by Emma Hamm
Her chest rose to press against his in a brief moment when her breath held. “You should go,” she whispered. “I think the red woman’s future is happening sooner rather than later.”
“What is she?”
“I think she is a Phoenix.”
“They’re dead.”
“I don’t think I’m wrong with this one. But I do know that time is ticking and she cannot be lost.”
His eyes flicked to hers. “Now you sound like her.”
And then he disappeared. The only thing remaining was the lingering heat against her skin where he had hovered. A long shuddering sigh rocked her shoulders although that was still all she could do.
“Please hurry Pitch,” she murmured. “She’s important, though I don’t know why.”
Lydia slept for a long time. Her body, although no longer entirely human, needed to heal. Every time she walked through the threads of the future, she found herself paralyzed again.
Her existence became an endless loop of training herself to see the future and healing. Pitch returned to tell her that he found the red woman and locked her up. That was a relief although guilt left a sour taste upon her tongue.
Time blurred. She awoke, usually to find a tube in her arm, ate what she could, and dove back into the threads.
Lydia followed the lines of Time as if it were a new religion. She watched people live their lives from beginning to end in the blink of an eye. Love flourished. Children were born. Couples struggled and fell apart. Everything she could see and manipulate.
At times, the future was dark. Rare creatures faded into legend. She watched a Giant become hated and feared. She watched a Hag grow up thinking that ugliness came from the outside, rather within. Worst of all, she watched creatures who were different hide from the world.
It was better this way, she convinced herself. For in those moments when she followed the long threads of Time, she also found him.
Malachi.
His thread throbbed with pain and anger. She ran through his history with tears streaming down her cheeks. There was so much pain. Mother, father, family, lovers, friends. All gone. All vanished without a trace.
There were many years of solitude. Years of being locked away and alone. His mind twisted and warped until all he could see was an ending where everyone felt his anguish. She worried the red woman would share the same desire, the same fate, the same ending.
An ending she was slowly realizing was the reason for her existence. Her own thread of beginning started with the sparking knowledge that she needed to stop this Malachi from taking the world by storm. She was the only one who could do that because she was the only one who could see every possible ending.
Her mind threatened to snap with the weight of it. Lydia had to stop him or watch her world burn to the ground.
Eventually, she learned how much to push her body. It took a very long time. But she woke up, blinked her eyes, and lifted her arm from the bed.
Lydia licked her dry lips and smiled. “There it is,” she murmured. “I knew I would get it.”
Pushing up on her elbows, she looked around the room for her constant shadow. Her kidnapper had become a reassuring presence although she didn’t understand why. A kidnapped woman shouldn’t become attached to someone like that.
Stockholm Syndrome was a threat, she thought. Although, she didn’t believe she suffered its effects.
“Well, if he planned to kidnap someone, he couldn’t have picked a better person.” She reached down to shove her legs off the bed as she muttered. “No one cares that I’m gone.”
Her legs remained useless. Her brain told them to move, and they refused. She didn’t have feeling in them anymore.
Lydia stretched her arms over her head as she thought her plan through. This was the first time she’d awoken and felt healthy. Well, sans legs.
Next to the bed, a wheelchair was within easy reach. The dim light glinted off the metal frame.
“Always thinking ahead I see,” she murmured. Pitch always seemed to know what she would need long before she thought it. And she was the one who saw the future.
Grasping the handles, she lifted one leg and then the other into the chair. She was breathing hard by the time she settled herself. But she had done it. Lydia hadn’t had to yell for Pitch to help her.
“Not half bad,” she told herself with a solid pat on the shoulder. “Now, to the bathroom.”
She struggled to release the brakes. Lydia had spent plenty of her time in a hospital, but she never wheeled herself around. Her fingers skittered over a rusted latch which released the brakes with a satisfying click. Proud of herself, Lydia wheeled to the bathroom for a drink of water.
She opened the door and froze. Across from her was a mirrored wall which revealed a woman who was not at all like she remembered.
Sitting in the wheelchair was a ghost. Her hair — once mousy brown — now hung pin straight and white. Nestled in the delicate strands were two graceful horns which curled from the sides of her head. Prongs jutting off the horns created a strange silhouette.
There was no color to her skin, now pale and milky white. A fine dusting of glitter made her skin sparkle. She might have found the effect pretty if she hadn’t looked like a corpse.
Inhuman. Strange. Otherworldly.
Lydia raised a hand to her colorless lips and watched her reflection do the same.
“Have I changed so much?” she asked herself. “In such a short amount of time?”
She lifted her hands to touch the curved antlers. Their fuzzy newness had disappeared, now smooth as ivory against her fingertips.
“Strange,” she said. “But not… terrible.”
It was the first time she had looked at herself in a mirror and thought she was beautiful. Not in the traditional sense, she was something new.
She still held the melodies of bells in her quiet voice. At least some things had not yet changed.
As she wheeled herself over to the sink, she muttered, “It’s not as if being in a wheelchair is all that bad. Being pretty is a decent enough trade.”
