Page 17 of A Circle of Uncommon Witches

FIFTEEN

Doreen sputtered as she was spit out of the sand, landing with a thump on a plot of soft green earth. As she coughed and dragged in breath, two more thumps sounded beside her. Margot and Ambrose tumbled close by, each gasping to breathe.

Doreen gave them a once-over, checking that they were okay, before dragging herself to a standing position. She leaned forward and yanked off her shoes, digging her toes into the earth, desperate to believe she was standing on the ground. She was befuddled and disoriented from traveling upside down through a hole in the earth, and she’d given too much of her energy to Ambrose.

Her depletion was fighting to take her under, and she shook it off, refusing. She dug into the matter of the land, the ether and all the elements, and did what Ambrose had shown her on that hillside in the Isle of Skye.

As she channeled the rhythmic buzzing hum of the earth into her, a great whoosh of power shot up her ankles and clamored along her calves, sinking into her thighs. A bright sound burst out of the soil, a dizzying accompaniment of chords that should not have worked together. A strange progression of major to minor, a mixing of modes. Tonally, it should have sounded like a nightmare, but instead it was like being inside a memory of the first time she discovered magic. The dizzying sense that accompanied realizing you were a tiny being in a giant world.

Doreen sighed in relief, her vision going from fuzzy to clear as she took in the world around them. The music softened and the tension shifted, the vibrations of the strings overlapping until they were in unison, vibrating at the same speed, bleeding into an exhale of a resolution.

Doreen didn’t try to shake it off. She inhaled the notes, pocketing them into her marrow, and rolled the tension from her body. She looked around for the first time, beyond the patch of land where they had been deposited.

She stood in the center of a cemetery.

Aged stones dotted the landscape like teeth in a yawning mouth. Doreen shuddered at the sight. Ahead of them stood what appeared to be the pink ruins of a former church. Multiple arches were carved into a sandstone structure that stood four stories high. The sides of the building tapered off, each level of carving and cutouts more impressive than the last.

“A peregrinate spell,” Margot said, shaking out her shirt, her voice thick with alarm. “And not a well-crafted one. Who the hell puts a traveling hex in the middle of sand?”

“Best guess is Eleanor,” Doreen said, her voice gruff, her throat aching. “Perhaps trying to help us get where we needed to go? I think we’ve found our chapel.”

“You haven’t asked me,” Ambrose said, shaking the sand out of his hair. He lifted his aqua eyes to Doreen. “About her.”

“I’m more interested in a conversation about you being able to break the curse, but to be honest, you don’t strike me as the able-to-talk-while-dead type,” she said, her voice low.

“What a good type that is,” Margot said with a wistful sigh.

Ambrose shot Doreen a look. “She’s odd.”

“She’s a MacKinnon.”

His lips twitched. “So was Lenora.”

“You can break it, but if you do, you die,” Doreen said. “That’s what she told us about the curse.”

“That’s the crux of it,” he said. “I don’t have a choice in the breaking. That’s the other part.”

“How can you not have a choice?”

“That’s the way of curses, Doreen. If I am able to break it—which I don’t know for certain—and I succeed, I die.”

“Unless you beat the trials. The real ones.”

“Yes, then I could transform and not die.”

“But we aren’t in the real trials,” Doreen said.

“No, but Ada is the one who cast the original curse, so there is still a chance for you to be able to find love.”

“Eleanor mentioned an original curse.”

“You can defeat it and Ada.”

“And you?”

He swallowed. “I think I am out of chances.”

Margot squirmed from where she stood by a trio of gravestones. “Not to interrupt what I am sure will eventually be a touching moment of weird, but there’s something seriously wrong with the graves.”

“When it comes to asking you about Eleanor,” Doreen said, slow to move her eyes from Ambrose’s, “I don’t need to know who she was to you. It’s clear for anyone to see. She died, and then you cursed us.” She thought about what Eleanor had told her in the stone cottage by the cliffs. “You loved her.”

She felt him fold in on himself, his body shifting as though prepared to take a blow. He was bracing himself too late. “I never got to say goodbye to her.”

Doreen reached out for him but dropped her hand at the last moment. “I think now, you may get the chance.”

“It isn’t her,” he said, his voice cracking. “It can’t be.”

Doreen tilted her head, thinking. “She told me she wore many faces. So it’s a version of what remains of her, perhaps.”

