by E. E. Holmes
A hand shot up to my right. “Please, can you clarify? What do you mean, break itself apart?” the woman demanded, shaking back long, dark hair.
Celeste pursed her lips, but answered the question. “It traumatizes itself so that it can no longer hold its energy together into a form. The energy splits off into pieces.”
The same woman stood up now, not bothering to raise her hand. “But what do you mean? How can a spirit—”
Fiona stood up from her seat and snatched a glass of water from the table in front of her. “She bloody means like this!” she shouted, and threw the glass as hard as she could against the back wall. We all watched in stunned silence as the glass splintered into a hundred sparkling pieces that dropped to the floor with a musical, tinkling sound, like rain.
Fiona let the silence spiral for a few moments before shouting, “Now let the woman speak and hold your damn questions for the end!”
Celeste closed her eyes as though praying for patience, then said, “Thank you, Fiona. As I said, the spirit will Shatter itself. The severed pieces are called Shards. The Shards scatter on impact. They become confused and frightened. They do not remember who they are, or to which complete soul they once belonged. Each Shard only contains a confused smattering of memories that it cannot make sense of until it is reunited with the other Shards. Their only desperate goal is to seek the comfort of the Aether, and so they wander and Habitate in any Durupinen they can find, hoping to find a way through.”
A violent shiver rolled through my body. I didn’t want to believe that any of this could be true, that anything so terrible could happen to a person’s spirit, and yet it made sense. It explained what Hannah had felt when Catriona had been carried past her. The spirits the Necromancers had used to hide Annabelle had been torn apart as well, though by different means. Countless times now, I had felt the shining purity and completeness of souls Crossing through me, one by one. I had connected with their humanity, and shared in the vividness of their memories. For me, the thought of a soul in Shards was as awful to conceive of as a dismembered body. I felt the urge to be sick, and quickly swallowed it back, fighting instead to focus on Celeste’s next words.
“Shards of a Shattered spirit have found their way into this castle. They have nested in Catriona and in Siobhán, whom we now must call Hosts. We are sure now that this is the source of their afflictions,” Celeste said.
Another woman stood up, this time in the very first row, thrusting her hand into the air as she did so. “Permission to speak, please?” she called.
“Very well,” Celeste said, even as Fiona snorted in disgust behind her.
The woman cleared her throat. “So, this is a case of Habitation, then,” she said, in the tone of someone trying to inject sense and reason into the conversation. “Why doesn’t Mrs. Mistlemoore use one of the Caomhnóir to expel the Shards? Surely, we can find a way to contain them once they have exited the body, perhaps with a Caging?”
Heads nodded and murmurs of agreement filled the room, but Celeste put up her hand to quell them. “It is not as simple as that. All of our Castings are designed to work on the spirits—whole spirits—that we encounter in our day-to-day dealings. But Shards are not whole spirits, and our magic is not designed to work on them. Wards have no effect on them, because Wards are meant to keep out spirits that are intact. We have no Casting that will expel a Shard, nor any Circle that can contain one.”
My mouth went dry. What did this mean?
“What about a Crossing?” another Durupinen shouted all the way from the last row of seats. “The Shards want to cross, don’t they? So, give them exactly what they want! Open up the Gateways they are trying to breach and let them through!”
Several of the women around her shouted their approval of this idea, but Celeste was already shaking her head again.
“We cannot do that. It is against everything we stand for, the very reason we are here. To send a single Shard through the Gateway, without reuniting it first with all the others, would be tantamount to abandoning it to wander lost in the Aether forever. No part of that spirit would ever find peace.”
“Do you mean to say,” the woman in the front row went on, her tone incredulous, “that there is no way to help them? That these Shards will Habitate inside Catriona and Siobhán permanently?”
“Not necessarily, no,” Celeste said. “There is one way to facilitate the removal of a Shattered spirit, and that is to get all of the Shards and all of the Hosts together within the boundaries of the same Casting circle. When they have been gathered, there is a casting we can use to put the Shards back together again.”
