When I open my eyes, I’m no longer standing in the clearing. I’m in the spirit world, and Bran is standing next to me. The bright red spikes of a kingfisher run down the crest of his head, and his arms have turned into slate blue wings.
He flaps them and gives me a worried look. “What’s happened to me?” he asks. “What’s happened to you?”
I beat the mica-scaled wings of a sisiutl. “We’re in spirit,” I say, pitching my voice to sound matter-of-fact and in control, even though this is a place in the spirit would I’ve never visited before. There’s nothing under my feet. There’s nothing above my head. All there is is darkness, though I can see Bran well enough. “You’re just manifesting your shade.”
“I am?” He flaps his wings again, this time with a bit more strength so he lifts into the blackness. “But my totem is a bear.”
“Not that I’ve ever seen,” I say. “Who told you that?”
“Madda,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. Bran’s followed around by a bunch of stuff, but I’ve never seen a bear in his entourage. So, who is wrong? Me, or Madda? Doubt raises its ugly head. Maybe my abilities aren’t as strong as I think they are after all. I sense this is somehow important, but right now, we’ve got other things to tend to. The darkness at the edge of my vision shimmers, and when I turn, the monolith emerges from a bloodred mist. It’s not alone. Behind it, in the shadows that aren’t shadows, is a creature that’s part wolf, part whale, and something else that has no name. It blinks in and out, disappearing only to reappear with some new physical configuration. Depraved eyes, decaying flesh, and a stink of such foulness that I choke when I breathe. I know this creature. I know that stink. It doesn’t come from the sea wolf-it comes with it.
“Now what?” Bran says, edging close to me. I can feel his fear, and so can the monster behind the monolith.
“I don’t know,” I say, though as the words leave my mouth, I start to boil with rage-not my own rage, but the rage of the sisiutl and of the raven and the dzoonokwa and all the creatures of the spirit world, and that rage is directed squarely at the sea wolf, who is also the man who has my brother. Hunt him, hunt him, they whisper in my mind. You must destroy him before he destroys you; before he destroys us.
I reach inside myself and search for a storm, but there’s nothing in this place to draw on. This is not the world by the twilight lake, where nature still has a role, where I’ve figured out how to wield what power I have. This is another place, a place of darkness and shadow, with little substance and no rules. “Have you still got your spirit stone?” I ask Bran. If the dzoonokwa sent us here with the stones, we must be meant to do something with them.
He dips his head to his chest so the spikes of red feathers on his skull shoot straight up in the air while he picks his spirit stone up with his mouth. “I have no hands,” he says with a frustrated grimace.
The sea wolf laughs as Bran fumbles with his stone. Is that what you mean to defend yourselves with? he growls.
“Not exactly,” I say as I move closer to the monolith.
Yes, yes, the creatures of spirit whisper in my ear. The monolith, the monolith!
But the monolith senses our approach. Its hum crescendoes, filling my ears with such a sound that I’m sure my mind will explode as the monolith begins to recede into the void.
“Quickly!” I shout at Bran. “It wants to get away!”
The sea wolf snarls and wraps his tail around the monolith. Come and get it, he says.
Bran mutters that rocks can’t move, but that’s exactly what the monolith is doing. It’s a living, breathing entity, and it’s trying to run from us.
“Faster,” I say to Bran. “Faster!”
He rises into the air. I follow, speeding after the monolith, which is fading, fading…
And then we slam into it, headlong. Bran crumples to the earth, unconscious. I hover in midair, screaming in pain. One of my wings is badly torn, but somehow I manage to land safely, only to find myself face-to-face with the sea wolf.
I’ve been waiting for you, he says. And now it looks like I’ve got you and your boyfriend after all. Time for you to give your totem up to your brother. Grotesque, mutilated fin-hands reach toward me, but he pauses, reconsiders, and turns toward Bran. I think I’ll take him first. Easy pickings, you know…
“Leave him alone!” I lash out with my battered wings but hit nothing. The man has disappeared.
