by Jake Halpern
The crowd went silent.
The woman smiled in a way that lit up her eyes, while the man’s lips were pursed, his square jaw clenched with angry determination.
Alec gawked at the woman. He was astonished. He was staring at Ember Aron. She looked exactly like her portrait in the house’s chapel—from the blue eyes to the high cheekbones and narrow face. She’d died five hundred years ago, but here she was, standing in front of them. Alec suddenly felt a flicker of hope. Ember Aron was famous for her generosity and piety. If she was in charge, well … maybe things weren’t so bad.
“That’s Ember Aron,” Alec whispered to Wren.
Wren didn’t seem impressed. “I know,” she said. “And the man standing next to her is Shade—the Shadow prophet. Irv was crazy about him.”
Wren tapped Alec on the shoulder.
“I’m more worried about him,” she whispered, nodding behind her. “He’s about a hundred feet behind us.”
Alec began to turn, but Wren grabbed him. “Don’t look—or he’ll see you.”
“Who?” whispered Alec.
“Dorman—he’s standing at the back of the courtyard. He’ll go crazy if he sees us. And I don’t think we want that.”
Wren stood perfectly still, taking shallow breaths through her nose. There were a lot of people in the courtyard—at least several hundred—but it was only a matter of time before Dorman noticed them.
And then what?
For the time being, however, everybody’s eyes were on Ember and Shade. Ember walked into the center of the courtyard, moving with the grace and fluidity of a dancer. Those nearby shrank back, as if frightened they might be too close. Two graylings trailed behind Ember, their eyes darting suspiciously around the crowd. When they caught up to her, Ember placed a hand on each of their shoulders.
Shade stepped forward and joined Ember, his silver-ribboned robe undulating like streams of rain on a summer afternoon. He, too, was flanked by two graylings.
“Where are we?” called a teenage girl, standing next to her mother. Her eyes were wide as saucers.
Ember smiled, flashing two rows of gleaming white teeth.
“You’re just where you’re supposed to be,” she replied. “On heaven’s doorstep.”
For a moment, people looked around, as if checking to see whether they’d missed something. “This is Purgatory,” said Shade, in a rich baritone that echoed across the courtyard. “And, yes … it looks like one island, but because of this magnificent wall, it’s really two. One side for Suns and the other for Shadows.”
Several feet away, the mother of the bride tugged knowingly on her daughter’s arm. She had a look of profound relief on her face.
Ember continued. “Shade and I are the High Keepers. And we’re here to make sure that each of you ends up on the right side of this most holy wall.” She waved a slim arm at the stone wall that loomed over them.
The wall itself was smooth and covered with intricate geometric designs. Farther up, Alec and Wren could see carvings that looked like the meandering branches of trees.
Shade raised both hands, palms out, as if bestowing blessings. “As our graylings told you: All of you need to form two lines. Shadows to the left. Suns to the right.”
Earlier, when the graylings had given the order, almost no one complied. But now the crowd fell into two orderly lines. There were no more questions, and people seemed relieved to have been given direction by two adults.
Alec and Wren joined the Shadow line. They had little choice. Alec was still wearing the Shadow cloak from Sami’s locker, and Wren was wearing her reversible cloak—silver side out.
Somewhere in the back of the line was Dorman.
A half-dozen graylings carried out a small wooden platform and placed it next to Shade and Ember. The two High Keepers climbed onto it as they watched the lines forming.
“Excuse me!” called an elderly man who stood just ahead of Alec and Wren. It was Jonas—from the raft. At his side was his wife, Marjorie. “Your blessings—Shade? Beggin’ your pardon, Prophet, but I’m wonderin’ how long I’ll be here. You see, on account of my wife bein’ such a good person—bless her soul—she was afraid that we might be separated, if I had to stay here a long while. And it’d be awful hard on her.” Marjorie shook her head in dismay, but said nothing.
“A very good question, proud Shadow,” answered Shade.
Jonas nodded with satisfaction and nudged Marjorie.
