Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

Lief found him up there, and sat across from him.

“They’re mine, you know,” Lief said. “I found them.”

“I thought you didn’t care about things like that anymore,”

“I don’t,” said Lief, “I’m just saying.”

Nick pulled out one of the coins. It was so worn there was no way of telling what kind of coin it was, what country it had come from, or what year it was made. They were all like that—even the one he had found in his pocket way back when—the one he had used to make a wish in Mary’s fountain. Funny how both the McGill and Mary had a collection of these coins.

As he held the coin, cool in his palm, Nick could have sworn it felt a little different. It felt almost…electrified…like a fuse completing a circuit.

That’s when an understanding began to come to Nick—an understanding that Nick instinctively knew was the tip of something very big and very important. He took the coin from his palm, and held it between thumb and forefinger.

“Did you know,” Nick told Lief, “that they used to put coins on dead people’s eyes?”

“Why?” asked Lief. “To keep their eyelids from opening and making people scream?”

“No — it was this old superstition. People used to think that the dead had to pay their way into the afterlife. The ancient Greeks even believed there was this ferryman you had to pay to take you across the river of death.”

Lief shrugged, unimpressed. “I don’t remember any ferry.”

Neither did Nick. But then, maybe people saw what they expected to see. Maybe the ancient Greeks saw a river instead of a tunnel. Maybe they saw a ferry instead of a light.

“I have an idea,” Nick said. “Give me your hand.”

Lief held out his hand. “Are you going to do a magic trick? Are you going to make the coin disappear?”

“I don’t know,” said Nick. “Maybe.” He put the coin in Lief’s palm, then folded Lief’s fingers around it until the coin was firmly in his closed fist. “How does it feel?”

“It’s warm,” said Lief. “It’s really warm.”

Nick waited and watched. A moment passed, then another, and then Lief suddenly looked up and gasped. Nick followed his gaze, but saw nothing—just the girders and hydrogen bladders of the airship.

“What is it? What do you see?”

Whatever it was, Lief was too enthralled to answer. Then, when Nick looked at Lief’s eyes, he saw something reflected in his pupils. It was a spot of bright light, growing larger and brighter.

Lief’s expression of wonder mellowed into a joyous smile, and he said, “… I remember now!”

“Lief?!”

“No,” said Lief. “My real name is Travis.”

Then, in the blink of an eye, and in a rainbow twinkling of light, Travis, also known as Lief of the Dead Forest, finally got where he was going.

Mary called the coins worthless, but Nick now knew the truth. He also knew that Mary wasn’t stupid. She must have known the coins’ true value —their true purpose—and it troubled Nick that she would hide something so important.

Lief was gone. Gone forever to some great beyond. The air where Lief had been just a second before now shimmered with color, but in a moment the shimmering faded.

Nick no longer had his own coin—he had hurled it into Mary’s wishing well, just as every single kid in her care had done. It was a requirement of admission. But now Nick had an entire bucket of them in front of him.

He reached in and pulled out another coin, placing it in his own palm, feeling that odd current again. The coin was still cold in his hand though, and Nick instinctively knew that while Lief had been ready for his final journey, Nick wasn’t. Nick still had work to do here in Everlost, and he had a sneaking suspicion he knew what that work would be.

Hammerhead was happily, if somewhat unsuccessfully, gnawing at a girder when he saw Nick approaching. “What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Noon maybe. Hey, Hammerhead, could you do something for me?”

“Sure. What?”