Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [95]
Here—somewhere—was my mother.
I did not know what the people of Hygryll wanted from me. But I was here, I would take the opportunity they had handed me, and I began to search. The countryside was stretched out, as always, and the hordes of Dead scattered among the jiggling boulders. But I had time. No one could call me back to Hygryll until I chose to go. And the Dead did not wander around. I could search methodically, looking into their faces, matching them with my dim memory of my mother in her lavender gown. I began.
For what seemed like hours, I walked the plain of Soulvine Moor, struggling to stay upright on the shaking ground, ignoring the churning skies, stooping to study face after face until my knees hurt and my back ached. Still I looked. I saw old men and women, some dressed in weird clothing from long, long ago. A few of the old women looked as if they might talk to me if I roused them, but I moved on. I saw young men and women, many of the men in armor from different ages. I saw children and babies. I saw the Dead, none of whom bore signs of violence or illness, although they must have died from violence or sickness or accident or childbirth. But not, anywhere, my mother.
And then my heart stopped. I saw Cecilia.
She sat quietly, more quietly than I had ever seen her in life, amid a patch of waist-high purple flowers. Most of the flowers had withered. The wind whipped their stems and brown petals against her skin, but she didn’t notice. Cecilia stared calmly at the rumbling ground.
“Cecilia! ”
I stumbled over to her. She didn’t look up, not even when I grabbed her, pulled her to her feet, and crushed her to me. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Cecilia—no! No!”
I kissed her lips, as I had longed to do for so many months. I kissed her eyes, her breast, her fragrant hair. Nothing roused her. She stood docilely, unresisting even when, in anguish and despair, I shook her hard enough to make her hair whip around her quiet face. It made no difference. She was dead.
I had failed to find her, to protect her, to keep her safe as I had once promised. Sobbing into her neck, I clutched her as she stood unknowing, all life and joy and playfulness gone. But when I finally led her forward by the hand, she walked after me, looking at nothing, or else looking at whatever the Dead see in their long trance. “Cecilia . . . I will find a way to rouse you. I will!”
She said nothing.
“I’m going to take you to . . . to somewhere else. Maybe once you’re away from Soulvine—!”
That made no sense. The Dead of Soulvine were the same as the Dead of everywhere else. But I was beyond sense. The only thing I could think to do was to get Cecilia away from here, back to the Unclaimed Lands, back to The Queendom, where I had known her before. It was a stupid, insane idea, but because it was the only thing I could think of to do, I started to do it. I led Cecilia forward, by her limp hand.
We threaded our way among the uncaring Dead, over the quivering ground, against the strong and unearthly wind. Her hair blew loose in wild tendrils. I stumbled, and when I stumbled, Cecilia went down, too. Then I hauled her up and we kept going.
The border was not far; I had walked it just last night, with the men of Soulvine. Just before I reached it, I tripped over another stone and fell heavily on top of one of the Dead.
“Alghhh! Leave me be!”
It was an old woman. I had roused her with a sharp elbow jab to her chest. She glared at me with indignation and fury.
“I’m sorry—”
She looked closer. “What be you doing, boy? Oh! You be ... Oh! A hisaf!”
She knew what I was. The next moment she looked around. Her old face, already a mass of deep wrinkles, wrinkled even more. “I ... be dead?”
“Yes,” I said. I had scrambled off her and now sat on the ground, Cecilia standing docilely above us, gazing