Chapter 32
Kessian and I fell into step behind them, and he let his fingers brush mine in case I wanted comfort. I knew if I accepted it the grief would pour out of me, so I didn’t.
“Were you awake for this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“I had cuts on my feet from the pine needles. The forest was so cold, but Dad’s hand was hot and clammy. It all seemed … far away. Like it was happening to someone else. And after, it was all hard to remember, but now …” I clenched my hand, wishing I’d taken Kessian’s comfort after all. “I don’t know if I can watch this.”
“Maybe we can stop it?”
I blanched. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking what the Keepers said to us. They said in dreams, we could only be spectators to the past and future, but here we could be their architect.”
Remembering what Emery had told us, I said, “Like time travel?”
“Marlowe bumped into me. I can affect the world. Maybe I can stop all this from ever happening. Stop the strid from being poisoned in the first place.”
I didn’t want to succumb to the hope that he was right. It raised somany questions, like what would become of us after, when history had been rewritten?
As we delved deeper into the forest, the shadows thickened, then seemed to move. Theydidmove. Out of the dark, more people appeared. An elderly woman in a nightgown, a man in a security guard uniform come straight from the night shift, a teen girl with her hair wrapped in silk curlers.
The strid hadn’t discriminated. Old, young, men, women. It took them all.
All the while, the song grew stronger, louder, and something else occurred to me.
“What if we aren’t meant to stop this happening? What if we’re supposed to find the identity of the flute player instead?”
Kessian looked contemplative. “Could be … but he was on the other side of the river. If we want to stop your dad from drowning, we won’t have time to get to the flutist before he flees.”
As the crowd around us thickened, the trees grew more sparse. We didn’t have long to deliberate. Crossing the river alone was a danger.
We reached the bank of the strid. My heart kicked wildly as the reality set in. I was about to watch my dad and I walk into the river and get swept away. Knowing I survived did nothing to calm me. The urge to grab them by the arms and drag them to safety was overwhelming, but I could not affect this world. Only Kessian could.
We drew closer. Ahead, someone I didn’t know reached the edge. They kept walking as if there was no drop, as if they meant to walk across the surface to the other side. Instead, they vanished, sucked under the moment their foot submerged, as if the strid had grasping hands poised to yank the unsuspecting down, down, down.
The flutist’s music shrilled in celebration of the first death.
“I don’t know if I can watch this, either,” Kessian murmured. “Not without trying to stop it.”
I said, “I don’t think it will help. The Keepers told us history is already written.”
But as a second person plunged in, and a third, terror seized me. What if it did go wrong? What if I died this time, and our entire world rewrote itself so I’d never lived past sixteen?
I couldn’t control that, but catching a glimpse of the flutist,thatI could do.
We were ten steps from the shore. Nine. Eight.
Kessian said, “I have to try.”
I’d come to the opposite conclusion. I didn’t want to relive my worst moments, but finding the one responsible? “I’m going to try and jump the gap. You try and save me and my Dad.”
Kessian looked alarmed as I broke away, running for the river’s narrowest point.
My young self and my dad were three steps from the edge. Two.
