Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

Andrei picked up his chair and meandered off, stumbling a bit in the darkness, still muttering mutinously. Anca watched him until he staggered around the far side of the wagon, and then she turned to me, one hand on the door handle.

  “Do you remember when you asked Ileana if there were any Walkers here in the camp?”

  “Yes. She said there weren’t.”

  “That was a lie.”

  My heartbeat broke into a gallop. “There’s a Walker in there?”

  “Ileana doesn’t want me to show you what you’re about to see. She doesn’t want to scare you away from making the choice that could save us. But she is wrong to keep this from you. You can’t truly make that decision until you’ve seen Irina.”

  I swallowed hard. “Can you just clue me in a little here? About what I’m about to see? Because I have to admit, I’m freaked out by the element of surprise here.”

  Anca ran a hand over her face. “Ileana, to her credit, has warned you that Walking can be deadly. She told you that you could die in the attempt, which I must admit, I doubted she would do. But death is not the only outcome to fear if you attempt to become a Walker.”

  “Are you saying there’s something to worry about that’s worse than death?” I asked, a tremor in my voice.

  “I could not say if it is worse or not. But at least death would release you.”

  “What do you—”

  “You must see it for yourself. No explanation can convey the reality of what has happened to her,” Anca said. “The Book of Téigh Anonn can instruct you how to Walk, just like a text book could tell you the chemical and physical changes involved when you fall in love. But you won’t truly have a chance of understanding what it is like to go through it unless you speak to someone who has experienced it firsthand. Irina is the only one among us who has.”

  Her hand rested on the latch of the door. I mastered a powerful desire to knock it away, before she showed me something I couldn’t unsee.

  “Don’t speak to her or approach her until I tell you it’s okay. Be ready to leave quickly, if I tell you we need to. And just… try to stay calm.”

  Yup, seriously considering the old turn-tail-and-run now.

  The interior of the wagon was bathed in semi-darkness. At first, all was utterly still, and I thought there must be a mistake; but then, Anca slid her lantern onto a tiny shelf on the back of the door, and the wavering light fell into the furthest corner, giving form and life to what only moments before could have been a bundle of rags or a mere shadow.

  A woman lay curled on a mattress under a heap of old blankets. Her long, dark hair was matted and tangled into a wild mess that obscured her face. A thick, wrought iron chain trailed out from beneath the blankets and snaked across the floorboards to the wall, where it was fastened to an iron ring. Strewn about the room was the wreckage of furniture, and piles of torn fabric and heaps of feathers that must once have been pillows. The place looked like it had been ransacked by a pack of marauding beasts, but I knew, somehow, that the solitary source of the destruction was breathing gently there beneath the blankets. Someone had scrawled runes over every inch of the interior walls with paint and charcoal, eerily similar to Annabelle’s flat. In my panicky state, I could only dredge the meaning of a few of them from the depths of my memory, but the ones I could recognize did nothing to ease my nerves: protection, binding, silence, submission.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked, before I could stop myself or form a more polite question.

  “You’ll see,” Anca said, and there was an unmistakable note of fear in her voice as she gazed down at the figure, who stirred and muttered softly in her sleep. Hesitantly, she bent down and shook the woman’s shoulder. With a grunt and a moan, she rolled over onto her back and pushed her mess of hair back from her face.

  “What… what do you want?” she croaked.

  “Irina, it’s me, Anca. I’ve brought someone to talk to you.”

  “Who’s Irina?” the woman asked, blinking in the light of the lantern.

  Anca threw me a quick glance before continuing. “You are. You are Irina.”

  The woman stared with a childlike fascination at the lantern’s dancing flame. “Yes, that’s right. I’m Irina. Irina, Irina, Irina,” she added in a little snatch of a tune. “It is a pretty name. But I shall cast it away, away, yes, I shall cast it away.”

  “Yes. Well, like I said, I’ve brought someone to see you,” Anca said again. She grabbed my sleeve and tugged me so that I stumbled into her. “This is Jessica.”

