Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

  “Did you make a wish?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t think of anything to wish for, just now.”

  “Yes. I know just what you mean.”

  Her breath, the familiar smell of her, was like oxygen to me. I groped across the rusty old hood of the Green Monster until I found her slender fingers, and wove my own through them. They fit like puzzle pieces. There was something I needed to tell her. What was it? Then I felt an ache in my other hand, an emptiness, and I realized who should have been there with us, all that time.

  “I found her,” I said.

  “I know. I’m so glad.”

  “She’s beautiful. And fragile. And so much more like you than I ever was.”

  She squeezed my hand “I know that, too.”

  As I spoke of Hannah, a distant echo pressed faintly against my ears. I turned away from my mother and looked off in the distance, down the road, as far as I could see.

  A shape darkened the horizon there. It might have been a door.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “That’s your way back,” my mother said.

  I looked at it again. There was a sound coming from it, reverberating softly along the soft bends in the road. It might have been music. It might have been a voice. It was so hard to tell, and I didn’t want to think too much about it just now.

  “I can hear something. There’s a voice.”

  “Is there?”

  “Yes. Can’t you hear it?”

  “No. I can only hear the stars.”

  And we listened to the quiet mystery of them, stretched out and singing above us.

  “This is the night I think of when I think of us,” I said.

  She turned to me, and her eyes were full of a glistening hope that plucked at the very strings that tied me together. “Do you mean that?”

  “Yes. I mean it.”

  “Because there were a lot of other nights…”

  “Forget about them. They don’t matter. Just this night, Mom. Let this be the night.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know that, now more than ever. I love you, too.”

  “And her…”

  “I’ll make sure she knows it. She will know it, in time. And she will love you, too.”

  Her hand squeezed mine, and the car seemed to speed beneath us, jetting far beyond the vast spaces of the Arizona night, and I shielded my eyes against the sudden, blinding brightness of the stars, as though they were trying their hand at imitating the sun. We were flying, our hair fluttering out of the open windows. I watched the pavement flash past, imagining, as I did when I was a child, that we were not driving, but flying like birds.

  A small smudged face was staring at me from the rearview mirror.

  “Mary!”

  “Yes.”

  I turned to look at her over my shoulder, but the battered back seat was empty. I could only see her in the mirror.

  I was suddenly full of hot, bubbling guilt.

  “Mary, I’m sorry. I brought you here,” I said.

  “I should be here,” she said.

  “But it should have been your choice to cross. You, and all those other spirits. But I was afraid, if I didn’t do something, that torch would go out and you’d never be at rest.”

  “I know that. We all know it. You saved us, truly.”

  “Did I?”

  “See for yourself,” she said, and the backseat vanished from the mirror. I was staring instead into some kind of darkened room. I leaned forward for a better look, and the mirror gaped and swallowed me, pitching me, tumbling into blackness until…

  I was crouched in a dark, dusty corner. To my right, a brick wall. To my left, a jagged row of laminated book spines. That familiar smell of old, neglected literature was sharp and mildewed in my nostrils.

  “Don’t spook them. Whatever you do, don’t spook them out of here, or I’ll never invite you on one of these investigations again.”

  I stared around for the source of the voice, but I could see nothing.

  “Who said that?” I whispered.

  “I did. I said that. Who the hell else would it be? Now be quiet before you screw this up, Ballard.”

  I couldn’t pin his voice down to any one place. First it was hissing from behind me. Then it was echoing like it was coming through stereo speakers. Then it was right beside me.

  “Where are you, Dr. Pierce?”

  “Where am I? I’m right here! Get your head out of your ass, Ballard!”

  I stared around and spotted him, smirking at me from the cover of a battered old volume on the Russian history shelf.

  “What the hell? What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “Me? I’m dead! I’m supposed to be here! Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

  I glared at him, not least because I hated the idea of him being dead, and even more he already had the audacity to joke about it.

  I sat in silence for several minutes, waiting for something to happen. The library was utterly still, but for the ticking of a clock somewhere, and the dull clunking of a nearby radiator.

  “What exactly are we waiting for?” I hissed finally.

  The Pierce on the cover of the book rolled his eyes at me. “The door. Look at it.”

  I followed his gaze and saw the door for the first time, way at the end of the longest row of books I had ever seen. Surely no library was that big.

  “I see it,” I said. “What about it?”

  “It’s the focus of the investigation!” Pierce whispered, and suddenly he was no longer plastered on the book cover, but kneeling beside me, eyes trained on the screen of a thermal camera.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked him. I stared down at the little glowing screen in his hands, but all I saw was the same scene before my eyes: a long passage ending in a closed door.

  “You tell me, Ballard. You’re supposed to be the ghost girl.”

  I stared down at the door. It looked completely ordinary. And yet…

  “I think I hear something.”

  “What do you hear?” Pierce whispered excitedly, and he pulled one of his recorders from his pocket, flicking it on and holding it up to my face.

