Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  I laughed. “I’m sure you charmed your way out of it.”

  He looked at me, head tilted a little to the side. “You sound different.”

  “I know.”

  “How much of her is . . .”

  “I’m not sure.” I bit my lip. Enough that when I looked at him, I remembered every second she’d stolen with him. There weren’t nearly enough of them. Enough that I could not tell which thoughts were mine and which were hers, and whether there was any difference at all. We had never quite been different people, she and I, and now any effort to imagine two where there was one seemed wrong.

  “Do you think she might have survived?” he asked. There was still hope in his voice, though I didn’t think even he knew it was there.

  “Her body? No. She’s dead,” I told him. There was hope in my voice too. Because if she wasn’t, that was worse. To be alive and to be trapped in that place, trapped with that thing— But I was as sure as I could be. She’d given me as much of herself as she could, and that was all that survived of her. I was what survived of her.

  He walked up the steps of the porch, standing just below me. We were almost eye to eye. “We’d barely gotten started,” he said. “It’s not fair. She shouldn’t be gone.”

  “I should be,” I said. “I was the one who . . . She was real.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked. “Are you sure you were the echo?”

  “I . . .” I shook my head. “It has to have been me.”

  “And now? You can’t be an echo. There’s no one to be an echo of,” he said. “So what does that make you?”

  “I’m Sophie. But I think . . . I think I’m Sophia too. So maybe that makes me both of us. Or maybe it makes me someone new,” I said.

  “I think,” he said carefully, “I’d like to get to know that person.”

  He didn’t hold me in his arms. He didn’t touch me at all. We only stood together in silence and in memory. Neither of us knew who I was, not yet, but we would learn. I didn’t know what we would find or what that would mean, and there was freedom in that. A future not empty but undefined, full of every possibility.

  The door opened. Abby stepped out onto the porch, a blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. She looked between us but didn’t ask. Still, my cheeks heated a little.

  “How’s Mrs. Popova?” I asked.

  “Tired,” she said. “She says time is catching up to her.”

  “What does that mean?” Liam asked. “Is she going to die?”

  “We’re all going to die, sooner or later,” Abby said. “She’s already put it off awhile. But she hasn’t turned to dust yet, so I’m guessing she’s got some time before the reaper double-checks his list and comes knocking.”

  “Soon you won’t be able to tell there’s anything strange about this place,” I said.

  “Soon there won’t be a place here at all,” Abby replied. “The birds are gone. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they’re coming back. Which means no LARC.”

  A thrill of panic went through me. Because I hadn’t really thought it through until just that moment—I would be leaving too.

  I might have Sophia’s memories, but I had never left this place. Not once.

  “You’ll be okay,” Abby said, catching my expression. “You survived in the echo world for fifteen years. You can survive civilization. And you won’t be on your own.”

  “I already heard my mum on the phone making ‘arrangements,’” Liam added. “Having spent her fifteen minutes of allotted emotion, she’s in full problem-solving mode. Her way of making up for leaving you behind, I suppose.”

  “She’s always been kind to me,” I told him. “She’s always taken care of me.”

  He gave me an odd look. “I think you may have more of a relationship with my mother than I do,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

  “You should get to know her better,” I said. “I think that you’ll like each other once you do. I like both of you, after all.”

  “And I dislike both of you,” Abby added with a grin to show she didn’t mean it. Oil and water, I thought, and it was Sophia’s thought, but it was also mine.

  In the darkness, stars began to shine overhead. Too dim, and too far away—but no, that was the way they were supposed to look. I was too used to strange worlds and strange skies.

  “Nighttime,” Liam said. “It’s been a while.”

  I reached into my pocket. My fingers bumped against the slender wings of the wooden tern, and a memory and its reflection surfaced. Sophia, embracing me in the cave. Slipping the bird into my pocket.

  “You should take this,” I said. I held the little bird out to Abby.

  “It already led me here,” she said. “I don’t think I need it anymore. You can keep it, if you want.”

  “It isn’t the one you had,” I told her. “This is Sophia’s bird. She still had yours with her when she . . . So I thought you should have it.”

  Abby took it from me, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s not to understand?” Liam asked.

  “This is the same bird,” Abby said. “The wing’s broken, see? And there’s a stain on the side. Sophia’s wasn’t damaged.”

  I reached into my pocket. My fingers bumped against something small and hard, and I pulled it out. It was the tip of the wing, broken off. “It must have happened while we were running,” I said.

  “Then it is Sophia’s bird,” Abby replied. “But it’s exactly the same as the one my sister gave to Ashford. Which means . . . I have no idea what that means.” She snarled in frustration. “What were my father and my grandfather doing here? Why did Miranda send me—to help you? Or was there something else? I don’t understand. I thought I would understand.”

  “Maybe that means you aren’t finished yet,” I told her. “Whatever brought you here, it isn’t done with you quite yet.”

  She closed her hand around the bird. “It’s done for tonight,” she said. “Tonight, let’s just be done.”

  “Well, we’ve already spent most of the night out here talking,” Liam said jokingly. “Want to stick around and watch the sun rise?”

