Silence. Her rapid breathing filled the room.
“This . . . this gives us hope.” Her voice sounded from behind me.
Us.
She had saidus. I knew she didn’t mean it in that way—us, she and I together—but my stupid, eager heart heard it that way.
There is hope for us.
That anguished longing swept me again.
More silence.
I didn’t trust myself to speak without breaking down entirely.
“Perhaps there is a solution for bringing the rest of your body into this world,” she continued.
I swallowed. Deep breath. Another moment for me to reel all my emotions back inside.
I turned back to face her. “I don’t know if it will ever progress that far, Chiara.” I cleared my throat, sternly telling myself to focus on the facts at hand. “The pain is incredibly intense, which makes it impossible to hold for long periods of time. Not to mention the fact that my corporeality bounces an equal distance into the shadow world afterwards.” I wiggled my almost invisible fingertip at her.
“But itdoesgive us hope,” she repeated, unwittingly sayingusagain. “Hope is important. The world you inhabit isn’t one of stasis, no matter how it appears on the surface.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “You can alter your physical state. Scars can appear in reality and weird black stuff comes through them. It’s not all good news, but I find the possibility of change to be encouraging.”
Ah, clever. For at least the thousandth time, I pondered the irony of Chiara being so brilliant and insightful in some ways and still so immature and irrational in others.
But then, wasn’t everyone like that in their own way?
We spent the next hour rehashing our previous conversations about my status, scars in reality and Chucky-slime. My finger melted back into its normal transparent state and I managed to reclaim my emotional stability. The shadows in the room shifted. Chiara curled into her chair.
“Like we’ve said, the ancient Etruscans knew that the mirror was a gateway to the next world.” She was sitting cross-legged now, knees bouncing. “That much we know for sure. But now that you can make at least some part of you corporeal, that changes the whole dynamic. Let’s go over their myths regarding the shadow world again.”
I pursed my mouth, thinking through my studies at Eton and then Oxford. “I’m wondering if the better question might be: ‘What myths discuss someone escaping the shadow world and returning to the world of the living?’”
“Like Orpheus and Eurydice?”
“Precisely. Orpheus used his love of music to set Eurydice free from the underworld and Hades. Or he would have, if he hadn’t slipped up and looked to make sure she followed him, sending her back to the Underworld.”
Chiara tapped her lips. “Who else?”
I thought through more ancient myths. We discussed a couple more. Say what you will about Chiara, I adored how quick her mind was.
“There’s always the most classic myth of all—Hades and Persephone,” I said. “Hades kidnapped Persephone causing her mother, Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, to go into mourning for her lost daughter, throwing the world into darkest winter. After searching for months, Demeter finally tracked Persephone to Hades’ underground realm. Demeter demanded her daughter’s release. Hades agreed, but as Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds while being held captive, Hades argued that part of her was now linked to the underworld—”
“And so Persephone had to stay half the year with Hades from that point onward,” Chiara finished for me. “Perhaps you just need to make yourself physical enough to eat something. Ground yourself in this world by ingesting something from it.”
The idea held a certain logic.
“Let me go grab some good chocolate.” Her eyes danced with excitement.
“Shouldn’t we be using pomegranate seeds?”
“I don’t think that the actual food is terribly important. But if you’re going to eat something for the first time in two hundred years, let’s make it amazing.”
Chiara raced from the room and returned a few seconds later with a box of decadent-looking chocolate truffles.
“How should we do this?” she asked.
“You mean, what is the lordly etiquette for ingesting chocolate while in a ghostly state? I think I may have missed that day of class.”
