by Ted Neill
“I’m sorry, Adamantus,” she said.
She brought the rock down on the whistle. It rang so loudly the sound hurt her ears. She ignored the pain and struck the silver cylinder again. This time, the sound was even greater, and with sparks. Her arm was flying now. She brought the stone down once more.
This time there was a bang, a blinding flash, a pain between her eyes. All went dark.
She was falling. There were voices all around her. Angry voices. Hateful voices. Gabriella had their attention now. She had earned their malice, but she was unafraid. She held the courage of one who had already lost everything.
She was falling. She had submitted to their power, and it was within their power to destroy her.
But they did not. As she fell, they were kept at bay, and she could sense their frustration.
Even their fear.
But why?
She fell. But the dead could not touch her. She was under something’s . . . someone’s protection. Someone even the dead could not cross. Even their power is limited, she realized with satisfaction
She was falling.
Then she was not. She was lying on the ground. There was light around her. She stood up. She was beside the harbor. But it was day. What time of day she was unsure. The sun was obscured by clouds. It could have been morning. It could have been the cusp of evening. The air high above the water was obscured with vapors and mist that rose in strange curling motions from its surface. Her boots, left behind on the dock, were back on her feet. Her clothes were dry. So was her hair. She ground the gravel of the shore beneath her foot. The stones sounded distant, leagues away.
The water of the harbor was limpid, so clear that the bottom was visible as if nothing covered it but glass. Fields of sea grass and forests of seaweed swayed in the gentle currents. It was like a secret revealed.
The water on the shore caressed the rocks gently. Each stone looked like a jewel. The green of the moss at the foot of the trees was the green of life, nothing like the cursed green in Falik’s stone. The trees were free of cracks, markings, or carvings. They were perfect, intact, white as if fashioned from snow.
This place before Gabriella was beautiful, and she half expected to see that the dilapidated tower had disappeared. The village was invisible, obscured or disappeared entirely. It was like Harkness before humans had come to settle. The Harkness that moved outside of human time. This Harkness was eternal. Before she turned to see if the tower still stood, Gabriella realized she did not want to see the tower—that sign of humans and their meddling and the grotesque manipulations of the clinging, rotting, dead.
But when she turned and saw the structure, it had been transformed, now beautiful, taller. Gone were the marks of decay and the black filth of corruption. Its surface was smooth and polished. The bricks were lavender like the sea on a spring morning. The tower was now free of fissures. The windows were filled with panes of glass that gleamed brightly, nothing like the empty skull sockets of the tower she knew. It was a monument to all things steady, to all things that persevered. It was not a tower of memories and loss. It was a tower of stewardship. Unlike the tower of the dead, which lurked in shadow even on cloudless days, this one was cradled in sunlight, its sides shining as if varnished.
Gabriella found herself standing before the tower door, now painted the same lavender color as the rest of the structure. Carved in its center was a symbol Gabriella recognized from the maze back on Dis, an elegant design she had admired. The design was a double-ended scythe, the sweeping blades implying a circle around the staff. Struck through the staff were three hash marks. The simple symbol was laden with meaning that she could not comprehend.
When the door swung open, Gabriella jumped, but it was too late to hide. A woman stood, holding the door open. Blond hair fell softly to her shoulders. Her eyes were blue jewels, and her skin was like ivory.
Although her face was beautiful and feminine, the woman’s dress was martial—blue armor with a red war cloak draped over it. On the breast of her armor as well as the side of the cloak was the spinning scythe symbol. She smiled kindly at the girl on the doorstep.
“Gabriella,” she said.
Gabriella was seized with panic. She did not know this woman, but something about her bespoke of power beyond any royalty. Gabriella fell to her knees and dropped her face to the ground.
“My lady,” Gabriella said. As she bent downward, she glimpsed the sword hanging on the woman’s belt. It was a strange iridescent metal that Gabriella did not recognize.
“Rise, young lady. There is no need to bow to your sister.”
Gabriella stood but kept her head down, responding to an inner urge to show some type of deference. As she met the woman’s gaze, a slight smile played across her face. Gabriella realized how silly she must have appeared.
“I am Auren of Hintland,” the woman said.
“Am I dead?” Gabriella asked.
“No.” Auren smiled again.
Gabriella asked a second question. “May I ask, my lady, what is your office?”
“You may, but you might not understand.”
Gabriella nodded, waiting.
“My office, now, is to guard the Seal of Dormain.”
Gabriella nodded again. “What is the seal, madam?”
The woman stretched out her hands as if to refer to all the space around her. That was her answer. Gabriella noticed her hands were marked with the same spinning scythe symbol as her cloak, her armor, and the door. The skin of her left hand was whiter than that of her forearm, like the memory of an old wound.
“My lady is right. I do not understand.”
Auren smiled but said nothing more. She walked towards the water, her feet making substantial noise upon the gravel. Gabriella assured herself that a ghost would not make such noise. She followed. Lady Auren took in the view.
