by E. E. Holmes
“And you’re not going to tell me what that ‘something’ is, I suppose?” Fiona asked, hand on her hip.
“Not at the moment, no,” I said. “But I promise it was important, or I wouldn’t have left you on your own for so long. I’m really sorry about that.”
Fiona raised her chin like she was trying to sniff the answer out. “You need my help?” she asked shortly.
“No. Thanks, Fiona, I’m okay. And I’m not trying to be cryptic or bullshit you or anything. I’m just… not ready to tell you yet, okay?”
Fiona shrugged. “Fair enough. Far be it from me not to know when to mind my own damn business.”
I heaved a sigh. That was far less painful than I’d imagined. I hated lying to Fiona even more than I hated lying to Catriona or even Karen, but at least Fiona didn’t make me feel like shit about it. Besides, I told myself, I would tell her everything when the moment was right—whenever the hell that was.
“How’ve you been coping while I’ve been away?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Haven’t had much time to worry about myself, not since the business in the courtyard started up. I suppose you’ve seen that since you got back? After all, she’s one of your best mates, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And I suppose you noticed that the whole scene looks an awful lot like my sculpture.”
“Yes, I couldn’t miss it,” I said.
“So, you can see, then, why I had to take it to the Council,” Fiona groused.
I gasped. “You what?! You took it to the Council? But I thought—”
“Be sensible, girl, what choice did I have?” Fiona cried, and I could hear the defensiveness in her voice. “I don’t like involving the rest of the Council any more than you do, but hiding that sculpture once I realized what it was would have been tantamount to treason!”
“But you’ve been helping me hide my Seer abilities for months!” I cried. “You did it to protect me, and I’m grateful. Why won’t you protect yourself?”
“It’s not the same thing,” Fiona grumbled, turning away from me and feeling her way back to her desk.
“It is the same thing! You’re the one who warned me against what they do to Seers! You’re the one who told me they would exploit my abilities and demand prophecies! And now they’re going to do the same to you!”
“Yeah, well, I can handle it,” Fiona said. “You’re just a kid.”
I stared at her for a full minute, the way her shoulders slumped, the way she hung her head. For the first time since I met her, Fiona looked… small.
“You are not expendable,” I said quietly.
“I never said I was—”
“You didn’t have to. Now, listen to me again. You. Are. Not. Expendable. I know what you are going through right now is tough, but you don’t have to become the Council’s psychic bloody pincushion to suddenly matter again, do you understand? You are still an artist. You are still the most knowledgeable art historian I’ve ever met. None of that has changed.”
Fiona did not reply, but screwed her face up in a pout like a child who’d been caught doing something she knew was forbidden.
“What did the Council say? When you brought them the sculpture?” I asked.
“They had a lot of questions,” Fiona mumbled, still brooding. “Very few of which I could answer. I don’t think they are much concerned with me at the moment, if I’m honest. After all, it’s not a prophecy anymore, is it? It’s already happening.”
“And you’re not worried they’re going to try to force more information out of you like they did with your mother?”
“Nothing I can do about it now if they do,” Fiona said. “What’s told can’t be untold.”
“Shit,” I muttered, beginning to pace. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re fussing over me for,” Fiona said. “The one you ought to be worried about is your friend down in the courtyard there.”
“Her name is Savannah, and I am worried about her,” I snapped back. I pressed my hands to my forehead, as though this pressure could somehow stop the whirling dervish inside my skull. “Oh my God, this is a nightmare.”
“Jess, if there’s something you need to tell me, now would be a good time to—”
A sharp pounding on the door interrupted Fiona’s words, causing us both to whip around in alarm. I jogged over to the door and opened it. A square-jawed Caomhnóir stood on the other side of it.
“The Council requests your presence at an urgent session to commence immediately in the Grand Council Room,” he announced to the tower at large.
“Who?” I asked.
“Both of you,” the Caomhnóir replied, still staring straight ahead as though determined not to make direct eye contact.
“Why does the Council want me there?” I asked, barely able to keep the anxiety out of my voice.
“They want everyone in the castle to attend,” the Caomhnóir replied. “It is a briefing on the situation in the courtyard. The High Priestess commands it.”
My heart pounding, I turned back to Fiona. She did not offer her usual grumbling resistance to being summoned somewhere, but was groping around for her cardigan. I hurried over to her, snatched the cardigan off the back of a nearby chair, and helped her into it. Then, gripping her arm, we followed the Caomhnóir out of the tower and down the stairs.
Fiona and I spoke not a word to each other the entire way down to the Grand Council Room. My heart was pounding so fiercely, I was sure passersby would be able to hear it thundering like a bass drum. What was Celeste going to say? Had there been some kind of development? Had something changed since I’d seen Savvy the previous night? Or had she somehow found out that I was hiding something from the Council? Fiona certainly sensed my panic. Her thumb was rubbing small, soothing circles into the palm of my hand as I guided her through the open Grand Council Room doors and up to the platform to take her place on the Council benches.
