Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

  “I’m not sure. The others must have let him in somehow,” I said, shrugging in an offhanded sort of way. Flavia had told me that the breech for Milo to enter would last only a few seconds, so I knew that, by the time Irina had noticed him, the only chance of escape had already been sealed back up.

  “But then,” she lit up like a firework, “there must be a way out! If he’s gotten in…” And she began to rocket around so fast that she was merely a blur, pausing only to probe at the confines of the space.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, dizzy from watching her progress. It was manic, desperate. “They’re pretty determined to keep us in here. I don’t think they would allow any sort of loophole.”

  “But then, how will he get out again?” she moaned, creeping along the bottom edge, like she’d dropped something irreplaceable in the grass there. She turned a mad-eyed, feral look on Milo, who moved back in alarm. “Do you intend to stay here forever, spirit guide?”

  “No, not forever,” he said, and looked at me for help.

  “Well then,” Irina said, and in the space of half a second she was beside him, almost offensively close to his face. “You’re the one I ought to cozy up to, aren’t you? Because when you go, I’m going, too.”

  “I… well, that’s not exactly how it works,” Milo said.

  Even as I rushed to help him, a part of me was amused to see him so clearly intimidated by Irina. His general level of sass usually meant he was very hard to intimidate.

  “Irina, he’s not going out as a spirit. You won’t be able to cross with him.”

  Irina rounded on me. “What do you mean? What other form could he take?”

  But I could not answer. Milo finally snapped out of his panic enough to do what he was supposed to do, and vanished into my body. I was overcome with the same dizzying sensation as before, so powerful that I hardly knew where I was or how to regain my bearings.

  I tried to focus and saw my own eyes staring back at me.

  It was probably good that my vision was hazy or I might have panicked completely. There was my face, not as I was used to seeing it in a reflection. And though the features were familiar, something alien was staring out at me from my own eyes, some other person’s expression twisted my mouth. That person chuckled, and I heard his voice wrapped in the cloak of my own.

  “Wow. So this is what it’s like to be you,” Milo said from behind the timbre of my own voice. “No offense, but it feels really weird.”

  I tried to respond, but I could hardly wrap my mouth around the words. I also couldn’t hear myself think; Irina was screaming at the top of her lungs, absolutely beside herself about what Milo had just done.

  “Impossible!” she was shrieking. “The Walker’s body is protected from possession. What is this witchcraft? What are you? How are you doing that?”

  Milo, who seemed a little braver now that my skin stood between them, addressed Irina. “Calm down, would you? I’m her spirit guide, remember? It’s one of the perks of the job.” Then to me he said, lifting an arm clumsily in front of his (my) face. “It’s hard to move it. It’s like I forget how to drive one of these things.”

  “It will come back to you,” I stammered. “Just hurry up and try to walk it across the grass so we can get out of here.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I can’t think or see straight when you’re in there. So just hurry up,” I said again.

  Irina was shouting something in her terrified confusion. I made out the words, “impossible” and “demon-spirit.”

  “Can’t you shut her up?” Milo asked from somewhere nearby. “I’m kind of busy here.” I watched as my body was attempting to rise into a seated position.

  “Irina, it’s okay! I told you, he’s my spirit guide! I know him! I trust him! Stop shouting!”

  “What is her problem?” Milo spoke through my mouth, with my voice.

  “She was always taught her body was safe from other spirits while she was Walking. What you’re doing shouldn’t be possible, as far as she’s ever known,” I said, trying not to look at him. Watching my body move without my consent seemed to make me feel worse. Summoning all my strength, I moved away from him, closer to Irina, who was now skittering around the far side of the enclosure like a bird trapped behind glass.

  “Irina, he’s just practicing, do you understand? Listen to me! We’re connected, and that’s why he’s able to enter my body. No other spirit could do it. He needs to practice, so he can move and protect my body if I ever needed it,” I said, speaking much more slowly than usual so that I could concentrate on keeping the words clear. The slow pace of my speech had the added effect of slowing Irina down as she listened. By the time I had finished, she was moving only a few feet side to side, eyes darting from me to Milo, who was now clumsily willing my body to stand up.

  “I have never heard of this. You are connected?” she asked, her tone still skeptical.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s Bound to my sister, and pledged as spirit guide to our Gateway. Spirit guides are the only exception to the soul catcher’s protection of the body from habitation. They probably never mentioned it to you because you had no spirit guide, so it didn’t matter.”

  She had slowed to a stop now. “What of your Caomhnóir? Why can’t he protect you?”

  The guilt and worry rocked through me in this new form, more deeply than I’d ever felt it. “He’s gone. We argued, and I don’t know where he is or if he’s ever coming back. I can’t count on his protection now.”

  “Hey!” I heard my own voice shout. “Hey, Jess! Take a look! I think I’ve got the hang of it. Shit, this feels weird!”

  I chanced a glance back at Milo and instantly regretted it. I had only the shortest look at my own figure, tottering like a drunkard in a weaving pattern across the enclosure before my vision became so clouded and blurred that if I’d had a digestive system, I would have emptied it heartily.

