Chapter 13 A Gift of Starlight
THE FIVE OF THEM WALKED through the halls, two boys, two girls, and a Lord of the Dead, all of them trailed by a full eclipse of moths.
Some of the windows they passed were open, and more moths came drifting through those windows to join the cloud that ebbed and flowed around the taller of the two girls, often landing on the shiny black cap of her hair, wings fanning as she walked on.
None of the five said a word as they walked. They watched the world around them with grim focus, clearly following some unseen trail. The Lord walked at the front, and he set the path the rest of them would follow, marking every step with serenity and silence.
“What are we going to do?” asked the darker of the two boys, after they had gone so long in silence that it had become almost physical, a cruel sixth member of their company.
“How are we going to get Nancy back from a bunch of hostile ghosts? How do we know she’s even still there for us to recover? ”
“We don’t,” said the second boy. “But she wouldn’t give up on us, and we’re not giving up on her. That’s not how friends behave.”
“She did give up on us once,” said the first boy. “As soon as she saw her door, she was off and running, and she never did look back.”
“And you can criticize her for that just as soon as you can convince me that you would have done any differently.”
“There’s no sense in fighting,” said the Lord of the Dead, turning to face the others. “All of you know what’s at stake here.”
“But what we don’t know is where we’re going,” said the shorter girl. “If you could tell us that, maybe we’d be less grumpy about the whole thing.”
“Grumpy.”
“Yes. We’re irritated and antagonistic and sad. I think the emotion that makes is grumpiness, don’t you?”
The Lord of the Dead shook his head. “You Nonsense children are exhausting. As to where we’re going, I don’t have an easy means of tracking the unquiet dead through the halls.
If I did, I’d have been doing it all along, and we wouldn’t have any need of this procession.
But I know where the graceful dead are waiting, the ones who’re content to wait for their rebirth to arrive. ”
“What do they have to do with this?” asked the girl with the moths.
“Sometimes when you’re trying to fight an unstoppable force, the best answer is an immovable object,” said the Lord of the Dead. “Sumi can see them. I can see them. Together, perhaps we can convince them that they should help.”
“Fight ghosts with ghosts,” said the first boy thoughtfully. “It’s a terrible idea, but it’s what we’ve got.”
“I’m so glad you approve.” They walked on, passing motionless statues and empty plinths, until they reached a door of silver filigree.
It swung open at the Lord’s touch, revealing an expanse of velvet darkness, treacle-thick and all-consuming.
The Lord of the Dead stepped through into the abyss, which held him up as if it were solid ground.
His flesh glowed a faint and lambent silver against the black, like a paler, more vital mirror of Jill’s spectral form.
The four teens followed him, the moths accompanying them. All their living bodies glowed in the dark in the same fashion, even the moths, which darted back and forth, leaving glittering contrails behind themselves.
“Stay close,” he said. “If I lose you in here, I’m not certain I can have you back again.”
They didn’t need to be told twice, but clustered close, Sumi going so far as to link her arm though his, like they were buddies going for a pleasant stroll. He looked down at her and she beamed up at him, giving his arm a squeeze.
“Take us to your grand solution,” she said. “I want my ghostie-girl back again.”
“She’s My ghostie-girl, as you call her,” he said, looking sternly down at her. “She chose My Halls, and My service, over you.”
“We’ll see,” said Sumi, and said no more of that, turning her attention instead to scanning the dark around them for signs of motion.
At first there was nothing, only the dark, comfortable and all-consuming.
For Christopher, Kade, and Talia, the nothing remained.
For Sumi and the Lord of the Dead, specks of light began appearing, glowing softly silver in the distance.
Sumi laughed and let go of his arm, stepping back a bit and spreading her own arms in welcome.
Dots of light began flocking out of the dark and covering her, plastering themselves to her skin like raindrops striking a solid object in their descent. She closed her arms, embracing as much of the light as she could while it swirled around her, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
“I remember you, I remember, I remember,” she said. “We were all dead together, you and I, and it was soft and quiet and beautiful, and I remember you.”
More lights appeared, joining their fellows in swirling around her, painting her in a silvery gleam brighter than her own light had originally been. Christopher gasped.
