by E. E. Holmes
“Help,” I whispered. “She was calling for help.”
Milo’s eyes went wide. “Help? Are you positive?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “She was calling out to me to help her.”
“Do you… do you think it was real? Like, a Seer thing?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t… was I drawing? Did I try to draw something?” I looked helplessly around myself, searching for a writing implement, or any other sign that I might’ve been trying to record some kind of prophecy.
“No,” Milo said, looking bewildered. “No, I was watching you. You were just lying there asleep, and then you started muttering. We cleared away all the pencils and paper and stuff before you went to sleep. The only movement you made was when you suddenly jumped to your feet.”
My heartbeat was so fast now that it felt like a thrumming hum in my chest. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and I began to sweat. “I wonder if… let’s just go check if she’s back.”
Milo looked skeptical. “It’s the middle of the night, Jess. If she just got back from a long trip, and you wake her up, she might kill you.”
“I’ll take that risk,” I said, and I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I put my feet gingerly on the floor, testing to see if my legs, which were still shaking, would take my weight. They trembled, but, to my great relief, they held. “And anyway, who am I kidding? I’m not going to be able to sleep. I’m not going be get a moment’s rest unless I know she’s okay. I just need to see her face, even if she’s screaming and throwing things at me.”
“Your funeral,” Milo said, with a rueful smile. “But I’m coming with you, just in case.”
I took a couple of unsteady steps across the room to grab my sweatshirt, which I had thrown over the back of my desk chair, which doubled as a hamper when I was too lazy to cross the room to the actual hamper, which was basically always. As I straightened up, ready to pull it over my head, I suddenly realized the absence of something.
“Where is Hannah?” I asked him.
Milo rolled his eyes. “Where else would she be? In the library. Again.”
I looked over at my clock. It was three o’clock in the morning. “Still in the library at this hour?” I asked incredulously. “Doesn’t she ever plan on getting any sleep? How is she going to make a presentation to the Council if she’s too exhausted to read her own notecards?”
Milo sighed. “I know. That’s what I keep telling her. But why listen to me, I’m just the Spirit Guide, the one whose destiny in the cosmic universe is to dole out epically sage advice that you two clueless mortals are supposed to be heeding, or whatever.”
“That presentation is weeks away,” I said. “She can’t keep up this pace.”
Milo nodded. “I know, but let’s worry about that later. Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”
I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and wound my tangled hair around and around itself into a messy bun on the top of my head, securing it with one of the black elastics that lived perpetually around my wrist. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Milo and I hurried down the silent deserted hallway. He floated along beside me, while my feet made echoing slapping sounds against the stone in my slippers. Here and there, a ghost floated by, bringing with it a dull misty light, like so many self-propelled lanterns on an English moor. None of them acknowledged us, and we barely spared any of them a glance. We were all too accustomed to each other’s presences to pay each other much mind anymore. It was strange to think that, even in a place like Fairhaven, I could’ve grown so used to the comings and goings of the dead. I guess we were living—and non-living—proof that a person really could get used to anything.
We passed through the entrance hall, where dying embers glowed like tiny rubies in the giant fireplace. Two Caomhnóir stood sentinel by the locked front doors, each as still as a statue and as silent as a shadow. They did not question us as we walked past, though their narrowed eyes followed our progress suspiciously.
We reached the base of the tower, but I had barely placed a single foot upon the bottom step when a voice rang out behind us, startling me.
“Who goes there?” the man’s voice called sharply. I turned around to see Seamus marching toward us.
I snorted. “Who goes there? Dude, you have watched one too many old movies.”
As I stepped back, taking my foot off the step, Seamus closed the distance between us, and recognized me. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Nice to see you too,” I said dryly.
“What’s wrong?” Seamus asked, ignoring my insolence. “What are you doing wandering the castle at this time of night?”
“Not that it’s actually any of your business why I go anywhere, but I’m not wandering,” I retorted. “I walked directly to this tower from my bedroom.”
“Why?” Seamus barked the question at me like I was being interrogated. I could feel my ire rising like a tide.
“Again, not that it’s any of your goddamn business, but I want to see Fiona. She just got back from the Skye Príosún.”
“Fiona has not returned,” Seamus told me, his eyebrows drawn together suspiciously. “Why did you think she had?”
This pulled me up short, but I wasn’t about to reveal to Seamus that Fiona had been calling me in my dreams. “I… because she told me before she left that she was coming home late tonight. I just assumed that she was already here.”
“Well she isn’t,” Seamus informed me. “She was due back several hours ago, but there has been no word from her.”
“What do you mean, there’s been no word from her?” I asked him, my voice coming out sharp and cracked.
“I mean that she was supposed to meet with the High Priestess when she returned, but she did not meet her car at the train station, and all attempts to reach her have failed. We have just sent word to Skye Príosún, to inquire whether she has been delayed in setting out, but no one has yet responded. Communication seems to be down temporarily.”
I suddenly felt dizzy, swaying on the spot. “Communication… has gone down… at the príosún?”