As I settled her into her seat, I scanned the milling crowd for Hannah and found her slipping in the door behind a knot of middle-aged Durupinen who were whispering anxiously together. Her face, when she found mine, was full of the same fear and unanswered questions that were crippling me. She made a movement that was half-shrug, half-head shake, and scurried to her seat in the benches. Her meaning was clear; she had no idea why the meeting had been called.
Within seconds, Milo and Finn had entered the room as well. Finn gave me a fleeting, cryptic look before taking his place along the back wall, where he was charged with guarding the doors. Milo soared straight to Hannah, engaged in a brief, whispered conversation, and then sailed back over the crowd to drift down into the seat beside me.
“Do have any idea what—” he began.
“Not a clue,” I replied. “And neither did Fiona. I was in her tower when we were summoned down.”
Milo just nodded. His form was vibrating so hard with nervous energy that his entire outline was blurred. Whatever else he might want to say, he swallowed it back as Karen hurried down the aisle and dropped into the seat on my other side.
“Do you have any idea why—?” she began, but I was already shaking my head.
Catriona was now sliding her way between the upper benches to her seat. The moment she was settled into it, she fixed the full intensity of her stare directly on me in a silent interrogation. Again, I was forced to shrug and shake my head, but her eyes continued to bore into me, as though she thought she might be able to worm her way into my connection by sheer ocular force and soak up my thoughts like a dry sponge. I was very grateful she could not.
All around us, Durupinen were filling the benches and falling into a silence heavy with anticipation. It seemed like every pair of eyes was now fixed on the doors to the adjoining chamber, from which Celeste would at any moment enter the room. And indeed, there was a collective gasp when the door swung open a few minutes later revealing Celeste, Siobhán, and Patricia Lightfoot, who all moved swiftly to their seats. I
’d never heard the room so silent as Celeste took her place at the podium and cleared her throat. She spoke in a voice of determined calm.
“I thank you for answering the summons to be here on such short notice. As you all know by now, Fairhaven finds itself in a mystifying and unprecedented situation. One of our own Durupinen, Savannah Todd of the Clan Lunnainn has entered into some kind of connection between herself and the Fairhaven Geatgrima. You have all shown great patience as we have worked to determine the nature of that connection.”
“Patient, indeed. As if we had any choice in the matter,” said a voice to my right, not bothering to whisper. Others were murmuring as well. Personally, I could barely restrain myself from having a hysterical reaction to the ludicrous neutrality of a term like “connection.”
“And have you? Have you determined the nature of this ‘connection?’” a second voice rang out, slightly shrill. It felt as though the entire room were walking a tiny ledge, narrowly avoiding toppling into a roiling sea of panic. Even now the spray was licking at our feet. The Caomhnóir could certainly feel it. They were shifting uncomfortably, hands drifting to their weaponry, eyes darting over the crowd. Celeste, on the other hand, took the interruption in stride. She seemed to expect the unrest—had, in fact, steeled herself for it. Her voice, as she continued was brimming with both authority and patience.
“Our Scribes have been working night and day, consulting the most ancient and obscure texts,” she said.
“That’s a ‘no,’ then,” Milo murmured in my ear. I gave a tiny nod to indicate that I agreed with him.
“I am going to invite our Chief Scribe to the lectern at this point to update you all on what they have found thus far,” Celeste said, and stepped aside as a tall, willowy woman took her place at the podium, unrolling a scroll in front of her. I had seen her many times before, during my time spent in the Fairhaven library. Her name was Morgan MacEnney, and the library was her undisputed domain. She was at least six feet tall, with pointed features, and pale, watery blue eyes which I’d only ever seen over the tops of a pair of wire-framed spectacles that hung on a fine gold chain around her abnormally long neck. Today these glasses were perched on her nose and yet another pair was glinting in the frazzled nest of her graying blonde hair. She cleared her throat and began to speak in a quavering voice.
“Thank you, High Priestess. I wish that I had more definitive answers for you all, but the situation we face appears to be unprecedented in our history. I can find no account, written or otherwise, in official records or even in lore, that describes what is currently happening in the central courtyard.”
I threw an anxious glance at Flavia, who was standing by in the knot of other Scribes, and who managed to keep a completely impassive expression, though her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. I knew she had taken a great risk, keeping what she knew from the other Scribes. I could only hope she did not come to regret it.
Scribe MacEnney cleared her throat again, then brushed several wisps of hair away from her face before continuing. “Despite the fact that we have not been able to determine a precedent for the situation at hand, we have managed to establish several facts that clarify what is happening. First, the nature of the connection between Ms. Todd and the Fairhaven Gateway, while unique, is not unidentifiable. Our tests and research show that what flows at this moment between them, visible as a glowing current of energy, is, in fact, the Gateway itself.”
This piece of information caused an uproar that took several minutes to settle down, during which Scribe MacEnney glared at us over the rims of her glasses, the classic school marm refusing to continue with the lesson until her unruly pupils got a grip on themselves.
A shrill voice rang out, “But where is it coming from? From Savannah Todd or from the Geatgrima?”
“We do not know,” Scribe MacEnney replied patiently. “The energy is moving through and between them in a kind of cycle. It is, in fact, very similar to the way that the Gateway flows through the joined bodies of the Key and the Passage once they have linked hands and begun a Crossing.”
