Spirit Ascendancy (17 page)

“That word ‘should’ is a pretty demoralizing one to be hearing right now,” I said.

Flavia’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry, I…”

“No, no,” I said, waving a hand at her. “Sadly, it’s the only appropriate one, at the moment. Is there anything else I need to know?”

Flavia shook her head. “I can’t think of anything else that wouldn’t just overly complicate things for you.” She gestured to the soul catcher. “Just put that on and get Irina to give you the right incantation. The rest will sort itself out.”

“What about getting back into my body?” I asked. “To be honest, that’s the part I’m most worried about.”

“There’s nothing ceremonial about it, that we have been able to discover; no castings that need to be performed,” Flavia said. “If you’re meant to Walk, you will be able to reenter your body any time you choose, and the two elements will rejoin without a problem.”

“And if I’m not meant to Walk?” I asked.

Flavia grimaced. “We will do what we can, through castings, to help you. I can’t say for sure if anything will work. There is no casting I know of that can force the rejoining of body and soul, but we can bring the two together, and hope your will to live is strong enough to bridge the gap.”

I laughed mirthlessly. It was a slightly hysterical sound. “I’ve been seriously questioning my will to live just by agreeing to do this.”

She reached out and gave my upper arm a friendly squeeze. “You are doing a wonderful thing. Every source, every sign that I have studied points toward the same conclusion; you are meant to be a Walker, and that ability is the key to salvation for our entire order. I would stake my role as Scribe on this going well today.”

I wouldn’t have thought words from a virtual stranger could comfort me so much in this moment, but I found myself fighting the urge to fling myself on this girl and hug her. Instead I smiled and said, “Thank you for all you’ve done to help.”

As she smiled back at me, I had a strange fleeting moment of something akin to déjà vu, like I was imagining an alternate universe where both of our lives were normal, and she was just the barista who made my latte at the local hipster coffee joint, or maybe the young adult librarian who read manga at the desk and made great recommendations when I dropped off my stacks of library books.

Maybe she sensed it too, for her smile turned a little sad as she said. “You’re welcome. I’m only sorry you needed me to do it at all. Best of luck to you.”

I turned back to Ileana, who had lit her pipe during my conversation with Flavia; her face floated toward me out of a sweet haze, like it was forming from a foggy atmosphere.

“Are you ready?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

She pointed to a space, just wide enough to crawl through, on the far side of the dome. “You enter there.”

I thought about taking one last look at Savvy, Annabelle, and Milo, but I knew that whatever I saw in their faces would only weaken my resolve, not strengthen it, and so I kept my eyes trained on the entrance and focused all of my energy on forcing my feet to keep moving toward it. There was an upsurge of excited whispering from the surrounding Travelers, so that it sounded like a strong breeze was rising up around me.

This was it, I told myself.

And she will have the power of sacrifice to end it all…

Please, please let this not really be the end of it all.

Taking a deep breath like I was about to plunge into icy water, I ducked my head, fell to my knees, and crawled through the opening of the dome.

Whether a result of the castings or simply because a hush had fallen, silence and stillness met me on the other side of the web. It was as though everyone and everything outside of it had ceased to exist. I did not know why I found this thought comforting, but for some reason, it calmed me. I didn’t have to think or worry about anything beyond the immediate; it was just her, and me, and what we had to do.

 I stood up straight and looked above me, where the runes hung in the air like constellations. Again, I felt comforted by their presence, though I could not recognize half of them, they seemed to give order to the chaos of the crisscrossing barriers above us. I tore my eyes from them and found Irina, still huddled in the fetal position on the grass. From where I stood, only the back of her head and the curve of her back were visible, along with the dirty soles of her feet. I walked forward and knelt down beside her. I could have reached out and touched her, although I would not have dared do it. Not yet.

