Chapter 25 #2
Celia tried not to think of these things as she trudged toward the river—through more memories of schoolyard games and rats as large as cats gnawing fingers to bone.
These lives and awful deaths grew sparser as she drew near the water’s edge.
Boats were lined up on the flat black-pebble shore.
Hundreds of boats, from every corner of history.
Some were made of reeds. Others had been carved with Viking ferocity—their prows curling like dragons’ tongues.
There were rowboats like the ones that lazed on the Serpentine in Hyde Park at the height of summer.
And more elegant versions, hanging with round paper lanterns that had yet to be lit.
She found herself searching for a version of the rowboat Papa sometimes used to tend to Rosewick’s swans.
For a jaunty straw hat and a whistled tune.
For any hint that her father might be here… waiting…
But Ezra’s mother was the only sign of life, climbing into one of the reed boats. When Nour caught sight of Celia, a frown flickered across her face, but she waved the young woman closer.
“We must hurry. Hekamaat is already a good ways downriver… If he sails much farther…”
“What?” Celia waded into the shimmering waters. The currents danced with colors and shapes. Memories. She watched with fascination and horror as a thought peeled off her own leg—the picture of young Celia sneaking gingersnaps from Rosewick’s kitchens swimming off downstream.
She climbed quickly into the boat.
“Death is a journey, just as much as life is.” Nour sounded grim as she pushed off into the river. “This place is merely the beginning. Spirits who choose to stay here often died too young. Or too violently. They put themselves in purgatory to stay close to their old lives.”
The boat’s reeds looked, and felt, brittle, but they didn’t break with Celia’s added weight. It was a relief to get out of the bone-cold water. “But Ezra… I mean, he acts like a fossil sometimes, but he’s not that old. And those sphinxes weren’t exactly gentle.”
“Ezra chose his fate,” his mother replied. “That’s why the gate opened. He accepted his death.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Nour speared her with a stare as their boat was drawn deeper into the rushing memories. “The currents will get stronger the farther we go. Even an iron will such as yours can get rusted away. If we take this boat too far, we may not be able to turn it around.”
“Then I’ll get out and walk back on the shore.” But Celia was startled when she waved toward the banks. Sometime between this moment and the last, a forest had sprung up where the fleet of boats had been. Fog wove between the trees’ trunks.
No.
Not fog.
More ghosts.
“You can’t.” The Sanct shook her head. “You can’t reach it by flying either. The river is the only path. To reach life again, you have to fight upstream.”
Good thing I’ve had plenty of practice. A woman in a man’s world. A shopgirl who should have been an heiress—upstream was all Celia Sinclair knew. She also knew better than to say so in front of Nour, who’d lost so much more.
“Is that what you did, with your brother?” she asked instead.
The shore had changed again. They were gliding between great, towering cliffs veined with gold. If there were any ghosts here, they remained hidden.
“I fought, yes. I went very far. Too far, perhaps. My brother was never quite the same after we returned…” Nour shook her head. “I put all of the pieces back together, but something was still missing.”
Every time Celia’s focus shifted, it seemed the view on the shore would too.
A field of poppies bled into her vision.
Then a Venetian-esque cityscape—its houses half submerged in water.
These buildings soon became columns, as if she and Nour were rowing their way through a flooded temple.
Trying to keep track of the changes was too dizzying, so she chose to stare at their boat’s prow.
Ezra’s mother didn’t seem bothered by this shifting landscape.
“When we joined forces with the Ageless Ones to beat the dead back from Thebes, my brother tried to become the first sacrifice for the immurement spell. But there wasn’t enough life in him to hold the stones.
He ended up back here.” Her gaze flickered to the shore, which had become a desert filled with hills of rolling, golden sand.
“I’m sorry.” She thought, again, of Papa, how hard she’d tried to hold on to him in the end, how much harder it would be a second time around.
“The price of love is loss,” Nour replied softly. “But Ezra shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes.”
There was something upriver. Celia straightened as a rowboat came into view.
It had gotten caught in the shallows, oars set in the locks, its lichen-covered bottom scraping the shore.
Two figures sat facing each other. Ezra.
She knew this—but not by the sight of him.
It was as if someone had taken an eraser and started wearing down his sharpest details, smudging dimples and alchemical eyes into a grayish blur.
His shadow. His shut. Thanks to their time together in the train car, Celia recognized it instantly.
