“Be still,” he said. “You are hurt.”
“How long?” she asked.
“Two days. You are healing.”
She groaned and tried again to sit up. Wîskacân put his hand on her chest and shook his head. She lay back.
Wîskacân drank some water himself and sat down on the ground next to her. “You must focus. This place listens closer than our world. It hears when you call. Dangerous, if you cannot control your heart.”
Molly started to nod but stopped as she felt her burned skin pull taut. “Thank you for saving me.” She took a few deep breaths. “I can breathe better now.” When she paid attention to it, she could still feel the thickness of the air, but breathing felt much easier than in those first moments.
“Your body learns. This land can be hard at first, but it knows you as its own.” He was watching her closely. “You have never been here?” She shook her head slightly, trying to avoid moving too much. “Your people do not come here, even when they are bound with spirits?”
“My people? Who?”
“The invaders. The ones who came across the ocean and built your city, Terra Nova.” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Among my people, those who are bound with spirits all come to this place.”
“I don’t understand.”
He shrugged. “It does not matter now. We are free. We have come home.” He smiled, and she almost smiled back despite the pain. Seeing him here, free of the harness, he looked like a different person. Open, calm. And I didn’t kill him after all.
He stood. “We must eat, but there is no food for us here. I will find us some. You should sleep while I go.”
“Yeah. I think I could do that.”
She watched him get up and listened to his footsteps as he walked away. She stared straight up at the sky, at the dizzying number of stars. The moon had gone where she couldn’t see it.
She forced her arm up, despite the pain, and looked at it. The skin was badly burned—red and peeling, and so dry it cracked as she moved it. She laid her arm back down. The rest of her body felt about the same. She closed her eyes and let herself drift away.
Something was sizzling, just to her right. She turned her head—only moderate pain this time—and saw Wîskacân sitting nearby, a fish in his hands. He was running his hands back and forth over the fish, and there was smoke rising between his fingers. The fish looked perfectly normal, and she wondered if he had caught it here or back in the human world. She didn’t even know if there were fish here—maybe the only inhabitants of this world were spirits. She felt dizzy for a moment, contemplating all the things she didn’t know.
The sun was high above them. It looked almost like the sun of her own world, save that the light pouring off it undulated across the sky like threads rippling in a slow breeze.
“You are awake. Good,” Wîskacân said. “We have food, water.” He had a knife and used it to cut open the fish, deftly removing bones and innards before handing her a small chunk of the meat. She moved her arm gingerly but ate quickly once she got it into her mouth.
“It’s really good. Where did you get the knife?”
“I returned to my people while you slept.”
“Your people?” she asked.
“I am Innu.”
“I don’t know them.”
He laughed as if she had told a joke. “We live to the east. Not far to Nitassinan, our land.”
“East? But…” She turned her head farther, as if she might see what he was talking about. But all she could see was an expanse of orange grass and a copse of the strange blue trees. “East is the mainland.”
He nodded once. “Yes. Nitassinan is across the water.”
“You’re saying you live on the mainland? But no one can go to the mainland.”
“We did not go there. We have always been there,” he said, gesturing to his left. “My people and many others.”
She opened her mouth to ask questions, or protest, but caught sight of his hand as it waved through the sunlight. “Can I see your hands?”
He watched her with narrowed eyes for a moment, then put the fish and knife down on the ground and held his hands out to her, palms open. The skin on them was a mottled red and black, peeling in places.
Burned. My lightning burned him.
“I did that. I’m so sorry, I—”
“No,” he said sharply, closing his hands. “The choice was mine. The pain is mine. It is not yours to take.” He returned to work on the fish. Molly struggled to suppress the surge of guilt in her stomach.
Not again. Don’t call it again.
“Breathe,” Wîskacân said.
Molly met his eyes, confused.
“You are afraid the storm might come back?”
She nodded.