  “I’d like that,” she said. We sat on the steps, the three of us in a line.

  Dawn was coming. We’d made it through the dark.

  INTERVIEW

  Sophia Novak

  SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

  Silence lingers as Sophie—or Sophia—finishes her story. Ashford frowns, but it takes him some time to compose a question.

  ASHFORD: That is an astonishing tale, Ms. Novak. And a well-put-together file. Did you assist in that?

  SOPHIA: Liam did the titles.

  ASHFORD: I thought he might have. Tempest. It seems fitting. You know, Ms. Novak, I don’t know that I’ve ever met someone whose life has been so thoroughly steeped in the extra-normal.

  SOPHIA: But there are other people who are in tune with the other worlds. Like me. Like Abby and her sister. We’re drawn to those other worlds, and they’re drawn to us. Because we’re useful. The Six-Wing wanted to use me. The thing that’s after Abby, that killed her sister—it wants something from her too, doesn’t it?

  He doesn’t want to have to ask; you can see it in his face. But it is the question he has been trying not to demand answers to this whole time, and it is finally too much.

  ASHFORD: Where is Abby, Ms. Novak? She made it off the island. So why isn’t she here? Why send everything like that? Not a word of explanation. She won’t answer her phone or her email. No one seems to have seen her. Do you know? Can you tell me?

  SOPHIA: I know.

  ASHFORD: Then where is she?

  SOPHIA: She went to find out what you’ve been hiding from her. She went home.

  Ashford looks grim.

  ASHFORD: That is w
hat I was afraid of.

  SOPHIA: Because you don’t want her finding the truth?

  ASHFORD: No, Ms. Novak. Because I don’t want it finding her.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FIRST, I’D LIKE to thank my parents. They have been a constant, un-vanished presence in my life, have not in fact met a grim demise, are emotionally and practically and in all ways extremely supportive, and deserve none of the cruel things I do to their counterparts in fiction. The next parents I write will spend the book baking, happily far from danger, I promise. (This is a lie. I’m sorry.)

  Thanks also to my wonderful mother-in-law, Rosemary, and her partner, Mike. Writing during a global pandemic has been challenging to say the least, and without sending the kids off to Grandma Camp there would be far fewer words in this book. And to my husband, Mike, who really should be at the top of the list every time, for splitting the workday with me, taking meetings with a toddler on his lap, and somehow, so far, getting through this with our sanity mostly intact. Special shout-out to Ms. Bean and Mr. O, along with coconspirators Vonnegut and Octavia Pupler, who tried their hardest to keep me from getting a lick of work done (sometimes through actual licking) but without whom my life would be very dull indeed.

  As always, thanks to the usual suspects who helped in one way or another to get this book from lumpy little idea to workable draft: Shanna Germain, Erin M. Evans, Rhiannon Held, Monte Cook, Corry L. Lee, and Susan Morris; to Lisa Rodgers and Louise Buckley for their advocacy and expertise; to Maggie Rosenthal, with apologies for not fitting in that extra defiled corpse you asked for; to Marinda Valenti, Abigail Powers, Delia Davis, and Krista Ahlberg for their diligence; and to Dana Li, Kristin Boyle, and Jim Hoover for yet another a fantastic cover and interior design. Special thanks also to SB Divya for her work as an expert reader.

  And of course thank you to all of my readers. Without you, none of this is possible.

  © Alice Marshall

  Kate Alice Marshall started writing before she could hold a pen properly, and never stopped. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with a chaotic menagerie of pets and family members, and ventures out in the summer to kayak and camp along Puget Sound. She is the author of the young adult novels I Am Still Alive, Rules for Vanishing, and Our Last Echoes, as well as the middle grade novel Thirteens.

  Follow her on Twitter @kmarshallarts or visit her online at katemarshallbooks.com.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.

  * Frame-by-frame review reveals signs of multiple images overlapping and/or fragmented. Unfortunately, our inability to retrieve the video files themselves prevents us from further analysis.

  * It is not always possible to tell which child is which, particularly after sections of corrupted video. Our best efforts have been made to identify the girls consistently, but errors may remain.

  * As in the Novak recordings, time metadata is corrupted.

  * Refers to Sara Donohue. See File #74, “The Massachusetts Ghost Road.”

  * Russian: “It devours.”

  * Note: Remaining video and audio is heavily corrupted. Auditory and visual distortion is heavy, and the camera ceases to record any information in increasing intervals. The following segments are those that contain decipherable information.

  * Note: Audio has been enhanced in order to transcribe this section. A greater degree of error may be present than usual; where dialog is indistinct, a best guess has been supplied.

  * For the sake of clarity, echoes are identified throughout the remainder of the transcript where it is possible to confirm their status. In the case of Sophia Novak and her echo, such a determination is impossible.

  * Revelation 4:8, partially transcribed: “And the four beasts had each of them six wings about them; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying.”

  * Time metadata is corrupted on all files created after 12:47 AM, the exact time of nightfall at the location in question.