37. Sam The Wall
Sam: The Wall
It is a commonly held wisdom among the spirits in the realm that the wall has existed for thousands of years and that it is repaired and amended over time.
—Wister Amsel, A True Account of Explorations in the Realm
I waited for Clementine at the wall.
She would come. I knew she would come. If anyone had the strength and tenacity to come this far, my Clementine did.
In place of Corbin’s lullaby, I had left her “Pretty Polly,” the tune played frequently by her downstairs neighbor.
I’d transported the bottles painstakingly by rope and pulley, accompanied by a note in a glass jar.
I hoped it would be enough. I waited. I stared into the fog.
There was no sign of her. Then, a sound that filled me with dread: I heard the slow, groaning rumble of an Oaring, still some distance off but coming our way, and my heart sank.
“No, no, no,” I muttered aloud. “Not now.” If she hadn’t secured herself to the mooring line, the violent waves that came in the Oaring’s wake would send her adrift, carrying her off into the currents.
“Miss Quinn,” I called out into the fog. “Are you there?”
It was so strange to be unable to see her, to have no idea where and how she was.
No answer came. The sound of the Oaring grew louder, and I glimpsed the dark shape of it some distance off, a giant shadow overhead, bulky and dark as a storm cloud. “Miss Clementine Quinn!” I called again.
Then I felt it: a tug on the rope. Not strong, but unmistakable. I tugged back twice, gently. “You’re almost there,” I shouted. “Keep going.”
She came out of the mist like a warrior emerging from battle, slogging toward me with labored steps, hauling herself hand over hand on the blue mooring line.
I felt such relief and gladness at the sight of her.
She wore the armored boots and the chain mail shirt; the rope she carried had been looped around the line and fastened at her waist. The Oaring was closer now, and its dreadful lamentations obliterated all other sound.
I sent Clementine a surge of encouragement before remembering that she was here, in the spirit realm, and would feel nothing.
She was only twenty paces away now, and the Oaring was overhead, casting its dark shadow over us.
I feared she wouldn’t make it in time. She took a step, and another.
No, she wouldn’t make it. In that moment I didn’t think about the scree; Clementine was in danger, that was all that mattered.
I needed to reach her. I vaulted the wall and closed the distance between us.
Finally, I could do something with my own self to help her; I wrapped my arms around her, grasping the rope with both hands. “Hold on,” I cried.
Now the Oaring passed, unleashing a furious, swirling current.
We were swept off our feet. She had one arm hooked onto the blue mooring line and one arm wrapped around my waist: I had both hands on the mooring line on either side of her.
For several seconds we stayed that way: me weighed down by my stone-studded netting, holding her and the rope with all my might; Clementine hooked to the blue line, fluttering like a sock on a clothesline caught in a gale.
Then, finally, the rushing current began to ebb, and Clementine’s feet began to drift downward, downward, back to the stones.
She collapsed into a pile beside the blue mooring line.
The worst was over. We hadn’t been carried away.
“There won’t be another for a while now,” I said to her, drawing back. She nodded, gasping for breath. “You can let go of the line.”
She let go. After a minute, her breathing was less ragged, and she pushed herself to her feet.
I was conscious, suddenly, of the space between us.
She was a few inches shorter than me, and she was looking up at my face expectantly.
Strands of hair were plastered to her damp cheeks.
I stopped myself from wiping them aside, gesturing instead to the stony ground.
“You should sit,” I said to her. “Rest a moment. It’s better if you don’t come any farther in,” I added.
“The air grows even thinner. As long as we’re together, I can remain on this side of the wall.
” She nodded. I was a little dismayed to see how spent she looked. We didn’t have much time.
“I have a great deal to tell you. Do you feel well enough to hear it?” I asked. She nodded again and met my eyes.
I felt less worried then. I’d seen her so many times, watched her do so many things, but I’d never felt her gaze upon me, never felt the force of her being looking directly into mine.
