Heart of the Rebellion

by E. E. Holmes

  As though my thought had preceded me into the room, Savvy turned and caught my eye. She shook her head at me, and I knew that she had no more idea of what this conversation would be about than I did. She looked beseechingly at me, begging for an answer I could not give her. I gave her what I hoped was a quick, reassuring smile as I crossed the room, and took the seat beside her, reaching out to squeeze her hand gently.

  “You got any idea what this is about, mate?” Savvy hissed at me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell her what Celeste told me, about her needing a friend to get through whatever was about to happen. I couldn’t bring myself to make her look any more scared than she already did.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” I said, lying through my teeth.

  As I let go of Savvy’s sweaty fingers and settled my hands back in my lap, the door behind us opened again, and Mrs. Mistlemoore walked in. Her face was blank—unreadable. She held a clipboard clutched tightly against her chest, and though her face was impassive, her knuckles upon the edges of the clipboard were white with tension. Behind her, one of her staff was pushing a high-backed, wooden wheelchair. Phoebe sat in it, slightly slumped, with a faded patchwork quilt tucked gently around her legs. She looked dazed, as though the trip from the hospital ward had thoroughly disoriented her. The grim-faced attendant wheeled her to a stop directly beside Savvy’s chair and walked out again without saying a word. Phoebe looked over at the two of us, her expression bewildered. It was clear that she had no idea what this meeting was about either. She may not, I realized, have been told that it was a meeting at all.

  Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  Mrs. Mistlemoore nodded curtly to us as she passed, stopping only to adjust Phoebe’s blanket, which was trailing down near one of the wheels of her chair. Then she took a seat in a chair right next to Celeste’s desk, just as Celeste was settling herself behind it. It was nothing like the desk in the High Priestess’s office—a hulking, mahogany monstrosity designed to intimidate whoever was unfortunate enough to have to sit in front of it. This desk was small and delicate, with gracefully carved wooden legs and a dainty white lace cloth draped over the top of it. It was, I realized, an official but far less foreboding place to meet with someone than Celeste’s actual office or the Grand Council Room, which always gave me the uneasy feeling of facing the wrath of a hostile judge and jury. It also would have been damn near impossible to get Phoebe up to Celeste’s office anyway, now that I thought about it—wheelchairs and endless spiral staircases didn’t exactly mix well.

  Savvy was looking indignantly at Mrs. Mistlemoore. “Begging your pardon,” she said, and though the words were polite, the tone was anything but. “Are you sure she’s quite well enough to be out of her bed yet?”

  Mrs. Mistlemoore nodded patiently, ignoring the sharpness of Savvy’s question. “I promise you, Savannah, that I would not have allowed her to leave the hospital ward unless I was quite sure that she was physically prepared to do so. The High Priestess needed privacy for this meeting, and I could not ensure that for you in the hospital ward.”

  Savvy nodded, but her expression was still skeptical. Beside her, Phoebe’s eyelids were drooping, as though she were ready to drop back off to sleep. She might be in the room for whatever this meeting was, but it seemed unlikely that she would remember much of it. The short trip out of her bed had already exhausted her.

  “I will not keep you any longer than is necessary to explain the situation,” Celeste said, addressing us all for the first time since entering the room.

  Savvy pulled her eyes from Phoebe and sat up a little straighter in her chair. “So, there’s a situation now, is there? And what kind of situation might that be?”

  “I want to discuss,” Celeste said, and again, I had the sense that she was choosing her words very carefully, “the recent discovery that Phoebe’s Spirit Sight has been compromised.”

  Savannah went rigid in her seat. Her eyes darted back-and-forth between Mrs. Mistlemoore and Celeste. “You told me that you would let me know as soon as you knew what was going on with her Spirit Sight,” Savvy said to Mrs. Mistlemoore in a rather accusatory tone.

  “And that is precisely what I’m doing,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said. “This was information that I felt it important for the High Priestess to have as well, as the implications of it reach far beyond the people sitting in this room.”

