by E. E. Holmes
“Wait, we’d have to move out of the country?” I cried. “What about college? What about St. Matt’s and my friends? I thought you and mom went to Harvard?”
“We did, for a time, but only after our training. The training takes two years. The Durupinen have been able to establish an internationally recognized study abroad program as a cover for our clan schools. You will be able to transfer back to the U.S. when your training is complete and your transcript will reflect that of a typical college.”
“When would we go?” Hannah asked.
“As soon as possible.”
I opened my mouth to argue but Karen silenced me with a weary hand.
“We’ll worry about the transatlantic relocation later, okay? We have something more pressing to discuss. Because our Gateway has been closed for so long, we simply can’t wait for the traditional initiation. We’ll have to unlock the Gateway here and perform your first crossing before we go. Now that the two of you are back together again, the pull for spirits meant to cross through you will be stronger than ever. There’s a real danger to both of you if we wait.”
“That must be what Milo was talking about,” I said.
“Milo?”
“The ghost I was talking to earlier. He’s a friend of Hannah’s from the group home.”
“Best friend,” Milo corrected. He had just appeared sitting on the kitchen counter.
“He’s here,” I told Karen. “In the kitchen.”
Karen instinctively turned her head toward the kitchen, but then turned back to us. Her expression was almost sad. I realized that she actually missed seeing the ghosts that were all around us. Either she was insane or there was a lot about this entire Durupinen thing that I couldn’t yet appreciate.
I continued, “He told me that they were getting impatient, and that we needed to hurry.”
“I can hear them now,” Hannah said. “They’ve been louder since I woke up.”
I gaped at her, horrified. “You mean you can hear them all the time?”
She shrugged. “If I’m not medicated.”
“What do you think, Hannah? Are you ready to do this?” Karen asked. “If we can cross them over, you may finally have a little peace.”
It took Hannah a moment to answer.
“I don’t like to think much about when I was little, but the earliest memory I can recall is sitting on my bed and talking to the ghost of a little girl in one of my foster homes. So many times I haven’t even known if the people I’ve met have been alive or dead, and I may never know.” Suddenly her voice grew stronger and she pushed her mug away from her. “But I’m tired of never being able to give them what they want. Some of them are so sad, so desperate, and they never understand why I can’t help them. Now that I can, I feel like I have to do it, even if I’m afraid.”
That settled it. I turned to Karen. “So, what do we have to do?”
“Well, I can help you with your first crossing. I’ve already spoken to Finvarra and she agrees that, under the circumstances, we should proceed immediately. I know you haven’t learned the incantations or anything yet, but I can set everything up and handle the ceremonial aspects, if you girls can just follow my directions.”
“Tonight?” I asked.
“Better not to wait any longer. What do you say?”
I looked at Hannah. “Up to you,” I told her.
Her face betrayed the slightest suggestion of a smile. “It’s not really up to either of us, is it?”
“Not really,” Milo called.
Karen stood up. “Is that a yes, then?”
“Yes,” we said together.
“I’m proud of you girls.” Karen’s eyes glimmered in the late morning sunlight. “I’ll get started.”
§
We ascended the stairs to the roof, filled with anxiety and trepidation. As we emerged onto the rooftop, where Karen had instructed us to meet her, the city of Boston was fading into purple twilight. All around us was a sea of buildings and their sharpening shadows, looking for all the world like a manmade garden reaching towards the dying sun. The breeze whipped between them, carrying the echoes of the city up around us and raising gooseflesh on our arms.
Karen was standing in the middle of the roof, beckoning us forward. Candlelight lit her from below like a campfire. Her expression was uplifted and even a little excited.
“Welcome to your first Summoning Circle, girls. Come stand with me here in the middle, and I’ll explain all of the aspects to you.”
I glanced down. Drawn onto the roof with chalk were two perfect, concentric circles, about six feet wide. Four candles stood between the inner and outer circles, marking out a square. A strange swirling symbol was drawn in the center. I recognized it as the same symbol that was stamped into the front of my mother’s old book.
For a moment I was frozen where I stood. A small voice in my head was shouting at me that this was not actually happening. It was a dream, it had to be. Things like summoning circles and rituals were not a part of my life, there was no way. But here I was, stepping carefully over that chalk line and feeling, as I did so, the decisiveness of that step. There was no going back.
Milo had materialized again, hovering uncomfortably around the outside of the circle as though afraid to get near it. I wished I was out there with him, a happily uninvolved observer.
“All of this,” Karen said, “will be explained in much greater detail to you in your studies, but here’s the abbreviated version. I’ve drawn the Summoning Circle with chalk, but bear in mind the circle can be created in a variety of ways. The four candles represent the classical elements. Have you ever heard of them before?”
I’d seen enough movies and read enough books to figure out what she was talking about. “Earth, fire, air and water, right?”
Karen nodded. “Exactly. All four of these elements must be represented in the circle before the fifth element can be summoned here.”
“What fifth element? What else is there?” I asked.