She reached for the glass waiting for her, but paused in her stretch. Lydia met her own gaze in the mirror.
“What?”
She pulled down the corner of her eye. That color wasn’t right. She had brown eyes. But A strange milky whiteness was encroaching around the edges, making one iris appear much smaller than the other.
The glass in her free hand dropped to the floor and shattered. Lydia barely registered the sound of crunching under her wheels as she pulled herself closer to the mirror.
“Yet another thing broken,” she muttered. “Another change to endure.”
But this was a more dangerous change. One she wasn’t certain that her body would heal from. She could survive a wheelchair. She could survive the future and all the burdens it placed upon her shoulders.
“Please don’t make me blind,” her plea was to the universe and to the magic boiling inside of her. “Please don’t take my eyes too.”
Pitch would understand what was happening. It was his captive soul inside of her.
Her lungs expanded but refused to deflate. She needed to talk to the mysterious Shadow Man.
Losing her eyes was a price she would not pay.
The wheels squeaked as she rushed from her room. Down the hallway she pushed herself, the banister at her side guiding her to the stairs — her greatest obstacle.
Lydia blew out a frustrated breath. “House,” she ordered, “Make it easier for me to find him.”
A great rumble made the boards under her wheelchair shudder. The stairs shifted subtly, enough that the decline would not be jarring and she could control the chair with the hand brakes.
She made her way down one set of stairs, then the next. Her body was weak. The small amount of physical labor made her breathe hard. Her arms shook and turned to rubber. Her hands slicked with sweat.
She made it down the stairs. A thrill of excitement tingled in her aching muscle
s. She had done it.
“Where is he?” Lydia asked the house. “Take me to him.”
A door creaked open down the hall.
Her wheels squeaked as she turned into the room, then fell silent as her hands clenched upon them. This was his bedroom. Dark as the man who lived in it, black satin draped from the ceiling and walls. It created an abysmal feeling that made her both uncomfortable and calm. The plush red rug drew her eye away from the large four poster bed.
Lying amidst the splash of color, Pitch was a dark smudge. She blinked away the impression of blood oozing all around him. He lay stretched upon the floor, his hands crossed on his chest.
All around him, like stars decorating the night sky, white moths fluttered. Three had arranged themselves over his eyes and mouth.
Their wings opened and closed with his breaths. She watched his body for movement, but could find none.
Pitch was the night sky, she realized. He was terrifying and dark. Full of monsters and madness, but also promises, adventure, and new worlds. He made her dream of endless possibilities limited only by time and space.
His lips moved and her breath caught. She could hear his words, but she read them like a book.
I love you.
Something in her splintered.
She would have given him Sil if she could have. He was tormented by her ghost, but Lydia couldn’t bring back the dead.
Pitch brought an empty vial to his lips. Her hand slid from the brake of her chair and thumped hard against the wheel.
“I’m sorry,” she burst out as great clouds of darkness gathered around him. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
The shadows stilled, undulating around him in a shield of darkness. His head tilted back to look at her. “You’re up.”
“Yes. I’m feeling much better.”
“That is surprising.”
“I’ve been working on it.”
“Getting better?” He asked as he rolled onto an elbow.
“I hadn’t planned on staying in that bed for the rest of my life.”
He arched an eyebrow.
Her cheeks burned, and she twisted her fingers together as she swallowed hard. “I was getting tired of staring at the ceiling.”
“Is that so?”
“And I need you to look at my eyes.”
“I would be doing that now if you would look at me instead of your hands.”
“No, no,” she said. “I think there’s something wrong with them.”
He rolled onto his hands and knees. She clenched her fingers harder as he crawled to her. His fingers sunk into plush red carpeting that she was certain would feel as comfortable as a bed.
But no beds, she chided herself. No beds. No blushes. No thoughts like that when the man who kidnapped her was crawling on hands and knees toward her.
A decidedly wicked grin spread across his face. His eyes narrowed with concentration as he knelt on his knees before her.
“What are you doing?” her voice shook as his hands skimmed her neck.
“Holding you still.”
“For what?”
One of his hands remained a steady heat against her throat while the other scooped under her hair to hold the back of her head. “So I can look into your eyes.”
Her lips trembled. “Why?”
“Because you asked me to.”
What was she doing? Her teeth ground hard until she could hear the creaking groan of her jaw. “My left eye.”
He leaned in close. Lydia could smell him now. Roses and cigar smoke. Chocolate and fir trees.
“Yes, you are correct,” he murmured. “It does appear your eyes are now different sizes.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you not know?”
“I wish I could say I knew everything, but it would be a lie.”
He leaned closer, peering at her odd sized eye. The movement brought him closer to her. Close enough that his nose might have grazed hers if he moved slightly to the side.
She didn’t want that. Lydia did not want to lean forward so she could inhale his scent deeper into her lungs. She didn’t want to breathe him in to see if his shadows would chill her overheated flesh.