  Irina looked at me for a brief moment, with just a trace of curiosity. Then she looked back at Anca. “She is a stranger to me. But you— why do I know you?”

  Anca grimaced. “I’m Anca. I’m your niece.”

  Irina looked for a moment like the word “niece” was mildly disturbing to her; I was feeling pretty disturbed myself. Anca had never mentioned that she was actually related to this woman, and what was more, Irina couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, maybe thirty five. Anca herself was at least that old. How could this woman be her aunt? I cleared my throat nervously in preparation to ask Anca this question, but at the sound Irina’s head whipped around and she locked me with a penetrating stare, as though she’d only just realized I was there.

  “Why have you brought this one?”

  “I told you, Irina,” Anca said. “Her name is Jessica, and she—”

  “Do not tell me her name,” she said sharply, every trace of sleepiness and vagueness now gone. “Do not speak to me of names, of earthly names! What care I for names? I cast them away, as you should cast her away. Far, far away. She brings danger with her!”

  “We know. That’s why we’ve come,” Anca said, with a brave attempt at a soothing tone.

  “You bring danger here to me? When I cannot defend myself?” Irina gasped, her pitch becoming shrill as she plunged a groping hand into her blankets and pulled out the chain, shaking it in Anca’s face. “When I am chained like an animal, trapped like a rodent?”

  “Irina, please!”

  “No! I will not stay here. I will not be the sacrifice in your games!”

  “No one is playing games, and we don’t want to sacrifice anyone,” Anca said, her calm façade starting to crack as her voice rose slightly. “We need your help.”

  Irina was still toying with the chain, winding it around and around her wrist. It looked like it was cutting into her flesh, but she did not seem to notice. She was digging under the chain, looping her finger under a knotted bracelet that seemed to be made of human hair. Her own hair, I realized, as I noticed great clumps of it missing from the back of her head. Having found the bracelet, Irina lifted her wrist to her mouth and opened it, as though she were about to bite herself, but then caught my eye and stopped. She looked back and forth between Anca and me, searching for something in our faces. When she didn’t find it, she dropped the chain to the floor.

  “Help,” she repeated, as though she barely recognized the word, and was merely trying it out, to see how it felt in her mouth.

  “Yes, help,” Anca said, and she knelt at this first sign of cooperation. “Jessica must learn how to Walk.”

  At the word, Irina’s face broke into a strange, euphoric grin. She took a deep, satisfied breath and let her head loll back as she blew it out again. I’d seen my mother look the same with the first sip of alcohol after a failed stretch of sobriety.

  “Ah yes, to Walk. To Walk,” she murmured contentedly.

  “Yes,” Anca went on quickly. “She must learn to Walk, but no one here can tell her how to do it, not from experience. There is no one among us here but you who has ever done it.”

  Irina snorted a reproachful little laugh. “Those fools lack the strength of mind. They lack the power. Only I ever found the will to do it.” She drew herself up and swept the hair from her face with a dignified stroke of her hand. I could see more runes inked crudely on the skin beneath her jawline.

  “Yes, I know that. And now Jessica needs to know
everything you can tell her about Walking. It’s very important.”

  Irina pouted. “Mustn’t speak of it. Mustn’t do it. They told me that I mustn’t do it anymore.” She gestured limply around at the runes, and I realized they must have been placed there to stop her from Walking.

  “I’m not asking you to do it,” Anca said. “I’m not trying to get you into trouble, Irina. I just want you to answer her questions. Can you do that?”

  Irina didn’t say anything, but instead turned to me and sat up straight and expectant, like I was about to read her a bedtime story.

  I threw a look at Anca, who nodded encouragingly at me. I hated being put on the spot in the most innocuous of circumstances, but this? I could barely repress a tremor in my voice as I addressed Irina.

  “What is it like, to Walk?”

  Irina grinned lazily again. “It is like sleeping and flying, like floating and falling. It is discovering the truth of things, losing and finding yourself in the haze that is hidden from the rest of the living, breathing world.”

