“But you’re blind,” I blurted out. “You can’t see anything!”
“I can see you,” he said quietly. His wounded eyes found mine and didn’t let go.
My words died on my lips. I felt hope rise up in my chest, sharp and bright.
Dante’s mouth moved in that small smile I loved. “I told you that before, remember?”
“But what about the bandage—?”
“I can always see you,” he repeated. “Even through the bandage. Even through the darkness. You are as clear to me now as you were the first time I saw you. Only now it’s like you have a halo of light around you. I can see a little bit of whatever that light touches”—he took my hand and squeezed it gently—“but that’s all.”
“But why me?”
“Because you are my constant. You are my North Star. From the moment I first saw the river, I saw you in it. You are my past, my present, my future.” He leaned forward, brushing my hair behind my ears. “I don’t know why,” he said, “and I don’t want to. I don’t want to find out it was a mistake. I don’t want to lose what little I have left of you.”
“You still have all of me,” I said. “Always.”
“Thank you,” he said. “That means more to me than you’ll ever know.” He drew closer and pressed a kiss to my closed lids, one on each eye, and then a third on my forehead.
“We’ll find a way to get your sight back. If we work together, I know we can do it,” I said. I didn’t know how to fulfill that promise, but I knew I would do whatever it took. I had to.
“I’d like that,” he said. He wrapped the bandage around his head again, knotting it in place with a single, sharp tug.
“Thank you, Dante,” I said. “Thank you for sharing that with me. For trusting me with it. And thank you for restoring my memories. How did you know what would work?”
“When I found you on the bank after Zo had hurt you, I promised you I would figure out a way to help you. When I realized that Zo had used his music to take away your memories, I thought it only fitting that I use my poetry to bring them back. Poetry seems to follow the same rules as music—the rhythm and cadence and counting—but it’s easier for me to access and use. Besides, I’ve done something like it before, remember?”
Of course I remembered. I felt stuffed to the seams with memories. It was easy to sort through them and select the one I wanted. “The Poetry Slam at the Dungeon last February.” I furrowed my brow. “Wait, was that the same poem? You used the one from the Poetry Slam to heal me?”
He blushed a deliciously dusky shade of red. “It was the only one I had. And it’s my best one.”
“It was beautiful,” I said, and I meant it.
Dante tilted his head. “You understood the poem?”
“Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I said it in Italian.”
“I—” I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. “Are you sure?”
A smile quirked his lips. “Pretty sure.”
“Then how . . . ?” My shoulders slumped as I thought through all the possible answers. It was a pretty short list.
“Do you remember having any problems with the language since you passed through the door?” Dante asked.
“No, none.” I frowned in thought. “Well, I could tell something was different right away because I could understand everyone I talked to. It’s like I’m speaking English—which feels right—but it sounds like I’m speaking Italian—which strangely doesn’t feel wrong. When I mentioned it to Orlando, he said I spoke the language like a native.” I tapped my finger against my lips. “Do you think it was because of the door? Did it change something about me?”
“Well, yes, it is designed to fundamentally change something about you,” Dante said. “But not like this. I wouldn’t have thought it would affect your language.”
“Maybe it happened later?” I suggested. “Once I was through the door, I mean.” I immediately shook my head. “No, that can’t be. I saw Orlando on the bank as soon as I came through the door, and we had a long conversation where we both understood each other. And he probably speaks twenty-first-century English as well as I speak sixteenth-century Italian.”
Dante and I both thought for a moment, and then he said softly, “A gift.”
I pulled my mind back from where I had been attempting unlikely answers. “What?”
“All of us who crossed over developed some kind of talent on the bank—a specific and unique gift to compensate for the loss of our relationship with time. I could see downstream to the future. Zo could enforce obedience. Tony could hear echoes of the past; V had a perfect sense of direction.” Dante raised his eyebrows. “Maybe yours is a gift of language.”
“Do you think so?”
“It’s the best answer I have at the moment.”
“Well, it would explain how I could talk to Orlando on the bank, but if the gift only works on the bank, then what about once I was back in the river? I’ve been around a lot of people and I’ve understood everybody.” I thought for another moment, absently lifting my fingers to my neck, searching for a locket that was still gone.
“Your locket,” Dante said suddenly, his voice unexpectedly sharp. He reached out and moved my hand away from my throat. “Where did it go? Did you lose it?”
I swallowed and looked down at my empty hand. “No, I . . . I gave it to Zo.”
“What?” Dante asked in horror. “Why?”