  “It’s difficult to tell. It’s really faint. A voice, I think.”

  “Concentrate really hard, Ballard. Can you tell what it’s saying?”

  I listened for a moment, and while I did, Pierce held absolutely still. Little red glimmers danced in the dark hair of his beard, reflected up from the recorder’s light. He was smiling like a kid in the glint of his own birthday candles, making a wish he knew would come true.

  The voice was repeating something, over and over again. There was a lulling rhythm to it, and it tugged at something inside me.

  “I think it’s a song… or a chant…”

  “Is it a male voice or a female voice?” Pierce asked.

  It was soft. Gentle. Tearful. It was a forlorn, heartsick sound.

  “It’s a girl. She’s really sad.”

  “But you can’t make out the words?”

  “No.”

  Pierce clicked the button on the recorder again, and the tiny red light went out. So did all of the light in the library. I yelled as we were plunged into darkness, but stopped almost at once as a desk lamp popped on beside my elbow, illuminating Pierce’s cluttered office.

  “Let’s examine the evidence,” he said. He elbowed a stack of books onto the floor to make room for the recorder on his desk. He slid into his rickety desk chair and pulled it in until he was crouched, his nose barely an inch from the little device. He looked up and rolled his eyes at me. “How do you expect to hear anything all the way over there? Get over here and listen!”

  “You’re so bossy,” I grumbled, and he grinned at me as I clambered up off of his threadbare sofa. We bent our heads together, and Pierce pushed the “play” button.

  The voice began again, but it was coming, not f
rom the recorder, but from somewhere outside the window. I maneuvered around the boxes and stacks to the window; the Queen of England stared primly up at me from the nearest pile of books. I pushed the dusty old ficus tree and a bobble head of the Prince of Wales aside, and peered out into the courtyard.

  It wasn’t the courtyard of St. Matt’s; it was the Fairhaven courtyard.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  No one answered. I turned around. I was alone in the office. Pierce’s shelves were full of teapots and ceramic figurines instead of books.

  I rubbed at the grimy glass with the sleeve of my shirt and looked out again. A tiny figure was standing in the center of a cobblestone circle, facing an ancient stone archway. She looked very familiar. I still couldn’t hear what she was chanting, but the sound of it was so alluring that I half wanted to leap from the window to follow the call of it.

  The call of it. The Call of it. Calling.

  I turned and ran as fast as I could out of the office and down a steep, winding staircase. A few steps from the bottom I lost my footing and stumbled forward. I thrust my arms out in front of me to break my fall.

  They plunged wrist-deep into cold, fluffy snow.

  I looked around. I was huddled in the shadow of a brick building. All of the windows were illuminated, and figures moved back and forth in some of them. I could hear raucous laughter, and the rhythmic thud of music.

  The snow was soft under my hands. So soft I thought that if I laid down on it, I could fall asleep, like on a bed of down. I pressed my cheek to it. It was cool and comforting. Then I waited to hear his voice, because I knew I would.

  “Hey, there.”

  “Hi, Evan.”

  I rolled over. He lay beside me, looking at me with those warm, friendly eyes, his face alight with that heart-stopping smile.

  “Nice fall.”

  I groaned. “You saw that?”

  He winked. “Maybe.”

  “I am the epitome of grace,” I said, flushing. “I’m well-known for it.”

  “What took you so long?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He took my hand, causing my heart to leap with giddy excitement into my throat.

  “How did you get here?” he asked after a moment.

  “I don’t remember. I came out here looking for something.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said again. The snow beneath my head seemed to be leeching memories out of me, leaving behind a pleasant, happy haze. It was lovely not to have to think, to worry, to fight. It was so easy, just to be here with him.

  “Tell me something,” I said to him.

  “What do you want to hear?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Anything. Just your voice.”

  He laughed, a carefree sound. It was musical, in perfect harmony with the music floating down from the nearby window.

  “Anything, huh? Okay, let’s see.” He cleared his throat theatrically, and we both laughed. Then he said, “She abides with darkness.”

  I sat up. “What did you say?”

  He smiled.

  “She abides with darkness.

  It clings to her like ash

  To the tips of her eyelashes, to the soles of her feet.

  It wraps about her, a soft, gossamer shroud

  That shields the world from the shine of her eyes.

  If I could brush it like stardust

  From the constellations of her cheeks,

  And see beyond the seeping veil, the blossoming sorrow,

  What mightn’t I give to be so blinded?

  All within me, surely, the pulse of every cell

  For a single brush of lip on lip.”

  I stared at him. “Why would you say that?”

  His brow furrowed in confusion. “You told me to say anything.”

  “I know but… of all the things you could have said, why did you say that?”

  He shrugged casually, turning his eyes back up to the sky above us. “It just seemed like something you should hear,” he said.

  I stared up at the sky, too. It was starry, like the sky above my mother and me as we stargazed all those years ago. Or was it a few minutes ago? Where was I?

  “How do you know that poem?” I asked.

