Emma nods. She doesn’t pull out the lantern, but she doesn’t need it. In some fashion, Margaret is still bound to Emma. It’s far, far easier to unravel her current shape than it would be to create it. In a matter of minutes, Margaret Henney is standing before her, smiling.
They exchange a few words, and Margaret says, “I’m going to go speak with your father.”
“Don’t waste breath. I’ve already tried. He says he’s not ready to leave.”
“I’m not wasting breath, dear. The dead don’t. And I think he’ll be ready to leave when he understands—and believes—that the threat Necromancers pose to you is over.” She turns to Eric, her smile diminishing.
“Eric.”
He nods. He’s never been demonstrative.
“Good-bye, dear.”
“Don’t waste good-byes on me. We’ll be seeing each other soon enough. Go talk to the Old Man.”
“He’s a little far—”
“He’s in the car.”
Margaret nods and leaves him alone with Emma. To Emma’s eye, Eric looks the same as he did when he entered the garage. No one else will see him that way. He’s dead. But he’s been dead for as long as Emma has known him. It seems a lifetime. It’s been just over two years.
“Are you sure you can do this?” he asks.
She nods but decides on honesty as she answers. “If there were anyone else who could, I wouldn’t.” She doesn’t tell him why; there are so many reasons to choose from. But her biggest is Chase. She has nightmares about what happened to Chase’s family. She understands why it’s hard to let go of hatred or judgment.
She’s surprised when the magar appears.
“You don’t intend to help me, do you?” she asks.
The magar’s glare is withering, but Emma’s built up a tolerance to it. “That is not the way the circle works.”
• • •
Emma sits at the rough center of the circle. She closes her eyes. She listens. This is the peaceful part of her task. She is never certain what she’s listening for. The dead aren’t always loud. They don’t always cry or scream or plead. Andrew Copis didn’t. But his memories were so vivid she could hear his mother’s screaming in place of his voice.
Tonight is a bit different from the usual searching: she knows who she’s searching for, and she has no doubt that she’ll find her.
• • •
When she steps outside of her circle—and outside of her body—she touches down in a landscape she refers to as gray. It’s an inexact description of a washed out nothingness. It has no character, no features, nothing to give it form or shape.
Or at least that’s what usually happens. Today, however, the landscape has one distinctive feature. Eric. His hands are by his sides, his expression too complicated to place. But his lips turn up in a small smile as she appears.
She doesn’t offer him her hand; he doesn’t attempt to take it. “You know where you’re going?” he asks.
She nods. She begins to walk, and Eric falls in beside her.
As they walk, Eric speaks. Eric, who never talks about anything personal. Eric, who is the foil to Chase Loern’s gregarious anger.
She’s never asked Eric if he still loves Reyna. She doesn’t ask him now. She doesn’t ask him if he stayed for Reyna’s sake because she knows the answer is No. He stayed to finish the job.
But she sees his restlessness so clearly now, she wonders if that’s all of the truth. She’s come to understand that truth, like the people who believe it, is complicated; it’s never entirely one thing.
She notes the moment the landscape changes, gray becoming stalks of dry, wild grass and the trunks of distant trees; she sees the sky become blue with a hint of clouds. She hears the rush of water and thinks of rivers or streams. The shadow of birds cross the ground as it solidifies beneath her feet, their wingspans large and open.
Vultures.
She has seen so much death on these walks. So much pain. So much fear. She glances at Eric; he is grim now. He knows exactly where they are. She almost offers him a hand because she’s not certain he will be able to remain here. He shakes his head with a rueful smile, and she understands.
She concentrates.
She can hear a girl scream. It stops her in her tracks, and for one long moment the scenery loses color. It threatens to lose stability, she is so overwhelmed by what she hears. It is not Emma’s voice, but it might as well be; her throat aches, and her chest; her hands are shaking fists.
She fights for control, fights to push the feelings aside just enough that she can navigate. She’s had practice by now. She’s lost evenings—and even weeks—to the lives the dead lived. She doesn’t want to lose this one, because Eric is with her. He provides incentive to master her reactions.
It’s been two years. More. She hasn’t seen Nathan except in photographs—and she will never see him again. It hasn’t hurt as much as this for a while, and she knows why. The girl’s loss is new. She is looking at death. She is looking at Eric’s corpse.
She glances at Eric; he is looking at her, his lips slightly thinned. “I’m sorry you had to do this.”
“I didn’t have to do it,” she replies.
“It was you or no one.”
She smiles, meaning it. “Is this where you expected me to find her?”
He is silent as the roof of a small house comes into view. He pauses there. “I wasn’t certain. Were you?”
Emma nods. “I was certain. I don’t know that she would have been happy with you, in the end. I don’t know that you would have been happy with her.” She has her doubts, but they’re irrelevant. What she knows is that Reyna never had the chance to live that dream, and Reyna was fragile enough—young enough—that it destroyed her.
