by Barb Hendee
The sound of weeping filled her ears, and she scrambled off the mat to the back of the curtained space.
The visage of a transparent girl stood at the foot of her mat.
Mari’s breath caught as she rolled back over her mat to get away. She came up in a crouch before the blanket partition to the next loft space.
The girl’s face was beyond pinched, with thin hair that hung down and over her shoulders. Her skin looked shriveled and shrunken to the bones of her face, and the same with her arms, as if she’d starved to death. With one exception, she was white all over, even to the peasant dress; there were purple half circles under her eyes.
She reached out with both arms and bony fingers to match as her mouth gaped. Maybe she tried to say something, but Mari was too shaken by all she saw.
A long, pained wail suddenly echoed through the rafters.
Since the night of death for Mari’s family, she’d never cried out again. But the sound of fear tore from her in a feral shriek as she ripped through the side blanket for the path between the sleeping spaces. She remembered those white forms among the woods, and everywhere they went, those she’d loved had died.
Then the black one thrust a hand through her father’s head and out of his face.
As Mari pushed through the blanket curtain into the path between the private spaces, she saw the white girl slip straight through wool material to block the path out of the loft. The ghost’s arms were still outstretched, and it began to drift toward her.
How could she fight something she couldn’t touch, or kill something already dead?
She glanced to both sides at the blanket curtains. Either way, she’d have to get through and then bolt out of the front curtain to get to the stairs. Her own space was the closet to the stairs. And the white girl was now only three strides away.
Terror began to force a change within her. Her sight widened, like that of her other flesh, until the dark lit up like twilight. And then the ghost looked too bright before her eyes.
Mari twisted back to dive under and into her own sleeping space. She stalled as she heard pounding footsteps from the direction of the stairs.
“Mari!”
That one word came from beyond the ghost, but it didn’t turn.
A hand thrust through the white transparent form.
Mari felt a scream out of childhood trying to come out. But that hand wasn’t black.
It had living flesh she saw more clearly than others would in the dark. Fingers curled as the hand ripped downward. The ghost girl came apart like vapors in the air. Those torn, white swirls like mist vanished in the dark.
In the path between the blanket curtains stood the Dead’s Man.
Mari couldn’t stop shaking. For that instant, she couldn’t even think, and then she saw his eyes with her fully feral sight. His irises glowed in the dark like beacons, but they were as white as the ghost had been. The glow began to fade as he panted.
“Are you all right? Did it speak to you?”
Each of his questions was like a tossed stone’s strike that made her flinch. More so when he took a step, and she quickly retreated. Where was her dagger? Glancing down at herself, she suddenly realized she wore no pants and was dressed only in her long muslin shirt.
“What did it look like?” Tris pressed. “Did it touch you? Are you all right?”
No, she wasn’t—but he was. She’d never before faced a spirit, though she’d heard of others who had. One or two had claimed they’d been touched, and they hadn’t been all right. Her own loved ones were dead because of that. But he had touched this spirit and it had suffered instead.
He was the Dead’s Man.
Where was her dagger?
“Mari?”
She flinched, still frozen in place. Why couldn’t she move? Had he done something to her? As he came closer, a bit more blue showed in his eyes, as if they continued changing. Looking at her—into her eyes—his own widened at what he saw. Fear in his face like concern confused her even more.
“Answer me,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Are you all right?”
Where had he been? Why hadn’t he come up to sleep?
“What did you do?” she hissed. “How did you do that . . . tear it apart?”
He flinched this time and dropped his gaze, but he didn’t answer.
“How did you get rid of it?” she asked, inching toward him. “Why didn’t you suffer . . . and die?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if relieved she was angry.
“I did not ‘get rid of it’ yet, not so easily. It does not work that way,” he said, “no matter what you have heard.”
Now that the white girl was gone, she wanted him gone—dead—as well. So why not do it? Even without the dagger, she might tear him apart, if she could change flesh quickly enough.
“What are you?”
He winced. Still not looking at her, he asked, “What did it look like?”
Mari’s heart still pounded in fear and rage. She tried to push down the memory of her parents’ murder, of the white visages she’d seen that night.
“White,” she answered, “even to her clothes.”
“No.” And he finally looked at her. “Her face, form, anything about her.”
That question stalled her even more. What did it matter?
“Starved, or maybe withered,” she said. “Her eyes had dark circles, maybe purplish, around them. Why?”
Tris went still, and his expression turned hard. “Starved to death? And purple-colored circles under her eyes? You could see that in the dark?”
His attention was so intense now. He closed his own eyes briefly and opened them again.
“It is gone for now,” he said, in the flat tone he usually used. “It has no connection to this building.” He pointed to her right. “I will take the space across from yours. It will not come back tonight, so you can sleep without fear.”
She didn’t move and waited until he slipped behind the blanket-curtain across the path. Only then did she back into her own space. She settled silently on her mat, then dug into her things, and pulled out the narrow dagger as she listened.
