Courage Is the Price

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  Even if Priti seems content to wander seemingly at random, how is Rue going to explain to her that Ghost is, well, a ghost? Rue hasn’t thought of that. Hasn’t even wanted Priti to come along, but she doesn’t know how to say ‘no’ and, in truth, without Priti she would be hopelessly lost and map-less. She would have had to sneak out of the house with no ill-gotten permission to leave, under-dressed and woefully unprepared.

  Now… she and Priti are facing a group of dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of the station-city. Rue’s head is throbbing so much she feels like she can hardly see. She’s turned her phone-pad off entirely, not wanting Mrs Krombel to try and contact her or, indeed, trace them. She’s got tracking on her travelling case. It would make sense to assume her phone-pad can be tracked too.

  By now, the UV-shields have rotated almost entirely. It’s dark and there are no lights to guide them, only millions of pinpricks that are supposed to resemble a starry sky Rue has never seen except in pictures. It should have made her breath come in short, sharp puffs, but her head is hurting too much and Ghost is too near for Rue to notice the fear that is flexing itself in her stomach.

  Priti is there too, but she is staying back, leaning against a rusty metal fence. She says the area is haunted. Rue swallows. Her friend is inside one of those buildings. She can sense that. But Priti refuses to come closer, is already unhappy to be where she is, but they both need the map to get back and they can’t afford to split up. Rue skitters. She’d like to be pacing along the plascrete road, but she’s too frightened. She really does not want to go closer on her own, but she also doesn’t want Priti to come with her.

  Priti is asking her for an explanation, but Rue doesn’t want to give it. How can she? How would she? How could she make Priti understand that ghosts are real and not dangerous?

  So, instead, she tells Priti to use the map and go home. It comes out more snappily than she’d intended, than she’s thought herself capable of, and she’s already striding along the plascrete towards the buildings. There are some crates to one side, but Rue ignores them. Her heart is hammering right at the top of her sternum, trying to break bone if not to break free of her body entirely. Rue ignores that too and keeps going. Her steps may falter, she knows it, but she pays that no mind, just like she pays the pain in her palms no mind, nor the ache in her hands and legs. Muscles she’s never even known she has are tensing up on her and she runs back once.

  Priti hasn’t moved. She’s clutching the map and the pen and she shakes her head. “Don’t.” It’s only a whisper, which makes it easier to ignore as Rue gathers up the courage to try again. She only gets halfway before bolting back this time, but Ghost is in there somewhere and she will not give up. She keeps going. Priti tries to stop her, once, she thinks, but Rue shakes the other girl off.

  Her eyes are more used to the dark now. Not that there is anything to see but a few boxes and buildings. One of them no longer has a roof. Another is lacking a door. Looking back at the entrance to the yard, Priti is still leaning against the fence. Perhaps she isn’t going until Rue is ready to leave.

  That thought warms Rue until she realises that if anything happens to her, Priti will be the last person to have seen her, and Mrs Krombel knows it. She’s probably just waiting because of that. Because she doesn’t want to risk putting her family in danger rather than because she has any friendship for Rue. It stings a little, but Rue will have to sort that feeling out later.

  Right now, Ghost needs her. Her fretting did bring her near the largest of the three buildings, the only one still entirely intact. The windows are cracked and the doors are closed, but it’s where her friend is. Rue is certain of that much. Rue walks from one side of the wall to the other. She doesn’t dare walk around the building, doesn’t dare disappear from Priti’s sight. The girl sounded frightened enough already, and Rue is the one who should be terrified.

  Standing on tiptoes, Rue tries to look through one of the windows. The glass is either so grimy it’s become opaque or the inside of the building is pitch-dark. If she were taller she could see something more, perhaps, but Rue refuses to go back to Priti and ask. Even if she could convince the other girl to come over, Rue isn’t sure she’ll have the courage to come back. So she only squints and tries to make sense of the shadowy lumps she can see inside. They could be machines, or they could be stacks of boxes or… things. Priti might have ideas on what kind of things. Her family would work with them, wouldn’t they?

