No one knows about Ellie. Not my co-workers, not my new friends, not my girlfriends, not my lovers. No one knows, because I never say it, because I can't.
“I killed her,” I tell Ilya.
Ilya's eyebrows arch, but she leans back against the chair, and she listens. She just waits and listens.
Finally, I work up the courage to say:
“We were out drinking,” I tell her, lifting my chin, tears streaming down my cheeks as I keep my voice calm and steady, my heart breaking all over again as I unleash the words I always keep locked so tightly inside of me. “I was too young to be drinking, and I'd had one too many. I lied to her and said I could drive. You don't know what that is,” I tell her, a sob choking my words. I swallow, keep going. “We have cars on my world. And they're vehicles that are very, very powerful. You should only drive them when you're sober. But I thought I was invincible, because I'd always thought I was invincible. So, though Ellie told me that we should take a cab, I said I knew better. And I tried to drive us home. I got us into an accident,” I whisper, voice breaking. I close my eyes. “And she died because of me.”
Ilya says nothing for a long moment. I sit there, feeling very sad and small, and then I hear a shift of fabric, and Ilya is reaching across the space between us on the table. She reaches out and takes my hand, covering the back of my hand with her own smaller fingers.
“I'm sorry,” says Ilya, and when I open my eyes, when I glance at her, I can see the true sympathy and sorrow etched on her face... I know she's being sincere.
We remain that way for a very long moment, before Ilya pulls her hand back, sitting against her chair, her shoulders poker straight as she crosses her legs.
“I don't know why I told you that,” I mutter now, shaking my head and wiping the tears from my cheeks. I laugh bitterly. “I never tell that story to anyone.”
Ilya shrugs a little, running her thumb along the wood grain on top of the table again. “I have the face of a listener,” she smiles grimly, head to the side, but she sighs after a long moment, face sobering. “Look, Josie...take the advice of a stranger. You must stop torturing yourself.”
My jaw sets in a hard line again. “I killed her, the person I cared most about...” my low voice shakes. “I'm not torturing myself with anything. I'm telling the truth. I killed her. If it wasn't for me and my stupid decision, she'd be alive right now. I'm to blame, and I'm never going to stop blaming myself.”
Something passes across Ilya's face, and—for a long moment—she gets a faraway look in her eye as she stares over my shoulder, past me, past everything in the room. “She wouldn't have wanted you to, you know,” she tells me in a singsong voice. “Your sister wouldn't have wanted you to blame yourself.” Her eyes focus, and she stares fiercely at me. “In fact, I think it'd break her heart to know that you haven't forgiven yourself.”
I shake my head, my heart aching so much that I can hardly breathe. “You don't know anything,” I tell her, words sharp, but Ilya holds up a finger.
“Think on my words, if you can, Josie,” she tells me, and then she stands, turning away from me. “Attis has returned.”
“What?” I repeat, discombobulated as I stand, as I wipe the tears away from my face again.
A knock comes at the front door.
I want to ask Ilya how she knew that Attis had returned. There certainly hadn't been any sounds of arrival. There was nothing, actually, to tell us that she was back, but when Ilya crosses to the door and opens it, Attis is standing there on Ilya's sagging front porch, and in her outstretched, armored palm is a single feather.
And it's on fire.
The fire is small, maybe the height of my hand, and very narrow. As the flames move across the surface of the feather, I realize...the feather isn't burning.
I smooth the front of my coat, and I take a deep, quavering breath as I still the features of my face, will my cheeks to cool after crying. I glance at Attis as I lift my chin, but she's not looking in my direction. Instead, she's holding Ilya's gaze as she extends the feather to her.
“It's done,” says Attis tiredly. Ilya hardens her jaw, taking the burning feather from Attis' hand, the burning feather that doesn't burn either one of the women as they touch it.