  “Hurry up!” I said, the words barely distinguishable. “I’m really not feeling well. I seriously can’t even watch you.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m walking back now. I’ll tell you when I’m done.”

  I could tell even through my blurred and fuzzy vision that Irina was laser-focused on me. “How is he leaving?”

  “In my body.”

  “Then how are you going to get out?”

  “I’m going in my body, too.”

  Irina laughed, though I couldn’t see what was funny. “You cannot occupy the same body together.”

  “We can,” I said. “We’ve done it before.”

  “Two spirits within one body? Can this be?” Irina whispered. She was staring down at my body, presumable making its way back toward the entrance with Milo inside.

  “Yes,” I said, still totally distracted. “Now please stop talking so I can concentrate.”

  Finally, I heard myself call, “Okay, Jess, I’m ready for you. Are you okay?”

  “I think so. Please tell me you’re finished.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve figured it out. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Thank God. I’m coming.”

  It happened before I could stop it. Irina was looking from me to the body, her expression intense but unreadable. And then she streaked with terrifying purpose, toward my body below.

  “No! Stop!” I fought desperately to gain my bearings, to force my own being into motion, but I could barely bring my destination into focus.

  I watched in helpless horror as Irina tried to force her way into my body, which jerked and writhed, as my mouth opened and screamed with a pain I could neither feel nor comprehend. I gathered every particle of strength I had and launched toward it.

  I hit it with a force that felt almost physical, though of course I had no physical form any more, and seemed to bounce off. My body was screaming, but it was not actually my pain, I realized, but Irina’s pain channeled through me. And I could see her, faintly, pressing herself against the boundaries of my being, battering herself against the door that
was locked against her.

  “You can’t get in, Irina!” I shouted. “You’re only torturing yourself. Get away from here, now!”

  “No!” I could hear her moan, even as my mouth spoke her words. “I must escape. I cannot stay here! Take me with you in this cage!”

  “We can’t!” I shouted, and with a shudder, I heard Milo, muffled and struggling as she continued to attempt to break in.

  “Get out of here, you crazy bitch! You know how it works! You can’t get in here, and you’ll only damage yourself trying!” he cried.

  I gathered my strength again, though what I was going to do with it, I had no idea. I just knew I needed to put as much distance as I could between Irina and my body. I needed to enter it again. But could I, when she was attacking it like this?”

  “Milo, brace yourself. I’m coming back,” I said.

  “Just get us out of here!” he called back.

  Irina’s strength was fading. She knew it, and fought even harder, hurling herself against my walls with another volley of blows.

  I did it instinctively, because I had absolutely no idea what else to do. I concentrated on the space where Irina was, imagined myself inhabiting it, and propelled myself forward with every bit of power I had left. I felt our spirit forms collide, felt her expelled from my body, and in the same moment felt my spirit and body reconnect to each other.

  The screams ripping from my throat transformed from sound to sensation as my senses came flooding back into my control. I stifled them at once, biting back sobs as I readjusted to feeling, to pain, to the darker side of having a physical form. I opened my eyes and saw Irina huddled in a faded, flickering, heaving mass on the ground. She was paler than I’d ever seen her, and she seemed utterly unable to do anything but lay and cry quietly. Her form was barely distinguishable from the ground on which it twitched and shuddered.

  “Milo?” I asked, not aloud, but inside my own head, which felt huge and unwieldy, like someone had strapped a ten pound weight to it in my absence.

  “I’m here,” he mumbled. “What the hell happened?”

  “Irina’s gone,” I said, the thought transferring from me to him almost seamlessly. “I forced her out when I entered.

  “I… she… that was bad,” he said.

  “Did she hurt you?”

  “She hurt you, I think,” Milo said. “At least, I was feeling real pain, so I think it must have been physical.”

  “Yeah, I still hurt,” I said, tentatively moving my fingers and toes, arms and legs. “But I think I’m okay. Wow, that was really… fucked up. I can’t believe she…”

  “Jess, are you sure she’s gone?”

  I pulled my attention away from my physical inventory. “Huh?”

  “Are you sure she’s gone? I think I can still hear her.”

  I looked again at Irina’s form, nearly translucent on the ground nearby.

  “Yeah, she’s definitely gone. I can see her over there.”

  “So then who am I hearing right now. That’s not you, is it?”

  “Is what me?”

  “The humming.”

  I stopped everything I was doing and listened hard.

  “What is it? Can you hear it now?” he asked, his voice echoing inside my head, blotting out any other sound.

  “All I can hear is you! Shut up a second and let me listen,” I said.

  The moment he stopped talking, I heard it, a tiny melody in the recesses of my head. It was slow and a little sad, like a nursery rhyme tune, and it repeated as I listened.

  “Yeah, I can hear it, but… that’s not Irina’s voice.”

  “No, it’s not. It… didn’t this happen before?”

  But it was already stirring in my memory, the night we had shared my body to slip through the wards at Fairhaven. He was right. The last time we’d done this, we’d heard the same thing: a clear constant presence of another voice… this same voice. Singing this same little tune. There was something about the voice that was oddly familiar. Without knowing why, it made a lump rise in my throat, made tears spring unbidden into my eyes.

