by Jocelyn Fox
“Communication with the outside world is forbidden,” said Molly, narrowing her green-gold eyes into a mockingly severe expression. “You are our prisoner.”
“Great,” I replied dryly, snapping my phone shut. “I get to sit around a fire for four hours every night and stare blankly at you.”
“We don’t just stare blankly at each other,” retorted Molly. “We have good conversations. There’s nothing to distract you. Nothing to hide behind.”
“Nothing to hide behind,” I repeated thoughtfully, sitting on my bed. I idly searched through my bag for sleeping clothes. Then I glanced over at Molly’s bed as she pulled off her shirt. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Molly glanced down unconcernedly, holding her shirt in one hand. Her whole pale body tensed, and then she shrugged, picking up the envelope from her pillow. “Just a letter I got the last day we were back at school.”
“Who’s it from?” Finally finding a worn t-shirt and comfortable shorts, I stood and peeled off my shirt.
“No one important.” Molly’s voice was muffled as she pulled on her oversize sleeping shirt. “And speaking of unimportant people, finish changing so that Austin can come in. He said he wouldn’t look up in the loft, but you know how boys are.”
As I slipped my shorts up to my hips, Molly strode over to the window and pulled it shut with a definitive snap. I protested. “Hey, I liked the breeze.”
“You just like to complain,” Molly said as she slid under the covers. “If you get hot, just flip on the ceiling fan.” She yawned. “Besides, no bugs can get in now.”
“There’s a great invention called window screens that takes care of that,” I muttered. We settled onto our beds.
“Are y’all decent? Can I come in?” came Austin’s voice from below us, accompanied by the creak of the front door.
I waited for Molly to answer. After a second, I glanced over at her and saw her profile in the half-dark, lit by the soft glow of the moon through the window. She held a sheet of paper in one hand—the contents of the envelope on her pillow—and from the frown on her face I guessed she didn’t like what she was reading.
“Moll?” Austin tried again.
I cleared my throat.
Molly blinked. “Yeah,” she said finally, her voice scratchy. “You can come in.”
Austin noisily prepared for bed, banging things around in the semi-darkness. The one light that illuminated the main room was on the ceiling fan, which shone into the loft as well. I cringed sympathetically as I heard his shin connect solidly with the leg of the table by the couch. His muffled curses drifted up to the ceiling, lingering against the polished wood like bats roosting in a cave.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to stop thinking about how I missed the smooth flat farmland of Pennsylvania among these rocky hills. The mysterious letter on Molly’s pillow drifted to the front of my thoughts, and I let it stay there for a few moments, floating like a leaf on the surface of a pond until I felt the slow heavy tides of sleep catch hold of my mind.
Chapter 2
In the night I dreamed that there was a tapping at the window. I sat up, holding the quilt to my chest and squinting sleepily. The tapping came again and I slid out of bed, tiptoeing to the window. I peered out into the darkness and saw a small bluish glow hovering level with the window a few feet away, circling. In the peculiar way of dreams, I knew that the little glow wanted me to open the window. I wedged my fingers against the sill and pulled upward. The glow slipped through a tear in the window-screen. It landed on my shoulder and tugged at my hair.
“Ouch,” I said indignantly.
“You’re paying attention now,” said the little glow in a clear bright voice. I looked at it closer, and if I slanted my eyes just right, I made out the outlines of a small body encased in the glow.
“You must listen,” said the glow. The glow was male, and despite his diminutive size, his voice was somewhere in the tenor range.
“I bet you sing beautifully,” I said to the glow. He hovered right in front of my face and snapped his little fingers.
“Pay attention,” he said crossly. “Don’t make me pull your hair again.”
“Is this a dream?” I asked, puzzled by the very real tug of small strong fingers on my hair. A niggling suspicion tickled the back of my mind. It was somehow a familiar feeling, but the familiarity was distant, as if from a childhood memory. I blinked, wondering why I suddenly felt like I was home.
“Don’t you worry about that,” the glow said firmly. “All you need to worry about is getting your pig-headed friend to heed the Lady’s order.”
“Pig-headed friend?” I repeated stupidly, mind still fogged.
The glow circled the loft, pointing down at the lump under the covers that wasMolly.
“Molly?”I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The glow whizzed around my head in frustration and then landed on my shoulder again.
“You mortals are so thick-headed it hurts,” he said into my ear. “The order.”
I paused. The little creature on my shoulder made a sound of impatience. “Hush,” I said, “I’m thinking.” I took my time, waiting for a flash of clarity. Finally, I drew in a sharp breath. “The letter.”
“Naturally,” said the little glow dryly. “You know,” he said, a sly edge to his voice, “you should go look at it.”
It was disorienting, him sitting on my shoulder where I couldn’t see him when he talked, and I told him as much.
“Well, isn’t that a pity,” he said. “I’ve flown far tonight and must rest before I return—straining my wings just because some little half-blood doesn’t like the idea of heeding an order from the Lady herself!”
I took in a breath. “If this is a dream, and it’s not real, I can do whatever I want. I can look at the letter if I want.”
