Page 75 of Daughter of the Dark

“First lesson in rifting.” Masimu turned and walked backward, his black cloak fluttering around his legs. There was no breeze except the one he created with his shadows. “You can only go to a place you can see in your mind. This is why muki tend to return to the place where they died.”

“Is this what you brought me here to tell me?”

“Partially.” With a puff of wind, Masimu was gone. A soft exhale, and he was beside her once again. “With night and rest comes strength, which is why muki rift away with the light. It takes a lot of power to leave Uku Pacha.”

The amount of power beneath the castle, all those muki desperate to return to their homes without understanding why, and now they were trapped there forever in a sort of involuntary stasis. It was her worst nightmare. Solana shivered at the thought of it.

“And what form of gift would this be considered?”

“Manifesting.” A small rock appeared in Masimu’s outstretched hand. He threw it, waited until it clacked against a building far-off, and then held his hand out to her once again. The same rock sat in the middle of his palm. “When you rift, you are this rock. You are creating your new reality and setting yourself within it.” Masimu tossed the rock aside and brushed his hand on his pants. “Your mind must be clear and focused for this to work.”

Solana kicked a rock down the street. The buildings were starting to look more like homes than piles of rubble. Some of them still had their small iron balconies, and one up ahead had a flower box with what looked like skeletal flowers poking out. “And if I fail to clear my mind or create a new reality?”

“Your body could split into thousands of tiny pieces that scatter across Supay,” Masimu said quickly, and then he clapped. The sound was especially sharp in the emptiness of the city. “Let’s give it a try.”

“Now?”

“Is there a better time for you?”

With a click, Solana closed her mouth and pressed her lips together. There wasn’t a better time. In fact, it was difficult to feel as though all of this wasn’t already a waste of time. Might as well indulge him in this to hopefully get what she wanted in return.

She came to a stop in the middle of the road. “Where to, then?” she asked with a sigh.

The lines of Masimu softened so subtly that she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been closely watching. “To your home,” he said softly, head tilted toward her as if sharing a secret. “In Qhilli. There’s someone waiting for you there.”

Solana stared at her father, eyes darting between his, searching for the implication behind the words he wasn’t saying. She refused to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. Refused to hope. The challenge in his eyes was all the motivation she needed. If she was right about where exactly they were in this imitation of Supay, then on foot, it would take hours and hours to get there. But with rifting? It could be the blink of an eye, as easy as a thought.

Only if Solana could manage to clear her mind and picture her new reality.

Or an old reality. It had been months since she had last seen her home. Even when she was in Qhilli, she avoided those four walls as much as possible. It had never been the same without Lucia, who had made their small space as homey as possible. There were herbs in the window that kept spiders out, and hand-knit blankets tossed over the bed and chair. Clay plates in the kitchen and a dusty and unused cuatro in the corner.

When Lucia died, Solana had been forced to sell everything she could just to feed herself. Only the blankets had stayed, and even those had been chewed by mice over the years until there was hardly anything left of them.

It was that barren space that Solana held in her mind. The cobwebs in the corners and the empty pots on the windowsill. The exterior that had faded with time and neglect and the sun. The doorjamb with her heights that stopped at the tender age of thirteen, and the doorknob that had been repaired more times than seemed feasible. Solana exhaled all her stress and urgency and focused only on what it would feel like to slip her hand over it once more.

The metal would be cold against her palm. The smell of the sea would be thick in the air—it always was, that close to the docks. Most days, the door stuck so badly that there had to be an equal measure of push and pull before it finally budged.

Solana felt like that door as the shadows coalesced over her body and swept her away. She was being pushed in a direction while also pulling it toward her, imagining what could be while remembering what had been. The ground rose up to meet her violently, but when she looked up from her hands and knees, the door to her house was just an arm’s length away.

Masimu landed next to her with much more grace. “You did it,” he breathed, pride shining in his eyes.

There had been a time when making him proud had been her greatest mission in life, even if it was never very difficult. Just making sure you’re real, he had said, watching her with such love that she never questioned who she belonged to and if she was wanted. It wasn’t until after he disappeared that Solana began to doubt everything. That she worried she was the reason he abandoned and then betrayed them all.

Perhaps she had been too needy, too difficult to tame, too disruptive to teach, too hard to love.

In the end, it mattered little. Masimu had disappeared, her mother had died, and now there she was, facing them both once again.

Instead of running into her home, Solana slowly got to her feet, took three steps back, and faced the door straight on. Masimu quietly stood beside her and together they inspected the weathered wood. There was no balcony or flower boxes beneath the windows. No need for flowers in a world with no sun.

“Is she…” Solana’s words trailed off, throat tight with hope and heartache.

“Yes,” Masimu said softly.

“All this time.” She kept her eyes pinned to the door, remembering a time when she knew she would open it and see her mother there. At the table, sewing a hole closed in her one good shirt. In the kitchen making tea. On the bed, curled in a ball when her grief was too heavy to bear, then when she was too sick to leave it.

Eventually, she was gone, and opening the door became the most difficult thing to do.

“She never came back. Did you keep her here? Did you command her to stay?”