She heard him drop boots on the floor, maybe his cloak as well, and settle on the mat, and then came the rustle of a blanket. After a while, his breath grew long and soft with sleep. She could still smell him by the strong scent of spiced tea.
Mari sat awake into the night as sweat built beneath her grip on the dagger’s leather-wrapped hilt. He’d gotten along before now without someone to stand in for his poor language skills. He didn’t need her, even for that. She’d watched him tear apart a spirit. Someone—something like him—could’ve seized control of it instead, even used it against her, like on the night her family died.
So why hadn’t he?
—
Tris lay on the mat facing the blanket-curtain of his space. Sleep did not come. He had forgotten his pack in the main room, where he had been lost again in the past. Then he had felt something manifest in the common house.
He had not see anything in the main room—but he had felt it here somewhere. And then he had run for those stairs, for Mari.
What would he fear for her?
She had easily dealt with three would-be bandits in the forest, even killing one of them. But she would not know how to deal with an opponent already dead. He had not taken the time to stop and completely vanquish the spirit—and he should have—but he’d shattered its visual manifestation without even thinking at the sight of Mari trapped in the back of the loft.
Again, why had he felt so much fear for her, the drive to protect her?
It was not safe, not rational for his life so far, and he did not need that extra responsibility.
Such a thing could not happen again.
Throwing one arm over his eyes, he tried to th
ink on something—anything—else. There were only memories to take the place of his strange panic over this wild, feral young woman who had invaded his life.
There was only the black one—that other him—whom he had first seen clearly when he was a child and later as a youth . . . and then later, he began to hear its whispers and to gain hints of what it wanted.
In the summer he turned seventeen, he and his mother traveled into northern Belaski to visit his aunt, his mother’s sister, Ellen de Pierres. Aunt Ellen was married to a wine merchant—not a noble—and so most people believed Reagan had made the better bargain in marriage.
Tris knew better.
The de Pierres were a merry family of six, all so strangely fond of one another, or at least strangely to Tris. His cousin Alaina had always tried to make him feel welcome, tugging him into card games, or playing at spinning tops, and chattering at him all through a noisy, happy, boisterous dinner. And while he did not accept or encourage her overtures, he did not avoid them. He had never met anyone so happy. She was slender with thick, chocolate brown hair.
Somewhat like Mari’s hair.
On that visit, Alaina dragged him outside for an evening walk through the rose garden, holding up both her side and his missing side of the conversation. She never appeared to mind. They were well away from the manor and almost to the tree line when she stopped and looked up at the sky.
“Oh, it’s getting late. I didn’t even realize, and now look,” she rattled on. “We should go back, before it’s fully dark—no, I won’t get lost, not here, but still—”
“Why?” he cut in, as she did not seem particularly worried.
He did not want to go back; he wanted to stay here with her.
Alaina hesitated, then smiled with obvious effort. “Nothing, not really, and it was . . . moons ago.”
That was the first time all day and evening that she faltered in chatter.
“Some serving children were fighting near the well,” she began again, more slowly. “And . . . a boy was pushed in. It was awful, and since then, people have spoken of seeing strange things at night or twilight, just not in the daylight.”
He stopped, touching her lightly on the shoulder, and she tensed.
“What things?” he asked.
She never answered. She inhaled, eyes widening as they fixed on something beyond him. That breath did not come out.
Tris half turned.
There in the far reaches of the rose garden stood a boy—maybe twelve—but as white as steam. At the sight of them, his roundish face twisted in rage around eyes like black pits.
Tris whirled around, forgetting Alaina. He looked all ways but saw no other white wisps of spirits. And no black him—that other him—in the darkening twilight. When Tris spun back, the boy’s lips curled in a silent snarl as he rushed forward.
Tris knew what would happen if a spirit touched the living.
This time he could not run, not leave Alaina alone—and his face grew warm.
The growing dark began lightening, as if twilight reversed.
He saw every detail of the boy down to the buttons of his shirt, his swollen flesh and bloated belly behind the untucked shirt. He did not care if the boy got to him—but he would not let it touch Alaina. He forgot everything but her. When he turned to grab her, she lurched away in even greater horror . . . at him.
“Your eyes!” she cried out.
Confused, he tried to grab for her again, even as he looked away.
The boy ghost was nearly upon them. Without knowing, Tris lashed out with a fist. It struck the boy, as if solid.
That swollen little spirit reeled and rippled backward, like a shred of linen in a wind.
Tris wanted it gone—not simply vanished but gone. He could not risk turning away to Alaina, not if he wanted to save her.
His need to make the ghost gone became overwhelming.
Then . . . behind the ghost, the night appeared to gather, swirling in upon itself. For an instant, Tris feared the black one was coming again. But this time was not the same as before.
Darkness behind the boy—in the spot Tris fixed on—appeared to solidify in the air, like a hole in this world. The boy’s face twisted, this time in an anguished snarl that Tris heard. And the boy charged again.