  A shudder ran down my spine. “Is it… difficult to do?”

  “Oh, no. To let go, is the most wonderful thing in the world. Snip, snip, snip the strings that hold you down. Leave all your pain behind, all the bonds of the flesh.” She looked down at her own hands and arms with a sudden, fierce anger, as though she couldn’t stand the sight of herself. “This cage, this wretched, wretched cage of bone and blood.” And she began to claw at her forearms as a feral animal sound bubbled up from her chest.

  I looked at Anca, sure she would tell me to back off, but she nodded grimly for me to continue. I knew I needed to. There was one really important question I still needed to ask.

  “Is it difficult to return to your body, once you’ve left?”

  Irina’s face fell suddenly into a dark, angry snarl. She bared her teeth at me. “Difficult? Would you find it difficult to return to a cage after flying like a bird through the sky? Would you find it difficult to become a slave again, after a beautiful moment of freedom? Would you?” And she raised her hand to her mouth again, and whispered a rapid, incomprehensible stream of words to her own wrist. Then, she took the knotted bracelet of hair between her teeth and tore it apart.

  I opened my mouth, unsure of what would come out, but before I could form the words properly, a familiar feeling crept over me: one that I’d come to regard with less dread and more resignation as of late. Even as I sensed it, Irina’s eyes rolled back into her head and she keeled over onto her filthy nest, where she began to twitch and shake.

  “Back away! Now!” Anca hissed, scrambling to her feet.

  I leapt back as I watched Irina writhe, and then her spirit shot with disorienting speed from her body and came to a halt mere inches from my face. Only my shock kept me from bolting out of the wagon in terror, as I stared into her wide, livid eyes.

  “LET US OUT!” it screamed in my face. “LET US GO!”

  Irina’s spirit continued to struggle toward me, but something was holding it back. After several terrifying moments, I was able to see past my own panic and realize that she couldn’t actually make contact with me. I had landed just on the other side of a circle that had been carved into the floor of the wagon. Careful not to move any closer, I shifted myself so that I could make out Irina’s body. The spirit was still tethered to it, connected with some kind of shining web, and as it thrashed, Irina’s body continued to convulse on the heap of blankets.

  “What the hell is happening?” I finally managed to choke out.

  “They’ve placed a casting on her. Well, many castings. It’s meant to prevent her from Walking.” Anca practically had to shout to be heard over the continued shrieks of the spirit as it fought to free itself.

  “Yeah, I got that much, but I don’t think it’s working the way it’s supposed to!” I cried, gesturing wildly to Irina’s body, still seizing on the ground.

  “It isn’t supposed to work at all. No casting exists in our canon specifically to keep a Durupinen from Walking. We don’t know if it has just been lost over the ages, or if it never existed at all. What you are seeing is a combination of different castings and runes, a sort of spiritual experiment.”

  “How can you experiment on her? She’s not some lab rat! She’s obviously in pain!” I could barely stand to watch her two selves struggle, the body, unaware, the spirit hyperaware.

  “I know, but they truly had no choice. When she first discovered how to Walk, she was the first in centuries in our clan to do it. The elders were enthralled with the possibilities it presented. Imagine, a Durupinen who could approach spirits on their own plane and understand everything they were trying to communicate without the need for guesswork or interpretation. They thought they could use her abilities to encourage particularly challenging or violent spirits to cross, without risking harm to the Durupinen themselves.”

  The spirit was tiring now, its shrieks dulling to low, guttural moans. It continued to pull at its bonds, but feebly. It was dreadful to watch.

  Anca went on, watching Irina’s spirit with an expression of resigned sadness. “At first, Irina Walked only when the Council demanded it. She was proud to be able to serve the clan in such a useful way, and her abilities gave her a certain status, a certain glamour, even. But the sensation was addicting.”

  “What do you mean, addicting? You mean she couldn’t stop herself from Walking?”