“The skeletons on Mariposa would glow that way when they pulled themselves together as the sun went down,” he said. “When they came back to life.”
“The dead here do not come back to life, unless they go somewhere else to find that spark of lightning and starlight,” said the Lord of the Dead.
“But they are made of the same stuff as the living, always. My beloved dead. I am come to you tonight not as a lord, but as a petitioner, for I need your help. All the Halls of the Dead need your help. The Lady needs your help. Will you protect your home?”
More specks of silver collected, gathering on Sumi’s skin and swirling through the air. All of them could see the ghosts now, they had gathered so thickly around them; this was their place, and they had been called, and oh, they were ready to come.
The silver gathered more and more thickly, until it began to form the outline of a child, a girl no more than eight years old.
Her hair was dark and pinned into a bun; her clothing was rough and hand-stitched, more suitable to a production of Peter Pan than a playground, and she had owl feathers braided into her hair.
What color she might have had once was gone, all rendered in the silver glow, and she was watching them with calm, unblinking eyes.
Kade gasped. “Lundy?” he asked.
“I was,” said the girl. “I’m here to wait for my rebirth. Which means I’m awaiting a door to the Goblin Market, for this time I’ll begin there, and give fair value all my days, not cheat anyone by disappearing from their home and halls. As soon as that door opens, I’m gone.”
“But you knew these people in life?” asked the Lord of the Dead.
“I did, which is why I’ve been chosen to speak for us today. On another day, another might have been the speaker; on another day, I might have continued to drift and dream, and wait for the hour of my redemption. What do you want?”
The Lord of the Dead blustered for a moment, looking shocked. “You would speak to Me so bluntly?”
“I would speak to you however it pleases me, for I am dead and have no need for the rules of etiquette that bind the living,” said Lundy.
“You’re no lord of mine. I appreciate the shelter you’ve offered to me, but as your power comes from our proximity, fair value is answered without any false civilities.
I’m under no obligation to grant you more civility. ”
The Lord of the Dead scowled.
Kade stepped forward. “Howdy, Lundy,” he said. “I’d ask how you’ve been, but I think ‘dead’ is a pretty stable state.”
She nodded. “It tends to be, yes. What’s going on?”
“Jill’s here.”
Lundy frowned. “Jill Wolcott? Jack’s sister?”
Privately, Kade thought that calling Jill “Jack’s sister” as if that were the most important thing about her might be enough to kill her a second time, this time through pure rage. He didn’t say that, only nodded and agreed, “Yes, that’s the one.”
“She killed me,” said Lundy. “You know that, right? Jill was the one who killed me. I didn’t have much of a life, but it was mine, and I wasn’t finished with it yet. She had no right to take it away from me like it was nothing.”
“You’re not wrong,” said Kade. “If it helps at all, Jack killed her not all that long after, because of what she’d done to you and to Sumi.”
“And she’s here?”
“She is. Her ghost is, anyway. She’s in with the other ghosts, the ones who aren’t willing to just sit and wait for their rebirth to arrive. And she’s got Nancy.”
“Nancy … that’s the one who’d traveled here before she came to the school, isn’t it?”
“Yes. When the unquiet dead started killing living statues, Nancy came back to the school looking for help. So we came to help her. Please, will you help us?”
“How?” Lundy spread her transparent arms, indicating the void around them. “We’re dead, Kade. Ghosts. We have no substance outside this room, and what we have here is a loan from the Lord of the Dead to make us more comfortable.”
“Jill and her army only have as much substance as they do because they steal it from the living,” said the Lord of the Dead.
“Well, how did they get the substance to do that in the first place?” Sumi demanded, sounding frustrated.
“You can’t keep changing the rules on us!
Either they have enough substance that they can catch and devour people or they don’t.
Either they can do harm or they can’t. You can’t have it both ways at the same time. ”
“It’s my fault,” said a new voice. As a group, they turned, even Lundy, to see a pale, silver-outlined figure in a flowing chiton standing some feet away, his translucent hands folded gravely in front of himself, his head bowed.
He was clearly one of the statues—or had been, because he was just as clearly dead.
“What do you mean, Iason?” asked Lundy. Then: “What did you do?”