“You should stay,” says Ilya softly, curling her fingers around the feather and then secreting it away into an invisible pocket in her big red skirt. “Stay for the spell, the both of you, and then for dinner. You can sleep here tonight, and—”
“We've already delayed too long,” says Attis, shaking her head. “It's kind of you, Ilya,” she says, and her words are gentle, “but we must get supplies and continue on our journey. We'll never reach the city in time for the festival if we stay tonight. I'm grateful, though, for your offer,” she says haltingly. And I know that she means it.
“Don't be a stranger,” says Ilya, her voice thick with emotion as I button up my coat and am about to go in search of Wonder. Miraculously, my cat appears from around the corner, covered in dust and cobwebs and wearing a very satisfied kitty smile. I scoop her up with a shake of my head and deposit her down the front of my coat; she curls up against me as I hold her tightly to me. She's already whipping out her most contented purr, sleepily blinking her eyes.
“Goodbye, Ilya,” says Attis, finally flicking her gaze to me. She straightens a little, indicating my untouched mug of tea with a small frown. “Are you ready, Josie? We can delay a small while if you—”
“No, I'm ready,” I tell her, words falsely bright as I tilt up my chin, as I force a smile. “Thanks for the tea, Ilya,” I tell the witch and move past her, ready to leave her house.
“Josie, please...heed my words,” Ilya murmurs to me, reaching out between us and clutching my arm with strong fingers. “Try to, anyway,” she tells me, and she lets me go, her arm dropping to her side, her fingers curled in a fist.
Together, we leave Ilya's house, and Attis steps down off her front porch, gathering Zilla's reins in her hands. Zilla looks a little tired but not terribly so; her head is just lower than usual. Zilla turns companionably enough, walking sedately behind Attis as I follow the both of them across the town's square, toward what I can only assume is the smithy. The guy is busy pumping his large bellows, and in front of him is an anvil and a horse standing in front of the open building, ready for its shoes.
“You came back so soon. Was it hard to get the feather?” I ask Attis, trying (and pretty much failing) to get my mind off of the conversation I just had with Ilya. Attis shrugs, wrapping the reins around her right hand.
“It was fine,” she says distractedly. “Standard job, really. There and back again. But we really must be going, Josie. Zilla has a loose shoe, and it should take the smithy a short while to fix it,” she says, glancing quickly at me. “And then right back on the road again. But we also need supplies,” she says, jerking her thumb down the road, to the only store I can see on the main drag of buildings. The only reason I can tell it's a store is the fact that it has a badly made wooden sign hanging over the front door. “General Goods,” it reads, in roughly painted red letters that look almost like a bad spray paint job.
“I can, uh, go get the supplies we need while you get Zilla a new pair of shoes. Or whatever,” I say quickly, when Attis raises a single brow and gazes at me in surprise. A quick smile that passes over her mouth before she frowns again, shaking her head.
“We need,” she says, holding up a single finger, and then she rattles off a bunch of items in rapid succession, items I have never heard of before, or seen. I mean, some of the things on this shopping list sound fantasy movie-ish, like what Harry Potter would probably buy when he goes shopping. One of the items, one of the only things I recognize, is “a new cooking pot,” and that's about it. The rest is perfect Greek—or Elvish—to me.
“Better yet,” says Attis, her brow still raised as the smile passes over her face again, “why don't you stay here with Zilla?” Her smile deepens. “And why don't I go get the supplies?”
“Good. Great!” I tell her, and Attis chuckles a little, passing close to me and pressing Zilla's reins into my hand.
“The smithy will take Zilla next, after this mare,” says Attis, indicating the horse in the cross ties in front of the smithy. “Be ready, and wait for her to be finished.” And then Attis is gone, striding over the village square toward the store, little puffs of dust kicking up from beneath the soles of her armored boots.
I watch her walk to the store, my mind crowded with a million thoughts, my heart aching with a million feelings as I take in the contours of her body, still visible (with a good dose of imagination and memory) beneath her cape and armor. I feel my cheeks begin to darken, and I sigh, turning to stare off into the distance purposefully, shifting my grumbling cat under my coat as my eyes unfocus, as I take a few, deep breaths.