Her breath, even and yet harsh, sounded abnormally loud in my ears with the silence pressing in all around. Her hand twitched in her sleep, a movement that nearly sent me backward like a skittish animal, and my eyes fell on a row of at least a dozen bracelets, carefully woven from glossy black hair, that adorned her wrist like the most grisly of jewelry. I realized with a jolt that I still had the soul catcher clutched in my sweaty palm, and fumbled to tie it tightly around my wrist. The moment I let it rest, fully fastened to me, I felt my pulse quicken beneath it, as though my very blood knew what was coming.

It was not easy to convince my hand, now shaking, to extend toward her shoulder. I meant to shake her gently, but I never had the chance. Before I could so much as lay a finger upon her, she jerked awake, eyes wide and hyperaware the very moment they snapped open. Her lip lifted back from her teeth in a snarl.

“What do you want? Who are you?” she hissed at me.

“I’m Jess Ballard,” I choked out around the knot of terror that threatened to obstruct my windpipe. “I’m the—”

“The Northern Clans,” Irina said, as recognition flickered to life in her eyes. “The girl who brings the danger.”

Well, there was a badass nickname I had absolutely no desire for. Still, I nodded.

“Yes. We met a few nights ago. Anca brought me to see you.”

“They said you would be coming here,” she said, and seemed to take in her surroundings for the first time. “They told me, but I did not believe them. They never tell the truth, not to me.”

“Well, they told it to you this time,” I said. “I’m here, and I still need your help.”

She simply stared, childlike, into my face as though I’d just agreed to tell her a bedtime story. She tucked her legs beneath her and clasped her hands in her lap, waiting.

Well, at least she wasn’t leaping out of her own skin to attack me yet. I took that as an encouraging sign and went on.

“You say that I bring danger. Well, I didn’t bring it on purpose. It has followed me here, and I am trying to protect us all from it, including you, and especially my sister.”

“What have they done to her?” Irina asked, very seriously. I couldn’t tell if she knew who the ‘they’ were that we were talking about. Perhaps she thought I meant the other Traveler Durupinen, since they were the ones who had kept her locked up for so long.

“The Necromancers want her to do something very, very bad,” I said. “She is extremely powerful, and they want her to open the Gateway and bring the spirits back to earth.”

Irina frowned. “Bring them back? That cannot be.”

“I know,” I said. “”No one should be able to bring spirits back. But my sister can. And I need your help to stop her.”

Irina nodded solemnly. “We must not let her do that. The spirits are happy where they are. They are at peace. We must be sure they stay there.”

“Yes,” I said, relieved that she had understood so much of what I had told her thus far; I’d half expected her to burst into angry gibberish the moment she’d laid eyes on me. “I’m the one who can help the spirits stay on the other side. I’m the one who can make sure they stay happy.”

Irina smiled at me, but it was a mechanical thing, devoid of actual happiness; I wondered if she, in her state, could even remember what it was to be truly happy herself. “Well done, you.”

A short bark of laughter escaped me, and Irina flinched. “Thanks,” I said. “Don’t congratulate me yet. I’m still not sure how to do what I have to, and that’s why I need your help.  You have to teach me how to Walk.”

As she had done when I met her in her prison on wheels, Irina became anxious the moment I mentioned Walking. Her fingers found the row of bracelets on her wrist and began to twist them in agitation. “I haven’t done it. I’ve stayed here. I’ve stayed in the cage.”

“I know,” I said, as soothingly as I could when my own voice was trembling in fear. “And the other Travelers know it too. You aren’t in trouble here. In fact, they want you to help me, and that’s why they’ve brought you here.”  I gestured around to our surroundings. “They’ve made this place for us. They’re standing by, in case we need them. But I need to learn to Walk, just like Anca told you, and I need you to show me how to do it.”

Irina narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you trying to trick me?”

“No,” I said. “No, Irina, I don’t want to trick you. See?” And I held up my own wrist, so that she could see my bracelet. “They made this for me, but I don’t know how to use it. I know I need to cut it, but I don’t know what to say. I need you to tell me what to say.”

