by S. C. Green
I held tight to his clothes, making a feeble show of fighting him but really planning to surrender to the coldness. It crept across my chest, icy fingers reaching toward my heart. Everything inside my body screamed for me to fight back, but I forced myself to let the cold take me.
Heat flared against my skin, drawing back the ice. “No!” My vision swam.
Alain clung to Dorien, trying to pry his fingers from my shoulders. Alain’s fires flared around him, duelling with the dark slivers of Dorien’s power.
Heat raged in my body, searing away the cold in a battle that occurred within my veins. The pain tore me apart. My ears rung. In the distance, someone screamed—a high, unending chorus of agony, a torture unparalleled.
It took me a moment to realise the scream was my own.
He’s stopping Dorien, I realised through my pain. He’s pulling me back from the other side.
I can’t … let him … save me ...
The heat burned through my body, stabbing at the ice like a wave of needles. Orange flames swirled around Alain, surrounding him with a bright halo as he wrapped his hands around Dorien’s throat. His face contorted with rage and pain, black feathers sticking out from his cheeks and neck. He was drawing so much power, it was pulling him into his raven form. Soon, he would drive Dorien’s ice out completely. He would kill his oldest friend and destroy my chance to die in one go.
“Alain,” I cried out. “Let go of him!”
“No!” he cried back. “I’m not going to lose you, Syd.”
“You have to!” I screamed.
The ice receded further. Panic coursed through my body. Somehow, I had to move my ruined body up the stairs, to the Mimir, and throw myself inside it.
Or did I? A wild idea occurred to me. Alain was drawing the power of the Mimir. That meant ...
I didn’t need to reach the Mimir. It was right here with me.
“You’ll never stop me,” Dorien hissed at Alain, the coldness biting back.
I raised my fingers to Alain’s cheek, drawing in as much of his heat as I could. The last thing I saw before I slammed my palm against Dorien’s face was Alain’s eyes grow huge with surprise.
“See you in hell, Dorien,” I yelled.
And then everything exploded into white light.
25
I opened my eyes. That was my first mistake.
Consciousness slammed into me like a freight train. Every pore, every vein, every bone in my body simultaneously burned with heat and was assaulted with needles of ice. The pain was like a stabbing that never ended, a wave of agony crashing over me again and again, wearing away at my body like erosion upon the unfaltering rocky shore.
I can’t be dead. Surely the dead feel no pain …
My fingers flexed. Gritty sand scraped under my nails. I was lying on my back, staring up at a dark sky, stars dappled across a midnight canvas streaked with thin ribbons of red and orange.
Stars. I hadn’t seen them for ten years. Tears pricked in the corners of my eyes. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
I lay still, contemplating the vastness and the splendour of the cosmos that stretched out above me. The pain receded, becoming a dull ache pulsing through my veins. I sat up, dusting the sand from my clothes. And after some time, I pushed myself to my feet.
I stood on a cold, dusty plain. A desert that stretched for miles in all directions, fading into a dark horizon that seemed to bend and distort as I stared at it. The dark shadows of a jagged mountain range rose from the bent horizon. Behind them, a stripe of brilliant orange lit the sky. It flickered, as though it wasn’t the sun staining the clouds, but a real fire stretching across the earth.
A light breeze blew, raising small clouds of dust across the surface of the desert. It had been such a long time since I’d felt a breeze. I grabbed my forearms, rubbing at the goosebumps that had risen on my skin.
I spun in lazy circles, drinking in the sensations, too giddy with the joy of freedom and space and air and stars to think about where I might be and how I’d come to be there. As I turned, I noticed a shape had appeared nearby. It moved across the plain toward me, and as it neared, I discerned a hooded figure gliding over the sand.
Instinct made me reach for my knife, only to discover my belt was gone. So were my jeans. In its place was a knee-length skirt. Instead of my old combat boots that were two sizes too big, I was wearing seamed stockings and heels. Heels. I hadn’t worn heels since I’d been interning at my mother’s company—
Where were my clothes? Why was I here, in this place? This couldn’t be the world outside the dome. So that meant—
I’d done it. I was inside the Mimir.