“The ancient Greeks called it ‘Aether’. It translates roughly to ‘essence’.”
“Spirit,” Hannah said softly.
“Spirit, yes. The part of us that is not of this world, but the next. And now, it’s time to call that element to join us. Are you ready?”
A shiver ran up my back and I took a shuddering breath. “Not at all. Let’s get it over with.”
Karen pointed to a green candle to her right. “Hannah, as the Key, you must come and stand by the candle representing earth. The earth is where the spirits are trapped, so that is where we must start.”
Hannah nodded solemnly and took her place.
“Jess, you must come and stand here, by the candle representing air. This is the only element through which spirit can be conducted. As the Passage, that is your place.”
As soon as I planted my feet beside that guttering yellow candle, a steady whispering began in my ears. My heart began to race as I tried to decipher the voices, but there were too many of them tangled together. I could only comprehend the general tone: anticipation. Excitement.
“Hannah, join your right hand with Jess’s right hand,” Karen instructed. Hannah reached her trembling hand for mine, and as I took it, I felt the same rushing electricity I’d felt the first time I’d touched her. The whispering voices magnified, now ringing inside my head. Hannah’s widening eyes told me that she could hear them, too.
Karen’s face was aglow. I realized that she had experienced all of this many times. She pulled a small book from her back pocket. I recognized it immediately as identical to my mother’s book, the one Lucida had left for me at Christmas.
“This is the Book of Téigh Anonn.” The strange words rolled off her tongue with surprising ease. “It was presented to me when I was eighteen, and soon it will be passed formally on to you. It will be the focus of much of your training. For tonight, just listen to the incantation and try to repeat it as closely as you can.”
Karen peeled the ancient cover back from t
he delicate pages. A sudden gust of wind blew the pages forward in a flurry, and then stopped quite abruptly on the very page Karen needed to begin the ceremony. She began to read, the words practiced and fluid:
“We call upon the powers endowed us of old.
We call upon the connection that binds us together.
With the joining of hands and the joining of blood,
The Gateway we open, the spirits we summon.”
At first all I could do was stand there with my mouth hanging open like an idiot. But then Hannah started speaking, and I automatically joined in. We repeated the first two lines, and then, with some prompting from Karen, the second two.
“Now, close your eyes and concentrate on a single phrase: ‘téigh anonn’. It means ‘crossing over’ in the old language, and you must repeat it until the crossing has ended,” Karen instructed.
“How will we know when it’s over?” Hannah asked.
“Oh, you’ll know, believe me. You’ll feel it begin. You’ll experience a flood of memories that aren’t your own. They will belong to the spirits that are passing through you. And you’ll feel a … tugging, I guess you’d call it. The pull of the other side is very strong, and although this circle protects you from it, you are not immune to feeling its power.”
“We’re not forcing them, are we? To cross?” Hannah asked in a cracked voice.
“No. No one can force a spirit beyond the Gateway. It is a conscious choice of the spirit to step across the threshold and meet what’s on the other side, whatever that may be,” Karen assured her.
“What does that even mean, ‘the other side’? Where are we sending them?” I asked.
“We don’t know any more about it than they do. It is our job to open the doors, not to glimpse what’s behind them. We won’t know until it’s our own time to cross.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” I said. “We could be sending these ghosts anywhere, couldn’t we?”
“Or nowhere,” Hannah added.
Karen shook her head fiercely. “No, I don’t believe that. Does it make any sense to you that these doors would exist, or that we would exist to open them, if they just led to nowhere?”
“Well, no, I guess not, but …”
“Jess, do you remember what your grandfather repeated, over and over again, when you met him?”
“He said, ‘I’ve seen it. Send me back,’” I said.
“Exactly,” Karen said. “He saw it. And he wants nothing more in this world than to see it again. I may have shared your doubts once, but not anymore. We are sending these spirits where they are meant to be, and we have to have faith in that.”
Hannah and I were both quiet. It was a lot to take in. Karen took our silence as assent and went on.
“There’s another thing. I should warn you that you may feel spirits cross over that you recognize. That is, they may have appeared to you before in a Visitation or a dream. Don’t be alarmed if that happens. Remember that this is their choice.”
Hannah threw a panicked look out of the circle at Milo, but he smiled and winked at her.
“No worries, sweetness,” he said. “I’m with you.”
Reassured, Hannah turned to me. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Karen lit a final candle, a white one. She placed it on the ground between us.
“The Spirit candle is lit. Let us begin.”
20
SAYING GOODBYE
“TÉIGH ANONN. TÉIGH ANONN. TÉIGH ANONN.”
Flash.
A red paper lantern floating away over my head. A stolen kiss that tasted like cigarettes. A line of cocaine-like fire in my nose, my make-up ringed eyes reflected blearily in a mirror.
Flash.
Being laced into a corset, feeling like my ribs would break. A man’s handsome, mustached face, first smiling up at me from a rowboat, then choked with emotion at the end of a long church aisle, then pale and drawn in a coffin.
Flash.
