A Different Kind of Despair (20 page)

"So what happened two years ago that changed
everything?" Leo wondered.

"I killed her."

That simple sentence froze us stiff.
Silhouette shook her head. I didn't know whether it was at us or
her memories, or even both.

"You see, Neith was an obsessive,
compulsive control freak. The Tapestry was her masterpiece, and she
was hell-bent on destroying anything that threatened its integrity.
Rather than wait for that to happen, she allowed for a new entity
to be created, one that could notify her of weaknesses in her
design so she could go back and strengthen them later. That entity
was called a Ghostwalker,"

"Ghostwalkers," Silhouette
continued, looking at the palms of her hands, "are aberrations. One
is made when someone defies the destiny Neith set out for them.
They die, but before their soul moves on they meet a spirit named
Feyt. If she believes someone is qualified, she offers to resurrect
them as a Ghostwalker, an incomplete and artificial
soul."

"Two souls in one body," I
breathed.

Silhouette nodded. "You caught that
quickly."

"That's the reason we're here."

The Ice Empress paused, her brow raised
slightly in my direction. I motioned to my inhuman body.

"I… am a Shaman. I can commune with spirits.
Even allow them to possess me. For one reason or another, my life
was in danger, and the only way to save it was to fuse myself with
the demon whose power I was borrowing at the time."

"Oh my."

"Yes." I felt my cheeks get hot, embarrassed
that I had to discuss this matter with a stranger as though it were
a conversation about the weather. "But the problem is-"

"-the body isn't meant to contain
more than one soul." Silhouette took the words right out of my
mouth. She sighed at the predicament. "You only bought time.
Eventually your souls will reject one another and try to split.
It'll kill you. That's quite the mess you're in."

"We came here," said Marvin, drawing her
attention. "Because we heard that you found a way to live with
your… condition. We hoped that your solution could also be used for
Miraj."

Silhouette's lips ran a thin line.
She stood up and walked over to me. The elf cupped my chin and my
skin tingled at the power radiating from her body. She turned my
head to one side, then another.

"It's different from becoming a
Ghostwalker."

Hope sank like a rock in the ocean.

"But it's similar enough where I might be able
to help."

My eyes lit up.

"How can I turn back to normal?"

"You can't."

I flinched.

"But you're normal."

"No." Silhouette's smile was a sad one. "I'm
not."

As though to prove her point, she
turned around and placed her hands over her heart. Her eyes closed,
she breathed deeply. We watched in awe as she produced the hilt of
a blade. Its edge was limned in shadow, darkening the surrounding
area.

Silhouette opened her eyes and set the blade
on the ground. To our astonishment, a woman formed whole, her skin
as black as midnight, her hair like silver webs.

"This is Feyt," said the Ice
Empress.

Feyt gave a polite nod in greeting. "When I'm
not in a physical form I exist almost entirely in Silhouette's
mind. Is this similar to the bond you share with your demon,
Miraj?"

"Yes! That’s exactly it!"

Feyt and Silhouette looked dubiously on one
another. Finally, the dark woman acquiesced to her host's apparent
decision.

"Binding yourself to another soul
is an irreversible process," Silhouette repeated. "I survived for
thirteen years in that state. The only way you can negate the
danger is by fusing completely, so your souls are indistinguishable
from one another."

I cringed at the notion of being bound to
Koronos so intimately. He gave me a mental stab.

Do you think we have another
option?

"Do you think I can do it?"

"That depends entirely on you,"
Silhouette replied. "I can tell you for a fact that it will be the
most dangerous thing you ever attempt. And your odds of surviving
the process aren't very high. It's your choice, Miraj; live for as
long as your souls can exist in the same body, which, my guess
would be about fifteen to twenty years. Or risk dying now in
exchange for a lifetime to spend however you wish."

I looked at Marvin. While pained
at the options presented, he merely shook his head.

"It's not my choice to make."

"I… I need to think about
it."

"Good." Silhouette winked at me. "I wouldn’t
allow you to jump right into it anyway. Now, if you don't mind, I
have a question of my own."

We each nodded, willing to offer
up what we knew in exchange for the help she'd already given us.
Ayasha be praised -she killed the Crone! What a dozen skeletons and
several necromancers couldn't do she managed in the space of five
minutes without a single scratch.

It was humbling, to think someone like this
could exist.

"How hungry is everyone? I need to know how
many servings to make for dinner."

…and baffling all at the same
time.

Epilogue

The home of the Ice Empress was a
modest series of cottages built on stilts and bridges over a sand
bank.

She did not live alone, as was
apparent by the shrieking of childrens' laughter as they tore
across the water. Several bounded towards them with a chorus of,
"Aunt Sil!" when they spotted her guests. Older residents ushered
them out of the way, giving them much-needed time to adjust to this
setting.

Miraj, with her horns and tail,
saw why the woman didn't react negatively to her appearance. Not
every child here was human. Some were elves, others stemlings,
another was a gnome… this was woman without a discriminating bone
in her body.

Leo regaled the children with
stories of Sand Whales over dinner. Will startled his companions by
freely offering to lug little ones on his back in pairs. Marvin
hobbled after another who thought it was a good idea to steal one
of his legs.

