Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

He had felt this before. He knew what it meant.

He spun on his heels to look out over the bay, but he did not see the bay. Instead he saw a jagged hole in space, only a meter wide. A portal to the Unworld.

But even as he saw it, he knew that this portal came with a heavy price—for Dillon knew Okoya was using the energy he had gleaned from Maddy’s soul to open the portal.

There were no red sands and icy skies beyond this hole; Okoya had chosen his point of entry with much greater precision. Through the hole, Dillon saw a place that had been burned into his memory, revisited a thousand times in his nightmares. A vast throne room of an ancient stone palace, the cathedral roof held up by what few pillars had not fallen.

And there in the center was a throne.

But the throne was facing the wrong way—Dillon could only see the back of the carved stone chair. Hanging over the side was a corner of blue fabric—the royal robe that had become her shroud. And the edge of a white shoe. Her shoe. Deanna’s.

His mind reeling, his eyes shot back to Okoya. Okoya strained to hold the portal. A vein bulged on his forehead, his face turned a vir­ulent shade of crimson.

“Can’t hold it —" he said through gritted teeth.

Dillon made a move to step through the portal, but Okoya grabbed him, his nails digging into Dillon’s shoulder.

“No time —" Okoya spat. “Seconds left.”

Seconds? Even if he pushed his spirit out before him, and revived Deanna from here, she was too far away, even if she ran, she would not make it to the portal in time. This was just another gift from Okoya’s bottomless bag of cruelties. He offered a pained glimpse of Deanna, without enough time to bring her back.

“Not her flesh!” Okoya hissed. “Draw her. Draw her now!”

And Dillon finally understood.

With the portal already collapsing, Dillon pushed forth a single impulse through the breach. He called to her. With every ounce of his soul, he called to her, and his call became an imperative that no spirit could resist. His call bypassed the corporal part of her that lay motionless on the throne, and reached to the far corners of the Unworld, until finding her soul.

As the portal collapsed to a pinhole, he felt her coalescing—moving toward him. And in the last instant before the portal sealed, he felt her—he actually felt her pass through him, like a bullet, in through his chest and out through his spine! But to where?

The portal was gone now, and Dillon searched around him as if expecting to see her there, like a ghost—an apparition before his eyes, but she was nowhere to be found.

“Where is she?” Dillon demanded. “What happened to her?”

Okoya had fallen to his knees, exhausted from his effort, barely able to catch his breath.

“How can you be so luminous, and yet still be so dim?” Okoya took a deep breath, and then another. The crimson left his face. “A discorporate spirit,” Okoya said, “seeks a dispirited body.”

Deanna ignited into consciousness.

She shot through the void, seeking something to grab on to, a body to join with her spirit, but there was nothing to give her purchase. Finally a vacuum drew her in, at last connecting her spirit with flesh. Now, out of the darkness and into light, only one thought filled her mind. It was a name. Her name— such a powerful thought she had to speak it aloud—but the name she heard was not the name she expected. An instant of fear. Uncertainty. But the instant passed and now the name she spoke—the person she was—no longer seemed foreign, it seemed right, and she forgot altogether why it shouldn’t feel right. She was Maddy Haas. Why on earth would she think she was anyone else?

Sitting alone on a boulder by the shore, Maddy turned to see Dillon running toward her, but as he neared, he slowed his pace. She could feel his trepidation as if the feeling sprang from inside her, and not him. She felt strangely radiant.

“Deanna?” he said.

“Don’t be stupid, it’s Maddy.”

“M . . . Maddy,” Dillon stuttered. “But. . .”

She slid down the boulder and slowly came towards him, feeling so calm, so in control, as if she had all the time in the world. No . . . more as if the world was in perfect time with me.

“I’m . . . different,” she said. “Have you done something to me again, Dillon?”

“Your soul,” Dillon said. “Okoya devoured your soul.”

She looked at her hands as if that might betray something about her current nature.

“I don’t feel like an empty shell,” she said. “In fact, I feel. . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. She looked up at the sky that radiated the pulses of the Vectors. She was feeling it the way Dillon must have felt it—the way a Shard would feel it, deep within her. She spun to him, filled with intense excitement. “I’m beyond myself,” she said, as Dillon had once said to her. “I don’t know where I end and the rest of the world begins. I feel the sky. I feel the depth of the ocean.”

“What do you remember?”

Maddy tried to put her thoughts together. She closed her eyes. She remembered everything from the life of Maddy Haas. The way she rescued Dillon and captured him again. The work she had done for Tessic. She remembered her childhood, her sister, her parents; but she knew these weren’t the memories Dillon was asking about, so she pushed harder, and suddenly gasped at an unexpected, unconnected thought.

“I remember a snake. It had no eyes. It was wrapped around me.”

“Go on.”

But as quickly as the thought had come to her, it was gone, like a dream she could no longer remember. But it had lingered long enough for her to know. She turned to Dillon in amazement. “I was Deanna Chang.”

Although Dillon laughed with joy, Maddy forced down her own emotion.

“But that doesn’t matter. I’m Maddy Haas now.”

“Yes,” said Dillon. “You are.”

Dillon reached out his right hand toward her. “No Shard takes this hand but you.”

Maddy looked at the hand, hesitating—almost afraid that all this wasn’t real, but in the end she touched him. She held his hand. The syntaxis that flooded both of them was so powerful, so perfect, she almost lost herself in it. His eyes were locked on hers, and hers filled with tears. For Maddy this was an answer to a prayer. All the times they had touched, shared each other’s thoughts, shared each other’s bodies—it paled compared to this.

Some things you can never share, Tessic had told her. You can never be what he needs. You can never be his true companion. Tessic had been right—and yet he had also been wrong.

“I didn’t know,” she said, filled with the joy of being one with Dillon; of being a part of each other; two shards of the same star. “I didn’t know . . .” Yet at the same time she cried in mourning, know­ing that the true soul of Maddy Haas had to die to make this possible. She was a tenant in someone else’s mind, in someone else’s body, and in that moment she vowed she would no longer seek the memories of Deanna Chang. Out of respect for Maddy’s sacrifice she would live this life of Maddy Haas and cherish it.

Let the flesh of Deanna Chang be dust.

Let her memories disappear with her.

It was a fair payment for the life she now claimed as her own. She gently let go of Dillon’s hand, their connection flickering away, but only for now.

“Tell me what you feel?” Dillon asked.

“Peace,” she answered. She felt the earth in balance with the sky, life in balance with death. Without her, life had been out of balance for so long, hadn’t it? As she reached her spirit out she could feel it touching hundreds of thousands of souls, leaving a calming sense of peace, an indominable sense of trust, and an absolute conquest of fear. Dillon had told her that Deanna’s gift had been faith, but she never understood it until now. How could she? So much of her life—so much of everyone’s lives—was built on fear. It was the guiding prin­ciple of survival. To call what she felt now faith was an understatement. It was beyond that. It was a feeling of absolute acceptance and under­standing that had no word to describe it. She looked up to the sky to see the waves of force flowing out from the three Vectors who still stood in the gate.