“Well, you’ve gotten the two of them together into the same room, haven’t you?” Marion said, standing up to join the discussion. “Why can’t you simply join the Shards now?”
“That is the other difficulty,” Celeste said. “We do not know how many Shards there are.”
“You mean to say there could be other Shards floating around this castle right now, waiting to infect the rest of us?” Marion asked, and her voice was higher than usual, betraying her fear.
“Yes, I am afraid that is what I am saying,” Celeste said. She paused for a moment as a panicked wave of cries and shouts rose and then died. “We are still trying to ascertain if Catriona is the source of the Shattering, or if she is simply the first victim of a Shard Habitation. We are investigating her recent activities with the Trackers, attempting to retrace her steps, and learning what we can of her last few days.”
Something clicked in my head as I recalled those terrifying moments in Catriona’s office. My legs shaking, I stood up and thrust my hand into the air.
Celeste looked down at me and nodded solemnly. “Yes. The Council recognizes Jessica Ballard of the Clan Sassanaigh.”
I ignored, as best I could, the feeling of hundreds of hostile stares boring into me. I cleared my throat. “What you’ve just explained to us—about what happens to a spirit when it Shatters—well, it helped me make sense of something I witnessed when I was up in Catriona’s office.”
“What you witnessed?” Patricia O’Toole spat. “What do you mean, what you witnessed?”
“I was there,” I said. “I was there in Catriona’s office when the spirit first attacked her.”
A fresh round of mutters washed over me, and there was no denying the suspicious tone. I waited, gritting my teeth to bite back a nasty reply to the unwarranted hostility.
“There will be silence, please, so that Jessica can speak,” Celeste said sharply. “She has the floor.”
“When I realized that something was wrong with Catriona, I left her with my Caomhnóir, Finn Carey,” I said, pointing to Finn, who smartly stepped out of line and gave a sharp bow to Celeste. “Then I went to find help, but there were several Caomhnóir right down the hall, including Seamus and Braxton.” Again, I pointed out the Caomhnóir, and both acknowledged me with a nod of the head. “As we arrived back at the Tracker office, there was a sort of… explosion. Spirit energy just erupted out of the room, in every direction. It was incredibly violent; it blew us all right off our feet.”
Celeste nodded. “Yes, Seamus mentioned the incident when he reported to me.”
“Well, that must have been it, right? The Shattering?” I asked. “The spirit that was trying to get through Shattered itself at that moment, and the explosion was caused by the Shards that went flying out in every direction.”
Silence hung on the end of my words for a moment, and then Finn took another step forward.
“Permission to speak?” he barked.
“Granted,” Celeste said.
“I must agree with Jessica,” Finn said. My full name sounded foreign on his tongue, like the name of a stranger. “There was a screaming as well, a screaming that traveled out of Catriona and multiplied into many screams that dissipated through the castle. I did not understand what was happening at the time, but the Shattering would make sense of this phenomenon.”
Celeste turned and put her h
ead together with two Council members behind her. A buzzing of discussion broke out in small knots all over the room as this information was discussed. Finally, Celeste turned back to the podium.
“I must conclude that you are correct, Jessica. What you and the Caomhnóir witnessed was the moment of the Shattering. We can come to no other logical conclusion,” she conceded.
Fiona stood up, and her face was aghast. “So, this is not a question of an errant Shard or two finding their way into the castle. The Shattering happened here. That means the castle is full of them.”
All terrified eyes were now on Celeste, who said, grimly, “Yes.”
Several cries and soft screams of panic broke out then, and all around the room, Durupinen jumped up from their seats. A few actually started running for the doors.
“Stop!” Celeste was shouting over the chaos. “Stop! Everyone please! Go back to your seats and try not to panic! Caomhnóir, hold the doors!”
As one, the Caomhnóir around the perimeter of the room stomped their feet, pulling long staffs from their belts and thrusting them out in front of them, creating a sort of human fence. The Durupinen who had run for the exits were all pulled up short, piling up on one another as they stumbled back in their haste not to collide with the staffs.