  But somewhere in that building, Ghost is crying out to her. Rue can hear her friend’s voice now (wordless screaming, but Ghost’s voice all the same) and before she can think she’s rounded the corner and looking for an entrance closer to where Ghost is calling from. She stops when her foot crunches onto glass. Looks to find a broken window. And she takes a deep breath as her nails dig into her skin and she carefully picks her way closer. Breathe deep. She’s come this far already for the sake of friendship. She’s been so brave already.

  Turning to look back, Rue can still make out the shape of Priti in the distance. The other girl is still standing at the edge, still waiting. Rue closes her eyes. Deep breaths. Ignore Ghost. She can be brave a little longer. She has to.

  And, telling herself that she is brave, that she is daring and loyal and strong and all the things she’s always admired in the stories she’s read and seen, Rue feels around the window sill for a safe grip to hoist herself up. She knows she can wriggle her way through the window if she can reach it. She’s limber enough, even if she no longer practises dancing as much as Amaranth would want, and the window is more than wide enough for her petite frame. That’s the trouble; Rue’s too small to reach and there is nothing near she trusts to give her more height even if she dared move. What if the window disappears when she moves?

  Just as Rue’s nerves are about to get the better of her, Priti is there beside her, softly cursing Rue under her breath. The other girl must have ghosted across the yard, but she’s cupped her hands together to give Rue a boost before she can ask.

  “Thank you,” Rue whispers as she puts a hand on Priti’s shoulder to steady herself. The lift gives her just enough purchase to scramble her way in. Though, dangling her behind out one end of the window as she tries to make sure no glass cuts into her stomach, Rue has to ask herself how she’s going to get down without landing on her face or otherwise hurting herself.

  20

  PRITI DOES NOT follow once Rue has found her way down from the window. At that moment, Rue doesn’t know if she minds. She’s landed on her arm during the fall, but the pain is abstract. It should hurt and Rue knows that she should be upset, but she feels… detached. Never in her life, not even when playing sports, has she been seriously hurt. Perhaps, she considers, her brain does not know what to make of it and, in any case, she can sense Ghost close by. Her friend needs her. Rue has no time to worry about her lack of feelings. Her friend needs her. And even though she’s all alone and she’s pretty certain that there’s something badly wrong with her wrist, Rue has no time to fret about any of that. Ghost is here. And if it’s possible for a ghost to be injured then her friend is injured.

  Rue still dusts herself off first, wrinkling her nose. She’s never seen so much dust in her life. It itches until she sneezes. The sound echoes loudly like… like nothing Rue has any words for, but she stands perfectly still, her good hand pressed against her nose and covering her mouth. Perhaps it sounds a little (only a little) like her alarm on a lazy morning. Surely Ghost has heard her now. Surely anyone who is in there would have heard her sneeze. Perhaps that means there is no one out there, but Rue presses herself against the wall anyway.

  Her feet crunch over more glass and suddenly she is very, very glad that she isn’t wearing her usual slippers. Trying to keep her breathing steady, Rue waits. She isn’t sure, for a while, whether the dark silence is helping or hindering her attempts. There is nothing, which is soothing. There is nothing, which is frightening. Priti is outside, waiting. Probably. Ghost, however injure
d, is inside. Rue is not alone.

  Soothing darkness wins out of terrifying. The presence of friends helps. Friends. Rue takes a deep breath, though she moves her good hand so that her mouth is hidden in the crook of her elbow and her nose is buried in her sleeve. It keeps the dust from itching so much.

  By now her eyes have become more used to the gloom around her. She can make out shapes, anyway. There’s definitely no machinery near her. Stacks of crates, though. The one in front of Rue is easily twice as high as she is. If she hadn’t hurt her wrist she might have tried to climb it, gotten an overview of the hall as a whole. It seems to be filled with crates, all neatly arranged in rows, none a material Rue recognises easily.

  As Rue explores, those stacked rows of crates are all she sees. No machines as far as she can tell. Rue finds it reassuring. She thinks. A dusty and dilapidated storage area has no life in it. Right?

