Not until, as was true with most riddles, the solution surfaced—suddenly as obvious as daylight and bold as brass.
The riddle, though, was itself a riddle. In that it wasn’t meant to helpme.
Also, Sir Black had dropped plenty of clues before this moment—right from the start of our conversation.
“I know who you are,” I told the ominous and intimidating figure.
“It makes sense that you would,” said Sir Black, “given what I said before. Thatyoudo not belong here.”
“Grim doesn’t, either,” I told him. “He just doesn’t know it. And knowing it… really knowing it… well,that’swhat makes you free, isn’t it?”
“Who am I, Helena?” asked the dark figure before me.
I smirked at him, my fear of him falling away in a rush as I lifted my hand to take hold of the edge of his mask.
“You are him,” I said, “you are her. This one and that one. You are everyone. But the answer you are seeking is… that you… are ‘me.’?”
I pulled free the mask, which, like Grim’s scythe had on occasion, misted away to nothing, revealing a face I would find in any reflective surface—in, as he’d said, glass. A familiar countenance that went everywhere with me because it belonged to me.
My best friend and my worst enemy. My supporter, my saboteur.
“You didn’t mean what you said before,” I whispered to him—to her, the woman who occupied that darkly cloaked and heavily armored form. “Did you? That I wasn’t meant to find love in this life.”
“Not if you don’t believe me,” Sir Black said, though he spoke now withmyvoice—right before he, she,Imisted away, too, the entire being unraveling and dispelling to vapor.
A moment later, our surroundings did, too, the impenetrable walls unspooling to fog before evaporating, revealing a nighttime scene.
A strip of forest ran behind a small thatch-roofed hut stationed next to gardens planted with neat rows of cabbage.
A wooden cart filled with straw waited to be hitched again to a mare or donkey.
Weak candlelight the hue of tarnished gold flickered from the hut’s lone window, drawing me toward it—toward the house. Right along with the low murmur of voices.
One of the voices belonged to Grim: his human form.
But then… the other voice belonged to him, too. That one to his monster form.
Drawing up to the window, I peered inside to find both versions of him present within the humble abode.
“Grim!” I shouted to him—to them. But as if they hadn’t heard me at all, neither of them looked my way.
I almost shouted to them again, but I stopped, my breath catching when Grim’s reaper form, scythe gripped in one hand, lifted a bony finger to point at the child sheened in sweat—the tiny boy I hadn’t noticed until that moment.
The one breathing shallowly, his small hand draped across his belly.
The one sleeping, sick—and unaware of the conversation being held in his vicinity.
A conversation that continued to unfold.
One that pertained to him.
To the boy who could be only one person.
“Phineas,” I whispered.
50GRIM
“I’ll not let you take him,” I said, positioning myself in front of the fearsome wraith who had entered my home unannounced—uninvited.