Seamus looked slightly alarmed at whatever expression was on my face. He took a hasty step forward and half-raised his arms, as though he thought for a moment that he might need to catch me. “It’s nothing you need concern yourself with. The location is remote, and it is often difficult to get messages back and forth in a timely manner. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, and I do not doubt that we will have it soon.”
I could not reply. It was all I could do to bite back the horror, the nameless fear that was rising in my throat. Fiona and I were two of the only people who knew what might be happening at Skye Príosún. Now she had gone there, hadn’t returned when she was supposed to, and was, quite possibly, calling me for help in my dreams. I threw a look at Milo, and saw that he, too, was looking extremely nervous.
Seamus did not miss the look that passed between us, and now his eyes narrowed as he looked first at me and then at Milo. “Do either of you have information about Fiona’s whereabouts?” he asked sharply.
“No,” I managed to reply hoarsely. “I just—”
A wild shriek echoed through the hallway, making us all jump and stare around for the source of the sound. A moment later, the shriek sounded again, and this time it became clear that it was echoing not down from the top of the tower, where Fiona’s studio was, but up the stairs from the base of the tower.
I turned and looked at Seamus to find that he, too, was staring at the staircase that climbed down into the furthest depths of the castle.
“Moira,” I whispered. “That’s the Léarscáil down there, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Seamus replied blankly, still staring at the dark hole of an entrance as though incapable of understanding how such a sound could arise from it.
As Milo and I shared an anxious glance, a third scream sounded, this one more urgent than the first two. Without another word, the three of us turned and ran for the staircase. Seamus got there fir
st, shoving his way past me and turning on his heel, blocking my access to the stairs.
“Wait here,” he ordered. “Let me assess the safety of the situation before you descend.”
“Like hell I will!” I shouted.
Seamus looked as though he’d like to tell me off, but a fourth shriek cut him off, and he turned instead and thundered down the stairs. Predictably ignoring his instructions, Milo and I hurried after him.
Just in time, a vivid memory of the only other time I’d visited the Léarscáil flashed through my mind as I ran through the doorway, and I flung my hands out on either side of me and grabbed onto the wall as I crossed the threshold. The narrow, winding stairs that led down to the Léarscáil had no railings, nothing to stop someone from simply walking through the doorway, taking one step too far, and plunging to her death on the stone floor dozens of feet below. Trying to catch my breath at the near miss, I turned and pressed the entire left side of my body firmly against the wall and proceeded to descend the steps as quickly as I dared, while still remaining cognizant of the unevenness of the stones, and the crumbling of the ancient plaster.
I chanced a glance below me, and what I saw made my heart stutter into a violent gallop. Upon the floor below me, a map of the world had been painted in painstaking detail. The colors were brighter, more vibrant than the last time I descended into this place. I remembered that Fiona had mentioned to me that she had recently restored it. A great, golden pendulum still hung from its massive chain, and usually it swung in a slow, steady, arcing pattern over the map, tracing the gentle ebbs and flows of spirit activity, and occasionally revealing shifts and patterns that could be interpreted by Moira, the ancient, shriveled Keeper of the Léarscáil. The pendulum was not swinging slowly or gently or predictably today; it was flying over the surface of the map, spinning wildly, as though invisible and powerful forces were flinging it back-and-forth. I scanned the room quickly for Moira, and found her at last pressed against the wall beside her desk, shouting at the Léarscáil as though it were a sentient creature that would listen to her and heed her frantic commands. Her eyes were wide and terrified behind the bizarre headdress of lenses and knobs and magnifying glasses that she had strapped to her head. Around her feet, a number of scrolls and books lay scattered upon the ground, as though they had been knocked from her arms, or else flung aside in her panic.
“Bugger me!” Seamus had skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stairs, watching the progress of the Léarscáil with his mouth hanging open. “What the devil…?” he murmured as I pounded to a stop just a few steps behind him.
“Has it ever done this before?” I asked him, bending nearly in half and clutching a stitch in my side.
“I’ve no bloody idea,” he replied, his head turning and twisting on his neck as he followed the Léarscáil’s progress. “I’ve only ever been down here but twice, but I’ve never seen anything like this. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work, even at the most volatile of times.”
I had a fleeting memory of Moira confiding to me that the most bizarre behavior the Léarscáil had ever betrayed was when the Prophecy had come to pass. Even so, she had not described anything resembling this possessed wrecking ball of a situation. The Léarscáil had gone utterly mad.
On the far side of the room, Moira was waving her arms frantically and shouting something at us, but her thick Scottish brogue and her high-pitched hysteria made it impossible to make out her words. Based on her gestures, though, it seemed that she might be instructing us to go back up the stairs and leave the place.
“We’ve got to get her out of here,” I said to Seamus, who nodded.
“I don’t know much about the inner workings of the Léarscáil,” he said, “but I know a thing or two about stonework and metal craft, and that chain will not hold for long with that kind of pressure on it,” he said, pointing up to the ceiling where, high above us, the chain creaked and shrieked with the strain that was being placed upon it. “If that monstrosity comes down with that kind of force behind it, it will mean death for anyone in its path.”