“You can’t do this!” Marion cried, and a dozen shouts echoed her. “You cannot trap us here like sitting ducks, waiting for each of us to fall to these Shards!”
“If everyone could just keep calm, I can explain what we—” Celeste began.
“This is madness!” Patricia shouted over her. “Call off these Caomhnóir at once! We are not obligated to stay here and calmly await our own Habitations!”
“Obligated? Of course you are obligated!” Fiona boomed, her voice like a cannon blast that barreled through the disorder and left it speechless. She stepped up onto her bench, and then up onto the tabletop in front of her, nostrils flaring in her fury. “Two of your sisterhood have fallen! Two of your fellow Gatekeepers are held hostage by forces they cannot fight on their own. And this is what you do? You turn tail and run? Is that what your sisterhood means to you? Is that all it’s worth, that you would spit on it, and turn your back to save yourselves?”
No one spoke. No one moved. All was stillness.
“You disgust me,” Fiona spat, and the words felt like Shards themselves, cutting into each of us. “Where is your courage? You would walk out those doors knowing that to do so means abandoning two of your own? You leave now, and there is a chance Catriona and Siobhán will never recover. They could lie in that hospital wing for the rest of their lives, mere vessels to a hostile spirit that refuses to let them go.”
The shame and embarrassment was palpable in the crowd.
“And if that doesn’t move you, because you don’t give a flying feck about other living people, think of the Gateways! What about the chaos this will cause, with two Gateways permanently crippled, unable to traffic the very spirits we are bound to protect? There are bigger things at play here than if you get inconvenienced for a few days!”
“Inconvenienced? We could be the next victims of this Shattering!” Marion replied, though her tone was definitely more subdued than before.
“Yes, you might,” Fiona said bluntly. “Some of us will surely have to play Host to these things, until all of them have nested and we can reunite and expel them all! There is no other choice! If you consider yourself too good for such a task, do please point out those here present in the hall that you would prefer to do it in your stead.”
Though Marion threw a pointed look in my direction, she didn’t dare meet Fiona’s challenge. Nor did anyone else. It seemed that Fiona took the time to look into every single face in the hall, daring each one to respond before finally saying. “No takers? Very well then. Kindly let your Deputy Priestess continue.”
“Thank you, Fiona,” Celeste said, nodding graciously to Fiona before continuing. “There is an additional challenge. The Casting used to reassemble the Shattered spirit includes a Naming.”
Several people groaned. Others looked even more puzzled than before, including Savvy, who stood up and called out, “Can you explain what that is, for the newcomers, please?” There was a murmur of agreement, which Hannah and I joined.
Celeste obliged. “Some Castings cannot be carried out without knowledge of the Spirit’s name. The name must be spoken, as part of the ritual, for the Casting to work. The healing of a Shattered spirit is one of these Castings. Unless we can discover who he or she is, we cannot heal or expel the spirit in question. By using the spirit’s name, we can force it to listen, to give us information, and to comply to demands. It cannot refuse us once its name has been spoken.”
Keira stood up. “And the Shards themselves are too confused to identify who they are?”
“That’s right,” Celeste said. “The Shattering leaves them so disoriented and incomplete that they do not have a full understanding of who they are. The more of them we gather, the better the chance that they will collectively remember, but we cannot guarantee it. And so, the Scribes are busy researching and questioning our resident spirits for any information, and the Trackers are retracing Catriona’s most recent moves, in the hopes that we can identify the spirit on our own. They have already—yes, the Council recognizes Jocelyn Lightfoot of the Clan Dílseacht.”
“You said a few minutes ago, that we need all the Shards in the hospital wing together in order to proceed. Is there no way to find them? They are pieces of spirits, after all, and everyone here is sensitive,” Jocelyn said. She was instantly recognizable as Riley and Róisín’s mother. They all had the same jet-black hair and round cheeks. “Surely, with the entire castle on alert, we can track them all down.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Celeste began, but then, to my utter shock, Hannah stood up and placed her hand in the air. Celeste spotted her at once and pointed to her, “The Council recognizes Hannah Ballard of the Clan Sassanaigh.”
