“You need to snap me back into the world.”
“I will, this is…” She pressed her fingers over her lips, then tried again. “Brogan, if I’m right, and this has been passed down to me by those of sight and song before me…mothers, grandmothers, aunties…Our big puzzle unsolved. Years. Decades. We’ve been watching. Looking.”
“For the book?”
“For that, yes.” She took a step away, stopped, her hands on her hips. “You have to walk with me. I can’t drag you to the truth, this old body.”
“I’m not leaving them behind.”
“Of course you’re not. This is still here, this is still now, it’s just a bit more. A step will do. It shows intent, it shows agreement, and that’s the thing I need from you.”
“I’ve never heard of a seer who can stop time, or fall a person into the cracks between time, who needs permission to say a thing.”
“Yes, well, we all aren’t what we look like. You look like a stubborn ass who might not do what I’ve asked, but maybe there’s a sensible man down in your bones.”
She waited. I waited. Then she sighed. “It’s important. It will help you keep Lula safe.”
She was manipulating me, but my gut said she was also telling the truth.
I didn’t want to go with her, but I wanted to know whatever was so important, she’d stop time.
I spread my hand and pressed fingertips against the top of the table to keep myself aligned with this reality, to stay grounded. It was an old trick from my spirit days.
Then I took one step forward with my good foot.
The world swirled, edges going soft, colors melting into fog. We stood in something that felt like a temple, felt like green, like spring, even though there was nothing I could see past the vague rolling of gold-drenched fog and darkness.
Eunice stood in front of me, a fountain, no, a bowl of water set on spindly legs, tall enough it came to her waist between us.
Eunice wasn’t Eunice anymore. Or rather, she wasn’tjustEunice.
Younger, certainly, and to my surprise, shorter.
Her eyes, though, were deep, echoing other women’s eyes, her features blurred with the overlay, the underlay of others: finer, thicker, older, younger. She was a hundred women, a thousand, each paper-thin and stacked upon the other to create this most outwardly Eunice.
Eunice who raised her hands over her head, a never ending slide of bracelets chiming down her arms.
Eunice who said, “This is it.”
Eunice who winked and snapped her fingers, hands still raised above her head.
The gold fog rolled as if a gentle breeze had slipped into the space with us, like the draft of a door opening.
Behind Eunice stood a woman, taller, thicker, with dark, heavy hair. And then behind her was another woman, back and back, disappearing forever into the fog, tall and short, notes written across an endless measure, until it was only Eunice standing in that skin. Just one note, but integral to the song.
“I am, we are, many names and one,” she said. “Seer, muse. We are Euterpe, of music, of lyric poetry, the giver of delight.” She lowered her hands. “A lot of other names, a lot of other times, but we are we, and I have been called by you to help. So I’m here. Helping.”
“I didn’t call you.”
The paper thin visions of women held very still.
The golden clouds froze.
Then Eunice scratched at the back of her neck. “No, I’m pretty sure you called me. Had to be you, Brogan Gauge. You’ve been god-touched and thrust back into the living. You’re just the sort of soul who would be brooding and lamenting, and needing some help.”
“I didn’t call you. Didn’t dream you, didn’t invite you into a vision. I don’t know why you’re so set on me, Eunice, but it isn’t because I need you.”
She waved off the women behind her. “This isn’t going to work. I’ll talk to him. Give me a minute.”
