NINETEEN
Gideon
All was utterly still and quiet, neither warm nor cool.
A strange, humid smell hung in the air.
Gideon rested sprawled on the ground, and as he came to his senses, he became aware of a smooth, powdery texture against his cheek.
His last memory was the weightless sensation of his stomach as they jumped into the void.
The darkness swallowed them, and the roaring grew deafening as they fell for what seemed an age.
He had a brief glimpse of a massive slab of gray crystal blooming out of the darkness, rushing up to meet him and as solid as the ice around them.
He tightened his hand around Hara’s and focused on the feel of it.
If this were to be his death, he wanted her cold fingers and aching grip to be the last thing he felt.
But he kept falling.
After that, he must have passed out since he had no memory of landing on solid ground.
He opened his eyes and blinked, finding that he was now in a place that should not exist at the bottom of a glacier pit.
He sat up and looked around him properly.
He sat on a stretch of beach, and a serene sea lapped gently before him.
He glanced behind him, but all he could see was endless sand, the distance hazy with mist.
The sky was a dusky purple scattered with stars, with only a thin fiery line touching the horizon.
He wasn’t sure what he had expected from a witch’s prison, but it would have been a bit more terrifying.
This was almost pleasant.
Gideon flexed his shoulders and his back, but nothing seemed to be injured from the fall.
There was a stirring beside him, and Gideon turned to see Hara sitting up.
Her eyes were wide as she took in their surroundings and brushed sand from her arms.
He couldn’t help but grin.
“Maybe we were both dashed to death, and this is the afterlife.”
“This is . . . this is my mind. This is where I go to see the past,”
said Hara in wonder.
“It’s nice,”
he said, letting a handful of fine lavender sand slip through his fingers.
In truth, he felt rather lightheaded with shock, not quite understanding where they were or whether any of it was real.
But he was quickly becoming acclimated to the quiet shushing of the water and the sunset that did not seem to change.
Sorbite appeared to behave much like the tapestries in the palace; one only needed a witch’s touch to enter.
“It’s bizarre seeing a place that has only been in my head. It always felt like stepping into deep water, looking into the past,”
she said, and she crawled toward the water’s edge.
“I wonder . . . ”
She reached out to touch it, but Gideon stayed her hand out of caution.
“Let’s think about this. Your mother and countless other people are also here somewhere. But where are they?”
“It looks as though we are all in our own mind’s version of the realm-between-realms. They could be sitting all around us, but we wouldn’t know,”
said Hara, pulling her knees to her chest. Her eyes were fixed on the water and her brows were knitted together.
“How can we find her, and the others?”
muttered Gideon, getting to his feet.
“Let’s go over what we know about sorbite. We know it is a magical substance that acts as a portal to the place where the past, the present, and the future meet. So, this place is your mind’s interpretation of the spirit realm, or wherever it is that time lives. If anything, that means your Sight should be stronger in here.”
Hara nodded, still staring at the water.
“It’s hard to ignore. It feels like I am drawn to it.”
“So, could you See where your mother is?”
A snarl ripped through the air, wet and guttural.
It was unlike anything Gideon had ever heard. He whipped around, but all he could see were gently lapping waves. Hara stood and went to him, clinging to his arm.
“What was that?”
she whispered.
“It seemed to come from over there, but I don’t see anything,”
said Gideon as he pointed towards the empty water.
“There’s nowhere for it to hide.”
“This place is a physical manifestation of the spirit world,”
Hara muttered to herself. Then she tugged at his arm.
“I have an idea.”
She grabbed his hand and began to walk them into the sea.
“Hara, I don’t think—”
he began, trepidation growing with every step. As soon as the water touched their boots, the snarl rang out again, and then Gideon saw them.
Two old men stared at them from the waves, their faces half submerged. They were curiously close together, as though they stood side by side under the water. Their eyes were clouded like long-dead fish, but they held a furious awareness that made Gideon stop in his tracks.
Barely moving his lips, he said.
“Hara, look,”
She stopped at the sight of them, a slip of breath catching in her throat. The men were a fair distance away, just close enough to make out their predatory expressions. Perhaps Hara and Gideon could make their way back to the beach, and that would appease them. Gideon made up his mind to flee rather than fight, and he turned back towards the shore.
Then they began to move.
Gideon’s heart stuttered into a gallop as he clutched for Hara, his hands shaking as he frantically pulled her towards the sand.
As the men neared, moving into shallower water, their shoulders began to emerge.
Their close stance was soon explained as their sinewed necks appeared, seamlessly joined.
The long, pallid torso they shared rose from the sea with every step, and thick ropes of flesh sprouted from it, dragging in the water like gangrenous ribbons.
The creature snarled again, both heads gnashing their long teeth, and it was then that Gideon realized the heads had the faces of Corvus and his own father.
He wanted to heave, his throat spasming, but Hara suddenly began to tug him in the opposite direction, dragging him deeper into the water.
