The Forgotten Locket (35 page)

Dante cautiously approached the empty shell.

“Careful,” I warned.

He nodded, reaching out his hand. I caught my breath. Before he could touch the shell, however, the clear wall shattered, falling to the ground like so many shards of glass. One of them flew past me, cutting my cheek with razor precision, leaving behind a trail of fire that burned.

A blue-white glow surrounded each piece of the broken shell of time, flaring hot and then dying away, leaving behind only a shine like an oil slick and the lingering sound of music.

Chapter 27

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the spot where Zo had disappeared. The shock of what had happened hit. Hard. My mouth felt dry; my stomach tightened. My whole body shook.

Dante gathered me into his arms, pressing his hand to the back of my head.

“Did it work?” Valerie asked in a raw voice. “Are we safe?”

“It’s finished,” Dante said. “Zo’s gone. And he’s not coming back.”

Valerie sighed in relief.

“Are you all right?” Dante asked me, rubbing his hands in circles over my back.

I nodded, but I wondered how much of that was the truth and how much was a wish. I feared the image of seeing Zo unraveling from time would haunt my dreams forever.

“You might be all right,” Orlando said, “but what about the river?” He pointed to the ground at our feet. The once wild rush of time was barely flowing anymore; the river that had once been as clear as glass had darkened to a clogged green and black and gray.

The stench had grown worse, the sulfur now layered with rotten meat and burned flesh.

“But Zo’s dead,” Valerie said. “Why didn’t the river get better?”

“Because the loop still needs to be closed,” Dante said, his face drawn and pale. “And if I die—either here or in the dungeon cell—the loop will never be closed.”

I frowned. “I thought it was too late to go back to the dungeon. Do you think, if the other you sees me there, that will be enough to fix the river?”

Dante paused in thoughtful stillness. He studied the river as though he could see through the murky shadows all the way to his other self. “I don’t think so,” he said quietly. “A wound of this magnitude will require something of equal magnitude to heal it.”

“Like what? It’s the end of time, Dante. How can we fix it?” I coughed, feeling the thick air weighing down my lungs like lead.

“I know how,” Orlando said softly.

I whirled on him, a sharp hope burning in my heart. “What? What can we do?”

“Not
we,
” Orlando said. Then he pointed at my chest.
“You.”

“Me?”

He nodded.

“You have a plan,” I stated.

“I have an idea,” he corrected. “It might not work.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll do it. I can’t simply stand here and watch the river die.”

“It means traveling to a place where no one has ever been before,” Orlando warned.

“Where?”

Orlando pointed upstream. “There.”

“What’s up there?”

“The beginning of the river,” Orlando answered, his voice calm and controlled.

Fear pulled into a tight knot in my stomach. “What?” I breathed.

“If you walk back along the bank far enough, you will find the point where the river begins. And when you do, you will be able to heal the river.”

The idea staggered me. “Why would you think I could do something like that?”

“Because you can speak the language of time,” Dante chimed in.

Orlando lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I saw what you did to heal Dante. What you did to Zo. It has to be you, Abby. You’re the only one of us who can.” He looked back at the sludge that crawled past our feet. “And it has to be now.”

I swallowed. “But, once I get there—assuming I even can—what am I supposed to do there? Heal the river? I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“You’ll know,” Orlando said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Dante said that we all have a gift here on the bank. Mine is that I can see the light of the river. I have seen that same light around you. The river wants your help, my lady. It needs it.”

“You can do it, Abby,” Valerie said.

I looked up at Dante’s face. His clear gray eyes were steady and sure. That small smile that was mine alone curved his mouth.

I swallowed and held out my hand to Dante. “Will you come with me?”

“Yes.” His answer was instant.

“Will you catch me if I fall?”

“No.”

I pulled back, surprised. There was a finality in his voice I hadn’t heard before. And then what he had said hit me, making me blink in confusion.

“What? Why—?”

Dante cupped my face with his hand and brushed his thumb across my lips, silencing my questions. “You will not fall. You will not fail.” He brought his other hand up to frame my face and looked directly into my eyes. “I won’t catch you, Abby, because I won’t need to. You were always meant to fly.”

I caught my breath, feeling a swell of emotion rising up inside me. I nodded, then turned to Orlando.

“I’ll do it. I promise.”

I hugged Valerie and Orlando in turn. Then I took Dante’s hand in mine and together we walked along the edge of the river, heading upstream, heading into the darkness. Heading toward our future.

Chapter 28

The darkness is absolute.

She remembers how the sky above the bank had turned black once before, when the river had been redirected and washed away her family, her past, her life. But this is even darker than that. This blackness breathes. This darkness waits.

She is only a thought. She is a shape without form. She is drifting without moving. She is alone in a darkness that is as tight as a drum, taut as a string.

The tension hums, not quite a sound. Not quite a song.

There is only the waiting. Endless waiting.

She wonders if this is the end. Or the beginning.

