Your words to me
Are oxygen
Sean
This time, I really think I am dead. And then my eyes open of their own accord, and I cough and splutter and vomit water until, at last, air comes into my lungs. Above me the sky is on fire – dawn, sunset? I don’t know – and Sarah’s face appears. Water keeps trickling from my mouth and another coughing fit splits my sides.
“Sean . . .” She’s calling my name, like a prayer. Her hair brushes my face as she leans above me. Her closeness is like oxygen. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe . . .”
A few ragged breaths – painful, but so blissful – the feeling of Sarah’s hands on my face. Elodie’s anguished face above me now.
“Ça va? Sean, ça va?” she keeps saying.
Sarah helps me up and I can’t quite believe I’m alive. My lungs are hurting more than I can say, my heart beats furiously, as if trying to make up for all the time it was still underwater, when I was trapped in the Surari’s nest.
“Niall?” I manage to rasp and gurgle before taking another deep, painful breath. His voice comes from somewhere behind me. I turn around and I see him, his hands clasped in his lap, bleeding profusely.
“I’m fine. I was in the mood for a long swim anyway . . .”
“Your hands!”
“Just a graze. We owe Alvise our lives.” He points at the water and I follow her gaze to the Surari’s body, tangled, face-down in the same dam where it’d trapped me. Two arrows are sticking from its back, green water flowing over its body.
I’m about to thank Alvise, when somebody screams, and I turn back to the water in time to see another Surari jump out of the stream with a leap that would be impossible for a human being. It attacks the first thing it sees – Micol – and flattens her on the grass.
I fumble, looking for my sgian-dubh, my reflexes slow and sluggish – but there’s no need. Sarah has thrown herself on the creature already, freeing Micol, and they roll on the ground together. Sarah’s hands sink into its skin. The Surari raises its head to the sky and howls, a howl of pain that has something unsettlingly human about it. The creature does resemble a human being, one that evolution has programmed to live underwater. The eerie sound stops quickly, and the mer-creature lies still, Blackwater seeping off its body, until it dissolves in one last gush. So there was a pair of them. Probably male and female. Sarah must be thinking the same, because she’s looking at the dead Surari with something resembling pity. I’ll leave compassion to her. There is no room in my heart for it now.
“Are you okay?” she asks Micol. The Italian girl looks ashen, but she’s unharmed.
“Yes. Thank you,” she says, and looks down. I can feel she still resents Sarah – and no wonder.
“Let’s get away from here,” I say, and take Alvise’s hand as he helps me up. The world spins around me, but I soon find my feet. I want away from this place; there might be more mer-demons, and who knows what else hides in those waters.
“Not far now,” says Nicholas, his stride more confident than ever. He can almost walk as he used to before he was blinded. Maybe it has something to do with getting closer to his home. “Soon we can rest.”
Yes, of course. We can all comfortably rest in your house, I think to myself. I’ll sleep like a baby for sure.
We’re all soaking, and the cold wind is biting us. Freezing white mist rises from the ground. Alvise is carrying my backpack, as I’m still weak. I still stumble a bit, but I’m recovering fast. Sarah walks shoulder to shoulder with me. I catch a glimpse of her profile – her face is hard, set. Determined. But there’s a strange look in her eyes.
“Hey. I’m okay. I’m here,” I whisper.
“If something should happen to you . . .” She doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Then you’ll keep going. You’ll finish this.”
She takes a breath, and nods. “Yes. You must promise the same.”
“I promise.” I’d keep going long enough to do what I must do. And then give up. A life without Sarah is not worth living.
Weird, how I knew that already soon after we met. Like whatever binds me to Sarah is the same thing that binds me to life. I hold her hand harder, tighter, and I don’t want to let go. I don’t care if everyone can see us, though neither of us likes making a show of our feelings. I won’t let her go.
The sun is setting behind us in an explosion of pink, red and orange, and we cast long shadows on the ground. Intermittent buzzing sounds accompany us, as Micol’s hands shine with multi-coloured charges. Strange sounds come from the trees, calls and animal growls and deep, bird-like squeaks. What’s hiding in those trees? More leeches? Surari whose existence we have no idea about? What will come next, to try to destroy us?
In my time in Japan, when the culling of the heirs began, I saw things that I’d rather forget – but I can’t. I can never forget the creatures that slithered out of the Tokyo metro, and the things they could do to human bodies. I hold Sarah’s hand tighter as memories of old horrors crept into my mind.
I think of Mary Ann. A Gamekeeper like me, and my former girlfriend. I never loved her, not like I love Sarah, but I cared about her. I care about her still. For a while, Harry Midnight, Elodie, Mary Ann and I were a team, fighting together in Japan. Harry is dead, Elodie is sick, and Mary Ann . . . I’m afraid to find out what happened to her.
Shadows are falling all around us, the patches of sky we see between the oak branches getting darker by the minute. Twilight, the hour that always struck fear in our ancestors’ minds, as predators sharpen their senses and ready themselves for the hunt. Night is falling fast, the air turning from lilac to purple in a heartbeat. Everything is wilder in this world, bigger, more vivid. An ancient wind-swept sky extends above us, the shadow of the moon getting stronger as darkness falls . . . In the Shadow World, even moonbeams can be deadly. I shudder, remembering the moon-demons.
“Eyes open for the moonbeams, everyone,” I remind them.
“What does he mean?” I hear Alvise asking Niall.
“Moon-demons,” Niall explains. “Sort of ghosts, really. Like animated moonbeams. If you touch them, you’ll turn into them. They attacked us the moment we arrived.”
“I always wonder if there’s an end to demons’ variety. New ones seem to spring out all the time,” Alvise says.
“In the Midnight library I saw a Surari Compendium,” Niall replied. “I swear, it freaked the hell out of me. And I’m a Dreamer, I’ve seen my share of Surari.”
“I wonder what’s worse, another night outside or one inside Nicholas’ castle,” I whisper to Sarah.
“Why did he not tell us about it before? Did he think it was an unimportant detail?” she replies.
I catch a glimpse of his imposing silhouette moving between the trees. “Who knows what goes through that dark mind of his?”
I long for some warmth, my body still frozen from the long immersion in the water. I feel like my bones will never dry up. We’re all so cold. We’ve been cold for days and nights without ever warming up fully. A fire would be a godsend.
All of a sudden we emerge from under the roof of trees, and find ourselves under a black sky full of stars. I can see the Great Bear just above us, and the Big Dipper, and more. The constellations are so clear it’s like watching every star in the universe being born. Only in the wildest, most remote places on earth could you see as many stars as this – a whole sea of them. Sarah is looking up in awe, the light of the moon reflected in her eyes.
We make our way along the curve of a steep, stony hill, barren of trees. I’m nervous, aware of what might lurk above us, or among the rocks of its ragged ridges. Past the hill there’s yet another ridge, black and steep and completely smooth, making the climb impossible, and against it, a stone building that seems to have sprouted from the rim, its windows dark like empty sockets, its walls covered in vines. Nicholas’ castle.
“Welcome home,” I whisper under my breath.