Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [97]
I’d had an insane hope that once off Soulvine Moor, Cecilia might rouse. She did not. I was so exhausted I could barely see her. “My lady, I must sleep.”
No answer.
I found us shelter from the wind beneath a stand of pine trees. Cecilia sat where I placed her. I lay on the cold and shaking ground and slept, something I had never done before in the country of the Dead. As I slipped into darkness, I was afraid that I would not wake. If you slept while here, did you die? Was the little death of sleep a passageway to the final sleep?
Almost I hoped it was. If I died, I would become like the Dead, unremembering of what had happened in Soulvine. I saw then what I had not seen before: that the lack of memory among the Dead might not be a curse but a blessing.
However, sleep didn’t kill me. Eventually I woke, crying out and clutching for Cecilia. She was where I had left her. I was dizzy when I stood up.
I needed more than rest. My body here was a real body, and so was my body there. Days might have passed since I crossed over. Never had I stayed here so long, and I was weak from lack of food. The body I had left in the round, windowless room on Soulvine Moor—how long could it last without food or water? What might the men and women of Soulvine do to it if I did not return soon?
I could not rouse Cecilia, but I could talk to her, desperate talk for a desperate situation. “My lady, I have a plan.”
She stared at the ground, her face expressionless.
“I am going to take you back to The Queendom. We will find a place, somewhere beautiful and far away from here. By the river, maybe, or the sea. Somewhere peaceful and sweet.”
But was there anyplace like that, in this changed country of the Dead that I myself had caused to change? So much I had done wrong, so much I had failed at. But there must be someplace less damaged than the rest, some peaceful haven somewhere, and I would find it for Cecilia.
“But first,” I told her, “I must leave you here and cross back over. I’m getting weak, here and there. After I cross over, I’ll be back at . . . at ...” I couldn’t say it aloud: Soulvine Moor. “Back there. But as soon as I can, I will leave, go to where I have left you, and cross back again. And then—”
And then what? Cecilia would still be dead. But I couldn’t think about that, any more than I could think, after my sleep, about what had been done in Hygryll. There are things the mind refuses. I understood now why Maggie and the other servants would not even name Soulvine Moor.
Cecilia stared calmly at the bed of pine needles beneath us.
I couldn’t leave her, not yet. So I stayed for hours more in that same mountain hollow by the little waterfall, within sight of Jee’s family’s Dead. I was too weak to walk. I pulled Cecilia down to me and lay with her in my arms, and I talked to her. I sang to her. I fed the pathetic illusion that she knew I was there. If I hadn’t done those things, I don’t think I could have gone on at all.
Finally I kissed her unresponsive lips, bit hard on my tongue, and found myself in the stone room in Hygryll.
All the men and women remained in the stone hut. For a crazy moment I thought they had all died: They sat in the unresisting trance of the Dead. But as I struggled to sit up, my head spinning, people stirred. I remembered, then, the gray fog of not-persons that had crossed over with me, and that had remained in that other Hygryll when I had fled. These monstrous people had somehow, in some thin and weird form, crossed over with me. Now they were returning to themselves, even as I was.
I loathed them. If I could have, I would have murdered them all, tortured them as Queen Caroline had once threatened to torture me.
The old man said humbly, “Thank you, hisaf.”
It took every ounce of strength I had left, but I staggered to my feet, made my way among the weary bodies, and pushed aside the door flap.
Spring afternoon on the moor. Sunshine washed the air with gold. The small purple flowers bloomed and birds sang and the moss was springy—and not shaking—beneath my feet. I sat,