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He takes a step back when I charge him. I keep advancing until the distance between our noses is too close to measure.
“Risk what Sion? What?” My last word cracks through the air like a cat-of-nine-tails. “Stop shoving disjointed puzzle pieces at me. What’s the big picture here?”
My partner takes half a step back, rubbing a finger under his bottom lip. “I’ve never had to explain—” His gaze climbs the tower, locking onto a window near the top. When he speaks, his voice is cracked and tinny. “Ever heard a cry in the dark you convinced yourself was a night bird or the wind itself?”
I shrug, unwilling to admit how often I’ve heard strange cries in the city or the park. Breeze trickles through loose strands of my hair. The mossy smells of water-logged stones and dirt fill the air. The current world isn’t stuck the way the Veil forest appeared. Sounds, smells, and sensations that surround us are active, alive. Clouds cross a full moon, not a three-quarter one.
Is this place the Veil too? There’s no wavering sheen in the sky or glowing spheres on the ground.
A wail of profound sorrow rends the air. I dig fingers into his sleeve. “What the hell?”
“The why we can’t stop.” The melancholy softening his features matches the air of misery dropping around us like a silken drape. “The reason I need you, Eala.” He raises his hand, palm up to the tower. Harmonies of lamentation flow from the single high window. “Up there’s the soulfall. They’re calling to us.”
Soulfall?
I search my memories of Máthair’s stories, but the word is new to me. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for Sion’s fingers twining through mine. I hope St. Augustine was on the right track with blind trust. I still only half accept I’m moving through a strange reality holding hands with a curly-haired enigma. This is exactly the situation that usually I’d run from, not embrace.
We trudge over grass-covered mounds, skirting rocks until we’re next to the foot of the tower. Below saw-toothed crenellations, the dark opening of a window brightens with candlelight. To my horror, the silhouette of a child, a girl, hovers at the edge of the sill.
I wave my arms and shout. “Back up, kid.” Negligent parents are about to pay the ultimate price. “Someone pull her in!” With both hands, I shove Sion toward the opening at the base of the tower where a door has long since rotted away. “Get her away from the window. Run.” My eyes fall to the collection of boulders spiking out of the river. Demon jaws lick watery lips in anticipation.
Sion doesn’t move.
Fear twists my throat. “Please.” I don’t know if I’m talking to Sion, or fate, or God. Anyone who will listen and keep this tiny being from falling. I can’t look at her anymore and turn away from the window.
Sion swivels my body to face the tower, crisscrossing his arms around me to lock my back against his chest. “Watch.”
I thrash with every ounce of my adrenaline-charged hysteria. “What are you doing to me?”
In the next second, the child steps from the sill into mid-air. I want to hide my eyes, but I’m paralyzed. The shadow that lives in my heart, fear of heights, wraps bands of ice around my body, riveting me to this spot, to this sight, to violence. It whispers to me.
See what happens when you climb.
Sion rests his chin on my shoulder, rasping words into my ear. “It’s not as it seems. You’ll understand if you don’t turn away. I promise.”
The little one’s dress billows around her, a parachute opening to the wind. She glides slowly downward, a strand of lace on a breeze. Moonlight peeks around the tower, illuminating her balletic descent.
Black vines of terror crawl up my body.
Sion holds me tighter. “Isn’t it lovely how she floats?”
Her delicate fall brings her level with us. Details become clear: the doll hugged in tiny arms, ringlets of her hair, a Sunday-best dress.
“It’s the girl from Charleville Castle.”
Sion hums confirmation.
Little Harriett’s gaze finds mine, and her face breaks into a smile. When the tip of her shiny black shoe touches the highest boulder that juts mercilessly out of the frothing water, she bursts into a million fireflies. Gravity has no dominion over the child. Her light flutters upward, tracing the path of a moonbeam and then dissipates into the sky to become pinpoints of stardust.
“Purity,” Sion breathes into my ear. “Her fulfillment is your doing, Eala.” I shudder in his arms. “You set her on the path to peace.”
Inside my heart, there’s a flicker. It moves through my chest and then out to every part of my body as if the girl’s fireflies are inside me instead of reaching for the moon.
Sion shudders when a woman steps onto the window ledge. The awful shrieking from the tower window is a needle of ice scraping my bones.
“You’re seeing souls falling, not flesh and bone.” His chin bores deep into the muscle of my shoulder. “Tortured spirits waiting for?—”
The woman leans out the window until the sky claims her body. She slides on an invisible plank toward the roiling white soup. Skirts flaps around her. The figure is all in gray tones, blurry and indistinguishable. When she meets the boulder, no sparks rise into the night. An explosion of sludge, blacker than ink, splatters over the surface of the rock.
