by S. A. Moss
I turned left, running towards the main street. I’d flag a cab, or hell, commandeer a car and make the driver take me anywhere but here. I was limping, and the back of my head hurt like hell, but I still had enough adrenaline pumping through my system to keep me on my feet.
A noise made me involuntarily glance behind me. I didn’t see anything, but when I turned back around, I realized why. The spindly creature stood directly in my path a few feet away, a twisted grin warping its gaunt face. It had been playing with me, just like it played with Silver.
I wrenched to the side, changing direction without losing any of my breakneck speed. Eyes locked on the creature, I darted across the street.
Well, halfway across it.
The car appeared in my peripheral vision, not there at all and then suddenly the only thing I could see. My hands went up—like I was Wonder Woman and had the power to stop three thousand pounds of metal with my forearms.
There was an awful, slamming pressure.
A flash of pain.
And then white nothingness spread out before me.
Inside me.
Damn it. I really wish I hadn’t studied for that test.
3
Death wasn’t as bad as I had sometimes imagined it might be.
After the initial pain of flesh meeting metal, it didn’t hurt. Nothingness felt like just that. Like an eternity and a blink wrapped up in one blindingly bright package. Like floating and falling. Like melting, dissolving, spreading out in microscopic particles. My consciousness was evaporating like spilled lemonade on a sweltering summer day, and I felt each thought, each memory, each marker of who I was drifting away from the others, expanding out into the universe on a wave of white light.
And then suddenly, it did hurt again.
As if pulled by a giant magnet, every piece of me that had been drifting peacefully away was hauled back, smashing back together with such force it was like getting hit by a car all over again.
My eyes flew open.
Darkness.
I blinked, and the overpowering white light of the universe echoed behind my eyelids. The contrast between that echo of light and the surrounding darkness completely disoriented me, leaving me almost blind. I sat up, groping around me, trying to get some sense of my surroundings. I felt something cold and slightly coarse beneath me. Stone?
With every blink, the brightness faded from my vision, and the darkness around me came into better focus. It wasn’t completely dark after all. The room was dimly lit by a soft flickering glow. Fire. I rubbed my eyes so hard I saw spots and blinked again.
I was on a stone slab in the middle of a large room. There was a small fire burning in a fireplace on one wall, providing the only light. The air felt heavy and stale, as if the door on the wall opposite the fire hadn’t been opened in a long time. The arched ceiling was high, but the solid stone walls had no windows, so I had no sense of whether I was miles up in the air or deep underground.
Oh, and I was naked.
I wasn’t cold, not even with my butt and legs pressed against the slab of rock beneath me. But I was distinctly uncomfortable. It was a little thing, but after fleeing a monster, getting hit by a car, and waking up in a strange room, having a freaking pair of pants and a shirt would’ve made me a lot more confident in my ability to handle whatever happened next.
I swung my legs over the side of the slab and slid off. My legs wobbled, and I pitched sideways, barely catching myself before I toppled over. I forced myself into an upright position, my eyes scanning the room. I really wished there was something I could wrap around myself. Hell, I’d take a sheet, a pillowcase, a dinner napkin. But the room looked to be completely bare.
No help for it then.
Testing out my legs again, I took a tentative step away from the slab I’d been lying on. I felt like a drunken sailor on a rough sea, trying to walk a straight line to the door but shuffling several feet to the side for every one step forward. My body felt strange, like I was a billion piece puzzle that had been taken apart and put back together by a toddler—a few pieces shoved stubbornly into the wrong places, a few missing entirely, perhaps.
Before I could reach the door, it opened, flooding the room with more light. I yelped and jumped back. My Bambi-legs couldn’t keep up with directives my brain was giving them, and I went down, scrabbling backward on all fours.
A figure appeared in the doorway. A girl, about my age, holding a bundle in her hands. She had a slight glow around her, as if she was lit from within.
What the hell?
She quickly shut the door behind her and set the pile of cloth on the stone slab. The slab looked disturbingly like an altar, I realized, as I tried to keep it between myself and the girl.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, sweet! I should’ve been here when you woke up. Look at you! Ah, of course, my very first arrival, and I’m botching the job already.”
The girl’s features were sharp, but her face was kind. Her voice was lightly accented. British, I thought. And she was holding her hands out in the universal gesture of “I mean you no harm.”
Um, sure.
“I just popped out to fetch you some clothes. I thought I’d be back before you woke up, but…” She grimaced before perking up again. “I think they’ll fit you, well enough for now at least. I borrowed them from Asha, but you can get your own soon.” She picked up the bundle again and held it out to me hopefully.
Clothes. Sweet, sweet clothes.
I really didn’t want to have the impending freak-out I could feel building inside me while standing in a stone room butt-naked.
As if she could read every thought passing through my mind, the girl smiled softly and took a small step towards me. “Trust me, you’ll feel much better once you’re dressed. Here, I’ll just leave these here, and go tend the fire. You get dressed, and once you’ve done that I’ll explain everything. Oh, I wish I had been here when you woke up! I’ll never hear the end of it from Arcadius.