Playing double dutch, gangly legs flying beneath me. Chasing an ice cream truck up a city street, laughing. Hiding on a rusty fire escape, heart pounding. Staring into an empty refrigerator.
Life after unfamiliar life flashed before my eyes. It was all I could do to keep on my feet; the barrage of sensations was so overwhelming.
Flash. A hospital room, clutching at my distended stomach beneath a white and blue hospital gown.
Flash.
A half-naked woman wiping lipstick from the collar of my dress shirt.
Flash.
Waiting for the subway, a kid strumming a guitar in the echoing tunnel.
Flash.
“Téigh Anonn. Téigh Anonn. Téigh Anonn.”
A hundred more lives flew by. I had no sense of time or space. I tried to focus on our incantation, holding on to myself for fear my own life would slip past me with the others.
A sudden spasming of Hannah’s hand in mine grounded me in our own reality. I focused in on the life we were both experiencing at that moment.
Flash.
A balding man shouting angrily, his face florid with rage. A boy stroking my cheek, telling me not to be scared as he roughly tugged at my shirt. A razor slicing cleanly across my wrist, drawing bright scarlet blood. Hannah perched on a windowsill in the moonlight, comforting me as I cried. A prescription pill bottle clattering to a tile floor.
Hannah’s roommate Carley was making her exit.
And then….
Blinded in a spotlight, climbing awkwardly onto the bench of a grand piano. A golden retriever puppy sitting beneath an enormous Christmas tree. A lacrosse stick tripping up my feet as I run, my arm snapping painfully. Watching snow through frosty eyelashes. Cold. So cold.
No. Please, no. I wasn’t ready for this.
A dark-haired girl emerging from a striped tent. The same girl smiling shyly through a plate-glass window. And again, ducking quickly behind the doors of the dining hall, her face flushed beneath a hairnet.
Seeing myself through his eyes, feeling his rush of emotion at the sight of me, made it even more unbearable. My knees began to tremble and I fought to keep on my feet.
A friendly conversation in a darkened library. Uncontrollable anger, hurling books through the air at a crouching figure in a messy dorm room. A kiss. A wonderful, impossible kiss.
With a cry that was somehow both his and mine, my knees gave way and struck the ground. Hannah’s hand gripped mine convulsively, maintaining our connection. Tears slid down my cheeks as we lingered, for just a moment more, on the only chance we’d ever had, reliving a kiss that could only ever be a kiss goodbye.
“No!” I moaned. “Wait!”
And suddenly, and I don’t know how or with what part of myself, I was fighting the pull of the current, willing him to stay with me. I knew it was selfish and I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but none of that was stopping me.
“Jessica, let him go!” Karen’s sharp voice penetrated my consciousness. “Focus on your task and let him go!”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! Now is not the time to mourn him!”
“It’s okay, Jess. I’m ready to go,” Evan’s voice rose in a whisper a hundred times louder than the other whispers whirling around in my head.
“Aren’t you scared?” I asked.
“No. I can feel it. It’s good, whatever’s waiting there. And you’ll be closer to where I am than anyone, just on the other side of the Gateway.”
“Let him go, Jess.”
“Let him go.”
What else could I do?
“Goodbye,” I sobbed brokenly.
I let him go. I felt him slip away on a tide of strangers’ lives, and, with a hollow thud, the door inside me closed.
§
I began to come back to myself. I could feel my knees protesting against the gritty tarpaper of the roof, feel the evening breeze on my face, which had broken out into a sweat. The strange worlds being played out behind my eyes had melted into b
lackness. I opened my eyes and found Hannah, on her knees beside me, still clutching my hand. She gave me a small, sad smile and then rested her head on my shoulder. We did not move for a very long time.
EPILOGUE
THE SUITCASE WAS NOT GOING TO CLOSE. I’d tugged and pulled and rearranged, and even sat on the damn thing. Mission impossible. “I give up,” I declared, flopping onto the bed. Hannah looked up from her own suitcase and smiled. “Aren’t there a few things you can leave here? I think the real problem is the shoes.” Her bag had zipped shut with a single effortless flourish. “I know, I know. Knee-high combat boots aren’t space-savers,” I sighed. “I guess I can leave the red ones.” I must have sounded pretty depressed because Hannah took pity on me. “Here, give them to me. I still have room.” “Thanks!” I tossed them to her one at a time. She caught them awkwardly and within moments they were zipped away, ready for the journey.
Hannah sank onto the bed next to me. She looked exhausted. Physical tasks still drained a lot of her strength. The aftereffects of years of therapies and drugs couldn’t be erased overnight.
“Where’s Milo?” I asked.
“Sulking. He really does mean well, you know.”
“Yeah, right. If he had his way, my entire wardrobe would be in a trash bag instead of my suitcase,” I laughed.
“No, he did like that one pair of jeans,” Hannah said.
Much to my chagrin and Hannah’s delight, Milo was still here. Despite his proximity to the summoning circle, when the candles had been blown out and the crossing completed, there he was, waiting for Hannah. I asked Karen about it, and she shook her head a little sadly.