The Songbird

Chapter 20: Ghosts

There were a few things Mina was aware of: the grass pillowed beneath her, the ache in every bone of her body, and the redness behind her eyelids, evidence of sunlight pooling overhead.

Flashes of the day before ran through her mind as she opened her eyes, moments of the knight's penetrating gaze, the explosion, leaving, running and running and running. Running so far until she collapsed here, wherever here was.

She could barely make out the shapes of trees and boulders around her, everything floating in and out of focus. Mina sensed she wasn't fully awake yet, clinging to that strange state between sleep and consciousness, where the veil of understanding was thinnest and thoughts fluttered about unkempt.

But in the haze, something tried to materialize. At first, it sounded like a hum, nonsensical and formless, but the hum became words, and those words gave life to a shape. The shape walked toward Mina, dark and undefined, and she wondered if it was the pesky shadow coming to tease her after its unusual silence as of late. But the closer it got, she saw that it wasn't formless at all, but rather a person stepping out from the shadows.

The world hurtled into focus for that one being, the person marked by her brown skin, her silky hair tied away, her dark eyes gentle and comforting as her song reached Mina's ears.

"Mom?" Mina rasped, voice broken and tired.

"Hello, my little songbird," Serris smiled, coming to kneel by her child. She reached out a hand and Mina grasped it, pulling it close to her face as her eyes spilled over.

"Where have you gone?" Mina begged. "Why did you go where I can't follow?"

Inwardly, she knew the answer. Knew that it was beyond anyone's capability, that there was no rhyme or reason to death, no matter what was left in its wake. Still, she wished for closure.

"I never left," Serris said. "You carry me with you in every step, every song you sing, whether you know it or not."

Every song you sing.

There must've been a reason why Mina could remember every song and story Serris told her, even though time should've stolen the memories from her mind long ago. The words had been etched into her being, along with the voice that had taught them to her.

"You were like me, weren't you?" She asked, fearing and craving the answer in equal measure. "Your voice."

"In a way," Serris admitted. "I'd had a knack for bringing stories to life when I told them, but it was just a talent to hold attention. Yours is different: from the moment I saw how the walls and floor would tremble every time you cried, I knew you had something far greater, a voice that would bring the world to its knees."

"I've only brought myself to my knees," she said, allowing herself the admission of weakness, of smallness. "I'm lost. And I don't know how to find my way back."

Serris reached out her other hand to smooth back Mina's hair, and even though she was already crying, the gesture sent her soul fracturing with the reminder of just how lonely she really was.

"You'll find a way, Mina," her mother said. "You always do."

"How?"

But that veil between sleep and awake had been fraying ever since Serris materialized, and now, it tore itself open. Her mom suddenly vanished, leaving Mina with one hand clutched against the side of her face, the place where she thought she'd held Serris's own hand. Everything was in focus now, the tress and boulders and birds flittering about and the air in front of Mina's face achingly empty.

She didn't bother concealing the sob crawling out of her throat. Who was around to hear it, anyway?

* * * * * * *

They watched from the distant treetops, veiled by foliage so they stayed out of sight. They'd seen her collapse here the night before, calling in reinforcements to help observe. And now she laid weeping after having spent a long while talking to no one.

"You sure you still want this one to be our spy?" A woman whispered to the man on a nearby branch. "The incident in the caves was bad enough. Now, she's lost her mind. Why can't the one in Abbott's inner circle be enough?"

"The one in Abbott's circle has one mission: learn the castle's inner working and the role of each within. They're meant to study it all like a giant clock, find out what makes it tick."

"And what would her mission be?"

"To help me destroy it. To insert herself as a new, vital piece, then leave them gasping when she's gone from their sight."

"And how do you plan to do that, Talmage?"

He considered the question, watching Mina as she lay on the forest floor, her quiet cries reaching his ears even from such a long distance.

"She's got to trust me. She has to become one of us," he explained. "You never fight for something you don't believe in, so we'll make her believe."

"That may take a long time."

"I'm prepared to wait."

And he meant it. For the end of a tyrant's rule, for the days when no one in Enid lived in fear of their king or the shadows that came at night. He longed for the satiation of hatred that had festered inside him like a wound, hatred born from the atrocities he'd seen, been a part of. For this, Talmage would have waited an eternity.

But somehow, he knew that with the girl one hundred feet below him, it wouldn't take an eternity.