I feel alert for the first time in hours, and I know it is because of Henry. Standing in the distance, well disguised amid the trees of the forest, I might not see him at all if only he was not Henry. But of course, he is. He could be hidden by a million leaves of a million branches on a million trees, and somehow I would find my way to him.
I look over at the small river where everyone else is watering the horses. I half expect Henry to be gone when I look back, but he is not. He is standing right where he was a moment ago, but this time, he holds a finger to his mouth, signifying silence. Then he beckons me to him with his hand.
I glance back at the rest of the group, still immersed in caring for the horses and tending to their own personal details before we ride again. They will not miss me if I am only gone a moment, and I cannot let a moment such as this pass. A moment when I might actually speak to my brother for the first time since his death.
I walk toward the tree line at the edge of the small clearing. I do not hesitate when it comes time to step into the leafy shade of the woods. As I do, Henry turns to walk deeper into the forest. I am not surprised to see him walking. Death has freed him of his useless legs and the wheelchair that was both his constant companion and his prison.
His voice drifts to me on the fog. “Lia! Come here, Lia! I must talk to you.”
I call out to him softly, not wanting to alert the others to my absence. “I cannot be gone long, Henry. The others are waiting.”
He disappears behind one of many trees, but his voice still finds me. “It’s all right, Lia. We’ll just talk a moment. You’ll be back in no time.”
I continue into the woods, finally reaching the tree where I last saw him. At first, I think it a trick of my own imagination and tiredness, for he is not there. But then I see him, sitting on a fallen log a little to my left.
“Henry.” It is all I can say. I am afraid he will disappear if I speak too carelessly into the silence.
He smiles. “Lia. Come and sit with me, will you?”
He sounds just as he always has, and I am not afraid to see him here among my own world. The gifts of the Otherworlds and the prophecy are vast and not always predictable. It would be difficult to take me by surprise after all I have seen.
I walk over, dropping onto the log next to him. When I look into his eyes, they are as dark and infinite as I remember. They are my father’s eyes, rich and warm, and for a moment my grief is so great that I do not think I will be able to draw another breath.
I gather my wits, not knowing how long we will have to speak in private. “It is so good to see you, Henry.” I reach up to touch his silken cheek. “I cannot believe you’re really here.”
He giggles. It travels through the forest like smoke. “Of course I am, silly! I came to see you.” His face grows serious, and he reaches over, putting his small arms around me in a childish embrace. “I’ve missed you, Lia.”
I breathe in the scent of him, and it’s just as I remember, that complicated scent of boyhood sweat and old books and many, many years of confinement. “I’ve missed you, too, Henry. More than you know.”
We stay that way for a moment before I pull away reluctantly. “Have you seen Mother and Father? Are they well?”
He gazes into my eyes, and this time, he is the one to reach out and touch my cheek. His fingertips are warm. “Yes, they are well, and I have much to tell you. But you look so tired, Lia. You do not seem well.”
I nod. “I cannot sleep. It is the Souls, you see. They have infiltrated our party. They have contaminated Sonia.” I thrust my hand toward him. “Now only I can wear the medallion. And I mustn’t sleep, Henry. Not until we reach Altus and Aunt Abigail.”
There is pity and compassion in his eyes. “Yes, but you will not be able to fight the Souls when the time comes, nor fight them now, if you do not rest.” He scoots closer to me. “Put your head on my shoulder. Just for a bit. Closing your eyes for even a few minutes will help you get through the rest of your journey. I’ll watch over you, I promise.”
He is right, of course. It is not easy balancing the need to protect myself from the medallion and the need to be prepared for an attack from the Souls. If I rest, I will be better prepared to face whatever they have in store between here and Altus. And who better to trust than my beloved brother, who placed himself at risk to hide the list of keys so that Alice would not use it to her gain?
