by Joni Sensel
Chapter 31
Ariel forced her feet toward Elbert. With only her hands and nothing to use as a pry bar, her plan wouldn't work so neatly. Still, she had to take her best chance.
"Left hand or right?" Elbert asked her. "Or shall I choose for you?"
"Left." Her throat was so dry, the word croaked and she had to repeat it. She kept her right fist loose at her side and tried not to imagine how it might shortly feel. The symbols tickled there now. She hoped Neela's observation before had been right and they'd respond to protect her somewhat when she needed. The sand around Neela's papa had shrunk from them. Elbert's wire might, too. If not, they'd be the last message this Farwalker would deliver. And the most meaningless.
Elbert's wires slid and shuffled, a knot growing broader and reaching toward her. He jerked his head toward the ghoul. "Make yourself useful and come take this timepiece. And quit flapping. You'll block his good view."
As the sail went limp and the cobbles thumped forward, Ariel sensed a small movement behind her. Briefly hidden by her body, Scarl was gathering himself, most likely to stop her. To delay him, she blurted to Elbert, "You probably don't know I'm a Farwalker now. I carry messages, and I have one for you."
Elbert growled. "I think the last message you gave me was spittle. I should have wrung your neck then."
"This one's not from me. I'm just carrying it. See?" She flashed her right palm, hoping the symbols might distract him. Then she flattened that hand into a blade and plunged it into his chest. Just as the crow had dived into one dead man, maybe she could reach into another and pluck out a dull light that would shift Elbert's focus and make him easier to fight.
Barbed wire proved more solid and biting than sand. The first pain felt like slamming her hand into ice. The second was worse, a fire that ripped. Ariel's torn fingers couldn't feel anything in Elbert except agony. She didn't know if they'd recognize his spark if they found it, but now she couldn't close her hand upon it even if they did.
Chaos erupted around her. Elbert roared, first in startled laughter and then in outrage. Scarl leapt up. He'd slipped out of his coat and now thrust it, and himself, between Ariel and Elbert. The oilcloth snagged and hindered the wire, and Scarl's body shielded Ariel--except her right arm. That was already trapped.
To her astonishment, Elbert released her. Continued pain blurred her view, but the wire of Elbert's chest sprang away from her fingers like a fanged mouth gaping in shock. Abruptly her right hand was free.
She yanked it to her chest. She expected to find a spark in her palm, delivered by some miracle of fumbling and luck. She saw only blood. But a light flared past Scarl, illuminating them both. There were five sparks in Elbert, and they weren't merely dull points. She'd delivered her message better than she'd hoped, and the symbols had slipped from her palm to the wire. Fiery, they raced along strands, taking shape for a blink before streaming to reform somewhere else. The wires kinked and shook at their passage.
Elbert's shadow sprang from the wire, which collapsed with a twang, Scarl's coat tangled with it. Unable to escape the wire completely, Elbert's shade stomped down the pile of barbs. Reaching up, shadow hands clenched around Scarl's throat.
Although without substance, those hands wielded the full strength of hatred. Scarl dropped hard at Ariel's feet.
Knocked back by his fall, she cried his name and stumbled toward him. Sailcloth battered at her to stop her. The ghoul had rushed in. A cobblestone hit her thigh, numbing her leg so it wouldn't bear weight. Hopping, Ariel fought, trapping both cobblestones under the cloth and sweeping the blood-streaked sail into a mound.
As it shifted and tugged to get free, the sailcloth snagged on the pile of wire. The more the ghoul churned it, the more barbs the sail caught. The five symbols, still racing along strands of the wire, glowed through the cloth. They blazed more brightly, and the whole knot went limp.
Whirling, Ariel clawed with her uninjured hand at the dark grip around Scarl's neck. Her fingers and his pulled in vain at what felt like a collar of ice.
Another voice joined the tumult: "Another bet for you, Uncle!"
Neela and Zeke ran up through the fog, Scarl's rope stretched between them. They faltered when they saw the fight, taking it in.
Neela darted closer. "I'll bet flames can melt you!" With an aim as precise as she'd shown on the seashore, she tossed a noose over the cloth-tangled wire. Zeke yanked the lasso tight, and they both pulled the rope--with the wire and sail--down the steep slope toward the drop-off. Elbert's shadow, bound to the wire, dragged behind.