“Why would I do that? Why would I enable another to do what is denied to me?” she asked, and she pouted, making her look momentarily like a small child about to throw a tantrum.

“Because,” I said, and I smiled in what I hoped was a conspiratorial way, “they’ve left us alone here. They’ve taken the bonds off of you, Irina. You can Walk in here. See?” And I gestured around us.

She took in her surroundings properly for the first time, noticing the specific runes in the space above us. She looked down at her arms and chest, from which the runes had been scrubbed away and, as comprehension slowly dawned, her face lit up like the sun peeking over the horizon. When she looked at me again, she was transfigured with joy, almost unrecognizable.

“I’m… free?” she whispered.

“In here, you are,” I said, crouching closer and pasting on a grin. “You can leave your cage, Irina, as long as you agree to show me how to do it as well. But first,” I tried to keep the smile in place, but my fear was threatening to overwhelm me, “is there any way to… can you tell if… If I will be able to Walk safely?”

She cocked her head to one side, considering me. Then she leaned forward and reached both of her hands out for mine. I extended them, and she grasped them with surprising force. Her fingers were cold and dry as she pulled me closer, staring into my eyes. I tried not to blink as those fathomless eyes bore into me.

At last she said, “You can, if you choose.”

I nearly cried with relief. “I can?”

“If you choose,” she repeated, nodding. “You are strong in soul. I can see it in the spaces behind your eyes, but you must choose. The choice is the hardest part.”

“But if I choose to return, I will be able to?”

“Yes.” Her expression turned momentarily skeptical. “If you really do prefer it. But the other…” Her lower lip trembled. “It’s wonderful.”

“I know. You keep telling me that.”  I pulled myself back together with a cleansing breath. This was it. “I want to feel it too. Won’t you Walk with me?”

It seemed she could not resist such an invitation. She looked around, but no one was visible beyond the barriers of the enclosure. “You must cut your bonds here,” she whispered, indicating the place between the third and fourth knots that Flavia had shown me.

“Yes?” I said, my heart beating so frantically now that the rhythm felt like a hum. “But the words! What are the words, Irina? What do I say?”

She beckoned me forward on the crook of her finger and said, “In the old tongue, and so that the spirits of old will hear you, you must speak it here,” she placed a fingertip on my mouth, “and here,” she moved it over my heart.

“Sínim uaim thar dhoras mo choirp 

Ach an eochair coinním fós, 

Bheith ag siúl tráth i measc na marbh 

Agus filleadh ansin athuair.”

As I fought to remember the words without knowing what they meant, a wind swept through the structure, whipping around us and tossing Irina’s hair into a frenzy around her face which was now aglow with anticipation. Then, without another word, her spirit burst forth and her body fell in a lifeless heap at my feet. As I watched it crumple, I was struck by the truth of it; though it looked the same as it had a moment before, there was nothing left of Irina there. Everything that made her who she was, was now soaring above my head. I looked up.

The joy. She was flying through the air like a bird, arms outstretched, her face alight with a happiness I could not comprehend. It was this, perhaps, that gave me the courage to take the soul catcher and the blade between my trembling fingers.

 I will choose to come back, I told those same trembling fingers, my breath, my racing heart.

“Sínim uaim thar dhoras mo choirp 

Ach an eochair coinním fós, 

Bheith ag siúl tráth i measc na marbh 

Agus filleadh ansin athuair.”

And I cut through the soul catcher with a single decisive swipe.

AND I WAS GONE.

Or I was really here for the first time; it was hard to tell which.

Gone was every physical sensation. There was no pain, no frightened fluttering, no connection to anything physical at all. It was an unfathomable relief I never even knew I needed, as though I’d been in pain all my life without knowing it, until suddenly it stopped, and I felt what it was to be really, truly at peace. I was nothing but weightless, floating, consciousness, and I was completely at my ease, in this small, quiet bubble of solitary contemplation. I did not see. I did not hear. I just… was.