“Hello, Sydney.”
I jerked my head up. The figure was now right in front of me. How had it moved so fast? White, bony hands reached up and lifted away her hood.
I staggered back, my hand flying to my mouth, trying to trap my cry inside. The face that stared back at me was that of my own mother.
She looked just as I remembered her the last time I’d seen her, the morning we’d had that horrible argument and I’d run away for good. Only … I squinted at that face and saw that not everything was the same. Gone were the lines at the corners of her eyes and the vein in her forehead that pulsed when she screamed at me. Instead of being pulled back into a scowl, her lips opened into a broad, kind smile.
“Mum?” I whispered, emotions swirling inside my mind, the residual pain in my neurons peeling away my doubts, my old grudges, my resentment. All that was left was an overwhelming urge to fall into her arms.
“My baby.” She smiled wider. She reached out, her fingers brushing my cheek. Her touch tingled against my skin, warm and inviting.
I jerked back, startled by the tears that sprung in my eyes, but she didn’t seem offended. “So, you’re dead.” Way to state the obvious.
She nodded. “Most of your family—if indeed you still consider us your family—are dead.”
If you still consider us your family. It was the kind of thing my mother had always said to me, in that condescending tone that implied I was ungrateful for wanting to go my own way, for running like hell from the life she’d designed for me, the life she herself was trapped in and unable to escape. Only here, in this place, her tone carried no malice, no disappointment, only sadness.
“Have you come here to berate me for my choices?” I asked, the words coming out high-pitched, as though I were still a petulant teenager. “It’s not really the time.”
“Your choices? Oh, my daughter.” Her fingers traced my temple again.
This time I was ready for it, but the intensity of her touch still made me flinch. It was like having an electric shock.
“I was so worried about you, all alone in the world. But of course I didn’t need to be. You made a better life for yourself than I could ever have hoped. I am proud of what you’ve done.”
“I have done some terrible things.” I thought of the man I’d killed in cold blood in the brothel, of the lust for vengeance that had sent me there in the first place.
“You have done all that you could to keep your humanity intact.” Her hand rested on my cheek. “Of course it was you, Sydney, who would save the city. If anyone could survive in this new world of ours, it was you.”
“I missed you, Mom.” Tears fell freely down my cheeks.
“Not as much as I missed you. After you left, I wanted so badly to contact you, to tell you how sorry I was for what I’d done to you. I wanted us to go back to being friends, confidantes, the way we were when you were younger. But your father said I had to leave you alone so you could live your own life. He told me I had driven you away, and he was right. He never forgave me, and I never forgave myself. By the time I convinced myself to reach out, it was too late. The dome was down. For years we fought the government to go in and get you out. But they wouldn’t hear of it, and then things got so bad, we had to stop trying.”
I sucked in a breath. “What do you mean things got
so bad? Are you saying something has happened outside the dome?”
My mother shook her head sadly. “I can’t tell you anymore. I’m under strict instructions not to give you any information.
“Instructions from who?”
She held a finger to her lips. “You ask so many questions. My purpose here is not to answer them.”
“Then why are you here? Because I’ve got to tell you, I could really do with some information right now. Why am I here, in this desert, dressed in these weird clothes? Why are you here? How do I bring the wraith back to the underworld?”
“At the end of life, everyone must rejoin, all cracks must be mended, all wounds healed.” She gave me a warm smile, the kind she used when I was a kid. The kind I hadn’t seen for more than thirteen years.
The lump in my throat grew larger. “I’m sorry you’re dead. I’m not ready to die, though.”
“No. But you are ready to forgive. Come with me.”
I followed her as she floated over the dusty plain, heading toward the fiery horizon. With every silent step, I was aware of time passing, of Alain and May and Diana and Harriet back on Earth. Had they all died while I was here, gazing at the stars and talking to my mother?