Margot cleared her throat. “Really think you might need to see this, Doreen.”

“Her being here has to be involved with the trials,” Ambrose said.

“Or it’s simply because she’s bound here, and to Ada,” Margot said, her voice as shrill as a poorly plucked string on a violin. “Please look at the damn graves .”

“Fine,” Doreen said, stomping over to Margot. “You could have just told us instead of…” Her voice trailed off, her hand going to her mouth.

“What is it?” Ambrose asked, crossing to where they stood.

Three graves stood side by side. With three names carved into them.

Margot Early MacKinnon

Ambrose Porter MacDonald

Doreen Antoinette MacKinnon

The earth beneath them was fresher than the others, and as Doreen stared at her name, her skin crawled with revulsion… and a lick of fear.

“What in the hell is this?”

“A warning?” Margot asked. “Or a promise.”

Ambrose cursed, leaving them to walk among the other graves, pausing to read name after name. He circled where they stood and returned, his face drawn. “I know every name in this graveyard,” he said. “I was tortured by most of them. They are the names of your kin.”

Ambrose’s jaw was clenched so hard it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. Doreen didn’t apologize again for the sins of those buried and gone, though she wanted to. She couldn’t undo what had been done to him.

Doreen closed her eyes for a solitary moment before she turned, crossed to the graves behind them, and began to read. There she saw her grandmother’s name… and her mother’s. It nearly felled her, the sight of the letters that made up the name of a person she had never gotten to know. Doreen rested a hand on the grave as her legs trembled. She took slow breaths, praying her mother was not one of the souls Ada controlled, while also desperately wishing she could find her. Talk with her.

Doreen looked beyond her mother’s marker to the rest of the MacKinnon line. She walked the ground, pausing at each grave as they led one after the other to Lenora, and then those who came before her. Each name was also carved into a brick in the wall that led up to the doorway of the crumbling church. Not quite a yellow brick road, but a pathway of named loss, nevertheless.

There was a single marker carved at the foot of the door. No grave, no dates, just a lone name.

Margaret Meghan MacKinnon

~Lost but Never Forgotten~

“Margaret?” Doreen asked, looking at the name. She’d never heard this name before, which was a surprise because their grimoire had a list of every last one of them scratched across three pages. She and Margot knew them all.

“Margaret MacKinnon?” Ambrose asked, jogging up.

“Yes.”

He looked alarmed that she didn’t know the name. “She’s who was meant to tie our families together, the MacKinnons and the MacDonalds. The betrothal of Hastings. The one who broke his heart and started the original feud between our line.”

“What does she have to do with the trials?” Doreen asked.

“Never heard of her,” Margot said, peering at the marker.

“She is the original cursed MacKinnon,” Ambrose said. “She is the reason Ada became the queen of the dead.”

The original curse. Eleanor’s whispered warning. Ambrose’s words settled in a cold wash and flooded Doreen’s system.

“Ada was clever and wicked,” Ambrose said.

“She’d have to be,” Doreen said. She was, after all, a vengeful spirit. Who happened to command an army of the dead.

“Ada won the trials, but she asked the gods for something they could not give. She wanted dominion over a soul, the ability to find it in death. She became a keeper of the dead instead,” Ambrose said. “She has a need, a want for MacKinnon souls, in particular.”

“And now we’re in her own personal version of hell,” Doreen said. “Trapped in it.”

“I did not know this would happen,” he said, his gaze sharp.

“We are haunted here,” Margot said. She nodded at the chapel. “Don’t you hear it?”

“The sigil?” Doreen asked, turning to her cousin. “Or something else?”

“Not our sigil,” Margot said. “It’s too eerie, too sad. Our sigil is chaotic; it’s longing and need. This is something else.” She rubbed at her sternum, right above where it housed her most precious organ. “It’s sorrow.”

Doreen forced herself to breathe. She nodded and let her eyes flutter closed, listening. “Sweeter, lonelier. The kind of notes that move like memory and seep down into your sorrow. Mold to your bones.” It sounded like the pain she kept in the box inside her heart, where she’d stuffed the loss of her mother.

It sounded like grief.

“If Ada’s grief is here, then perhaps she is too,” Ambrose said, and he walked up to the front door of the chapel and slammed it open. Darkness lurked behind the doorway, and he strode in to greet it. Margot gave a little shout.