She left the clothes in the middle of the slab and walked over to the fire. My eyes darted to the door again. Was it worth trying to make a dash for it while she was distracted? But toward what? And away from what? She didn’t seem particularly threatening. In fact, in this whole messed-up situation, she was my only lifeline.
Mind made up, I reached over and grabbed the bundle of clothes. They were actually pretty close to my size—if not my usual style. A pair of tight black jeans, a black tank top, simple black bra and underwear, and calf-high boots. I scrambled into them. My legs were slowly gaining strength, enough that I was able to actually stand to pull the pants on.
I sat on the slab and leaned down to lace the boots up, glancing over at the girl as I did. The fire was burning a little brighter now, but I suddenly realized it didn’t seem to be feeding off anything. She hadn’t added any logs to it, and there weren’t any ashes under the fire. It was just fire, burning on nothing.
“I’m dressed.” The words felt strange slipping past my lips. Like I hadn’t spoken in years.
The girl turned around quickly, beaming at me like I was her new best friend. “Oh good! Do you feel better? It looks like the fit was just right after all. What’s your name, sweet? I’m Pearl Howlett.”
“Um, yeah, thank you. My name is Camille Prentice.” Even as unsteady as I felt, she was so friendly and polite it was hard not to be polite back. “Where… where am I?”
“You’re in the Shroud.”
“The what? What does that mean? What happened?” Some of my earlier panic was returning, and I wanted answers faster than she was giving them to me.
Pearl looked at me for a moment, as if trying to get a measure of my mental state. Then she said simply, “You died. You know that, right?”
4
I swallowed. “I… No. I mean, I thought I did. But I couldn’t have. I’m here.”
She cocked her head at me. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes.” My throat constricted around that brutal truth.
“What?”
“Your heart. Shouldn’t it be pounding out of your chest?”
“I – ”
“Feel your pulse.”
I reached a shaking hand up to grasp my opposite wrist. An awful compression tightened my chest, but the more I concentrated on it, the more I searched for a beating heart somewhere in that tight space, the less certain I felt. My fingers closed around my wrist, searching frantically for some flutter of movement. I liked to do sprints when I ran along Lake Michigan, and I often checked my heart rate after a particularly hard push, so I knew how to find it easily. But there was nothing. Avoiding Pearl’s gaze, I switched wrists, just in case only one side of my body had no blood flow.
Nothing.
“But I’m breathing!” The words burst out of my mouth like a child’s last desperate attempt to win an argument against a reasonable parent.
“Well, yes. You need breath to speak. And breathing is a habit some of us take years to fully let go. But you certainly don’t need to.”
As if cued by her words, my breath stopped. I forced my lungs to pull in air, refusing to give up this one last security blanket. I was damn well going to keep breathing, dead or alive or… other.
“You mean I really—?” I couldn’t say it.
“Died. Yes. Everyone here did. I died almost two hundred years ago.” Pearl shook her head, biting her lip. “Shoot. I thought this would be easier to explain. You’re my first arrival, and I was so excited to meet you, but I’m probably doing a terrible job of helping you adapt.”
She was wearing a floor-length dress, and her coppery red hair was wound around her head in an intricate arrangement of braids and loops. As her green eyes watched me, her fingers caught the fabric of her skirt and twisted absently. “You died and came back. It’s extremely rare. We haven’t had a new Guardian born in over a hundred years. Your soul, instead of being dispersed into the aether, was caught in the Shroud and pulled back here.”
“The what?” Please say something that makes sense before I lose it.
“The Shroud. It’s an in-between place that separates the earthly realm, the one you know and where you lived, with the ethereal plane—the afterlife. Think of it like a sieve. Most beings that die just pass right through it to the ethereal plane, but every several hundred thousand people, one gets caught in the Shroud instead of passing through. Does that make sense?”
I didn’t respond, but I think my slack jaw said it all.
She smiled. “It’s all right if it doesn’t. It will.”
A crushing exhaustion suddenly settled over me. I slumped forward, resting my elbows on my knees and letting my head droop down. I took a few—apparently completely unnecessary—deep breaths, then looked back up at Pearl. She was biting her lip and watching me closely.
“Okay,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up nearly to her hairline, and she straightened. “What do you…? Really?”
“Yes. Okay. I’m dead, but not dead. I should’ve died but got caught in some place called the Shroud.”
She still seemed to be confused by my sudden acceptance of my circumstances. I stood up and faced her, encouraged by the growing stability of my legs.
“I’ve been agnostic my whole life. I never believed in any particular religion, but I was open to the possibility. Humans don’t know what happens after death. I didn’t think it was this, but if you’re telling me it is, and here I am, then what good would it do for me to insist you’re wrong? Sure, part of me is convinced I’m lying in a hospital bed in a coma somewhere, and this is all some incredibly vivid hallucination. But for now, I’m going to assume that what I can see and feel right in front of me is real.”
Her face lit up with joy, and I could see a thoughtful admiration in her eyes. I’d surprised her. She stood up to face me, and though outwardly she still looked like a fresh-faced, vivacious young woman, I suddenly believed that she’d existed for several hundred years. Whether or not they change physically, people have to carry their years somewhere. She carried them in her eyes, which were wiser and sadder and fuller than they should’ve been.
