Rimwick

Glowing Eyes and Other Closed Things

I would like to apologize in advance for this chapter.

Carry on.

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"Get up! Something's happened-"

"Where's Master Atlas?"

Blearily, I open my eyes. The lantern flames flicker warily across the low ceiling, and the voices outside are calling too loudly, panicked. I look around the room. Brooke, in human form, is pulling on her little white dress- and now she's crossing to the door, forehead strained, peering into the hallway. Fallon sluggishly shrugs her blankets off, muttering something about shooting her brother if he wakes her up again. I pull on my jeans, leaving the t-shirt I sleep in where it is, and stride out to the corridor. Silently, like a ghost, Brooke steps aside for me.

"What's going on?"

Felix is there, and he smiles when he sees me, although his cobalt eyes are creased with worry. "I'm not sure."

"Hunting party, in the woods." The speaker is a boy, slightly older than me, with a sun-colored ponytail and rubbled cheeks. He puts his hands on his knees, then straightens up and speaks. "They found a body, not far from here, and said to fetch all the clan leaders and Master Atlas."
"Whose body?" I jump as Roman appears from the boy's room.

The messenger avoids our eyes. "I don't know.

"Put on a shirt," I snap at Roman.

"Whose body?" he repeats.

"Some singer, or something! I didn't know her! Look, if you wanna see, they've got her down by the falls, but I need to find Master Atlas."

I freeze, at his words, and then all of us are running.

The trip to the falls is too short, and the starkness of it's length travels on ad infinitum. Everything is still. The air, the ice. The sky is a cage, a blinding white dome, cool and clear and trapping us.

Ahead of us is a cluster of people, that Roman, barely beating out Fallon as fastest runner, plows through. Panting, I follow, through the blankness of the creek bed. I don't know if the group around the body is silent or screaming, laughing or wailing or waltzing, but I don't care. The only thing that matters is the dead girl, who can't be, who isn't-

A braid, loose strands of hair twisting away, lying coal-black against the snow.

Who can't be-

Red drops, thorn pricks, leading to an ocean large enough to drown in.

Who isn't-

A hand, pale and open, resting on the crystal ground.

But it can't be, it isn't- it's another girl, with that face, those eyelids someone closed, that crimson stain leaking from her back- it's someone else. It isn't-

A dark shape falls next to me, falls on the ground. I stand rigid, staring at the empty space above us rather than the unforgiving snow. Someone, an adult, I don't know her, but she puts a hand on my shoulder. I ignore it, looking at the sky. Just looking.

Dimly, I'm aware of noise in the distance. A keening, pitched cry, lullaby of the banshee, and Master Atlas' voice calling through the vacant air. And another, playing with words, twisting a melody around their tongue just like her, just like she used to-

"All summer long, we sing a wild song..."

No. I want to stop it, want the silence of the sky, because no one should sing when Nocterem's Echo is lying in the snow with her hand reaching out.

"It-" Roman. His hand, on my arm. His breath breaking down his throat, catching so that he coughs up the cold. "It was her song."

So I step back, and listen.