“Now you’re thinking,” the glow said appreciatively.
I slid out of bed…but it wasn’t like in a normal dream. Part of me slid out of bed, and I glanced back over my shoulder to see that…I was still asleep, arms tucked under me and my hair spread out in a burnished golden fan over the pillow. As I watched in fascination, the sleeping half of me frowned slightly, sighing, as if…as if I was having a strange dream.
The glow tugged at my hair. “The letter is still under her bed.”
I watched Molly as I knelt down by her bed, sliding my hand into the darkness. I froze when she rolled over, her short dark hair mussed. Then my fingers felt the edge of the envelope, softer and thicker than normal paper. I sat back on my heels and turned the envelope over in my hands. It felt so…real. I glanced over my shoulder and looked at myself, still sleeping in bed. I turned back to examining the letter, peering closely at the heavy wax seal weighing down the flap of the envelope, a stark and vivid scarlet against the creamy paper.
I felt the little being lean forward intently as I delicately slid the folded sheet from the envelope. I unfolded it, and for a moment I thought the paper was blank. I turned my head slightly toward the glow, but then, from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of beautiful script, flowing down the page, and a seal at the top, a tree in black with silver stars and a crescent moon interwoven through its branches.
“Interesting, interesting,” the glow murmured into my ear.
“Are you talking to me or to yourself?” I asked.
“Both,” he replied. “I was not told you have a touch of it…you must, to see anything at all.”
“A touch of what?” I asked in irritation.
Then Molly made a little sound of distress in her sleep. I folded the letter quickly, slipping it back into the envelope and carefully replacing it in the darkness beneath Molly’s bed. As soon as the letter settled back into place, she sighed in contentment. I stood and backed away from her bed slowly, sup
pressing a slight flush of guilt.
“I know you don’t know anything, but you don’t need to.Quite frankly, you’re better off. All you need to do is gently push your friend in the right direction,” the glow told me.
“And which direction is that?” I asked. I sat down on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch my sleeping self. I held out a hand. The little light filtering through the window drifted through my translucent skin. Yet somehow my transparent hand didn’t look quite ghost-like; living warmth colored my skin, and there was a slight glow to me that I knew the dead wouldn’t possess. “What in the world is going on right now?” I said softly, mostly to myself.
The glow tugged on my hair, gentler this time. “Stop asking so many questions.”
“It’s not as though it matters anyway,” I pointed out rebelliously. “This is all a dream and you’re not real.” I didn’t believe it in the very core of myself.
The little glow laughed. “Right you are, right you are,” he said in a sing-song voice. “You’re a curious one. It’s not often that mortals slip so easily between their two halves.”
“What do you mean?” I heard the mingled curiosity and suspicion in my own voice.
“I should leave you thinking it was all a dream,” the little glow said with a conspiratorial air. “But there’s something strange about you.” He touched the curve of my ear with one tiny hand. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you have priestess blood in you, but I wasn’t sent here for you, and so I shan’t say anything at all.”
“Of course,” I said amiably. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Or I guess I should already know, since it’s my dream and all.” I thought for another minute, waiting for it to come.
“All the time in the world in dreamland,” said the glow. He hopped down onto my leg and sat on my knee cross-legged, looking gravely up at me. The longer I looked at him, the more detail I was able to see: he wore boots, and a long tunic with leggings beneath, and his face was pointed but still pretty, in a wild, boyish way. He wore a little down-feather in his hair, perched jauntily behind one ear.
“Hm,” I murmured dreamily, lying back against the headboard of the bed. I was careful not to dislodge him from my knee. He sat on my kneecap and dangled his feet in the air like a child.
“I’ll tell you my name,” he said, “if you tell me your name.”
“Tess,” I replied with a little laugh. “Tess O’Connor.”
“Tess is short for something?” the little glow said, leaning forward with interest.
“Theresa. But it’s Tess.” I jiggled my knee the slightest bit, just enough to made the glow put out a hand for balance. “Now you tell me your full name, since I told you mine.”
The little glow stood up and bowed elegantly. “Whither Willow Wisp,” he said. He tilted his head. “Although, mortal Tess, that was nothing of a fair exchange.”
I had no idea what he meant by that, so I let it pass. “Can I just call you Will? Or Wisp?” I sat up suddenly. “That’s like…Will o’ the Wisp!”
Dislodged from my knee, the little glow flew in a few pleased circles. “One and the same,” he said. “You could say it’s a family name. And if you really insist on a nickname, I’d prefer Wisp.”
I yawned.
Wisp hovered above my face and grinned impishly. ”Dream-walking will tire you greatly, if you haven’t been taught,” he said.
“Hmm,” I managed, feeling my eyes drift shut. I blinked and looked up at Wisp. “Can you come back in another dream?”
“If you tell your friend to heed the summons of the Lady,” Wisp said gravely, “I will come back again, Tess-mortal. And perhaps then I will teach you to venture farther in your dreams.”
