“But it is,” he says, and then his hands fall away and he walks into the house.
I’m alone, and the answers chirp from the trees, across the moors and I have to get them. I have to get the answers, because my sanity is slip slip slipping and if I don’t figure it out soon, I’ll be lost.
I know that.
I know that.
So I find my brother, and I insist that we seek out the truth. Finn loves me so he comes and he’s doubtful, but he’s here.
I stand at the mouth of the woods, and the trees bend and hiss and sway, and words form on my lips.
“One for one for one.”
“What does that mean?” Finn asks me, because he’s standing at my elbow.
He won’t leave me, not now that he thinks I’m as crazy as he is.
“We have to keep each other sane,” that’s what he said yesterday after I told him what happened in the mausoleum and in Sabine’s room.
I look at him now.
“I don’t know what it means,” I tell him honestly. “I just hear it in my head, over and over.”
Finn looks at me, and he’s scared and his pale hand grasps mine.
“That’s bad, Cal,” he tells me, and he doesn’t have to say the words because I already know. Of course I know.
I step into the mossy forest, and I’m surrounded by the cool ferns and shadows, and I don’t know why, but I know I’m supposed to be here.
“Don’t,” Finn urges me to come back, and he won’t follow. “I don’t like the way it feels in there.”
“I don’t either,” I tell him, but I keep going, one foot after the other, because I’m being pulled by an invisible tether or a cord.
Finn stays and his face is worried, but he’s unable to follow, and I don’t judge him for that. The feeling in the woods is oppressive, and dark, and terrifying.
There’s something here.
Something here for me.
Ahead of me, a shadow moves, it lurches, it glides.
I follow it, unable to remain still. It flits in and out of trees, and so do I.
And then finally, finally,
It’s gone, and I’m alone.
I feel the stillness, and I taste it with my tongue, and I’m alone.
I stare about, I whirl in a circle, and there are charred wooden pieces arranged in a circle, a bonfire.
I see something amid the ashes, something brown, something tattered, something old.
I bend and touch it, and it burns my finger.
The embers are still hot.
I rock back on my heels and prod at it with a stick until it falls away, out of the embers and to safety.
It’s a book and it falls open and the first page stares up at me, with my brother’s scrawling handwriting.
The Journal of Finn Price.
My eyebrows crimp and knit, and I take a breath, because why was Finn out here?
I wait while the breeze cools the pages, and even though they are charred, there are still some left that I can read.
NOCTE LIBER SUM NOCTE LIBER SUM
BY NIGHT I AM FREE.
ALEA IACTA EST. THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST.
The die has been cast.
The die has been cast.
Serva me, servabo te.
Save me, and I’ll save you.
Save me.
Save me.
Save me.
My breath comes in pants and I can’t I can’t I can’t.
Because Sabine said these words to me, these same exact words, in different times and places.
She said the same things to my brother?
What do they mean?
The pages are fragile and the edges come off in my fingers, black and charred, but I can still make out more of the words.
I’M DROWNING. DROWNING, DROWNING.
IMMERSUM, IMMERSUM, IMMERSUM.
CALLA WILL SAVE ME OR I WILL DIE I WILL DIE I WILL DIE.
SERVA ME, SERVABO TE.
SAVE ME AND I’LL SAVE YOU.
SAVE ME.
SAVE ME,
SAVE ME, CALLA.
AND I’LL SAVE YOU.