“You seem more like yourself,” he sounded amused. His hand flexed against the back of her skull.
The words doused the fires burning in her stomach. “You don’t know what is normal for me. You don’t know me.”
“I know you well enough. I’ve kept you alive for so long, I think I could say I know you better than most.”
Her brows furrowed. “How long?”
Pitch took a while to answer her. His hand pulled away from her neck only to smooth the hair away from her face. His fingers danced along the tines of her horns. “I have the perfect jewelry for these.”
“I don’t want pretty things.”
“But you would look lovely covered in diamonds.”
“I don’t want diamonds. I want the truth.”
The look he gave her felt dangerously close to pity. “You have been asleep for a very long time.”
“Which is?”
“Somewhere around fifty years. I do not count them as others might, but I believe it has been that long.”
“Fifty years?” she repeated.
Although Lydia had understood that learning the future would have taken time, she hadn’t thought it would take so long.
“My friends?” she asked. “My family?”
“I did my best to find them while you were resting,” his hand continued the soothing rhythm. “They were concerned, particularly the Gorgon. She tried to turn me to stone.”
“She would have. She’s protective of me,” Lydia couldn't hear herself over the ringing in her ears.
“They love you a great deal.”
“I don’t look older.” Lydia remembered her reflection in the mirror, touching her face to find wrinkles she knew weren’t there.
He pulled her hand away from her face. “You are no longer human. Sil’s magic is powerful. You will not live a mortal life.”
“But I’m not-” She didn’t have the words. Immortal? Her mind threatened to snap. “It can’t be. Can it?”
“It can,” his thumbs wiped away her tears. “I think it’s time to show you the rest of Sil’s secrets. Would you like to see?”
Lydia nodded, though she was capable of little else.
Pitch stood. His body was as fluid as water, or perhaps as the shadows moving at the edges of her vision. The entire wheelchair shook as he rounded behind her and pulled her out of his room.
Lights sprung to life around them as he pushed her down the hallway. Sconces flickered with white magic, burning her sensitive weak eye. The bite of pain pulled her mind away from immortality and back into the present.
“How did you keep me alive?” Lydia asked as they approached a new set of stairs.
“Your body didn’t want to stay alive,” his voice was soft like the beat of an owl’s wings. “I watched you age until you stopped. Then you reversed time and became young again.”
“I did?”
“Perhaps unknowingly. Your power recognizes a healthy young body is more suitable to its purpose.”
It made sense, but also made her nervous.
“Pitch?” she asked. “If I wanted to die, do you think the magic would let me?”
He hesitated, but she felt an answer deep within her own breast. Something stirred inside her as though she had swallowed a snake. It writhed and coiled around her heart.
His voice was deeper than usual, “I don’t think it would.”
Something inside her cracked, revealing her future. If she ended her existence, then her body would continue on. She would be a doll for the magic to continue its work. Pretty and porcelain, she would spout prophecies until this world ended.
The magic would continue on without her.
“Oh,” she whispered.
The magic within her was silver with the light of t
he moon, and sharp as the edge of a blade.
“I am sorry,” Pitch told her. “It is not a fate I would wish for you.”
“You don’t know me,” she reminded him. “Maybe I was a serial killer before I was possessed. Maybe I hurt people in my spare time. Or just liked to make people cry because I knew the words to hurt them.”
He snorted as he guided her chair down a stairwell. “Highly unlikely.”
“You don’t believe I’m capable of it?”
His breath caught in the shell of her ear as he whispered, “I believe you are capable of a great many things. The magic within you should have dissolved your body. It should have fractured your mind. But here you are.”
“It feels like a dream,” she replied. “I’m going to wake up soon aren’t I?”
“Sadly, no. This is our reality as much as it is our nightmare.”
He pushed her into his office. Lydia’s eyes caught upon the books that lined the walls. They stretched two stories high. Thousands of books, in all shapes and sizes, assaulted her senses and her fingers itched to touch them.
She had forgotten how much she adored reading.
Golden lettering sparkled in the dim light, calling out to her. Clouds of glimmering gold dust shimmered between each book. She saw fingerprints on the spines, each a mark of love, of a single person handling each book with exquisite care.
“What are these?” Lydia asked.
“Her.”
His voice echoed in her mind while her eyes followed the lines of rich mahogany shelves. Along the edges of each bookcase, angels reached outstretched hands. It was the only place in the house that did not depict demons or gargoyles.
Fitting, she supposed, for the only place which he considered being hers.
She reached down, grasped the wheels of her chair, and propelled herself forward. A hidden part of herself was holding its breath. Each inch of space she devoured was a moment where she may discover the truth about herself. About her future.
The spines of the books were cold against her fingers. They did not heat at her touch or spark with magic. Disappointment made her sigh.
“They’re just books, Pitch,” she whispered.
“Yes, they are.”
She glanced over her shoulder. He leaned against the door frame, one leg hooked over the other and his arms crossed over his chest. Raising an eyebrow, he caught her gaze.