It did not disturb me at all to be completely stripped of my senses; I found it natural, in this state. I didn’t seem to need them to experience my surroundings fully. But as I thought of my senses, I thought of my body, and as soon as I did that, I found myself wishing I could see.

The moment I wished for it, I gained a sort of vision. It wasn’t like seeing things with my eyes, but I could see, nonetheless. I took everything in, gauging my own relationship to them. I seemed to be hovering very close to the top of the dome the Travelers had built to contain us. I knew I could not touch it the way I had when I had a physical form, but something about the energy radiating from it stopped me from trying. Even as I floated near it, part of me wanted to cringe away from it. I focused instead on the space below me and saw a figure lying on the ground. It took a moment to associate that figure with myself. I knew it was my body, but even mere moments after vacating it, it felt entirely foreign to me. Was that really what I looked like? Was my hair really so dark, my skin so pale and drawn? Was my face, so young in comparison to others, really that careworn and sad?

I looked for a long time at my right hand, open and reaching, in the overgrown grass. Living was a sad and empty thing, sometimes, that hand seemed to say.

I felt a twinge of longing to rejoin with that hand, to fill that body so that it would not be so empty, so alone.

“Isn’t it exhilarating?” a voice said from nearby.

I tore my attention from the body below and focused instead on the other spirit now hovering level with me. Irina was alight with happiness, her form expanded with energy like an inflated balloon. As I watched, she soared around the perimeter of the enclosure, looping and diving and weaving like a stunt plane in an airshow.

“Yes,” I admitted. “It certainly is.”

She looked as I had remembered her, and yet she looked entirely new; a shining, rainbow-colored version of her human self, glowing and pulsing with unrestrained energy.

“You don’t look like a ghost,” I told her.

“I’m not a ghost,” she said. “A ghost is an imprint, an echo. I am so, so much more than that. Imagine a ghost with the energy and vibrancy of the living, but unfettered by a human body. That’s what I am. That’s what you are.”

“What do I look like?” I asked, more to myself than to her. I held up a hand before my eyes. I shone and gleamed in a spectrum of color, pulsing and flowing, trailing an aura of light from my fingertips as I wiggled them back and forth. I looked down at my body, or rather, at this new representation of my body. How strange it was to have a form and yet feel nothing physical. And if I was up here, then who was down there?

I looked down at my body again. It drew my eye with some kind of powerful attraction, and I felt the urge to approach it, to study it more closely.

“Why are you looking at that cage? Forget about it. Let yourself go!” Irina laughed, flitting about so fast that she seemed to be in three places at one time.

It’s not a cage, I thought. But when I looked away from it, I understood why it would have been so easy, in that moment, to forget about its existence entirely, down there in the dark blanket of the grass.

I will go back, I told myself. I will go back. But first I would feel what it was to really Walk, since I’d gotten this far.

“Irina, how do I… move?” I asked. I had no real control over myself in this purest of forms. I couldn’t understand how to propel myself through a physical space now that I no longer had a physical existence.

“You must stop thinking as though you have a form that must be moved with muscles and bones. You control your movement with your being,” she said, soaring past me.

“Do you think you could be a little more specific? I don’t seem to be able to control anything with my being, probably because I have no idea what the hell that means!”

She actually laughed, and I saw in her spirit face the girl she really was, the girl she could never be again down in her body. It was beautiful and sad at the same time. “You must will yourself to occupy each new space. Visualize yourself in it, and you will begin to move.”

“That sounds like a lot of work,” I said. “Couldn’t I just float, or something?”

“It’s not work. It couldn’t be easier. Just try it, Northern girl,” Irina called.

I focused on an empty patch of air across from me in the enclosure. No sooner had I pictured myself in it than I was there, with no clear perception of how I had done it. I tried again, this time focusing on a thick patch of grass in the corner. Again, I found myself instantly upon it, and disoriented at the speed of my own travel. I reeled, feeling a sort of mental dizziness.