I gaze into the forest on the other side of the smithy's open shop.
I'm trying to distract myself from sad thoughts of Ellie, and I'm trying not to think about Attis, either, so whenever Ellie or Attis rise up in my mind, I concentrate on a plan to get the radio station back on air. It's an imperfect system: I'm looping on images of my sister's smile, and then I drag the thought of my office at the radio station into my brain. But, of course, brains are tricky things, and that thought is followed immediately by the memory of Attis last night—catching me, catching me out of midair, my knight in shining armor.
Literally.
Then I immediately squash those thoughts by thinking of the board meeting I missed, trying to formulate strategies for an excuse and a passionate speech I might never be able to give...
After several long moments of hammer striking horseshoe and anvil, I see the silver flash in the woods.
If I wasn't staring at that particular spot between the trees, I never would have noticed it, but it was there—I saw it. A bright silver flash shimmered between those two tree trunks, the kind of silver flash that would happen if someone had turned a mirror into the sunshine overhead, beaming the light in my direction.
But, in all likelihood, there's no one out in the woods with a mirror.
My stomach turns inside of me as I lean forward, as I narrow my eyes and try to make out what could possibly be causing that silver flash. I know what it is, know what it is even before I see her bulk moving deeper into the woods, her shadow passing over the trees.
It's the silver bear.
There is absolutely no reason in this universe (or any other) that I have this immediate compulsion to follow the bear. Especially now that I know she may be dangerous.
But this idea, this ridiculously strong idea wells up inside of me that I need to see her. It's so powerful, this feeling, that I've dropped Zilla's reins on the ground before I even realize what I'm doing, my hands falling to my sides as I take a single step forward.
“Hey...uh...can you watch her?” I ask the big smithy, who's hard at work pounding a horseshoe into submission on his anvil. The guy stops his relentless pounding, lifting the hammer as he squints at Zilla and then back at me with a shrug.
“Sure,” he rumbles, then goes right back to swinging the hammer over and over again on the red horseshoe against the anvil.
I loop Zilla's reins around the wooden post in front of the smithy's building, and then I'm trotting through the meadow behind the building and moving into the woods again, between the two pine trees that, the minute I step onto the forest floor, swallow the sound of the smithy immediately.
All is quiet.
As I move between the trees, I don't even think about the fact that it might be difficult to find my way back to the village. That I might get lost with a few more steps. It's impossible to orient myself beneath these massive, close trees, but I don't think about that fact at all. I simply head quickly into the woods, practically running as I duck my head under branches and take quick gulps of cold air in my pursuit...
And I find her, the bear, almost immediately.
Because the silver bear is waiting for me.
That's the only way I can make sense of it. I'm hurrying through the thick underbrush beneath the trees, and then, just as quickly, I have to careen to a halt. Wonder makes a little dissatisfied sound from her snuggled cave under my coat.
The bear is standing in a natural break in the forest, a clearing that was made from one of the massive pine trees falling. Sunshine streams down from the gaping hole in the crown of trees overhead, filling this tiny glade with light. Even though it's so cold that I can see my breath in front of me, when I stare at the silver bear, I feel warmth emanating off of her, it seems.
The bear is just as big as I remember her, standing with her great silver bulk in the very center of this glade. Her coat is just as shiny as it was the first time I saw her, seeming to glow from within, as if every strand of her fur is luminescent, pulsing with that bright silver glow. She still strikes me as a sort of wise, kind creature, like an herbivore, as she stands there, head pointed toward me as she blinks sleepily, nose wrinkling as she sniffs the air.
I clear my throat. I take a deep breath.
And then I think, “What the hell?” and I whisper, “Um...are you following me? What do you want from me?”
I don't know why I expected the bear to answer, but I realize that I did expect a reply.
Good God, this world is doing things to me. I can't believe I thought a bear could actually speak to me...
