Page 231 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
After a few more moments, she calmed herself enough to pull back and wipe her face with the edge of her sleeve. Kase’s stolen military jacket had a few more knicks and scrapes on it from her recent ordeal. It stood in heavy contrast to Jack’s pristine appearance.
“Is it really you?” Hallie stumbled through the question, her breathing still hitching with the aftermath of all the sobbing.
He gestured for her to follow him as he walked back toward his pile of wood. “Yeah, yeah, in the flesh—well, not flesh, but—aw, you know what I mean.” She hadn’t the faintest. “Before you start asking a bunch of questions, I can’t answer all two hundred of them I know you got, so keep it to one at a time, will you?”
Hallie followed him, her boots scuffing on the dirt and well-kept lawn. “Where are we? Am I…”
“Ah-ah! That’s two already! Still don’t listen to a word I say.” Jack stacked a few chunks of firewood into Hallie’s arms and then loaded his own. “Are you dead? Probably. I like to call it Souls Meet, but Gran calls it something foreign.” He nodded toward the cottage behind him. “Come on.”
Hallie nearly tripped as he led her around to the back of the cottage. “Gran?”
Jack led her along the perfectly trimmed hedges that stood tall along the side, and the vesper flowers climbing up a wooden trellis. They leaned over like little pink and white prayers. They were her mother’s favorites. She used the petals as a garnish for fancier inn dinners if someone special was visiting for the night. Otherwise, they weren’t to be bothered, allowed to grow wild along the back fence.
“She’ll be back soon. I sort of messed up one of the last Meetings, and I’ve been relegated to chores around the cottage and watching over the Nether Gate you came through until she deems me punished enough.” Jack stopped in front of another pile of chopped wood, each one stacked neatly on a pallet before an arched side door. “She knows no one ever comes through that one. Except you, apparently.”
Hallie set the wood down and ran her hand along the side of the cottage before looking back at him. “That didn’t answer my question at all.”
He picked up a bucket near the door and scooped out a handful of what looked like corn. He handed it to her. The kernels felt real, just like the daisies and the dirt still under her nails. But beneath the shock and the fear and the confusion, she felt warmth. It felt just like her power…but if she was dead, shouldn’t her power be gone? Wouldn’t it be reborn?
If the world hadn’t ended when Mr. Gray had pushed her through the Gate, anyway.
Jack led her around the cottage to the far side, where chickens waited in a little fenced area and a tiny version of the cottage behind them. “I know you. No matter how many answers I throw at’cha, you’ll just ask ten more questions, and Gran can answer them better than I ever could.”
He dug in the bucket and fished out a handful of corn. He tossed it into the pen. The hens exploded with chatter and dove for the kernels. “Probably should throw that soon,” he advised, nodding at her hand. “The ladies like their food, and if you don’t throw it quick like, one of them is liable to peck you through the fence til you do.”
He threw another handful in, and the hens descended on the food once more. One of the hens, one with feathers the color of the sunset, couldn’t get close enough. Jack tsked at her.“Come here, Anne. You know you gotta be quicker than that.” He gave her a few kernels.
She pecked his hand, and he drew it back with a snap, but no blood spotted his fingers. He laughed. “There’s that spunk. Good girl. Now go lay me a good ole egg.” He set the bucket on the ground and pointed to the various hens. “Now there’s Jane and Lizzie. That one there? The one with the grayish brown and black feathers like a mockingbird’s? Scout. Then there’s Hester, Eowyn, Arwen, and Jo March. Thought she needed the full name. She’s the one who’s the most stubborn.”
Hallie sprinkled her handful near Anne and the one she thought was Hester. They both clucked in approval. Maybe. It was hard to tell, but they snatched up the kernels rather quickly. “Jack, why are there chickens in the afterlife, and why in the stars are we feeding them if they’re already dead?”
Because she was beginning to think this was all some horribly cruel and ridiculous dream her mind had drummed up to torture her. She hadn’t taken anything besides Navara’s journal through the Gate. She’d left her satchel on the ground.
Oh, stars, the journal! She’d left it.
“Wait! I’ll be back. Just a moment.” And then she hurried toward the other side of the cottage and into the little field beyond. The sky grew darker as the sun sank beyond the distant horizon. The golden light made the mountain tops glow.
There in the patch of ripped up daisies and messy dirt was the journal. She scooped it up and headed back toward Jack.
Jack nodded back toward the cottage. “Chickens die too, and they still need people to ferry them over. Just easier than people. Plus, I think Gran likes the company.”
“Ferry them over?”
Jack hung the bucket on a hook by the door. “Like I said,lots of times,best to let Gran explain.” He twisted the knob,putting on some terrible mimicry of an upper-crust Jaydian accent. “Come in for a cuppa, will you?”
Jack saw her hesitation and held out his hand. “No, really. It’s about to be dark out, and it’s best to be inside when that happens.” His eyes looked beyond her at something only he could see.
Hallie looked back at the sunset. “What do you mean?” What could be dangerous about the dark when one was dead?
“Let’s get you some tea. You still drink peppermint?”
Hallie turned back and narrowed her eyes. “Jack.”
He rolled his eyes, but something about his smile twitched…resigned, maybe, or stubborn. Either way, it gave her the impression he either wouldn’t or couldn’t say anything else about it. “Comein, will you? Gran will be home soon, and then we can eat some of the stew I’ve had on the hearth all day. Made some bread, too.”
Hallie chewed on the inside of her lip and stepped inside. “Fine.”
The inside of the cottage looked very much like someone named Gran inhabited the place. The entire interior was two rooms with what Hallie assumed was a loft accessed by a ladder in the corner. The walls boasted various needlepoint landscapes. Hallie recognized both Stoneset and Myrrai in two of them. The others weren’t familiar to her, but they were beautiful nonetheless with their great cedars and blue, misty mountains. A patchwork quilt lay folded on the back of a brown couch, and a wooden rocker sat near the generous brick hearth. On the other side, a little kitchen waited. A large farm sink with a Zuprium pump lay beneath a lace-curtained window facing the sunset mountains. A little wooden table was set with two places complete with placemats embroidered with bulbous red mazelberries and oak leaves along the edges.
