I study Nimh.
She’s like a torch in the darkness, pushing away the fears and horrors of the night. I let my gaze linger on her profile as she turns to round the corner ahead of me, moving slowly as she picks her way over a pile of fallen rubble.
The faint blue glow from my chrono plays across her features, her full lips, her dark eyes, her thick lashes. Her face is nothing like Saelis’s rounder, softer features, her serious gaze nothing like Miri’s energetic grin, but she’s magnetic in a way that’s undeniable.
I can’t think why I find myself comparing her to my friends. Maybe it’s the heartbreak of being told that I can’t ever be with them—or the realization that I may never see them again.
Maybe my heart wants some way to fill the void.
A magic-wielding girl from Below. Good choice, North.
Nimh pauses as the tunnel opens up into a bigger space beyond. She turns and our eyes lock. Her gaze is steady, and for a long moment we’re perfectly still.
Just the two of us in here, the storm raging outside.
Beyond these glimmering rock walls lies death, far as the eye can see. But the girl in front of me is so full of life.
I expect her to blink or look away. It’s what people do when they accidentally make eye contact. But she doesn’t, and I can’t.
“Why do you stare at me?” she asks quietly.
“Um.” I reach for words and come up short.
She tilts her head, and maybe it’s a trick of the blue light, but her cheeks seem to darken with color, just for an instant. As if she senses it, she lifts her fingertips to press them against her skin.
They touch just near the dark smear made by the drops of blood that fell from the bodies up in the trees, and in that moment I remember that her friends are dead.
Skies. I’m reaching for something that’s not there. What am I doing? She’s not looking at me the way I’m looking at her, and I shouldn’t even be thinking about this. My own cheeks are hot as I grab for the first available subject change.
“This is, uh, the place you wanted to show me?”
She carefully steps out into the larger space, and I follow.
“Hold a moment,” she says, soft. “Here, I can get far enough from the walls to reach the mist that lies dormant in this place.”
“Uh, mist? Like that stuff outside?” I wish my voice didn’t sound so nervous. “I thought it couldn’t exist in here?”
“The mist is everywhere,” Nimh answers gently, though at the edge of the chrono’s light I can see her lips twitch. “A little is safe enough, and necessary for magic. There is a little trapped inside this old ruin, kept here by the cage of sky-steel around it.”
“How do you know all this?”
She smiles at me. “I discovered it when I was a little girl. No one else comes here.”
She reaches into that utility belt she wears, drawing out a pinch of something between finger and thumb. Bowing her head, she whispers to it softly, and then tosses it up into the air. Lifting her chin, she blows gently, and the tiny particles come to life. Glowing first like a swarm of tiny insects, they glide out into a larger, darker space, each one illuminating until it’s like we’re standing on the edge of a galaxy.
I’ve got my mouth hanging open like a palace tourist, but as I gawk at the beauty of it, slowly I begin to realize what I’m seeing.
It’s a huge—well, not a room, it’s too big for that. There are double-height ceilings, and a series of dark openings that lead away to other spaces—some on our level, others running off a balcony around the second level. At first I think it’s a grand hall, but then I figure out what I’m actually looking at. It’s much simpler than that, and so completely out of place here that it startles a laugh out of me.
She shoots me an inquiring glance, and I lift one hand to gesture at our surroundings. “It’s a shopping arcade,” I say, pointing at the rows of cement openings where the duraglass must have been. “Those are storefronts, right?”
“There were merchants here,” she agrees with a tentative smile. “I think once it was open to the sky, or they had the art of making much larger sheets of glass than we do now.”
I crane my neck back to take a look.