I remembered the sound of Zo’s music crashing into me, the twist and pull as he slammed that black block into my memories. “He was in my mind, changing things, taking things from me. He made me forget.” I closed my eyes, remembering the music Zo had brought with him to the cathedral. That song hadn’t hurt, but it had left its mark on me all the same. “He made me think he was someone I could trust. I thought I loved him.” I turned my fingers into a fist. A sour taste filled my mouth, coating my tongue with acid.
At the thought of Zo and his music, a corner of my mind turned to shadow and I swallowed hard. Had a ghostly taint of Zo’s touch remained like a stain I couldn’t erase? A drop of poison that had resisted the antidote of Dante’s poetry?
“I’m sorry, Dante. I’ve wished for the locket back ever since I gave it to him.”
Dante was still and quiet. A deep line furrowed his forehead, and the muscles tightened in his jaw, along his arm, and across his shoulders.
“You’re worried about the fact that Zo has the locket, aren’t you?” I asked quietly.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, but the line in his forehead didn’t go away.
“Why is it so bad if he has it?”
Dante didn’t say anything for a long time.
“Are you mad at me?” I ventured.
My question seemed to rouse him from his thoughts. He turned immediately to me. “No, it’s not you. This is my fault. I did something without thinking it through and now it looks like I’ve made things worse. I should have known better.”
“What did you do?”
Dante sighed. “Zo used his guitar to hurt you, so I used it to hurt him in return. I destroyed it right in front of him.”
“You destroyed Zo’s guitar?” I repeated. “I thought I had just dreamed that.”
“When?” Dante asked. “When did you have that dream?”
“Last night, I guess.” I smiled wryly. “Time is a little slippery these days.”
Dante didn’t laugh.
“Why? When did it happen?”
“After I found you on the bank and sent you back through the river, I immediately hunted down Zo. I found his guitar and broke it. I thought that would be the end of it, so I turned my attention to figuring out how to restore your memories.”
“Is it bad, do you think? Me dreaming about events so close to when they actually happened?”
“I don’t know—maybe.”
I shivered. I had felt Zo’s touch in my mind and on my body and I had no desire to repeat either one. The idea that he co
uld somehow be in my dreams too made me feel oddly exposed.
Dante squeezed my hand with his, sweeping away his worried frown with a swift smile. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll get the locket back. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure he believed it himself.
• • •
We walked back along the river, carefully avoiding the thin threads that were spooling out in new directions.
“This is the last thing I wanted to see,” Dante said with a heavy sigh. “The river shouldn’t be doing this. Any of this.” He pointed to a silver thread that had separated from the main river, the shimmering line coiled around in a tight spiral like a spring. “And listen to it. It even sounds different. It’s like there is this odd echo—I can’t quite make it out.” He cocked his head, listening.
I concentrated as well, hearing the familiar chimes of time and the melody of the river. But this time I could also almost hear words mixed in with the music.
“And it seems softer somehow,” Dante continued. “Like it’s blurred along the edges, or feathered, like an angel’s outstretched wing.”
I swallowed, remembering Lorenzo standing over the cracked statue of the angel in the cathedral, how the wings had been bent and broken in his fall. I didn’t think they were connected, but I felt now like I had felt then: sad and small and helpless.
“Though this appears to be a little beyond feathering,” he continued. “I wonder how many of these threads are spooling off the main river?” He crouched down and skimmed the flat of his hand over the surface of the river, close but not touching. “No wonder it’s been harder to keep track of the time, with the river this unstable. Sometimes it feels like it’s slipping away and I can’t hold on to it. Other times, it feels as heavy as a stone and I can’t make it move, no matter how hard I push.”
“Can you fix it?”
Dante stood up and weighed his answer in the stillness between us. “Maybe. But I’ll need to study the currents of the river in order to see the possibilities of how we might be able to cleanse it and stabilize it. And that means I’ll need to stay on the bank—at least for a while.”
“Can I stay with you?” I gestured to the barren landscape around us. “I’m already here, after all.”
“I wish you could. But it’s too dangerous for you to stay. You haven’t found your balance yet. You haven’t had time to. It took me nearly a year to find mine once I had passed through the door. You’ve only had a couple of days.”
I frowned. I hated to ask my next question, but I had to. “And you’re sure your eyes will be okay? You can still see downstream the way you used to?”
Dante nodded with a small smile. “Yes and yes. I will be fine. Besides, if we are going to restore the river—and restore your family, I haven’t forgotten about them—then I need to know what’s going on, and for that, I need to study the river.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you being here alone. I want to help.”
