Voices called out when she reached the path. Men in neon vests ran towards her, and she thought for a moment that she heard Gabe’s voice calling out. She tried to think back to the last time they had spoken. It was the summer after her sophomore year. That internship had made her dream of worlds beyond her own. She didn’t recognize the faces that surrounded her, and she didn’t know who caught her when she finally fell.
“Somebody call 9-1-1!” Gabe yelled and shoved the men aside to kneel beside Jess and the unknown search and rescue member who had caught her. “Jess? Jess? Do you know where you are?”
“I’m not doing so hot, Gabe,” she whispered. She tried to reach for his hand, but the spots and exhaustion made her hand fall to the ground.
“Somebody get water!” he called, and she frowned. She wasn’t thirsty. She hadn’t been thirsty since she had been to the fourth dimension. “Everything is going to be okay. We’re taking you to the hospital." Another member in a bright orange vest handed him a water bottle. “Can you drink this?” He guided the bottle into her hands. When she nearly dropped it, he held it tight and helped her drink careful sips. “This guy.” He gestured to the man holding her. He was middle aged with a baseball cap on.“Is going to carry you. His name is James. He won’t drop you. No arguing, okay.”
She wanted to argue. She wasn’t obese, but she was a solid one hundred and forty pounds. A few days without food weren’t going to change that, but James picked her up like she was nothing. Jess would have been impressed if she hadn’t caught sight of how her jeans fell over her legs. The pants shouldn’t have been that ill-fitted. She struggled and grabbed Gabe’s arm. He held on to her hand when her fingers couldn’t grip anything.
“How long?” The words ached. Her whole body felt tense and ached. Gabe grimaced and walked beside them, holding onto her hand. Her hair fell into her own sight. It was dull and splintered at the ends. “How?”
“It’s going to be okay,” he reassured, but Jess didn’t believe him.
“Mom?” she called. Nobody answered. “How long? Please…how long?”
Gabe didn’t respond, but James did. “You’ve been missing twenty-three days.”
Shivers twitched her limbs when she just wanted to curl up and stay still. Tears leaked at the edges of her eyes as Gabe gently urged her to drink again. Tiny sips were not filling. Away from the core world, she hadn’t felt the hunger as keenly. Kilpeni had supplied water and reminded her constantly to refill the water bottles where possible. The water she had drank for the past who knows how many days had not been water even from the core world. After the third dimension, she was less thirsty until Kilpeni had prodded and prodded her to drink small sips. Her body felt the days though her mind had pushed them aside.
Clumsily, she pushed the water away and pulled the collar of her shirt down to reveal letters tattooed into her chest. James was looking straight ahead, but Gabe saw and swore for the first time since she had first met him. The letters were dark against her pale skin: Went Better Than Planned Stop Not So Unimportant Are You Stop Score One Compass Stop. She let out a strangled sob. Gabe reached out, and she knew that he was reading it.
“Who did this to you?” he asked, and she just wanted to sleep.
She tried to open her mouth to lie, but the truth tumbled out. “The Compass.” Her mind ached. She was certain they would think her crazy when she cried, “Do I have a shadow? Where is my shadow? Kilpeni! Kilpeni!”
The rest faded to black with Gabe’s voice following her down. “You’re safe, Jess. Everything will be okay.”
Chapter Seventeen
She stood in the doorway of her closet staring into the mirror. Her mother had placed it inside with crosses in a joking manner thinking her daughter’s hatred of mirrors was a funny thing. Once, it had been. The tears welled up in her eyes though they already poured down her reflections face.
Jess closed the door behind her and stood only a few inches from the reflector’s surface. Her reflection screamed though she could not hear the sound. Her reflection slammed fists against the surface which did not move or shake at the force; however, with each smashing blow, sparks and vibrations rippled showing an only newly familiar form. Dark eyes switched to a tawny hue and back while crimped long hair shorted to short wavy curls and back. He wailed and cried until his fists pressed against the surface and his forehead leaned against the glass. This time, she mirrored her reflection and leaned her forward to touch where his false face pressed.
“They told me that they can use lasers to remove the tattoo,” she told her reflection. They were too close for her to see much clearly, but she tried her best to read his lips. “I don’t think I’ll do it.” His lips repeated and repeated. “You can’t hear me either…can you?” He didn’t respond. He didn’t shake his head or nod. She stared at her own face, but she wasn’t Narcissus. The sight would never be the same.
She stepped back, and her reflection did as well. Her reflection pulled down its collar to show her: No More Talking Stop The Compass Completely Sealed Off The Core Stop This Is Goodbye Stop. The words melted though her own hadn’t and never would. New words formed on her reflection’s chest: Amnesia Will Be Real Tomorrow Stop Kilpeni Will Not Reveal Himself Stop.
“Don’t I get a choice?” she asked though he couldn’t hear her. “I don’t want to forget.”
The words shifted once more, and these were not from the Compass: I will protect you. You deserved so much better. You were always important. Her reflection bowed its head and let the collar fall back into place. A fist slammed against the other side of the mirror, and his face rippled through as he mouthed, “I love you.”