It was beautiful. The soft light was almost palpable. The far shore was visible in surreal detail, just as Gabriella had been able to view the seaweed beneath the harbor water. Gabriella had seen such visions only in her dreams. Auren appeared transfixed, but Gabriella was not sure if the woman was studying the distant shore or the wafting forms rising from the water. Every wisp of mist seemed to be just on the verge of taking on a shape, a shape of something real and living.
How long they paused there Gabriella could not tell. Her sense of time had been erased. Finally Auren spoke.
“They are angry with you, Gabriella. Angrier than I have ever heard them before.”
Gabriella was puzzled. Who was angry—the Servior? The dead? Chief Salinger and his wife? She thought it best to reveal as little as possible and let Lady Auren continue. The tactic often worked with her parents, but Auren was wise to her.
“I said, they are angry with you.”
“I am sorry, my lady. Unfortunately, that list is long just now. I am not sure whom you mean.”
Auren smiled again. “I know. You have certainly been in the middle of things, Gabriella Carlyle.”
Gabriella nodded. The woman continued. “I refer to the dead. They are very angry with you.”
“I blasphemed them.”
“Indeed, but the trick was theirs first. You were just, Gabriella. They are angry because they do not like to be bested or called out on their treachery, especially when righteousness is on the side of their accuser.”
“Was that not disrespectful?”
“It was. It was also dangerous, but the dead are not gods . . . you must remember that. They are a part of everything like you and me.”
Gabriella could hardly imagine being the same part of things as this woman, not to mention the dead, but she remained quiet and listened as Auren talked.
“The dead deserve the same respect given to anything, anyone, else. No more. No less. And it should be reciprocal, although it is not always, for even the dead are limited. Even the dead can be selfish, as they have been in this instance.”
Gabriella wanted to ask if this meant things would be righted.
But she thought it better to show humility first. “Will they punish me?”
“I hardly think they have a right to. Be warned. It is not beyond them. But not now, they will not dare, now that you have my protection. You must realize, Gabriella, that the dead are not as they were in life. They are changed. They are hungry for life. It is why they remain here in this place, feeding off the gifts, the adoration, the attention of those whom they envy so much—the living.”
“Where is this place, this tower?”
“The other side.”
It was all Auren would say. As Auren walked along the shore, Gabriella following, they approached a lantern. Gabriella counted seven lanterns, each hung on a pole shaped like a shepherd’s staff. The lanterns were in a line leading away from the water, each one increasing in height as they went up the shore. The lanterns burned with thick wicks, the flames wavering in a breeze that Gabriella had not felt at the tower. It was strong enough that some of the lights nearly went out, but somehow each continued to burn. The lanterns rocked, their chains groaning. The rusting links looked as if they might break at any moment. Gabriella noticed an eighth lantern sitting on a post out into the harbor. Its light seemed brighter than all the others.
“What are these?” Gabriella asked.
“Think of them as seven tombs, or seven prisons, for those whom they represent are not dead.” Auren said this with regret as if she wished it were otherwise.
“Why is that one in the sea?”
“She is not bound, but even alone she is a great peril.”
“But why is she in the water?”
“The last time she was seen she had been cast from the floating city into the sea.”
“Who would have done that to her?”
Auren’s face darkened with remorse. Gabriella wished she could have taken back her question.
“These are old betrayals that you should not worry about.” Auren turned and walked back towards the tower. She stopped again where she had gazed into the harbor, but this time her eyes were fixed upon Gabriella.
“What remains to be decided is what to do with you and your request.”
“My request?”
“To help Adamantus. That is why you came here.”
It was, Gabriella realized. She did want to help Adamantus, wherever he was. But she found she had difficulty remembering where she had come from in the first place. She looked in the direction of the vanished village. Trees and heather covered a shore that was free of any signs of human occupation. Docks and ships had disappeared. Had the village ever been there?
“We have not much time. You can stay here only so long before you are drawn on to the other place. Already you are forgetting, aren’t you?”
Gabriella hesitated. “I think I am, but I remember Adamantus. I want to help him.” With the thought of him, it felt as if a thread passed though Gabriella’s heart and began to draw her back to where she had come from.
“I don’t want to go back,” she said, resisting the pressure. “Everything is so sad there, and everything is peaceful here. They have taken him away, and it is my fault.”
With those words, something broke inside her, and she wept, sobbed as she had not cried since she was Dameon’s age. She shook, and her breath came in gasps. She fell to her knees.
“But I deserve it,” she said. “I have not been a good friend. I have been even less of a sister.” Gabriella tried to say more but choked. She felt unworthy of the tranquility around her. The shapes of mist from the lake drifted up around the two of them. Gabriella took a deep breath and attempted to speak again. Her voice was a pathetic croak. “Please, I don’t want to return. I’m too ashamed, and I can’t bear to lose Omanuju and Adamantus.”
“I can release Adamantus, Gabriella. If you wish it.”
Gabriella stopped her crying and looked up.
“There is a condition,” Auren said.