  Phoebe was fighting valiantly to keep her eyes open, but it seemed to be a battle that she was destined to lose. Savvy reached over and grabbed Phoebe’s hand in her lap as a sign of solidarity, it seemed. I suspected, though, that it was as much to gather strength as it was to bestow it; Savvy’s face had gone starkly white.

  “Go on then,” Savvy said, her jaw thrust out in the very picture of the British “chin-up” mentality. “Let’s have the worst of it, then. I can tell from the looks on your faces that we ain’t about to hear nothing cheerful.”

  “No,” Celeste said solemnly. “I’m sorry to say you are quite correct. It is a grave situation, I will not lie to you.” She took a deep breath, and held her hand out for Mrs. Mistlemoore’s clipboard. Mrs. Mistlemoore handed it to her, and as she did so, they exchanged a serious look. My heart was beginning to thunder beneath my shirt as the anticipation mounted. Savvy was looking at the clipboard like it was a loaded weapon that Celeste had just pointed at her.

  “As you of course already know,” Celeste began, her voice professional, but not unkind, “Phoebe awoke yesterday without the ability to see, hear, or indeed, sense any spirits at all. We cannot say whether this result of her ordeal is expected, or ordinary, for what Phoebe has gone through is extraordinary—possibly unique. Certainly, we have no record in all of our Durupinen history of any such situation occurring.”

  “Hang on, now. There’s that other girl, Flavia,” Savvy said, so defensively that it came out as nearly a shout. “That Charlie bloke’s gone and done the same thing to her.”

  “He attempted to do the same thing to both of them, that’s true enough,” Mrs. Mistlemoore interjected quickly. “But the fact of the matter remains that he experimented upon both of them, and that each of those experiments was slightly different, producing different results. While Flavia is another victim, we cannot claim that their conditions are identical, and therefore we really cannot use one as a true predictor of the other. At least, not entirely. Mr. Wright used some different runes and positioned them slightly differently upon each of the girls. There were also traces present of different substances that were used in each attack. It is clear that he did not yet know what he was doing, and both Flavia and Phoebe have suffered differently as a result.”

  Savvy seemed to want to argue with this, but could not wrangle her thoughts into a rational response. She sputtered and stammered a bit, but then went silent. Phoebe did not attempt to interject. It seemed all she could handle was merely to keep her eyelids up where they were supposed to be. Everyone was basically talking about her as though she weren’t really there, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. Her eyes drifted from speaker to speaker and, based on her expression, she was only vaguely following what was happening.

  “If I may continue,” Celeste said, once Savvy had fallen into silence. At this point, she turned and addressed Phoebe directly. Phoebe, sensing the shift in attention, gave her head a little shake and renewed her attempts to stay conscious. “As I was saying, we cannot know, or indeed predict, what the eventual outcome will be for you, Phoebe. We can only assess what is happening now. And what is happening now is troubling in the extreme.”

  I recognized the look on Savvy’s face, and was pretty sure she was about five seconds away from launching herself across the desk and tackling Celeste right off her seat in frustration. In order to help Savvy avoid sitting in front of the Council on charges of assault against the High Priestess, I reached my arm across her chest as a gentle reminder to stay in her seat and behave herself. She threw me a glance that was at first defia
nt, but quickly melted into something like shame. Her shoulders slumped, and she dropped her eyes to her lap.

  When I was sure that she had regained control of herself, I looked up at Celeste and nodded my head. “Perhaps it would be best if we dispensed with the formalities and just went straight to the explanation. I think it would be best for everybody if we just get it over with. You know, kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid,” I said.

  Celeste nodded. “Yes, of course. I apologize. It is not my intention to make this any more painful than it needs to be.” Celeste flipped the page on the clipboard, folded her hands upon it, and turned to look directly at Phoebe. “Phoebe, it is my painful obligation to inform you that Mr. Wright’s experiments upon you have resulted in a severed connection with your Gateway.”

  Phoebe blinked. She blinked again. Her expression was utterly blank.

  “Phoebe?” Celeste prompted her after a few silent moments. “Do you understand what I just told you?”

  Phoebe blinked again, and then shook her head, her hair whipping over her shoulder like a horse tail swatting at an irksome fly. “Sorry, ma’am, but no. I don’t reckon I quite understand what’s going on.”

