Chapter 15 #2
They set off again, even slower if that was possible, thanks to Thia’s exhaustion.
It happened gradually, but as the minutes passed, mist slunk toward them, swirling around their ankles and twisting upward as though testing the retreat of the sun.
A wave of a torch sent it scuttling back, hissing like cold water on a hot pan.
There were strange voices in the air, some familiar, though Thia couldn’t place them.
They called her name, beckoned with promises of comfort or calls of distress, until she desperately wanted to cover her ears, but couldn’t for fear of dropping her torch.
Brandishing fire like a weapon, she also couldn’t use her hands to climb, which slowed them even more, until Thran finally signaled to stop.
“What is it?” Dess rasped. She was grateful to hear his fatigue, glad she was not the only weary traveler in their group.
“Trouble,” Thran said gruffly, pointing above.
“Clouds,” Oskaren clarified. “There’s no moon.”
Dess cursed. “What do we do?”
“Perhaps we should rest,” Thran said, with an eye on Thia. “Since where will make no difference now.”
Dess shook his head aggressively. “No. No, we can’t stay here. We can’t stop.” He inspected the sky. “The clouds might clear.”
Thia tried to step toward him, and her legs gave out. Properly this time. She managed to twist away from her torch before it burned her, but her wrists stung from the impact. She spat a mouthful of dust.
“Look at her,” Oskaren said. Thia searched for the sneer, but her face was impassive. “Unless we want to abandon our Storm Crow, we rest.”
Thran nodded in agreement and let his pack slide to the ground. Dess seemed uncomfortable, but he let out a shaking breath and did the same.
“We should make a ring of fire,” Oskaren said. “Find what you can.”
While Thia sat clutching her torch for dear life, the others gathered what sticks and brush they could find.
It was not enough. They completed the ring, setting up their rolls within, but Oskaren estimated their materials would burn through before midnight.
They settled on four hours of rest, with each of them taking a one-hour watch.
Thia volunteered to go first, too jumpy to sleep anyway, and none of them protested.
With the ring to protect them, she set her torch down against a boulder, and rubbed the stiffness out of her fingers.
The others settled into their bedrolls, orange light flickering over their familiar features.
Mavrel occupied Thia’s pillow, while she sat at the foot of her roll.
Dess showed her how to feed the fire, but the advantage of first watch was that she likely wouldn’t have to.
The only battle she had now was against her eyelids.
The others were asleep almost instantly.
Dess fell first, she could tell by his snoring, then Thran, then Oskaren, their breaths shifting from shallow to deep.
Thia felt strangely alone, even though their bodies were present.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, shivering from cold and apprehension both.
Against her best effort, her eyes began to close. She forced them open, but moments later, her head sagged. She was nearly asleep, but she couldn’t….
“Thia.”
Her eyes shot open. She glanced over her shoulder at the others, but they were still sound asleep.
“Thia!” It was a woman’s voice.
Thia scanned the circle of flames, struggling to see beyond.
“You must stay awake,” the woman said. “You must keep yourself safe.”
“Who’s there?” Thia questioned, squinting into the dark.
A sigh sounded. “Thank god,” the woman said. “You mustn’t fall asleep again.” It was stern, but not unkind.
A man’s voice answered. “Is she here? Did you find her?”
“She’s here,” the woman replied.
Thia’s heart thrummed a painful rhythm. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“Over here,” the woman said. “Through the fire.”
Thia stood, knees cracking painfully, and crossed to the edge of the ring, trying to make out their shape.
There. A flash of white mist. A face.
A ghost.
She shrank back. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Don’t be scared,” the woman said. “Look at me. You know my face. I won’t hurt you. We would never hurt you.”
There was something in the way she said it that made Thia creep closer, trying to make out slopes and plains that were incorporeal, yet strangely familiar….
“Mom?” Thia whispered. There was no mistaking the freckles, the three that spilled onto her top lip, the larger one across the bridge of her nose, even if they were muted as mist.
“Oh, my sweet baby,” came the reply.
A man’s face appeared beside her mother’s.
“Dad?” His blond hair curled just like it did in all her photos, comfortingly haphazard across his forehead.
He nodded, and tears misted his translucent gaze. “Thia.”
She let out a sob. “Is it really you?” Her parents had died here. If there were ghosts, why not them?
They nodded. “We had to see you,” her mother said. “Just once.”