“No, no,” Irina giggled. “You must envision the journey itself, not just your final destination. You must imagine yourself existing in every step along the way, or you will never know what it is to fly!” And she soared past me in an arc, her arms spread like wings.

I gathered myself for another attempt, though I could already feel myself tiring. Or at least, I think I was tiring. If I were a light, I would have been dimming. My colors seemed to fade as I watched them. My eye was drawn to my body, only about ten feet away from me, and it no longer looked foreign anymore, but inviting. It looked like my bed might have looked after a very long day, or the way a coffee might have looked after a classic all-nighter.

“Should I be tired already?” I asked Irina.

She stopped rocketing around for a moment, though she looked annoyed. “Yes. It is very hard, at first. Returning will perhaps seem easy this time, but do not be lulled into a false security. When you truly Walk, when you embrace it with all you are, your spirit will thrive on it, and that earthly body will reveal itself to be the prison it really is.”

I did my best to ignore those words. I couldn’t worry about that now. I had work to do. If I couldn’t control my path while I Walked, the ability was useless. I needed to be able to propel myself into the Gateway without getting tired or disoriented, or what good would I be in the struggle ahead? I focused instead on the practical part of her advice, imagining myself occupying each step along my path to my next destination.

I started to move and then quite suddenly, lost all momentum. It was too much. I’d already tried to do too much, and I could feel myself starting to drift, without control of where I was. As I hung, suspended, a terrible thought occurred, flooding me with panic. What if I couldn’t get back to my body?

It wasn’t physical panic, of course. I had no “physical” anymore, and that further thought only deepened the panic, which was a sort of a buzzing of the mind, a scattering and shaking of my thoughts. In my fear, I concentrated on the one thing that was anchoring me: that body, lying immobile in the grass below. As I did so I expressed a wish, more fervent than any I’d ever expressed before, to somehow find my way back into it. Even as I did so, it was as if my body, answering my call, began to do the work for me, casting out an invisible net and ensnaring me in it. The bonds tying me to my body were starting to tug and tighten, to reel me back in. And as I watched Irina in her glory, I envied her, and yet I pitied her, for I knew that to go back for me would be a relief, and for her would be utter torment.

I envisioned myself, not flitting around the vastness, but back below, tucked safely inside the body I’d left behind. I allowed the vision to fill me, to spread through every shining, multi-colored particle of myself, and imagined the ties that bound me to my physical self winding me closer and closer, pulling me back. I did not fight against it, but embraced it.

I will go back, I told myself again. It is home. Home is where you return to.

My body moved closer, or rather I moved closer to it. I could see the tiny beads of sweat trembling on my brow, could see the light glimmer on the tips of my eyelashes.

We… I… connected.

I drew a breath that filled every inch of my being, sucked it in like I’d been submerged in water until the very moment I could hold my breath no longer. I was awash with disorienting sensations, an onslaught of the return of my five senses. Smells attacked my nose. Lights popped and exploded in front of my eyes. Every pore was afire with feeling. I was overwhelmed to the point of terror until I remembered that this was what it felt like to be alive.

“She’s back!”

“I can see her! She’s moving!”

“Jessica! Jessica! Are you alright? Someone get her out of there!”

Rough hands seized me and dragged me backwards by my arms through the opening of the enclosure and into the soft, dewy grass in the clearing.

“Jessica! Are you okay? Say something!”

“I… I think I’m okay,” I gasped with difficulty. I tried to remember how to focus my eyes, and Dragos wavered into view above me, alongside Anca, whose hair was hanging down around my head, blocking out the light. A poking and prodding at my arms and legs revealed a number of other Travelers marking me with runes in dark, dusty charcoal dust.

“What are they doing?’ I asked, still panting like I’d run a marathon.

