Page 62 of Echo North

It ended before I was ready, but not before my cheeks grew damp with tears. I blinked up at Hal, who leaned his elbows on the keys and put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook and I jerked up from my seat and scrambled onto the stage. I sat next to him on the piano bench, slid my arm around his waist. He felt heavy beside me, his grief a solid thing.

“I wanted—I wanted you to know one thing about me,” he said. “One true thing. It was all I could think of to give you.” His voice was raw, ragged.

Ask the right questions,whispered the smoke-woman, unbidden, in my mind. “Where did you learn to play like that?”

“I learned from my friend. She wrote that piece—it was her gift to me.”

The words tore at my heart, and I tried to push away my jealousy. “What happened to her?”

“I lost her. A long time ago.” He stood from the bench in one stiff motion.

“How long ago?”

He looked at me, his eyes wet. “A moment. And an eternity.”

I rose and slipped over to him. “If there was a way to—to get everything back … to make everything right again … would you let me help you?”

“You cannot help me, Echo. You never could.”

I stared at him, my pulse overloud in my ears. “Hal—”

He stepped back, his whole body trembling.

The stage began to shake beneath our feet. Stars exploded beyond the domed ceiling, the world fractured white. I got the feeling from Hal’s sudden sharp breath that this wasn’t supposed to happen—another change in the story.

He flashed one more look in my direction, and winked out of existence.

I turned to see Mokosh standing in the midst of the hall, a pale green dress blowing about her knees in some invisible wind.

“All he does is lie to you,” she said. “Why can’t you see that?”

“Why doyouonly show up after he’s gone?” I snapped, unaccountably irritated with her. “Are you following me? Library, I want to stop reading.”

“Echo, I’m only watching out for you—”

But I was already stepping through the mirror. The hall faded around me. Hal’s music coiled fragile and tight around my heart.

IDREAMEDIWAS DANCINGwith Hal in the glittering ballroom. Soldiers burst in with their rifles and bayonets, and they slit Hal’s throat in a sweep of jagged silver. He stared at me as he crumpled and fell. “You cannot help me, Echo,” he whispered. “You never could.”

And then I was kneeling in the snow and it was Rodya who lay there, red blood staining the white ground. He gasped for air and couldn’t breathe and I turned and saw my father’s bookshop, burning, burning. My father was trapped behind the window.

“Papa!” I screamed and ran toward him.

Then everything turned dark, and I stood in the room behind the black door. The baubles dropped from their strings, slicing me to pieces as they slid past. I pushed through the falling stars to the strange whirring clock, and there behind the glass was Hal’s face, his eyes wide with horror.

IWOKE WITH A GASPto the sound of someone crying. The darkness was sharp and cold around me, and I was shaky from the grip of my dreams. But I knew, as I had not wholly known before, that it wasn’t the wolf making that noise.

It couldn’t be.

Fear bit sharp. I reached out to feel for the wolf in the blankets.

But my hand touched skin, my fingers brushed against a very human arm. I gasped.

The owner of the arm woke; there was a sudden frozen stillness, the sharp intake of breath.

“Don’t touch me,” came a hoarse, desperate whisper. “You’re not supposed to touch me.”

But I didn’t pull away. My pulse raged, strong enough, wild enough, to make me burst apart.