“The answer is simple,” continued Shade. “We’ve built a collection of bliss houses on both sides of the wall, where you’ll sit and say your mantras. This is the key to entering heaven. This is how you earn your passage. And as you repeat these holy words, you’ll fall into a kind of sleep … we call it bliss. You’ll be quite content, why”—and here Shade paused to laugh—“some say that our bliss houses are heavenly. Shadows, your bliss houses will look like the Moonlit Beach. Suns, yours will look like the Sunlit Glade.” He smiled at Jonas. “And trust me”—again, there was that rich laugh—“when you do finally make it to heaven itself, your wife will be so divinely happy there, she won’t even notice if you’re late—by a few days, or even a few years.”
Ember clasped her hands together, as if in prayer, and then flashed her dazzling smile again. “My dears,” she said. “We’ve already started accounting for who is here, but before you enter your new homes, we’d like to ask you to help us check for breathers.”
Breathers.
Wren slouched downward, as if she could shrink herself into nothing.
“Sometimes the living fall into the Drain,” continued Ember. “We call them breathers, and they’re not meant to be here. We need to find them so we can help them, too.”
A murmur spread through the crowd.
“This won’t take long,” said Ember. “I want everyone to find a partner—someone you do not know—and take hold of their wrists. Then feel for a pulse.”
Whispers rose from the crowd. Wren looked for an escape route. But there was none. Half a dozen graylings stood in front of each of the two exits. Wren turned to Alec. He was staring intently at Ember and his look was so … eager. Wren grimaced. She had a suspicion about what was going through Alec’s mind: He wanted to talk with this woman. Wren gave his arm a hard squeeze and shook her head.
Not now, she mouthed.
Seconds later, a teenage girl with a long ponytail stepped toward Alec and reached for his wrist.
Wren was quicker; she grabbed Alec’s arm and yanked him away.
“Find your own partner,” hissed Wren. The girl frowned at Wren, but stepped away to look for someone else.
“Thanks,” whispered Alec. He looked shaken. “I didn’t even see her.”
They clutched each other’s wrists fiercely and drew close to one another. All around them, people were doing the same thing.
“Does anyone feel a pulse?” Ember called out. “If you can, I want you to call out—good and loud.”
Alec and Wren could feel the other’s pulse racing. They stood there, gripping each other’s wrists, eyes locked, for what felt like forever. At last, Shade brought the exercise to an end.
“Thank you for your fine work,” said Shade.
Wren eased her viselike grip.
“No!” screamed a man’s voice. “I’m telling you—it ain’t fine.”
Wren’s entire body stiffened. It was Dorman.
“I saw two breathers!” he yelled. “They were climbing on the Ramparts and then I saw ’em later at the bottom of the Drain, way before all the dead woke up. Right at the waterfall! I was alive, just like them. We fought—they stole my wooden plank and drowned me. But I bet they’re still alive!” His deep voice echoed in the courtyard.
People began nudging and pushing to get a better view of Dorman. Then there was a collective gasp. Unable to resist, Wren turned and caught a glimpse of an urn falling off its pedestal. Sparks flew in a wide arc above the heads of several Shadows.
Immediately, people were jostling—p
ushing, shoving, kicking. “It was the Suns who pushed it on us!” someone yelled. “I seen ’em!” Screams and shouts rang out.
“Silence—calm—all of you be calm!” bellowed Shade. “Graylings—restore order now!”
Along the perimeters of the courtyard, dozens of graylings scrambled forward in a flurry of motion, like crabs scurrying with the tide.
Wren and Alec hung on to each other and kept their heads down. In this chaos, someone tugged insistently on the bottom of Wren’s cloak. She looked down. A grayling stood at her side—a small girl with an ugly raised scar that started near her eye and traveled across her freckled face.
“Let’s go,” whispered the grayling. “Trust me.”
Alec gaped at the girl. She had the pudgy cheeks of a child, but the eyes of an adult: stern and deadly serious. They were eyes that had seen things.
The girl kept a tight hold on Wren’s cloak as she walked to the open doorway in the far-left corner—the doorway that Shade had used to enter the courtyard. Amidst all of the confusion and shoving, no one paid them any attention.
