by E. E. Holmes
Squinting my eyes shut, and holding my breath, I took ahold of the braid tightly in my hand and gave it a sharp yank. I bit my tongue against the desire to cry out as I felt each hair part company with my scalp. I blinked rapidly to clear the tears from my streaming eyes and worked with fumbling fingers to tie the soul catcher around my wrist.
As I worked, I let my mind fall backward through my memories, landing gently upon the recollection of the first time I had ever Walked. I had had such doubts that I would be able to do it—sure that, if I left my body, I would never find my way back again. But Irina had looked into me and seen that I had the strength to do it.
“You are strong in soul,” she had told me. “I can see it in the spaces behind your eyes, but you must choose. The choice is the hardest part.”
It was true then, and it was true now. Even though I had Walked many times since Irina had spoken those words to me, I still feared the choice. But that was good, I argued to myself. Irina lost all fear of Walking, embraced her choice so fully that her body became akin to a torturous prison for her when she had to re-enter it. The fear kept me safe, I reasoned.
I closed my eyes and envisioned the two parts of myself, my body and my soul, my essence and the vessel that contained it. I focused on the ties that bound them together, imagined them as one with the fibers of the soul catcher now secured around my wrist. And then I whispered the Casting, being sure that I did so with both my lips and my heart, as Irina had directed me:
“Sínim uaim thar dhoras mo choirp
Ach an eochair coinním fós,
Bheith ag Siúl tráth i measc na marbh
Agus filleadh ansin athuair.”[1]
Then I placed the soul catcher between my teeth and tore it apart between the third and fourth knots, where a bit of red thread peeked through the braided fibers.
The moment the hairs broke apart, my soul slipped its bonds as well. I hadn’t Walked in a very long time, but the experience was like coming home. The weightlessness, the freedom, the utter lack of physical sensation. I felt buoyed up by the sheer purity of my own form and, for just a moment, I felt a thrill of the kind of joy that Irina must have felt when she Walked. Not because I now thought of my body as a prison, or because I never wanted to return to it, but because for the last twenty-four hours, my body had been a tense and tightly-knotted ball of stress and emotion and fear. And though I could still feel those emotions, I was deliciously free of the effects that they had had on my physical form. It was beyond relief; it was bliss. I enjoyed it for a brief moment, and then focused my energy on being able to take in the room around me.
I had been careful to keep the blanket pulled up to my chin when I was still inside my body, and I was glad to see as I glanced down at it that it seemed an absolute portrait of peaceful sleep. I did not think that anybody who passed by the cell would be able to tell that my soul had temporarily slipped its shell. If I’d still been in possession of lungs, I would’ve heaved a sigh of relief. Instead, my relief made me lighter, made my energy sparkle with a renewed lightness.
Relieved that I had managed to transition, I focused in now on the connection between Hannah and Milo and myself. Now that I was essentially made entirely of my own energy, finding the connection felt like plucking hundreds of strings upon a musical instrument to find the right note. After a few moments, however, fear began to creep in. No matter how many strings I plucked, no matter how many melodies I made, I could not seem to find the tune that would open the door between Hannah and Milo’s thoughts, and my own.
Okay, I told myself. Okay, don’t panic. It probably works differently in this form. Maybe I don’t have to open a door, or reach out to find them. Maybe, since I’m just pure thought and emotion and energy, they’re already here with me and I just haven’t noticed. Praying that this was the case, I attempted to communicate.
“Is… is anyone there?” I released the thought and tried to feel where it might land, but it was like a puzzle piece without a matching hole.
“Hello?” I tried again. I felt my way out to the end of every single tentacle and tendril and wisp of my form, but I could find nothing but my own emotions singing back to me. Hannah and Milo were definitely not there.
I was seized with a terror so complete that it made me feel instantly like a ball of static, popping and zapping instead of floating free. I had to know if by Walking, I had somehow damaged the connection in some way. I turned back to face my body and focused upon it, trying to recall as precisely as possible the instructions that Irina had once given me. I had to visualize myself inside the space and that was how I moved to it. The moment that I pictured myself, wished myself to be connected again with the body that I had left down below me, I was there. The rejoining of my body and my soul was instantaneous and electric, and my body twitched and gasped with the force of it.
The moment that I was back inside my own head, I was bombarded by a chorus of frightened voices.
“Where did she go? Is it possible that… Oh, wait, no, she’s here!” Hannah was saying.
“Oh, thank God! I thought… I mean, she was gone, right?” Milo cried.
“Jess! What happened? Where did you go?” Hannah demanded.
“The connection just completely severed. Not just as though the door was closed, but like there had never been any door at all!” Milo babbled hysterically.
“I know!” I told them. “Calm down, please. This is disorienting enough without the two of you flipping out in here!”
Hannah and Milo made fruitless attempts to calm themselves.
“It seems like the connection doesn’t work when I’m in Walker form,” I told them. “We’ve… we’ve never tried it before. It didn’t occur to me that there would be any way—any form—that we couldn’t communicate in.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Milo said. “I mean, I’m already in spirit form. I don’t have a body, and the connection always works for me.”
