“What is that? What’s down there?” Sami managed to ask.
“Nothing is in there,” the Nixie hissed. “And everything.”
“The void!” Bat shrieked. “Between the Worlds.”
“Without depth or death,” the Nixie affirmed with her frozen smile. “Things fall without cease.”
Again Sami tried to step away from the ledge and once again her rubbery legs failed her.
“Perhaps you would like to give me the Eye now,” the Nixie purred. “Or do you need a closer look at the void?”
“Never.” Shaking, Sami crossed her arms tightly. “You’ll have to take it from me.”
“That won’t be a problem,” the Nixie assured her. “I can crush enemies and traitors with a single blow. Like so.” She flicked her index finger and swatted Bat across the room: she struck the wall and fell lifeless to the floor.
“No!” Sami gasped. “Don’t hurt her!”
The mer-creature tilted closer to Sami, so her coiling hair spilled forward, and her hands swept over and around, sweeping powerful air currents through the room. “You have so many playmates! I can dispose of you in the same way. Or perhaps you’d rather make some new friends—like Ashrafieh.”
“Ashrafieh?” The name echoed through Sami’s brain. She was filled with a sense of dread. The Flicker from her grandmother’s stories, her guide and protector, was named Ashrafieh.
The Nixie gave a weird hooting laugh that rippled and reverberated through the walls of her palace. “I had to do something to bring you to me, didn’t I? I needed you to transport the Eye for me, from World to World. But I also need you, Samara,” she added slyly.
“I have nothing to give you,” Sami snapped.
“But that’s where you’re wrong. You are something so special. You were born with the powers of your ancestors—human and Flicker. Finally, after generations of empty waiting, there is one deserving of my Reflecting. I shall become a Flicker again and learn to Reflect you, Silverwalker.” Her hair twined and twisted as a terrible smile filled her face.
A Flicker? Sami hesitated, but didn’t have time to puzzle over this. She wanted to run away, yet her body wouldn’t obey her. And there was something more, something beguiling about the music in the Nixie’s voice and her extraordinary laughter that snaked its way into Sami’s consciousness. She squatted before the pit, shaking so badly she could hardly breathe. “I would never want you as my Flicker,” she said, “a monster like you.”
“Monster, you say?” Again the Nixie laughed, the sound of it increasingly musical. “The gloaming has begun. Soon you won’t be able to resist me at all. And don’t forget, Samara—you are part monster yourself. The blood of Ifrit and Flickers runs through you.” Colors of sea green and teal blue rinsed across her face and body and her hair twitched, and Sami watched as the Nixie grew at least another foot taller. “Just give me the Eye,” she crooned. “I’ll let you go and I’ll free your grandmother, too! Oh yes, I know all about her troubles. And I’m the only one with the power to release her. That is why you came to Silverworld in the first place, isn’t it, Samara? Just give me the Eye and you can go home a hero.”
Horrified, Sami realized she was beginning to feel drawn to the Nixie. Increasingly, everything the Nixie said seemed to ring with truth and music and poetry. The Nixie knew how to free Sami’s grandmother—so why not give her the stone? What a tiny price to pay—why, it was almost nothing at all!
There was just a very small, dwindling sense at the back of her mind—the awareness that she’d come for Teta, but that along the journey, her purpose had grown larger and stronger. Sami wasn’t here for Teta only, not anymore, but for Dorsom and Natala, for Bat and the creatures imprisoned in the castle and its grounds. For all of lovely, flickering Silverworld. And yet her thoughts were getting cloudy and confused. She knew she’d come to fight the Nixie, but the feeling of it, the necessity, seemed to be moving farther and farther away—as if the monster were lulling her into a trance. The terrible pit that yawned between them might have changed back into a sparkling blue pool again for all Sami knew. None of it mattered any longer—not Silverworld or the Actual World, not the Flickers or her family. It was impossible not to give in.