  Celeste adjusted herself in her seat and cleared her throat again, as she tried to find the words to clarify herself. It was evident from the expression in her eyes that she found having to deliver this news terribly distressing. “It would appear,” she began deliberately, “when Mr. Wright twisted your Spirit Sight, he interrupted—or somehow broke—your connection to your Gateway.”

  “Broke?” Phoebe asked, her voice small and hoarse. “What do you mean, broke?”

  Celeste glanced rather helplessly over at Mrs. Mistlemoore, who came to her aid in that kind, yet business-like tone she always adopted at a bedside. “‘Broke’ is perhaps the wrong word to use, for we do not know if the connection is beyond repair or not. It may be that some Casting can be found that will repair the damage. Or else the damage may repair itself, like a creature who loses a limb, and simply grows a new one. Or…” she faltered and stopped.

  “Or?” Phoebe prompted her. There was nothing sleepy about her eyes now. They had gone wide and round as coins. Where they had been dull and clouded mere moments before, they now sparkled brightly with fear.

  Mrs. Mistlemoore took a deep breath, steeling herself. “Or the connection may be severed permanently.”

  No one spoke for a moment. The news hung over us, like a terrible storm cloud, threatening to open up at any moment and drown us all. Savvy recovered first.

  “How can Phoebe’s connection to the Gateway be broken?” she asked. “The Gateway is inside her, right? It’s in there, in her blood. How can you become disconnected from something that’s actually a part of you?”

  “The Gateway exists outside of the Durupinen,” Celeste replied, keeping her tone as gentle as she could while still sounding like a schoolteacher who was slightly frustrated that a student had not been paying attention. “The Durupinen are merely a conduit to it. For example, all of the spirits who choose, at the moment of their death, to cross over into the Aether, do so without the guidance of a Durupinen. Those spirits do not need Durupinen to be physically present in order for the Gateway to open and accept them, for it is always there, waiting for that very moment. It is only when that Gateway closes that the spirits need someone to open it for them. Think of the spirit as somebody wandering around trying to get through a locked door with no key. The Durupinen have the key. But the door exists, whether the key is nearby or not.”

  I’d never heard anyone explain the Gateway quite in this way, but I imagined that if I had been told of my legacy as a small child, this might have been the very manner in which my mother would have explained it to me. Savvy’s face was twisted in concentration, as though she were looking for a loophole. Phoebe, however, was starting to look as though she had understood something.

  “So, what you’re saying, ma’am, is that I’ve lost my key?” she asked tentatively.

  Celeste nodding along encouragingly. “Yes, exactly that. And, to extend the metaphor, since it seems to be an apt one, we are not sure if that key is lost forever, or if we may in fact find it again. There is simply no way to know.”

  Phoebe nodded, clearly pleased that she had understood what Celeste and Mrs. Mistlemoore had been trying to convey to her, but the pleasure was short-lived. I watched as it drained from her face, to be replaced by a poignant sadness. “So… I will never see spirits again? I will never be able to help them?” she asked in barely more than a whisper.

  “We cannot say for sure,” Celeste answered, her lip trembling. “It is possible.”

  Savvy was looking at Mrs. Mistlemoore, Celeste, and Phoebe as though they had all quite lost their minds. “And what about me, then?” she blurted out suddenly, the intensity of her voice making us all jump. “What does this mean for me, then? We’re the same Gateway. The same blood. Why is it that I can still see spirits, but Phoebe can’t? The connection must still be there, right? Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to see them either.”

  “It is curious, to be sure,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, nodding thoughtfully, her face full of an academic interest. “But I think this may have something to do with your placement in the Gateway, and not just the connection itself.”

  “You’re gonna need to explain that to me, mate,” Savvy said, shaking her head. “I can barely follow what’s going on here.”

  Mrs. Mistlemoore arched an eyebrow in response to being addressed as “mate,” but otherwise let the insouciance slide. “Very well. Every Gateway has two parts—two Durupinen are required to complete the connection to the Gateway, and to allow spirits to Cross.”

  “Yeah, I’ve managed to grasp that much,” Savvy said dryly.