“It could return, if you let it. Breathe. Think of your breath moving in and out, only of your breath.” He began breathing deeply himself, hand moving back and forth in front of his chest.
Molly copied him, focusing her attention on the feeling in her lungs, her chest, the glimmers of bright wind passing out of her mouth. The guilt subsided, and no storm came.
“Good,” Wîskacân said. “It is important to be able to still yourself while you are here. For you, very important, with two strong spirit links. This world listens very closely to you.”
“Yeah, I—wait. Two?”
He looked at her sharply. “You do not know even this?” He put his hand over his face and muttered to himself in his own language. “Your people know so little but take so much.”
“Legerdemain. I have a link with a spirit named Legerdemain.”
He came closer and put his hand on her chest, closing his eyes. “Two spirits have claimed you as kin. One is in the human world, where you cannot feel it.”
“Yes. Legerdemain.”
“There is another, here in this world. A greater spirit. A piece of the sky, a storm.”
“I don’t know what that is. Unless…could it be the spirit I freed from the Gloria Mundi? It was huge—we call it a first-level spirit—and I almost got swallowed up in it. But I didn’t think it changed me. Not like Legerdemain.” She swallowed. “Is that what’s happening? The storm I feel sometimes, the lightning? Did that come from the great spirit?”
“I do not know. But you have been twice honored. It is rare, even among my people.”
“Rare? But it happens sometimes?”
“Sometimes.”
People on the mainland. People who know about spirits, about the way I’ve been changed. “I don’t understand all this.”
“For now, healing is more important than understanding.” He touched her arm lightly, running his fingers down to the back of her hand. “Good,” he said. “It is good we are here. This is a healing place. Tomorrow you will move without pain, I think.”
Molly looked down at her arms. They really were beginning to heal—though the crusts of peeled skin on the grass around her were slightly nauseating. “I do feel better.”
“Good. Stay calm, breathe, and you will heal.” He stood and stretched his legs. “I will go now, but I will return in two days’ time.”
“Go? Do you, um, do you think that’s safe? I can’t move really.”
He smiled down at her. “You are safe here. I will leave the food and water. But I must go back to Nitassinan. That is my first home, my truest home. I must heal too, and I will do it better there, among my people.”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. Is there anything I need to know about the spirit world? Are there dangerous animals or things?”
“Only if you call them to you. Sleep as much as you can, and remember to breathe deep.” He knelt and held her hand for a second, his cracked skin scraping against hers. She squeezed his fingers despite the pain. “I will return and see you back to your first home as well.”
“Home. Right.” She let go of his hand. “Thank you for helping me.”
“We have helped each other.” With a final smile he walked away. She pushed herself awkw
ardly up onto her elbow to watch him cross the grass, running lightly and easily, and disappear into the trees. Beyond the trees she could make out the faintest glimmer of water—the gulf that divided the island of Terra Nova from the mainland. She stayed that way until it became too uncomfortable and then lay back down on the grass.
Her movement seemed to stir the grass to life. She could feel its fronds through her shirt, gripping her, exploring her. It felt odd but not uncomfortable. She nestled in and closed her eyes.
When she woke again the sun was gone, replaced by the strange winged moon. Dark silhouettes crossed its face. They moved in a V shape, like geese, but they had no wings that she could see. Long, willowy tails trailed behind them.
She pressed her arms into the ground and succeeded in sitting up. Her skin felt tight across her body, but it no longer cracked when she moved. She checked herself over, then removed her shirt to shake all the dead skin out of it. Her skin was raw and red but much better than it had been.
How long have I been lying here? I don’t even know.
As she pulled her shirt back over her head, she heard rustling in the trees on her left. She looked over and saw something emerge. It was small and white. It seemed to flow across the grass more than walk. Its shape was long and pointed—almost like a fox, Molly thought, but more like a painting of one, done in the simplest brushstrokes. It was moving straight toward her.
As it approached she stood, nervous, but it pulled up short a few feet away. It glowed slightly, and it floated just above the ground. It seemed to be made of wind.
