Chapter 31 The Echo
The Echo
Sage grumbled her entire way through the thorns.
Not only was it a painful trudge, battling her way through sharp, broken brambles that felt like a million cat claws lining her walk, but the roses that surrounded the narrow path she forged filled the air with the most pungent, headache-inducing fragrance, enough to make her woozy, even without the bleeding.
Sage muttered as she lumbered, thinking longingly of the sword that had clattered onto the kitchen tiles so many hours ago, which she absolutely should have commandeered. “Idiot girl. What kind of fool presents herself willingly at the finale of a cursed spell without wand or weapon on hand?”
Of course, in the name of accuracy and an informed neutral stance, Sage also forced herself to consider the possibility that the spell may in fact never be over, that their attempts to follow the chain’s story to the end would not bring the conclusion and instead only serve to drag her deeper and deeper towards the nucleus.
The Sage Hemlock she thought she knew had never gone a day in her life being unprepared.
Never once had she lazily surrendered her control to anybody else, and now, when the stakes were highest, she found that she had no choice but to do just that.
She had arrived at this crucial crux in her findings without knowing what would be required of her to succeed.
She winced as her trouser leg caught on yet another tiger claw–sized thorn, which shredded the green fabric. She gave a guttural growl and a stamp of her foot. “I liked these ones.” Her last crumb of patience was wearing thin.
A walk that would have usually taken her half an hour or so had taken several.
Even under a grey sky and the frost-tipped thorns, she sweated beneath her clothes from the effort.
Each thorn that crossed her path required slow, careful hand placement and sudden brute force to snap the stems and crack the spines out of her way.
Finally, framed in brooding clouds, perched on its hill and breaking through the jagged horizon, the domed top of the Equinox Gallery came into sight over the towering thorns.
What would normally have been the borders of the rose gardens had become a blurred tangle of crimson and deep brown overgrowth, but just beyond their walls, the true extent of the gallery’s enchanted transformation revealed itself.
The pale wide pillars that once surrounded the gallery had stretched higher and wider, turning into the palest pink turrets, which framed the main body of what was now, undeniably, a castle.
Arched stained-glass windows, forked railings, even a grand wooden drawbridge that lay open over the town stream, which was now a moat surrounding the castle.
The gallery’s gilded roof reflected the first of the early twilight stars, beaming them back over the town in bolts, and every stone wall was draped in crimson roses, flowers losing petals in a red rain over the ramparts.
The window of the tallest slender tower, crowned with a pale blue turret, caught the lilac light and glowed faintly. It looked as if someone was home.
A faint path had been trodden ahead. Had someone arrived here before her?
It certainly seemed that way. Maybe it was Robin.
He could have broken free from the forest; he was a problem solver by nature.
It could even have been Laurel; she was flighty but unswayable when she wanted something; she could have managed to pull herself from the depths of sleep.
Perhaps she’d even find the both of them together.
The daring hope was enough to light a fire within Sage’s broken heart and drag her onwards.
Sage winced as she sliced open the back of her right hand on a thorn in her hurry, but eventually, she came to the first of the wide steps at the foot of the gallery-castle, the stairs leading to the grand doors.
The left one was ajar, stems of roses contorting around it and down the carpet, growing before her eyes around the gap.
If her siblings really were in there, she only had to walk inside to find them.
Sage wasn’t ever one to admit when she felt afraid, but there was no one left to bother hiding it from.
No one to prove anything to. On her own, fear swept through her, but she had to make herself keep moving forwards, again and again.
Sage slipped through the heavy doors and made her way into the gallery.
The place was completely, unnaturally silent.
In the collection of palatial, floor-to-ceiling portraits that lined the walls in gilded frames, painted eyes seemed to follow her as she took a few cautious first steps.
Every figure on canvas, every smooth statue standing against the walls, was watching, and Sage held herself in an equally frozen stature in an effort to creep through the gallery unnoticed. By whom, she wasn’t sure yet.