“He’s a bit mad,” she said, one hand resting at the base of her throat.

“Clearly,” Doreen said, her gaze on the space beyond the door, a tug at the corner of her lips.

She waved for Margot to follow, and as Doreen entered, she brushed her hand over the doorframe and whispered a spell of protection. For whatever they found inside.

Finally, she disappeared into the dark where the grief sigil originated, and no other sound dared to follow.

It was so dark Doreen could hear her thoughts pinging in her brain and the sound of her heart pounding in her chest. She reached out as she moved, grasping air instead of wall. “Does anyone have a light?” she asked, hoping to find a footing in the void.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than flames flickered in all four corners of the room.

She gulped and turned in a circle. Doreen stood in a room filled with books. Stone pews were stacked with them, arranged as though they were in a library. Doreen counted ten rows of three. Thirty long pews filled with books. There was no altar, no stage for a pulpit. Only row after row of books, and then, along the wall, more books piled floor to ceiling.

In each corner of the room, including the farthest corner—which had crumbled into a gaping hole in the exterior leading to another interior room—were torches lit by unseen hands.

The floors were painted black. Doreen rubbed her shoe across, and the color smeared. Ambrose leaned down and brushed his hand along the books, his fingers coming away with gray powder.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Ashes,” he said. “Soot.”

“It’s raining ashes in a chapel in the underworld, and the churches are filled with soot,” Margot sang as she came up behind them, the words matching the strange melody following them.

They spread out, Ambrose and Margot heading to the pews in the middle of the chapel, Doreen shifting to those along the wall. The books started by the door, their covers faded and fragile, near to crumbling. Doreen didn’t touch them for fear they might disintegrate. In this hallowed place she was scared to touch anything for fear it, or she, might fragment into nothing.

As she moved from one wall to the next, the books changed. They had a luster. None were titled, but they aged in reverse like Benjamin Button—from falling apart to well-loved to pristine. When she finally reached the farthest wall, the covers were gleaming and the pages appeared crisp. She gave in and picked up the last one, and nearly dropped it as she read the title page.

The Uncommon Life of Doreen MacKinnon

By Doreen MacKinnon

Fingers trembling, she turned from the title page to the first paragraphs of the opening chapter. The words were handwritten, and it was almost in Doreen’s slanted script. If not for the angry loops attached to her g ’s and y ’s.

The words on the pages were familiar, echoes of her thoughts about being lonely, wishing she had a boyfriend, wanting to be known and loved. Yet Doreen knew she had not written these words. They were an amalgamation of her feelings. Like someone had gotten a glimpse of what they thought she was feeling and ran with it.

This did not stop the leaded weight from thudding heavily in the pit of her stomach. She flipped ahead to the last chapter, halfway through the book, and saw a single name.

Ambrose MacDonald

Beneath it was the entry:

The first time I met Ambrose, he looked through me. His aqua eyes with their black ring, and his stubborn brow. I thought he hated me.

It did not matter that he never saw me how I wished he would see me.

It did not matter how long the wait, or if he saw me at all. He so often never did. The singular study on my end was enough to sustain me.

I whispered to him on the cliffs. With my eyes closed and my bare feet planted in the earth. As I rolled forward, my toes gripping the ground, my weight shifting forward, I would imagine him behind me.

This morning, I stood there, thinking of him yet again.

The wind rustled my dress against my calves. Invisible fingers brushed against loose strands of my hair, grazing my cheeks. I pretended it was his fingertips and rocked back onto my heels, to imagine for a moment he was there to catch me should I fall. I inched closer to the edge of the cliff, of danger, of possibility.

Beneath me, waves crashed, the sound an answer to the unseen storm brewing beneath the surface. I knew that call; it was building in me.

I leaned forward once more, my breath filling deep into my belly, expanding my chest until I thought I might float up and away like a leaf into a breeze. I am performing for myself, on my own, as I drift forward again onto my toes. The skies overhead turn the shade of a faded bruise. My heart on display, battered for only me to witness.

As my dress billows up around me, it tries to pull me away from the edge of this daydream. Of impossible things. Of a moment I live only in my head. Of this all-consuming desire.