But that's not what the bear does.
The bear doesn't speak, because—of course—she's a bear. But she does take a single, lumbering step forward, toward me, blinking long and slow with her great blue eyes.
And then she unrolls her tongue from inside her mouth, a little like a giant cow, or, actually, a bit more like the giraffes at the zoo. Her tongue is long. I stare, eyes wide, as she unrolls her tongue all the way, comically, and then something falls right off the tip of her tongue, as if her tongue had been holding that in her mouth, carrying it around with her.
I glance down at the ground, at the thing the bear just dropped, but when I look back up at the bear, utterly perplexed...
Of course she's gone.
My blood is rushing through me, and my breath comes in short, small gasps. “What the hell?” I mutter angrily. “What the hell?” I yell to the woods, to the gigantic, disappeared silver bear.
To my entire situation.
For a long moment, I close my eyes, my hands curled into fists by my sides. I try to convince myself that what just came out of the bear's mouth—like he was dropping off a special delivery at my feet—isn't there. That I'll open my eyes, and there will be nothing on the forest floor...except for maybe a huge bear paw print, or maybe not even that.
But I know that this just happened. I know the bear stood in front of me, her silver bulk shimmering in the bright sunshine, and that she had unrolled her tongue like a cartoon dog.
I know that the bear had somehow, impossibly, been storing something in her mouth, and that she'd dropped it at my feet.
I know because, when I open my eyes...it's still there on the forest floor.
I crouch down on the ground, staring at the thing the bear left me, covered unceremoniously in bear spit.
I stare, and I stare, and I feel the world fall away from me as I continue to stare.
It's my sister's silver locket.
My sister's silver locket that she was buried in.
Chapter 9: The Locket
I have no idea what to do. I have no idea how to explain this so that it fits in with my conception of the world. Because it makes no sense at all. This was the locket my sister was buried in. It should be deep in the dark ground, far, far away from here. On another world. It should be something that I will never see again.
Just like my sister.
But the locket is here. Somehow. Impossibly.
It's in my hand.
I stare at the necklace for a long moment, tears swimming in front of my eyes as I rub my thumb over the surface of the locket, wiping away the bit of moss it
just picked up from being on the ground. The locket is heart-shaped and ornate, as only something made in the eighties would be. It was my sister's favorite piece of jewelry; our parents gave it to her when we were small, and she loved it so much because it was “grown-up,” and then when she was actually grown up and it was a little tacky (you know, having been made in the eighties and all), she still wore it constantly, still loved it, still never took it off. Even for the gym. Of course she had to be buried wearing it. It was as much a part of her as anything was.
My heart in my throat, I throw the catch of the locket and open it. I don't know what I'm looking for. Further proof, I guess, further proof that this thing is real, that it's really here, that it's really my sister's locket (even though I know it on sight). I'm desperate for something that makes sense. Maybe this isn't really hers. Maybe it's not, I think (even though I know it is). I'm just so confused.
And then I look inside the locket.
And I know for certain.
Because there's the picture of me as a kid with fantastic, eighties hair (a perm and everything, tightly coiled curls around my face like a halo of clouds), right across from a picture of my sister with equally fantastic eighties hair (massive, massive bangs).
This is her locket. It's Ellie's locket.
I look up, tears streaming down my face. But the bear still hasn't reappeared, and, for some reason, I don't think she's going to come back. At least not today.
What the hell is this bear? Where the hell did she get this locket?
And what the hell does she want from me?
There are no answers here, on the forest floor. So I rub the rest of the dirt from the locket onto my coat, and then I undo the tiny clasp and, with shaking fingers that make it very, very difficult, I put the locket around my neck.
And I stumble back to the blacksmith and the patiently waiting Zilla, standing there and chewing on her bit, one back hoof cocked in relaxation, like absolutely, positively, nothing has happened.
I'm shaking harder, I realize, as I unloop her reins from the wooden post.
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