Unfortunately, so did Scarl. Ariel threw her weight on him. She slowed him, but not enough. Elbert's anchor of wire and sail was heavy, and as Zeke and Neela drew close to the dangerous edge, they stopped pulling and began shoving the useless snarl over. Elbert couldn't break free, but he was taking Scarl with him.
Ariel cried, "Zeke, stop!"
Over the grinding of the wire on stone, Zeke and Neela either didn't hear or didn't heed. But Scarl did, and he must have realized he was nearing the brink. Although the strain on his swollen face said it took his last effort, he stopped fighting Elbert to shove Ariel off him.
"No!" She scrambled back to him, clinging, as the wire mound plunged over the edge. Elbert's shadow slipped after it, feet first, until his whole dark length dangled from his grip on Scarl's neck.
Zeke dropped on Scarl, too. For an instant, they hung balanced, Scarl purple and choking between. Ariel clutched at his shirt, more ready to fall with him than to let Elbert take him alone.
A gleam flashed near her straining right wrist. The marks on Ariel's palm had not crawled off after all, but spawned onto the wire as they had from the guard stone. The original set pulsed on the back of her hand now, glowing pink amid her bloody wounds.
With a cry, she thrust her wounded hand forward and plastered it against Scarl's shadowy noose. The marks zipped between her fingers and down to his neck.
Recoiling as he had from the marks on the wire, Elbert flung his hands wide, letting go. The weighted wire took him.
His fall was silent, but flames leapt high to meet him.
Chapter 32
Zeke dragged Ariel and Scarl from the edge as sand beneath them tumbled into the void.
The Finder rolled to one side and lay fighting for breath. His chest convulsed with the effort, but he only managed a raspy wheezing. Under the smeared blood from Ariel's hand, his throat was visibly crushed and bruises already darkened his skin. She crouched at his shoulder, fumbling to get him more air.
Neela rushed to her side. Zeke was already there.
"He can't breathe!" Ariel's heart fluttered. "Neela! Can you put the wind in him?"
"Like you did me," urged Zeke.
"I don't have my pipe!" Neela whistled and huffed, but the meager sounds that resulted brought no wind in response. "It's not working."
"None of our skills are the same here," Zeke murmured. "The stones haven't listened to me much, either."
Ariel said, "Please keep trying!"
Neela cupped her hands and blew breath to Scarl's lips. Nothing she did made a difference. Scarl's gasps weakened.
Ariel raised his limp hand, pleading. "Don't." She choked on tears.
He gave no sign that he was aware of her.
Ariel thought of Mirayna. Would he die and go join her? Or suffer a worse fate? Here outside the world, he might become trapped in a lifeless body that would anchor his spirit like wire or sand. Mirayna's words of warning echoed in Ariel's head.
They stirred not just regret, but also desperate hope. If hatred and anger could cause so much damage here, maybe other emotions could fix it. Mirayna's gratitude had brought them together at the lighthouse, and Neela's papa had delivered a beating with his anger, but neither example told Ariel what to do now. Yet it seemed to her that when it came to love, the most delicate touches contained the most power--fingertips on her face, a butterfly alighting, a breath tickling her ear as it brought her a secret. A caress of a thumb on
the back of a hand, or Scarl's palm skimming her hair when he thought she was sleeping.
Ariel's fingers hovered over his chest where his shirt hid the scar that was oddly shaped like a hand. That, too, had come from a touch of unexplained strength, a reminder from a ghost who would not be ignored. The memory brought Ariel inspiration. The ghost's handprint had returned Scarl to her once before. Maybe it could again.
Drawing on past glimpses, she spread her bloody fingers to roughly cover the welt. Scarl's heart skittered beneath her torn hand, almost too weakly for her to feel it. He was warm in the clammy mist, though. She focused on that.
Ariel summoned everything she felt for Scarl. Memories of their best and worst moments together flitted through her mind, each adding to the fire of feelings in her heart. Love tangled with respect and not a little frustration. They all swirled in her chest so she thought she might burst.
