Wings to the Kingdom (Eden Moore 2)

“’Kay. ”

I turned my back on my prostrate brother and gazed between the trees, looking to catch that flash of motion again. It was more like a fast burst of light, so I thought I might have better luck seeing it without the flashlight—and besides, if I took the thing with me I’d never find Malachi again.

I didn’t plan to wander far, anyway. If I didn’t find anything soon, I’d give up and go.

But I wanted to know what the watery white noise meant, and I wanted to see what moved in the trees. No person walked so fast, or so quiet; and it’d had ample opportunity to jump us if that was its intent. Instead it ignored us—brushed past us towards the river. If it saw us at all, it did not care that we were there.

I swiveled my head left and right, focusing, trying to pinpoint the inconsistent sound. Over to the left, maybe. It was stronger in that direction. I took a step or two that way, and I grew more certain.

Enough glow remained behind me to cast deep shadows in pillars around the trees, but even with the haphazard optical effect I spotted the gleam again.

I stumbled towards it, tripping over anything bigger than a quarter and scuffing my palms on every trunk that caught me. But the rush had reached a roar and compelled me forwards, even as the last of the light I’d left with Malachi faded dim enough to be useless behind me.

Before me a form came together on the riverbank, or it might have been only that I saw it better as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. I thought it must be tall—a good head and a half taller than me, so at least seven feet or better—and I thought it was wearing a cloak or something else that flowed long around its back. Its shoulders were hunched, and its arms were wrapped around them.

It was rocking back and forth and mumbling, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying. The words didn’t make any sense from my distant position, and something about the cadence suggested I might not sort them out even if I drew closer.

I did move closer, forward from the trees and nearer to the river’s edge.

I couldn’t hear what the tall thing was saying, but I could understand it all the same. There were words in the swirling ambient noise, or if not words then something else very close to words—the chunks of ideas that inspire that which is spoken or written.

It’s not a cloak he’s wearing, I thought as I circled away from the trees and down to the water. It’s hair. It fell long and thick down to waist-level, and it swayed like a curtain.

“I can hear you,” I said.

It ignored me. He ignored me, I decided—assigning a more personal pronoun. He seated himself and wrapped his arms around his knees; he was still nodding back and forth as he sighed his monologue.

A deal is a deal. The last was dead, and I gave my word.

I couldn’t tell if he said it aloud or if I only heard it that way, but I understood him well enough regardless. “What deal?” I asked, but he didn’t turn around.

But was it the right thing to do?

“Was—was what right?”

Still he did not respond. I didn’t expect him to; he was not talking to me, and if he heard me address him, he didn’t deign to acknowledge it. But I wished he would turn around. I wanted to know what he was, and what he looked like.

He did turn, a three-quarters shift that showed me an indistinct profile and one warm-bright eye. It made me think of a cat’s eye, the way his socket pulled all the dim light together and concentrated it into a dull, certain gleam the color of a cut lime.

He almost seemed to address me then, or it might have been only that he sp

oke to himself while facing my direction.

No. The dead are my children. I owe them more than this.

Louder and louder the buzzing, roaring, humming sound that accompanied him. My eyes watered, and I pulled my hands up to rub them hard. The vibration became something that knocked my teeth together and made my cheeks numb, and when it stopped I let my hands fall to my sides from pure surprise.

Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was gone.

And I was in the dark—alone, except for the odd slapping of a fish against the water’s surface a few yards away. I yawned to stretch my jaws, and my ears popped.

“Eden?”

Malachi’s voice sounded closer than I expected. I felt like I’d moved a mile or more away from him, but a wobbly column of light wiggled through the trees and pointed at the sky.

“Eden, where did you go? Did he get you? Eden?”

“No one got me. ”