“No!” she cried. Tears rushed down her face as she pressed against the mirror. “Please, don’t! I love you too! Please don’t go! Don’t leave me here! Don’t leave me here without you!”
“I love you,” he repeated. “I love you.” The words came again and again. His tone twisted from its deep baritone. Slowly, it rose to match hers in a cruel echo.
Whimpering, Jess cursed every power she knew to name. “Please…”
The image blurred. Rivers of tears poured down her cheeks stealing his face away. She slammed her fists against the mirror. The glass rippled. Light refracted in mockery. Cracks webbed across the glass. A small explosion pushed her backwards, and her shadow leapt from the ground covering her from the shards. Slamming against the floor, she fell unconscious. In her sleep, Jess continued to cry. Soft sobs bubbled uncontrolled over her lips. Darkness slipped over her, and if her shadow held her against all rational forces of physics, no one of the core would know. When they found her in the morning, she laid surrounded by the mirror’s shards. If the reflection was watching her from every single one, no one noticed.
Chapter Eighteen
“You said she’d get better,” Kilpeni hissed. Never had a single form felt so constraining, but the Compass held Kilpeni’s shape captive in a way they never had before. “You said this would be for the best.”
She Will Be Fine Stop It Has Only Been A Year Stop
Still, despite the being’s words, the hold released, and Kilpeni collapsed into his own form. “Jess isn’t eating enough. She hates the dark, only reads on her computer now, and won’t go near mirrors. If she keeps this up, she’ll die. You said - ”
Humans Die Stop It Does Not Change Your Mission Stop Get Yourself Together Stop
Kilpeni shook his head, staring through the dark at where Jessica slept. Curled up, she huddled with her blankets tight around her. Even in her family home, she trembled - instinctually terrified. PTSD - that was what the therapist said, but she hadn’t talked much in those few sessions; instead, she pointed to her amnesia and said the therapist was a waste of her time.
It hurt. Parts of him which shouldn’t have existed ached at the sight of her. Thinner than she had ever been. Always on high alert. Terrified and on edge, avoiding any personal connection. His arms itched to wrap around her. If he could only touch her - just hold her, every
thing would be okay.
“She’s not - I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and pretend that nothing happened,” Kilpeni whispered, holding back tears he shouldn’t have been able to shed. Pain blossomed on his arm, but he clawed at the words, hissing, “You promised she’d be better. Promised this was the only way to make sure she had a long and happy life. You lied to me!”
All around him, the dimension trembled. The firm boundaries quivering as the unnaturalness of his emotions fought against the rigid order of their abstract being. Across his skin, the reformed stones trembled. They resonated with his fury - echoing his rage with their own. The Compass betrayed them all. Every sacrifice - every single one for love. Itzal and Set - captured in stones, they were so close and yet eternally apart. Other Aislings who fell in love - if they existed - could at least meld one into the others as they faded from existence, but Itzal and Set - they never even had a chance.
Kilpeni dug his fingers into his skin, transforming them into claws as the burning words of the Compass dragged over his skin, but the Aisling ignored the words. One by one, he pulled the stones from his skin. If the tightly sealed borders between the Core and Second Dimension put Jess at risk, he would tear them down. Those leeches could crawl their way back to the Core - hell, some of the stones were so long gone, maybe letting them have a sun wouldn’t be the worst.
“You made me abandon her when she needed me,” Kilpeni growled. “You can alter my body however you want, so either you make me human and let me go back to her, or you kill me. I am not watching the woman I love die right in front of me!”
“I admire your hutzpah.”
The voice startled Kilpeni, but the sight of its source terrified him. A humanoid stood before him, but it only had the most basic outline. A head, a body, two arms, and two legs - all covered in a mirror made liquid. The creature cracked its neck, tilting its head from one side to the other as it wavered as if someone in all dimensions except the Core at once.
“Compass?”
The mirror-man’s shoulders sagged. “You are an idiot. All Aisling frankly. You all think I’m this omnipotent, omniscient being. I got rules too, ya wurp.”
“How...if you could come through this entire time, why would you leave the stones with me? Why would you do any of this?” Kilpeni growled, throwing himself in the Compass’s face. “None of this would have happened if you had gotten off your high horse and come down here from the beginning!”
Sneering, the Compass waved their arm. “Again. Not omniscient here, man. I had no idea you were going to fall in love with a human.”
“You should have adjusted your plan.”
“I did. Just because I didn’t tell you about it, doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing something. Yeesh!” The mirror face lowered from the lumbering height to glare at Kilpeni with his own eyes reflected in their smooth face. “You and the dame almost died one time around, do you really want to mess with those stones again?”
Kilpeni’s fist clenched around the stones he’d dug from his skin. Their indescribable forms pressed into his palm. “Yes. If it meant she’d be happy, yes.”
The reflective face rose. For all the Compass could argue about not being omniscient, their gaze seemed everywhere. It weighed down upon him. Staring into the face of the closest he had ever known to a god and hearing the creature deny their own power. To claim otherness and a set of rules which Kilpeni couldn’t comprehend. Rules he likely would never be told.