  But there is nothing else to see. Heart throbbing, Rue inches forward. She’s pressed her injured wrist against her stomach to try and keep it safe and steady. She’s pretty sure keeping the wrist steady is important. Rue is certain that, if she had enough light, she’d see dust motes swirling as she walks. From the outside the building looked big. From the inside, it looks like Rue could easily get lost in it. She isn’t sure how she’s going to find her way back when she’s found Ghost. She doesn’t even know how she’s going to get up to the window again when she’s only got one good arm.

  Firmly, Rue tells herself to worry about it later. Firmly, she tells herself that she has no room to worry about anything except finding Ghost. Predictably, it backfires and she spends minutes, precious minutes, trying to get her brain to stop thinking about what’s worrying her. She can’t press herself against the stacks for fear that they’ll topple onto her and she doesn’t dare flee to the safety of the plascrete walls. Given the state of the other buildings outside she’s not sure those walls are as safe as they look.

  So Rue spends those minutes hovering in the darkness, flitting forward and back until she can grab hold of the feel of her friend again. Sensing Ghost is easy, at least, and all she has to do is follow the paths between the stacks and take whatever turns seem to be the most logical, whatever direction Ghost seems to be coming from the strongest. There’s something incredibly defiant about her friend. Rue has never felt emotions along their communications like this, not so powerfully. Never so powerfully.

  Before long there is the tiniest strip of light visible in the distance. It takes Rue a moment to realise that it is light and the only reason she recognises it as such is because it offers a colour other than shades of darkness-damped grey, something different. Something that isn’t just a darker or lighter shade of night. There most definitely is luminescence coming from where she can sense Ghost and, she realises, a door as well. The glow is coming through a crack at the bottom. Silence has settled onto her now, seeped so deep into her bones she cannot even hear herself breathe.

  Rue knows she is breathing. Can feel the rise and fall of her stomach to remind her, would feel it even if she didn’t know. It’s not that Rue has been sneaking or trying to be quiet. It’s just that the dust is so thick it muffles everything. And so, hearing disembodied voices startles her so much she almost screams. Rue has already got her elbow pressed against her mouth, but she presses harder and hopes she’s been quiet enough. People are talking. The voices are coming from behind the door.

  Inching closer, Rue can make out that, rather than being windowless, the door is as grubby as the rest of the building. She freezes when she realises that she recognises the speakers even though she cannot understand what they’re saying. It takes a moment, but she stands stock-still almost right in front of the door. One of the voices is that of Ghost, which she’s expected. The other one is Libby’s.

  It’s that Rue can sense Ghost’s defiance or the world might spin around her. Libby. Chief of all tormentors at the Academy, the only person Rue thinks she’ll ever claim to truly hate. She’s tucked most of the things Libby has done far down in the recesses of her mind where she cannot recall them. Rue is certain she’s shaking. Libby.

  If that door opens, there will be nowhere for her to hide. Nowhere but up and there’s no way she can climb the stacks with an injured wrist. Rue wants to run, to hide, to forget everything and go somewhere no one will ever be able to find her again, not even her parents. Or, if they do find her, that they’ll only discover her bones. Anything as long as it means not facing Libby.

  The Academy is bad enough. The snakes are bad enough. The pushing and pulling and tripping is bad enough. She can’t. She can’t she can’t she c–

  Ghost is screaming again, sending white pain flashing across Rue’s vision so strongly that Rue stumbles to her knees and has to catch herself. She doesn’t know if she’s screamed, but she does forget that her left wrist is injured. When she tries to catch her weight as she falls, her face just about doesn’t meet the floor. There’s red-hot pain jarring through her bad wrist where there was only numbness before. It’s still nothing at all compared to what’s just at the edges of her soul and mind and Rue struggles to push herself upright with her good wrist and good elbow. She struggles to push Ghost out of her mind at the same time, to put up boundaries like Ghost had always seemed capable of and Rue had never thought she’d need.