Tris stepped in the way, grabbing for the boy, and his fingers closed halfway through the semitransparent chalk white arm. His first reaction was shock that he could not stop the spirit, but pressure on his fingers forced its way through the surprise. And the more shock faded, the more solid became his grip.
The ghost screeched and thrashed, clawing at his face.
Tris quickly took hold with his other hand as he ducked a swipe at his face. His eyes fixed on that whirling black void beyond the boy. And on instinct, he shoved.
He neither heard nor felt the savage spirit’s small boots slide across grass and earth; he did feel it resist his effort to drive it back. One white hand latched on to his upper left arm in a matched grip for his own on the spirit’s. He hunched in a half crouch and shoved all the more.
The whirling darkness beyond spread out closer behind the boy.
Tris made a final effort and shoved with his whole body, releasing his grip in the last instant. And then fear filled him again as the small white form began to swirl, as if ripped apart by that whirlpool of pure darkness.
It was gone in an instant.
He stood there, just staring at what he had done, not knowing how he had done it. And then came whispers. At first, he thought someone else had come or that Alaina had approached behind him. Before he could turn, he heard it again, coming from the swirling darkness, which began to fade.
. . . my Tris . . . me Tris . . . I Tris . . . not you . . . Tris . . .
Somehow, he knew it was the other him speaking through the portal. He felt its presence and its rage and its longing to be him.
Then the black void drained like swirling ink sucked into a hole in the world—and vanished.
The whispers were gone.
Tris began to shake. There was another sound now behind him in the darkening dusk.
Rapid panting breaths came so fast there was no room for a voice.
Tris turned too quickly and nearly lost his balance.
There next to the manor’s stone wall, half-hidden beneath a rhododendron, Alaina sat on the ground. One hand half-shielded her face, hiding her mouth.
She was safe. How he had managed this, he still did not know. But she was safe. And he went for her.
Alaina uttered a gasp and scooted back deeper beneath the bush.
“What—what—,” she stuttered in whimpers. “What . . . are you?”
A growing chill sank into Tris as he backed away from Alaina’s terrified eyes. The answer to that question would come in little pieces over the following years. Until it drove him away from anyone who might hear those whispers from the black one—the other him.
. . . not you Tris . . . I Tris . . .
That first time in Alaina’s eyes, when he lost her, would not be the last time he saw this in the eyes of others.
Tris lay in the dark listening to Mari’s slow breaths at the loft’s far side beyond the blanket. By their rhythm, he knew she was not sleeping yet. It had been years purposefully spent alone since he’d had thought of protecting anyone but himself. And now he had no wish to face such a complication again. He rolled toward the loft’s wall and away from the sound of Mari’s breaths, but that one question would not let him sleep. It had been asked too many times—first in terror by a girl and now in fear-fed rage by a young woman:
What are you?
CHAPTER FOUR
When Mari awoke, it was still nearly dark in the loft without windows, and she didn’t remembering falling asleep. In one blink, she knew Tris wasn’t in the loft anymore.
She didn’t smell
or hear him.
That panicked her as much as what she’d seen last night. She wrestled into her pants, jerkin, and boots, left her pack behind, and only tucked the sheathed dagger under her jerkin as she rushed downstairs. Hurrying through the door into the main room, she skidded to a stop.
There he was, and he lurched upright off a bench, startled where he’d been staring at the fireplace again. There was no fire in the hearth now, just the charred blackness of the soot-covered stone hollow. He turned away from her, back toward the hearth.
She didn’t see his cloak or his pullover—no socks or boots either. He wore only pants and a faded, untucked black shirt. Same as last night, and by its wrinkles, he’d slept in it.
Crouching before the blackened fireplace, he began shaving kindling to start a fire. She didn’t say anything—but neither did he—and she felt more uncomfortable than on their journey here. Sleeping across the fire from him had been awkward, but at least then he couldn’t slip away like he had this morning.
Mari stood eyeing his back until the tinder ignited by flint sparks sprouted a small flame. He blew gently upon them, not saying a word, with his back still turned to her. His bare feet were so pale. She suddenly wondered what the day would bring.
“How do you . . . ?” she started, and then stalled. “What’s next?”
He pivoted halfway in his crouch. “Normally, I would find someone who speaks a little Old Stravinan or someone with an accent I can follow a bit to help me in questioning others. But now that you are here . . .”
What? Did he think she’d just do whatever he wanted? Be his mouthpiece?
“I will pay you one-quarter of my fee,” he said, turning away to thread another piece of tinder into the fire. “If you will translate for me.”
Mari hesitated. He wanted to hire his would-be killer, his onetime victim left alive? She’d rarely had the chance to earn her own money, and the prospect pulled at her more than she cared to admit. Aside from keeping him within sight, it was better than other things she’d done for coin.
She tensed at hearing soft steps outside, and in a count of three or four, the common house front door creaked open.