“No—Hara, stop, what are you doing?!”
he exclaimed in a panic.
“Trust me.”
She gasped, clasping his hand.
The weight of the sea pulled at their thighs and hips.
No matter how quickly they tried to move, the water dragged at their legs and hindered their progress.
Their breaths became labored pants and his muscles burned with the effort.
The creature charged towards them as though it suffered no such exhaustion, and Gideon hoped with desperation that Hara had a plan.
Then there was another snarl, like a scream from a jungle cat.
Gideon whirled around in time to see a massive shape emerging from the haze in the distance.
It appeared to be running down the beach at incredible speed, and Gideon’s skin turned icy as all the blood drained from his extremities.
He could see the sinuous flex of its haunches as it sprinted towards them, and Gideon wished that he’d brought his pistol after all.
The form solidified into an enormous black and white cat, taller than a stallion.
Its pelt was short and sleek, and its growl rippled and reverberated in a tremor that Gideon could feel in his chest.
Claws like scythes unsheathed from its paws as it sprang for the water—not towards them, but for the two-headed monstrosity.
It pounced and slashed at the beast, fastening saber-like teeth into one of the necks.
Its tail thrashed at the water, sending violent sprays into the air.
“Seraphine,”
whispered Hara in disbelief.
Relief and awe pounded in Gideon’s heart, and he held Hara close.
She quivered in his arms, her hands over her mouth as she watched her familiar’s form savage the creature.
Gideon made a silent vow that if they left this place alive, he’d never complain about the cat again.
The long fleshy tendrils of the monster were no longer inert.
While the giant cat slashed and tore at one of the heads, the tendrils grew longer, winding themselves around Seraphine’s ribcage.
Blood gushed freely from the mangled head of the monster, which was little more than a stump now, but slowly the cat’s movements became stilted.
As the half-decapitated monster collapsed into the water, it began to pull Seraphine’s form with it.
The giant cat struggled fruitlessly, the ropes of flesh snaring it like iron bonds while it screamed.
Hara let out a gasping sob, turning her face into Gideon’s chest.
Gideon could hardly stand to watch as the life was suffocated out of the spirit-Seraphine, and so he urged Hara to keep moving, trudging deeper into the water.
Hara submerged herself, and Gideon had no choice but to follow.
The warm water instantly muffled the screeches of the struggling cat.
Her hand clenched tightly around his, and then he was being pulled, jerked, and the water rushed past him faster than he could ever swim.
In an instant, Gideon was on all fours, gagging and choking.
His throat felt as though it had been rubbed with sand as he coughed.
The ground was firm beneath him, but his head felt as though it were still tumbling and rushing through the water.
He retched, but nothing came up his aching throat.
Eventually, he realized that he was no longer holding Hara’s hand, and he frantically looked around him.
She was there, a few strides away, curled up and gasping for breath.
Just beyond her, a deep pool of water sloshed against three walls, as though some of Hara’s ocean had been captured indoors.
The water slapped against the walls as though something had just been violently expelled from it.
He crawled to her and gathered her in his arms.
“Hara, can you speak?”
he said, and she groaned.
“Yes,”
she said, sitting up.
“What happened? What was that thing?” he said.
Hara turned her face into his chest and began to weep.
He held her close and rocked her, trying to hold back the hysteria that threatened to overwhelm them.
He would never forget the sight of the creature rising from the water, the blood curdling sound of its cry.
He knew what it was.
She did not have to say a word; that was Hara’s greatest fear.
That thing represented the horror she felt at the thought of his father and Corvus, the two men who were responsible for uprooting her world. But what was it doing here?
“I thought this was a realm of time. How could that thing appear?” he asked.
“The beach was formed by my mind,”
she sniffled, slowly recovering.
“I suppose there are things that live in my past that are strong enough to become real, too.”
He held her closer, and she began to keen softly.
“Seraphine,”
Seraphine was safe outside of the stone. Wasn’t she? Gideon clamped his eyes closed and fought back his own terror. They knew far too little about what they were meddling with. Who knew what other horrors would emerge?
But they were not on the beach of Hara’s mind anymore.
Gideon studied their surroundings for the first time.
They were in a wide, dim corridor that opened on one side like a balcony.
It formed a ring around a deep empty space in the center.
He craned his neck to look down into it.
Below them were more levels, and when Gideon looked up, there was only darkness as the levels went on forever, perfectly neat and symmetrical.
“Hara, where did you take us?”
he said in a low voice.
She was silently taking in the space with wide eyes.
“This is my mother’s mind. Or at least, her version of the realm-between-realms.”
“How—?”
“When I searched for her influence under the water, I felt her, stronger than I have ever felt her. I took hold of it to look into her present, and then we were brought here. This is her present.”
Gideon could hardly wrap his head around all this.
“If we were outside in the real world, I would only be visiting this place in my head,”
she said, getting to her feet.
“But inside the stone, I can move into it as I would a set of rooms.”
“But does that mean . . .”
“She’s here. We just need to find her.”