Shimmer (Riley Bloom #2)(30)

“What now?” I glanced between the prince and Bodhi, looking for some wise words, if not guidance.

“We leave her.” The prince shrugged. “Now that my brothers and sisters are freed”—he nodded toward the place just outside the globe where they all stood, peering in at us—“it is time for me to go. I was hoping to reach her, but that does not seem to be possible just yet. And for that, I am sorry. It is a very great failure on my part.”

Though Bodhi was quick to agree that we should all just leave and possibly revisit that sad, angry girl on some other day, I had another idea entirely.

“I know exactly how to get her out of here,” I said, looking at each of them. “Just follow my lead.”





22


“You can’t do it,” Bodhi said, but I turned my back on him, determined to go through with it no matter how he might choose to protest. “You cannot force someone to cross the bridge. It goes against all the rules. And I can’t believe I have to repeat this to you when you already know that.”

I glanced at the prince, embarrassed to be bickering in front of him like this. Still, I had every intention to stand my ground. I’d had an idea. A good one if I might say so myself. And I was sure it would work, if Bodhi would just give it half a chance.

“No one’s forcing anyone to do anything,” I said, making it a point to roll my eyes and shake my head. “I mean, sheesh, whaddaya take me for? Some kind of amateur?” I screwed my lips to the side.

“Then what?” he asked, voice still full of the fight. “You can see she’s not cooperating, so short of forcing her to do what you want, how are you possibly going to convince her?”

I clutched my hips and gazed all around; just because he was in charge of guiding me, didn’t mean he knew squat when it came to the depths of my imagination. “I’m not going to force her, and I seriously doubt I’ll be able to convince her—though I do know something that will.”

Bodhi squinted, taking his annoyance out on the straw he mangled hard between his teeth.

“The bridge will convince her.”

He sighed. One of those big, loud, exasperated kind of sighs that was soon followed by, “Excuse me, but did I not just tell you that—” But his words were cut short by the flash of my hand.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, gazing between him and the prince. “Maybe I can’t force her to cross it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lead her to it.”

They looked at me.

“And once she sees the promise it holds, well, there’s no way she can resist.”

“Yeah? And what if she does?” Bodhi asked, stubbornly refusing to see the absolute genius of my plan.

But I just shrugged. “Well, then I guess we’ll cross it, and leave her to stare at it for the rest of eternity. But there’s no way it’ll come to that,” I said, my voice bearing far more conviction than I actually felt.

“So how do you propose we get her there, to this … bridge?” the prince asked, still dressed in the rags he wore when we first met.

I dropped my hands to my sides and squinted at her—at the world she’d created, the one that once seemed so large and overwhelming, only to be reduced to the size of an average thirteen-year-old girl.

She glared at us, all of us. Her fists raised in anger, shouting every type of threat she could think of. And she was so furious to see her little dog Shucky (back to being the tiny version of himself) sitting right alongside Buttercup that she even included him in those threats.

To be honest, if you’d asked me at that moment how I planned to get her anywhere even close to that bridge, well, I really couldn’t have said. I mean, it’s not like the journey was all that long, since all we had to do was make the soft golden veil of light and slip through it to the other side, but still, how would we get her through it?

How would we lead her first to Summerland, and then, hopefully, to the Here & Now just beyond?

Then it hit me—why not just roll her there?

After all, the bubble was perfectly round, which should make it easy enough. And though I knew she wouldn’t like it, by that point, I admit, I wasn’t really all that concerned about that.

I approached the globe, placed my hands on either side of the space where her eyes glowed and her cheeks flamed bright red, and I started to push. Rolling her slowly at first, seeing her tumble and fall and totally freak as her whole world was sent upside down and a crazy swirl of ash sprayed all over the place.

And just as I was about to deem it a somewhat awkward, but still overall, success, one of Prince Kanta’s brothers, a former slave whom I recognized from that sadistic bowling game of Rebecca’s father’s, placed his hand on my arm, and when our eyes met, what I saw practically brought me to my knees.

And I watched in amazement as he took my place, knelt down to the ground, and attempted to lift the bubble right onto his back.

At first I didn’t understand the gesture. Didn’t understand why he’d chose to burden himself like that. But then, when all of the other slaves joined in, it suddenly began to make sense.

They had forgiven her.

They had released themselves not just from her manifested world but also from their centuries-long connection to her.

By holding on to their anger, hatred, and calls for revenge, they’d remained enslaved well past the time of their deaths.