  Our realization was simultaneous. I couldn’t even have said whose thought it was that zipped across both of our consciousnesses. But it was Milo who spoke first.

  “Oh my God. Oh, my God, Jess! It’s Hannah!”

  I cringed as his excited voice bounced around the inside of my skull. “Milo, seriously, calm down!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” he whispered impatiently. “But listen! That’s her, isn’t it?”

  Heart pounding now, I focused in on the humming again, trying my best to tune out all of the other uncomfortable sensations I was readjusting to. Sure enough, the more I listened, the more I was sure he was right. It was Hannah’s voice we were hearing.

  “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right!” Milo said. “Don’t you think I know her voice? I can believe I didn’t realize it the last time it happened. I guess I couldn’t concentrate on it last time, because I was too distracted by the fact that we were actually sharing a body. But that’s her, I’m sure of it!”

  “What do you think it means? Why can we hear her?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. This whole spirit guide thing just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” Milo hissed. “I haven’t been able to communicate with her at all since they took her. I’ve been trying and trying, but they closed our connection somehow. I must take the two of us together, for some reason. And if we can hear her…”

  He didn’t need to finish the thought; the same lightbulb was flaring to life over my own head. “Try to talk to her! Call her name, see what happens!”

  “Hannah? Hannah, it’s Milo. Can you hear me?” Milo said, his voice quiet and tentative. The humming went on unbroken, except for an occasional sniffle. She was crying.

  “I’m going to try louder. Brace yourself,” Milo said.

  “Okay.”

  I cringed as he shouted in my head, every decibel clanging against the inside of my skull like a church bell. When he had no success, I tried. I shouted for her mentally, then out loud. Finally, after a half dozen attempts we had to conclude she couldn’t hear us.

  “Now what?” Milo asked.

  I glanced over at Irina, who was starting to raise herself from the ground.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, before Irina unleashes herself on us again and someone has to perform an exorcism to get her out.”

  “Good thinking.”

  I crawled laboriously toward the opening, every muscle searing, my head feeling like it was full to the brim with sloshing, rolling water.

  “Do you feel as shitty as I do right now?’ I asked him.

  “I think this is probably the worst I’ve felt since I’ve been dead. So yeah, I’d say so.”

  I collapsed onto the grass just outside the enclosure and Flavia, Anca, and half a dozen Caomhnóir descended on me.

  “Back up!” I shouted, raising my hands in front of me as Flavia reached out with some kind of candle. “Everyone just back off for a minute!”

  “But Irina! Isn’t she…”

  “No! She’s still inside, and you better check on her, because I have no idea if she’s okay. Now back off, please, I’m trying to concentrate here!”

  My voice was ringing with authority I didn’t know I could muster, and everyone backed away obediently. Several of them cautiously approached the enclosure. I pushed them all out of my mind again, so I could concentrate. The voice—Hannah’s voice—was still singing softly.

  “Okay, let’s think here. Do you think we are hearing inside her head right now, the way we can hear inside each other’s?”

  Milo concentrated a moment, then said, “No. I don’t hear any thoughts, do you?”

  “No. Just the humming. Let’s see if we can hear anything else.”

  I felt our energy sync up as we both focused on the sound of her voice. Other sounds began to clarify around her. A high-pitched buzzing—perhaps a fan or an air conditioner? The steady tic
king of a clock. A tapping noise, like a pebble being repeatedly dropped on the ground, or maybe a dripping of water. A scratching, like fingernails in the dirt.

  “I can hear where she is!” I said, excitement bubbling up in me for the first time in days.

  “Me too!” Milo said. “It sounds kind of echo-y, doesn’t it? Like she might be underground, or something?”

  I focused again, and immediately heard what he meant. There was a hollow quality to the sounds, and even the humming itself had a faint echo to it. “Yeah. She’s definitely inside. It sounds sort of like some of the bigger chambers at Fairhaven, the way the little sounds bounce off the stone walls.”

  My imagination, inspired by my fear for her, began to conjure images of dank prison cells and empty castle dungeons. I felt Milo shudder, and knew the images disturbed him just as much as they did me as they filtered from my mind across his, like foreign waves lapping up onto his shore.

  “Okay, she can’t hear us, but we can hear her,” Milo said. “What’s going on?”

  “It must be one of the aspects of being Bound. You’re like a connection between the two of us.”

  “No one ever said anything about being able to hear each other in our heads!” Milo snapped. “What the hell? No one thought we might like to have that information?”

  “Yeah, well they also failed to mention the prophecy that meant our ensured mutual destruction, so their track record on giving us important information is pretty shitty,” I said. The pressure in my head was starting to build, and I could barely concentrate. “Can you come out for a minute? I think I’m reaching my limit for how long you can stay in there.”

  A strange pulling sensation, and all the pressure lifted as Milo appeared beside me. He was barely visible, and panting like he’d just run a sprint.

  “Me, too,” he said. “Wow, being inside you is no picnic.”

  I stared at him. He caught my eye and started cackling. “Okay, wow, things I never thought I’d say to a girl.”

  I joined in the laughter, but it died out quickly as the gravity of what we’d just discovered hit us both.