Sami smiled broadly as the Nixie’s laughter rang through the palace, and the walls and floors trembled and rocked as Sami opened her palm and held up the ring. “I’m coming,” she said.
The Nixie reached out with her smooth gray hands, leaning so close that Sami could smell salt water and starfish. And at the very last moment, grasping at the last atoms of her resolve—the last remaining shred of her former self—she turned away from the hands and walked into the eternal void.
It was like bursting through a sheet of frozen fire.
Falling and screaming, followed by a shriek from the surface. Sami caught a glimpse of ruby eyes, a flickering split tongue, and a taloned, scaly hand shooting out, trying to snatch her back, grazing her hair. She plunged, along with a shower of falling debris, stones, tile, gems, forks, seashells, and what might’ve been silver backgammon pieces.
Plummeting.
Gasping.
Eyes slit against wind, onrushing emptiness, a distant light above, already fading.
Twisting and spinning, losing all sense of up and down.
She tried to catch another breath, her mind spiraling, dimly aware that she was falling, falling, falling.
It was like all the falls of her life combined and spun in circles—from trees and stairs and the crumbling building in Lebanon. She wailed continuously as the force of the plummet sucked the sound right out of her throat. Seconds burnt into minutes until time itself burnt away, meaningless in the unending dark.
And yet.
Something inside Sami, something larger than she was, started to grow warm. It was a sensation that pressed through her skin and charged her heart and mind, as if she had been waiting for this all along. This thing in her seemed to have no fear of falling—or any other fear. It was a feeling, sensing quality that sharpened her thoughts and gave her presence of mind, even in the free-falling plunge.
Somewhere inside that endless well of falling, Sami perceived a weirdly familiar sensation. Impossibly enough, it seemed she was able to pick up on a vibration that felt like the air in her grandmother’s bedroom. “Teta!” she yelped. Teta warbled away in the falling force as if she were shouting underwater. She closed her eyes again, concentrated, and sent her thoughts out in a beam: Teta, Teta, Teta.
After a long pause, a thought bounced back: Here.
The word rang inside her—Here—a fiery bell of both thought and voice. Even through the wind, Sami heard it clearly.
“Teta?” she gasped. “Where—are—you?”
“I am Ashrafieh,” the sorrowful voice called back.
Ashrafieh. A dozen memories flashed: Sami at three or four, playing patty-cake, her grandmother pointing to her reflection in the mirror: Who’s that in there?
Ashrafieh.
“There is no ‘where’ here,” the voice went on. “I am no-where.”
“Hear you,” Sami gasped as she spun. “Trying to. Hear. I’m—I can’t stop.”
“You must try to listen, Sami. You must try to stop the free fall.”
“How?”
“Samara!” the voice cried, sounding so like her grandmother that even as Sami streaked through the nothing place, she strained toward the voice. Instinctively, her body had started to curl in on itself like a fist. “Call on them. The powers. They will stop you.”
Sami couldn’t think. She struggled to listen through the rushing winds.
“Free fall is no different from Silverwalking. It’s like a mind fall—inside your body and your imagination! If you stop your mind, then your body—it will follow!”
Sami was knotted up tightly, her knees pressed against her forehead, arms wrapped arou
nd her shins. She kept her eyes closed and tried to imagine stopping, but she was sick with fear and dizziness. She just seemed to go faster and faster. “It’s—not—working,” she spat out.
“Don’t think of what’s outside or around, of edges or surfaces. Turn within. Find your hidden light, your mantle core. Go there! NOW,” the voice commanded. Sami inhaled sharply, and like a pulse of pure energy, she felt herself speed to some inside place beyond even blood and bones, a beat of brightness inside pure dark.
Eyes shut tight, Sami looked toward a glowing white light.
