Page 93 of In Her Own Rite

I open my eyes, afraid to see what I’ve done. But we’re just in the living room. Gabe is on the couch, breathing rapidly, eyes wide. But he’s okay. And the rest of the world is unchanged.

“What the fuck happened?” he rasps.

“I think I healed the bone,” I say, as much to myself as to him. But I don’t think. I know.

“You saw my memories.”

“I saw your memories,” I repeat numbly.

He looks up at me, his eyes wide with confusion and fear. “What the fuck, Em?”

“Gabe,” I say quietly. “Who is she?”

34

KIERAN

“Heij, jenge!”

“Hey, Heimig,” I say, walking into the bookshop.

“Not often I see you in here without Emerson,” he says. “Are you here to pick up something for her?”

I shake my head, then pause. “Well. Maybe, sort of. I don’t know.”

“What do you need?”

I look down at the table to my left, covered with a large display of new hardcovers.

“You probably don’t sell poetry, right?” I ask.

“Sure I do. What are you looking for? Some Neruda, perhaps?” He gives me a knowing smile, but I don’t get the joke and shake my head.

“Um. Ralph Waldo Emerson?”

His eyebrows raise appreciatively. “We do have some. Any particular collection?”

I nod. “Something with ‘The Rhodora,’ if you have it.”

“I’m sure we can find that,” he says with a wink. “Follow me.”

He leads me through the narrow aisles of the front of the store, towards the stairs that take him to the lower level where the second-hand books are kept. I’ve been in here a few times with Em, when she was looking for a particular book on Fakari history or healing. But Heimig leads me to the left, where a small shelf at half-height is marked with a sign reading ‘Poetry.’

“Here,” he says, reaching for a thin blue book with faded letters on the spine. He flips through it. “Yes, see? ‘The Rhodora.’” He clears his throat dramatically. “‘In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes…’”

“Right, yeah, that’s perfect,” I say quickly, looking around in case anyone can hear us.

Heimig closes the book and gives me a smile. “Do you want me to ring this up for you? Or are you looking for something else?”

I hesitate. I’d only come for this today—Em’s been finding every possible reason not to talk to me in the evenings, and for the lack of her closeness and scent, I find myself scrambling for any trace of her. But now that I’m here…

“Can you take that up to the counter? I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m just going to look around.”

He nods, his eyebrows raised. “Sure,jenge. I’ll have this behind the register for you when you’re ready.”

I nod, and he leaves for the stairs while I turn to the used books Fakari history section, where Em usually goes whenever she used to take me here. I take a few minutes to see if there’s anything of interest. I see some translations of theFakari Eijna, the ancient text which contains both our moral edicts and folklore. There’s a handful of old books, pages yellowed and spines peeling, about Fakari religion and language. My eyes practically glaze over as I skim just the titles. And then I see one book that may help me.

It’s large and fairly thin, just about a hundred pages or so, and the style of the spine makes me think it’s probably a hundred years old. The letters on the back readAtgabrayyit Gastnaejet dat Fakarieilat. A Comprehensive History of the Fakari Islands.

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