I lay my head on his shoulder, breathing in the wool of his tweed waistcoat. The forest looks odd from this angle — skewed sideways, it is suddenly something foreign and dark with only an undertone of familiarity. I let my eyes drift close, falling into the delicious emptiness of sleep, a sensation that feels precious for the simple fact that I have not been able to take it for granted these past nights.
I should like to say I have a moment’s peace. That I manage a few stolen minutes of rest, and perhaps I do. But the next thing I know, a fierce wind blows around me. No, that is not right. It blows through me, coming from some primeval place that opens up from within.
I have a flash of the sea on the many summers we spent on the island as children. Alice and I learned to swim on that island. We would stand on the beach where the water rushed to meet our feet, marveling at the sea’s power to pull so much sand back into her watery depths, leaving us standing in an excavated abyss. That is how it feels. As if something has opened up inside of me and is pulling everything important, everything in me, into some ancient place, leaving only an empty shell still standing on the familiar beach.
“Li-a! Where are you, Lia?” The voices come from afar. I haven’t the energy to open my eyes and find them. Besides, Henry’s shoulder is so comforting, so solid under my cheek. I should like to stay here for a very long time.
But I am not permitted the luxury of slumber. Of ignorance. Instead, I am awoken with a ferocious shaking and then, shockingly, a harsh slap to the face.
“Lia! Whatever are you doing?” It is Luisa’s face, her tawny eyes into which I look.
“I’m only resting. With Henry.” My words sound slurred, nearly incoherent, even to my own ears.
“Lia… Lia. Listen to me,” Luisa says as Dimitri and Edmund run up behind her, breathing heavily as if they have been running. “Henry is not here. You have been lured into the forest!”
Indignation swims to the surface of my stupor. “He is here. He’s watching out for me while I sleep, and then he will tell me all the things we need to know to get to Altus safely.”
But when I try to look for Henry, I realize I am not sitting on the fallen log as I was when I first sat down. I am lying on the ground amid the dead, crackly leaves. I look past Luisa, past Dimitri and Edmund. Henry is not there. “He was here. Just a moment ago.”
I scramble to rise from the ground, and Dimitri rushes forward to put an arm under one of mine. It takes me a moment to gain my balance. When I do, I turn in a slow circle, scanning the woods for any sign of my brother. But somehow I know he is not there. Was never there. I bury my face in my hands.
Dimitri pulls my hands away. He holds them in his. “Look at me, Lia.”
But I am ashamed. I, of all people, have allowed myself to be lured into sleep. Have allowed the Souls to use my love for my brother. I shake my head.
“Look at me.” He releases one of my hands and tips my chin so that I have no choice but to look into his inky eyes. “This is not your fault. It isn’t. You’re stronger than any of us, Lia. But you’re human. It’s a wonder you have not fallen under their spell sooner.”
I wrench my hand from his and turn, walking away. It only takes a few steps for the fury to find me, and I spin to face Dimitri. “They used my brother! Of all the things… of all the sacred things they might use, why him?” Though my question begins with rage, it ends with a whimper.
Dimitri closes the distance between us in two long strides. He puts a hand on either side of my head and stares into my eyes. “Because they will use everything in their power, Lia. Nothing is sacred to them. Nothing
save the power and authority they crave. If you know nothing else, remember nothing else, you must know and remember this. You must.”
18
By the time we make camp for the night, I am in a state of hyperawareness. I feel as if I could not sleep even if given the opportunity, though I have never been so physically exhausted in my life. Once Luisa and Sonia are ensconced in separate tents and everyone else has settled into quiet, I become convinced that it is only constant movement together with constant thought that keeps me awake.
I begin circling the diameter of the campsite while Edmund and Dimitri settle the horses in for the night. Later, Edmund will sit outside Sonia’s tent to keep watch, as has been his custom these past nights. I still do not know if he watches her continually to protect me from her or to protect her from herself. I have been too tired to ask.
While I pace, I think. I try to project myself forward, through the last leg of our journey, to the time when I will see Aunt Abigail at Altus, and forward still to the journey after that — the one that will take me to the missing pages. It is good to occupy my mind, and it has the added benefit of providing me with a glimpse of possible obstacles where I might still design a way around them.