  “Well, then you no doubt also know that each Durupinen has a slightly different role to play. One of them is the Key, and the other is the Passage. Generally, it is the Key who has been seeing spirits even from her earliest memories of childhood.” Mrs. Mistlemoore looked back and forth between Savvy and Phoebe, waiting for them to identify themselves.

  “Yep, that would be me,” Savvy said, raising a finger in the air. “Living amongst the dead since I was still in nappies, me.”

  “And you, Phoebe? Mrs. Mistlemoore asked, turning to Phoebe. “When did you first see a spirit?”

  Phoebe shrugged. “Not all that long ago, I reckon. I was about fifteen, or maybe sixteen. Might’ve seen them before then, I suppose, but if I did, I didn’t know they were dead.”

  “So, Savannah, you are the Key, and Phoebe is the Passage. Phoebe’s Spirit Sight has only developed as a result of your own. As your connection to the spirit world grew stronger, hers began to develop. It’s not a parasitic relationship, strictly speaking, but imagine it as the smaller creature latching onto a larger creature to nourish itself, and the growth of the one defining growth in the other.”

  I could tell from Savvy’s face that she did not think much of this metaphor, but she allowed it to pass without her usual snark. “So, she can see spirits because I can see spirits, that it?”

  “Your gift has allowed her gift to develop,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, nodding. “Now, if you had been attacked, Savannah, it is likely that neither of you would be able to sense any spirits at this time. Savannah, because your gift acts as a doorway to her gift, both of your gifts would likely be affected in that scenario. But since Phoebe was the one who sustained the attack, and since it was her Spirit Sight that was directly affected, it is only she who has lost the access to communicate with the spirit world.”

  “Okay,” Savvy said, rubbing her temples as though trying to fend off the beginnings of a massive headache. “So, I can still see and communicate with spirits, but what can I do for them? It takes both of us to open the Gateway. But one of us is no longer connected to it, so what does that mean?”

  It was Mrs. Mistlemoore’s turn to look beseechingly at Celeste to find the words to answer Savvy’s question. Celeste expelled a small s
igh, and when she met Savvy’s eye, her expression was full of pain. “It means that your Gateway, at least for the present, is closed.”

  Savvy looked blankly at Celeste. She turned to look at Phoebe. Then she turned to Mrs. Mistlemoore, her face expectant, sure that she was going to jump in with some sort of caveat, some sort of additional information that would make this blow gentler, less devastating. No one had anything to offer her. Finally, she dropped her gaze and whispered the awful truth to her own trembling hands.

  “We’re not Durupinen anymore.”

  Celeste reached across the desk and took Savvy by the hand, gripping it tightly. “Savannah Todd, you look at me, and you hear me now. Both of you hear these words and hold them in your heart. You will always be Durupinen. No Necromancer Casting can take that away from you, ever. Both of you are part of a clan now, and both of you will have an important role to play in the defending of the spirit world. We may not know what that will look like yet, but I can assure you that this man, this… monster… has not and cannot take that from you.”

  “But we won’t be Crossing spirits anymore,” Savvy said, still unable to meet Celeste’s eye. “That’s over now. That’s done.”

  Celeste’s face spasmed with repressed emotion. She squeezed Savvy’s hand again. “Yes. I wish I could give you another answer, but it seems, at least for now, that that part of your journey as a Durupinen is done.”

  All the air seemed to have gone out of the room. I could barely breathe as I watched the force of this news hit Savvy again and again, breaking a tiny piece of her disbelief away each time it hit her. It was devastating to witness. Beside her, Phoebe was quite still, her expression blank.

  My insides were writhing with pity and horror. Selfishly, I wished I was somewhere—anywhere—else. Why the hell did Celeste drag me down here, damn it? I couldn’t do a goddamn thing to make this less awful! All I could do was stare and wince and avoid trying to hide my eyes like a helpless spectator of a tragic accident. I reached for Savvy’s hand, but whether coincidentally or on purpose, she moved it at the same moment and tucked it firmly into her armpit as she crossed her arms over her chest in a pose that looked as though she were trying to keep her midsection from falling apart.