As they crossed through the open doorway, Alec slowed down for a moment, his mind suddenly flooded with doubts. He glanced backward, trying to catch a glimpse of Ember. If anyone could help them, surely it was her.
“Should we …,” began Alec.
But Wren and the grayling had already disappeared into a darkened, stone tunnel. Alec hurried to catch up with them. Several dozen paces later, the grayling stopped beneath a lantern hanging from the wall. She turned to face them. “I gotta go back now,” she said. “Can’t let Mother and Father know I was gone.”
“You mean Shade and Ember?” asked Wren.
The girl nodded. “We’re all one big happy family,” she said, with a quick roll of her eyes. “Ain’t that obvious?”
Wren placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, as if to keep her from running off. “Were you the girl who spoke to me back in the water?”
“Maybe,” she replied, shaking off Wren’s hand. “And maybe I was the one who knocked over that urn. But none of that matters right now.” She reached into her robe and took out two tickets—of the sort used to board a ferry. She handed them to Wren. “The first number on the ticket is the address—you’re in Bliss House Forty-Seven—and the second number is your seat.” She gestured farther into the tunnel. In the distance, they could see another doorway. “It ain’t far. Don’t get close to anyone. You might cause problems.”
With that, she turned and hurried back toward the courtyard. Wren and Alec needed no more encouragement. They walked quickly along and soon emerged from the tunnel onto a narrow, rectangular terrace made of polished cobblestones. On their right, the great wall loomed over them. Hulking stone buildings stood everywhere—drab, windowless blocks that resembled crypts.
The terrace was empty except for a lone figure—a middle-aged man whose bald head was peppered with flecks of seaweed. When he saw Alec and Wren, he waved excitedly.
“Excuse me,” he said, hurrying toward them, wide-eyed and jittery. “Excuse me, but have you seen my daughter? The graylings—they took her away. I’ve been waiting here for her …” He glanced about again as if, perhaps, his daughter might have just emerged from some hiding place.
Distant sounds of shouting floated up from the courtyard. It was Shade, yelling at the top of his voice to separate into Sun and Shadow lines. The small riot had not yet ended. Still, it reminded Wren and Alec that people would start coming out of the tunnel before long.
Wren was about to pull Alec away from the bald man when a girl appeared on the other side of the terrace and approached them. She had a round face, framed by red hair that had been woven into a hood covering her head, neck, and back. Whoever she was, it seemed doubtful that she was the bald man’s daughter.
The girl focused her attention on Alec and Wren.
“Welcome, honored dead,” she said, in a monotone that hinted at her having uttered this phrase a thousand times in the past day or so. Silver bracelets around her ankles clinked and jingled. “Tickets?”
The man rose to his full height and bounced a bit on the balls of his feet. “Listen here, young lady,” he said, chin high in the air, voice rising in indignation. “I come from the Eastern Crags, and I’ve been waiting here for my daughter. When will she be back?”
“I’ve told you already.” The girl took a step forward, making her bracelets chime. “Your daughter’s of grayling age. She’ll be working for our High Keeper now, Shade.” She frowned at the man. “Now get to your seat.”
The man crossed his arms. “And if I refuse?”
The two of them locked eyes. It seemed as if the man might continue to argue, but an expression of weariness overcame him, and he did something most unexpected: He yawned.
“You’re tired,” said the grayling, nodding with satisfaction.
“Yes—yes I am,” said the man slowly. “I’m exhausted.” He began to massage his temples.
“It’s the pull of bliss,” said the grayling. “Go now. Go to your seat.”
“To my seat,” muttered the man. “But I …” After a moment’s pause, he turned and shuffled off the terrace.
The red-haired grayling turned to Alec and Wren. “Tickets?”
Alec was so mystified by what he’d witnessed that he didn’t even react to the girl’s question. One second the bald man had been near hysterical, and the next second he’d yawned.
“Tickets?”
Wren nodded and presented the tickets that the freckle-faced grayling had given them.
“That way to Bliss House Forty-Seven,” said the girl, pointing down a narrow alleyway that snaked between two stone buildings. “It’s close.”