It destroyed so many people.
“Are you ready?” Emma asks.
“I don’t know.” His smile is apologetic, and his hands are tight. He is watching vultures and hearing the ugly laughter of villagers. Emma doesn’t know if they actually laughed; memory, she has discovered, is subjective.
And irrelevant. This is the past. This is the cage that traps the dead. They don’t see it, can’t leave it, without help. She knows that Reyna deserves this cage.
But she knows that Reyna did not, on the day Eric died, deserve this pain. She didn’t deserve to lose her mother, her sister, her uncle, and the only man she would ever love. She didn’t deserve the murderous cruelty of villagers goaded by fear into an act of madness. If she hadn’t suffered, if she hadn’t been victim to things she didn’t deserve, there would never have been a Queen of the Dead.
And it is here that the Queen of the Dead was born. It’s here that she will, finally, die.
Eric makes—has made—no excuses for her. Emma is certain that centuries of almost-life have killed the love he once felt. But maybe love survives, in some fashion.
Or maybe Eric is as trapped by death as Reyna has been. Maybe some part of Eric is still the boy that loved her, in this village, centuries ago—the person he was when he was killed. And he was killed, Emma knows, attempting to protect Reyna. He was willing to give his life for her.
He did.
• • •
Emma can see the body. She can see Reyna. The gown and the tiara that characterized her later reign are nowhere in sight, and her hands are covered in blood. Eric’s head is cradled in her lap; she is bent over his face, the edge of her hair matted red and sticky. Emma can’t hear what she’s saying, but she can guess, and she’s grateful for the distance.
Eric, however, shakes off uncertainty and fear as he sees her there, cradling his head. He walks—almost runs—to her side, and stands in front of her, looking down at her bent head. He kneels.
“Reyna,” he says, as Emma approaches them both, moving slowly. “Reyna.”
Reyna doesn’t look up. She’s not aware of Eric’s presen
ce. Emma feels a pang of disappointment on Eric’s behalf, but she shakes it off quickly and smiles at Eric as he looks up at her.
She feels her clothing shift as she becomes firmly rooted in this memory place. She knows her hair changes. She’s not certain whether or not she retains her own face because she’s not certain her face would be relevant to village life—or life on its outer edge.
But she says, as she approaches, “I’ve called for a healer.”
Reyna looks up at the words. She doesn’t see Eric. She sees his injured body.
“We need to get blankets,” Emma continues. “And we need to build a fire. We need to keep him warm.” She doesn’t look at Eric’s chest, at the gaping wound that appears to cover the whole of it. She looks, instead, at Reyna.
Reyna is frozen for one long moment. She looks at Eric’s body and looks at Emma, and then she very, very gently lowers the memory of Eric to the ground. She stands, facing Emma, and as she does, the scenery fades.
The look on Reyna’s face is one of recognition. Emma is surprised. She’s not afraid. She knows the circle will protect her, if protection is needed. The dead she has guided to freedom never recognize her for what she is until they are almost at the exit.
But Reyna recognizes Emma.
• • •
“I didn’t think you would come,” she says.
“If you could think that I wouldn’t,” Emma replies, “you shouldn’t be here at all. You shouldn’t be trapped here.”
Reyna shakes her head. Her appearance remains as it was on the day Eric died and her world ended. There is a quiet dignity in her now that Emma never saw in the Queen. And there’s pain—but it’s an honest pain, not a pain transformed into anger or rage or hatred.
“I was always trapped here,” Reyna says. “I can’t escape it on my own. I know—I know it’s not real. Who better than me, to know it? But it holds me anyway. I—I didn’t think you’d come. Why did you?”
Emma says, truthfully, “Because there’s no one else.”
“I would have left you here.”
“I know. But I’m not you.”
“Because you’re better than me?” There is no rancor in the question. No accusation. No fear.
“Because,” Emma says, surprised at the tightening in her own throat, “I was safer than you.” She smiles and adds, “And because I was asked, as a favor.”
“My mother?”
Emma shakes her head. “Your mother doesn’t ask for favors. In fact, your mother doesn’t ask for anything.”
Reyna winces, but she laughs, and her laugh is surprisingly warm. “You’ve spent some time with my mother, I see.” The laughter fades slowly. “Who asked you?”
Emma reaches out for Eric.
Eric hesitates and then places a hand in hers.
It’s clear that Reyna can see him the instant their hands connect. Her eyes are wide and luminous—with death, and possibly with the tears the dead don’t shed. And her smile steals breath, it’s so radiant. To Emma’s surprise, Eric appears to blush.
“Eric?”
“I told you,” he says, voice rough and low, “I want you to leave this place. I want you to leave it with me.” He looks down at her—he has to, she’s not tall—and he says, “There’s my smile.”
And he smiles back.
• • •
“I’m proud of you, Sprout.”
Although the garage is chilly, the words are warm. Emma’s not a child; she doesn’t need to hear them. But some part of her is still her father’s daughter and always will be. Even if he’s dead.