  It is hard, so hard, but Rue gets herself onto her knees and then pulls herself onto her feet. The stack she uses to do so wobbles. Harder still is the step forward, but Rue takes it. Her body is shaking like a leaf, cold, because she has never, ever, dared to confront Libby. Not a second time. She’s done it once, the first time she arrived at the Academy. No one, not even Priti, has dared confront Libby a second time. Yet Rue knows she’ll do it now. She’s going to turn the handle on that door and enter that room. Ghost is there. Her friend is there. And Rue may be a coward. She may be gulping for air and hugging herself with one arm for warmth and an attempt to calm her stomach. She may be crying and shaking because she’s fighting every instinct she has ever had, but Rue is going to open that door.

  She doesn’t know what lies beyond it. She hasn’t heard anything after the screaming of her friend stopped and the soft murmur of Libby’s voice drifted away back into silence, as unmistakable as Amaranth’s voice in a crowd. Rue doesn’t care. Her friend needs help. Ghost is behind that door. There is no room in Rue’s head for anything else. She is fighting pure instinct now, not thought, and she can only fight her instinct with will. Ghost needs help. She can help. Rue doesn’t know how or what or why, but she can help. She will help.

  And, just like that, Rue has reached the door. Just like that her good hand has pressed itself against the dirt and grime. The door doesn’t budge. The handle isn’t real. It’s not an Old Earth replica door. Not a proper one. It’s just a painting. Rue’s heart flits nervously in her chest and traces the wall around the door. If there’s no scanpad, if there’s no sensor, if there’s no way to open –

  But there! To the side, there’s the slightest circular indent. A sense-button, and Rue lets her thumb press against it until the door slides open noiselessly. The room beyond is so bright that Rue has to cover her eyes and squint as the light floods her senses. She may have whimpered, she’s not sure, and she wouldn’t know what at. Whether it’s at the sight of her friend, all ghostly tatters around the edges, at the painful surprise of the light, or at the knowledge that there’s another door on the opposite side of the room just sliding shut.

  21

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” is the first thing her friend asks, and Rue is relieved to see the tattered edges start to come together again on their own. Perhaps she should be frightened of that, but Rue is so scared already that there isn’t room for more.

  “We need to go,” she says, croaks, because what else is there to say and Libby isn’t in the room. Who knows when the other girl will return or what she wants? The room itself, now that Rue is able to see properly again, was once an office. The metal desk is still there, motl
ey brown with rust and empty, and she can see nothing that would suggest the torture the screaming seemed to be indicating. But then, of course, she doesn’t know how one would go about torturing a ghost. They’d just float through whatever device you had.

  “You need to leave,” Ghost says.

  “You were in trouble.”

  “You need to leave, Rue.”

  “Not without you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  And Rue would like, so much, to believe that, to think it true and turn and run. But she can sense the pain still lingering along their connection, see the fear in her friend’s movements… She’s known Ghost almost all of her life and they’ve been practically inseparable. Rue knows her friend well and she recognises a lie when she sees it. And so she says, “No.” And if her voice trembles a little and her eyes water just a touch, she has still said ‘no’. “No. I’m not leaving without you.”

  “I can’t leave, and you’re not safe.” Ghost’s calm tone would be infuriating if not for the circumstances.

  “You’re my friend.” Rue’s voice is truly shaking now, but it is only familiar fear coming to the surface. She wants so badly for Ghost to take over, to make everything fine again, to tell Rue what to do, but… She doesn’t think that is possible. Not this time. Not if Ghost is telling her to leave her friend behind. She can’t.

  This time, then, the only one who can do anything is Rue. Perhaps, always, it has been that only Rue could do anything, if she’d only known how. Perhaps Ghost has ever always guided her. “Tell me what to do,” she says in a small voice, just as the door on the opposite side of the room opens.

  There is no time nor place to hide in and Libby lets out a startled yelp. Not a scream. The scream is Rue, but she is afraid rather than startled and then there is someone else, someone much like Ghost, behind Libby. They feel more solid and Rue has no more time to try and comprehend the meaning of that or the sight before her because then Ghost is screaming too.