“I don’t understand it,” Hannah chimed in. “We are all Bound together. There shouldn’t be anything that can—”
She stopped mid-thought, and then I felt the truth hit her like the clanging of a gong. I put my hand to my forehead to stop the emotional ringing.
“It’s our blood,” Hannah said. “Our blood is where our gift lies. Our blood is what binds our Gateway together, and what binds us to each other.”
The lightbulb went off over my own head as well. “Oh my God, you’re right!” I told her. “When I’m separated from my body, that means I’m separated from my blood. And without the blood to bind us together, the connection doesn’t work.”
“Well that was… unexpected,” Milo said. “And honestly, much more literal than I ever considered the whole ‘blood’ thing to be.”
“No kidding,” I agreed. “Then again, we are in completely uncharted territory here. I mean, has there ever been a Seer/Walker/Muse who is bound through a Spirit Guide to the other half of her Gateway? My guess is probably not.”
Milo snorted. “Our little Jess is such a unique little snowflake.”
“Jokes aside,” Hannah said, sounding frustrated, “what the hell do we do now? If you can’t communicate with us when you’re Walking, then how the hell is Catriona supposed to guide you through the príosún?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “This complicates an already complicated situation. Does Catriona have any insights?”
I felt Hannah pull out of the connection slightly to confer with Catriona. When she came back, I could practically feel her eyes rolling. “Catriona would like me to congratulate you on foiling her well-thought-out plan with your unnecessary complications.”
“Tell her I’m sending her my deepest apologies and also a few well-chosen hand gestures,” I snapped.
“So, what do we do now?” Milo asked.
“Well, it doesn’t seem like we have any choice,” I said resignedly. “I’m just going to have to go out there blind and see what I can find. Just ask Catriona for some general directions, and I’
ll try to do my best.”
“General directions? Jess, you’re not going out for a drive in an unknown area, you’re sneaking through warded prison blocks crawling with enemies!” Hannah cried. “We’ve got to think of something else. Catriona telling you to turn right here and turn left there is just not going to cut it! We can’t keep you safe like this, Jess, and if we can’t keep you safe, then we need to abandon the plan and think of something else!”
“What kind of plan, Hannah?” I asked, my temper rising in my frustration. “You guys can’t pull me out of here. Once I’m out, there’s no way you’re gonna be able to sneak me back in again. The Caomhnóir will get too suspicious! We’re just going to have to—”
A sudden, sharp clanking sound made me jump, and I dropped the soul catcher onto the bed. I whipped around in alarm just in time to hear a familiar voice whisper my name.
“Jess! Jess, it’s me!”
My heart leapt so high that I could scarcely breathe as I scrambled off the bed, dashed across the room, and dropped to a crouch by the tiny metal slot in the bottom of my door, which I could see now was propped open by a meager inch or two.
“Finn?” I asked, my voice so choked that I could barely get his name out.
“Yes, love. Yes, it’s me. I’m here, I’m on my way to a shift change, so I don’t have long,” he replied, and though he was barely raising his voice above a whisper, I could hear the intensity of the emotion behind the words. I reached my fingers through the opening in the door and found his hands there waiting for me. He clutched at my fingers with a low cry and held them tightly, stroking the top of my hand with his thumb.
“What in blazes are you doing here?” he asked. “When I saw you in the courtyard, I very nearly lost control of myself. How in the world could they arrest you? What are the charges? I was only able to steal the briefest glance at your intake papers. I saw something about the Traveler Clans, but the clerk put the file away before I could get a good look at the details.”
“Finn, calm down,” I told him as soothingly as I could while my voice shook with tears. “I haven’t really been arrested. There are no charges, not real ones anyway. Catriona manufactured them. She staged the entire arrest so that I would have a cover to get in here.”
“Cover?” Finn repeated blankly. “I don’t understand. A cover for what? Is this something to do with the Trackers?”
“Yes,” I told him. “The Trackers are investigating what you told me last month, about what’s happening with the Caomhnóir here.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jess!” Finn exclaimed, and his hands tightened around mine. “When I passed that information along to you, I didn’t mean for you to come bursting into the place yourself! Damn it, it’s too dangerous! All I meant for you to do was to pass my suspicions along to the Caomhnóir leadership. What in the world would possess you to come here?”
“I couldn’t do what you asked me to do, Finn,” I told him. “I couldn’t just hand the information off to Seamus. Catriona and I both agreed that it was too dangerous. There’s a very good chance that someone at Fairhaven is already aware of what’s happening here, and we couldn’t risk passing the information through the wrong person. We couldn’t let them suspect that we knew what was going on.”