“Well, I may have completely botched your welcome, but you’ve handled it much better than I did when I woke up here. I spent hours screaming for my mother and insisting that my fiancé was going to come rescue me. I don’t think Arcadius will ever stop teasing me about that. I actually tried to make a run for it. As if there was anywhere to go.” She smiled fondly as she spoke of Arcadius, then shook her head, refocusing on me. “I’ll warn you, the feelings of panic and disbelief will probably return at various points over the next few days. It’s a lot to take in. But if you’re feeling all right now, I can take you to greet the Council. They’ll be terribly excited to meet you! And then the Seer will determine where you’re needed.”
As she spoke, my chest tightened again.
She was right about the feelings of panic returning. It was hard to keep calm when every other word out of her mouth made no freaking sense to me. Squaring my shoulders, and trying to regain my earlier moment of calm, I nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Beaming at me like a proud mother, she nodded and led the way to the door. I followed closely. I might not totally trust her yet, but she was the only person I knew in this strange new place, and I wasn’t letting her out of my sight until my world stopped spinning. We walked down a short hallway lit with wall sconces, and up a long set of stairs.
As she led me confidently through what was starting to feel like a very large, old castle, she peppered me with questions about the strangest things. What were the features of the latest smartphone? Were all movies in 3D now? She’d heard they actually invented a hoverboard, was that true?
“Many Guardians spend almost all their time on Earth, but I hardly ever get to visit. I’m always so behind the times when I go. I miss it,” she said wistfully.
My brow furrowed. Will I be one of the ones going back to Earth?
I muttered short incoherent answers to her barrage of questions, more caught up in my surroundings than our discussion of technological advancements.
As she led me down another hallway, this one dotted with a few windows, I peeked outside. It looked like this place was a castle of some kind, built up on top of a craggy hill. Smaller outbuildings and a large tower rose in the distance, and a stone wall surrounded the entire complex.
Beyond the wall, the landscape was rough and wild, a riot of unrecognizable trees and plants. The world outside was dark, lit only by three dimly glowing moons. Clouds swirled across the sky like paint in water, making the shadows on the land look alive. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
“What’s out there?” I asked, scrambling to catch up with Pearl, who’d gotten several feet ahead of me when I paused by the window.
“The Wild. It’s where unattached souls who are trapped in the Shroud end up.”
“What?”
She glanced over at me. “Every Guardian here woke up exactly where you did, in the arrival chamber. This place is a hub, it calls to souls who are pulled back into the Shroud, and those who answer the call are brought here to join us.”
“I don’t remember being asked what I wanted,” I said, a little bitterly.
“It’s not a question. It’s a call. A purpose. And your soul said yes.”
My stomach dropped. Thanks a lot, soul.
“So there are people in the Wild? Anyone who doesn’t end up in here ends up out there?” I shuddered. On second thought, maybe my soul made the right call.
Her stride faltered just slightly. “They were people. But the Shroud… alters them.”
Before I could ask her another question, she halted in front of a large door and gave one sharp rap.
5
“Enter,” a booming voice called from inside.
“Don’t be nervous,” Pearl whispered to me as she swept the door open. “They act intimidating, but they’re actually ve
ry nice once you get to know them. Arcadius is nothing but a big teddy bear.”
The chamber was large and much more nicely furnished than the room I’d woken up in. Like that room, a fire burned in a fireplace on one wall. But this room was also lit by a large chandelier hanging above four ornate chairs. An ornate rug covered most of the stone floor, and tapestries hung on the walls. I took in all of that at a glance, but what really held my attention were the people in the chairs. There were two men and two women, all vastly different looking, except for the dim glow that emanated from each of them—and the identical severe expressions on their faces.
Pearl stopped in front of them. “Council, may I present our newest Guardian, Camille Prentice.
She stepped to the side respectfully, and all eyes in the room fell on me. I was probably supposed to do or say something formal, but I couldn’t for the life of me come up with anything. So I went with a simple, “Hello.”
The burly man behind the table nodded. He had blond hair and a beard, and even sitting down, he was the largest person in the room by far. If he were standing, I’d guess he’d tower over all of us.
“Hello, Camille, and welcome. I’m Owen.” His Scottish lilt boomed.
I winced. “Call me Cam, please. Nobody’s ever called me Camille except my parents.”
The woman next to him, who was probably half his size and had dark skin and intense dark eyes, spoke up next. She had a light accent too, but I couldn’t place it. “I am Sada. Welcome to the Shroud.”
“We hope Pearl has been helping you transition and not simply pestering you for information about the latest developments on Earth.” The man at the end of the table spoke up, and Pearl stuck her tongue out at him. Before he even said his name, I guessed it. “I am Arcadius.”
“And I am Adele,” the final Council member said. She was a large woman, all boobs and hips, but her soft curves didn’t match her hard eyes. I decided either I liked her the least, or she liked me the least. Or maybe both.
