Page 72 of Avelina

“There’s no light here anymore,” he said. “Not for a long time.”

As my eyes adjusted, I noticed that the house wasn’t just dark. It was burned to the ground. The minute I noticed this, the smell of burning intensified dramatically and I coughed as if smoke still filled the air.

Exposed wooden posts stood with empty air between them where the walls should have been. Black, scattered piles of what might have been furniture cluttered the floor, and one side of the house had caved in. On the other side, through a large hole in the roof, I saw two moons: one white, one red.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Fire,” he whispered. “Everything in my life has been destroyed by fire. My house. My mother. My face. My whole life.”

“Why? How?”

“Seleca,” he said. “Once she found out about the strength of my reservoir, she came for me. She was there for me the day Aaron escaped. Finding out about his Evocation was just an unfortunate coincidence. After that day, Ellis disappeared, Aaron disappeared, my home and mother disappeared. She took everything and made me believe it was my fault. I had nowhere to turn except to her. She condemned me to Hell and made me believe she was my savior. It was a perfect, beautiful lie, and I didn’t realize it until you woke me up that day in the field.”

I closed my eyes, feeling Ward’s despair in my soul. The pain of it was more than an uncomfortable emotion. It was a physical burden that pressed down on my awareness so hard I fell to my knees. I knew I hadn’t actually fallen, but it still hurt when my knees cracked down on the floorboards. For a moment, my mind drifted to the memory of my accident. My lungs were heavy, and I tasted blood in my mouth. Oh, my friend. I’m here. I’m still here. But where are you?

I opened my eyes again, but the burned-out house was gone, replaced by my own home in the redwoods. The sun overhead shone brighter than I remembered, but I smelled the sweet and spicy aroma of my favorite place, and for a joyous moment, I thought I had been teleported home. I jumped up, the weight on me abruptly gone. I took off running toward the house, heading for the door to the screened-in porch.

I reached the porch door and yanked on the handle, but it wouldn’t open. I pulled on it even harder, confused because the porch door didn’t even have a lock. It wasn’t locked, though, but frozen, as if it was just a video of a house that had been paused. I turned around, staring at the trees and sky. Everything was still. There was no wind, no birds, no swaying and rustling of branches. The sky was bright blue with no clouds, and there wasn’t a lick of fog anywhere. This wasn’t right.

Barking still came from somewhere, but it sounded far away. I jogged toward the sound, into the forest.

“Ward?” I called. “Where are you? This is creepy and weird, and I wasn’t at all prepared to be sucked into a bright blue nightmare. What in the hell is happening?” I continued jogging toward the sound, which was getting louder and louder. “Ward!”

“Calm down. You’re so dramatic,” he said.

“Oh, good. You’ve learned the gaslighter’s creed,” I said, stopping to glance around. “Do you have a body or am I the only character in this horror movie?”

Then, I heard a growling behind me. I spun to see a white wolf bearing down on me. Its eyes were deep red, and its fangs, which had grown inconceivably long and sharp, dripped with blood. The wolf looked like it might morph into a saber-toothed tiger. I stumbled backward and fell because, ya know, that’s what idiots like me do in horror movies. The white wolf jumped clear over me and dashed off into the woods.

I looked over my shoulder in stunned confusion, then got up to follow it because it barreled off in the direction of the barking that I knew must be Rogue.

“Lina, wait,” Ward said. “Just let that one go.”

“What do you mean?” I asked incredulously. “That was the white wolf that caused my accident. I have to go see what happened.”

“Lina, there’s nothing for you to see over there. I ran away and hid. That’s it. I ran, and then Seleca found me and sent me to lead you toward the bridge. You don’t need to see me being a bad friend.”

“You’re not a bad friend, and you still haven’t answered my question about why I can’t see you,” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said in a small voice. “Maybe because, in my mind, I’m already gone.”

Again, I felt his despair, and again I fell, crushed by the weight of it. I tasted blood in my mouth again as my body and awareness were both pushed down into the dirt so hard that I lost my breath. I had a flash of memory, the hooves of a horse, a crushing pain in my chest. I knew, then, that this trauma might kill me right alongside my friend.

I heard Ward calling in my mind. Lina, I’m sorry! I can’t help it. I’ve tried. I can’t stop! He was crying again.

I squeezed my eyes closed to avoid getting dirt in them as a force I could feel but not see pressed me deeper and deeper into the ground. Like a fragment, I thought.

Though I knew my subconscious mind didn’t need to breathe, I nevertheless suffocated under the crushing weight of Ward’s anguish and would soon run out of air and die. I was vaguely aware that my real body had slumped over on top of his and was unconscious. It was almost as if I had connected with Ward so deeply that I had left myself behind altogether. If I died here, I didn’t know if my body would ever wake up again. I had a strong suspicion that the answer was no for both of us.

I searched for the elusive Conjuration fragment in my mind and found it wisping around in the background as if trying to hide. I reached out for it, but it resisted capture, escaping through cracks in my concentration like smoke.

I would not permit this.

Come! I commanded, then imagined sucking the smoky fragment to myself like a vacuum. You are mine. Come to me. It came swiftly now, filling my unconscious body like helium into a balloon. The pressure on me eased, and I breathed easily again.

“What did you do?” Ward asked, sounding relieved.

I shot up from the imaginary ground, filled with inspiration. “Ward, I greatly underestimated the power of Conjuration,” I said. “I’ve barely used it, and only then it was to talk to Spirit. She says that the soul of a person is basically their experience of the past, present, and future. We always assume that the body, or at least the brain, is the thing that makes us think and experience things, but what if there is this thing called a soul that is doing the actual experiencing and the brain is just an interface between that experience and concrete, time-locked reality?”

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