She is silent as she leaves the circle; she doesn’t scuff it or obliterate the binding words beneath her feet. She doesn’t know the precise moment when Margaret leaves, but she knows when she’s gone. Eric is gone. Nathan is gone.
Memories are a poor substitute for life—but regardless, they’re precious. The memories are Emma’s to hold on to for as long as she wants, and they cost no one.
“Thinking?” Brendan Hall asks, as she leaves the garage, falling in beside her.
“Mostly that I have to take Petal for a walk.”
“Want company?”
She nods.
• • •
Petal is older and deafer, but he has the heart of a puppy. A puppy that no one has fed, ever. She takes dog treats, picks up his lead, pops her head into the family room to let her mother and Jon know they’ll have to do without a begging rottweiler for a while, and heads out.
Her father keeps her company, although he stays out of the family room. The only thing Emma resents Jon for these days—and it’s a tiny, tiny resentment—is her father’s stiff reserve. But Jon makes her mother happy, and Mercy Hall deserves some happiness out of life.
And, if Emma is honest, she likes Jon. Jon can pull a smile out of her on days when that’s harder than pulling teeth. There are still bad days, after all. But they’re fewer.
• • •
She walks to Nathan’s grave. The fact of the grave once felt like the end of her life, and for a while, it had been. Things that had been so important became, instantly, trivial. She had gone through all of the right motions, with no sense that they meant anything.
But if this marked an end, it marked a beginning as well. It was here that she first met Eric and the magar. It was through Eric that she met Chase. In the past two years, Chase had become as important to her as friends she had known since she was five, which was good, because now that he had returned to Toronto to stay, she was going to be seeing a lot of him. He wanted to marry Allison.
She glances at her father.
“You’re okay, Sprout?”
“I am. I’ll miss Eric—but it was time.” Saying that, she runs the back of her hand across her eyes.
The tears are not for Eric. Her father knows. But she doesn’t speak until she finally reaches the cemetery, and even then, it’s hard.
“The worst thing about being dead,” her father says, starting the conversation, “is the helplessness. I wanted to pick you up when you fell. I wanted to hold your mother when she cried. I wanted to be able to duck out to the store and buy the groceries I knew she’d forgotten.”
“I did that.”
He smiles fondly. “Responsibility is for the living, to the living. I wanted to know you were both okay. I wanted to know that you were doing well.” He shakes his head. “Every bad day either of you had wracked me with guilt, because there was nothing I could do about it.
“And then you met Eric and the magar. I am not—I will never be—grateful to the Queen of the Dead. But the consolation was that I could speak with you again. I could offer you comfort. Cold comfort,” he adds, with a slight smile. “I watched you for years.”
Emma turns, then. “I’ll be all right, Dad.” She wills herself not to cry but fails.
“Yes. Yes, you will. Thank you.” When she doesn’t respond, he reaches out with his cold, dead hands and touches her cheek. The tears should freeze, but they don’t. “The best gift any child could give their dying—or dead—parents is that: the certainty that they’ll be okay. You’ll be more than okay, Emma.” His smile deepens; hints of pain change the shape of his eyes. “Part of me doesn’t want to leave. Part of me wants to stay and watch what you choose to do, how much you’ll achieve, from here on in.”
Emma holds her breath. Exhales. “But no pressure.”
He laughs.
Emma smiles. She understands the part of him that wants to stay. She was his daughter. He loved her. But she understands, as well, that he is tired. He is exhausted. The only thing that ties him to the world of the living is the daughter he loved—but they both know he can no longer be part of her life.
Life is hard, sometimes. But it continues. Having seen the result of one desperate woman’s attempt to create an eternity of love, it’s best that way.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“I’ve seen where you’re going. I’ve never followed any of the dead.”
“You’ve had no incentive.”
“The magar has been teaching me for two years, Dad.”
He laughs again. And he doesn’t say no.
“I want for you what you want for us,” Emma says, before he can. “That’s all. I want to know that you’re safe, that you’re happy, that there’s some peace for you.”
“You don’t know what actually lies on the other side of that door.”
“No. But no one living does. If I can see you off happy, that’s enough. That’s enough.” She takes his hand; it’s cold. Of course it is. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Everything. Giving me life. Loving me while you were part of it. Watching me when you couldn’t be. The usual.” She stops speaking and waits until the tears are under control before she leads her father away.
He’s smiling. She’ll remember that later.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Sagara lives in Toronto with her husband and her two sons, where she writes a lot, reads far less than she would like, and wonders how it is that everything can pile up around her when she’s not paying attention. Raising her older son taught her a lot about ASD, the school system, and the way kids are not as unkind as we, as parents, are always terrified they will be
Having a teenage son—two, in fact—gives her hope for the future and has taught her not to shout, “Get off my lawn” in moments of frustration. She also gets a lot more sleep than she did when they were younger.
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