Chapter 37 #3
Thick strands of shimmering violet threads lined the far wall like some kind of cursed spider web. Even looking at it felt somehow wrong, turning my gut with revulsion. It pulsed as if alive, filling the air with a dark energy, a heartbeat that shouldn’t have been.
“The Weave,” Typhon hissed.
My breath caught as the realization struck. This was the Weave? I’d never imagined the barrier between this realm and Everdark as a physical entity. I’d envisioned it more like a glowing collection of rune-magic instead of a writhing, sticky mass.
The Weave pulsed and pushed across toward us, like an air current, bringing all the smells we’d been enduring into even sharper focus.
“It shouldn’t be manifesting like this,” Typhon said, confirming my own suspicions as he pressed his nose into the crook of his elbow.
Zeed staggered back, raising a trembling hand. “Ah fuck, fuck. Fuck. I . . . was here. I didn’t go home at all. This is where I was all that time. This is where they brought me.” His face was chalk white as his eyes flitted around the space in horror. “We need to get out of here –”
He broke off as a faint sob cut through the hum of the pulsing threads, and I cocked my head.
“Did you hear that?”
Was it her? The wretched figure I’d seen in my vision who had needed my help?
“Harlow, wait, let’s go together!” Fable called, but I was already charging toward the sound. Who was the person I’d almost recognized? It hadn’t been Opie. I’d been certain of that, but my heart said it was someone I knew and maybe even loved.
I ducked under a thick strand of the Weave’s webbing, pushing forward until I was on the other side.
In the far corner of the room a stick-thin figure with a white shirt was kneeling on the floor in front of an otherwise empty pew, facing the wall of woven threads.
She was alone now. The other Dwimmers who had been lined up in my vision were nowhere to be found.
Her bony shoulders trembled as she sobbed, but her fingers never stopped moving, flitting from thread to thread and pulling them together in a hypnotizing, rhythmic pattern.
I was shivering so hard that my teeth clacked together as I made my way closer, gaze fixed on that rusty, matted hair. But my mom was a blonde, white blonde like me. So who was this?
“You’re alright. You’re safe now. We’re going to help you.”
She didn’t even look at me, just kept sobbing as her trembling fingers continued their frantic work on the Weave. My heart sank as I realized she wasn’t just crying. She was completely trapped, physically unable to stop what she was doing. As if she was enslaved to the magic itself.
I looked over my shoulder. “The rest of you search the room, there were others.”
Typhon looked at me. “Others?”
“Later. Look for . . .”
For the source of the agony Gary had picked up on. For Opie. For whatever we needed to do here.
“It’s okay,” I repeated softly, stepping closer to the woman. “Please, talk to me. We won’t hurt you.”
Her head jerked up suddenly, eyes wild and unfocused.
“Who are you? Who . . . who am I?”
But I knew exactly who she was as I stared into her amber eyes. The tilt of her mouth, the shape of her nose. Too thin, but it was her – there was no doubt.
“F-Fable?” I croaked, hardly able to squeeze the word from my throat.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she stared back at me as tears streaked down her filthy face, unseeing, her fingers continuing their endless dance.
I whirled as footsteps sounded from just behind me and found myself staring at . . .
Fable.
She rocked back on her heels and gaped, transfixed by her ill-fated doppelganger. “What the hell . . .”
My jaw worked as I tried to make sense of it all. The memory of that terrible sensation I’d felt from her stone when we’d first arrived at Heathermoor . . . had to be her when she was in this place, . . . but how could she be in two places at once?
“Is that a Quirk? Fable, did your Quirk show up?” Cat demanded, her terrified eyes flicking between the two Fables as she lifted her hand. “Like a body double?”
The Fable that had been with us all along bent at the waist, her whole body going into spasms even as the other Fable continued to weave magic like a marionette possessed by demons.
“What the fuck is happening?” Zeed barked, fear lacing his words. “I know I was here. I was weaving just like she is. What if . . . what if I’m still here? Or, another version of me is?”
“Stop, all of you!” Typhon grabbed a hold of me and dragged me away from the Fable on her knees, broken, weaving for all she was worth. “This could be some sort of illusion meant to trap us.”
“Holy shit,” Ross grabbed at his head. “This is insane.”
Not wrong, he was not wrong at all. I didn’t know what to make of any of this. I looked to Fable on her feet, though she was still bent at the waist, sucking wind hard.
Thunder boomed overhead, rattling the walls all around us, sending a few chunks of ceiling plaster to the floor, but my attention was focused on a different sound . . .
The quiet squeak of a door opening in the distance. The one we’d arrived through, the one with the squeaking hinges.
We were no longer alone . . .