Aisling Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

Aisling reached Willowbrook by midmorning. She found Melora in the ivy-wrapped cottage, stirring a pot of broth. The old woman looked up, and her wrinkled face split into a grin. "You brought a god down to size," Melora said. "I felt it from here." But Aisling did not sit. A cold draft moved through the room, though the door was shut. "Something followed me," Aisling said. She had felt it on the stairs. A tug, like a hand at her sleeve. Now it filled the cottage. A woman's ghost took shape by the hearth, thin and gray, her mouth open in a silent cry. She had died alone on the mountain years ago. Aisling's voice had called her without meaning to. And Aisling had no way to send her onward. "I can hear the dead," Aisling said. "I can hold them. But I never learned the rite to free them. She'll linger. She'll hurt." The ghost's face twisted. Frost spread across the floorboards. Melora set down her spoon. "Then don't use a rite you don't have," she said. "Use what you are." Aisling closed her eyes. She thought of Nyx, the shadow child she had held until grief became peace. She thought of Zamir on the mountain, held to his own shape by song. She had never sent a soul on. But she had learned to see what a soul needed and give it. That was the whole of it. She began to sing. Not a memorized chant. Her own voice, low and sure, reaching the spirit still listening. "You are not lost," she sang. "The path is open. Walk it." The ghost turned toward her. Aisling sang of warmth, of rest, of a door standing wide. She did not command. She invited. The frost stopped spreading. The ghost's cry softened. Her gray form brightened, edges melting like morning mist. She reached toward Aisling once, then turned away, toward something only she could see. "Go home," Aisling whispered. The spirit stepped into the light and was gone. The cold left the room. The broth bubbled again. Melora exhaled. "You made your own rite," she said. "Most shamans copy the old words for a lifetime. You built a door from nothing." Aisling opened her hand. The ring of light from Zamir's bond glowed faint against her palm. She understood now. She could call the dead, and she could free them. The two halves had joined. But a shaman was not ordained by one soul freed. "There will be others," Melora said, and her voice dropped. "Word travels. When people learn one shaman can send the dead home, every grieving family will come knocking. And not all the dead want to leave." Aisling looked at the door. Tomorrow she would climb back to Zamir, as she had promised. Today, she had crossed a line she could not uncross. She was a guide now, in truth. The lost would find her.