I opened my mouth to ask her, but she spoke first. “This Alain you have been pining after. He is not who I would have chosen for you.”
“Of course not. Alain has a personality,” I mumbled, and it felt as if I’d fallen back through time when every other word out of my mouth that was directed toward my mother was a sarcastic comment. Already, I felt at home around her, which made me miss her even more.
She laughed. “True. And he loves you dearly. You are lucky to have that in your life, Sydney. Embrace it. Don’t let it go. Take it from someone who knows—love is more important than anything.”
I knew she was no longer talking about Alain. “Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I was young and lost and very, very angry.”
“Not as sorry as I am, Sydney. You were the most precious thing in the world to me, and I drove you away. I tried to choose your life for you, and in the end, you showed me the error of my ways. I only wish I had seen it sooner.”
Ahead of us, darkened lumps rose from the dusty earth. As we drew closer, the sky outlined the remains of a temple—pillars toppled into the dust, stone blocks heaped in piles, and crumbling steps leading from a grand procession into the inner chamber. Sands swirled through the ruin, claiming it stone by stone.
My mother stopped in front of the stairway, her head bowed.
I shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Can we hurry up at all? My friends are down there, and they’re kind of counting on me—”
“Time doesn’t work the same way here,” she said, not looking back. She glided like an ice skater across a rink, ascending the stairs. “To them, you’ve been gone for the blink of an eye. It may not be enough time, or it may be too much. Follow me.”
I wished she’d stop talking like a carnival fortune-teller. And I wished she’d turn around and look at me again. My whole body ached to embrace her, to give over to this swell of emotion bubbling up inside of me. But I knew if I did that, I’d lose all sense of focus, and I wouldn’t be able to do what I’d come here to do. As if she’d heard my thoughts, my mother turned at the top of the stairs, her eyes boring into me.
“Looking at you is painful,” she said softly. “Because when I look at you, I see my beautiful daughter who I failed with my selfishness. But we can’t keep looking to the past, Sydney. We need to focus on the future. Your future.”
She seemed pretty confident I would have a future.
I followed her through the entrance of the temple. As soon as I stepped into the inner chamber, light exploded around me. This wasn’t the blinding glare of the Citadel, but a warm, gracious light. It embraced me, drawing me into it.
On a plinth in the middle of the room was a glowing orb about the size of a basketball. It was the source of the brilliant glow. Colours swirled inside the orb, occasionally emerging on the surface and creating magnificent crystalline patterns across the stone walls before disappearing again into the swirling energy.
I stared at it in wonder, even as my stomach churned with nerves. “What do I do?”
“I think we can help you figure it out.”
Two figures stepped out from behind the plinth. They wore long black cloaks that dragged in the sand, the hems badly stained. One towered over the other, and I could tell by the slope of his shoulders even as he reached up to remove his hood that it was Cory. My heart soared to see him again.
“I’ve missed you, Syd,” he said, his smile touching every corner of his face.
I ran around the plinth and threw my arms around him, my embrace barely reaching his shoulders. His skin tingled against mine, the same way my mother’s did.
I turned to the other figure. It raised a thin, delicate hand, and pulled back its hood.
The figure’s face had been partially crushed, the skull misshapen from a cruel blow. My heart thudded as I recognised the features—those wide, curious blue eyes, that turned-up nose, silky red hair, the wide-mouthed smile with the gap between the front teeth...
“Diana?” I whispered.
She nodded, her kind smile never leaving her face. “I’m sorry, Syd.”
“What are you doing here? I told you not to follow—” My heart froze as I realised the truth. “No.” My heart thudded in my ears. It can’t be true. It can’t be ...
“Dorien threw me against the sarcophagus. I hit my head.” She pointed to the wound on the side of her skull. “But it’s okay because I’m here with Cory. And everyone is so friendly and nice.”
No. No, no, no, no, no.