Miraj burst into tears of laugher as the
precocious child tossed the shin to Will. The Doll taunted Marvin
with his prosthetic. A cruel game of fetch ensued, resulting in the
necromancer heaving on the grass in exhaustion.

Silhouette sat beside the demoness
on the edge of one of the bridges, their toes touching the water
below.

"What
is
this place?" Miraj asked, looking
around at the tiny pocket of paradise. "I thought Faespeare was
supposed to be one of the most terrifying forests in the
world."

"It is," the woman replied. "But
its guardians and I have reached an understanding. They shelter me
and ensure no harm comes to the children, and I help them with
their occasional pest problem in return."

"But where did all these children come from
anyway?"

"Some lived in these woods to
begin with." Her blue eyes lingered on their smiles, bringing one
to her own lips. "Others, like Ian, are war orphans. I seem to pick
them up nearly every time I venture outside. It's a bit of a habit,
honestly."

"It's a good habit."

"I like to think so, too." She
cast her eyes to the water, her lashes like fans of snowflakes,
framing their depths.

"You're not at all what I was
expecting."

"Oh?" Her eyes crinkled at their
sides. "What sort of person did you think I would be?"

Miraj bit her lip, sheepish. "Cold.
Unyielding, potentially a hermit?"

Silhouette laughed. It was the type of sound
that could only be produced by feeling joy in every fiber of one's
being. Miraj found that she would never be able to picture this
woman without a smile, as her face almost looked incomplete without
it.

"The archetypal Ice Empress!" She
wriggled her fingers into the night air. "I can't fault you for
having that impression if you're only going off of the title." A
shadow belied the sparkle in her eyes. "My entire life feels like a
lesson in reading between the lines. The longer I live the less
anything is as it first seems to be."

Miraj, with her glowing demonic eyes, snorted
into the darkness.

"I can relate."

"And you have my deepest condolences for the
fact." The sorceress shook her head at it all. Neither woman knew
very much about the other, but with kindred spirits little needed
to be said. They sensed, rather than saw, the layers of complexity
in one another, a series of trials and sacrifices that led them to
become the people they were today.

"I'm going to try what you
suggested," Miraj said suddenly. "I have to take that risk because
I have-"

"-someone worth living
for."

They exchanged empathetic glances. Silhouette
smiled in her faint, enigmatic way.

"I knew you'd choose that option."

"I'm starting to wonder whether
you know everything." The mage cackled at that comment. Miraj
coiled the end of her tail around one of her fingers. "Would you be
willing to give me an opinion on something?"

"If I feel I have a comment worth
contributing, sure."

"What do you think about revenge?"

As Miraj glanced from the corner
of her eyes, Silhouette felt like an entirely different person. Her
warm and welcoming aura was gone, replaced by a haunting, empty
expression.

"Could you tell me a little more so I can
better understand the circumstances?"

"I… belong to one of four Tribes in the west.
One day mine was slaughtered by my kin." The demon's lime green
gaze pierced through the veil of night, seeking out the face of her
sleeping husband on the lawn. "If it weren't for Marvin and his
friends, I probably would've died as well."

"And all this happened suddenly, without any
warning at all?"

"Yes."

Silhouette set a finger on her chin, sighing
at the story.

"How long ago did this happen?"

"A month, give or take."

"
Gods above
, Miraj! I'm so sorry for
your loss."

Miraj forced a smile she didn't feel. Her tail
sagged as an honest indicator of her emotions. Silhouette, after a
moment's consideration, slung an arm around the young woman's back
and pulled her against her side.

The last time she had this kind of
embrace from another woman it was her mother cradling her the day
she died. Miraj choked on a knot in her throat.

"I wish," Silhouette began with obvious
hesitation. "I could tell you that it's a bad idea… but the truth
is that would make me a hypocrite." She stroked the demon's hair as
she recounted her story.

"There was once a man who changed
my world. He gave me a new home, a new history, even a new name. I
hated him for it, but not to the point I wanted to kill him," she
confessed. "Then one day he was the one who changed. I'd taken
everything he'd given me up to that point and made a life for
myself. I had friends, a family, and dreams for the future. He
destroyed everything, and it almost destroyed me."

She stopped running her fingers, just holding
her hand on Miraj's head, lost in thought.

"Revenge should be a last resort, when you
can't move forward without leaving death behind."

"Do you ever regret it?"

"No." She resumed stroking
her hair, her smile returned to her lips. "Once again, it doesn't
sound like the responsible adult thing to say.
Don't kill people. You'll regret it
,
but that would make me a liar. I killed that man, I enjoyed it, and
then I was satisfied. I hated what he'd put me through, but I no
longer hated him. And then I closed one of the darkest chapters of
my life so I could finally start a new one."

"But-" Miraj craned her neck at
this caveat. "If you want to move forward, truly move on from the
past, then you'll wind up having to make sacrifices. We can spend
our entire lives chasing a single dream, then once we achieve it we
find ourselves so changed from the people we were at the start that
it no longer matters."