“Hello.”
With a start, I realized the voice was seeping through me from the unfamiliar magic I had felt a moment before, a magic so close to Joclyn’s I couldn’t tell the difference. The two powers spiraled throughout me as if they were somehow connected.
“Who is there?” I asked, my focus more on the magic as it enveloped me, paying attention to the way it moved, searching for clues as to who was talking or even what was happening.
“I’m here,” the little girl said with a laugh, the sound similar to Christmas bells.
“And where is here?” I was tense, the fear and uncertainty coming back, despite the fact I could still feel Joclyn’s magic calming me.
The lack of control and understanding I was experiencing made the emotions worse. I had been in situations of life or death before. I had been moments away from death. But even in those traumatizing moments, I still had control over my life. I could choose to live, choose to die, choose to fight, choose to give in.
Here, I had none of those options.
I could only focus on trying to figure out what had happened, on where I was.
My gut was telling me that, by following the water into Joclyn’s power, this was a sight, but I had seen her sights before, and they were not like this. I had connected with her mind before, and it was not like this.
“You know where you are,” the voice came again with a laugh, the childlike game winding up my spine in agitation. “You were just thinking about it.”
I cringed at the intonation, and Joclyn’s magic flared within me at what was said, her own fear increasing alongside mine.
“You can hear…?” It wasn’t possible. Only Joclyn could tap into my mind, and then it was because of the way our souls had fused. This voice, however, was not hers. “Joclyn?” I spun on the spot, searching from end to end of the void to find who was speaking and understand what was going on.
“Joclyn!” I knew she had to be there because I could feel her magic. I could feel it swell as I said her name, the warmth of it seeping into my bones, wrapping around me in snakes of a comforting weight.
I gasped at the intimate touch, my eyes closing as my heart rate pulsed in excitement, each throb promising me she was right there, so close I could feel her skin against mine.
Opening my eyes, I expected the lights that were so common for us to appear among the void of white, but there was nothing. Just a powerful sensation that she was right there, standing beside me, my magic pulling me toward her.
“I am not Joclyn, but I know her very well.”
“How do you know her?” I asked, the simple phrase not making any sense. “Where is she? May I see her?” I kept my voice low as I continued to look into the nothing, my heart rate accelerating even as I tried to keep myself calm, to speak to this mysterious thing as I would a child. Regardless, something deep inside whispered to me that whatever I was facing was not the child they were masquerading as.
“No. She is not here anymore. I took her somewhere else.”
“Where?” With a start of fear, the word erupted in long, hollow sounds stretching away from me.
I cringed, tensing as that strange magic increased inside me, the waves of it moving through me, blending with Joclyn’s as the sound of the laugh deepened, heightened.
“She loved you very much, you know.” All signs of the game she had been playing were lost in the heaviness of her voice, the sound of the echoed laugh running over it.
“Loved?” Fear and anger erupted with the single word as the laugh continued to resonate, as if someone had bumped a gramophone, the sound coming again and again.
I could feel my temper rise to dangerous levels, my anger increasing until Joclyn’s magic swelled again. The warmth of it wrapped around me so tightly it was all I could focus on, and the weight of my anger seeped away with it, the sound of the laugh fading to shadows until it was just me and the heavy familiarity of Joclyn’s magic pulling at my mind and soul.
The weight of her pressed against my chest, lying over my arms. Just as she was in the world I had come from, before I had been pulled into this place.
I stopped. The knot in my stomach spun abruptly at the revelation that was whipping me around. I had dismissed it so easily before, but there was nothing else …
“You are thinking about it again,” the child chastised. My mind focused back on that room, on the girl I held. “About where you are, about what this is. Have you figured it out yet?”
“This is a sight.”
She laughed at my revelation, the joyful sound making it clear I was right.