“Sorry, I forgot you aren’t dead,” he said nonchalantly.
“Where are we, and how are you here?” I asked, focusing on my feet. The ground didn’t appear to be solid, even though our feet connected with it. It was black, like black glass. The spacewas endlessly black except for glowing swirls threading through the air like neon paint under a black light. The colors cast enough light that I could see Ranth.
“I wasn’t accepted in the garden yet, so I can still travel. We are at a crossroads—a plane that intersects worlds. Your desire must have brought us here. Now, you must make your choice, knowing the risk. But Sorrel…” Ranth began.
The decision was clear and then muddied. If I didn’t go back, my friends would be devastated. They meant so much to me. I was already giving up Ranth. If I had a chance, I had to take it.
“Not home, then,” I said, gritting my teeth against the guilt of choosing her over my friends. I wanted both. Maybe I could have both. “How do we get there?” I asked, marveling at the number of swirls in constant motion, colored threads that all lead to a different place.
Ranth closed his eyes. “That is where you seek to go.” He pointed to a swirl that was like a moon and a star had collided in silver sparks.
I walked toward it, and he pulled me back. “You don’t need to move. We know where we wish to go. We can just go there.”
“How?”
“You use your core to travel, like when you use your maca to go planar, and you know where you want to go. This time there is no root. You just imagine your destination.”
“But I don’t know what the Sisters look like or where they are.”
“You know what you seek. Dream it and the dream will take you.”
The pressure of his invisible fingers laced with mine, and I closed my eyes. The whispers clawed into my head, and images of a red-edged portal were accompanied by echoes of my mother’s silent scream. Withered silver hands pulled her spirit from her body, taking her away from me.
We fell through the floor that wasn’t there. The traveling sensation tore at my insides, and I choked back vomit as my head filled with cotton under the pressure. Silver blurred my vision, but the whispers told me I was in the right place. A void. A graveyard of lost souls.
“What now?” I asked, but my voice faded in and out much like the whispers themselves.
Ranth spoke in my head. “Where do we go?” He squeezed my fingers knitted into his.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Harold said petal-like husks.” I closed my eyes and imagined piles of spirits turned thin, like specters. We started moving, and when I opened my eyes, we were in a cave of shiny silver. Water dripped from the ceiling, and white stalactites hung down like vampire fangs. My breath came out in clouds, and silvery shapes flickered and darted in the shadows.
Ranth let go of me, and the darkness closed, sending the chill of the unknown through my veins. I moved closer to Ranth. His hand clamped around my waist was the only thing keeping me from running.
“The fear is not a threat. Accept it, and it will fade.” His voice in my head calmed me. But how could I accept fear? Wasn’t it a gut reaction, like breathing?
“Fear is a choice. You can choose to submit to it or fight it. Submit and it will lessen. Believe in yourself, Sorrel. I know how strong you are.”
I focused on my breathing, homing in on the fear. Then I embraced both, letting my anxiety leave me in a cloud of white. Strength rippled through me, and the flickering specters faded into the shadows.
Then the whispers rose from the ground in swirls of sound until they filled my thoughts.
I bent over, covering my ears, the sound bleeding inside my head. But Ranth’s voice cut through the whispers. “Find your own words and make the whispers your own voice. Chant with them.” I stared at him, confused.
“You wished for lessons, yes?” he asked.
“This isn’t teaching. You tell me things, and then I do them.”
He laughed, and the whispers pushed back a little, enough for me to think. Chant, but with what words? This was too hard. I covered my ears and screamed, trying to block out the sound. I dropped to the cave’s floor. Ranth’s arms slipped around me.
I can do this.
The whispers pushed into me, building louder and louder. I stopped fighting them and let them swirl in my head. I called upon my ancestors, building it into a chant. “Beloved ancestors, I ask for your direction and aid.” The words blurred into a song, which muddled with the whispers in my head.
At first, my voice wavered, then the song became mine, pushing the whispers back. But the whispers rose, undulating into a song until they were no longer whispers at all, and I had words of power. The key that would release my mother and me from this place.
Taking Ranth’s hand, I walked forward and called out into the shadows.
“Mom?”