“I know. And that’s one of the things I love about you.” He touched his forehead to mine. “You can help by staying with Orlando. By staying safe. And staying whole.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew Dante was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
“You did meet up with Orlando, right?”
“I’ve been with him ever since I arrived here—in this time, I mean. He was at the courtroom with me. And at the cathedral. He was even here—on the bank—right before you showed up.”
“He was?”
I nodded, remembering that with Dante’s limited sight, he hadn’t been able to see his brother. “I think he recognized you, but he fell into the river before he could reach you.”
A small furrow of worried thought creased Dante’s forehead.
“What about Zo?” I blurted out. “He said he could find me wherever I was—the way you can.”
“Let me worry about Zo. You concentrate on finding your balance.” He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me closer. “Do you trust me, Abby?”
“Always,” I answered without hesitation.
“Then trust me,” he said with a smile.
“I will.”
A glimmering flicker of light in the distance caught my attention. As I turned toward the main flow of the river, I saw a series of flashes like a heat mirage that made the land ripple. I paused, squinting in hopes it would bring the strange images into focus.
“Abby? What do you see?” Dante asked. He angled his face in the direction I was looking, but I knew he couldn’t see the shimmering light that had appeared on the bank. Not with his blind eyes behind his bandage. My heart seized up a little. We had to find a way to heal Dante. He couldn’t live like this.
“It’s a light,” I said, knowing it was too general a description to be helpful. “It’s across the river, and it looks like . . .” I rubbed my eyes. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. “It looks like my mom.” Terror clawed at my stomach, turning it into a seething mass of acid.
“Your mom?” Dante asked.
She stood motionless, her face turned toward me, a glittering veil of mist hanging between us.
“She can’t be here,” I moaned. “Why is she here? How?” I clenched my hands into fists, feeling my knuckles tighten with the strain. Then I shook my hands loose and bounced on the balls of my feet, wanting to race across the river and into my mom’s arms.
Dante touched my shoulder, holding me in place. “It’s not her, Abby. It can’t be her.”
“How can you be sure? What if she came looking for me? What if she managed to follow me?” I gasped. “And Dad! He’s there too.” I rose up on my toes, craning my neck for a better look. The light resolved into a third shape. “Hannah?” My voice cracked and bled away from me. My family stood on the far side of the split river. All of them. Together.
But I remained apart, separated from them by the vast expanse of time.
“Abby, no, listen to me,” Dante stepped in front of me, blocking my view. He moved his hands from my shoulders to my arms. I tried to shrug him off, but he was too strong.
“Let me go—”
“They’re not really here,” he said, his voice loud but calm. He stepped aside again. “Look at them, Abby. Really look at them. Tell me what you see.”
I took a deep breath and narrowed my eyes. It was hard to see past the emotions that sprang to life inside me, but what I saw made me catch my breath.
My mom looked pale white, ghostly and transparent. The outline of her body wavered, seeming to bleed away into nothingness as I watched. Her hair moved slowly in a breeze that wasn’t blowing. Her eyes were soft; it looked like she had been crying.
The images of Dad and Hannah floated nearby, their bodies the same ghostly white and thin. I could see where they were holding hands, but their individual fingers were lost in a hazy cloud of white. Hannah’s skirt ruffled around where her ankles would have been had she had any feet. The edges of her outline rippled like water.
Dante lifted my chin with his fingers, pulling my gaze back to his face.
In my heart, I knew Dante was right. My family wasn’t really there. It was impossible. “How did you know? Can you see them?”
Dante shook his head. “Not now, but I saw them like that once before, when I tried to restore your family to you the first time. When Zo erased them from the river, it was like they became ghosts, cut adrift. They are just images, Abby. Shadows seen through the mist of time.”
“We have to save them,” I said, quiet but firm.
“We will,” Dante said, equally firm. “We won’t let them be lost forever.”
I glanced back to my ghost family, desperate for another look, even knowing they were just fragments, just memories.
As I watched, a brighter light cut through the flat sky. The ground trembled under my feet like a minor earthquake. I hung on to Dante for balance.
Another figure materialized in the distance. A tall girl w
ith short black hair, the ends ragged and choppy. She barreled forward, running on bare feet straight through the wisps of my family, scattering them into a tattered oblivion. Her worn bathrobe covered a dirty gray sweatshirt and loose pajama pants. Her familiar face was twisted with anger and madness.
“Valerie?” I whispered, confused.
Even though she was some distance away, she lifted her head as though she had heard me. She fixed me with an intense gaze, and then she smiled.
But it wasn’t a smile of reunion or welcome.