“How could you leave me?” The words tore from her.
But Melina shook her head. “Not here. We trespassed just to see you. The other specters…It isn’t safe.” She reached out a hand, but dropped it just before she touched the protective ring of flames. “I’m so sorry, baby.” She turned toward Jason. “We should go.” They started to disappear.
“Wait,” Thia begged. She didn’t understand. Why find her, just to abandon her again?
Jason reformed. “There’s a cave not far. It’s spelled against evil spirits. If you could get there, we could be safe. We could talk.”
Thia sniffed. “You want me to leave the fire?”
He nodded. “You can make it. Hurry.”
She wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
Melina solidified again, closer this time. “Thia. Please, baby.”
Thia frowned, trying to make out a possible path.
She wanted to believe them, yearned for it.
They were different than the specters who had taunted her all morning—not mere tendrils of mist whispering at the edges of her mind, but warm faces she knew almost as well as her own.
But if such a cave existed, wouldn’t one of her companions have mentioned it?
“There’s a song,” she said slowly, directing the words to Melina.
“Grandma Winnie used to sing it to you when you were little. Do you remember?” It ran through her head now, alongside the memory of her grammy’s gentle caress as she recounted the story, then serenaded a five-year-old Thia in princess pajamas too.
Melina’s answering smile was twinged with sadness. Then she started humming. Her voice was soft, nearly lost in the crackle of fire. But there was no mistaking the melody.
The Beatles, “All You Need Is Love.”
Thia’s breath shuddered. That song didn’t exist in this world; there was no way for a specter to know it.
But then Melina fell silent, spinning toward the dark. “They’re coming.”
Jason cast an uneasy look between them. “We have to go now, if we’re going to make it out.”
Melina’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry. But I’m glad I got to see you again, just once.” She began to flicker out of sight.
“No,” Thia begged. “Wait. Please.” She chewed her lip. “Dess,” she whispered, nudging him with her free hand. “Dess.” He didn’t wake.
“Thia.” Her mother’s voice. It sounded afraid now. “Thia!” A scream echoed somewhere in the black, raising the hairs on Thia’s neck.
She paced the ring’s confines, trying to make out anything beyond. “Mom?” There was only darkness and the echo of her voice against rock. “Dad!” she called, louder.
The fire gave a loud pop, and she jumped. “Hello?”
Nothing. What if she was wrong? What if that really was her parents, and in her skepticism she’d just condemned them to whatever worse fate could befall the dead?
Melina’s whimper finally sounded. “Help me.”
She had to make sure. She’d come right back. She stepped back for momentum, then hurdled over the flame.
Or would have, if a hand on her arm hadn’t yanked her back. She halted mid-flight, careening into a hard chest.
“’Tis not your mother, lass.”
Thran. Thia shoved herself away, and he let her go.
“How do you know?”
He said nothing, only stepped in front of her, so that he was now between her and the fire. Thia frowned. “What are you….” But then mist reappeared.
A girl. Not Melina. Young, with light brown hair and white skin, her lashes long and doe-like. “Da?”
Thran’s breath hitched.
“Da, is that you?”
Thia gasped. “Your daughter?”
Thran shifted, putting his back to the flames so he faced Thia again. His mouth pulled into a harsh line, but moisture glistened on his cheek in the trembling light. “An illusion.”
But she understood what he wasn’t saying. She was dead, the same as Thia’s parents. That these specters wore their faces meant nothing.
Thia sagged. “How?”
“As the lass said,” Thran replied, jutting his chin at Oskaren’s sleeping form. “Departed souls, embittered against those still living. They sense your thoughts and use them against you. Should you have followed, they would only have led you to death.”
The specter had never named the song. Only hummed it—while the same melody was playing through her mind.
A chill crept over her. They would have killed her. Wearing her parents’ faces. And she would have let them, if not for Thran.
Thran, who had left her to the n?gens. Who had evidently lost a daughter.
His face was unreadable as he waited for her response. She wasn’t quite ready to thank him. “You can go back to sleep,” she said instead. “I’ll ignore them.”
Thran’s attention flickered between her and the flames. He opened his mouth, then seemed to think the better of whatever he might have said. He climbed back into his roll.
But, Thia noticed, when he rolled onto his back, he didn’t close his eyes. And when her parents returned, urgent and beckoning, she was glad not to be alone in the dark.