“But that’s just it, Jess,” Finn replied. “I don’t know what’s going on. I still haven’t managed to figure out—”
A sudden sound echoed from the cell across the hall. Finn froze, as did I. We spent a full minute in hushed anticipation to see if we had been discovered, but when no further sounds penetrated our self-imposed silence, we accepted that the sound was simply one of the prisoners talking in their sleep. Nevertheless, Finn was determined to be even quieter. He crouched so low to the doorway that he pressed his cheek to the stones of the floor. I lay flat on my stomach and did the same, so that only the width of the door separated his cheek from mine. He was poorly shaven, and his cheek looked more sunken than when last I’d seen him up close, but his eyes were bright and full of fire.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” he repeated. “Please, Jess. Whatever this is, I can handle it, I can figure it out. There’s no reason for you to—”
“Yes, there is,” I told him. “There is a reason, Finn. It’s not just what you told me, but since I saw you last, so much has happened that I… I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t know how much you know.”
“How much I know about what?” Finn asked. “What’s going on, Jess? What is it that I don’t know about?”
My mind whirled. It was too much, too much to explain in this stolen moment that might be interrupted at any second.
“There’s a Necromancer,” I told him quickly. “His name is Charlie Wright.”
“I know of him,” Finn said, interrupting me. “They’ve got him locked up here.”
“He’s here? In the príosún?” My stomach turned over with fear. Why the hell hadn’t I thought to ask about Charlie? Of course, he was here. This was where the Northern Clan housed all their most vile enemies. Where else would he be?
“Yes,” Finn said. “I recognize the name. It’s not every day we get a new Necromancer here—not anymore, anyway. It caused quite the flurry of excitement when they brought him.”
I made a split-second decision not to get into the gory details of what had happened between Charlie Wright and myself. If I did that, I’d be lucky if I was able to stop Finn from charging off to the Necromancer cellblock right then and there, and murdering Charlie in his sleep. Not that I was against murdering Charlie on principle, but now was not the moment. No, I could save the whole story for when Finn and I were both safely out of the príosún. “I was part of the team of Trackers that brought him in,” I told him, which wasn’t technically a lie. “And before we did, he told me something that really disturbed me.”
“And what was it?” Finn prompted me.
“He said something about our defenses. About how our defenses and allies had been breached, and that they would soon belong to the Necromancers.”
“Your defenses and allies?” Finn asked.
“Those were the words he used,” I said.
On the other side of the door, Finn shook his head in exasperation. “But that could mean any number of things. He’s not necessarily referring to the príosún, or even the Caomhnóir. The Durupinen have centuries’ worth of different kinds of defenses—Castings, fortresses, networks of hidden identities. How can you be sure this was what he meant?”
“I wasn’t sure at the time,” I told him. “But then… I had another vision.”
Silence from the other side of the door met these words. I waited patiently for Finn to recover.
“A vision?” he repeated. “You mean… another prophetic drawing?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “And I didn’t only have it once. It has asserted itself over and over and over again. It shows no sign of changing, and no sign of relenting.”
“What is it?” Finn asked. “What did you see in the vision?”
“The very same scene every time,” I told him. “A view of this príosún, with Necromancers and Caomhnóir together swarming the castle walls as though prepared for battle. And a veritable army of spirits hovering in the sky above them.”
Silence. Then…
“Dear God,” Finn whispered.
“I know,” I agreed, relieved that he finally seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why I couldn’t risk passing the information blindly along, or entrusting this mission to anyone else. I’m the one who had the vision. I’m the one who’s meant to interpret it. It’s supposed to be me, I just know it.”
“Why is it always you?” Finn whispered, an edge of desperation in his voice.
“Just lucky, I guess,” I replied.
“So, what are you supposed to do now that you’ve gotten inside the walls?” Finn asked. “What are you hoping to achieve?”
“That part is a little less clear,” I admitted. “The first s
tep was just to get inside the grounds, hence the false arrest. Now, I’ve got to try to explore the place, see if I can figure out if the Necromancers and the Caomhnóir are actually working together and, if so, what they’re planning.”
What little I could see of Finn’s face looked incredulous. “How exactly do you propose to do that?” he asked. “I’m lucky I was able to find you at all, and even if I could just let you out of here, it would be minutes before you were discovered and locked back up again, this time with a twenty-four-hour guard for good measure. Not to mention what they’d do to me if I was caught releasing you.”
“You don’t have to let me out of here,” I told him. “And absolutely no one is going to see me.” I squeezed his hand. “I’m a Walker, remember?”
“Yes, but they will have prepared for such an eventuality,” Finn said exasperatedly. “Each prospective prisoner that comes into the príosún is thoroughly profiled, and Castings are set up to counter all of their individual gifts. The Caomhnóir here will be fully informed of the fact that you are a Walker, and they will have made it impossible for you to take that form.”
“But you’re forgetting that Catriona is in on the plan,” I reminded him. “She set up the paperwork. She’s altered the Castings. I was attempting to Walk right before you showed up here, and it worked. Well, it mostly worked.”
“What do you mean, mostly worked?” Finn asked. “How is it possible to mostly Walk?”
“Oh, the Walking part works just fine,” I told him. “I had no problem leaving my body. It’s my connection to Hannah and Milo, the one that was created through the Binding. It doesn’t work when I’m in my Walker form. I’ve never tried to use it before while I was Walking, so I didn’t realize it would be affected. Hannah thinks it has something to do with the absence of my blood.”