“Protective runes, to make sure your spirit doesn’t attempt flight,” Anca said. Her expression was already transforming from concern to wonder. “Aren’t… don’t you want to Walk again?”

“Not particularly,” I said watching now as every visible patch of skin was marked up. “Hey! Watch it!” I cried, slapping away one woman who was attempting to lift my shirt to mark my midriff.

“Stop!” Anca said. “Stop warding her! She’s… fine. She has reconnected.”

I swatted another hand away and tried to sit up. My body was reluctant to obey my thoughts, and Dragos, seeing what I was trying to do, helped me into a seated position.

“We weren’t sure how long to let you go, so we began the casting to pull you back, but you returned before we could complete it. Did you return by yourself?” Anca asked. She was still looking into my eyes like she couldn’t believe she was seeing me look out at her from behind them.

“Yes,” I said. The dizziness and disorientation was fading. I began to gently move individual fingers and toes, testing my control. It seemed to be returning. “It was exhausting. That was as much as I could do, for a first try.”

Anca’s face split into a grin. “It was miraculous to watch.”

A scuffling nearby drew our attention. Milo, Savvy, and Annabelle were struggling to get through to where I was sitting.

“Oh, I know you did not just try to expel me,” Milo was shouting, in full-out fierce mode. “I am this girl’s spirit guide, do you hear me, and you will let me do some guiding or I will haunt your ass until doomsday!”

It was my turn to grin. “Let them through, please,” I called.

The protective circle that had formed around me broke apart and Milo blasted through it, Annabelle and Savvy right on his heels. Annabelle looked pale and shaken, and Savvy’s mascara was smudged suspiciously under her red-rimmed eyes, but Milo was smiling from ear to ear.

“’Atta girl!” he said when he spotted me. “I knew you’d be a natural. Never doubted it for a second.”

I smiled back. “I couldn’t let you have all the fun in spirit form. Now I can annoy you even without a body to dress in clothes you hate.”

He chuckled gleefully. “No worries, sweetness, I’ll just find something else to rag on you about.”

It was the first time he’d ever used his signature pet name on me, and I didn’t take it lightly. He winked, as though to say he’d meant it.

“Blimey, Jess, that was… well, I’m glad you’re back because you gave us all a bloody heart attack.” Savvy said tremulously.

Annabelle managed a smile. “Well done. Truly.”

“I must agree. Well done, indeed.”

Ileana had appeared as well, the Travelers having parted like the seas for her and her trail of pipe smoke. “What brought you back? We didn’t need to force you, I see.”

“No,” I said. “I wanted to come back.”

“Wanted to? You mean you could actually feel the connection with your body?”

“Yes. I was free of it, but I could always sense it there. It was still connected to me.”

Ileana flashed her wide gold toothed smile with an approving nod. “The prophecy did not lie. You are truly meant to do this. Perhaps a Durupinen in a century could exist in the spirit form and actually want to return. It was always a struggle, even in the earliest days, for Irina to return. It was a shorter Walk than I expected, though. Why did you return so quickly?”

“Walking is… well, I couldn’t do it for very long, at least not this time. It takes a lot of energy. Irina said it would get easier; she certainly had no trouble with it. But it’s going to take some practice before I’m good enough at it to do anything useful.”

“Well then, practice you shall have,” Ileana said. “This structure and all the assistance we can give to you are yours to use, until such time as you feel ready to Walk on your own. Our Scribes will continue to find anything they can that might assist you.”

“Great,” I said, as a wave of exhaustion worked its way from my soul into my body, making both feel as though they were suddenly made of lead. “I’m going to need all the help I can get. And speaking of help,” I glanced back at the enclosure, inside which Irina was still rocketing around like an escaped firework, “what are you going to do about her?”

“Do you still require her assistance?” Ileana asked.

“Yes, definitely.”

“Then we will keep her there, inside the enclosure, until you no longer need it.”

I continued to watch the cage, sure I could see her gleefully flitting about. “And then?”