Each time we’ve gone past, the Storm has taken more. Giving up pieces of myself isn’t so hard. But where will it end?
The hunger on Casvian’s face, the barely restrained fear on Dalca’s, the determination on Izamal’s—these things make me worry. The Storm has whittled them to their cores, and now the fog has swallowed them whole.
“Dalca!” Casvian calls. “Izamal?”
“Here.” Izamal’s voice comes from a few paces away. “Vesper?”
“Here.” I reach for him but grasp only air.
“Dalca!” Casvian yells again.
There’s no response.
“I’m going after him,” Casvian says.
“No—I will,” Izamal says, his voice already retreating. “You stay with Vesper.”
“Wait!” I tread toward their voices. I don’t like the way Izamal’s been looking at Dalca.
“He’s my responsibility!” Casvian’s footsteps fade away.
“Dalca? Izamal?” I shout.
I’m here.
I reach toward Dalca’s voice and grasp his wrist.
But it’s not his wrist grasped in my fingers. It’s the shadow. It solidifies into an inscrutable darkness, thickening to the shape of a person,the one visible thing in the fog. And then it turns its featureless face to me.
I can’t let go. And from that skin-on-shadow connection, a strange understanding comes to me. It’s neither my friend nor my enemy. And yet it’s both. Guardian and jailer, protector and executioner, creator and destroyer. It’s everything, a wholeness that’s indivisible, undefinable.
It’s as familiar to me as the formless place that appears when I shut my eyes. The shape of my infinite insides.
“Who are you?” The words disappear into the silence of the Storm, but I know my shadow has heard.
I am your guide. There is no turning back. The Storm is within you now; where you go, it will follow. The only way out is to go further into the Storm, further into you. Down and down you must go, until you descend into the dark heart of the Storm, into the darkest pits of your soul. You must not turn your back on anything that you find. Face it all. Accept it all. Only then may you find what you seek.
“What happens if I can’t?”
You must, even if you cannot.
It’s not courage that buoys me, but a primal instinct.Survive.
My shadow stretches out a hand. I reach for it and keep reaching, my hand touching nothing as I lose my balance.
I fall into the darkness of my shadow, into a darkness that swells as far as the eye can see, through cold wet air that eats my screams, past a hundred other falling girls, each of them twisting toward me, reaching for me, their grasping hands tearing my clothes, their gentle cold kisses stealing the air in my lungs, their teeth biting into my flesh and tearing away the thing that makes the blood beat in my heart. One by one, they pull from me deeper things, memories and dreams and nameless things, until all that is left is my name.
They take that, too.
They set the empty husk that’s left on its feet, onto a road made of bones.
Empty of all, the body that was once mine walks on.
There is no sun, no moon, no time. If there’s a destination, I don’t know it.
Under my feet, the bones turn to sand. It happens so slowly that I don’t notice until I stub my toe on a voice. It is a sweet voice, kind and strong and soft and frightened. It is mine.
I pick it up and swallow it.