Page 124 of Last of Her Name

My words feel small and inconsequential compared to the Prismata’s much greater existence. It’s like tossing pebbles from the shore to get the ocean’s attention. But still I try to find a point of connection, a way of making myself heard by it.

You have to leave, please. You’re in danger!

I can feel it react, a thread of green curiosity flickering in and out, brushing over me like a slinke leaf. So it must hear me—but does it understand?

Stars, this would be so much easier if she could talk to me! Is Clio even in there? Or was every knowable part of her a result of my own subconscious?

Where did I end and she begin?

Did I get it all wrong?

They’re coming to destroy you. They don’t know what you are. Please, you must let me help you!

I have to find her if she’s here. Whatever part of the Prismata clung to me all my life, shadowed me in the form of my best friend, I have to find it now. It’s the only way I can stop Volkov and save the people I love.

It’s the only way this war can end.

As hard as it is, I have to let my mind clear. I must put aside the words and the pleas, and unearth something deeper. Something more instinctive, that the Prismata will understand.

I start with an image.

We are thirteen years old. We sit under the grapevines, spying on a shirtless Pol as he washes the mantibu. But then a slinke spider drops from the vines and lands between us. We scream and Pol sees us, then chases us with a bucket of soapy water. He trips and spills it on himself, and you and I laugh and laugh …

Warmth spreads through me. I can recall the day so clearly, and the purity of our happiness.

We are ten years old, sitting on the floor of my bedroom. The window is open, and we can smell the rich wine in the presses below. I draw a spaceship and you color it. We name itStarchaser. We list the planets we’ll visit and what we’ll do. It takes us hours to plan it all out, and finally we fall asleep, back to back on the carpet.

No one knows me like Clio does. No matter what she is, she’s my best friend, for as long as I live.

We are eight years old. It’s night, and we’ve snuck away from Pol’s birthday party to sit on the top of the house, looking up at the stars. I point out Alexandrine, and you say we’ll go there first. “You and me against the universe,” you add, and we link pinkies and swear to be friends forever.

I lay everything before the Prismata—every moment, every smile, every whisper. Every fight we had, every make-up, every prank we pulled. I lay out our love for Pol. I pour our friendship into this ancient being’s mind. And I give it my fear and horror that I might lose her.

I feel heat rising, softness closing around me. The Prismata is changing, shifting. I struggle to understand, and then—

“Stacia.”

Her voice.

As clear in my thoughts as it ever was.

Relief floods through me. “Clio? Is that you?”

Her excitement rises around me; I canfeelit, like soap bubbles popping on my skin.

“I asked you to come to me,” she says, “and you did.”

“Yes, yes! I’m here, Clio. Stars, I am here. I’m sorry it took so long.”

A pause, as the current of the Prismata swirls around me. My mind floods with color, curls of yellow and red. And then, out of the misty hues, a solid form materializes, appearing before my mind’s eye like fog taking shape, colors assembling into the form I know and love so well.

Clio walks toward me and takes my hands, and I realize I have my body again, or at least the sensation of one. I can see and feel and hear her as if we were standing in the vineyard back home. She’s wearing the blue sundress she had on the last day I saw her, and her hair flows around her shoulders, as golden as the light around us. I’m in my favorite outfit—the tank top and cargo pants that I had to abandon on Sapphine, and even my multicuff is on my wrist. My hair is braided over my shoulder.

I pull her close, hug her tight, until tears run from my eyes. She squeezes back, and somehow, she feels more herself than she’s ever been before.

“I miss you,” I whisper.

“I was never far.” She pulls back to look at me. Her eyes aren’t blue anymore, but all the colors of the Prisms, swirling endlessly. “So. Are you going to tell meallabout it, or what?”