If the Durupinen seemed wary at my remarks, it was nothing compared to the tension that met Hannah’s turn to speak. She fought to ignore it, though she clenched and unclenched her hands. Suddenly, a soothing voice flowed through the connection, wrapping Hannah in its comfort.
“Don’t you let them intimidate you, sweetness. You got something to say and they’re going to hear it. We don’t play their games,” Milo said. He materialized beside her, and I knew the shivery coolness of his presence was as good as a security blanket to her.
“I have some experience in sensing fractured spirits,” Hannah said, an audible tremor in her voice. “Three years ago, I came across a Necromancer casting that used fractured spirits to hide someone. The spirit fragments were very, very difficult to sense. We were in the room with them for a long time before we even realized something was there, and I was the only one who noticed, probably because of my Caller abilities.”
Celeste nodded. “Go on, please.”
“When the Caomhnóir carried Catriona past me earlier today, I sensed it again. It was a similar energy. Again, it was very faint, and very difficult to decipher. If I hadn’t felt it before, I don’t think I would have picked up on it,” Hannah said.
“So, it can be detected,” Marion said, pointing at Hannah with a triumphant gesture. “So, we send the Caller around the castle to track down the Shards.”
I leapt up from my seat, plowing right over Celeste’s attempt to acknowledge me. “First of all, ‘the Caller’ has a name. Her name is Hannah Ballard, and you better use it if you are going to address her. Secondly, she is not some canary you are going to shove down this coal mine, to be sacrificed because you’re too scared to face the alternative. And lastly, even if Hannah were willing to scour the entire castle for these Shards, what good would it do? You heard Celeste: there is no way to trap them, no way to contain them. In all likelihood, Hannah would immediately become a Host to the first Shard she found, and then we’d be right back where we started.”
Marion opened her mouth to ret
ort, but Fiona cut her off. “Jessica is right. We cannot let our fear overrule our good sense, however little good sense some of us may have,” she said, and she glared at Marion.
“Thank you, Fiona, but that is not constructive either,” Celeste said. “The fact is that there is only one course of action. During your wait in this room, our Scribes have been consulted, and every text about Shattered spirits in our extensive library has been reviewed. Fairhaven must be quarantined. No one is allowed to leave the premises. The Hosts will be gathered in the hospital wing, within the circle that, even now, the hospital staff are creating with the help of the Scribes. When all the Shards have been gathered together, the process to rejoin and expel them can begin.”
“Quarantined?” Patricia shouted. “Why must we be quarantined if we have not been infected?”
“Any one of us could be a Host at this moment, and simply be ignorant of the fact,” Celeste said. “The Shards do not announce themselves. They take over without warning. We cannot risk that anyone might leave this castle an unwitting Host. The instructions are clear, and we will all abide by them. Anyone who breaks the quarantine will face serious sanctions against her clan. Make no mistake about that.”
No one spoke. No one argued. Everyone simply waited for what was next.
Celeste took a long moment to let her threat sink in before she continued. “We cannot continue the Airechtas under these conditions. I move that all sessions be suspended until the Shattering is resolved.”
“Seconded,” Fiona called from the benches.
“All in favor?” Celeste asked.
Slowly every hand in the room rose into the air, including mine. Hannah’s was still shaking.
“Motion carried,” Celeste said. “The Caomhnóir stationed outside of this room have secured the entrances to the castle and the borders of the grounds. We will gather here again at eight o’clock tomorrow morning for another update. Any encounters with a Shard must be reported swiftly. Caomhnóir will be stationed with their clans until further notice. The Caomhnóir reserves have been called, and will be assigned to each clan to provide a second shift of protection overnight. We will do all we can to keep everyone as safe as possible.”