Sage had always admired the gallery and thought it very beautiful, with towering high ceilings, intricate old cornicing and a beautifully polished floor.
It was a sanctuary that she used to save as a treat for an afternoon to lose herself in the beauty and history of the paintings.
But then, at some point or another, she had started to feel a little silly whenever she took a seat in front of her favourite works of art just to look at them by herself, enjoying them for what they were.
She hadn’t been back since. Although Laurel had often encouraged her to go again, it was another small example of how she had stopped letting joy ever make a decision on her behalf.
Things like that felt so insignificant the older she got.
Sitting before a painting for beauty’s sake was never important and there was never time.
But it occurred to Sage, seeing the old works of art amid the darkness, that time would pass regardless, whether wonder was permitted among it or not.
There was not some prize to be won for being the most serious or the hardest working.
She was only losing out, wasting strength on pushing it back.
Why not let it leak in sometimes, morning light through the curtains to wake up more gently, more happily? Time would pass regardless.
It wasn’t until she was in the very centre of the gallery that Sage spotted them.
The outline of a figure gazing up at the largest painting in the whole of the Equinox.
The work was a famous classic in oils that depicted Port Sylvan in its glory days.
It was on the postcards that they sold at the museum.
It showed all the landmarks: the historical buildings, the stops on Sage’s tour, each one of her favourite nooks and crannies of the town.
Beams of layered paint shone golden upon Port Sylvan, wrapping the space in sunshine from the very outer borders of Pridian Manor, all the way to the Founders’ Fountain at the very centre.
Proof, perhaps, that it had always been something straight from a fairy tale, that magic had forever been buried below.
Sage couldn’t decide if it was Laurel or Robin—the height wasn’t what she expected to see for either—when she took a few steps closer. And the figure was cloaked. Through the low light, Sage could only make out the smallest details.
Plain dark velvet, threadbare in patches, the rich shade of black faded to a ghostly silver.
A few stains from aged damp, but the faintest trails of starlight and constellations stitched lovingly into the fabric.
And the careless dash of dark red that Sage had always treasured as proof of the real, living woman that had once worn it.
“There you are. My kindred spirit.” The soft, musical voice spoke out of the darkness as she turned towards Sage and lowered her cloak hood.
“Lilara?”
The woman smiled and nodded, black hair bouncing and a pretty grin in the most familiar shade of crimson lipstick spreading across her face.
If Sage had ever been one for dreaming, it felt like an impossibly long time ago.
However, if she really did permit herself to try to remember such a time, usually too painful to do so, she knew that it was true.
Once, she really had looked for fairy doors.
Stuck out her tongue for snowflakes. She had forever chosen the pink option, been a girl who had loved so many “silly” things: fiction books, soft animals, glitter pens and (have mercy) maybe even a boy band or two.
It was an unguarded, instinctive sort of love and one that was always full of wonder.
That part of her had left so long ago, holding hands with the part that permitted magic freely and recklessly. So much time had passed since then.
But standing face-to-face with Lilara Mournfell—or some hazy, nebulous version of her, at least—the witch who had lit a single spark of hope in the fifteen-year-old who couldn’t find one for herself, was the closest she had ever come to something feeling like a true dream come true.
It was as though she were viewing her from underwater, beneath misty moonlight. Her faint form wavered, loose and glassy and glittering.
Lilara held out her hands.
Despite herself, despite all that had happened, Sage rushed towards Lilara and hugged her tightly, in a way that made her feel like her own sister.
She felt translucent and silk-like to the touch, a formation of memories and thoughts and magic.
Sage couldn’t help but laugh in strange delight at the realization that Lilara smelled just like the museum, like history and memories and life long gone.
“You have done me a great justice.” Lilara smiled with closed eyes into Sage’s hair.
“All of the work and dedication that you have given me, Sage, it has been remarkable to see. My gratitude knows no bounds. I am so very honoured.” Lilara held Sage out at arm’s length to look at her properly.
“We are two sides of a coin, are we not?”