Chapter 38
The cave was quiet.
Too quiet.
When I crossed the threshold, even the low howl of the wind surrendered to silence. The murderous pound of my heart echoed off the dank walls, my soles thudding on the damp soil like a war drum.
My gaze bored into the shadows, sweeping the corners for silhouettes, for ghosts.
For that alternate version of myself.
Skeletal remains were scattered on the ground like ivory chips, practically glowing in the darkness—which was thicker here, mustier, the surrounding mountains blocking the light and casting the place in near pitch-blackness.
“Hello?” my voice chorused, calling a dozen times, echoing deep into the heart of the cavern. I expected one to talk back, but when they all faded, it was only silence that answered.
A draft cycled through, spreading the scent of mildew and decay. Between its whispers, I swore there was a laugh, a watchful eye—a sense of knowing.
Shivers raked my spine, but I trudged deeper, because the only way forward was inward.
If I turned back now, the desolate Icelandic wilderness would eat me alive. Miles, I was miles away—I’d counted at least three ridgelines and one vast lava field on the way here—from any form of civilization.
Remote wasn’t even the right term for it; I might as well have been in a different world.
Since there was no alternative, I called into the depths of the cave again. “Hello?”
Soft light flickered in the blackness, dancing off the rock ahead. A low hum drifted to my ears. My heart leapt. There was someone else in here.
I broke into a jog, the path growing paler, messier, more densely littered with bones. A girl kneeled at an altar, her brown hair slicked behind her ears, her blue dress stained and torn.
It was me—other me.
Any semblance of confidence left my body, leaving my voice low and hoarse. “Hi there,” I said to my doppelg?nger, unsure how I was supposed to address myself.
She—I—held an old angel figurine, the color faded, the ceramic cracked, a wing missing. She was turning it over and over in her hands, her fingers raw and bloody.
I lowered myself into a crouch, my teeth clattering against the cold, my nerves, and met her at her level. The humming stopped. Her body stilled. Slowly her head turned as if it were separate from her body, on a swivel.
Candlelight flickered over hollow black eyes and sunken cheeks; thin black veins popped against ghostly white skin. All the air left my lungs, and I slipped backwards, catching myself on my palms. She grinned, a mutilated smile full of crimson-stained teeth.
I reached for my dagger.
She lunged.
I rolled out of the way, her clawlike hands drilling into the ground—where my chest would have been seconds before.
“What’s wrong?” she said—I said—but it wasn’t my voice, it was throaty and all wrong, and yet the words were leaving both our lips. “Don’t like what you see?”
Her neck twisted, the tendons protruding, bones cracking at the harsh angle. I felt my own snapping, turning to meet her stare.
“What is happening?!” I said, and she echoed me in her creepy singsong of a voice.
I gasped, and she cackled.
I stumbled, and she charged.
In a streak of bluish black so fast it was like she flew, she tackled me, slamming me into a pile of skulls. I sank into the bones, the air thinning, fear crushing. Razor-sharp nails clawed at my clothes, at my face, at my hair.
The heel of my palm slammed into her shoulder, but she just brought her face closer, her rotten breath breezing my cheeks. Her pupils glinted with a savage hunger.
Fighting to inhale, to move, I snuck my hand into my boot, wrapping my fingers around the hilt of my blade.
She mimicked the movement, reaching into the skeletons. Cartilage snapped, and as I brought my weapon to my chest, she raised hers—a splintered bone—over my head.
Was this how it ended? Would I kill her—myself? My grip was slick on my dagger.
I shut my eyes and counted down from ten. On that last number, that last whisper, a calm flooded my veins.
This was it. It was over.
I pressed my elbow into the dirt, then pushed up.
“River, no!” An accented voice snapped my eyes open.
A shadow fell over us. The other me mirrored my look of surprise.
“You can’t kill her!” Insistence draped the intruder’s tone. Light and fluid. Female. “If she dies, so do you. She is you.”
Seeming to waver between impulses—kill or listen—my doppelg?nger and I released the hold on our weapons. They clattered against the dirt. She darted into a shadowy alcove and sank to the ground. Arms wrapped around her knees, she rocked back and forth, quietly humming.
She wouldn’t look at me.
A hand, human, appeared in the empty space before me. After staring at it for longer than probably necessary—counting all five fingers, noting her fair skin popping against the dark cave—I took it.
Legs wobbling, I rose to my feet.
Divine presence swept over the room. Over me. An urge to bow. To sing. To worship. To pray. To kiss the ground.
Brilliant wings—so white they shone like beacons in the gloom, so tall the tips grazed the ceiling and the bottoms swept the floor—fluttered and folded, flush against her shoulder blades.
She was fresh-cut grass and fallen leaves and fields of flowers. She was rocky mountains and steep ravines and mossy canyons. She was sustenance, soil, nutrients, life. She was a voice, one of three, that had haunted my waking thoughts for so, so long.
She was Earth—Mother Earth.
Fiery green eyes flared, two beacons of chartreuse flame in this dark, musty, dirt world. “We finally meet, River Harlow.”