They could still hear shouting from the harbor.
“Sounds like the Suns and Shadows are at it again,” said the grayling in a bored tone. “Thank goodness for the wall.” She raised her hand. “Go on now.”
Alec and Wren set off, relieved to be on their own again. The alley was flanked by stone warehouses. The walls facing them were dotted with narrow ledges that held glass jars filled with small gray shards.
“What’s with the jars?” whispered Wren, reaching out as if to grab one.
“Don’t touch them,” Alec whispered.
“What’s in them?”
“Fingernail clippings.”
“Yuck,” whispered Wren, crinkling her nose. “Why?”
“Shadows say the fingernails of the dead are poisonous,” said Alec, as if this were perfectly obvious. “They use them to ward off evil.”
Wren glanced up and down the empty alleyway, then stopped and turned toward Alec.
“Alec, we need to get out of here—now,” said Wren. “First of all, we’re alive, and I want to stay that way. Second of all—I don’t care if Suns and Shadows are separated—sitting in Bliss House Forty-Seven until we wake up in heaven does not sound like a good idea right now. Especially since we’re not dead. And who put Shade and Ember in charge anyway?”
Alec’s throat felt dry, and he swallowed once or twice before replying. Wren wasn’t thinking this through. Ember was considered to be one of the wisest Suns ever to walk the streets of Edgeland, and Shade was equally revered among the Shadows. They must know what they’re doing.
“I don’t know who put them in charge, but how do you know what they’re doing is wrong?” asked Alec. “This is purgatory, after all. It’s not supposed to be a barrel of fun.”
“Maybe,” said Wren. “But something’s wrong here. It feels like … a prison.”
“We ought to talk to Ember,” said Alec. “There must be a reason they’re looking for breathers.” He ran his hands over his braids. “She said they wanted to help. Maybe she could get us back up the Drain?”
Wren’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I know you think Ember is some kind of saint, but I do not think talking to her is a good idea. You heard what that grayling with the freckles said. They’re hunting us.”
Alec raised his
eyebrows. “Sorry,” he said. “But I’ll take Ember Aron’s word over some grayling we met a few minutes ago.”
Wren reached into her pocket and pulled out the tickets to look at them again.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s poke around this Bliss House Forty-Seven before we do anything else. Maybe we can find some rope or get a lead on a boat.”
Alec looked doubtful. “What, we’re just gonna stroll in there, and someone will give us a boat—oh, and here is some rope too—that’s what you think?”
Wren shook her head. “No. We’ll have to steal them. I have a lot of experience at that—ever since I was kicked out of House Aron.” She looked at him pointedly.
Alec wasn’t sure how to reply. Sometimes he wondered whether, somehow, she knew that he’d ratted her out. There was almost a hint of it in her eyes. Or was he simply being paranoid?
A flurry of bells began jingling—it sounded as though they were coming from a nearby alley.
Wren startled, then tugged on Alec’s arm and started walking again. “Let’s not find out what that’s about.”
Soon they came to a narrow stone entryway with a Forty-Seven carved above a wooden, barnacle-covered door. There was no knob—only a rope handle.
“Wait,” whispered Alec, running his hand down the tiny gap between the door and the wall. A cold, crypt-like air was seeping out of it. “Are you sure about this?”
Wren sighed. “Of course not,” she said. “But we can’t just roam the streets. By now Dorman probably told Shade and Ember everything. Soon the whole island will know there are two breathers on the loose.” She paused, letting this possibility sink in. The jingling of bells was getting louder, and now they could hear the scuffling of footsteps. A lot of them.
Wren gestured toward the door.
“All right,” said Alec.
Wren pushed the door open, and together they stepped into Bliss House Forty-Seven.
They stood inside the doorway, taking in the cavernous space. A single orb hung from the room’s center, just bright enough to illuminate hundreds of ladders standing in rows, rising from the floor to the ceiling. Every ladder had wooden chairs attached to each rung. A person sat rigidly in each chair. There were people of all ages—from spindly grandparents to small children—and they were as still and lifeless as waxen figures.