She knew she had reached a safe place—far beyond the fall or the void—and she felt it growing stronger, brighter, and larger around her. It was a place she thought she’d visited at least once before, on the day she learned her father had died. In this place were many bits of memories and pieces of thoughts: her parents’ voices, her grandmother calling to her, singing an Arabic lullaby, “Yalla Tnam Rima.” In this place, she heard other languages and other voices—those of friends and strangers saying her name. She felt them all around her, inside the bright place, stars inside a constellation. She thought, You are made of all your memories.
Something amazing began to happen: Sami started to relax. Her hands opened, her knees released, her legs floated out, her arms unfolded. She stopped spinning. Her fall seemed somehow to ease, softening, slowing. She began to feel—almost buoyant. As if she were learning to fly.
She lifted her arms and the wind supported her. She wasn’t afraid anymore, but…nearly…triumphant. She wanted to laugh out loud. And then she did laugh, because she wasn’t falling at all. She arched her back and felt herself turn in a little circle. She tilted her arms in one direction, then the other, and her body turned with them. When she flapped her arms, her body rose and she could figure out which way was up. When she lowered her arms, she sank a bit, but could hold herself in place with a single thought: Stay.
“Ah. So you are stopped,” the voice said. “Good. Very good.” Sami heard a hint of surprise. “And you did it so quickly. It took me months of mind fall before I even began the down-slowing.”
“You saved me,” Sami called softly. “Thank you…Ashrafieh.”
“You know of me, then,” the voice said. Sami could hear her pleasure. “But it was you who saved yourself.”
“I remember you talked to me—through the gazing pool?” Sami prompted her.
“That wasn’t my physical self you observed,” she said, “but that of my mind. Gazing pools can channel mind waves.” And it was a difficult message to send, she added, switching to thoughts. Terribly risky to try to sneak thoughts through the water. No knowing when she might be listening. I did it through your friend.
“Through Dorsom?” Sami asked. “When he got into the gazing pool, he said he was just going to reflect my own thoughts.”
He must have been surprised to hear my whispers, she said gently. He was the true channel through which I spoke. What an extraordinary rebalancer he is. He made it possible for me to break through to you.
“And now we’re together. Here.” Sami turned once through the air, trying to make out any shapes or contours around her, but it was impossible to see through the purplish-gray murk—a bit like trying to look past the edges of a dream. “What is this place?”
“The space between the Worlds—the void between Silverworld and the Actual World,” the voice said. “In this time of being trapped here, this is all I’ve come to understand. We’re trapped within a kind of portal, in a place that free-falls and keeps falling.”
Sami asked, “How? How did that thing get you?”
She could hear Ashrafieh hesitate, trying to put her answer into words. “There was a time when our Silverskinned went empty—the one shared between your grandmother and me. Our connection is special—stronger than that between most Actuals and Flickers. A most powerful being is your grandmother—she is sensitive and open to the energies of the Ifrit. So Nixie is fascinated and compelled by her. When our contact was emptied—even though it was very briefly—I became weakened. It was then Nixie seized and imprisoned me.”
It went empty? Sami tried to imagine in what way a mirror could ever be empty. It sounded like something that could only happen here, not in her world. Frustrated, she looked straight up, flapping her arms, craning backward in search of some sign of light. “Well, whatever this place is—it’s been real, but I’m ready to get out of here. How about you?”
“For me it’s not possible. I fear you needs must leave me.”
Sami’s head twisted around as she searched the nothingness. “There’s no way that I’ll do that.”
“I’ve tried. For ages. No one escapes the Bleak Fairy’s prison. I cannot move or be moved. And you must not stay. The gloaming has set in—I see it in the depth of the grayness. It twitches and deepens. Once it completes, it will swallow Silverworld entirely. Though my powers are nowhere as strong as yours, you must leave now or you’ll never have any way to return to your own World. Already I fear it may be too late.”