  “I’m sure by this time you’ve learned all about the fact that our spirits long to cross to the other side. They feel the pull and give into it, which is why most spirits cross immediately at the point of death, and do not require our assistance. Our spirits are the same, though something in the Durupinen blood protects our souls from feeling the pull too keenly when we are in close proximity to our open Gateways. But Irina was allowing her spirit to leave the protection of her body, and it craved the freedom she gave to it. Soon she was Walking constantly, abandoning her body for months at a time and disappearing to roam among the other earthbound ghosts. Over time, her spirit grew stronger and her body grew weaker, and the spirit began to forget who she was and why she was here. She no longer followed the orders of the Council. She could not be trusted to wander the world, full of the knowledge of the Durupinen. She was a liability. And so, when next she entered her body, they trapped her there. She has been this way ever since.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  “That’s the other thing,” Anca said. “The body doesn’t age while the spirit is Walking. It enters a state of suspended animation. You heard me call her my aunt, but actually she’s my great aunt.”

  I blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No. I wish I was. Irina is nearly eighty years old.”

  I looked back at the two Irinas, who were becoming one being again as the spirit sank, still moaning, back into the body. Her face, shining with tears, betrayed barely a wrinkle, her hair only a thread or two of silver amongst the tangled, patchy mass of black.

  “She looks so frail,” I said.

  “Her spirit has grown too powerful for her body. She’s little more than a shell to house it, now.” Anca said, nodding.

  Irina began to stir. She pulled herself into a sitting position, both hands clapped to her head as though it were pounding fit to burst. She looked up and cried out, startled to see us standing there.

  “Who are you?” she asked us sharply. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am Anca, and this is Jessica. It’s okay, Irina, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Anca said, her usually brisk voice now weary and deflated.

  “Who’s Irina?” Irina asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Anca said, taking me by the arm and pulling me back toward the door of the wagon. “We’re going now. We’re sorry that we disturbed you.”

  “Go, then!” Irina sobbed. “Go and leave me in peace!”

  “We’re sorry,” Anca said again, and tugged me through the door and out into the frost-kissed darkness of the
clearing. It was silent but for the sounds of crickets and a snatch of drunken humming from Andrei, deep in communion with his flask somewhere out of sight.

  “Why couldn’t she remember us? When her spirit went back inside, she didn’t even remember we were there,” I said, between deep gasping breaths. I was fighting to keep something down. I couldn’t tell if it was hysteria or my dinner.

  “You saw the bonds?” Anca asked.

  “That web thing? Yeah, I saw it,” I said.

  “They’ve been created from psychic and mental energy. They are using her own thoughts and emotions to keep soul and body connected to each other. It works, as you can see, but at a cost. It is painful for both body and spirit to struggle against it. And because those thoughts and emotions are being stretched outside of the body to keep them together, Irina loses access to them. It has driven her into madness. The best parallel I can draw is to a person suffering from dementia. Her mind is battered unpredictably between clarity and confusion.”

  I had no words to respond, but Anca seemed to have expected this. She picked up Andrei’s lantern, having left her own in the wagon, and turned to head back to the encampment. My legs and my heart now much heavier, I trudged after her.

  9

  Choices

  WE SAID NOTHING ALL THE WAY BACK to the encampment. There was nothing left to say. The silence might have been awkward; Anca kept looking over at me with her mouth half open, poised for speech, but my own thoughts were so loud, that I honestly don’t think I would have heard her over them.

  As far as I could see, I’d never been faced with a more frightening set of choices. I laid them out in my head, each worse than the last.

  Choice number one: I could run from the prophecy. I could refuse to get involved, go into hiding, and hope the Necromancers left me alone. Of course that meant never seeing my sister again, and allowing her to potentially destroy the entire Gateway system and throw the ghost population of the world into utter chaos. It also gave the Necromancers far too much credit. As long as I was breathing, I was a threat to their plan, and I was deluding myself if I thought they would ever stop hunting for me. Eventually they would catch up with me, and when they did… I shuddered. No, choice number one wasn’t really a choice at all.