Beautiful Darkness(113)

Liv picked up her backpack and stood staring at the end of the almost endless dock. I pulled myself up next to her.

“This is it.” I looked at Liv. “I can feel it.”

I shivered. That's when I noticed she was shaking, too.





6.20





Sea Change


It felt like we had been walking forever, as if the bridge in front of us only got longer the closer we got. The farther we went, the less we saw. The air became brighter and heavier and wetter, until suddenly my feet came to the edge of the weathered planks — and what appeared to be an impenetrable wall of fog.

“Is this the Great Barrier?” I squatted down, touching the place where the wood ended. My hand felt nothing. No invisible Caster stairwell. Nothing.

“Wait, what if this is like a dangerous force field or some kind of poisonous smoke?” Link pulled out his shears and gently pushed them into the mist, then yanked them back, perfectly intact. “Or maybe not. Still, pretty creepy. How do we know if we go through that we're going to be able to come back?” As usual, Link was only saying what the rest of us were thinking.

I stood at the end of the bridge, facing the nothingness. “I'm going through.”

Liv looked insulted. “You can barely walk. Why you?”

Because this whole thing is my fault. Because Lena was my girlfriend. Because I might be a Wayward, whatever that is.

I looked away and found myself looking at Lucille, her claws digging into Ridley's shirt. Lucille Ball was no fan of the water. “Ouch!” Ridley put her down. “Stupid cat.”

Lucille took a few deliberate steps across the wood, turning to look at me. She cocked her head.

With a flick of her tail, she took off and was gone.

“Because.” Turns out, I couldn't explain. Liv shook her head, and without waiting for anyone else, I followed Lucille into the clouds.





I was in the Great Barrier, between universes, and for one second I didn't feel like a Caster or a Mortal. All I felt was magic.

I could feel it and hear it and smell it, the air thick with sound and salt and water. The shore at the end of the bridge was pulling at me, and I was overwhelmed with an unbearable sense of longing. I wanted to be there with Lena. More than that, I just wanted to be there. I didn't seem to have a reason or logic for it, apart from the intensity of the longing itself.

I wanted to be there more than anything else.

I didn't want to choose one world. I wanted to be part of both. I didn't want to see only one side of the sky. I wanted to see it all.

I hesitated. Then I took a single step and walked out of the fog and into the unknown.





6.20





Out of the Light


Cold air hit me, sending goose bumps up my arms.

By the time I opened my eyes, the brightness and the fog had disappeared. All I could see was a blur of moonlight pouring into a hole in the jagged cave in the distance. The full moon was clear and luminous.

I wondered if I was looking at the Seventeenth Moon.

I closed my eyes and tried to experience the intense rush I'd felt the moment before, when I was between worlds.

It was there, behind everything else. The feeling. The electricity of the air, as if this side of the world was full of life I couldn't see but could sense all around me.

“Come on.” Ridley was behind me, pulling Link, whose eyes were squeezed shut. Ridley let go of his hand. “You can open your eyes now, Super Stud.”

Liv appeared after them, breathless. “That was brilliant.” She came up beside me, barely a golden hair loose from her braids. She watched the waves crash against the rocks in front of us, her eyes sparkling. “Do you think we're —”

I answered before she had a chance to finish. “We've crossed into the Great Barrier.”

Which meant Lena was here somewhere, and so was Sarafine.

And who knows what else.

Lucille was sitting on a rock, casually licking her paw. I saw something next to her, snagged between two rocks.

It was Lena's necklace.

“She's here.” I bent down to pick it up, my hand shaking uncontrollably. I had never seen her without it, not once. The silver button was shining through the sand, the wire star caught in the loop where she had wrapped the red string. These weren't just her memories. They were our memories, everything we had shared since we met. The evidence of every happy moment she'd ever experienced in her life. Tossed aside like all the other lost bits of broken shells and tangled seaweed that washed up on the beach.

If it was some kind of sign, it wasn't good.

“Did you find something, Short Straw?”

Reluctantly, I opened my hand and held it out for them to see. Ridley gasped. Liv didn't recognize the necklace. “What is it?”

Link looked at the ground. “It's Lena's necklace.”

“Maybe she lost it,” Liv said innocently.

“No!” Ridley's voice was rising. “Lena never took it off. Not once in her whole life. She couldn't have lost it. She would've noticed the second it slipped off.”

Liv shrugged. “Maybe she noticed. Maybe she didn't care.”

Ridley lunged at Liv, Link holding her back by her waist. “Don't say that! You don't know anything! Tell her, Short Straw.”