The sun breaks through the clouds. It crests across my face and heats the cold running through my bones. I am always wanting him. I am always cold. I hold these fragile dreams close. They are a whisper, thinner than a single strand of hair, more fragile than the loosest thread along my hem.

I feel beautiful.

I am thankful there is not a looking glass to inform me. For surely it would prove me wrong, and I would see myself through his eyes. In them, I am never as pretty as I might or could or should be. In them, I will never measure up.

The wind grows colder, and I shift forward. Aware, knowing none of it is real. It is all a story in my mind, and I am alone.

Standing at the edge of a cliff.

I take a step back. One. Two.

When I turn, the dream will be gone, the spell broken. I back away another step. Afraid to turn. And when I do, at last, he is there. Waiting. Only, even as I am standing before him, it is me that he does not see.

Below us, the gurgle and gush of the water is constant and free. I blink, and he is gone. Once more I am alone in my thoughts. In my desire. My wants and my daydreams.

It only takes a moment for me to realize he was never there at all. It was always, and ever, only this edge of the cliff and me.

Doreen did not read on.

Her hands trembled as she set the book down. She stepped away.

The words were not hers, aside from the first ones—which were ones she had spoken to Margot before. The rest, though… she had not written them, but as she read them, they felt true. It was as though someone was watching her, taking note of what she could not, would not, voice. Pulling out the tender and tentative truth of what she did not wish to admit. Of how she was feeling for Ambrose.

Doreen swallowed, and turned to step away again. To put space, distance, between the book and herself.

But as she did, a shape formed in the empty space beside her book. It filled in, and a new book with a sparkly purple cover appeared.

Her whole hand vibrating, Doreen picked the book up and turned to the title page.

Margot MacKinnon

She looked over to her cousin, who was perusing the books stacked in the pews. While she stared at Margot, trying to work out what the books could possibly mean, the chapel shifted.

It happened much in the same way Eleanor had flashed from black-and-white to Technicolor. How Sinclair had stopped and struggled to speak at the castle. One moment the chapel surrounding her was a makeshift library; the next, it was an aged and barren space, typical for a forgotten country chapel.

There stood an altar, with five rows of unlit candles and a dais. In the center, a tall black candle sat by itself.

In another flash, Doreen saw the old chapel imposed over the chapel-slash-library as it was now. They existed simultaneously, which was impossible.

“Do you see that?” she asked, keeping her voice low, as though the very presence of the books demanded a whisper.

Ambrose looked over to her, and he blinked. He put the book in his hand back into its slot on the pew and looked down at the row of books before them. He saw, Doreen supposed, what she did. That they were in two realities. He took a step back and she realized he should have been standing over a gaping hole. He started when the tall candle in the middle of the room wasn’t there for him to bump into.

“Doubles,” he said.

Margot stared at Doreen before shifting her gaze to Ambrose. Her eyes moved to the book in Doreen’s hand, and Doreen followed her gaze. The book shifted as they watched. From a journal bearing her cousin’s name to a large bone.

Doreen’s arm shook. She looked at the shelf, and realized it was still a stone shelf, but it was filled with various bones and jars and liquids that looked like they belonged in a devil’s laboratory.

“Put that back, Dore,” Margot said, her voice quiet but firm.

Doreen set the bone down, her breath catching in her throat. “What is this place?”

“It’s a graveyard, the real one,” Ambrose said. He nodded to the hole in the floor. “I think whatever we’re meant to find is in there.”

“You think Ada is in that hole?” Margot asked.

“I have no idea what is tucked down there.”

Doreen tiptoed back toward them, dusting her palms off on her pants. “The books on the far wall are journals. I… I found one meant to be mine, and Margot’s appeared while I was standing there. Before the library turned into a decayed house of bones.”

“Those are the same,” Margot said, nodding toward her row of pews full of books. “They present as journals written by our ancestors. I think… this is their dust, ashes, and bones. A collection of our family line. I don’t know why ours would be here, besides the fact that we are here.”

Doreen gulped and shuddered. “So, it could be Ada’s cave, somehow?” They looked down in the hole together, staring into the darkness. “I’ve really had enough of caves for a while,” Doreen said.

“How do we retrieve what we don’t know to ask for?” Margot said, looking down.

“I used the Secretum Veritas to find the Dead House.”

Margot turned to her. “Really?”

“The Dead House?” Ambrose asked.

