THE OTHERS CATCH up to us not long after. I don’t know if I’ve already forgotten by then—the bridge, what I saw. Even now that I remember what I’d forgotten, I don’t remember when it was I forgot. Is that strange?
Mel and Kyle find us first, and I panic, because Becca and Anthony should have been before them—but they’re less than a minute behind, racing out of the mist and fetching up near us with identical stricken expressions.
“That was a trip,” Mel says, underselling it by a mile. She shows her teeth, but it isn’t a smile. I want to ask what they saw, and I can see the same question on their faces, but no one speaks it out loud. One confession will demand the rest, and I don’t think any of us can quite bear that.
“This is it, then,” Anthony says. “The last gate.”
“Not the last,” Lucy says. “There’s one more.” The gate to Ys itself. And from there, a way home.
We clamber over the broken gate, helping each other across. On the other side the road sticks out into the mist like a broken-off dock. No one moves.
“We’ve come this far,” I say. “We can do this.” I reach out and take Becca’s hand, then Mel’s. Mel grips Kyle’s hand tight, and Anthony takes the other, Becca and Anthony closing the ring—Lucy dropping back, away, giving us the moment. We held hands like this before we stepped onto the road. A ring of us, and so many gone now.
“You came for me,” Becca says. “All of you. I don’t know how to make that up to you. How to make it worth everything you’ve been through. Everyone we’ve lost.”
“We did this for you. Not because of you,” Anthony says. “Don’t feel guilty. Feel . . .”
“Loved,” I say softly. “We came, all of us, out of love. For you. For each other. Even Jeremy, even though I doubt he’d appreciate me saying it.”
“Way too much of a bro for that touchy-feely stuff,” Mel agrees with a tilting smile, and we chuckle. “Sara’s right. We’re here out of love. Because of what all of us were willing to give up for it. Especially Trina. She loved you more than anything in the world, Kyle, and she would do what she did a thousand times over again if she knew it would get you home. And so we’re going to get you home.”
“I hope I’m worth it,” Kyle says.
“I hope I’m worth it, too,” Becca says. They share a look that settles from pain into a kind of peace.
“We all get home,” Anthony says. “That’s how this ends. Every one of us.”
“Every one of us,” we all echo.
The circle breaks. Anthony keeps hold of Becca’s hand, and Mel lingers near me a moment. We don’t have the right habits yet—the small things to comfort each other, to connect not as friends, or not friends alone, but whatever we’re becoming. We have to settle for an out-of-place smile, a gaze that lingers a second longer than it might have yesterday, a brief touch of her hand against mine.
Then Lucy steps up, her smile sweet, and slips her hand into mine once more.
“It isn’t far now,” she tells us. “Soon this will all be over.”
“Should we go first?” I ask.
“We’ll go first,” Kyle says. “I mean, if that’s okay. I just want this over with.” His eyes shift away from mine.
We watch silently as Mel and Kyle walk into the mist, turning into shadows before they vanish.
“Ready?” Lucy asks me.
“Ready,” I lie, and we walk after them.
The road is surprisingly intact here—few stones that manage to touch one another, but the edges clear enough, speckling the ground at semiregular intervals. The mist leaves us mostly blind, but that’s a kind of blessing. I don’t want to see what’s around us.
Because of the mist, we don’t see the dark until we’re almost in it. We hardly acknowledge it, except to rearrange our grip slightly, more securely.
“Almost done,” Lucy tells me—or maybe she’s talking to herself. We step past the border of the darkness, and into that strange, echoing space.
I count steps. One, two, three, four. That urge is there— letgoletgoletgo—but I grit my teeth against it, and Lucy’s grip never wavers.
And then she stumbles. Her breath is labored, and her grip tightens against mine with an alarming sort of desperation.
“Lucy? Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Hold on,” she says. “Here, hold—hold my arm.”
She slides her hand through mine, guiding my palm up to her upper arm so I can grip and leave her hands free. I hear her rummaging in her bag, and then—light. I blink rapidly in the sudden luminescence. She holds the severed hand with its candle in the palm. There isn’t much left of it, but she sets it at our feet. We’re still among the scattered stones, soft grass growing up around them.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and then I see that she’s bleeding. Her hair hid it at first, but the blood trickles down her neck and pools in the dip of her collarbone, soaking into her dress. Her eyes are glassy, and she sways. “What happened? Oh my God. What should I—what should I do?” I ask.
She peels her lips back from her teeth. “What happened is Lucy’s brother is a bastard,” she says. “And there’s nothing you can do. Not unless you can travel back sixty-five years or so and stop him from slamming a rock into her skull.” Lucy. Her skull. I blink in confusion, but I don’t have time to think about it.
The blood comes thicker, faster. She staggers. Her knees buckle. I lunge to catch her on instinct, but all I can do is lower her to the ground as she wheezes.
“What do I do?” I ask again.
“It’s all right,” she tells me, her voice faint. “I knew it would happen. It’s why I had to turn back last time. Lucy was dying when she stepped onto the road. This close to the end, it catches up with her, that’s all.”
“What do you mean, Lucy was dying?” I ask. “You’re Lucy. What—”
“It’s why I couldn’t use her to get away,” she says. “But you and your sister—you’re both so receptive. I never had to try very hard to get you to hear me. Lucy was like that. Pity about the dying.” Something moves behind her eyes, and I realize I was wrong. Lucy isn’t decades older than she looks.
Those eyes have the weight of centuries.
“You’re Dahut,” I whisper.
She grins. “And you are my way out of this prison,” she says. She reaches out, and before I can pull away, she seizes my hand. Something rushes out of her, cold as the sea, and into me.
And
I
cease.