K. McEntire - Lightbringer

The White Lady shook her head. “Too late, Rider. Look past her.”

“Poshel ti na huj !”

“Tsk, tsk, language! Still, I suppose circumstances are a little volatile. Look.”

Despite himself, Piotr stilled and did as she ordered.

There, just beyond the curve of ballroom wall, was a shaft of light where before there had been none. At first it seemed the light was the last glimmer of the fading day peeking through some hole in the ceiling, but that notion was quickly abandoned. The rest of the building was solid and strong, both in real life and in the Never. This light was coming from somewhere else.

Piotr moaned and the White Lady sighed. The light was vibrant, shimmering, and where it struck the air, it danced with shivering, whirling motes. “The Lightbringer’s time has come.”

“NET!”

“Yes.” Calm and assured now, the White Lady danced to the ever-shifting stage and settled herself on an ornate chair at the edge. She drew the folds of her robe around her, rubbing her rotting hands together until they sounded like a cicada song. “Now we wait.”

For long moments nothing happened. The shaft of light—no, Piotr had to admit to himself, that glow was not light but rather Light—fairly hummed with serenity. He tested the strength of the Walkers again; still their grip did not loosen.

Then, faintly, Wendy’s body began to glow. It was not her regular brilliant Light but a gentle, glimmering haze, pale green around the edges and faint white at the center. The strength flowed from Piotr’s legs and he wilted to the ground, the Walkers finally releasing him as he sagged to hands and knees, only barely able to hold up his head. “No. Wendy… net.”

Wendy sat up, leaving her body behind. In her hands was a small glass ball, shining with mindless pulsing fire. Was it her soul or something more? Piotr did not know, but the orb was painful to look at, like her tattoos; its depths glimmered with Light.

Behind her the Light grew brighter, more insistent, and a low humming, both terrible and inexpressibly lovely, began to fill the room. The volume rose in a slow, sensuous sweep of sound like a radio being gradually turned up in some distant room, until Piotr’s head was ringing with the gorgeous-painful chords. If the Walkers or White Lady heard the cry of the Light, they paid no attention. The Lost were unmoved, the other Riders unconscious and cocooned with the spirit webs. If Wendy heard she paid no mind. Only Piotr, with the song of Wendy’s Light vibrating his very teeth, was bent in pain.

Wendy stood and the sound, blessedly, began to subside. She held out one hand and twisted it back and forth, palm up-palm down, then patted her face, her shoulder, her hip. She ran fingers across her lips, curled her fingers into a fist, and tapped the chair beside her, the one her body still lay beside. Her hand slid through the rotting wood easily.

She nodded once, her suspicions confirmed. “Well, hell. That sucks.”

“Good afternoon,” the White Lady said. “How are you finding your death thus far?”

“Can’t say that I like it.” Wendy wrinkled her nose. “Everything smells like rot.”

“It does on this side.” The White Lady waved a languorous hand in the direction of the warped and splintery floorboards, the waterlogged walls. “You grow accustomed to it.” Then, surprisingly, she indicated the shaft of Light. “That is, unless you wish to go to your eternal reward. You have earned it, after all.”

Wendy glanced at the Light, her expression calm, and shrugged again. “I suppose I could. It does look kinda nice.”

“It is, in fact, very nice,” the White Lady agreed gravely, then smiled. “It’s the nicest thing there is. Why do you think I’ve been doing the things I’ve been doing, hmm? For kicks?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it much. I always just assumed you were a crazy bitch,” Wendy said, stepping away from her body and strolling casually across the room, rolling the ball of Light in her nimble hands.

Wincing, eyes never leaving the ball, the White Lady waved a hand and the Walkers parted for Wendy. She knelt by Piotr. Her hand, far from its usual warmth, was cool to the touch as she ran it across his forehead, brushing aside the sweaty strands of hair that clung to his temples. “Are you okay?”

“You’re dead.” Piotr laughed bitterly. “I’ll live.”

“I can see that.” Wendy helped Piotr to his feet. Weakened, he staggered as he stood, but here she was strong and supported him easily. She handed him the ball of Light; he hissed, it was hot to the touch. “Hold this and let’s get out of here before this skank causes even more damage. We can come back for the others.”

“Language!” The White Lady wagged one finger in a tsk-tsk motion. “You weren’t brought up to speak like that, young lady.”

“Up yours,” Wendy sneered, pressing one hand in the small of Piotr’s back for support. “You’re not my mother.”

The White Lady paused, just for one brief moment, and Piotr felt a thrumming in the air. The Light, just a short distance away, began trembling, the motes within whirling wildly. The song, which had faded to a nearly imperceptible hum, rushed upon him in a wave, the exquisite melody breaking with horrible force upon him and sapping his little remaining strength in a tide of unexpected ferocity. Piotr stumbled and fell. As Wendy, crying out in surprise, leaned forward to help him, she missed the White Lady rising to her feet, the quick patter of steps as the woman hurried downstage.

“Look out,” Piotr whispered and Wendy released him to face this new threat. But the White Lady slowed as she stepped off the last stair, held her hands out in supplication.

“Oh Wendy,” she breathed, pale and rotting fingers lifting up the obscuring hood, pushing the fabric free so that it puddled loosely on her shoulders, revealing a last few clinging curls of strawberry gold hair and a face etched with crosshatched lines similar to those the surrounding Walkers sported, but deeper, rawer, and real.

“After all our conversations and all the hints I’ve dropped, I truly thought you would have figured it out by now. I am your mother. Wendy…it’s me.”

“You’re lying,” Piotr said, but Wendy shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “She’s not.” Making sure that Piotr could support his own weight, Wendy approached her mother, hands clenched in loose fists at her sides. “Mom? What happened to you?”

“The Lost,” her mother said, her voice see-sawing wildly, alternating between bitterness and tears. “They were scared, wild. They reached for me and broke my Light, shattered it into a dozen pieces, one for each of them.” She ran a hand across her face, grimaced. “Breaking my soul apart hasn’t done wonders for my disposition, I’ll give you that. It’s made me…not at all balanced these days.”

Wendy glanced over her shoulder at the assembled Lost and did a rapid headcount. Twelve. “But these kids aren’t the same ones. I sent those on.”

“I don’t need the same ones,” her mother chuckled, fingers rising slowly up, the tips of the phalanx bones poking through the flesh at the end. She dug her fingers into her face, the bones parting her rough stitches, essence flowing like blood in a wet gush that pitter-pattered against the basement-ballroom floor and soaked the front of her dress. “I just need the one who called their Light. Twelve Lost—even inert, they’re like gunpowder, you see—and the one who whiffed out the ones who ripped me to shreds. A match. Combine the two and BOOM, I’m back. Back to the living, back to work. Back to doing what I do best.”

“Mom,” Wendy protested, “but that’s me. It’s Wendy.”