After a timeless moment, she realizes this is the
before.

The moment
before
the beginning. This is the anticipation.

This is what they came for. To find this moment, here at the beginning of forever.

And she knows
exactly
what to do.

Her mouth shapes his name, and her mind rings with remembered echoes. His voice, dark, like chocolate, but also light, like citrus. There are no words yet, just sounds inside her mind, just feelings inside her heart: a laugh as bright as a wish, a sigh as soft as a secret. A kiss as solid as a promise.

She conjures him. Claims him. She speaks his name: “Dante.”

The darkness shivers with the sound. A silver chime blooms like hot glass, turning the darkness from black to gray. Like smoke. Like stars.

The space next to her suddenly has depth and dimension.

And he is there. Present in a way he wasn’t before.

She is holding tight to his hand, the only point of contact in this terrible void. He is close. She can feel the heat from his body. She inhales the scent of his hair, his skin. She listens to his body move, breathe.

The glassy chime ripples outward, resonating through the darkness, reaching . . . searching.

And then, his voice . . .

“Abby.”

The two sounds meet, merge. They are one. They are whole.

And she feels herself take shape in the darkness, take on depth and dimension.

They are no longer lost in the darkness. They are united. They are together, one harmonious whole.

The sounds of their names spiral upward together, filling the blank spaces around them with light and life and music.

The gray lightens to gold, smoky and muted, but light nonetheless.

She can see more of him now. But only an outline.

He is darkness against the emerging light. His hair is the black of closed eyes at midnight. It is swept back from his face, curling against his neck. His skin is shadowed and smooth. His body is long and lean, the shape of strength, of contained confidence.

There is a power in him. She can feel it pulsing through their linked hands. She is surprised to realize that the power is in her too. It feels the same as his, but different. As though they have both taken a small part of themselves and, in sharing it with the other, have been rewarded with more than before.

She feels hollowed out, but not empty. She is filled with the echoes of her name from his lips. She is amplified.

The music grows, each note high and clear.

He takes her hands in his. His thumbs rest in the curve of her palms.

She looks into his eyes, and she can feel her heart beating in her chest, each thump as bright and sharp as a diamond. Her breath is like silk in her mouth. Her lips are dry, but her bones feel like water.

Anticipation burns.

He moves closer. She moves to meet him.

Hands and fingers intertwine. Her head rests on his shoulder—the perfect height. His hands support her back—the perfect balance.

They breathe together. Their hearts find the same rhythm. The music encircles them, envelops them, encases them. She feels like dancing.

She can feel the
rightness
of the moment.

It is time.

She steps back and withdraws, from next to her heart, a second heart.
His
heart. A silver shape that had been cracked open.

The heart is empty except for a small key, yet she still feels a heat spilling over her fingers like blood.

She listens to the music that has been born into the space around them. She can speak this language, this music, and so she listens and finds the words she wants to say.

Whole. Together. Renewed.

The note she speaks is all of these words, but mostly it is
love.

When she looks down at the heart in her hand, the fractures have disappeared. The cracks are no more. The heart is whole again. Better—it is as though it had never been broken.

She smiles. She knows how important it is to be whole before you can be healed.

A light shines from inside the heart. A brightness that pushes back the darkness like the birth of a star—or a sun.

She holds the locket in her hands and then presses it against his chest. The light penetrates into his skin, casting a glow from the inside. It centers over his heart, rises up behind his eyes.

She speaks once more. The music of healing. The sound of permanence. The words of strength.

The light flares—inside and outside his skin—and she knows it is done. He is healed. He is strong. Better—it is as though he had never been broken.

And then, from out of the distant darkness, a wave of light.

As the light crashes down around them, sparking like fire, flowing like liquid, the music spirals upward on a rising scale, each note glittering with promise and potential.

The light fills the void. There is a bright point on the ground next to where they stand. The point lengthens, elongating into a line that grows thicker and wider until it is a trickle, a stream, a river that flows away into the distance, burning away the darkness as it goes.

It is instantaneous, yet she can feel the exact moment when it happens. The moment when the river of time begins to cut through the bank on its way to the future and forever. When timelessness changes into time.

But before the first tick of time registers, before the river moves with the first ripple of life, in that moment when the light is the brightest, she sees him clearly—who he was, who he is, who he could be. She sees all of him, and he is beautiful. She knows in that moment that she holds his soul in her hands, in her heart, and she is honored by his trust.

She looks deep into his silver-gray eyes and willingly offers her own soul to him in exchange.

She places the newly mended, perfectly whole silver heart in his hand.

His eyes glisten like stars, like moonlight. He lowers the locket into the river. It slides into the light; he lets it go. As he withdraws his hand, a ripple extends outward from his touch. And another ripple extends beyond the first. And then a third follows the second. And on and on and on until the river of light is teeming with ripples, bubbling with life.

It has begun. And there is no calling it back, no stopping it.

The time that pours into the river is forever protected.

The music is everywhere. The music is everything.