A Flight of Souls

“What are we going to do?” Kailyn whispered in a strained voice.

“I don’t know,” I breathed. “I’ve got to keep trying, at least one more time.” As much as I hated to leave my newfound uncle behind, I still had a promise to keep to my family… and to River.

I looked at Kailyn pointedly. “You should return to the pond,” I told her. “You don’t need to stay and wait with me.”

She shook her head. “No. I can’t leave you here.”

Eyeing her determined expression, I didn’t bother wasting my precious energy trying to convince her otherwise. I knew that she was too stubborn a wolf to heed my words.

I set my focus back on Lucas. Now that we had stopped saying Jeramiah’s name, he was drifting again.

“You can do it, Lucas,” I began again. “I believe in you. Jeramiah believes in you… Jeramiah loves you.”

As soon as I spoke the last words, it was as though an electric current shot through Lucas. His eyes lifted wide open and, to my great surprise and relief, his head lifted up further than it ever had until now. His face scrunched up in concentration and determination, and slowly but surely, he raised himself higher and higher until he was sitting upright.

“My God,” Kailyn gasped beside me. “It worked! You did it, Lucas!”

The blueness of Lucas’ eyes was brightening, and although they were still very foggy, he was conscious and right now, that was all that mattered.

“Now we need to get out of here,” I breathed, fixing my eyes on my uncle in an attempt to hold his gaze. “We’ve got to head back to our pool in the upper levels, and you must follow us. Do you understand?”

It had been such a battle for him to sit up, I feared how much more difficult it would be to get him to stand. But I had to have faith in him. I’d seen how the right words could jolt him to life. If he could sit up, he could stand up. And he could walk. He had to walk.

But first, Kailyn and I had to stand up ourselves. I fixed all my focus on rising to my feet. It was a Herculean effort—just as difficult as sitting up was, but once I was standing my movement came much more easily. I could move through the water faster than I’d thought that I would be able to, and I wondered whether I might even be able to sprint. Kailyn rose to her feet beside me with similar initial difficulty, and then she too loosened up as I had done.

“You stand now,” I said to my uncle, embarking on yet another pep talk. “Just think of your son. Your son, who holds no grudge against you for abandoning him.” Well, it was true that Jeramiah held no grudge against Lucas… because he didn’t know that Lucas had willingly abandoned him and his mother. The only grudge he held was against my parents and grandfather. But that was a story for another day. “He loves you, and he wants to reconnect with you,” I went on, trying to use as many trigger words as I could think of that might get Lucas going. And it was working. He took much longer than Kailyn and I to stand up but that was to be expected. He managed to stand in the water, however wobbly his stance was.

“Now walk,” I said.

He moved ever so slowly, inching one foot forward, but he managed to reach the edge of the small pool without toppling over. He’s going to have to perk up a lot if he wants to stand a chance of being kept as an ornament in the upper levels…

There was still a lot to be done. But we were making progress. For now, we just needed to make it out of this cursed chamber and get back to the pool before the ghouls arrived for their “inspection”.

Kailyn and I drifted upward and out of the water, Lucas trailing behind us. Next we had to pass through the chamber’s walls. We couldn’t pass through the same doorway that we’d come through, because that would lead directly back into the coffin room, a place we did not wish to visit again, especially not with Lucas. So we passed directly through the nearest wall. We traveled slowly through wall after wall, and I constantly looked behind me to check that we hadn’t lost my uncle. There were a number of scares along the way when I believed we had, but eventually we made it back to our comfortingly bright pool on the highest floor.

I insisted that Lucas jump in first, and then we followed after him, sinking in among the rest of the ghosts. I didn’t even bother looking at any of them and I was certainly in no mood to answer any questions. My primary concern was making sure that my uncle was hidden, the way he’d once hidden me.

We guided him toward a particularly thick cluster of ghosts and he slumped down into a corner. Kailyn followed suit, collapsing in exhaustion. I felt like joining them, but I couldn’t sit still. Not yet, at least.

Kailyn and Lucas would need to keep a watch out for the ghouls. As soon as they spotted them approaching, they needed to start moving around and acting lively. I didn’t know how my uncle would survive the scrutiny. He had practically no aura, like the rest of us in here, and with his incapacitated state, he stuck out like a sore thumb. I feared that when the ghouls arrived in an hour or so, they would immediately take him. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed and how many more hours we had until the ghouls came looking for us.

Marcilla, Nolan and Chantel hurried over to us and, predictably, asked us to tell them everything that had happened. I gave them non-answers. I had more urgent things to do now than talk.

I’d sunk into deeper desperation to escape this place than I ever thought possible, and at the same time felt more clueless than ever.

My mind turned back to the oracle, even as I cursed her. Why did you mean for me to be here, Hortencia? For what purpose? And what do I do now?