Her eyes were unflinching, filled with certainty, but also something else: a thing hard to name that was not quite compassion, not quite sincerity, and not quite fellow feeling, but something related to all of these.
My mother would have called it corazón, a strength and openness of heart.
“Miss Quinn,” I said. “My name is Samuel May.”
“Are you…” she began. “Are you the one…?” She was struggling to speak.
“Yes,” I said, reaching out to take her hand. Yes. She squeezed my fingers, and her eyes, searching mine, lit with hope. “Yes, I’m the one who has dogged your steps these last few weeks. But I must tell you. You won’t find Rosetta’s spirit here. She’s already gone.”
Clem blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Someone else has already taken her back to the realm of the living as a thew.”
“You…” She frowned. “Why would you think that? What did you see?”
“I didn’t see it happen, but I know that it has happened, because I know who brought about her death, and I know why they did it, and I know that the moment she passed into this realm someone came to collect her spirit.” She looked at me without speaking. “I’m sorry, Miss Quinn.”
For several seconds she stared down at the stones.
She didn’t seem aggrieved by my news, only confused.
No doubt the journey into the realm had taxed her so greatly that she couldn’t respond to something so shocking.
For a moment I thought she might sink down onto the stones and close her eyes, but instead she looked up at me. “Tell me what you know,” she said.
It wasn’t elegantly told—I was worried by the drained look upon her face—but I told her everything I knew: about her efforts to free her mother, and the Cisneros Society, and my own unfortunate role in its work, and the methods relied upon to acquire spirit thews.
I couldn’t tell which parts of it, if any, most astonished her.
She simply sat through my recitation with a grim expression, and when I was through, she began with her questions.
“Each time a woman has been stoned, the purpose has been to create a thew?”
“Yes.”
“Why are they marked with letters?”
“Initials. To designate the enchanter who will bind them.”
She took a breath. “The spirit who helped you—Corbin. Is he also helping now?”
I shook my head emphatically. “No. Like me, the spirits who once assisted the other ropers couldn’t bring themselves to continue with such a scheme.”
“But then how do they get thews? You’ve made clear that no Society member is courageous enough to come here himself.”
I nodded. “Yes. But the Society is practiced in coercion. They’ve found the way to extract the cooperation of spirits here in the realm who still have loved ones in the realm of the living.
” I paused. “There are many here who would do anything to keep the people they love safe. It hasn’t yet come to me, but it will. ”
Clementine looked at me gravely. “I see. So for you this isn’t merely about seeking retribution. It’s about protecting your mother and Cris.”
“Precisely. It’s only a matter of time.”
“What do you propose, then?”
I paused. Would she accept? I felt absurdly nervous. “You must take me back to the realm of the living. As your thew.”
She peered into my eyes, as if trying to detect the truth in them. “Are you sure you wish to be a thew?”
“I’m sure.”
“How can you be? You’ve never been one. You don’t know what it’s like.”
I put my hand on her arm. How could I explain to her that as a spirit, I had seen far more in just a few months than I had in almost two decades as a living person?
Nothing was hidden from me. And I knew her.
“Being your thew would not be the same as being a thew for the Cisneros Society.” I could not say at that moment what I also felt: that I would have done almost anything by then to stay by her side.
The conviction had stolen up on me slowly, and now it could not be denied.
I wished to be with Clem, wherever she might be.
“That is true,” she said quietly.
I seized on her agreement. “Once we’re back, Miss Quinn, we’ll find a way to stop them.”
“I don’t just want to stop them. I want to dismantle the entire Society.”
I smiled. “Very well.”
“And ensure that they never take another woman’s life.”
“Certainly.”
“And make them pay for taking lives so freely, yours included.”
“Most assuredly, Miss Quinn. And find Rosetta. And free her.”
She clasped my hand, as if to seal a pact. “Call me Clem,” she said. “And yes. I agree.”