5. Chapter 5 #3
“Alright,” I say to the owl, who blinks at me behind a pair of wise, golden eyes.
“I suppose that I’m not the most graceful thing on this planet.
Which is a fact you can blame my parents for.
” I wave the dagger around for emphasis as I take a seat on a nearby rock, tugging the jacket tighter over my shoulders and hacking up a cough.
“Not that I even remember my parents,” I add in hindsight.
“They dropped me off on the doorstep of an orphanage long before I knew how to crawl.” The owl banks its head to the side, studying me.
“You would be bitter too, if your parents could’ve afforded you, but hadn’t wanted to.
” The owl hoots in pity. “Listen, you’re lucky that you’re up so high, otherwise I’d turn you into stew. ”
Something rustles nearby, and I raise my dagger defensively.
“What are you doing?” A female voice erupts from the bushes, causing me to leap off the rock, twist my ankle, and fall.
With my face pressed against a bed of decaying leaves, I look up at the intruder, only to find my sister staring back at me.
Her long hair enwraps her body like a cape, the cascading river of darkness framing her heart-shaped face. She always has been the prettier one.
I wipe a smear of mud off my cheek with the palm of my hand, fighting back the urge to scream at her and tell her to go away.
As children, Solara and I had been inseparable.
We would wake up to the sound of bells tolling and proceed to follow each other through the orphanage’s maze of corridors on our way to class.
We’d scrunch our noses at the wardens during arithmetic, and then we’d assist each other with cheating our opponents during combat training.
Finally, we’d fall asleep tucked beneath the sheets with our bodies nestled together for warmth, only after watching the sun wane from the sky and discussing what life would be like on another planet across the stars.
Sometimes, we’d even poke fun at Grandmaster Grimwell’s peppered mustache, or the endless sea of permanent frown lines taking up residence on his forehead.
But everything changed the day Solara revealed that a demon was haunting her dreams. She’d fallen asleep with her hands clasped tightly in mine, as though she’d feared sleep was a place that might take her away from me permanently.
And she’d been right. I’d woken to find her gone. Vanished into thin air. Disappeared without a trace. The imprint of her body still pressed against the mattress was the only evidence left of her sparingly thin existence.
I’d reported her disappearance to the wardens, who’d reported the matter to Grandmaster Grimwell, who’d smiled in response. “Perhaps now, Shadow will realize that her imaginary friend never existed at all.”
From my place in the servant corridor pressed up against a slab of stone, with my right eye crushed against that burrowed-out hole in the wall, I’d shoved my tiny fist in my mouth and let out a silent, blood-curdling scream.
From that moment on, I’d assumed my sister was lost forever, whisked away by a shadowy demon whom I pictured having twisted horns and veiny wings. I even began to wonder whether that shadowy demon would come to collect me.
Every morning, I’d pray to the four Mothers for my sister’s safe return.
And every night, I’d write the make-believe demon a personal letter, begging for him to deliver Solara back to me.
And by some miracle of a chance, he’d listened.
Solara came back to visit me often, growing into a woman alongside me, even though no one else could see her—even though no one else believed me.
But her return had not made her whole again.
Instead, her body was made of mist and smoke.
“You’re suffering from psychosis,” my warden had informed me. “An insane asylum would be fitting.”
Out of fear of being sent away to a place even colder and more unforgiving than my tenebrous enclave, I’d kept my mouth shut, acutely aware that hiding within the walls of the orphanage as a girl without magic was far safer than suffering in the world outside alone.
Solara motions toward the blade, her incinerating gaze yanking me back to reality. “I thought that you vowed never to take up a weapon again?” she asks, her head tilting slightly, eyes cast in judgement.
“Guess I lied.” I peel myself up off the ground as shame wallops me upside the head.
Look at me, covered in dirt and grime, soaked to the bone by rain, traipsing through the forest and trying to maim things.
The version of me from yesterday, the one still dating Eric, would be utterly humiliated. “Why are you here, Solara?” I ask.
“I’ve come to help you,” she explains, her gaze flitting up at the owl. “You’re slipping, Shay.”
“Of course I’m slipping,” I scoff. “My entire life is unraveling apart at the seams. At this rate, my only two options are to become a mercenary or a pirate, neither of which I’d be good at, regardless of how tempting.”
“You’re slipping because you’ve stopped searching for me,” Solara corrects me. Her soft voice unwinds the tension burning its way through my aching heart, forcing my white-knuckled fists to loosen on the blade and my breathing to steady itself.
She’s right. I did stop searching for her. I gave up my hunt to find her the morning that I was kicked out of that orphanage and onto the curb, putting my focus entirely on survival instead of locating her across the universe. How long has it been since then? Seven years?
“Eric was right,” I admit with a little shrug, guilt pumping freely through my veins. “You’re not even real. You’re a mirage of my mind.” As if to prove my point, I swat her away like she’s a cloud of dust.
Solara frowns, and then rematerializes. “This is serious, Shadow. You must find the old woman with mismatching eyes—one black, one white.”
“I searched for that old bat for years,” I snort, “and nothing came of it. She probably doesn’t even exist. She’s a ghost, a daydream, a fantasy. Just like you. You ruined my relationship with Eric.”
“Eric ruined your relationship with Eric,” Solara says.
“Well, it certainly didn’t help my case that Eric believed I talked to ghosts,” I contend as I jam Augustine’s dagger into a nearby tree trunk with a crack.
The memory of my ex-lover’s treachery plunges straight through my heart, taking the brunt of the impact.
“Why are you really here, Solara? Other than to tell me what a failure I am?”
“The old woman sent me.” Solara’s irises morph from slate blue to glacier gray. “She vows that if you find her, she’ll grant you one wish. You could wish for us to be together again.”
I slump into myself. The truth is, I’d give anything to be with my sister again in her physical form.
Anything. No matter how impossible it seems. Solara must sense it too, because she catches my hand in hers and presses my palm against her face.
Her cool skin reminds me of a misty rain cloud.
Temporary, as if one wrong breath could send her sailing away.
“Trust in Augustine,” she whispers. “He will lead you to the old woman. She has foreseen it.”
But before I can ask any follow-up questions, my sister disappears into a shimmering cloud of dust and evaporates. I absolutely detest when she does that, as though she’s been sneezed away from reality.