I sighed and rolled over to my side. I felt myself settle back solidly into my body, and my mind was too hazy from tiredness to contemplate the strange, yet somehow familiar, sensation. As I drifted into sleep, I felt cool little hands tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“Sleep well, Tess-mortal.”
The whispered words lingered in my mind like a benediction, spreading behind my eyes and soothing the small worm of worry writhing its way into my thoughts as I drifted into a deep sleep.
Chapter 3
I woke again while it was still dark, with an unusually quick clarity. Normally I muddled around for a few minutes after waking, rubbing my eyes and convincing myself that whatever the day held would be more rewarding than sleep. Now, I glanced at my alarm clock and found it was still early, but not too long before dawn.
I slipped out of bed and padded over to Molly. “Hey,” I whispered, shaking her shoulder. “Let’s go for a run.”
She rolled over and yawned. “What time is it?”
“Time for you to get up and be a good running partner.”
Molly made a face. “Or…time for you to go back to bed.”
“If you don’t come with me, I’ll just go by myself. And then I’ll get lost and you’ll have to come find me.”
“That would be more work than it’s worth,” grumbled Molly, sitting up and stretching.
“So come running instead,” I said in a bright whisper.
“All right, all right.” Molly swung her legs out of bed and looked at me from beneath her fringe of bangs, which stuck up wildly in all directions. She narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s gotten into you this morning? Normally you’re a grouch.”
I grinned. “Maybe I just had a really good night’s sleep.”
Molly said something under her breath as she rooted around for her running shoes. I pulled on my socks and shoes, and ran down the stairs lightly, trying not to disturb Molly’s parents and Austin.
Outside, the early morning air settled crisply onto my skin. I stepped down off the porch, breathing deeply. At this hour in the springtime, the air in Pennsylvania would drape over me like a transparent robe, laden with the scent of cool dew and wet grass, laced with the sound of trees shuddering softly before the dawn. Morning runs at home were exercises in counting pavement cracks, skirting carefully manicured lawns and, on long routes, breathing through the heavy clinging smell of fertilizer being spread on the rolling hills of the farms on either side of the road.
Here, though, I heard the crunch of gravel under the soles of my sneakers. The dusky outlines of the rugged hills challenged me through the half-light, promising aches in my legs but beckoning all the same. The screen door banged and Molly walked over to me, combing through her bed-head hair with three fingers.
“Since when are you a morning person?” she demanded. “You woke up without an alarm clock.”
“You’re not in a good mood, so I’m going to try not to hold what you say right now against you,” I said.
“How charitable of you,” Molly grouched under her breath.
I elbowed her lightly as I sank into a hamstring stretch. “Come on, Molls, lighten up. We’re in Texas, it’s our second day here, we don’t have to worry about school or anything else right now. How often do we get to say that?”
“Not often enough.”
“That’s right,” I said. “So let’s enjoy it while we can. No professors, no class-work, no physical training.”
“No physical training?” Molly raised a skeptical eyebrow at me. “What do you call this then?”
I widened my eyes innocently. “I call this fun.”
“Of course. How could I forget, Tess with the mile-long legs, running is so much fun.”
“Stop complaining and let’s go,” I said, tightening my ponytail with a tug. Molly dutifully fell into step beside me as I started running. “You’re lucky I wasn’t your partner in martial arts,” I commented. At our university, there were optional physical education classes that included full-contact boxing, swimming and martial arts. Most young women didn’t particularly enjoy the physicality
of boxing and martial arts, but Molly and I reveled in it. It was just another one of those things that had convinced us we were too much alike not to be friends.
“We would have killed each other,” agreed Molly. “Though I heard you really didn’t take it easy on Emily Warner, if the rumors were true.”
“I’m just flattered there were rumors about me,” I said with a sly grin.
We warmed up for a few hills, the gravel crunching under my sneakers and spraying to the sides as I dug my toes in to get traction on the steep trail. When I felt the muscles in my legs loosen, I increased my pace. Molly ran just behind me, off my left shoulder—her typical position. The gray sky slowly lightened above us, blushing pink in the east and then washing the hills in pale gold light as the sun rose over the cedar-studded horizon.
I ran until the cool air burned in my lungs, until my legs felt heavy and my arms, swinging back and forth like pendulums, were only kept in motion through their momentum. At the crest of the next hill, I stopped, sweat sliding down my back and soaking the strands of my hair by my ears. The flush of sunrise brightened, bringing the wild landscape out of the suspended moments between night and day. I listened to the birds announcing the day’s arrival, their sweet shrill notes floating in the cool air like ribbons, intertwining and overlaying to create the tapestry of sound that was the Hill Country.
I took deep, measured breaths. The burn in the back of my throat faded into a dull ache, the familiar iron taste creeping into my mouth as I swallowed thickly. Looking back down the trail, I spotted Molly, her dark head down and her pale arms pumping as she gamely tackled the steep incline. When she reached the top, she grinned at me. I eyed her sweat-free forehead suspiciously.
“Why don’t you ever sweat?” I asked teasingly.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Molly, smiling impishly. “All I know is that I don’t have to worry about smelling disgusting after a run and that’s pretty convenient.”