“Would you like some company?” The voice is at my shoulder and causes me to jump, so deep am I in thought and tiredness.
I do not stop walking, but when I turn my head, Dimitri is keeping pace on my right.
I shake my head. “It’s not necessary, Dimitri. You should sleep. I’m fine.”
He chuckles. “I feel quite well, actually. More alert than usual, in fact.”
I smile at him. “Even still, I am counting on you to see me safely to Altus. If you become overtired, the both of us might end up on a different island entirely!”
He reaches down and grabs my hand. “I assure you, I am as alert as the day I met you with the Hounds. I told you; I don’t need sleep the way you do.”
I tip my head to look at him as we walk. “And how is that, exactly? Are you not… mortal?”
He tips his head back and laughs at the indigo sky. “Of course I’m mortal! What do you think me, a beast?” He bares his teeth and growls playfully.
I roll my eyes. “Very funny. Do you blame me for asking? How else can it be that you do not need sleep?”
“I never said that I don’t need sleep at all. Just that I can go considerably longer without it than you.”
I give him a sly glance. “I think you are avoiding the subject. Come now, surely we do not have secrets at this juncture!” I am enjoying the mischievous banter. It makes me feel less odd. As if we might be walking in one of London’s many parks on a beautiful summer day.
He sighs. When he looks back at me, his smile is a little sad. “I am mortal just as you are, but I am descended on one side from one of the oldest lines in the Grigori and on the other from one of the oldest in the Sisterhood. In fact, every one of my ancestors dating back to the Watchers has formed a union with a member of the Sisterhood. Because of this, my… gifts are extraordinary. Or so I’m told.”
“What do you mean, exactly? To what gifts do you refer?” I cannot help feeling that he has kept something significant from me.
He squeezes my hand. “The same gifts you have — the ability to travel the Plane, to scry, to speak to the dead… The more closely we are descended from the original Watchers and Grigori, the more of that power we retain.”
I stare into the night, trying to put a finger on what gave me pause. When I find it, I turn back to him.
“You said ‘we.’”
“Yes.”
“What did you mean?” I ask.
He looks at me with a small smile. “You, too, are descended from an old line. A pure line. Didn’t you know?”
I shake my head, though there is a realization, something hidden in the murk of my lethargic mind, fighting its way to the surface. “I only found out recently that my father was a member of the Grigori at all. There hasn’t been time to ask questions about his lineage.”
Dimitri stops walking, tugging on my hand until I stop beside him. “He was as powerful a member of the Grigori as your mother was a Sister, Lia. You, too, are descended from a long line of unions between the Sisters and the Grigori. It is why you are so powerful.”
I shake my head and begin walking, so fast now that he has to trot to catch up. I don’t want to find the connections that I am already beginning to find, though I cannot put a reason to it.
“Lia… What is it? This is nothing. . . Well, this is nothing that should upset you. If anything, you have a better chance of ending the prophecy than anyone before you because of your lineage. It is the reason your Aunt Abigail was so powerful and your mother, too.”
I nod. “Yes, but it also means that Alice is probably more powerful than I imagined, and I already imagined her very powerful. Plus…”
“Plus?”
I feel his gaze but do not meet it right away. I keep walking, trying to put words to the sadness I suddenly feel. Finally I stop walking once again. “Plus, I am beginning to understand that I never really knew my father at all. That he must have felt very alone and did not believe he could share his worries with me.”
“He was trying to protect you, Lia. That’s all. It is all any of us in the Grigori endeavor to do for the Sisters.”
I can do nothing but nod. Nod and walk.
We do not speak again, but Dimitri does not once leave my side. We walk the whole night through, sometimes in silence and sometimes in murmured conversation, pacing circles around the camp as the sky fades from midnight blue to lilac to the palest orange in the distance. We walk until it is time, once again, to ride.