“Where my aunts kept you,” Doreen said, wincing as she explained.

“Apt name,” he said, before wandering over to the door to look out.

“What do you need to do it?” Margot asked. “You can do it again, yes?”

“I used the bark of my wand and a bloodstone, herbs from my garden and a bit of Stella’s hair from her hairbrush. I had an idea of what I was calling, though.”

“What was the cost?” Margot asked.

Doreen squirmed.

“You haven’t paid it yet?”

“No.”

“You’re in a hellscape.”

“And?”

“It didn’t occur to you that this was the cost?” Margot said wryly.

“Which part? Getting hoodwinked by the queen of the dead, tossed into the underworld, or facing the horrors of this place?”

“Maybe all?”

“Huh.”

“Was it worth it?”

“What?”

Margot’s brows shot up. “Finding him.”

“Yes,” Doreen said, without hesitation, not meeting Margot’s eyes.

Margot thought about it. “Love, I think, is worth it.”

“I’ve always hoped that would be true.” She met Margot’s eyes. “But that’s not what this is about.”

“You might end up surprised,” Margot mused.

“Is it worth it to offer up some of my blood and call it a day?” Ambrose asked, rejoining them.

“Not in this world,” Doreen said. “We don’t know what we would bind you to—Ada, the rest of the dead kept here… Who knows?”

“If it breaks this world, isn’t it worth trying?” Ambrose asked.

“No,” Doreen said.

“I’m offering.”

“You’re a moron.”

Ambrose leaned down so they were face to face. “I’m not afraid.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Maybe you should look around. We’re in a prison we can’t escape, and I am being haunted by my dead ex-girlfriend. What do you have to lose?”

Doreen paused. Her eyes narrowed. “Oh my goddess, do you want to be tied here? Stuck here? With her?” She threw up her hands. “Of course you do. Fine, give me a rusty nail and I’ll slice you open. Lean over so I can stab your aorta.”

“What?” Ambrose took a step back. “That’s not what I am saying. I don’t want to be stuck here.”

“I think you do.”

He gave his head a slow shake. “No.” He stepped closer to her. “Doreen. Whoever that is, even if it’s Lenora, she isn’t my Lenora.”

“ Your Lenora,” Doreen said. “Says the man who was sobbing over her in a cave, prepared to turn into a stone and never move a pinkie toe again after seeing her.” She crossed her arms tight over her chest, and the muscle in his jaw bulged again.

“It’s fine, Ada could pop up and eat us at any moment, but go ahead, choose now to argue,” Margot said, and inched away from them, slowly making her way to the other side of the room, where she picked a book off the stacks and started flipping through it.

“It’s normal. I was in shock,” Ambrose said to Doreen in a loud whisper. “How did you expect me to act? I was shaken .”

“Heartbroken.”

“Of course I am,” Ambrose said, his voice rising. “I bloody loved her and lost her .”

“And now you want to stay with her ,” Doreen said, slamming her pointer finger into his chest. “Admit it.”

“There isn’t anything to admit.”

“You want to stay.”

“I don’t.”

“Do so.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Liar.”

“I do not—” He stopped talking, reached up, and grabbed her finger.

“What?”

“You’re jealous.”

“I…” She tried to yank her finger away. “No, I am not. Give that back.”

“You are .”

“She really is,” Margot called from where her nose was stuck in a book.

“It’s called self-preservation,” Doreen said, trying to tug her hand free and failing.

“Doreen,” Ambrose said, tugging her to him. “Who is the liar now?”

“I don’t want to get stuck here, and without you I can’t break the curse. You said it yourself. That’s all.”

“You sure that’s the story you’re sticking with?”

“Speaking of story,” Margot called when it was clear Ambrose and Doreen had reached a stalemate and were locked in a staring contest, neither moving nor admitting the truth of what they were feeling. “You two might want to read a few more of these creepy bone histories before we make any rash decisions. Unless one of you is about to confess your undying love.”

Ambrose dropped Doreen’s hand, and she took a step back. He looked away. She hurried over to where Margot waited.

“Are they all journals?” Doreen said.

“Did you look through this one?” She held one up. “It’s your mother’s.”

Doreen sat down hard on the pew and snatched the book from Margot. She yanked it open, fear and hope flooding her.