Gabriella nodded. “Please, tell me. What must I do?”
“You will never see him again. Adamantus will live, but where he goes you cannot follow. You will carry that sadness in your heart the rest of your living days just as he will carry his.”
Gabriella could not bear Auren’s gaze. She looked down at the stones at her feet. Stone was all her world consisted of at that moment. Stones of the grave, a stone in her heart, a millstone of sadness slung around her neck that would grind her down with the weight of loneliness until all that remained was dust. She pictured her father sitting in the darkness earlier that evening, holding the broken whistle. She pictured herself, holding the whistle she had broken, growing old, without the joy of the elk’s magic and company, the kindness in his eyes, and the wisdom in his voice. Consigned to a life of ordinariness as her father had been. Her long life stretched terribly before her.
But if Adamantus were to live, his heart to beat, she realized it was no choice at all.
“It is enough that he lives,” Gabriella said.
“Then it is done.”
Gabriella looked up into Auren’s tranquil face. The woman’s lips curved up into a faint smile. It could not be so easy, Gabriella thought. She wanted to stand, but she was too weak. Auren knelt down beside her, her face the picture of compassion. Gabriella had to look away to keep her sobs from coming back. She felt that thread at her heart, tugging her now with all the insistence of the lonely world awaiting her. Auren took Gabriella firmly by the chin and turned her face to meet her own.
“You have learned the reality of true love tonight, Gabriella, but I won’t let you leave without a second gift.” Auren moved her marked hand to Gabriella’s cheek. Gabriella pictured that same symbol, the double-ended scythe, spinning in her mind. Auren leaned forward and kissed Gabriella’s forehead. For a moment, a fleeting moment, all her cares were lightened, the thread pulling at her heart gone.
“That,” Auren said, drawing away, “is the essence of all the gods.”
“A kiss on my forehead?” Gabriella asked. The pressure had returned to her body, and she felt herself being drawn away. It was too late. She saw Auren smile, then she was gone.
Gabriella woke in her wet clothes. The sky overhead was lightening. The woods were noisy with the dawn’s songs of birds. As she blinked her eyes, she felt something sticky on her face. She touched her forehead. Blood, a great deal actually, accompanied by a rising bump on her temple. She propped herself up on her elbow. Her shoes were still missing. Her toes were a bruised, wounded mess, her toenails tattered and bleeding. Beside her on the shore rested one half of the shattered whistle, a reminder of the pain she had forgotten in her confusion. With a sinking heart, she realized that perhaps those moments between sleeping and waking, those moments she had just experienced, would be the only moments in her coming life when she might forget the sorrow she felt clinging to her body like her wet clothes.
Now she had returned to the world of the real, reminded by her shivering limbs, chattering teeth, and stubbed and bleeding toes. She crawled over to the broken whistle and took both pieces in her hands as one would a wounded creature. She cried for it as if it were something once alive. There was a split stone beside it, the stone she had placed the whistle on. Both stone and whistle had snapped. It did not take long for her to realize what had happened. A piece of the stone had struck her in the head, knocking her unconscious. The woman in the tower, the lanterns—had it all been a dream? What of the dead?
She scrambled up. The tower looked the same to her, but it felt changed, as if it had been drained of its power, as if it were only a pile of stones. There was one way to find out. She went to the door, the black rotted, cypress wood door. It could not have been more different than the one she had dreamed about with the lavender paint and spinning scythe. She kicked it open with a cry at the pain and stepped inside.
The empty space was stuffy and smelled of mold. She felt spider webs across her face. She stood in the center and held out her arms, throwing her head back to shout, “I defy you. I have violated your sanctuary. I have insulted a
nd blasphemed you, and I am unrepentant. I call upon you to take your righteous vengeance and kill me.”
Nothing happened. The dead did not retaliate. The gods were silent. Mortimer was right. They were a myth, all of them, make-believe.
Then she remembered her dream.
You are under my protection.
Had she just dreamed what she had wanted, as Mortimer had said everyone did? Or had Auren protected her? Maybe she would never find out.
Maybe she would.
She ran out the door and turned left down the shore. In her dream, this was where the lanterns had been. There was nothing but rocks, tree roots, and cattails now. The water of the harbor was opaque once more. The messy jumble of village houses and their pall of chimney smoke was in place again.
Gabriella sprinted up the shore and, after a few minutes of running, left the harbor and crossed into a grass field. Unlike in her dream, her movement took effort. Her body felt heavy and tired. She was on the far side of the harbor now, where the land rose to the point that looked over the harbor and the sea. The Servior ship was gone, and dawn was upon her. The harbor was a lavender color that reminded her of the dream. She could not help laughing a bit at her own desperate imagination.
As she climbed the hill, she could see the town below her. The empty shore of her dreamscape had been replaced by houses, docks, and moving ships. Yet, something about the town she had known all her life was less permanent, for she had seen Harkness without Harkenites, an island outside of time, a harbor with limpid water and floating ghosts.