“So, what do we do?” Milo asked.
Seamus turned, and stared at Milo as though he had forgotten that he was there. “The two of you,” he said nodding his head to each of us in turn, “go for help. Find someone who can run for the barracks and call together every Caomhnóir they can find. Send them down here at once.”
“No,” I said sharply. “I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving her here. I want to help.”
“You can help by alerting the Caomhnóir!” Seamus barked, losing his temper swiftly under pressure. “We’ve no time for arguments!”
“Look, no offense, but it will be much quicker if I just go by myself,” Milo snapped back at him. “Having to wait for a non-floater is just going to hold me up. Just let me materialize where I need to go. Jess will be much more help to you here than she will be to me. She’s not a fucking damsel in distress, Seamus. She’s smart and capable. Use her.”
I turned back to Seamus who was nodding grudgingly, unable to deny the logic of this. “Very well, Spirit Guide Chang, go then, and quickly.”
Without another word, Milo gave me a reassuring wink and vanished from sight.
I turned back to Seamus. “Okay,” I said, trying to sound brave and determined, instead of scared shitless. “Tell me what to do.”
“What I want you to do,” he said through his clenched teeth, “is walk up those stairs and leave this room so that you are no longer in imminent danger of being killed.”
“Well, I’m not doing that, so how about you give me an alternate set of instructions, because the longer we stand here arguing about your patriarchal bullshit, the better the chance that Moira will be crushed to death.”
Seamus’s face went as rigid and cold as a statue’s, and I thought for just a fraction of a second that he might actually reach out, grab me by my hair and haul me back up the stairs himself. He certainly seemed to be considering it. Then he blinked and, a muscle twitching in his jaw, he said to me, “I want it noted from here on out, that I asked you to vacate the space, and that you refused me. I do not want it said that I put a Durupinen in unwarranted danger. I need that to be very clear.”
“No one will ever hear any other version of that story from me,” I told him calmly. “I’ll make sure everyone knows that whatever happens now, it was my own stupid decision, okay?”
Seamus nodded once, and we both knew that this would have to be good enough.
“Okay,” I said. “Now what do we do?”
Seamus’s eyes darted around the room, taking in as many different aspects as he could. I could tell that he was thinking fast, trying to determine the best course of action while assessing how much risk would be involved for every party in the room. As much as I detested him, I couldn’t help but be impressed with his clearheaded assessment in the face of disaster. All I felt capable of at the moment was arm flapping and excessive cursing.
“Right,” he said at last. “No matter how quickly it’s moving, or with how much force, that pendulum can’t reach the outer edges of the room unless it flies off the chain. If you stick to the outer wall, and I mean keep yourself pressed flat up against it at all times, you should be able to get around to the far side of the room and reach Moira. Then you can guide her back around the perimeter to the stairs. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes, of course I can,” I said a little defiantly. The tone was less to convince him than it was to convince myself. “And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see if I can find something to slow the Léarscáil down,” Seamus said. Even as he said it, I could see him looking hopelessly around the room, completely at a loss for how to complete this task. “There’s got to be a way to slow it down,” he muttered.
“It’s controlled by the balance of spirit energy,” I said doubtfully. “I’m not sure that any kind of physical barrier could prevent it from doing exactly what it’s doing right now.”
“Tha
t may be so,” Seamus said. “But if we don’t attempt to slow it down, it’s going to destroy the room, and everything in it. And if it breaks free of the chain and crashes into the walls, the whole tower could come down.”
Even as he spoke, the Léarscáil’s massive pendulum swung wildly in the opposite direction, bucking every norm of gravity and momentum, and probably a dozen other physics rules I knew absolutely nothing about, and barreled over the surface of the map again, this time crashing into a small wooden cart full of scrolls and smashing it to smithereens. The scrolls flew into the air like confetti, and then rolled away across the floor in every direction.
“Bloody hell!” Seamus muttered. He was bouncing back-and-forth on the balls of his feet, and it was as though he needed to be in physical motion to keep his gears turning, to figure out what to do next. It was clear, as I watched his eyes follow the Léarscáil around on its erratic path, that he was attempting to make rhyme or reason of its movement—to detect a pattern. Perhaps he thought that if he could memorize it, if he could determine where it was going to go next, then he might be able to do something to slow it down, or else stop it. My eyes also began to follow its progress, but it soon became clear that there was no predicting where it might go next or what it might next destroy.
On the far side of the room, Moira was in preservation mode. As I watched, she scurried around like a frantic little mouse, gathering up scrolls, and tucking them into niches in the wall, hoping to protect them from the Léarscáil’s pendulum, which was now basically a possessed wrecking ball. She started whistling and cawing, her little wrinkled face pointed up to the sky, and at first I thought she’d gone mad, but then I heard a flurry of wings and saw a swirling cloud of birds descending from the rafters.