“Hello?” she said to it. It made no sound but came a little closer, slowly, as if worried about scaring her away.
Its white tail curled around it, and it shivered slightly. Then the brushstrokes of its body seemed to merge, and new limbs appeared—ones that were straighter and more solid. Its body reformed into something like a small person, and two dark eyes appeared in the white, featureless face. It looked up at her and waited.
There was something familiar in the new shape. The dark circular eyes, too wide for the face, the straight limbs with a small bulge around the joints, the blocky body…
“Cog?” she said. “Is that you?”
The small spirit jumped forward, shifting quickly back into his previous brushstroke form. He skipped and flowed around her legs, and she laughed and crouched down. She put a hand to his back, and he pressed up against her palm. He felt soft and yielding, like cotton.
“It’s really you, isn’t it?” She gathered the spirit into her lap and held him for a moment. The spirit made a humming sound and curled into her arms. He looked so different now. When she had known him in the human world, he had inhabited a small cogitant—a foot-tall automaton, like a tiny metal man, used to do menial tasks aboard the Legerdemain. Despite the change, he felt familiar and comforting. “It’s so good to see you. I didn’t know what happened to you after I let you go on the Gloria Mundi. You made it home!” She grinned down at him and felt tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. “That’s good. It’s so, so good to know you’re safe. That I at least managed to help one spirit get home.”
She felt a lump in her throat, and the tears began to fall from her cheeks, passing through Cog’s insubstantial body. “Oh, Cog,” she whispered.
She heard a rumble on the horizon, like a distant storm. The hairs on her arms stood up.
Breathe, she thought, and pulled in a breath and blew it out through pursed lips. In and out. She breathed deeper, slower, trying to concentrate on her lungs. The rumbling subsided. “Sorry. I’m a bit rough right now.” She grimaced as she said the words.
Cog’s head rose, and he leapt out of her lap.
“Wait! I didn’t mean you have to go!”
Molly rose to chase him, but he stopped only a few yards away, bending to the grass. There was something there, rising up from the ground. It glimmered like gold and curled in the air. It looked like a tendril of pure light sprouting from the earth.
“What is it?” she asked.
There was a soft rumble, and Molly put her hand to her chest. But her heart was slow and steady. Not a storm. Not me. The rumble seemed to travel toward them, and now she could feel it under her feet.
The light that Cog had gone to investigate was joined by others. Cog leapt and danced between them as they continued sprouting, moving steadily closer to Molly. She backed away.
The lights reached her feet. They sprang up all around her, twining around her legs, glimmering between her fingers. The earth beneath her feet warmed.
The ground in front of her parted, and two huge black eyes set in a stony face peered out at her from the earth. A huge creature pulled itself up and onto the ground, tendrils of light all around it. The creature was covered in these tendrils too, like golden ivy clinging to a cliffside. But unlike ivy, these lights were in constant motion, growing and receding in dizzying curlicues.
It took her a moment to recognize the creature through all the light. It was the terric spirit they had freed from the extractor. Its pale golden glimmers had turned into something bright and alive and bigger than the stones of its body. Its blackened skin had healed—though she could still see the places where its stone had broken away, leaving its body uneven.
“You’re here,” she said, then shook her head. “Of course you’re here. But why? I mean, why did you come here, to me?”
Its eyes were fixed on her, and she could see herself reflected in them. In the reflection she saw strands of light beginning to wind themselves around her legs, and she shook them off. The lights didn’t climb her again. “Why did you come?” She felt Cog brush against her calves, but she didn’t look down.
Strange colors swam around the edges of its eyes, and her reflection fractured. The lights swirled and formed an image—the terric font. And around it a cavern dominated by the huge harvester. The image broke up and reformed to show Molly herself, her family, and Ariel and Toves. Molly bit back tears.
“You want to know what happened?”
The spirit’s huge head nodded.