Bending close, she set a feather-light kiss on his neck. As she touched him, she exhaled, imagining everything in her heart running out into him--including, if need be, the force of her own life, her own spark of Essence inside. She willed it to flow from her lips to her hand, flooding Scarl with her life so his heart would keep beating, and with love potent enough to heal his damaged throat.
He twitched and then dragged in a hideous gasp. Ariel recoiled, sure she'd made matters worse, but she kept her hand on him. His chest jerked and stilled. She held her own breath, thinking she'd watched his last one. Her kiss had been only a silent good-bye.
Zeke clutched her shoulder. A rush of love and sympathy like a warm, fragrant breeze slid from him into her. She let it flow through her and exhaled that, too, to Scarl.
At the very end of her breath, the Finder inhaled again. Ariel froze, hardly daring to hope. Scarl drew air in as deeply as she had exhaled, as though they shared the same breath and she'd passed it to him. The air hissed through his throat, but it no longer stuck. Ariel rejoiced when he coughed, which no one could do without air to expel. Slowly the rise of his chest grew less labored. His eyes fluttered open to fix on her.
"It's all right, better now, you'll be fine," Ariel babbled. "Right?"
His eyes closed again, but his hand fumbled, found hers on his chest, and pressed it.
Focused on Scarl, Ariel paid little attention to Zeke until he drew her hand from the Finder's chest and began dabbing blood from it with his sleeve.
"How bad is this?" he asked. "The bleeding's stopped, at least."
Pain rushed back into her awareness. Her right hand was afire. "I'm surprised I have fingers left." Her voice wobbled. "Good thing I need my hands less than my feet..." A warm wave swept through her, threatening to pull her into a faint. Slumping against Zeke, she let him tend her.
Not finding the source of the blood, he wiped more firmly. Instead of gouged flesh, he uncovered a mass of fresh scars. On her palm, the scars and symbols were woven together, the difference between them not easy to tell.
"That's it? No cuts?" he asked.
A pained laugh escaped her. Her own gratitude must've been as strong as Mirayna's, or perhaps the love flowing through her had worked from within. "I'm so happy Scarl's alive, they probably healed," she told Zeke. "But then why does it still hurt so bad?"
"I don't know. Can you move it?"
She'd moved it before, as Scarl's bloody shirt showed, but now Ariel was afraid to increase the burning. She twitched one finger, unwilling to try anything as bold as making a fist.
"I don't mean to be rushing, since I'm not the one hurt," Neela said. "But as soon as we can, we should go. Before more nasty spooks come along."
"Good idea," Zeke agreed. "Let's get out from under this bridge. It's not hard, but Scarl will probably need help."
Ariel leaned over the Finder. "Scarl? Can you sit up, do you think?"
He raised one hand in a weak gesture to wait. His other hand rose to his throat, so Ariel guessed pain was still dogging him, too. Shortly he struggled to push himself upright.
Together they got Scarl to his feet, with Zeke supporting most of his weight. When Ariel tried to help, Zeke waved her off.
"It'll be easier if we're not tripping on each other," he said. "I can carry him on my back, if I have to. It wouldn't be the first time today."
Ariel could hardly imagine Scarl agreeing to that. "When was the first?"
"When we stepped onto The Plank to fall out of the world."
"You know The Plank?" Neela asked.
"How else did you think we got here?" said Zeke.
Neela narrowed her eyes. "Don't tell me the wind helped?"
"It didn't." Zeke ducked out from under the abutment with Scarl. Ariel and Neela followed, angling up the mushy embankment toward the cobbled bridge deck.
"I was hoping you'd quit following when you got to the ladder," Ariel told him. "I thought you'd fall if you tried it."
Zeke grimaced. "We might have, without Scarl's rope." He explained in short bursts how they'd reached The Plank.
"The stone told me how you'd gone, as well as what people called it, and I explained why we needed to follow," he said, huffing. "You probably didn't notice how eroded it was, but it was getting ready to fall, and since it had learned the way from the wind, it'd been thinking of leaving the world anyhow. I begged it to help us. It wouldn't have, I don't think, except it liked cheating gravity by falling out of the world."
