Chapter 6 #2
Suddenly, something large and dark flashed across the reflection.
I gasped again, louder this time, so startled that I reeled back from the birdbath, lost my grip on it, and fell backwards, landing hard on my backside.
The breath huffed out of me, and my eyes squeezed shut.
I waited for Xiomara’s sarcastic remark about my clumsiness.
It didn’t come. In fact, there was only silence—actual, complete silence. A silence that pressed on me like a physical presence. The sound of the ocean, the feel of the breeze, the quiet shushing of plants as they moved in the wind, all of it was gone.
I opened my eyes. I was alone. Xiomara was gone. Shadowkeep was gone. The garden was gone. The sky was gone. There was only me, sitting on nothingness, and the birdbath. It was as though the rest of the world had been stripped away.
“Xiomara?” My voice shook violently, echoing in the emptiness.
There was no answer, no sign that Xiomara, wherever she had gone, could hear me calling to her.
Shakily, I got to my feet, a process made all the more unnerving by the fact that I couldn’t actually perceive what I was pushing against with my hands, or standing on with my feet.
It didn’t feel like anything, and yet it seemed solid beneath me—I was anchored to it, not floating away.
I stepped forward toward the only thing that seemed to have traveled with me into this void, which was the birdbath. I looked down into it. I saw the stars in an inky sky, the same stars I’d been staring at before—the stars which, I confirmed with a wary glance, were no longer winking down at me.
I tilted my head, and realized I could see more than just the stars. There were branches of trees swaying gently in the breeze and, if I lowered myself close enough to the basin, I could just make out the edge of Shadowkeep’s porch roof. Inside the birdbath was the place I’d just been.
So where was I now, and how the hell had I gotten here?
I tried not to panic, but beads of sweat were already breaking out on my forehead and dampening the palms of my hands.
Okay, think, Wren, think, I commanded myself, but my mind was nothing but blank buzzing.
Nothing I’d learned so far gave me any hint as to what had just happened to me.
Xiomara had made no warnings about sudden shifts in time and space, or falling through hidden magic portals.
I tried to take a deep, calming breath, and felt like my lungs had turned to stone, unable to expand.
A slight rustling sound broke the muffling silence as completely as a gunshot, and I spun on the spot, staring around wildly for the source of the sound, and then promptly screaming.
I was no longer alone. A figure stood maybe twenty yards away in the emptiness.
It was facing away from me, but I still knew exactly who it was.
Tousled gray-blonde curls, slender, long-fingered hands, the trailing hem of her patchwork dress dragging along the nothingness she stood upon. It was Asteria.
The rush of relief I expected to feel didn’t come.
I stayed rigid, my hand pressed over my mouth, for some reason terrified that she had heard me.
She hadn’t turned at the sound of my shriek, nor did she show any sign that she was aware of my presence.
Her stillness filled me with a dread I couldn’t explain or control.
I didn’t want to be here with her. I didn’t want her to turn around.
I turned back to the birdbath, reaching out into the space on the other side of it, desperate for some sign of Xiomara’s presence.
Would I be able to sense her there, even if I couldn’t see her?
But my hands groped through an emptiness as complete as the rest of the space around me.
Wherever Xiomara was, she wasn’t here with me. I would have to face this alone.
I turned back to the still-motionless form of Asteria, my mind in a whirl.
I was the one who had been desperate to communicate with Asteria.
I was the one who suggested that Xiomara and I try to reach her together.
But for reasons I didn’t understand, it was only me here.
Maybe that was as it should be. After all, I was the one she had been reaching out to at the start of the summer.
I was the one she sent the messages and warnings to.
Now it was just the two of us. This realization calmed a little of my fear.
Was I really going to waste this chance to talk to my grandmother on my own, just because I was afraid?
As I worked through this tangle of thoughts, my breathing finally calmed. My heart settled from a gallop to a trot, and I felt steadier. There was no reason to fear my own grandmother. I might not understand what was happening, but that was no reason not to try for the answers I sought.
“Asteria?”
I spoke it quietly. I wasn’t sure if you could startle a ghost, but it seemed prudent to try not to. But Asteria made no movement, no sign that she had heard me. I tried again.
“Asteria? Asteria Vesper?”
Again, nothing. I cleared my throat, and then remembered that the volume of my voice was unlikely to be the issue.
I was communicating with a spirit. The loudness of my voice surely meant far less than the clarity of my mind.
I took a moment to push away every thought that had crowded in there since the moment I’d landed in this odd in-between space.
I focused instead on inviting Asteria in, opening a mental door and making room for her.
“Asteria,” I whispered, and felt how much further it traveled. “Asteria Vesper.”
The reaction was so small I almost missed it. One of Asteria’s hands, hanging limply at her side, twitched—the fingers curling in and then falling loose again. It was the first movement she’d made since I spotted her—I took heart and tried again.
“Asteria, it’s me. It’s Wren.”
Wren Vesper.
The words fell into my head like coins into a well, echoing in the emptiness I’d created to receive them. They were quiet and dim, a faint whisper carried on a breeze I couldn’t feel. The figure of Asteria was close. But her voice was very, very far away.
I chanced a step closer to her, and then another.
My mouth had gone dry. Maybe if I could see her face, I would understand better.
But why wouldn’t she move, or even turn to look at me?
It was unnatural—even for this very unnatural situation in which I now found myself.
Everything felt wrong, but that felt the most wrong of all.
I began to move in a large arc, circling around Asteria with slow, deliberate steps. I was afraid of spooking her, even as I called out to her again.
“Asteria, it’s me. You gave me a message, remember? About a girl and a book?”
Wren. The girl. The book. The girl will… bring the book.
My pulse quickened as hope shot through me.
She was understanding. We were connecting.
I was coming around the side of her now, though her face was still obscured by the curtain of her untamed hair.
My memory ached for the smell of her—damp earth and lilac and rose petal.
I longed for the touch of her strong, callused hands, the twinkle in her eye that always spoke of the untold mischief we might make together.
I beat the longing back so that it wouldn’t cloud my focus. I needed answers, not nostalgia.
“She came, Asteria. She brought me the book.”
The book… has come home?
A wave of something heavy swept over me, a disorientating mixture of relief and fear. It confused me, and I stopped walking. Any moment now I would see her face. Just another step or two. But why was it so hard to convince myself to take them? I spoke instead, stalling.
“Yes, the book is home. Asteria, you told me to trust the girl.”
Trust… her… you must…
“You said she was connected to the Source…”
Asteria moved for a second time. A sort of spasm rolled through her body, and she let out a strangled sort of gasp. My heart lurched, and I stumbled a few steps closer to her.
“Asteria? Are you okay?”
The Source…
“Yes, the Source. What did you mean? How is she connected to it?”
The Source… the Source is in danger…
“Asteria, I don’t understand. What does that mean? Is the girl the danger?”
The Source… you must protect the Source… find the girl… we can’t… we’re so lost…
“Asteria, why is it in danger? From what?”
So lost… so dark… all of us trapped…
Her voice, still so far away, was broken and trembling.
My heart leapt up into my throat at the sound of it, tears welling in my eyes.
It was unbearable, that fear in her voice.
I bridged the last of the distance between us at a run, all fear swallowed up by a deep need to comfort her.
At last I reached out and, grasping her hands in mine, pulled her around to face me.
Where Asteria’s face had been, there was just… emptiness. A smooth featureless stretch of void, from her hairline to her chin. It was as though someone had come and erased her.
I screamed, and the place in which we stood together shattered.