“Well, I got my Da away—I got him out of the cave, at least, but who knows what happened after that. But Toves… You broke the font. He couldn’t get home. He died.”
The eyes fell dark, and the spirit made a deep, mournful sound that Molly could feel vibrating the ground beneath her. The sound grated on her nerves.
“Why are you here?” she shouted. The spirit didn’t move or even pause in its sound. Molly felt like she was shouting at a cliff face. As her anger flared up, she felt a brief hum of electricity, and then it collapsed.
“I don’t know why I’m mad at you. Toves wasn’t even mad. Said you just wanted to get home. You’re not the one who took him there. You didn’t ask him to stay.”
The spirit didn’t seem to be paying attention to her now. It raised its head skyward and opened its mouth, its sound growing and changing slowly. It’s singing, Molly realized. The sound fluctuated slowly but never ceased, humming through the ground around them. It was so low that sometimes Molly couldn’t hear it anymore, but she could still feel it.
She waited for the song to stop, but it didn’t. Molly’s legs were beginning to tremble, and her skin was sore. Finally she sat, and Cog came to curl in with her.
“Do you remember Toves, Cog?” she asked him, letting her fingers play through the winds of his back. “The terric spirit in Knight’s Cove? When Da kicked me out of the house, Toves let me stay with him.” She paused, fearing she might be overwhelmed again, might call a storm in on them, but the big spirit’s song was so slow, so steady, that it seemed impossible to feel panic or anger inside it—only a soft and somehow peaceful sadness. “He asked me to get him home, back here to the spirit world. But we found a harvester like the one on the Gloria Mundi, and this spirit was inside. I asked Toves to stay and help free it.”
There was a pain in Molly’s side. She lifted her shirt to discover a crack in her skin, a bright-red streak that glistened wetly. She sig
hed. Moving too much. Take it slow. Molly lay down, and Cog slid into the gap between her arm and her side.
“What if I didn’t go home?” she said. “No more fighting. No more dragging people into danger. It’s so peaceful here.” She closed her eyes. “I mean, as long as I stay peaceful.” She listened to the spirit’s song. It vibrated through her, in her head, her skin, her bones.
She opened her eyes suddenly. She hadn’t meant to drift off, but she could see the moon had moved halfway across the sky, and the spirit had stopped singing. But it was still there, lying just beside her. She could feel the warmth radiating off it, juxtaposed with the coolness of Cog, who was still tucked in on her other side. The glowing tendrils were all around them, but none touched her.
She sat up, and the spirit’s head shifted just slightly, taking her in with the corner of its eye. She left Cog sleeping and moved closer to the other spirit, the lights on the ground making way for her.
“I’m sorry. About before. I shouldn’t have yelled. It’s just…it hurts. But I’m glad you got home.” She sat again, a few feet from the spirit’s head. “It was all so fast, we didn’t have time to talk. But I know it must have been horrible for you in that box. I’m not sure I can even imagine what that was like.”
The spirit shifted itself, turning its face farther toward her and resting its head on one of its craggy legs.
“Do you have a name I can use? I mean, one that a human could say?”
Its only response was a long, low rumble that hummed through her bones. She watched it, and it watched her. The spirit itself was absolutely still—not breathing, not shifting—but its lights were constantly in motion, growing and then fading to make way for new tendrils.
“I’m still thinking of you as an ‘it.’ With the other spirits, I started thinking of them as ‘he’ or ‘she,’ even though I know spirits aren’t actually like that. What do you think you would be?”
Another rumble. Molly heard the far-off whoosh of the moon winging its way toward the horizon. She spread her fingers in the grass, feeling it move under her palm.
“I guess that’s more about me than about you,” she said. She paused. Something in the words echoed in her memory, but she wasn’t sure why. She shook her head. “I mean, me wanting you to have a name I can use. Wanting you to be he or she. You aren’t those things, and you don’t have to be.”
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