  “I read it somewhere,” he replied with a contented sigh.

  “Where?”

  “In this.”

  And he pulled from his back pocket a small, battered black book. He tossed it into the grass between us. I slid my hand out of his and reached for the book. And in the moment I let go of him and touched the book, I remembered.

  I couldn’t stay here.

  And where a moment before there had been the brick face of a building, there was now a door, old and crumbling and carved all over with faded runic markings. It stood ajar, bathed in a purplish glow, and if I squinted, I could just make out a dark figure standing deep in the heart of it.

  “Hannah.”

  “What’s that?” Evan asked.

  “It’s Hannah. She’s Calling me.”

  He frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “You aren’t supposed to. It’s just for me.”

  I turned for one last look at him. He smiled at me, that smile that could almost convince me to stay. Almost. He was beautiful. He was perfect. He was gone.

  And I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to be gone.

  I strode, without another backward look, to the threshold of the door. I stood upon it as though poised for flight. Far away, Hannah’s voice was Calling me. And I would answer it.

  I leapt onto the current of her Calling and rode it back.

  §

  I sat up and sucked in that first, dizzying breath as I connected once again to my body, but almost immediately all of that air was knocked clean out of me; Hannah had tackled me in a hug so fierce I was flat on my back again.

  “It worked! Oh, it worked! Oh, Jess, thank God, thank GOD!” she was sobbing.

  I wrapped an arm around her. “I never doubted you. I knew you could do it.”

  “I didn’t. I thought you were gone,” she gasped.

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you,” I said.

  I brushed her mane of hair away from my face to see Finn smiling at me, his face glazed with tears.

  “Are you alright?” I asked him.

  He actually threw back his head and laughed. “You literally come back from the dead, and you ask me if I’m alright?”

  I laughed, too, a little sheepishly. I could feel myself blushing under the intensity of his gaze and hastily looked away in time to see Milo flying at me.

  “Gah! Stop! Back away!” I cried as he attempted some sort of ghost version of a hug that just left me feeling freezing cold and tingling uncomfortably.

  “I can’t help it! I’m having a proud mama moment over here!” he said. “My two girls! That was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “If you say so,” I said, then gasped as I caught sight of the Geatgrima behind him.

  “Whoa.”

  Or rather, what had been the Geatgrima, for it had crumbled to a pile of rubble upon its dais. Figures were gathered all around the perimeter of the courtyard, just visible through the still-settling dust. It seemed that Savvy and Annabelle had been successful in freeing the inhabitants of the castle. I spotted them, arm in arm, near the entrance to the Grand Council Room. To their right, Celeste and Fiona were helping Finvarra rise shakily to her feet. The walls were lined with students, teachers, Caomhnóir and Council members alike, all with rather awed expressions on their faces. I felt myself turn, if possible, even redder under all of their eyes. I dropped my gaze and found myself staring at Neil’s motionless figure, sprawled in the far side of the platform.

  “Neil?” I asked.

  Hannah shook her head. “The part of him that could follow you into the Gateway did. It didn’t come back out again.”

  I pushed the reality of that thought away and allowed t
he intense relief bubbling up inside me to wash over everything. It was over. It really was over.

  “Jess, I don’t know how to… I’m just so sorry,” Hannah said. “I was so stupid. They told me… I mean, they made it sound like—”

  I cupped her face between my hands. “Look at me. You don’t apologize to me. Not for this. Not ever,” I said. “I’ll explain it to you later, but I know all about what they said to you, and you have nothing to apologize for. We ended this together. That’s all that counts here, no matter what anyone else says. You understand me?”

  Her face broke into a watery smile. “Yes.”

  I smiled back. A little word, reclaimed.

  I started to climb to my feet, but before I could do more than slide one awkwardly bent leg out from under me, Finn was there, one arm around my waist, the other grasping my hand to assist me. Jess from a few days ago would have slapped him away. But that Jess hadn’t seen what I’d seen.

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting his help and leaning on him as I regained my bearings.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I let him accept my thanks without his really understanding exactly what it was I was thanking him for. I wondered if I would ever tell him how close I had come to staying behind, to ignoring the summons that had brought us back together. I wondered if I would ever tell him that it was his words, the ones he’d woven together so beautifully, that had created the net that caught me before I’d been irretrievably lost. I thought, perhaps, I would. Someday.

  I held tight to his hand long after I’d managed to stand on my own two feet again.

  Epilogue

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE we’re packing again. Doesn’t it feel like we just did this?” Hannah sighed.

  “I guess so,” I said breathlessly as I dragged my suitcase over to the stack of luggage by the door of our room. “We haven’t been here very long in the grand scheme of things, but a hell of a lot has happened since we first set foot in this place. In some ways, Boston was a lifetime ago.” Many lifetimes ago, and none of them our own.

  Hannah nodded. “You’re right. I don’t even know how I feel about going back.”

  “I do. I’m voluntarily getting back on a plane. That should give you a fair idea of how I’m feeling about it.”