to do it.”

“Huh?”

“We’ve got to try to use her. She’s the only one living who’s done it. I don’t care how many books Ileana and her Council have studied about Walking, I don’t think this is something you can learn from a book.”

“You think Irina can actually stay sane long enough to teach you anything?”

“No idea. Maybe not. We’ve got to try it though.”

“Finn isn’t going to take this very well.”

“You never know,” I said, with greater conviction than I actually felt. “He might be more supportive than we think.”