Chapter 25 #4
She had to keep rowing, pushing against this impossible current, the way she always did.
“Mind if I take a turn?” The boat dipped precariously as George moved toward the rower’s seat.
“Please.”
Celia nearly gasped with relief as she handed him the oars.
Maybe ghosts could move up and down the river more gracefully…
But no. George’s efforts were just as slow.
He couldn’t sweat, but he did look a good bit grayer once the shore shifted back to the eerie Venetian cityscape.
Abandoned buildings leered like skulls, sinking ever deeper.
“The boat’s too heavy.” George kept straining against the oars. Even the dead had limits. “We’d go faster if we lost some weight.”
There wasn’t much to spare, aside from a coil of rope. Celia tossed this into the water and then glanced down at her boots. Those had to weigh at least two pounds each.
SPLASH! PLOP!
It did seem to help. Marginally. The ruins of the city slipped away into the blood-bright field of poppies.
They still weren’t sailing fast enough.
Celia shouldered off her jacket and watched it land like a burning battle flag into the river, twisting and vanishing downstream.
She unbuckled her belt slowly, taking stock of everything tucked away inside its pockets.
The Tunguska knife, the cute little faience hippopotamus, a fair number of ankhs, her father’s lighter…
All the magic she’d fought—tooth and nail—to collect.
All the magic that was never hers to begin with.
Not worth your life.
“Toss it,” George urged. “It’s weighing us down.”
He spoke the truth, but still, Celia hesitated.
How could she face the Apex with nothing?
How could she destroy the Order empty-handed?
How would the vicious little beast inside her bloom and grow without the fire of William Sinclair’s lighter?
How could she fight without the splinters of a starstruck forest?
All that quiet violence Papa had passed down…
Who was she, without such things?
“Celia, my dear.” Biz cleared her throat. “There’s always more where that came from.”
There was, wasn’t there?
More anger, more bleeding, more chances to feel fully alive.
But only if she did not drown with the weight of the dead.
Celia took a deep breath. It felt like the shape of an oath in her chest as the belt went splashing in the river.
Her father’s relics sank like a stone.
Poppies crept past.
Too slow.
Still.
“Let me have a turn at rowing,” Biz told her brother. “I don’t want to just sit here like some damsel.”
As the two switched seats and the flowers faded, Celia kept taking stock of her wardrobe. The locket of sunlight popped open as she removed it from her neck, causing the veins of gold in the surrounding cliffs to flare extra bright. It arced through the air with shooting-star grace.
George watched the light sink into the water. “I don’t know if it will be enough,” he murmured.
Celia’s palm pressed flat over her chest. She felt the skeleton of the key there—her final charm. She pressed even harder, as if she could ingrain the relic into her skin. Her own unbending bones. What would she be without this last piece of her father’s magic?
Locked inside a land full of ghosts.
The boat tipped and there was another splash.
Celia’s hand flew to the rowboat’s edge, stunned. George had thrown himself overboard. Shimmery waters parted around his shoulders as he swam toward the stern.
“What are you doing?” Biz had stopped rowing in her panic. The boat floated back into George’s arms, but lost no more ground thanks to the ghost.
He’s standing, Celia realized.
“The river is shallower here.” George shoved his weight into the boat with a huff. “I can help push.”
Celia studied the currents weaving around the waist of George Ellington’s faded uniform. The monster was probably too big to navigate this section of the river…
She started to swing her leg over the edge, only to be stopped by a snarl.
“No. You stay inside the boat.” Neck muscles bulged in George’s neck as he pushed forward. “Keep rowing, Bitty!”
“If two of us are pushing we’ll go faster—”
“You won’t reach the gate that way, Miss Sinclair.”
There was something in George’s voice that made Celia stare more closely at the water.
Just around the ghost, the currents’ pattern had shifted.
A whirlpool had formed around his waist. She caught glimpses of Thornhill swirling along with cricket fields and war memories.
These circled the ghost once, twice, then floated into the wider river. Disappearing downstream.
Death was taking him back.
“You have to guide my sister through.” George’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “Promise me you’ll see her back to life.”
“But—” Celia glanced over her shoulder. Biz had started rowing again. Between that and George’s steady efforts, the boat was now gliding. “What about you?”
Soon, they’d be passing the mist-wreathed forest. The gate loomed on the shores just after that… but George Ellington was already looking fainter. His memories were bleeding out into the water so quickly that Celia could see straight through where his heart should be.
“Ezra and Biz have bodies to go back to,” the ghost said. “I’ve lingered here too long.”
And now he was leaving.
Piece by piece.
Memory by memory.
“Promise me,” George pressed.
Celia nodded quickly. “Yes, yes. I promise.”
The ghost sighed. His uniform looked even grayer than it did in his hemorrhaging war memories. “I sure hope my heaven has decent tea…”
Celia turned to where Biz was dutifully rowing. She was making good time—trees had started to appear on the shoreline. Despite the fact that Celia’s shoulders still smoldered from her last round with the oars, she reached for them again. “Trade with me, Biz. Keep your brother company.”
“Are you sure?”
“You need to be with George now.” Celia swallowed, trying not to think of what it was like, those final moments at her father’s deathbed.
Biz traded places with a nod. To her credit, the young woman did not cry or scream when she saw what was happening to her brother. She leaned forward and pressed her hands over his, as if holding them to the boat. They spoke to each other in soft, low tones.
Celia rowed.
Already her hands felt like one giant blister, but she was gaining far more ground than before. George kept pushing, though his steps forward were growing uneven, and every time Celia looked toward the stern, she saw less and less of him.
Finally, Biz’s hands were pressed against wood.
Tears fell down her cheeks.
The waters rippled, and for a moment Celia was sure that the monstrous crocodile creature was charging them.
But no.
This was one final push.
Trees vanished as the boat surged forward, into the vast black nothingness they’d started with.
Stones scraped their hull. Celia’s oars clattered to the floor.
She jumped up, searching past the other ships for the only thing that mattered.
The gate. It glowed red in the distance, but as Celia stared, she realized that the edges were starting to curl back.
Back, back, toward the heart of the door.
“Ezra…” she whispered.
All hope.
All terror.
Ezra was being brought back to life.
The gate was closing.