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Where are you?

Who are you?

The whispers grow into a forest, and we stand among its trunks. An ancient forest, trees too big for three men to wrap their arms around. The canopy so thick that only speckled light filters down to us, shivering with the shapes of leaves. We stand on a patch of road, seven stones knocked up against each other. I pant. Lucy grins, cheeks pink and eyes bright.

“See?” she says. “It’s not so bad.”

I can still feel reality pulling apart inside of me.

“No time to waste,” she says.

“Wait—” I begin, but she’s already stepped off our little island and—

—and into the sea. It closes over us, deep and dark and filled with echoes. Whale song and weeping. I hear my name and start to turn, taking in a breath before I think. Water rushes in, but I don’t choke. A man stands—floats—stands beside me, staring ahead, wrapped in cloth like a funeral shroud, his mouth gaping and mournful.

We’re all coral and bones since she let the water in. They get the story wrong. They say that, besotted and foolish, Dahut opened the gates for her lover, and the tide came and snuck in after. But her lover was no man of blood and bone and breath. It was older, greater, than any man. It sang to her of destruction, and she let it in. To cover every part of her. To devour every part of us. Do you understand?

And a laugh. We’ve moved on. Another step, another ten, I can’t tell. We shouldn’t be able to walk, surrounded by dark water, but walk we do. And now a woman walks with me.

We’re all coral and bones since she let the water in. They get the story wrong. They say it was an accident, that she forgot to close the gate against the tide, but it isn’t so. Dahut opened the gates to a power more ancient and terrible than we could comprehend and spread her arms in welcome. But the wise men of Ys called to the sea, and drowned all of Ys to stop her. Do you understand?

I don’t, I want to tell her, but she is already gone, and a child walks beside me, our feet stumbling over silt and stone.

We’re all coral and bones since she let the water in. They get the story wrong. She opened the gates, but she drowned before she could let her lover in, and the gates were shut once more. Yet she persists. The road persists. She draws them in, the travelers, sings to them that they may come to Ys and she might escape, and find her lover again. The sea cannot drown him forever. The road cannot hold her forever. Do you understand?

I gasp, and we are on dry land again. Another cluster of stones, a remnant of the road.

“What did you see?” Lucy asks, head cocked. “What did you hear?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “There were—we were under the water—and there were people down there with us. I think they were talking about Ys.”

“A scholar came down the road once,” Lucy says. “He said that the city of Ys was a French myth. He said it bore some similarityto the things about Ys he’d heard on the road, but there were differences, too, and he never did decide whether it was just a story the road manifested for him, or if it was the truth behind the road’s illusions.”

The story is shifting and sliding in my mind. Dahut, this woman, was trying to let something—something ancient and terrible—into the city. She failed, but the city was destroyed, creating the road. At least that’s what I think Lucy is telling me, what Becca told me before.

The road calls to some people, I remember. Becca heard Lucy calling. What did Lucy hear, to lure her to the road? Ys? Dahut? “What do you think?” I ask.

“I think it’s real,” Lucy says. “I think there was a city called Ys, and a woman called Dahut who drowned it. I don’t know about the rest of it—this ancient power, the reason Dahut flooded the city. But I don’t think it matters, do you? It doesn’t matterwhywe’re here, only that we are, and we want to escape.”

It’s one of many moments where her age strikes me—the depth of it. She’s not just older than fifteen. She’s been here decades. A lifetime. How much must that change you? But she smiles her dimpled smile, and looks over her shoulder, and the moment passes.

“Look,” she says.

I glance back. Behind us is not water but a hill that drops away, and at the bottom, fields of golden wheat spill in all directions. In a gap between the wavering stalks, Mel and Kyle run, hand in hand, Mel’s bag thumping against her back with each step.

“They’re running from something,” I say. I can’t make out Mel’s face but I can imagine the fear etched on it. I start back toward them. Lucy holds me in place. “We need to help them,” I protest.

“They’ll be all right,” she says. “And if they aren’t, there’s nothing we can do from here. We need to get to the gate. We’re almost there.”

She steps off the stones. And we are—

In the woods. I know these woods and I don’t. We’re in the Briar Glen Woods, but they’re younger, with slender trunks and too much light, and a voice calling.

Lucy. Lucy, where are you?

Lucy, I didn’t mean to.

Goddammit, Lucy.