An hour into our ride the next morning, I smell the sea. Knowing it is so close makes it possible to fight the insidious call of sleep, though I have given up the notion of dignity and do not ride erect in the saddle, but slumped against Dimitri’s chest. I do not even know if Sonia glances my way or pays me any attention at all. I long ago stopped expending my precious energy worrying about her attention. For the moment, she is quiet, and that is good enough for me.
The forest passes in a blurry haze, and every moment I desire only to close my eyes. Only to sleep and sleep and sleep. But the briny smell of the ocean gives me cause to hope that the end is near.
The wood fades a little at a time, the trees at first becoming only slightly less dense, eventually thinning to the point where it seems we are no longer in a forest at all. Finally we cross some invisible threshold and are on the beach.
The horses stop all at once, and the sea stretches, moody and gray, into the infinite distance. We stare at it in silence.
Luisa is the first to dismount, dropping to the ground with characteristic grace and unlacing her boots. She pulls them off, followed by her stockings. When her feet are at last bare, she wiggles her toes in the sand, watching them before looking up at me.
“You’re not too tired to dip your toes in the sea, are you, Lia?”
There was a time when her mischievous grin would have been catching, when I would have jumped to join her. Now her words come from very far away. They take a long time to reach me, and when they do, they barely make a dent in my consciousness.
“Lia?” Dimitri’s voice is husky in my ear, his chest hard against my back. “Why don’t you go with Luisa? The cold water will do you good.” The air is chilly on my back when he dismounts. Once on the ground, he holds up a hand. “Come.”
I take his hand out of instinct and swing one leg over the horse’s back, stumbling a little as I hit the ground. Luisa kneels, reaching for one of my feet. “Here. Let me get this.” She taps the side of my boot, and I obediently lift my leg, bracing myself against Dimitri’s horse.
She proceeds to remove first one boot and stocking and then the other. When the sand, gritty and cold, is at last against my bare feet, Luisa rises. She takes my hand, pulling me toward the water without a word.
I have not lost all my faculties. Even as I stagger
to the water behind Luisa I am wondering how we will get to Altus, what is next in our journey. But I do not have the motivation to ask or even to wonder for very long. I allow Luisa to pull me toward the rushing waves until they swallow my feet. The water is frigid, and I get a jolt of something like pain mixed with euphoria as my toes are enveloped by the slippery slickness of it.
Luisa’s laugh is carried on the wind, all the way out to sea, it seems. She lets go of my hand and wades farther out, scooping handfuls of water and spraying it in every direction like a child. Even now, I feel the loss of Sonia, for she should be in the water, laughing and rejoicing at how far we have come together… how close we are to Altus. Instead, she is a virtual prisoner, carefully watched by Edmund and Dimitri behind us. Sadness and resentment war within me. It is a losing battle no matter the outcome.
“Wait a minute…” Luisa has stopped playing in the waves. She stands a few feet in front of me, gazing through the mist in the distance. I follow her gaze but see nothing. The fog stretches on and on, blending together with the gray of the sea and the nothingness of the sky.
But Luisa does see something. She continues staring before turning back to Edmund and the others.
“Edmund? Is that — ” She does not finish her sentence, but turns back to the water.
When I turn to look at the rest of the group, Edmund is walking slowly toward us and peering into the same distance. He walks right into the water, unmindful of his wet boots, stopping right next to me.
“Why, yes, Miss Torelli. I do believe you’re right.” And though he addresses Luisa by name, he seems to be talking to everyone and no one in particular.
I turn to him. “Right about what?” My tongue feels fuzzy in my mouth.
“Right about what she sees,” he says. “There.”
I look in the direction of his stare and, yes, there is something dark making its way toward us in the water. Perhaps it is my lack of sleep, but I feel suddenly frightened as the object comes closer and closer. It is monstrous. A large, hulking thing all the more frightening for the utter soundlessness of its approach. I feel an irrational, hysterical scream building in my throat as the object breaks through the last of the mist hanging over the sea.