Is that the best you can do? he cackles when he reappears on the other side of Bran. Why don’t you give up now, before you really cause problems? I’ll let the boy go if you do.
“No,” I say, because there’s a reason this creature suddenly wants to strike a deal. He has Paul. I think fast- what do I have that he wants? I stare at the moonstone hanging at my throat, and suddenly I know. It wants the monolith to remain intact. That’s why the dzoonokwa brought us here, why the raven has helped me along. They’re trapped by the monolith, trapped in the boundary that protects the entire Island, just like Ms. Adelaide said. And the sea wolf wants to keep it that way.
But why is it that he can come in, and yet the creatures of spirit can’t leave?
Because of whatever that stink is that follows him. I see it now, curling there, looming in the darkness, taking form. It rises up, a great maw and nothing else. This is what the creatures of the spirit world fear. I can sense it, rippling out toward the dzoonokwa, coursing through the nothingness around us. They are trapped, and while they are, the sea wolf and his denizen can hunt them as they desire-and us, too. I’ve already seen the poison gas take one person already. Saul. I thought it was my fault. But perhaps it wasn’t after all.
And now, I am here-because I share the power of sisiutl, the strongest of the spirit creatures, and if I want to break the monolith, there is nothing the sea wolf can do to stop me.
I rest against the monolith, pressing my head to its cold, shining surface and listen, turning so I can see my eyes reflect back at me. Do it, my mind whispers. The searchers have already found their way through. The monolith is failing. If the creatures of spirit die altogether, what then? And what if this creature gains their power first?
Your brother, the sea wolf says.
Yes, my brother. Me, for Paul. If I do this, if I take Paul’s place, I will save him.
But I can’t. Even as a great sob rips through my throat, I know I can’t. I must stop the sea wolf and whatever it is that follows him, no matter what the cost.
And that cost, for me, is my brother.
So before I change my mind, I seize the moonstone with my mouth and press it to the monolith. At first, nothing happens, but then from far off comes a faint noise, like the sound of ice cracking under the warmth of a spring sun. It has begun.
“Bran,” I say, turning just in time to see him begin to shift back into his human form and vanish. “No!” I scream, grabbing at him. “You have to stay here!”
He slowly opens his eyes and the plumes of red reappear on his head. “I hurt,” he moans.
“I know, I know,” I say, helping him up. “We’re almost done. Just one thing left to do.”
Pain rockets through my bad shoulder as I fold my wings and help Bran stand, ignoring the sea wolf, who is poised to strike. Bran leans into me, and with the last of his strength, he presses his stone into the monolith just as the sea wolf leaps toward us.
The world shudders. The monolith screams, a sound that defies description. My ears feel like they’ve been shot with glass and I’m forced to drop the spirit stone so I can press my hands to my head. My ears-I’ve never felt such pain! Bran falls to the ground and vanishes. It doesn’t matter. We’ve done what we needed to do. Cracks appear, turning the surface of the monolith into a spider-web. I see my face fragment into a mosaic of selves, each one skewed, each one me.
No! the sea wolf howls. Do you know what you’ve done?
I ignore him. Smoke seeps out of the cracks on the monolith and I drink it in, greedily consuming its power. Its power is now mine, and I will devour it whole and turn it on this creature of nightmares beside me.
The sea wolf rushes to the other side of the monolith, lapping at the smoke, trying to claim what he can for itself, but it’s too late. With each breath I take, the cracks widen, until chips slough off. The creatures of the spirit world rush forward, catching them in their maws and swallowing them before disappearing from sight. The dust left behind I swallow myself. I don’t know what this will do to me, but I do it anyhow as my sisiutl self takes over and drives me on.
When the chips stop falling, all that’s left is a single obsidian shard. It slices my palms as I seize it and turn it over and over, watching as my eyes stare back at me.
I don’t see the sea wolf lunge at me, but I feel him. Before he can tear flesh from my body, I lift the obsidian shard high in the air, and with all the strength I have left, I rip the veil between the worlds apart.