Sami felt her heart tighten, imagining for an instant the colors and creatures of Silverworld lost to the emptiness. Just as quickly, she pressed her eyes shut. Never. “Ashrafieh—I know you’re not my grandmother. I’m still learning how this Reflecting World works. But I know for a fact that you’re a part of her—that Teta isn’t Teta without you. She’s dying, back in the Actual World, and she needs you. I would never ever leave my grandmother in a place like this and I sure as anything won’t leave you, either.”
“But the gloaming—”
Sami flapped her arms once with impatience and jumped upward. “Being scared and stuff just holds us back. That’s something I learned from Dorsom and Natala. We have to try—there’s no other choice. You helped me stop falling—now help me to help you! Guide me to you—send out a sign, any kind of signal.”
She could almost feel Ashrafieh shaking her head. “There’s no kind of location—there isn’t a here or place to come to,” the Flicker said miserably.
“Yet we can hear each other,” Sami insisted. “And not just in our minds, right? Our voices are reaching each other somehow. And I still have a physical body….” Sami ran her hands along her arms. “And you?”
“That I have. Though I’m not sure what is left of me. I’ve been in stasis—without nourishment or reflection—for a long time.”
Sami nodded in the dark. “If you still have a body, then you still can be moved. Couldn’t you travel to that same—inside place—that you helped me find?”
“Flickers aren’t built like Actuals—you hold your unbreakable energy within yourself. For us, it rests on the outer surface—it is with this energy we reflect. I need color to survive.”
Sami crossed her arms, feeling almost comfortable for someone floating in midair. “I’ll carry you….”
“No—no—I am quite certain, it won’t work—” The voice sounded fainter. “It’s too much effort, even to stay here—present with you….”
“Have you ever tried? With an actual Silverwalker?” Sami felt bold—it was the first time she’d ever openly called herself that. “Before, when you helped me—you sort of shot your voice, or shouted maybe; it was like I rode on it, on a current.”
“I sent you a thought message, but it was you who did all the work of it.” Ashrafieh’s voice was increasingly distant, as if she were fading away. “I’m slipping….”
“Then let me try now,” Sami cried into the grayness, terrified of losing their connection. “I’ll hang on to you!”
The Flicker didn’t respond—she seemed to have entirely gone away. There was no time to wait. Sami wasn’t certain of what to do next, but she wrapped her arms around herself, lowered her head, and tried to go back to that bright core of energy. She reached toward it herself. This time, the way back was stronger and clearer to her. The bright space appeared easily. And there
was something more there, another voice or presence she’d felt before, but couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t Ashrafieh, she was almost certain. But that extra something or someone was important—she knew it. She reached toward it, listening, thinking, waiting.
Sami, I’m here. With you I am. Do you hear?
Her eyes snapped open and she cried out, “Dorsom!”
Sami felt Dorsom’s presence as clearly as if he were right next to her, yet she couldn’t help saying, “Is it really you?”
For true, it’s me. I felt you return back to Silverworld—and I knew when you spilled into the void. I called and called to you, hoping your thought-mind would hear mine.
Sami nodded. “I can hear your thoughts perfectly—I can. Oh, Dorsom!” she cried, full of hope and fear all at once, and she heard her voice tremble. For a moment, she felt wisps of dread creep into her stomach. “It’s so horrible here. I can’t see or feel a thing. It’s like being trapped inside someone’s—”
Deadness.
“Yes.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “And—and also, there’s someone else—Ashrafieh is here as well—with me. She’s trapped. We have to help her.”
I know.
“You knew?” Sami looked straight overhead, where she imagined the way back would be. “Have you always known she was here?”
We suspected. Ashrafieh has been missing for some time. We didn’t know for certain until you joined her.
When Dorsom said until you joined her, Sami felt her bright core grow dim and shrink, and her ears pulsed. What sounded like a million other tiny voices seemed to rush in from all directions, all of them throbbing with the same despair, as if she were surrounded by an army of lost souls.
Sami, resist the emptiness, Dorsom instructed. Pull away from any of the murky places. Now is the time for you to free-fly.
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