“Where the hell are you going?” I screamed.
Ash didn’t answer. She kept walking, along the rails, into the dark.
“What the hell, girl?” I asked Maraud, but Maraud was just as confused by her behavior as she was by all human behavior.
“Ash!!” I called. I could see her in the darkness ahead of me.
I’d returned from the Underbridge to find her sitting on the rails in a kind of trance, with Maraud standing guard over her. When I squatted down and touched her hand and said her name she’d opened her eyes, looked startled, then gotten up and walked into the darkness.
Was there something here she was looking for? Something she needed? Or was she broken beyond repair by the Palace’s powerful magic? Was this part of her healing, or part of her damage?
I ran after her. Already the storm had soaked me so thoroughly that I didn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t tell the difference between air and rain, water and wind.
And then she stopped. Stood still. Tilted her head back. Lifted her face to the downpour. Turned toward me. Her eyes were shut, but I could see her smile.
“I feel it,” she said, when I reached her side. “I can feel it breaking. The spell I’m under. The rain helps. It’s real. It’s here, now, in this moment. I’m here.”
“Okay,” I said. I had to say it loud, to be heard above the wind. “So . . . we just stand here?”
She opened her mouth, let rain collect there. Laughed, spat it at me. In her face, in her eyes, the old Ash was coming back.
We were standing on the railroad tracks. Riversea waves crashed at our feet. I knew what she was talking about. I felt it myself. The elements were strong, here. Everything else was stripped away. We were rooted firmly on the Earth, on the stone and metal of the train tracks. Breathing in air, surrounded by water. Fire burned inside of us, and twinkled in the distance—lights on the riverboats; cooking fires along the quay.
“It’s not safe here,” I said to her.
“It’s happening,” Ash said. “I remember.”