This statement caused a heightened buzzing in the room. Several people actually got up from their seats and moved to other places, eager to confer with relatives or friends.
“So, are you saying that the Gateway is actually open right now? Can spirits Cross through it?” Siobhán asked, raising a hand in the air as she spoke like an eager student.
Scribe MacEnney shook her head, flapping her hands to quiet a renewed volley of cries and shouts that had risen at Siobhán’s words like a flock of frightened birds. “No. The energy is contained between them. The spirits who are aiding in our investigation have reported that the pull of the Aether is not directed at them, though it is still present. We have used Casting after Casting in an attempt to detect any changes in the ebb, flow, intensity or direction of the energy. So far it has stayed at steady state.”
“And what of Savannah Todd?” a familiar voice cried out. Mackie had jumped to her feet. I didn’t even know she was in the castle; other than a brief return to Fairhaven to assist with the Airechtas, she’d been living and teaching near Oxford. I would have been thrilled to see her if the situation hadn’t been so dire. Her face was stricken with concern, for Savvy was one of her good friends. “Why can’t she communicate? What is being done to free her from this situation?”
Scribe MacEnney looked over at Celeste for help at this point, and Celeste stepped up beside her, so that they were side by side at the podium. “At the moment, nothing is being done. We are not at all sure that attempting to remove her from the situation is the wise course of action,” Celeste said.
It was Kiera who spoke up now. She looked pale and drawn, as though she hadn’t slept in days. “And why not? She cannot simply be left to languish there. Surely, she cannot continue in this state. No living person can.”
“I can speak to that,” Scribe MacEnney said, relieved, it seemed, to be able to greet a question with an actual answer. “We have examined Ms. Todd as thoroughly as we can without actually making contact with her. She has entered into what can only be described as a state of suspended animation.”
She seemed to think this statement to be self-explanatory and so jumped in surprise when Fiona’s voice barked out from behind her on the Council benches, “And what the bloody hell does that mean, for the rest of us who aren’t fluent in absolute codswallop?”
Celeste narrowed her eyes at Fiona but refrained from reprimanding her on her foul language. Scribe MacEnney, however, was quick to reply, “It means her body has, in essence, hit the pause button. She does not require what living people require. She does not need to eat or drink or sleep. She simply exists. It is not unlike what happens to the body of a Walker when they choose to Walk.”
Predictably, every head in the room turned toward me. I felt my cheeks flushing, but kept my chin turned defiantly upward. I tried to ignore the attention and focus instead of what Scribe MacEnney was now explaining in more detail, but which I already understood. The truth was that this explanation provided me with a modicum of relief. I had been concerned for Savvy’s physical well-being, wondering how long she could possibly sustain herself in such a state, unable to take sustenance or even to sit down. But now I grasped a tiny piece of what she was experiencing, and it helped me breathe just a little bit easier.
When I met Irina for the first time, confined to a dilapidated Traveler wagon like a dangerous animal, I was stunned to learn that she was more than seventy years old. Her body was young and supple, her skin unwrinkled and her eyes bright. She looked no more than twenty-five, and Anca had explained to me the reason behind this phenomenon. Irina’s body did not age when she was Walking, and so the many years she spent refusing to be reunited with her physical form meant that, though decades had passed, they had passed right by her. My own body, I realized, had done the same, but only for a matter of hours, not years, for Walking did not hold the same, irresistible lure for me that it had held for her. My body
would always feel like my home, not my prison—one of the many reasons why I was meant to be a Walker, and Irina ought to have stopped. If she had never been captured and returned to her body, her physical form would have lain agelessly for eternity, like a fairytale princess awaiting a wayward prince with a penchant for necrophilia to break the spell.
“It is the opinion of the Scribes that Ms. Todd is in no immediate physical danger,” Scribe MacEnney’s voice sliced through my reverie like a knife.
“And what of other dangers?” a woman directly behind me shouted, making me jump. “What of dangers to the rest of us? To the spirits we serve? What if the Geatgrima reaches out to claim another of us? Or all of us?”
“It’s because we broke the traditions!” another woman cried. “We let that upstart young woman into the ranks of the Caomhnóir. We’ve flown in the face of our God-given roles, and now we are reaping the wrath of the spirit world!”
This was too much for me. I stood up and rounded on the woman, entirely surprised that I did not shoot literal lightning bolts out of my eyeballs. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, get a grip on yourself!” I snapped at her. “God didn’t invent the asinine rules like Sanctity Lines that govern our existence, we did! The spirit world doesn’t care if Savvy took part in a few training exercises. This kind of bullshit superstition is the reason we’re all panicking instead of listening to the facts. Now, sit down and let Scribe McEnney finish her report. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
The woman huffed and puffed in indignation, as though she were going to blow my proverbial house down, but then seemed to deflate, sinking into her chair.
Celeste held both hands up in the air, shaking her head. “While I do not approve of this kind of language amongst our company, I agree with the spirit of what Jessica has to say. This kind of speculation has no value. It stirs up fears and prevents us from responding rationally.”