“You must let her go now,” she said, walking up and touching his arm. “Let her go.”
“I can’t just leave her here on the ice. I need to bring her back to the shore,” he said.
“Alistair, you must let her go.” She looked at him, her face growing more youthful by the minute.
Alistair swallowed hard, not understanding anything that was happening and continued to hold Nora tightly to his chest. Nothing made sense in that moment.This has to be a bad dream, he thought. He closed his eyes, desperately hoping that when he opened them again, he would be curled up on the sofa in the cottage with Nora in his arms.
But when he opened them, he looked down at the lifeless body of the woman he loved. In that heartbreaking moment, he wished he had told her he loved her. She had won his heart from the moment she ran into him at the market. Even though he had been irritated at first, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind the entire day. Then they somehow ended up on the same bus to Letterfearn. He couldn’t ignore the pull he felt toward her, so much so that he had gone back to the cottage the first night of the storm, making up some story about everything in town being booked. The truth was, he hadn’t really looked. He had wanted to go back to the cottage so he could get to know her.
“I love you,” he whispered, still cradling her.
He began to rise with Nora in his arms when the woman struck her cane on the ice, sending a shocking sound bouncing off the mountains. Ice began to creep up and around Alistair’s feet, freezing him to the spot where he stood, not allowing him to move her away from the loch.
“I know this is hard for you, but you must let her go,” she said emphatically, her mismatched eyes sparkling in the moonlight.
He looked down at Nora’s face, her features serene in death, and kissed her forehead. Then he looked at the old woman, who was no longer old but young and beautiful. At that very moment, he knew who this woman was; he had been told stories of hersince he was a wee boy. She was the Cailleach, the winter witch, a guardian of death and birth; she signified the circle of life.
He kissed Nora’s lips one last time, but there was nothing there except the cold touch of death. He laid her on the ice in front of him and then looked at the Cailleach. He hoped that she was as kind and peaceful as the stories had said and that she would use her powers to help. She gave him a gentle smile and then looked back to the sky.
The moon was almost fully visible once again, except for a tiny strip of darkness still clinging to its edge. As the final shadow fled, the moon became whole again, and its beams of soft white light bathed the loch once more.
The Cailleach stood in front of Nora’s body, casting it in shadow as she bent down to put her hand on Nora’s chest just above her heart. She whispered a song faintly into her ear, then stood up. Stepping aside, the Cailleach let the moonbeams bathe Nora’s body in their soft healing light.
Chapter Sixty-Three
In the Depths
Nora woke to total darkness. Startled, she looked around, trying to gauge where she was, but it was too dark. She strained her ears for anything, but there was nothing other than complete silence. After a few minutes, her eyes began to adjust, and the silhouette of a man emerged from the murky black abyss. As he drew closer, the night began to fade into a dusky twilight. Not until he was mere feet away could she make out his features. It was Colin.
“Nora,” he said with a wide smile playing across his lips.
Stunned, Nora stared at him. Realizing she was sitting on the ground, she began to stand.
“Colin?” she asked as he reached his hand down to help her.
Just then she heard a voice cut through the shadows and echo down toward them.
“Take his hand,” the voice said. It was her gram’s voice.
Nora felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Walking out from the thick cloud of twilight, Gram emerged looking as she had in the photo album—vibrant, young, and happy.
Nora took Colin’s hand and stood up as her gram walked over and stood beside him.
“Gram,” she said, stepping forward to hug her, but it was as if she wasn’t standing on the same solid ground that they were. Though they seemed mere feet away, each step toward them only left Nora in the same spot she had been. Colin put his arm around Edith’s shoulders and pulled her in tightly to him. They looked at Nora with beaming smiles, pride showing in their eyes.
This had to be the afterlife, but why was she not able to be with them, to hug them? Was she just in a coma and not dead? Had she been wrong about the sacrifice? Had she failed to break the curse?
“I don’t understand. Where am I?” she asked as shadows ebbed and flowed around her.
“You’re in what we like to call the waiting room. A place you go after you die until it’s decided where you will go next, but don’t worry, you won’t be here long,” Gram said, still smiling at her.
“You’ve been here before, remember?” Colin said, looking over his shoulder at something she could not see.
“When?” Nora asked, confused.
“The night of the car accident. Most people don’t return from this point, back to the living world. But you’re not most people. You’re a Darrow, and magic runs in your veins,” Colin told her.
Nora thought back to the night of the accident. “I died that night?” she questioned.