I screamed silently. But no amount of screaming or pleading could undo what Dorien had done. Diana was here, which meant she could never go back. She was gone, forever.
When my soul returned to my body, I would never hold her again. I’d never stay up all night with her, inventing stories about people outside the dome. I’d never feel her heart beating against my chest as she slept against my shoulder. The thought of it was too much to bear. My body shook uncontrollably, every muscle and sinew in me screaming to do something, anything, to save her.
But it was too late.
Grief overwhelmed me, pushing out all other thoughts. I clamped Diana to me, pressing her thin body to mine as though the sheer force might shove her soul back into the world. I breathed in deep. She still smelled the same, like sunshine and maple.
“Please, don’t do this. Don’t leave me. I can’t do it without you, pet. You’re my whole life.”
She smiled, a sad one that fluttered across her sweet face. “Not anymore.”
I hated that smile. It was a smile of Diana’s incomparable kindness that had gone from my life forever.
“Please, Mom,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Don’t worry. I’m fine here. Your mom and Cory will take care of me.”
Mom. My body reeled. My heart shattered to pieces. I couldn’t do this. I couldn't just let her go.
“I will do you proud, my daughter.” My mother placed her hand on Diana’s shoulder. “This time, I’ll do it all right.”
“There’s so much I wanted to teach you,” I choked out, the grief tightening my grip on her. “So much I wanted you to see. I was going to show you the stars and the ocean. We were going to watch Jurassic Park for real—”
Diana clutched my waist, rocking against me, her cheek pressed to my chest. “You’ve shown me everything I need. Now I have something to show you.”
“I want to stay here with you. I don’t care about Dorien or the wraith.” The idea of letting her go plummeted my heart to my knees.
“You can’t always get what you want.” Diana pulled away, the sudden emptiness of my arms sending an ache through my entire body that hurt more than any physical pain I’d ever felt. She stepped toward the orb, pointing to a large dark spot swirling across the surface—a blemish upon the bea
utiful swirling surface. “These are holes,” she said. “They are the pieces of this world the wraith took when they returned to Earth. You have to find those pieces and bring them back.”
“I don’t know how to do it,” I said, already admitting defeat without the promise of her in my life.
“Yes, you do.” Diana said. “All you have to do is—”
Crack.
The whole building shook. I leaned against Diana to steady myself as I whirled around to see where it had come from. There was another crack as one of the giant pillars flanking the processional toppled over, sending up clouds of sand as it crashed against the stairs. The floor shook violently.
Through the sandy haze, I spied two black-clad figures struggling against each other, moving toward us. Dorien and Alain fell through the door, their hands at each other’s throats. Dorien threw Alain on the ground. He kicked him in the head with such force his neck snapped back, smashing his skull against the stone plinth.
A strange gurgling sounded from the back of my throat. No.
Alain’s eyes rolled around his head. He didn’t move, didn’t fight back. The fire burning around him died away.
Something snapped inside of me, some invisible switch that triggered a deep, visceral reaction. I tore myself away from Diana and barrelled toward Dorien. I couldn’t take any more. I might not be able to save Diana, but I could damn well save Alain.
“Now that we’re here …” Dorien stood over Alain, his face twisted into an ugly scowl. Black tendrils unfurled around his deadly fingers, reaching toward Alain. “I might as well finish what I’d set out to do—”
I slammed into him, sending us both flying across the room. Dorien hit the ground hard, skidding on his side across the flagstones. My arms wrapped around his chest, drawing his body against mine even as the black tendrils surrounded me, pressing their cold terror under my skin once more. A dark energy drew up within me, a rumbling of intense pain and rage bubbling through my veins. I pulled that energy with my mind so it rose to the surface, burning under my skin.
Dorien yelled as the energy crackled through the black tendrils. They shied away from my skin, unravelling from around my limbs. He tried to throw me off, but I clung tight. As he crawled toward the plinth and tried to use it to haul himself to his feet, I flung out my hand and touched the white orb.