“What is this slave to you?” she asked, her voice a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.
I shrugged, hoping my request wouldn’t make things worse for Barnaby if I lost. “He’s nothing more to me than any other slave I’d want freed.”
The crowed snickered and jeered at my response. A mocking grin spread across Lady Nightwing’s features. It was tinged with what might have passed for pity, had it been someone else.
“Agreed,” she stated aloud for the benefit of our audience. “Let us continue.”
Then, for my ears alone, she whispered, “Sometimes I forget how pathetically amusing you humans can be.”
I ignored her derision and unclenched my palm, rubbing the coin between my fingers again before flipping it up into the air. Lady Nightwing and Lathos edged forward. “The tree remains my choice for this and the next toss,” I clarified, not wanting to leave them room to change any more rules.
Lady Nightwing glared at me impatiently. “Understood.”
The shadowy nimbus around Lathos writhed and reached toward me once more. I held my breath and removed my hand from where I’d caught the coin. My stomach roiled and my heart sank. I didn’t know if it was Lathos’ doing or the coin’s natural fall, but there was no doubt as to what my eyes were seeing.
“Sun,” I said in a choked voice.
“Once more, Sydney,” Lady Nightwing said with a calm smile.
I fingered the coin one last time, a desperate prayer on my lips as I tossed it. I uncovered it quickly, like ripping a band-aid from a wound. Lathos’ black aura seethed forward and I blinked. Shadows swirled violently around my hand, but the silver of the coin only shone brighter against them. It grew hot against my skin, insistently revealing the tree.
“It’s the tree,” I said with a strength I didn’t feel. “I win.”
The crowd erupted in uncontrollable wrath, and the fury on Lady Nightwing’s face was terrifying. My knees gave out and I collapsed to the filthy ground. The voices washed over me like a raging sea, hatred crashing against me in unrelenting waves. Sparrow’s coin was my life preserver, and I clutched it in desperation.
“I won,” I said, my voice sounding faint to my own ears. “You have to send us where we want to go.” I tried unsuccessfully to swallow. “What’s wrong with me?”
Lady Nightwing looked down on me with utter contempt. “You think you have outsmarted me, human, but I shall have the final victory. You may have cheated the Hoarde out of one night’s diversion, but by the looks of you, you wouldn’t have been good for much anyway.
“What is wrong with you?” she mimicked nastily. “The deadly poison from Hob Nightshade’s thorns burns through your veins. So I will send you to the one who bears the mark of infinity as promised. And your pitiful soul shall trouble me no more.”
My vision tunneled as I tried to grasp what she was saying. “The half-goblin. You will also send him wherever he asks,” I insisted weakly.
She ground her teeth. “As agreed. Now be gone.”
Dark fire seared through me. I tried to scream but my voice wouldn’t work. The tunnel around my eyes narrowed to blackness. All my senses collapsed into a single awareness – pain - and it tore through me as if I was being ripped apart.
And then there was blessed nothingness.
Chapter 3 – Adrift
“I am The Shepherd. There is nothing to fear. Come, bright one, it is time to rest after your journey. Rest and let go.”
The voice was comfort and warmth. I settled into it - became the words, sank into the depths of their meaning. And I was content.
After a while I felt a gentle shifting, inexorably forcing me out of my newfound contentment as if someone was waking me from a pleasant sleep. I transitioned into a dissatisfied grumble, and the voice I had thought to join with chuckled softly.
“Your pardon, bright one. I cannot take you into me, but you will be united with the others soon.”
I accepted, existing along-side the voice instead of within it. A vague curiosity stirred me and my awareness expanded to reveal the space around me. It was darkness, soft and thick, fogged with dim color. Entities floated past, each with a unique form, but all of them shimmering with the same inner light. It was as if their essence was the light and their forms were fluid and inconsequential.
They were beautiful and strange, familiar yet not. I was drawn to them on an elemental level. It seemed natural to want to flow into them and nestle within their glow.
A smoldering orb soared past on gossamer wings, sparking trails of energy that flew out behind it like the tail of a comet. Another being trundled by, almost amphibious in appearance, as if the head of some sea creature had been joined with the body of a man. Its dark, soulful eyes stared through me, wisdom brimming in their depths.
The figure of a woman danced through the gloom, her inexhaustible essence spilling out from her in bright waves of joy. A distinctly feline form slunk past, its face glowing like a cautious moon.
Another young woman’s form peered out at me from a shadowy corner, and she seemed strangely familiar. She glowed golden, but her light was dimmer than the others’. Her long blonde hair billowed around her ethereally as she turned away. A heart-rending sadness radiated from her entire being.
A chubby-faced little girl smiled at me, haloed by points of tiny stars that formed a constellation around her. Her expression shone with innocence, yet worlds of knowledge smoldered in her child’s eyes. A thought flitted past, a fleeting memory of a tiny, wrinkle-faced woman I had once called Grandma.
“These souls are waiting to be reborn and must learn to stand alone once more. You will be together again, perhaps, but now is not the time.”
Then a face with strong male features appeared and looked out at me from a flaming ball of radiance. His eyes, intensely blue, burned with desperation. They struck a chord deep inside me, imploring me to remember who I was and rejoin him.
His fear confused me as I drifted away from him through the multi-hued fog. And then he was gone, replaced by the ocean of light that called to me.
It grew brighter and brighter and I felt myself quicken as I flowed toward it, eager to pour myself into it. But again, something held me back.
“Easy now, bright one. We’ll be there soon.”
Impatient at the delay, my focus shifted to the being that belonged to the voice. A figure drifted close behind me, benevolent and ancient as time itself. A drooping, walrus-like face, dripping with whiskers and studded with large round eyes of deepest midnight, hovered above me. His body was covered in sparse grayish feathers, the skin mottled a dark pink where it shone through them.
The bulbous fingertips of one three-fingered hand were curved above me protectively, and I realized that he cradled me within his palm. Swaying gently with his movement, I watched the being in awe, the ocean of light forgotten. Finally he stopped.
“Here we are, bright one. I now release you into the Sea of Souls.”
He held me away from his body like an offering, and I turned to look out onto a vast sea of purest light. I realized in wonder that it was made up of countless beings like the ones we had just passed. Their endless manifestations were in constant flux as they flowed through each other in waves. They seemed to briefly adopt physical likenesses from one another when they touched, as if they could become each other for a moment before moving on.