Ezra had always had a distinct softness, a miraculous tenderness despite all the war and abandonment he’d faced.
The second soul… Was it Biz?
They were still too far away to tell.
Nour had seen the rowboat and was using her wand to steer their way toward it.
“Ezra!” When Celia’s voice echoed across the water, she realized that the river was making no other sounds. Not the way a real river should. “Ezra Bright! Turn around, you mule-headed martyr. You’re coming back with us!”
“Hush!” Nour hissed. “We shouldn’t call attention to ourselves.”
“Why not?”
Just then, something large and scaly cut through the cosmic shimmer on Celia’s side of the boat. She almost bit through her lip to keep from screaming.
Nour lifted her wand out of the river as the creature slipped past. It was massive: at least twice the length of their reed boat… One lash of its tail and they would be drowning in memories.
“I see why the other ghosts chose to stay behind,” Celia muttered when the monster finally disappeared. “If their only other option is getting gobbled up by a fifty-foot crocodile…”
“It only devours the deserving,” Nour said.
Their boat drew closer to Ezra’s, until both hulls hit desert sand. Dunes rose and fell along the river. Beautiful to look at, but not exactly a place Celia would elect to stay for all eternity.
“Ezra.” This time, when she called his name, the shadow-figure in the boat turned toward her. There were still very faint lines sketching out his Ezra-ness.
His eyes brightened when they landed on Celia.
She almost saw a hint of green.
“Celia? What are you doing here? What—” He choked at the sight of her fellow sailor. “Mut.”
“Hekamaat.”
At the sound of his name—his true name—Ezra’s edges sharpened. Celia could see both the man he was and the boy he’d been. The scholar, the soldier, the son of Egypt. Her own heart swelled in her chest, beating extra hard. He was beautiful. He was dead.
Celia couldn’t stand the thought of him staying that way.
She sat with it, though, as Nour climbed out of the boat, wading through several inches of water to reach her son. When the two embraced, her gold-blue feathers covered Ezra completely.
The other ghost in the rowboat watched with quiet intensity.
Celia watched back.
Her heart started to sink.
Not Biz.
This ghost wore traces of a uniform and was gripping a tin mug like some Whitechapel beggar.
Biz didn’t hold her teacup that way—she drank her English breakfast pinky up.
If not for these things, Celia might have clung to her first guess.
There were enough similarities between Elizabeth Ellington and her brother, George, to justify it.
They both sat ramrod straight. They both drummed their fingers on whatever surface they could find.
They both saw far more than they were seen.
Nour’s arms dropped away.
The ghost that was George let out a cry.
When Celia turned, she saw why.
Ezra was gone.
In one hand, Nour held her wand. The other cradled a canopic jar. She clutched it to her chest as she waded back to the reed boat.
“Did you just stuff your son’s soul in a jar?” Celia gaped. “Like strawberry preserves?”
Nour set the jar carefully in the center of the boat. “I’m bringing him back to life. Come, Celia. We must make haste.”
“No!” George let out another cry. “You can’t resurrect him yet.”
“If I don’t manage this quickly, I might not be able to do it at all,” explained the blue-masqued Sanct. “The dead will keep spilling through the gate unchecked. Life as we know it will end.”
Celia’s stomach twisted as she tried not to remember her basin vision. So far, all of it had come true…
“You must bring my sister’s soul with you. Please. Ezra and I were following her boat.” George waved a gray arm down the shore, where a third rowboat was beached in the sands. Footprints strung into the dunes: up and over. “She’s here. Somewhere.”
“Biz?” Celia could taste hope between her teeth, thick enough to warrant a toothpick.
Her friend wasn’t too far gone.
Not yet.
Nour shook her head as she pulled out her wand. “We cannot push any farther. There’s too much to lose.”
I just didn’t want to get left behind again… Biz’s voice floated back, in the river’s silence. Celia shivered at this memory as she studied the footprints, which wound up the side of the dune like an heiress’s necklace. “But what if she’s just on the other side? I can run and grab her—”
The Sanct kept shaking her head. She plunged her wand into the water. George tried to grab at the boat as it began to shudder upstream, but his hands passed straight through the reeds.
Ah shit. Celia was going to have to be a hero, wasn’t she?
She prayed that the crocodile was far away as she lunged out of the boat, quickly splashing to shore.