With a low sigh, the Compass shimmered in the in-between. “One life cannot be allowed to outweigh this entire universe and all the layers around our Sphere.”
“Then kill me,” the Aisling urged.
In his hands, the stones trembled. Two of the stones shifted like magnets drawn to each other, and his flesh wouldn’t be enough to keep them away from each other. Even their names - names for those who were never named, and they were purposefully separated. The desire to be together - the claim between them as they sacrificed themselves - had been ignored. Those who survived wrote the history, and for decades, running from one human to the next, Kilpeni reinforced the anguish which he suffered now.
All he knew about the Core World and the Outer Dimensions demanded he stay where he was - that he remain hidden as he was ordered. Stuck between the habits he had carefully cultivated and what his heart demanded, Kilpeni struggled to stand. The Compass had the control. If they wanted, they could tear him in two - kill him with a thought. Even his mind wasn’t safe.
“We don’t know what happens to humans when they die. All the spheres I know about, everyone I’m in contact with, nobody knows what happens to those in the Core World after death - or before. We don’t know why the Core Worlds exist, but they’re why we’re all able to survive,” the Compass informed him, rocking their weight from one foot to the other. “Writing even a couple words on her stretched me thin. Thank goodness, she’s not an idiot, right?”
Kilpeni stumbled. “What?”
“What I told you that I can’t do more than open a door between the Core and here? Core World people are complicated, and I was shocked as you when I could manipulate her while she was here - probably why I managed a bit of manipulation before I closed everything off, but come on, I’m just a valve in the system.” Hands on its hips, the limbs melded into the body as the Compass loomed forward. “Surprise?”
“She remembers.” The words slipped out before his mind had time to process what they meant. Joy and terror and hope curled like ouroboros in his chest. “She remembers me. I’m killing her?”
Leaning backward so sharply a human’s spine would have broken, the Compass groaned. “Come on, man. She’s good, yeah? Dodging mirrors and shadows to keep what she’s been doing hidden, but I’m better. Your lady’s been working out how to drag you through to the Core World. Golems and everything.”
“Golems...but we - we burned Alexandria. Nothing survived on us. We made sure,” Kilpeni murmured even as the stones inside his fist hummed.
Compass laughed. “Humans find a way.”
“Then replace me. Let me go through. I’ll stay there. Cut me off. I don’t care what happens to me after,” Kilpeni begged, but the Compass shook their head.
“Hypothetically, doing that might result in you being functionally human. Cutting your ties to this dimension would be - ooh - that’d be a loophole I might have been cultivating for a long time, kid,” they informed him. “And I might just have a couple bodies prepared. Maybe even - ahhh, one even in storage behind a waterfall.”
Grabbing the Compass’s shoulders, Kilpeni forced himself to be calm. “Bodies?” Lifting his hand, he opened them. “Them too?”
“All at once will be...problematic. Set and Itzal - those two recovered well enough. I’ll send them out into the two bodies I hid in Rome. Those romantic kids,” the Compass chuckled as he reached out, but Kilpeni closed his fingers around the stones.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
The smooth surface of the other’s face rippled. “You don’t.”
Pressing his palms together, Kilpeni pressed the thumbs against his forehead. “Wake up Set first.”
“That’ll cause a disruption.” Humming, the Compass shimmered before settling. “How about this - I’ll figure out a way to ensure they know how to get in touch with you?”
Another question of trust, but what choice did he have? After centuries guarding the, Kilpeni opened his hand, holding the stones out for the Compass to take. One by one, mirror tendrils took them, and a chill fell over Kilpeni.
Without warning, he flew backwards, falling into darkness as the mirror face rippled. “Good luck.”
Chapter Nineteen
Waking up in the dark, Kilpeni coughed, wrapping his arms around his new body. Bumps rose on his skin as the chill settled before the rush of his pulse drove heat from within. Stumbling through the dark, Kilpeni forced himself to move toward the sound of rushing water. He could do this.
The nearer he drew, th
e more light rose around him, and following his every step, a shadow moved.
“Thank you for your service,” he murmured to the Aisling on the other side, knowing they would not respond.
He fell over the edge, sinking into the cold water and the afternoon sun. Hot summer air hit him when he broke the surface, stealing away the chill as he laughed, smiling at the clear blue sky. Racing up through the woods, he followed the trail he had only ever seen from the ground back to the long house and toward the main road.
Dressed in deer-skin trousers and a linen shirt, he wore items more familiar to the land centuries before, and he had no money for the bus or any transportation. The pathway between where he stood and Jessica stretched far, and his heart ached with sympathy for ever having demanded she walk the entire way before when the hours between them tormented him.
Still, with no other way, he set one foot in front of the other. The deerskin boots on his feet were made for walking, and he knew the roads to get him home to her.
Chapter Twenty
Something had changed. Jess couldn’t describe the unease when she woke, but she forcefully kept her eyes from moving to her shadow. She avoided the reflection of her face, waiting until the bathroom mirror fogged, so she wouldn’t have to look at her own, staring back at her with the exhaustion she refused to acknowledge she felt.
All day, the strange feeling haunted her. Like stepping onto a boat for the first time, it left her listing from one side to another.
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