Falling Skyward

Chapter Forty-Five: Talking Shadows

"What are you talking about?" Vanessa's voice was harsh, piercing.

"You just said . . ."

"I never said father died. No, those brutish creatures didn't kill him. No one knows what they did to him, but Katalia remembers hearing the screaming."

"If he's not dead, then where is he?"

Vanessa motioned her head toward the sitting room. "He's in there, but I doubt he'll recognize you. He doesn't even know his own children from strangers, so there's little hope of him knowing you." The words curved in disgust.

"Lana, what's going on?" Taren asked, still blinking against the vague lower-world light. Taren touched her arm gently, but Lana pulled away, forcing herself into the sitting room before the fear overwhelmed her. She felt nothing could be worse than not knowing.

The gnarled, skeletal creature sitting near the fireplace looked nothing like her uncle Orrick. He was a living corpse, hardly moving, hardly breathing. The only movement came from eyes that occasionally flitted exaggeratedly and randomly around the room. When his eyes weren't moving, they were fixed intently on some unseen shape above him, unblinking.

Lana took his hand, feeling nothing but bone and cold, loose skin beneath her fingers. "Uncle. It's me, Lana. Can you hear me?" The stare remained constant, unflinching.

She tried questioning, caressing, prodding, but nothing seemed to work. She was a ghost to him. Nothing but a bit of empty space.

"You're wasting your time," Vanessa said, hands on her hips, her eyes reflecting her exhaustion. "He never talks anymore, just screams in his sleep. It's all I can do just to get him to eat or drink a little bit here or there."

Lana turned back to her uncle, this huddled shell without any spark of animation. "What did they do to you?" she asked quietly, to herself. She thought she saw a shiver run through her uncle's body.

Lana leaned in closer, whispering so only Orrick could hear. "I'm so sorry I left you, that I ran, that I brought them here. I'm sorry for what I have done to you. I don't know if there is forgiveness powerful enough, even in your sacred texts, that will allow you to forgive me. But I know if any man was capable of it, it would have been you."

She stood up, her face steely, expressionless. "I need to see Gailen."

Drayer shifted uncomfortably as Soren spoke. "We are just wasting our time here. We should go, before the star ether loses its charge. It was a mistake for us to come here."

Lana didn't allow the sting to evoke any emotion from her. Her confusion at her past nightmares, of the visions and images she had been so certain of, plagued her. "I'm not going until I speak to Gailen," she said. "I don't care what the rest of you do."

"What are you saying, Lana? What's going on? Who are these people?" Vanessa asked, more scandalized than ever. It was then, staring into four sets of frustrated, bewildered eyes, Lana realized these two groups of people—one from her past, the other her present—didn't understand one another. They spoke different languages—both which came so naturally to Lana, she hardly realized she had been switching between the two. How could this have happened? The idea was unsettling but too tangential, too bizarre for Lana to spend energy on now.

"Soren, we have plenty of time," she said in Askendian.

Taren added, "Don't you think we should at least see how the boy is? Whether the dreams were true?"

"I think it is best if you all stay down here," Lana added.

Lana began walking up the stairs, but Taren caught her hand, whispering, "Do you want me to come with you?" She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. Taren let her hand drop. Before she left, Lana's eye caught the iron box on the mantlepiece, the curving ivy forming a clasp. Instinctively, Lana snatched the box, slipping it into her pocket.