United

Ancestral Fight

I ran toward the shuddering light at the base of the cementery. I had to get down there. I could feel Harry was there. I needed to see him and make sure he was alright. It looked like a monstrous, cloud-ridden lightning storm. Only it was happening on the ground.

The shadows had been warning me, I realized, for days. Now their dark show had turned into something even Stella could see. And the other students who’d run ahead must have noticed it, too. I didn’t know what it could possibly mean. Only that if Harry was down there with that sinister flickering... it was all my fault. 

I wouldn't stop until I found him to shove the book under his nose and cry out that I believed him, that part of me had believed him all along, but I’d been too scared to accept our unfathomable history. I would tell him that I wasn’t going to let fear drive me away, not this time, not anymore. Because I knew something, understood something that had taken me far too long to piece together. Something wild and strange that made our past experiences together both more and less believable. I knew who, no, what Harry was. Part of me had come to this realization on my own, that I might have lived before and loved him before. Only, I hadn’t understood what it meant, what it all added up to, the pull I felt toward him, my dreams. Until now.

But none of that mattered if I couldn’t get down there in time to find some way to fend off the shadows. None of it mattered if they got to Harry before I could. I tore down the steep tiers of graves, but the basin at the center of the cemetery was still so far away.

Behind me, a thumping of footsteps. Then a shrill voice.

“Stella!” It was Mrs. Leith. 

I looked back and saw Stella gaining on me and calling back over her shoulder. "You’re slower than Christmas coming!”

“No!” I yelled. “Stella, Mrs. Leith, don’t come down here!” I wouldn’t be responsible for putting anyone else in the shadows’ path.

Mrs. Leith froze on a toppled white tombstone and stared up at the sky like she hadn’t heard me at all. She raised her thin arms up in the air, as if to shield herself. I squinted into the night and sucked in my breath. Something was moving toward us, blowing in with the chill wind.

At first I thought it was the shadows, but this was something different and scarier, like a jagged, irregular veil full of dark pockets, letting flecks of sky filter through. This shadow was made of a million tiny black pieces. A rioting, fluttering storm of darkness stretching out in all directions. 

“Locusts?” Stella cried.

I shuddered. The thick swarm was still at a distance, but its deep percussion grew louder with every passing second. Like the beating of a thousand birds’ wings. Like a hostile sweeping darkness scouring the earth. It was coming. It was going to lash out at me, maybe at all of us, tonight.

“This is not good!” Mrs. Leith ranted at the sky. “There’s supposed to be an order to things!”

Stella came to a panting stop next to me and the two of us exchanged a bewildered look. 

“She’s losing it,” Stella whispered, jerking her thumb at Mrs. Leith.

“No.” I shook my head. “She knows things. And if Mrs. Leith’s scared, you shouldn’t be here, Stella.”

“Me?” She asked, bewildered, probably because ever since the first day, she had been the one guiding me. “I don’t think either of us should be here.”

My chest stung with a pain similar to what I’d felt when I had to say goodbye to my parents. I looked away from Stella. There was a split between us now, a deep division cutting us apart, because of my past. I hated to own up to it, to call Stella's attention to it, too, but I knew it would be better, safer, if we parted ways. I knew this moment would come.