Having climbed to the top of the slope, Zeke paused to catch his breath. "The hard part was for it to take us with it alive," he added. "If we'd already been standing on it when it broke, it would have dropped from beneath us and left us behind. But if we stepped on it too late, we'd miss it. Either way, we'd have fallen. We had to hop at exactly the right instant, staying close without touching--like jellyfish sucked into the wake of a boat. And since I was the only one who could hear the stone's signal, the feet jumping had to be mine."
Scarl tried to speak. Little more than a hoarse whisper came out. "Or I would've left him. Rather than risk Zeke's death, too."
Ariel winced. "I'm sorry." The words made her feel worse. They were words for spilling somebody's tea, not for endangering their lives. Her friends didn't have to follow her anywhere, truly, and she wasn't sorry she'd helped Neela, but they'd almost lost Scarl, and more dreadful things might yet come. Ariel hugged herself, thinking of both Zeke and Nace. It was hard to do the right thing for everybody. She could only do what seemed to be the right thing for her and hope those she loved understood.
"I wouldn't have let Scarl leave me behind," Zeke said. "We made it, anyway. I rode The Plank, and he rode on me. After I convinced him I could bear him. I took a big leap... into nothing, a blur. But when my feet landed, the stone lay on the bridge, and we stood on top of it. Come see."
They hurried onto the first cobblestones of the bridge.
"We heard the boom when The Plank hit," Neela said. "Did it hurt to fall without the wind?"
Zeke shook his head. "It was jarring, but not like a fall. More like bumbling off a porch that wasn't as high as you-- hey!"
They were near enough to the guard stones to make out their symbols. But now The Plank stood between them on its broken base, reaching twice as high as the stones. Narrow gaps were all that separated them.
"It stood up!" Zeke said. "It was lying flat when we came."
A shadow slipped through the slender space between stones, billowing out to human shape before sidling past. But unless the drifting mist was fooling Ariel's eyes, none of the gaps between the three stones was wide enough for anyone with flesh to pass through.
Chapter 33
No amount of shoving could topple The Plank to give them room to climb over. The stone sat so heavily on its base it was a wonder it hadn't knocked the bridge down. After pointing sideways for lifetimes, it would now spend eternity stretching straight up.
"I didn't notice before how close to these others it landed," Zeke said. "It looks like it's blocking the way on purpose."
"Can you ask it to fall back agai
n?" Ariel asked. "It helped once."
He sang under his breath before shaking his head. "It's ignoring me. All three stones are chanting. They started when those marks got on it."
As Ariel had leaned her shoulder into the stone, the symbols on her sore hand had begun moving once more. They'd squirmed up her arm to spawn onto The Plank. She'd delivered the message again, whether she meant to or not. The symbols had spread evenly across the rock.
Scarl, who was standing on his own now, stepped forward to peer at the marks.
"Do you know them?" Ariel asked. She'd been avoiding the matching set on the cobbles, which writhed under her feet every time her boots touched them.
"Not in any way that makes sense." His voice, though still hoarse, had grown stronger. "They're disturbing."
"They've helped, though." While she explained, Zeke edged nearer, cocking his head.
"The stones are repeating the same ideas, over and over: 'Face ever forward. Forward ever fall. Fallward, forward, faceward, ever.' I don't know if it's a song, strange advice, or a warning."
Ariel groaned. "It sounds like a riddle."
"Mayhap they're encouraging us to go forward." Neela dropped to her belly near the base of the stones, where the gap between was the largest. She wiggled her head and shoulders into that space.
"I might can get through here," she called, her voice muffled. "But I don't know about anyone else." Her legs and feet slid away, too.
"Wait! Don't get separated from us." Zeke knelt to reach through, steadying himself with one hand on The Plank.
He jerked it away. "Ugh, I didn't just hear 'fall' that time. I felt it. Like a threat to knock us off the bridge. If I didn't know better, I'd say this wasn't the same stone that brought us."
"Perhaps the symbols have altered it," Scarl said. "The pattern that keeps catching my eye means madness."
"We might try climbing the short stones to get over." Zeke shuddered. "But I don't think they'll let us."
"Can we sneak around them?" Ariel crept toward the misty edge of the bridge, unsure where safe footing ended. "If there's room, we-- oh!" She jumped back. Her toe had stubbed something moving.