Frances S. MacKinnon

The name was there, but the words were not. Instead, it simply read:

Soul Not Willing

“What the hell does this mean?”

“I don’t know.” Margot shook her head. “Do any others say the same?”

Margot walked around, flipping through the journals while Doreen held the book as though if by clinging to it she were holding on to a tangible piece of her mother.

“Why would Ada take these?” Ambrose said.

“What do you mean?” Margot asked.

“Ada needs souls. She siphons their life force and power.”

“Maybe the souls not willing are the souls she couldn’t take,” Margot said.

“You think so?” Doreen said, her heart a painful vise in her chest.

“Yes,” Ambrose said, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. Doreen exhaled, hope and relief flooding through her. “It makes a kind of sense. These could be a record.”

“Hey,” Margot said, pausing. “Hear that?”

Doreen looked up. Cocked her head.

“It’s another ripple in the room, but instead of showing two places,” Margot said, “it’s like there are two sounds fighting to be heard. One of them won’t hold.”

A book tumbled from the shelf, coming to a stop at Ambrose’s feet. He picked up the book.

Eleanor Lenora MacKinnon

Ambrose let out a mournful huff. He flipped through the pages, looked up, and swallowed hard. “There’s something wrong with the ink. It’s rust-colored, nothing like the quills or ink Lenora used. Some of the words have been scratched out and new ones added over them.”

“How do you mean?” Margot asked.

“Listen,” he said. “It looks like originally it reads: ‘She wanted to meet her fate, but changed her mind.’ But it’s been scratched out and now reads: ‘She wanted to meet Ada , but changed her mind and died.’”

“What? Why is it altered?” Margot said.

Doreen thought of Eleanor/Lenora, and how she was like the two worlds of the chapel—shifting from one form to another. How the sentences were saying one thing and then another, how they were in one world that seemed to be more like two.

“Miles to go before she sleeps,” Doreen said. She walked over to the hole in the middle of the floor. “What if Eleanor couldn’t come here without being summoned?” she said. “This is a place that is orchestrated, and that means everything that happens is being done on purpose. It’s like there are two sides of Eleanor—the one I met in her home and the other version. What if she’s bespelled?”

“So why send us here?” Margot said. “Do you think she wanted us to call her here?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Doreen said.

“She said she’s part of the family,” Margot said.

“Only one way to find out,” Doreen said.

“What are you two thinking of doing?” Ambrose asked.

“There’s a way to call us to one another,” Doreen told him. “A type of MacKinnon communication—the aunts used it when we were little and gone too long into the woods. Though I don’t know if it will work now, since we’ve been untied from our line.”

“Only one way to know,” Margot said.

“ Safe as secrets, ” Doreen said, calling their family motto up, her voice ringing loud.

“ As it ever was, ” Margot replied, her voice echoing in the space around them.

The lanterns in the room exploded, the flames rising high before they shot across the room, creating a bridge of light. The ground creaked, the wind moaned, and the chapel shook before it let loose a bang and the center of the floor caved in on itself.

They scrambled back, over the pews and away from the sinking floor, Ambrose holding on to Doreen, Doreen pulling Margot after her.

One by one the rows of books toppled as the chapel shook, and then finally stopped.

A long, terrifying minute passed. They waited for Eleanor to appear.

The only sound in the room was the swishing of the fabric of a skirt, shifting like a sigh. Doreen turned to Margot to ask her to be still, when she realized Margot hadn’t been wearing a skirt. Neither was she, nor Ambrose.

The sound came again, the movement growing closer.

Doreen’s heart thumped so loudly in her chest she wanted to shush it.

There was a flicker of a light, and then a rumble deep in the chapel. More candles than the room could possibly hold flickered to life. The land quaked. Suddenly, pages shot from the hole in the center of the room. Hundreds of them, one after the other. They rained down on them, fluttering like petals from a giant flower.

She thought she heard a rush of words from the poem that had pelted their skin once they’d left the castle.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Briefly, Doreen wondered if those words weren’t for her, or even Ambrose.

What if it was all for Ada, or from her? Grief in one of its many forms. Haunting them.

Whispers filled the room, a resonate voice, ageless and tired, and the poem’s words tapered off. The words of the pages bucked as the floating pages came together in a whoosh of air, snapping into line between two thick covers. The book dropped directly in front of Doreen’s feet, and the chapel fell silent.