Engraved in the ladder rungs on the south side of the Fifth Point were letters that were no longer blackened by time and pollution and oxygen. They were gold now, and the words were illuminated by the stars:
Come right up, dear souls.
See the lights above.
Grow the Light inside.
Alma stood at the base of the ladder after a long walk through the stormy, middle-of-the-night empty streets. She wanted to come right up. She wanted to see the lights. She wanted to grow the light.
But she was carrying a pack full of elements on her back, and she was carrying a Starling in her aching, burned hands, and she had been struck by lightning and thrown off a silo and she had not slept enough in almost three weeks.
She wished that her friends were there to help her.
She shifted the Starling so that she was upright, her forehead pressing against Alma’s shoulder. When Alma had first picked her up, the star-child had felt so fragile and light, and now she was practically weightless, as if her insides were almost empty, as if she was little more than a shell of herself.
“Can you hold on?” she whispered, and the Starling’s small hands wrapped around her neck and held on.
It was the best Alma could do. She started to climb her second ladder of the night.
Every step was a struggle. Every rung bit into her hands. She wanted to stop. She wanted to cry. Instead, she climbed onward, upward, until she reached the top.
At the center of the platform, there was a small metal door with a handle. Alma gently laid the Starling next to it. The wind whipped around them, up so high, and the clouds appeared, then vanished, appeared, then vanished, as lightning flashed within them. Alma had been sure the ShopKeeper would be waiting here, but he wasn’t. She didn’t know what to do next.
The Starling let out a small, whimpering chime.
“Don’t worry, Starling,” Alma said, pulling off her backpack. “I’ll figure it out.”
She unloaded the element jars and the quintescope. The book had said that connecting the true elements would produce quintessence, but it hadn’t given any other instructions. It was up to her to decide what to do.
“I’m going to mix them together,” she told the Starling after a long moment of hesitation. “That should do it.”
First, she opened the fire jar. The flames inside flickered steady and strong. To this jar, Alma added the earth. When they joined together, the two elements burned all the brighter, all the more brilliantly, sending out sparks and flares.
“It’s working,” Alma whispered. “Almost there.”
What could she add next though? The water might put the fire out. Perhaps the wind had to come next.
Alma opened the wind jar—
And the air came whooshing out. Alma jumped to her feet and pressed the quintescope to her eye, thinking she could somehow scoop the wind back into its container. She saw the shining, dancing silver light, but it was flying up into the sky, scattering like dandelion seeds. Then it blew to the west, back to where it had come from, back to Second Point Peak.
Alma fell to her knees. In desperation, she grabbed the jar of water, uncorked it, and dumped it into the fire container.
The fire went out. Black smoke rose up from the jar, smoke tinged with the acrid scent of burned metal. Alma stared down in horror at what she had done. The elements were all either gone or ruined now.
And next to her, the Starling was silent, not moving, not shining at all.
“Starling,” Alma whispered. She touched the small copper hand carefully. It was cold, cold, cold.
“Starling!” she cried, shaking the Starling’s arm now. “Starling, hold on. You can’t burn out yet!”
The Starling didn’t open her eyes.
After everything, Alma had failed. She had failed. She felt her throat tighten. She felt her heart pounding faster and faster and faster. The books in her mind began to open.
But then Alma took a deep breath. She took another one. And another one and another one.
“Quintessence and elements,” she whispered to herself.
Then she banged on the trapdoor with all her might.
“ShopKeeper!” she shouted. “ShopKeeper, we’re here! This is the end, and we’re here, and we need help!”